Cute analogy, but it falls apart upon closer examination. Before nearly every FB and BB season, there are optimistic projections made that soon wither once the season starts.
I beg to differ. What falls apart is your misconstruing the “rear view mirror/windshield” analogy to mean Projections. My cute analogy has nothing to do with projecting the future but instead… well, read it in my actual post pasted below.
Sports psychologists have a concept
calledI call “complete the past.” One successful coach I know of actually uses the Rear view Mirror/Windshield analogy in the first team meeting after the previous game to complete the past. He writes what happened — the good and the bad — inside a rear view mirror he draws on the white board. After acknowledging and covering “the past” they declare the past complete and move to the white board with the “windshield” on it. The windshield is symbolic of looking forward to what they are going to do to get ready for the next game. Over simplification I’m sure but filing the past in the past drawer gives a different future than filing the past in the present drawer (being mindful of the past).
There is one piece missing from the above analogy and that is being informed by the past. Even looking to the future we are foolish to ignore the past, i.e., being informed by the past. The Wolfpack spring practices were designed looking to the future after being informed by the past. Mistakes in the future are not a result of ignoring the past but are a matter of not being informed by the past. We have to get the past out of our future or we are doomed to repeat it. This is true in all of life — our businesses, our marriage, our entire lives.
We mistakenly think that we can ignore the past and it will go away or we can forget the past. Look and see. How much of your past that you want to forget have you actually forgotten? Not much I’d bet. The best we can do is acknowledge the past and declare it complete. Acknowledging the past is telling the truth about it. Without acknowledging the past we cannot declare it complete and move on.
That is what the coach above is doing with his team by examining what’s in the rear view mirror — acknowledging the past. Having done this he can declare the past complete and move on to preparing for the future. The future he prepares for is not given by the past but is informed by the past. Whew!!
Ever wonder why some coaches are successful and others are not? You think it’s because coach “X” knows plays coach “Y” doesn’t know? Or one coach calls better time outs than the others? You can hire coaches for thousands instead of millions if football knowledge is all it takes to be a successful head coach. Being informed by the past, not being used by the past is one of the difference makers in determining success or failure. (I’m pretty sure wolfpack92owen will see this as my way of talking in nonsensical circles. Discounting that which we don’t understand is a way of coping with it. I think Albert Einstein talks in nonsensical circles. And no, I’m not comparing myself to Einstein. but embarrassingly so with wolfpack92owen.)
If in my posts you see projections, either I badly made my point or you badly misconstrued what I wrote. My occurrences of “looking out of the windshield” are attempts to see where we are going, not predicting where we are going. My analogies of looking in the rear view mirror are just that — people looking in the rear view mirror to see where they/we are going. I don’t steer my car looking in the rear view mirror, I steer it based on what I see looking out of the windshield. Likewise when I look to see where the Wolfpack is going in the future I don’t look at the past even though I am informed by the past.
