OK, on Monday we discussed what to remember. Now let's talk about the other side of the coin. We need to talk about what to forget.
Most of us have embarrassing moments in our life or times when we failed. Because these were so painful, we can recall them in very vivid detail. I remember my junior year of high school. All of the good athletes made the varsity football team that year. I was stronger than most of the kids in my class and thought I would be a lock to make varsity as well. The first week of two a days, I was even a starter on the offensive line. But there was one practice where we were supposed to work on pass blocking. This kid across the line from me was quicker than I was and he ran right by me and sacked the quarterback three or four plays in a row.
Not only was I demoted from a varsity starter, I was sent to the junior varsity team. It was humiliating. To make matters worse, when the list came out and I everyone knew I was on the JV team, a certain classmate of mine made a very vocal point of telling everyone around that I was JV. That was even more humiliating. When I tell this story, I can still feel part of those humiliating emotions inside me. They aren't very big and it certainly doesn't bother me but it is still a reminder of a failure in my past.
There was another time while I was at TCU that I was trying to make an ROTC sport team called Ranger Challenge. Now the TCU team was one of the top squads in the nation and I really wanted to make the team. At the very first of the season, I was running pretty well and I had a good shot at making it. Then I got hurt playing softball and ended up being a back up. I was devastated and it sent me into a depression. Now my friends on Ranger Challenge never said anything. They were great guys about the whole thing but I was still embarrassed. This even happened at least 15 years ago and I still remember it pretty well.
Yet, when I graduated from law school, I graduated Cum Laude and 4th in my class. I certainly remember doing this but it is more of a distant memory and it only happened about 10 years ago.
So why do I remember my failures more vividly than my successes? Because pain can stay around longer than that feeling of happiness that comes from success. Now I can certainly tell you that after all these years, I learned lessons from both of the failures I described above and that's a good thing. But I let my ROTC failure ruin my grades at TCU. I let my high school failure completely shake my confidence.
So here is what we should learn from what I did. There are certain things that we just have to choose to forget. I'm not saying that you will completely forget those bad things that happened to you. Obviously I remember high school and TCU to this day. But we do have to choose to let go of what happened and we definitely have to learn to "forget" the pain involved. If we don't let go of those bad events in our lives, we will never have an opportunity to reach for and then celebrate success.
If we continue to hold onto and relive those bad memories too long, it's like trying to swim with cement shoes on. It will just keep dragging us down. We will never be able to soar to the heights God intended if we continue to focus on our failures. Now I am not telling you to pretend that bad things didn't happen and I'm also not telling you to never be sad when bad things happened. That would be ridiculous. But what I am saying is after you have had some time to feel sad, let it go. Don't go around talking to yourself or other people about your failure, let it go and start climbing to the next place God has in store for you. No matter how bad things are in your life right now, God has a good plan for your life.
So let me sum this up by saying that there are going to be bad circumstances in our lives that we have to deal with. I know they are there. However, if we keep our focus on all the bad things that happen to us and never choose to focus on the great things we have done or that God has done for us, we will never achieve the full potential God has for our lives.
That's another Opinion of the Minion
Most of us have embarrassing moments in our life or times when we failed. Because these were so painful, we can recall them in very vivid detail. I remember my junior year of high school. All of the good athletes made the varsity football team that year. I was stronger than most of the kids in my class and thought I would be a lock to make varsity as well. The first week of two a days, I was even a starter on the offensive line. But there was one practice where we were supposed to work on pass blocking. This kid across the line from me was quicker than I was and he ran right by me and sacked the quarterback three or four plays in a row.
Not only was I demoted from a varsity starter, I was sent to the junior varsity team. It was humiliating. To make matters worse, when the list came out and I everyone knew I was on the JV team, a certain classmate of mine made a very vocal point of telling everyone around that I was JV. That was even more humiliating. When I tell this story, I can still feel part of those humiliating emotions inside me. They aren't very big and it certainly doesn't bother me but it is still a reminder of a failure in my past.
There was another time while I was at TCU that I was trying to make an ROTC sport team called Ranger Challenge. Now the TCU team was one of the top squads in the nation and I really wanted to make the team. At the very first of the season, I was running pretty well and I had a good shot at making it. Then I got hurt playing softball and ended up being a back up. I was devastated and it sent me into a depression. Now my friends on Ranger Challenge never said anything. They were great guys about the whole thing but I was still embarrassed. This even happened at least 15 years ago and I still remember it pretty well.
Yet, when I graduated from law school, I graduated Cum Laude and 4th in my class. I certainly remember doing this but it is more of a distant memory and it only happened about 10 years ago.
So why do I remember my failures more vividly than my successes? Because pain can stay around longer than that feeling of happiness that comes from success. Now I can certainly tell you that after all these years, I learned lessons from both of the failures I described above and that's a good thing. But I let my ROTC failure ruin my grades at TCU. I let my high school failure completely shake my confidence.
So here is what we should learn from what I did. There are certain things that we just have to choose to forget. I'm not saying that you will completely forget those bad things that happened to you. Obviously I remember high school and TCU to this day. But we do have to choose to let go of what happened and we definitely have to learn to "forget" the pain involved. If we don't let go of those bad events in our lives, we will never have an opportunity to reach for and then celebrate success.
If we continue to hold onto and relive those bad memories too long, it's like trying to swim with cement shoes on. It will just keep dragging us down. We will never be able to soar to the heights God intended if we continue to focus on our failures. Now I am not telling you to pretend that bad things didn't happen and I'm also not telling you to never be sad when bad things happened. That would be ridiculous. But what I am saying is after you have had some time to feel sad, let it go. Don't go around talking to yourself or other people about your failure, let it go and start climbing to the next place God has in store for you. No matter how bad things are in your life right now, God has a good plan for your life.
So let me sum this up by saying that there are going to be bad circumstances in our lives that we have to deal with. I know they are there. However, if we keep our focus on all the bad things that happen to us and never choose to focus on the great things we have done or that God has done for us, we will never achieve the full potential God has for our lives.
That's another Opinion of the Minion
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