People say the past is where you learned the lesson. The future is where you apply the lesson. How can we learn from the past? May this reading benefit you 🙂
Point of View: It’s late evening. You are sitting by yourself. Watching the sunrise and reminiscing about your past. You’re suddenly thinking about what you should have done or shouldn’t in your life. Do you have any regret?
No matter who we are, we all have bad and rough experiences in life. If possible, we want to erase the bad memory from our minds. But the reality is, we can’t do that. Past is a part of our life. Without it, our life is not complete.
Each of us has our own past story and experience that make us who we are today. Whether it is good things or bad things, it doesn’t matter. After all, it results from the choices we made and the traces that we live our lives. You might not erase your past or even change it, but what you should do is learn from it.
In fact, the past is the best teacher you ever get. You can learn from the past for a better future. From past experience, you can have so many lessons which are not taught in school. Everything you have accomplished so far and the experience you had, either positive or negative, will teach you something.
You might be asking, how can you learn from the past? Why is it important to learn from the past? How the past can help me to learn from my mistakes? No worries, there are a lot of valuable things you can learn from it.
1. Learn about your strength
Do you know what your strengths are? If you don’t, it’s fine. Not everyone knows what their strengths are, and you can still go searching for them.
One method to learn about your strengths is looking back on your past. You must have accomplished something back then when you are struggling, but you did not realize it. Once you are aware of that, you can put more effort into nurturing that strength and use it to achieve success in the field you are passionate about.
Those who do not learn from the past surely won’t know their true strength. Thus, it’ll be wasted.
“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.”
– Arnold Schwarzenegger
2. Learn about your weakness
Weakness Is the Way: Life with Christ Our Strength
No one knows what your weakness is until you actually face it by yourself. Each of us has our own weakness. Of course, you must be very frustrated by your weakness, because it makes you look weak. And nobody will ever want that.
But this is where we should learn from the past. By discovering your own weakness, we can do something about it. Either we decide to avoid it or learn how to overcome it. It’s all yours to decide what to do about it. Thus, you can turn the table around from failure to success. Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points.
Those who do not learn from the past surely won’t learn about their weakness. Learn from the past. We are strong when we know our weaknesses.
“A hero is someone who, despite weakness, doubt, or not always knowing the answers, goes ahead and overcomes anyway.”
– Christopher Reeve
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
– Thomas A. Edison
3. To Not Repeat the Same Mistakes
Have you ever asked yourself, “why do problems always find you? Why do troubles always happen to you? How do you get out of this situation? Is it my fate to be a failure?” If you have, then you should stop.
The correct questions you should ask are “how to learn from my past mistakes? what can I learn from this failure? how to bounce back from here?” That’s a better mindset. Learn from the past. Remember, after the rain comes the rainbow, and the sun will shine after the storm.
And please put in your mind, that what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger and become a better person in the future. No matter how bad the situation is, try your best to endure that, and don’t stop trying.
Learn from the past for a better future. This is where we could learn from the past on how to avoid the same mistakes. Some of the best lessons we ever learn are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future. After all, Edmund Burke said,
“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”.
This means, those who do not learn from the past will never be successful and tend to repeat the same mistake. Thus, let’s explore what can we learn from the past to help us today:
“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is a delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”
– Denis Waitley
“Success is not final. Failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
– Winston Churchill
4. To choose real friends
The best thing about learning from the past is you can identify who are your real friends. A real friend is the one who keeps supporting you during the hard times and is always there for you whenever you need them. Not the one who is there for you in a comfortable state and avoids you when the situation is unfavorable for them.
These are among the things that you can only learn from the past. And if you find your real friends, don’t ever lose them even when you are successful. They are just like the diamond at the center of the earth. It’s so hard to find, and so priceless.
Please treat them as your treasure and don’t ever trade them for anything in this world.
“An acquaintance merely enjoys your company. A fair-weather companion flatters when all is well, a true friend has your best interests at heart and the pluck to tell you what you need to hear.”
– E.A. Bucchianeri
“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.”
– Walter Winchell
This is why it is important to learn from the past because you can only learn through yourself. No one can ever teach you that. And bear in mind, that your past doesn’t define you, but it makes you who you are today.
