FORGET IT! By James M. Becher
FORGET YOUR FAILURES AND MOVE ON TOWARD YOUR DREAMS.
It is a fact of life that all of us will inevitably fail in something in someway at sometime along the bumpy road of life. When this happens, we need to be able to forget it and move on toward our dreams and goals.
To quote Norman Vincent Peale: "One of the most important of all skills is that of forgetting. It is said a man is what he...eats. A man is what he forgets....to be happy and successful you must cultivate the ability to say to yourself--forget it! Memory is one of our greatest facilities, [and] It is a great skill to be able to be selective and say, 'I will hold this...this other, I will cast from me."
Why is this so important? Because, and I speak from experience, if you don't, the memories and regrets will eat at your mind like a cancer and will paralyze your progress to the extent that you will never be able to move ahead. And, after all, the failure you are remembering with so much regret may not be as big of a setback as you think.
To quote the mother superior in "The Sound of Music," when the Lord closes a door, He opens a window." But we will never see the window if we are focused upon the closed door.
But, what can we do, if, having tried to forget it, the thoughts persist in our mind? To further quote from Dr. Peale: "There are only 2 things to do:
- Do everything you reasonably can about it,
- Then practice forgetting it. Walk away from it in your thoughts. Conceive of it as lying back there growing ever more dim against the horizon as each day carries you further from it.
NOTE: This article forms the major part of one of the Chapters in my new Biblical self Help book, "Principles of the Kingdom. (God's Success Principles" (Click the link for more info.) And for more on God's Success principles in general and to view the chapter titles of my self-help book, visit the website listed below.
