The Challenge of Hindsight

This is Part 26 of of a series on vision. It’s like a serialized book! You can read previous chapters here:

Part 1. Part 2. Part3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11. Part 12. Part 13. Part 14. Part 15. Part 16. Part 17. Part 18. Part 19. Part 20. Part 21. Part 22. Part 23. Part 24. Part 25.

It’s Hard to See Behind You

Last year I learned that I have a weak posterior chain. This means that my back body — from the back of the shoulders, the lats, lower back, glutes, hamstrings, calves — are not as strong or as well-developed as my front body. This is fairly common. As I started to even out the imbalances, I noticed that had difficulty activating my back muscles because I couldn’t see them in action.

A breakthrough came when I found a spot in the gym where the mirrors lined up in a way that allowed me to see my back muscles as I did one of my exercises. Suddenly, I was able to feel the muscles working.

By seeing my back muscles I could bring the right focus to them, and start to bring energy to them. And suddenly I was able to move forward in my progress.

The mind-body connection is powerful. It’s easier to build strength in a muscle when we can visually see it working. In fact, one reason most people are front-body dominant is that we see our front body all the time, which leads us to work on it more. Where focus goes, energy flows.

As in the body, so too in life.

Hindsight is not 20/20. We actually don’t see the past clearly at all. We tend to see it only through the lens of the present. In fact, what makes the past the past is that we are looking at it through the lens of the present.

With the benefit of knowing all you know now, maybe you would have made a different decision in the past. But at the time you made the decision, you didn’t know what you know now.

The past has value only to the extent we can pull valuable information from it to help us root our vision.