Chapter 16 Chapter 6 Do not worry about the past

The past is past and cannot be changed.Wise men focus only on the present and the future, they don't care about the past. When you're worrying about the past, you're just sawing sawdust. I have a line of dinosaur tracks in my yard - dinosaur tracks left on large flagstones and logs.I bought them from the Peet Museum at Yale University.The curator also sent a letter stating that these footprints were left 180 million years ago. Even an idiot wouldn't think of changing the footprints of 180 million years ago, and people's worries are as stupid as this idea, because even if it happened 180 seconds ago, we can't go back. correct it.We can think of ways to change the impact of what happened 180 seconds ago, but we cannot change what happened then.

The only way to make past mistakes worthwhile is to calmly analyze them, learn from them, and then forget them. A few years ago, I opened a large adult education tutoring school, with branches in many cities, and spent a lot of money on maintenance fees and advertising fees.I was so busy with my classes that I had neither the time nor the mood to manage my finances.And I was naive enough not to know that there should be a good business manager to arrange the various expenses. After almost a year, I suddenly found that although we made a lot of money, we didn't make any profit.I should have done two things at once.

One, blot the loss from your mind and never bring it up again, as the black scientist George Washington Carver did when he lost his entire fortune. Second, I should carefully analyze my mistakes and learn from them. But I did neither.On the contrary, I started to feel sad. I was in a trance for several months and couldn't sleep well. Instead of learning from it, I made a similar mistake on a smaller scale. It was really "teaching 20 people how It’s much easier to do it than to do it by yourself.” Mr. Aaron Sanders will always remember the most valuable lesson taught to him by his Physiology and Hygiene teacher, Dr. Paul Brandwin. "I was only a teenager at the time, but I used to worry about a lot of things and feel sorry for the mistakes I made. I kept thinking about the things I did and wished I hadn't done; I kept thinking about the things I said. , I hope I can speak better at that time.

"We walked into the science lab one morning and found a bottle of milk by Mrs. Paul Brandwin's desk. I don't know what that has to do with his physiology class. Suddenly, the teacher threw the Bottle of milk spilled in the sink while shouting 'Don't cry over spilled milk'. "Then he called us over to the sink and said 'Take a good look and remember this lesson forever. You see the milk has leaked. No matter how much you rush and how much you complain, you can't save a single drop. Just move first Brains, take precautions, and the bottle of milk will be saved. But it's too late now—all we can do is forget about it and move on to the next thing'.

"I will never forget this performance. It taught me not to spill the milk if possible. If the milk spills and the whole thing leaks out, just forget about it." "Don't cry over spilled milk" is a cliché, but it is the crystallization of human wisdom.Even if you've read the books on worry written by the great men of all ages, you won't find more useful clichés than "The boat will be straight when it reaches the bridge" and "Don't cry over spilled milk."In fact, if we just make more use of those old sayings, we can live an almost perfect life.However, knowledge is not power if it is not harnessed.The purpose of this book is not to tell you anything new, but to remind you of what you already know and to encourage you to apply what you have learned.

The late Fred Fuller Züder had a gift for telling old truths in new and engaging ways.Once speaking to a senior college class, he asked, "Who has sawn wood, please raise your hand." Most of the students raised their hands.He asked again: "Who saw sawdust?" No one raised their hands. "Of course, you can't saw sawdust," said Mr. Szoudet. "It's the same with the past. When you start worrying about what's done and what's past, you're sawing sawdust." When baseball veteran Connie Mark was 81, I asked him if he ever worried about losing games.

"I used to do that. But, I found that it did me no good at all. The powders that were ground could not be ground again," he said. "The water has washed them down to the bottom." Jack Dempsey, over dinner with me, told me about the fight he lost the heavyweight title to Kim Tong-li. "At the end of the tenth round, although I hadn't fallen down yet, my face was swollen and there were many scars, and my eyes could hardly be opened. I saw the referee raised Jin Tongli's hand and declared him the winner... …I’m not world champion anymore, I’m walking back in the rain, through the crowd to my house.

"One year later. I played against Tong Li again, the result was still the same, and I was finished forever. It was really difficult not to worry about it at all, but I said to myself 'I can't live in the shadow of the past, I Take this blow. Can't let it knock me down'." So he tried to forget his failures and concentrate on planning for the future. He ran the Dempsey Restaurant and the Great Northern Hotel on Broadway, arranged and promoted boxing matches, and held various exhibitions about boxing matches.In this way, he has neither the time nor the mind to worry about the past. "My life now is much better than when I was world champion."

Shakespeare tells us: "A wise man never sits and mourns his loss, but gladly seeks out ways to make amends." I visited Sing Sing Prison once, and the thing that surprised me the most was that the prisoners seemed as happy as the outsiders.The warden told me that the inmates arrived with a grudge and a bad temper.But after a few months, most of the wiser ones were able to forget their misfortunes and settle down to their prison life.He also told me that a prisoner used to work in the garden. When he was planting vegetables and flowers in the prison wall, he could still sing, because he knew that crying was useless.

Of course, mistakes and omissions are our fault.But who hasn't made a mistake?Napoleon also lost 1/3 of all his important battles.Perhaps our average record is less than Napoleon's.