Make Friends with Your Past – It can’t be Left Behind
The idea of leaving the past behind is an offense to who you are. And the hope of recreating the past is an offense to who you might become.
Penobscot Bay, Maine
Nostalgia:
James Taylor touches my longing for the past in Copperline.
“I tried to go back, as if I could, all spec house and plywood.
Tore up and tore up good down on Copperline.
It doesn’t come as a surprise to me, it doesn’t touch my memory
and I’m lifting up and rising free down on Copperline.”
Nostalgia is grasping for a past that’s gone and won’t return. I feel it when I breathe the Maine air and relearn the accent I grew up with.
We left Maine when we were young. Five years ago, we returned for my mother-in-law’s funeral. We’re home again for a few days.
Nostalgia in small doses honors the past. But too much nostalgia is dog shit on the bottom of your shoe.
In large doses, nostalgia pollutes the present and offends the future.
I work with leaders who struggle with the present because it’s not like the past. For example:
- Your company merged with another and your job radically changed.
- You poured yourself into a young leader, but she left for a opportunity in another state.
- Current success is disappointing compared to the success of your past.
Make friends with your past:
The past is never in the past.
Reflecting on the past is opportunity to consider who you have become.
- How is your past multiplying your capacity to serve? Shrinking it?
- How might you scorn your current team because they’re not the dream team you had in the past? How do people feel when they’re compared to remarkable others?
- How might current opportunities go unexplored because they aren’t as good as past opportunities?
How might the past pollute the present? Expand the future?
How might leaders make friends with the past?
While I am brad new to getting these emails I wonder why you had to use offensive language in what is supposed to be for leaders?
No offense intended.
Welcome to the neighborhood, Mr. Peters. 🙂
Words or phrases like that are rare here, so I believe it was used with thought and simply intended as emphasis in contrast. That’s how it felt to me …
Yes, welcome Mr. Peter’s. I would second Shannon’s observation. I find Dan very careful and thoughtful about his word choice and though I was surprised, the term made me pause and consider how polluting the past can be.
Robert,
I have often wondered the same thing, because Dan does this more often than Michael suggests (and maybe more than I personally care for, because we all know that if we were to respond in kind, this forum would degenerate) and (I believe) for more purpose than Shannon suggests.
Not to speak for Dan as a definitive why, but I do find that when Dan does this, he is always effective at being inspiring (or falling short of that, at least being provocating) of good, sharp thinking … something that’s tough to do in our quickly happening world today.
Being inspiring (or at least provocative), to both groups and individuals, is essential to leadership.
Thanks (honestly) for your reaction/comment;
it certainly has generated some introspection for a few of us who have become inured to Dan’s foibles.
I suspect you have also inspired a future offering from Dan on how the right use of “swear” words are actually an indication of (creative, dynamic) intelligence. 😎
I’m baffled by this thread as finding some kind of offensive language. Leaders are supposed to listen well for intent and purpose in words. I found the language was immensely helpful as I tend to get too nostalgic and it indeed does have negative consequences for me. I read Dan because he limits his words intentionally, so he speaks to the point quickly and clearly. Also, I look at my reaction to a person’s words more about something being touched in me rather than something they need to correct. If you need more gentle words, perhaps he’s not your leadership guy, but he is mine.
You make my point more succinctly. Thank you.
“The past isn’t dead. It’s not even past.”
– William Faulkner
History may not repeat, but it surely rhymes.
– I don’t recall who said that
I call it the Oediepal Imperative: Each child/generation must differentiate itself from its parents (slay one, marry the other) to truly become its Self. The great triangulation of life: the past begets the present begets the future …
The young are impelled to ignore the traditions of the past to favor an ideal future despite the limiting conditions of the present …
Those that are tempered by experience have mastered the existing and find themselves on the threshold of a paradigm shift, an epiphany, that will subsume all before it and make all the prior partisan conflict mute and the new direction most promising.
The problem has always been letting go of the apophonies, the things said and believed and done that never should have been believed, said or done.
Letting go of the past is a way of forgiveness, not forgetting or denying. This would be emotional intelligence (maturity), a trait that we seem to be increasingly lacking as we “progress.”
Good leaders are always in search of (conversant toward) that paradigmatic epiphany that will “bend our world” as we know it. They don’t get there by forgetting or denying or negating the past, but by subsuming it with a better way.
The past should be a source of learning, not a residence. The biggest challenge is to remember the past as it actually was. I remember less of the specifics of the past than my emotional response to them. These responses, however are impacted by many other factors than any single event. So when I think back I ask myself “what else was going on then?”
Dan,
I believe there is value in remembering the past, just not dwelling there too long. Those life experiences have made me who I am and if I don’t recall those and at the very least, not make the same mistakes twice, I’d be foolish.
At best, I see my role as a leader (or parent, because I have found a strong parallel there) is to help those for whom I’m charged with leading, in avoiding those same pitfalls. I think of it as the “don’t touch the stove, it’s HOT!” opportunities….there’s no sense in them burning themselves if we can prevent it; now sometimes they don’t listen and it still happens.
One of the things that puzzles me about some leaders, is how they claim to be ‘progressive’ in their thought process, yet when presented with a real challenge, they revert back to solving problems as they did 25 years ago. Reminds me of the cliché, “when every problem looks like a nail, all solutions looks like a hammer.” Sometimes yesterday’s solutions are applicable, but often times they are not. I guess it proves out the adage, if you really want to see a person’s true character, you want to see how they react under pressure!
As for the salty language…I laughed! It was very apropos!
How might leaders make friends with the past? Acknowledge what the “past” has done for you as you have grown, acknowledge the “past” for the lessons you have learned, acknowledge the “past” for the wisdom experience has given you, acknowledge the “past” for the experiences you have enjoyed along the way, acknowledge the “past” for direction it can give you for the present and future, acknowledge the “past” with thanks for without thanks for what we have been through we can’t move onward.
Smiling and laughing here, I love the dog shit comment!
The past has created your present, and your present will create your future. Enjoy all 3!
Honestly, I’m not one who is offended by “minor” or “lesser” curse words – especially when not directed *at* me. I was brought into a leadership role under a highly successful and respected leader who occasionally let a word or two slip in informal situations with peers/others in leadership. While initially caught off guard, I certainly wasn’t offended and it didn’t degrade my opinion of her or the value of what she had to say.
I consider this forum an informal peer group, thus am not bothered in the least by the choice of words. While “poo” would be less offensive, it would also have injected (in my opinion) humor and lessened the impact of the statement.
I think this particular blog applies not only to professional situations, but personal ones as well! Very thought provoking!!!!
“Here’s an interesting thought. It has been suggested that there really is only one present moment rather than a succession of present moments one after another and that that one moment extends into eternity. We don’t have time to explore that now, but it sure is compelling. Whether that is true or not, how we live in this moment will definitely effect how we live in the next. By simply paying attention, our lives could improve quite a bit.”
-Delivered at the Antiochian Women’s Pre-Lenten Retreat, February 10. 2018, At St. John of Damascus Church in Dedham, Massachusetts
A limerick…
It is absolutely necessary to ponder your past
Sometimes you’ll cry, sometimes you will laugh
I’m certain the past shall never be dead,
It’s been tucked into compartments inside of ones my head
Hello Dan, In my humble life I enjoy my past; each person’s past is a teacher, an alert system of sorts (a car is passing, in our rearview mirror we are alerted).
If given the opportunity there are a few things I would change from my past. Those few things are my greatest, respected teachers. I have grown.
Dan,
Just had to laugh….
The past is my driving force toward my future, I learned by my mistakes and remember today when the ideas hit my mind why we don’t repeat the bad past and use the good past!