We occasionally ask the following question: If you had but 24 hours to live, who would you call and what would you say? It's not a bad conversation starter and an even better exercise in introspection. Fortunately, we all have lengthy futures stretching ahead. For some, the ideal future is the one that lies in the past, only a little better perhaps.
 
Nostalgia for most of us means memories fixed in amber; to be revisited only in our mind but never to be relived: a certain nuance at a moment in time, a sense of color and feeling in a long-ago setting, a song, a memory from a triumph in school, or an early career success. As much as we'd relish the chance to do it again it's simply out of reach, set in stasis in our memory.
 
In his book, Linchpin, Seth Godin casts the past into the future, reminding us that if we lock-in on a certain scenario for ourselves only to anticipate that it won't happen, we get nostalgic for something that can never be. Says Godin "That isn't positive visualization; it's attachment of the worst sort. When we do that we attach to an outcome we can't control."
 
Think about your self-messaging: "If it weren't for ______ I'd be more successful." Or, "I'd be a much stronger leader if only _______." By doing this exercise, we begin to eliminate the barrier of the week since "if only" is a built-in fire wall that when eliminated, propels us forward.
 
Companies fall victim to clinging to a false sense of future-nostalgia. Godin describes an incredibly myopic decision on the part of the New York Times. The Times, a print monolith today passing from the stage in slow painful increments, was offered a monstrous deal with Amazon in 1996 that would have transformed the economics of the paper and delivered billions of dollars over time. Senior management turned it down, rationalizing that Barnes & Noble, a big advertiser at that time, might be offended. Seth Godin observes, "The Times' management had nostalgia for the future anticipating steady increases in their business model at that time, and felt threatened by a radical shift in that future."
 
Clinging to the past is a siren song since it clouds our view of the future and limits our range of vision and initiative. An entire corporate destiny may turn on a fleeting possibility; a wave that we see approaching but one that will quickly roll away into the past. Nostalgia for the future has its place, so long as we don't allow our sense of comfort and consistency to crowd-out the next big opportunity.
 
Consistency may simply be a false sense of loyalty, to a past that doesn't care.