How to use your past to guide you forward (7 Free Reflective Questions to get you unstuck)

We spend so much of our time trying to become improved versions of ourselves. The job, the choices or the moments we wish we’d handled differently. But here’s what I’ve realised. If you want to improve your future and make change or choices that genuinely make you happier and improved versions of yourself, you first need to use your past as your compass.

Every experience you’ve had has taught you something about who you are, what makes you come alive, what drains you, and what you’ve outgrown. If you start looking back with curiosity instead of criticism, the patterns begin to jump out at you. Like when you felt most you or what environments brought out your best side or what moments gave you energy rather than stole it.

So many of my clients think they will need to start from scratch (or thats what they want to do), but there’s always a way to utilise what’s already there. In my own personal experience, I thought I was walking away from the only industry I knew. It was 15 years of client work, campaign management, and product know-how. But later, when I became a coach, I realised I’d carried it all with me. All those skills like communication, empathy, problem-solving, listening, they all became the foundations of my business and I use and leverage all of my past experince until this day.

So before you dismiss what’s behind you, pause. Every role, every skill, every mistake, every heartache - it’s all data. You just have to see what you’ve already got and use it!

Because when you start unpicking what truly lights you up or the moments that gave you energy, the strengths you naturally lean on, the skills you’ve built, the value you want to bring, and the purpose that sits underneath it all, you begin to see how it all connects.

And from there, you can make decisions that actually align with who you are, instead of throwing away everything that’s got you here.

Ive put some questions together below to help kick start this reflective process.

• When in your past roles did you feel most alive, engaged, or proud of yourself? When did you feel drained, stuck, or disconnected?

  
  

• Which environments or projects brought out your best self — the version of you that felt confident, natural, and capable?What were you doing? Who were you with?

• If you look back over your work history, what patterns do you see?Are there themes or threads that have followed you through different jobs?

• What strengths or skills have you built over the years that you’ve never fully appreciated or used?(They don’t need to sound “career-y” — things like listening, problem-solving, creativity, calmness under pressure all count.)

• Whose definition of “success” have you been chasing — yours, or someone else’s?How might your career look if you started defining success on your own terms?

• What experiences have you written off as “failures” that might actually have taught you something valuable about what you want or don’t want?

• If you were to take the best of everything you’ve done — the skills, the lessons, the bits that made you feel good —what kind of career or lifestyle might that point towards?

Want to know how I help my clients figure this out?

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Amy