One of the secrets of the great life of the apostle Paul was that he learned how to forget. He did not spend his time looking at his successes or his failures. Rather, he kept focusing on the future and pressing toward the mark of Christian maturity (Philippians 3:13).
This is one of the secrets of any great life.
It was the brilliant mind of Aldous Huxley that came forward with the statement that a genius is a man who is able to overlook those things that are unimportant. What Huxley was saying is this: If you want to be smart, if you really are a genius, you have to cultivate not only the art of memory, but also the art of being able to forget.
Playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder, who spent much of his life studying past cultures, didn’t believe a man should spend much time in his own personal past. “I erase as I go along,” he once said. “I look forward so much that I have only an imperfect memory for the past.”
Coach John Wooden, formerly the basketball coach at UCLA, said after his team had won its ninth national championship in 10 years, “Next year we’ll start out as though we’ve never done anything.”
We must never be shackled to the past with its successes or its failures. We must never be satisfied with where we are and never rest on our laurels. We must always keep looking forward and pressing onward to reach our highest potential in Jesus Christ.