Your History - Grasshopper

How valuable is your history? Everybody has a story to tell, but what does it tell you about you?

There are countless facts, figures, events, and memories that make up your story which paint a fulsome picture of you.

But what’s the one obvious thing about our story that we often fail to notice? I submit it’s how we got here.

When we assemble all those facts, we arrive where we currently are. And, once we make that discovery, we assign a giant value to our history, our story. This is why I am the way I am.

But when it comes to taking steps forward, our story holds us back. That’s because our history is just that, a history lesson, nothing more.

How you got here is interesting and may shine a light on where you currently are, but forever retelling your tale will take you down a dead end trail.

I’ve used this analogy before and it bears repeating now. Let’s pretend that you find yourself in challenging set of circumstances. You’re lost in the woods. How you got there, whether it was on foot, on roller skates, parachute, or you were blindfolded and dropped off, doesn’t change the fact that you’re lost! And how you got there is not useful information. It has little to no value.

Your focus has to be on what do I do now? But that’s not what we do. We want to retell our tale of woe that has no chance of getting us where we want to go.

If you spend countless hours trying to make sense of how you got to where you currently are, you’re spinning your wheels, digging yourself deeper into a rut. Better to stop digging and start looking for some rigging that will set you free. And I can tell you for sure, you won’t find it in your history.

All the best,
John