Insight is O-V-E-R-R-A-T-E-D

A second lesson I’ve learned this year is that insight is overrated (I got this line from a friend). Not unimportant, just overrated.

I have the kind of personality that craves insight from past events. I want to understand why things happened the way they did, why I responded the way I did, and what I could have done differently.

I have to be careful about getting so caught up in understanding past events that I stop looking to the future.

Part of my problem is that I’m tempted to believe that hidden in my past is a magical insight, some clue to my past failures, that if I were to discover it, would change everything about my life moving forward.

So far, after sending my inner Indiana Jones on a number of adventures into the past, I haven’t found the psychological Holy Grail that will fix what’s wrong with me.

Even when I have found what I consider to be semi-satisfactory answers to some of my questions, it’s been disappointing to learn that answers from the past do not contain enough momentum to propel me forward into a meaningful future.

I’ve learned that a more propulsive question than what happened? and why? is what am I going to do next?

The energy for moving forward isn’t harnessed by dwelling in the past, but by tapping into a hopeful future.

Yes, what I’ve just written is the product of insight.

Insight may be overrated. Irony is not.