Do not look back too much!
When I was preparing my driving test, my coach kept telling me, but I kept forgetting was, for every five seconds I need to take a glance at the rearview mirror — looking at what’s behind me.
I understand the reasoning behind this requirement; however, the very idea of keeping looking back, while I am driving 100km per hour, troubles every cell inside me.
The essence of the test is conformity, and there is no room for personal customisation. In the end, I passed my test and got my driver’s license on the first try. I did OK, no, I did awesomely!
However, life is not a test but a play written, directed and performed by no one but you. Feel free to do whatever you want as long as you accept your responsibilities. In my play, I chose to look back less often, maybe once a while retrospectively but not regularly.
If there is a wonderland where we haven’t learned the concept of yesterday (the past) and tomorrow (the future), we will be a lot happier, won’t we?
The burden of past and future makes life much more complicated and hard to fathom. In my opinion, the past has a more significant impact on the present (the now).
A lot of people around me are living in the past, letting the past dictate their present. Just because they failed their first business earlier, it will be foolish for them to start another.
They use their past experiences and knowledge to determine their present and future. You know who else does that, we call them “experts”. That is why I always feel a bit upset when someone refers to themselves as experts in a particular field.
I will never call myself an expert. I intend to be a beginner forever, which releases me from the burden that I always need to be entirely right. Having a beginner’s mindset leads to a much more innovative and creative life.
Let the past past! The past only determines our starting point, and it won’t affect our destination. That being said, make sure you do utilise the most critical value provided by our past, which is the knowledge we have acquired from the previous mistakes.
The goal is not about making fewer mistakes; that’s unachievable; instead, we should not make the same mistakes again. However, don’t be a slave of knowledge. Always be cautious when you invoke the past experiences to resolve today’s problem.
