Understanding your Past helps you to Determine your Future

So we can learn from our mistakes after all. How does that equate to us knowing our future. Can we foresee the future? Or do we need to consult a fortune teller? Can our past help us predict our future?

When we make strategic decision we usually focus at the future, our hopes and dreams are pinned on the future. Why is that? Do we think we can determine our future? Sometime we tend to forget that future has a past and that past is the foundation of the future. So how do we find a connection between the past and the future? Can we draw a bridge to connect the past and the future?

In business school you are thought to look for trends, for history, for past performance. The question is does this really help in predicting the future such as betting your life savings in a company's publicly traded shares... This is actually applicable in most aspects in life, so here's the secret.

Ok. pick up a pen and a paper let's use a project, well any project could be from starting a company or planning for a big event or a party or just about anything in the future. Define a time line from the beginning to today and a time in the future. Now add the following to the timeline: the people involve; the goals in the beginning and future goals, successes, obstacles overcome, potential obstacles and lessons learned. The items you filled in reveals the importance attached to the past and your vision of the future.

Now how do you connect the past to the future? By analyzing the trends and applying the lessons learned not only from the project but on past projects as well.