Looking back with Kindsight.
Hindsight is seeing clearly what happened; kindsight is seeing yourself kindly within what happened.
Hello Game Changers,
Lovely to land with you again.
Every now and then, a comment or a phrase arrives in your orbit and it hits the feels. During my new online journal writing group - born from the wonderful connections we have made here on Substack, Sarah shared the words “looking back with kindsight,” I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Credit goes to ADHD business coach and strategist for women Angela Rasspass who shared this phrase forward. I knew it was the beginning of the reflection you are about to read.
Some ideas don’t arrive as thoughts - they arrive as recognition. Hindsight is seeing clearly what happened; kindsight is seeing yourself kindly within what happened.
Being human means meeting challenges
Hardship isn’t an exception to life - it is a part of life.
Walking this human experience guarantees challenges of varying intensities. Some will present as inconveniences, some shake the foundations of who we are. In those moments, difficulty rarely arrives neatly packaged, like a perfectly wrapped gift that you excitedly give to a loved one. It can feel like the storm, the hurricane, the cyclone all in one. When you are in it, you are not thinking about lessons or growth - you’re simply wondering if you’ll make it through.
Even when you know “this too shall pass,” a part of you asks: Will it? Will this one?
There were times in my own experience where progress felt impossible to see from the inside.
The Tiny Glimmers
Progress can often arrive quietly.
Recovery, healing and growth rarely shows up as dramatic movie moments. They can arrive as tiny glimmers. Something today felt a little easier. You laughed without forcing it. I felt I had a little more capacity today. A task that felt impossible last month feels manageable today. Looking forward, the progress is almost invisible. Looking back, you realise it was happening all along.
We can often wait for breakthroughs while life is revealing small moments of wisdom.
The After the After
Surviving something is about getting through it. Living after it is about discovering who you become beyond it.
We often talk about getting through the hard seasons- the adversity, the setbacks, the hard yards, the moments that demand everything we have just to keep moving forward - to keep striving to make it to the other side. But we talk far less about what happens when the immediate crisis ends, or we settle into life long recovery.
The emotional layers that arrive afterwards. The exhaustion. The grief. The recalibration. The moment you realise you can slowly put your armour down. The permission to do something simply because it brings joy, not because it serves recovery, productivity or survival.
Sometimes healing begins not when the storm ends, but when you realise you no longer need to brace for it everyday. You adjust to work alongside it.
Hindsight’s harsh edge.
Looking back isn’t always kind.
As humans, we are exceptionally good at auditing our past selves. With the benefit of hindsight, we replay conversations, revisit decisions, and scrutinise our reactions. We judge ourselves for what we think we should have known, compare where we imagined we would be with where we are today, or measure our lives against someone else’s. Too often, hindsight becomes less about understanding and more about self-criticism.
There can be grief in that gap. Grief for plans. Grief for identities. Grief for timelines that never happened.
Choosing Kindsight
Extending compassion backwards.
What if we looked back with the same compassion we would offer a friend? What if, instead of asking, “Why didn’t I do better?” we asked “How did I keep going?’ What if we gave more credit to the version of ourselves who was carrying far more than anyone else could see?
Kindsight isn’t pretending things were easy, and it isn’t rewriting history. It’s choosing to recognise the courage, resilience, and quiet strength that often went unnoticed at the time.
Maybe it’s time to become our own greatest cheer squad. To celebrate surviving as much as thriving. To honour efforts as much as outcomes. To recognise the strength it took to simply take the next step. Because sometimes, the bravest thing you ever did wasn’t something the world applauded - it was refusing to give up in those moments that no one else could see.
Maybe kindsight is simply this: looking back at the person who carried you through and finally saying. “You did better than you realised.”
Here are three gentle questions to sit with:
When you look back at a difficult season, what strengths do you see now that you couldn’t recognise at the time?
If you spoke to your past self with the kindness you’d offer a dear friend, what would you say?
How might your story change if you measured yourself by your courage rather than your struggles.
I love the idea of “kindsight” - being less judgmental of ourselves in retrospect. I particularly liked how you say progress arrives quietly, that effort matters as much as outcome, and that it takes strength to take the next step. Brilliant!
Melissa, thanks for sharing that kindsight vs. hindsight concept. It's a really good one.
It's exactly how it is in coaching. We don't focus on what went wrong or maybe even say something negative about what took place (which I never do) when a goal is missed. We look back (in kindsight as you put it), and focus on what went well. No matter how off-goal someone is, there's always something that went well and that's where the energy should be focused on.