Truth 50. Don't look back

You can live life in only one direction. Once you make a decision, look back only long enough to learn from it. Then look forward, because there will be another decision right around the corner. If you're driving using the rear-view mirror, you will not see what is coming at you on the road ahead.

You will be tempted to agonize about the decisions gone wrong or to gloat over the ones gone right. The first impulse will blind you with regret. The second will blind you with arrogance. Neither form of blindness will improve your decisions going forward. You need to move ahead with both eyes open.

Learn to forgive and be forgiven. One of the hardest and most important challenges is found in the deceptively simple words of the Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." You will make mistakes. You don't have to forget. With any luck, you will remember and learn from them. But you do need to forgive, to let go so that you can focus on challenges ahead that are just as serious.

Author Stephen Levine, after working with patients at their deathbeds for many years, conducted a thought experiment in his own life that he chronicles in his book A Year to Live.³⁰ What if you had only one year left to live? How would this change the way you live your life? What decisions would you make? Levine's book is a fascinating exercise that will give you a healthy perspective on life and keep you firmly focused on the road immediately ahead of you.

Make the best decision you can and then get on with it. Say your mea culpas, if necessary. Admit, as politicians are fond of doing, that "mistakes were made." Perhaps you might even be bold enough to admit that you made them. Then forge ahead. Your career and life going forward will not be shaped as much by the decisions of your past, as important as they are, as by the ones you're still to make in the future.