There is an analogy saying that we don’t drive a car by looking in our rearview mirrors, but through the windshield at what is in front of us, not behind us. This is so true on so many levels. Although, we do have to know and understand our past in order to move forward successfully!
No matter our experiences we can always learn something from things we have done in the past. Be that it was something good or something bad. That is the beauty of the human mind. We have the ability to assess what happened and learn from it so that we can use that information to move forward. The only hitch to the whole thing is, we have to actually do it. We have to look at what we have done, and actually learn from it. We can’t just ignore what we have done as though it never happened. That does not do anyone any good in trying to make something better.
Learning from our past can be applied to many scenarios. It could be from playing sports, a traveling adventure, a work incident, a driving close call, a conversation we had with one of our children, and for this case a relationship or more that we have had. Looking in the rearview mirror at the right time can actually help prevent another disaster. For example, I have made it a practice of mine that while I am driving on the freeway, I try to keep an awareness of those around me. Especially when traffic gets thick. The reason I do this is to know where my outs are if I have to make a defensive maneuver. An example of what I do in these cases that has helped me is while I am driving, as soon as people start locking up their brakes in front of me, I am taking a quick peek in my rear view mirror to see how close the person behind me is that I may try to adjust what I am doing to prevent an accident from happening that involves me. Do so allows me to either slow down sooner, faster, move to another lane, or prepare for the worst. Like I said, I am not driving looking through my rear view mirror, but I am glancing back to make sure that everything is ok, and if not it helps me to make a change.
Just as we need to glance back in our rear view mirrors to assess and avoid danger while driving. We need to glance back in our lives every once in awhile to assess what has happened and possibly make a course change to avoid the dangers that may affect us. Those dangers could be anything from things we have said to choices that we have made, or the lack thereof as well. We all have done things that we regret in our lives, be that they are great or small. In doing so we can learn from those things and become better so that we don’t do it again.
Just as we have done bad things, we have also done good things that can help us. Looking back is not always about reflecting on the bad, but we need to remember the good that we have done and build on it, so that we can be happy and not weighted down by our mistakes. It’s too easy to remember the bad in our lives, and the lives of others. We need to try and remember the good things so that we can be uplifted as well as lift up others with the good things they have done to help them as well.
Remember that we can learn from everything that we do, and that it does not always have to be bad. To have a happy and healthy relationship, we just need to continuously work at it. Embracing both the good and the bad so that we may learn from it in order to have a better relationship moving forward.
