It’s No Use Going Back to Yesterday
3 Min Read
This Halloween, my daughter and I went with an Alice in Wonderland theme for our costumes. Even though the old-school movie version always gave me the heebie-jeebies (a talking, disappearing cat will do that), we had fun pulling everything together. A successful thrift store trip landed me an amazing long jacket, pants, and a few other pieces for my Mad Hatter costume (more Johnny Depp than the original). My daughter made for a fantastic Alice.
We had a great time, and I even got a few compliments on my costume. I like dressing up because, realistically, I only have maybe one or two more Halloweens before she’d rather go with her friends than have a parent tagging along. Of course, now I’m spending the week “redistributing” her candy so we don’t end up with 10 pounds of chocolate in the house. (It’s called a candy tax, right?)
Being the Mad Hatter for the night made me wonder if there was some wisdom in Wonderland that I had overlooked as a kid. Turns out, there is—just not from the Hatter this time. It’s from Alice herself:
“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
— Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
It’s such a simple line, but it packs a powerful punch of truth.
I often look for little pieces like this to share with clients or athletes. This one, in particular, connects directly to coaching—the art of focusing not on the past, but on the here, the now, and what comes next. Alice reminds us that we are constantly changing, growing, and adapting. Who we were yesterday isn’t who we are today.
Self-reflection and meaning-making is important. We learn from our experiences, process them, and take the lessons forward. But once we’ve done that, it’s time to move on. Easier said than done. Sometimes it feels safer to try to be who we once were, rather than who we’re becoming. But that version of ourselves existed under different conditions—with a different team, challenge, and/or perspective.
Leadership, like life, is about evolution. We change—and so does everyone around us. The challenge is to let people evolve instead of freezing them or ourselves in time. We can’t hold on to who someone was and expect them to lead, follow, or connect in the same way forever. Just as we can’t do the same to ourselves.
Alice realized she was changing from Wonderland, she couldn’t go back to who she was before she fell down the rabbit hole. She had seen too much, learned too much, and changed too much. None of us can go back either—and maybe that’s the point.
She was changed by the journey, shaped by what she experienced, and ready to face what came next. Leadership works the same way: you can’t go back to who you were yesterday. You take what you’ve learned, focus on the here and now, and use it to shape the future with the perspective, skills, and growth you’ve gained along the way.
Steve