Don’t Dwell on the Past

Hey team, it is a beautiful Monday, and I’m excited to be here with you again. Will Rogers said, “Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.” I believe that’s the quote. If I got it correct, it’s pretty darn close. What that means, obviously, is don’t let yesterday’s issues, mistakes, failures, even successes take up too much of today.

Don’t dwell in the past.

In leadership class, I’ve often talked about making sure that you’re not spending all your time looking in the rearview mirror. It’s good to look at mistakes and failures and figure out what you did wrong and work on improving yourself. However, if you drive through the rearview mirror, you’re not able to see what’s in front of you. At 70 miles an hour, imagine taking your eyes off the road in front of you and only looking at what’s behind you. You’re probably gonna crash. I’ve seen many people do that successfully through looking through that rearview mirror in a figurative way, not necessarily a real way.

But if you’re spending all your time thinking about yesterday, then you’re not in today. And I think that’s a good thing for all of us to recognize. We do make mistakes; we do grow from them. If you fell down yesterday, you made a mistake. You fell, get up, dust off, recognize what caused the fall, and dedicate yourself to making progress moving forward today. Look ahead to try to avoid the next obstacle, to traverse the next hurdle you run into. Hit those things that are coming up on you, and quit spending all the time looking back at the failures of the past.

That’s just good wisdom for all of us as we are transparent, invested, and humble in acknowledging our mistakes.

But we’re invested in moving forward, not going back, not looking back, and spending all of our time dwelling in the past. But moving onto that bright future that’s directly ahead of us, using what we’ve learned, the wisdom we’ve gained from our mistakes, even from our successes, to springboard us and move us forward in a positive way.

So on this Monday, as you go through this beautiful week and the many sunrises to come, keep looking forward, keep growing, keep striving to do better and be a little better than you were yesterday. But don’t dwell on it, don’t dwell on yesterday, focus on the future, be in the present, and keep moving. God bless you guys; I’ll see you next week.