Flipping through the channels the other night, I stumbled on the 40-Year Anniversary Show of “The George Michael Sports Machine.” Time flies! I was immediately flooded with a wave of nostalgia for a bygone era. The Sports Machine was a groundbreaking sports highlight show that ran in syndication for over 23 years and revolutionized sports storytelling on television. In the Summer of 1989, I was fortunate enough to secure a coveted internship at the iconic show.
Over the course of that summer, I earned the nickname “Fight Doctor”, for my knowledge of the professional boxing world and my penchant for putting together splashy highlights of the most mesmerizing fighters of the time. Mike Tyson. Evander Holyfield. Pernell Whitaker. Julio Cesar Chavez. It was a glorious time and I soaked it all in! I gleaned many valuable lessons from that experience, and the most powerful one occurred late one night in the editing room.
This particular night, we needed more content specifically from the boxing files. Fight Doctor to the rescue! I had put together a dozen or so segments, and I combed through the reels of all these highlights to find something new and compelling. I felt I had already covered everything interesting about the sport, and I was clearly struggling and feeling the pressure. Just when I was about to give up, one of the show’s producers calmed me down and counseled me to take an alternative approach.
“You’ve already created the highlights for the summer. What are you missing?”
I didn’t think I was missing anything. He was right. The highlights were already out there. What more could I do?
My non-answer prompted a swift response.
“Go back to the original tapes. There’s always gold on the cutting room floor!”
And so there was. In one segment from an original tape, I found a great highlight of a previously overlooked match. That “forgotten” reel ended up making it onto the final production for the big Sunday show!
It was a great lesson in film production. But it was an even better lesson for our everyday lives. Some of our most valuable material comes from the moments we leave on the cutting room floor.
Looking Back to Go Forward
In our work lives, we are constantly learning and growing. We go through stages in our careers and each one leads to the other. Where we end up could be far different from where we started. And that is generally a good thing. We don’t want to become stagnant, and we need to constantly challenge ourselves. But we can’t be too quick to dismiss previous experiences. Perhaps there is an old colleague who could be helpful or supportive in our current position. Perhaps there is a skill set we learned that we could apply to our new area of focus. Perhaps there is a valuable lesson we learned long ago that has tangential relevance to our new role. We always have to move forward. But there is huge value in occasionally looking back. Sometimes previous experience holds the key to a present challenge.
And that goes for friendships as well. Grade School Friends. High School Friends. College Friends. Parents of our children’s friends as they go through various stages of school and sports. Some remain with us forever. Some fade as our lives ebb and flow. We can’t stay close to everyone. Hold tightly to those who remain through the turbulent times. But don’t forget about the old friends who are no longer top of mind. Just because we are no longer in touch, does not mean they no longer matter to us. Take some time to look back. Don’t be afraid to reach out and let them know you still care. It won’t be wasted time. We can all benefit by mining for gold on the cutting room floor!
Lowlight to Highlight
But what about those moments we want to forget? The ones we intentionally left on the cutting room floor. The cringe-worthy mistakes. The heartbreaking losses. The squabbles and regrettable breakups. There is a lot of pyrite amongst the nuggets of gold. But even these blunders can teach us something. With a fresh perspective, we can learn and grow from these experiences. Sometimes, it’s about what path NOT to take. Sometimes, these moments make us appreciate how far we have come on our journey. Sometimes our lowlight reel makes our highlight reel even more invaluable!
We take a little bit with us on each stage of our journey. Granted, not everything will make it into the final production of the show. But we can’t be too quick to discard our past. We can always find gold on the cutting room floor!