When faced with catching a fly ball, Lucy missed again. “The past got in my eyes,” she told Charlie Brown, “I thought I had it, but suddenly I remembered all the others I’d missed.”
I’ve known hundreds of workplace Lucys. People who let their past get in the way of their future; who self-determine what they’re going to do, can do, or might be able to do by what they didn’t do, haven’t done, or even failed at. They stay aligned to their past like a Peanuts comic strip philosophy.
Past-focused people sabotage themselves with yesterday’s mantras that become today’s expectations: “Yeah, we tried that before and it didn’t work;” “I got rejected once already so I’m not going to make that mistake again;” or “No one listens to my ideas.”
What they miss is this: that may have been true yesterday, but (continue reading →)
