When you get ready to invest money there’s a clause in the paperwork that says that past performance is no guarantee of future results. Just because the mutual fund has been making 15% per year for the last five years, there’s no guarantee that it will do it after you put your money in. But the opposite is true for people. You past is the greatest and most accurate predicator of how’ll you do in the future.
That’s a good thing for men because self-doubt and other people telling them they have no talent or abilities, can drive a once successful and effective man straight to the sidelines. But there’s one thing self-doubt and the others cannot overcome, historical facts. What a man has accomplished in the past. That’s why it’s good for a man to remember on his past successes and to occasionally take a look at his trophies.
Of course this can go bad on a guy too. The cold, hard truth is you can’t be the high school stud forever and nobody wants to be around the guy who’s still wearing his high school letterman jacket at 30. But you can recall what happened when you gave everything you had to accomplish something and were successful.
If you’re in a slump, maybe the best thing you can do is to pick up one of your old trophies and try to remember what habits and activities enabled you to win that trophy and then start doing them now. Because past performance IS the greatest indicator of man’s future success.
