The Future Matters More than the Past

While reading through one of many relationship books I came across one of them which I purchased several years back, 100 Simple Secrets of Great Relationships by Dr. David Niven. The book takes a simple scientific approach to explore relationships which he's formatted as an obvious list of 100 things followed by a real-life example. Through the years I've put little flags on the pages that struck my fancy. One in particular I thought was an excellent follow up to my last post so I'd like to share it with you all in hopes that you can take something from it and use it wisely.

The Future Matters More than the Past When a relationship has a successful history, some may imagine that the work has already been accomplished. But that is no more true than imagining that successful gardeners can skip watering and fertilizing this year because of their good track record. The fact that you have experience and confidence in your relationship means that you know what needs to be done. It does not mean that can ignore things that need to be done because you've done them before. The task of a successful relationship never ends because the point of a relationship is to build toward the future, not the past . Niven, D (2003). The 100 Simple Secrets of Great Relationships. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

If you think about it, what happened in the past simply cannot be changed, so why sit and harp on it? Why continually beat yourself up emotionally over something that happened previously in your current relationship or something from a past relationship? Nothing gets solved when you focus on the past. We gain success through hard work, trial, and error; and the same applies to a relationship - you learn from the mistakes you've made in order to ensure successful futurity. So let's put forth the energy spent beating one's self up into making the future a more successful one. I really hope that the things that I post can provoke thought and allow room for continual growth in the lives and relationships of my readers.