Debriefing

When I lead team building activities, one of the important things that I always do is the debriefing. It's the time after the activity where we talk about what just happened. When learning to debrief, it is often structured in three sections - what, so what, and now what.

What - what happened? How did the group work together? What did you do well? What could you have done better?

So what - What did you learn? What did you need to do in order to succeed? Why did we do this activity? Why does it matter?

Now what - How will you take what you learned and use it outside of this activity? What does this have to do with your daily life?

The thing is, debriefing is important for all sorts of things, but we don't often take the time to do so. I wrote yesterday about how I was out of balance. Last night after I turned off my computer I was thinking about some things that have happened in my life recently and realized why it was that I was out of balance. So I sat down with my prayer journal, and I reflected on what had happened, the feelings that was bringing up in me, and the reality that not dealing with those feelings was getting me stuck. I was avoiding my feelings and it was creating the unbalance.

And you know, last night after I prayed/journaled, I found that today I was much more focused. I started getting my life back in order. I got some things done at the office that I had been putting off. I got my kitchen cleaned and my living room decluttered. I made chili. All these things are representative of simply getting myself back to where I want to be. When we don't process what happens in our lives, we do ourselves a disservice because we don't learn as much as we could, and sometimes, like me, we get stuck without even realizing why. When we are honest with ourselves about what is really going on, it is then that we can move forward and face things as they really are.

I'm not saying my processing is done. It takes time. But I have started to realize what was really going on, what I could learn from the experience, and how I can use what I have learned.

What, so what, now what...