I am not big on TV.
I am typically the last person to hear of a new TV show; I most likely have NO idea what music video you may be referencing; I don’t know “last night’s game’s scores;” and I certainly will be the reason my team loses in a game of Trivial Pursuit involving the categories, Entertainment and Sports & Leisure (and admittedly, most likely Arts & Literature as well).
And I’ll just come out and say it, I can’t stand “Game of Thrones,” never got into “The Walking Dead,” and wanted to put an ax through my TV after 10 minutes into “Breaking Bad.”
Yep, I am a TV dunce…
However, there is one scene in the Netflix TV series, “House of Cards,” which I actually watch, that really sticks out in my mind. It’s right after Freddy Hayes was forced to sell is BBQ joint to pay for his son’s bail. He said the simple and poignant line,
“I ain’t one for lookin’ back. Eyes ahead.”
This resonated with me. As an entrepreneur striving to do great things, to explore the unknown, I have mad plenty of mistakes and experienced far more failures than I can keep count. I can’t afford being plagued and paralyzed by these failures. I have to keep my eyes ahead to the next goal and mission.
I think everyone gets that… you learn from your failures but do not allow them to define you.
But what I think many folks fail to recognize is that while you shouldn’t dwell on your past failures, you shouldn’t dwell on your past successes either.
Yes, good for you, you caught the homecoming football game touchdown that won it for your team.
Yes, great, that you graduated from a prestigious college (never mind this has no indication of how well or poorly you performed there).
And whoopidedoo that you used to be a fitness model and had the looks of an angel.
Let me let you in on a secret, no one cares what success you had if your current level of success is nowhere close to that same level. The winners recall their past wins and successes as a way to build credibility on their way to something bigger and better. The wanna-bes recall their past wins and successes as a sad way to validate themselves when they have allowed themselves to become irrelevant.
Be a winner, do great things and amazing things and only talk about your past wins and successes as precursors to the even more amazing and greater things you are striving to accomplish. And then let those “more amazing and greater things” eventually become your new “past wins and successes.”
Onward and upward.
