To put the concept of the article in a nutshell, the article lays out steps for an exercise that you do with a group of people to ‘recapitulate’.  Same as you, I asked “what is ‘recapitulate’”? 

The article reads:
Making an intention is like taking aim or pointing your arrow at a target.  If your intention is clear enough, it gives a focused direction to everything you do, and you find yourself making choices that naturally expedite the journey toward your goal.  (Recapitulation) is a formal looking back at the greatest hits and flops of your recent past. The simple act of recollecting, writing, and then destroying what you’ve written will create an experience of having dissolved the negative thought or act that you want to release. 

After reading the article, I decided to see how it could impact my own professional life, and my team at work.  I wanted to see if this exercise could benefit our team members, and thus our company.  I extended the invitation to anyone who was interested in exploring if it could apply to our professional lives.  I had 3 people volunteer from our company. 

We gathered in a meeting room and reviewed the article applying to the professional self.  We laid some ground rules such as no venting, no verbally stating anything that could be confidential information (specifically of other employees since not all of us were supervisors), that sharing of information was not required but writing it down would be, and the paper would be torn up by that person and placed in a shredder (since I couldn’t get approval for a fire pit). 

We went to work.  We started by writing down reflections where we felt proud of an accomplishment.  Then we wrote down how we felt during those events.  Then we took some time to write down negative events, times when we felt we didn’t do our best.  We described our feelings when the negative events happened.  Thirdly, we wrote down what we could do to fix the situation, or change our behavior to better ourselves. 

Then we took turns sharing something that we felt was positive, listening to what each person felt proud of.  We decided to not share any of the negative events, but rather to keep them on paper.  Next, we all tore up our papers and threw them into the bin to be shredded, letting go and putting the past behind us.  You should have seen the energy people showed when tearing their papers and throwing them into the bin!

To wrap up the exercise we took a few minutes to consider what we wanted to accomplish for 2013, how we wanted to succeed and what qualities each of us would like to bring forth.  It was surprising what we learned about ourselves and each other. 

If you try this yourself, I would like to suggest that the ground rules and structure be clearly stated.  Each person needs to feel safe in this environment, and information should be written rather than verbally stated to prevent any infraction between team members.  There should be no pressure to share, and the paper needs to be disposed of appropriately. 

With that said, it was interesting that people that are task or project oriented, took time to realize that they had emotions attached to their duties, and what those emotions were.  Such as acceptance, and that acceptance created a feeling of success.  It gave the opportunity to realize what each of us was doing well, and what feeling gave us job satisfaction. 

It also taught us that taking the time to reflect on what we didn’t do as well as we would have liked, taught us about ourselves.  We often think of changes we need to make while we are in the moment.  But we rarely take time to really reflect about how we can put it into our plan for the next year. 

By looking inward, we were better able to understand how we can positively impact those we work with and are outside of ourselves.  By hearing what made people feel good in their roles, we learned what was important to the people we work with on a daily basis.  We also learned what was really important to us- acceptance, being knowledgeable and helping others be their best. 

In the end, we all agreed that repeating the recapitulation exercise as a team would be a right click.

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