Knowing When To Leave Your Past Glory Alone!

We all have precious memories of our backdated wins and plenipotent achievements. Maybe we created a landmark and flamboyant testament of integrity at the workplace and got awarded for it. Or maybe you were your year’s valedictorian and went ahead to make a magna cum laude speech that has since become a blockbuster. Or just anything you used as an entering wedge to greatness…What is that for you? Share in the comment section to inspire someone. 

I want to shower you with generous and chivalrous congratulations. You deserve all the good feelings and pride that come with all that esoteric and exclusive achievements. Let a blanket of serotonin cover you when you reminisce all that and permit no wandering cortisol to spoil your gaiety. All our experiences, especially the carefully wrought and decisive ones, have a great place in helping us to hold. 

Even as you enjoy such precious memories, some questions should be permitted to act the part of an ethical intruder. How long do you want to bask in the sunshine of your past glory? How are you doing currently? Is your current status a cumulative improvement of what you were in the past or dwarfed version? What else have you done to make a difference other than the decade-long achievement you keep on scripting and coloring?

Have you seen people who are basking in their past glory? They always talk of how pious they were when they were young or how faithful they have maintained an untainted character during their entry levels at work. They have a big mouth and elastic memory for the past glory and meridian splendor. We always meet them, and sometimes we have been tempted to be that ourselves. Haven’t you?

It should be understood to mean well, especially when your current status reflects what your past achievements have contributed to. It could encourage someone to curve their path in the dwindling and trying precipice of existence and find a space with the high and mighty. To this extent, your past glory could serve as a bridge to greatness for someone in the valley of decision. 

What about when you are swimming in the cool pools of compromise and betrayal of conscience? Of what value is your past glory? Is it not used selfishly to evade accountability and responsibility?

People often reach out for their past glory to comfort themselves from the inconveniences and stagnation of the moment. When they seem to be a summary of everything non-commital and a lord of excuses, they will reach out to the shelter of their past glory…

“When I was in college, I conducted twenty crusades every year.” “When I was doing my internship, I never arrived late a single day.” “When I was young, I never engaged in agenda manipulation…” et cetera.

What about today? You were a seasoned crusader then, but what are your constant request to be excused doing today? You were always on time as an intern, but what good is your redundant lateness today when you are a CEO? You dated right, but now you are married wrong, so what?

Past glory is good and can be an easier source of comfort. However, to remain impactful, you must learn to avoid basking under the sunshine of your past glory for too long. Your current status is what the world will remember and is likely to be what eternity will reward you for. And this is supposed to be fair in all respects. 

If you were a great mind yesterday but crippled your faculties with constant abuse, the world will forget the sharp brain that graced the stage a few years ago. Yet, again, if you didn’t get it right in the past, yet by painstaking diligence, you have learned to stick to the path of rectitude and stability, you would not want the past outburst of ephemerals and follies to be called upon to haunt you. What a fair play!

There comes a time when you must learn the painful lesson of leaving your past glory alone. Avoid the cheap comfort of saying “I was” to deal with the current and advance further and further. Don’t cripple and stagnate yourself by settling in the easy chair of past glory when you are down the easy slope to ruin and degradation. 

From The Cleaver, we wish you a fruitful week and a lifetime of constant growth and advancement. Why should you remain stagnant and salty when you can reach out for fresh challenges and opportunities to grow?