I was recently interviewed on Jeremy Irvine’s podcast ‘Dear 21 Year-old Me’, which employs the device of ‘Now and Then’ perspectives – and invites us to reflect on the question ‘What if I knew then what I know now?’

While I’m not comfortable with either self-aggrandizement or self-blaming, I have long been a staunch advocate of reflective practice. The interview was therefore an opportunity to practice another form of this discipline – with the benefit of an interlocutor and an unseen audience.

I have written before about the use of regret as a catalyst for improvement rather than a source of guilt or shame. Extracting insights from experience is one of the most beneficial ways we learn and grow – and often our mistakes are our best teachers.

Whether you listen to the interview or not, I hope you too will find a way to reflect on your experience and see any mistakes or missteps you may have made as catalysts for your own growth. We can’t change what we did or didn’t do in the past, but we can certainly resolve to aim higher – now and into the future.

Thx to Jeremy for the opportunity to engage in yet another form of reflective practice.