The learnings from Vera

by Susan Thomson
View the authors Profile

Here is a post in a series, aimed to help you defrazzle. That is get rid of that frazzled feeling experienced by many of us in today’s hectic world.
Life offers us many learnings.

I wonder if you have ever seen the crime drama called Vera on television in the UK?

Vera is a detective chief inspector of the fictional 'Northumberland & City Police', and is played by Brenda Blethyn who I think I is a brilliant actor.

I was thinking about a particular scene in an episode from a number of years ago.

The team of detectives are at the police station after something hasn’t gone well. A person has been killed, and had the team been quicker to intervene this might not have happened.

In the scene, I recall Vera leads a ‘debrief’ with her team.

She asks everyone, ‘what are our learnings?’

A couple things struck me.

This was the first time I heard someone talk about ‘learnings’ and it stuck with me. When there is more than one thing to learn, I guess it is natural to use the plural.

I also was struck by the way the boss handled the debrief.

She didn’t point the finger at individuals, nor did she didn’t beat herself up.

What was done was done. But to inform the team’s future approaches, she wanted her colleague to share their ‘learnings’.

My thinking today is this. We all have had challenges in our lives. We have had negative experiences that at the time caused worry or hurt perhaps.

And we will have more since that’s what life is about.

Those experiences, along with the positive ones, contribute to the people we are.

I have found it can be helpful to take some time to think about what I have learned from a situation in order I can move on.

My thinking will often allow me to choose to do something differently the next time.

I consider my learnings.