Henry,
In my last letter, I had a short section about “Don’t fight the last war.” I thought this idea deserved its own letter. When I was in school, my extracurricular activity of choice was basketball. I am sure when you read this you will be able to empathize with the following, but my dad was heavily involved with my basketball career. Though I resisted him on many, many occasions, the truth was that his involvement is the reason I met with any success on the court. One of the things he would often help me to remember was to not dwell on my mistakes. Though we must always learn from them, if we allow our mistakes to cloud our judgment on the very next play, we will get caught in a spiral or self-sabotage and negativity. Remember where you erred, develop your weak spots, but don’t relive a past moment to the detriment of the present one. One might say “move on” or “focus on the next play” or some version of “what’s done is done.” I like the slightly more militarized adage “Don’t fight the last war.”
While this idea of not dwelling on the past is multi-faceted, we will remain on the sports analogy. It’s a useful comparison because by the time you read this, you will probably understand at a visceral level how it feels. You will make mistkes, and in the moments following them, you will have a choice; do I let what’s done effect my mindset going forward? Or do I attach no emotion to the past and accomplish the next task as if it was the first. The latter is the only real option for success. This is true on the court or field, but this is also true in life. You will make mistakes. You will let yourself down and you will perceive (whether true or not) that you have let other down. The only thing that will matter, however, is that you process undaunted in the present.
To return, as I so often do, to the thoughts of the stoics, when we make a mistake, it immediately becomes a thing of the past. As the very moment something becomes of the past, it passes out of our control and into the realm of that which we can no longer control. This no power to change what has been done, we must focus on that over which we do have power, our mind. The past is external that that which is in the past should “have no hold on the soul. It is there unmoving, outside it.Disturbance comes only from within — from our own perceptions” [i]
In the above example of my mental state on the court, I would be chastising myself for a mistake, and in the process of doing so, would fail to be focused on the now, and thus make further mistakes. However, the requirement to not dwell on the past and never re-fight the last war also applied to when we succeed. Again, in “The 33 Strategies of War” author Robert Greene make “Don’t fight the last war…” his second law. Discusses how one of the greatest generals of all time, Napoleon Bonaparte, used his enemies’ inability to adapt to the new strategies of warfare against them. He saw what the Prussian had done with incredible martial skill, in previous wars and recognized that is he chose to fight them on those terms his forces would fall and his aim of an Imperial France would fall with them. So, he adapted. He learned the lessons from previous fights and searched of weaknesses and openings in the old tactics. Meanwhile the Prussians saw no need to change. Why should they? On the even of Napoleon’s rise, the Prussian Army was the unchallenged military power in Europe.
If in our past, we have been highly successful, we must be as cognizant of not living in our success as we are of not living in our failure. In both cases, we must not let the past effect how we approach today, which remain in our control. However, it is critical that we don’t completely forget the past. We can never eliminate its existence. We made that mistake, and we earned that success. It is and always shall be there. What we can do, is ensure that we are in control of our perceptions of the events of yesterday. That’s a very fancy way of saying we should not let the past affect us, but we should always use the lessons of the past to develop ourselves.
I again return to “Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife” by John Nagl. In it analyzes two military conflicts, and the organizations that fought in them. First, he shows that the British Army, which fought a counter-insurgency operation in Malaya, was far more successful than the US Military was in its counter insurgency experience in Vietnam. He poses the question, why is it that two military organizations, the American and the British, which are as culturally similar as they could be, had such dramatically different outcomes against similar opponent. The answer, according to Nagl is that the “British Army was a learning institution, and the American Army was not.” Put simply, the British has successes and failure, but remained willing and able to adapt their strategy accordingly. The Us Army failed to learn from mistakes, but perhaps worse, failed to recognize when even successful strategies had outlived their usefulness, and shift away from them.
I recognize this is highly repetitive of my previous letter, but I believe the topics covered here bear some repeating. Go ahead and add to our list of Family Mottos: “Don’t Fight the last war.”
Your Father
Ryan
PS
A List of Family Mottos may be worth something here and in subsequent letters.
- Imua — Of course, the big one, and the most versatile one.
- Aika — “If” in Ancient Greek… perhaps the topic of another letter
- The Obstacle is the Way
- “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
- Always give yourself Options
- Strong Mind, Strong Body
- Discipline is Freedom
- The Ego is the Enemy
- A Warriors Greatest Weapon is his mind
- Amor Fati
- Control your Perceptions, Control your Emotions
- “You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
- “You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
[i] Marcus Aurelius and Gregory Hays, Meditations (New York: Modern Library, 2003). Book 4.3