How hitting “rewind” can help you move forward: Your three-step plan

Imagine if you could hit “rewind” on life. With the benefit of hindsight, you could fix your mistakes, relive key moments and eliminate all regrets.

Obviously, that’s impossible. Yet, while you can’t go back and redo your choices and actions, you can learn a lot about yourself, and set yourself up for success in the future, by taking a moment to run the tape back for a self-assessing review. It’s a technique that works—here’s why you should give it a try, and how to do it effectively.

“How did that happen?” Looking back on your days, and your behaviours in various situations, allows you to notice the circumstances and thoughts that led to your actions and reactions.

Sometimes, it might seem painful to relive the memories if a situation went poorly, but doing this provides an opportunity to identify what you’d like to repeat in the future, or change when faced with that scenario again. You can build yourself a roadmap to “course-correct” the things that move you farther from your goals and repeat or build on the things that move you closer to them.

For example, let’s say you find yourself eating a cookie you didn’t want. Take a moment to consider what situations, thoughts and actions led up to the behaviour. You may find that one of the reasons that you ate it is because the cookie box was out on the table — and so you may choose to keep it in the back of the pantry next time.

Or, let’s take a more positive situation. You decided to go for a walk instead of turning to food when you were bored. Run back through that decision-making process and examine what happened. You may realize that one of the things that encouraged you to go on a walk was seeing your shoes in the kitchen. You may then choose to keep a pair of shoes in your kitchen for next time.

In both cases, the value of your “rewind” was identifying a change you could make to help lead you on the path you’d like to follow next time around.

As described in your Weekly, the next time you’re in a situation where things don’t go the way you wish they would have, use these steps to identify adjustments for next time:

1. Imagine watching a video recording of the situation. In your mind, rewind the tape 48 hours — or whatever the proper timeframe may be — and watch everything that happened. As you’re viewing it, you can see what actions you’re taking, what the circumstances are around you, and you can even hear what you are thinking.

2. Determine where you would stop the tape, make a change and re-record it. What would you change and at what point? For example, if you found yourself buying a lavish lunch you didn’t really want, you might stop the tape after dinner the night before, when you decided not to pack leftovers for lunch.

3. Now replay the tape with the re-recording. How do things turn out differently? Based on this, consider what you can do differently next time to help create a new recording.

Try doing this three times over the next week. And when you do so, remember that it’s not helpful to judge yourself when reviewing. You may find your actions were avoidable, but keep in mind, everything is easier to recognize in the rear-view mirror.

Changing behaviours isn’t easy, because so much of what we do on a moment-to-moment basis is almost (if not completely) out of our conscious awareness. A healthy dose of self-compassion will do wonders — and the “rewind” button will become a powerful tool in your weight-loss journey going forward.