Failing Backwards

It’s funny, when my wife tells a story of something that happened to us, perhaps we’ve got some friends over for dinner or something,

often I saw the event completely differently or she tells it via details that I have zero recollection of. 

I notice the same with friends, an embellishment, an exaggeration, once a friend pointed out that I had combined events on separate days in a story I told. 

It was a good story though. 

I used to think the worst. 

It’s a weakness that as humans we lie about the past to make ourselves appear better or more interesting in the present. 

Notwithstanding that this does happen, it turns out that remembering exactly how events occurred isn’t really possible and isn’t really what our memory is for. 

Firstly we are only able to perceive a very small amount of what is going on. In any given moment we will take in what is most important to us or most threatening to us in that moment and VERY little else. 

Hence why two people can have a very different idea of events. 

Secondly, our memory exists to support us in being able to identify early when those things we most value are close by and take action to get it. 

More importantly perhaps it exists to support us in identifying early when things that threatened or hurt us in the past are beginning to form in our environment so that we might avoid them. 

This is why past events plague us and often leave us fragmented in the present. 

Perhaps we’ve been sacked in the past and as a result we no longer go all in at work. 

Perhaps we’ve failed to lose weight so we operate as if failure is invitable. 

Memories of failures or mistakes that persist do so because they hold lessons. 

When we extract the lessons the memory shrinks and at the same time we become more whole in the present and better equipped to succeed at the same challenge. 

Often my clients will produce exact steps of how to go about failing at the very challenge they have come to me for help with. With that comes the confident of success in the present. 

Thought that might be a cool thing to know. I have found it seriously useful and often I’ll notice that I’m noticeably more relaxed from day to day.