By Joe Byerly
When I was a kid, there were a handful of professional athletes I used to idolize. They were at the top of their game. They had money, fame, and even got to ride around in limousines. I don’t know why, but that was a big deal back then.
If you paused the story there, they were successful. To a 10-year old boy, they had it all.
But you can’t pause the story. As the Greeks used to say, panta rei, or “All things are in flux”
Nothing stays static. The story always continues.
And their stories continued. They continued into substance abuse, injuries, bankruptcy—and some even died too early.
They made it to the mountaintop, snapped the selfie, and then hit pause. They got stuck in their own glory and stopped paying attention to the day-to-day decisions, the ones that got them to the mountaintop in the first place. And they definitely weren’t paying attention to their own rapid descent.
They forgot, or maybe they never knew, that you can’t pause the story.
There are times when we do that ourselves. We pause the story. We have moments when we feel on top of our game, so we take the internal selfie and hit pause. Life keeps moving, but we stay stuck in that chapter. And we, too, start descending.
Sometimes, we just can’t let go of that season long enough to step into the next one. We’re still the commander, the executive, the athlete—long after we’ve stepped off the field.
As Sean Fitzpatrick, former captain of the New Zealand All Blacks, once reflected about his life after rugby, he didn’t want to become one of those ex-players “who walked backwards into the future.”
Panta Rei.
The phrase is a warning, but it’s also empowering.
Sometimes we pause our limiting stories—and remain frozen in them. The one about failure. The one about falling short. The one about potential unrealized.
But life is always changing, it’s always in flux, and so are we. If we want to change, we can. If we want to move in a different direction, we can. And if we’re not proud of the person we were yesterday, we can do something about it today.
So while our accomplishments matter and our past struggles matter, they have no bearing on today. We only stumble when we try to walk backwards into the future.
We can’t pause the story.
Panta Rei
Joe Byerly is a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel with 20 years of service, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and command of a cavalry squadron in Europe. He earned numerous prestigious awards, including multiple Legion of Merits, Bronze Stars, the Purple Heart, and General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award. In 2013, Joe founded From the Green Notebook.
A passionate advocate for self-knowledge through reading and reflection, he authored The Leader’s 90-Day Notebook and co-authored My Green Notebook: “Know Thyself” Before Changing Jobs, a resource for leaders seeking greater self-awareness. If this post resonated with you or sparked any questions, feel free to reach out to him at Joe@fromthegreennotebook.com.
