Lessons From The Past

Lessons from the past

Tim Connor

Have you ever wondered what some of your past experiences during your life were trying to teach you to have a better tomorrow?  Each of us have a life filled with a variety of circumstances, situations and people that were in our life to help us to learn valuable lessons so that we could use this teaching to create a better future.

The problem occurs for many people however when they refuse to see the learning as very personal and choose to point their finger outward or remain in a mindset of blame.

Every day we have the opportunity to learn about ourselves and life but unfortunately today most people are too busy, wrapped up in their own importance or just naïve about all of the potential learning and what it has to do with them.  I call this – lessons from the past but there are two vital characteristics that need to be present to have this work for you in a positive way – you have to listen and you have to be willing to learn.  Without these we are all destined to continue to repeat the same mistakes that cause pain, regret or disappointment of some kind.

What are some of your lessons from the past?  Ever taken the time to consider them?  Do you have the courage to confront them? Are you willing to learn from them and apply the learning to today’s experiences?  I don’t know your life story so I can only give you my personal perspective on this subject so let me give you three examples that maybe you can relate to see the value in this exercise.  Please keep in mind that I’m being a little vulnerable here.

One - I am a giver and over the years I have gone out of my way to give to others and always be there for them.  Recently while considering my many life’s lessons it hit me.  I always put you and your agenda ahead of mine.  We had plans for Saturday night and you called me at the last minute to tell me something has come up.  I say, “No problem, I understand.”  I put my Saturday night on hold for you but you let something unimportant get in the way of our plans.  Now I’m not saying that things don’t happen from time to time that cause all of us to have to cancel something.  This is normal and routine.  What I’m suggesting here is, is there a pattern to your behavior?  If the answer is yes, why do I keep letting you set me up?  Is it because I want to be nice or am I being stupid?  The bottom line here is that every time I let you off the hook the message to me from me is simply, why do you keep letting other people’s agendas take precedence over your own?  If you had given me more notice I could have made other plans for Saturday night.

Is it my just trying to be nice? Or some other reason why I allow your time and agendas or priorities to be more important than mine?  This was a very valuable insight one I wish I would have had years ago.  If I had I would have avoided a great deal of disappointment, frustration and yes sometimes anger during my life if I had learned this lesson or had this awareness much earlier. 

Two -

On another occasion I had a lesson from the past when I finally realized I need to be more concerned with my self-acceptance than I am the acceptance of others.  This was a hard one to face.  As a speaker and author I want you to like me, it helps the relationship be more positive for both of us.  The problem is, when I am more concerned for your acceptance of me than I am of myself.  Why is this?  For starters if I am more focused on you accepting me than self-acceptance I will tend to be willing to let go of my beliefs, values, opinions etc more quickly as I want to avoid conflict or even confrontation.  I always felt the way to avoid this was through agreement in some way.  The lesson came when I suddenly realized that I am entitled to my own views and they don’t have to mirror yours.  You can like them or not.  You can agree with them or not but in the end I wasn’t put on this earth to agree with you or anyone.  I was put here to have my own perspectives and I’m not saying mine are better or smarter than yours or right or wrong or that yours are better or smarter than mine or right or wrong.  We both have our unique ways of looking at things and we don’t have to agree to get along or to be liked.

Three -  

This last one was a biggie in my life.  Several months ago I realized that because I have had so much failure in my life that I was developing a mindset that accepted failure as a part of the life process. I even wrote a book about it with a co-author.  After a great deal of contemplation I learned that I was using my justification for failure as a speaking and writing tool.  My attitude was, since I have failed I have the right to speak or write about it in a real sense.  The problem, I realized was, that this mindset became a benchmark for all of my other activities.  If they failed I had a rational for them.  The issue here was that I was getting comfortable with this rationale.  This needed to change.

If I hadn’t been willing to re-visit this issue in a subjective way I would still be using this mindset as I go through new opportunities, projects or activities.  Not a healthy outcome.  My final reality came at the end of this contemplation when I accepted my previous failures as valuable but that I didn’t need more of them to justify my ability to talk or write about them.

So, I’ll leave you with a question – when was the last time you looked back in your life over situations, circumstances or people to see what you could have learned from them that for whatever reason you didn’t?