Many allow themselves to get trapped in the grasp of past events.
Fact: Nothing that took place in the past can be changed. Stop agonizing over mistakes or bad decisions you made. All that does is cause you to beat yourself up and damage your self-confidence and self-esteem. You have to stop living in a world full of should haves, could haves or would haves. All you can – and must – do is learn from the past and use that knowledge to benefit you on a going forward basis.
Avoid at all costs allowing your mind to wander too long in the future. When you do this, you are destined to follow one of two paths. The first path is “worry”—you become obsessed with what could go wrong with any action you might take. This path eventually causes you to overload on fear, which usually results in you doing nothing, which leads to stagnation and eventually failure.
The second future path is “exhilaration” and false optimism over what you will or might do.
Again, don’t allow your mind to spend too much time here either. You become obsessed over all of the great things that lie ahead. When this happens, you leave yourself open to missing warnings of an approaching problem or worse. Want an example? Google Leon Lett, former player for the Dallas Cowboys. Leon became so obsessed over “what” was about to happen that he missed the crisis rapidly approaching in the form of Don Bebe of the Buffalo Bills.
So what’s left? The “present” is.
To be productive and effective in your role, you have to focus on “staying in the moment” (the present). Why? Because “in the moment” is the only place where you can act and bring about real and significant results in your life, career or business.
The lesson: Be sure you find and maintain a healthy balance and relationship between your past, future and present. Enough said.