5 Powerful Reasons Why You Need to Look Back to Move Forward
#4: Helps you discover a negative life cycle
“Remember how far you’ve come, not how far you have to go. You are not where you want to be, but neither are you where you used to be.”
~Rick Warren
We, as human beings, are continuously thinking about tomorrow. Thinking about how we would survive the next day or 50 years from now. And we do everything today to reach that particular goal we have set for ourselves for tomorrow. We thus end up in this rat race of life.
Many of us have the mentality that the past cannot be changed. Thus we should always focus on the future. While that is true, and it is wrong to live in the past, it is very important to look back and see how far you have come. Learn from your mistakes to not repeat them anymore.
Here are five reasons why it is important to look behind to move forward.
1. You start appreciating yourself more.
Most of us have certain goals in life. Get a good job, buy a house, have kids, reach a certain point in your career, have a lot of friends, and die happy. Most of these goals if you see, are just points in your life.
We become so engrossed in certain milestones/stops in our life, monetary or otherwise, that we completely forget the journey. How far we have come. We become so focused on what others have achieved so far that we forget how much we have achieved to get to this point. We sometimes also end up undermining all our efforts from so many years that we have put in to reach this point.
Looking back helps you appreciate yourself more. It lets you reflect on how far you have come. It takes you away (at least for a little while) from the rat race that we call life, and take a deep breath. Feel proud of yourself, pat yourself on your back, and move forward. It motivates you to keep going.
2. You become more open to opinions and embracing mistakes (yours and others)
There should be some reason why the world values experience so much, right? Because it helps you grow and learn. During your journey, you do make mistakes. But later on, you stop/reduce beating yourself up for making them, accept them, and move on.
Sometime last year, there was an escalation in my office. I am not a person who handles pressure well and end up messing things. So, I panicked. One of my onsite managers who understood the situation pinged me, calmed me down, and told it was okay to make mistakes. Asked me to take about 2 hours and fix the code. It was a simple situation, but that was almost a turning point in my life.
Before that, I used to get irritated due to other’s mistakes, especially if it affected my work. I had no patience in teaching them what to do and what not to do. But after this, I was able to learn from my mistakes and become more empathetic towards my colleague’s mistakes too. I think that incident fundamentally changed the way I approach matters. So now, whenever I face any similar situation, I remember how my onsite counterpart handled it, and try to help others.
As you keep looking back periodically and learn from yours and other’s mistakes/activities, you also become more open to other’s opinions. Mostly because you have learned from the past that not listening to others does not bring you any gain.
3. You become more grounded.
It is so important to know where you came from and your roots. It is so easy for any human to get head weight because of instant/overnight success. Reaching the top is easy but maintaining yourself at the top is difficult.
Head weight does not allow you to maintain yourself at the top. Those are the moments where you look back in your life, see where you came from, appreciate your roots, and people who have helped you reach a particular position in your life.
You become more grounded because you start attributing your success to instances, situations, and people in your life. You realize that you could not have done this all alone. And start working harder towards the future to make the people around you, including your family, proud.
4. Helps you discover a negative life cycle.
Making mistakes is a part of being human. However, people who do not look back and take the time to analyze their mistakes, keep making them over and over. Which, would be harmful to you in the long run.
I was always a person who used to leave things halfway if I ever got bored with any activity. Even for my college exams, I used to be left with 20 half-finished chapters the day before the exam. And the same habit started affecting my workplace. I had to take conscious steps to avoid the same. If I had not looked back and realized my mistake, I would still be doing it till now.
By analyzing your mistakes, you can prevent history from repeating itself. You prevent yourself from committing the same mistakes all over again because looking back will refresh your memory as to what it was you vowed to never do again.
5. Helps you celebrate your little successes
Working towards each of our milestones is a long and tiring journey, full of ups and downs. Along the way, there is a huge probability to become demotivated, since the end/milestone might seem too far.
In my second month of writing on Medium, I earned $14.55. Medium is filled with “How to earn $10,000 a month”, or “How to earn $7 a day in Medium” type of articles. Reading all of these, my motivation was bound to come down. I was posting articles periodically, taking immense care of my headlines and formatting. Where was I going wrong? I felt like pulling my hair out.
It was then my husband sat me down and flipped my perspective. In the first month, I had gained 50 followers, in the second 65! I earned $4.45 in the first month and tripled my earnings in the second month! It is an improvement, isn’t it? I then realized my mistake, and went out to buy 2 books that I have always wanted to buy to celebrate my success:) It felt amazing!
I became even more motivated to work harder, improve my skills, and write good articles. This was just one experience. Each of you might face so many of these kinds of experiences in your life. Whenever you feel demotivated or drained, stop, look behind, celebrate your small successes, and move forward.
Life is a long journey. While it is important to not stay and dwell on your past, it is very important to look back, learn from your mistakes, and be proud of where you are in your life.
I hope this article has helped you in making you realize that. I am going to spend some time on my porch today with a glass, thinking about my experiences. Are you?
