Uncategorized July 20, 2012

When you live in the past it hinders you from moving forward!

A quote form Jeff Olson (The slight edge) "It seems most people live with one foot in the past, saying "Only if things had been different, I would be successful." And the other foot in the future, saying "When this or that happens I will be happy/successful." and they completely ignore the present, which is all we really have. It's only the decisions that you make in the moment that are Slight Edge decisions."

I find that in general many people want to dwell on the past. You will find that they allow the past to make them unhappy in the present which in turn keeps them from moving effectively into the future. I'm not dismissing the past but the past is something we can look back at and learn from and use it to make better decisions going forward. What the past can't become is the road block that keeps us trapped in decisions that we have no power to go back and change.

This applies to all areas of our life, work, recreation, relationships, you name it. A good example is a baseball player who makes a big game error, he can't change what happened it's done. He has two choices. Play that error over and over in his head as say what if I had just moved faster, or what if I had better anticipation. Or he can identify what caused him to make the error, forget about it and then put a plan in place to not duplicate his mistakes and learn and move on.

The learn and move on is the most important piece. We are all human and we all will make mistakes, in fact we will make them over and over again. The key is to learn and not make the same mistakes twice.