I’ll never forget the first night my wife and I spent in our new house after a long moving day.

It was evening when we finally sat down to reflect on the day’s events. The children were upstairs in their barely-made beds, surrounded by half-opened boxes with clothes pouring out.

Our furniture was tentatively placed in rooms that were loosely defined from a couple of visits and my crudely made floor plan.

We weren’t sure which room we’d put the TV in so we picked one of the rooms on the main floor and I plugged in some wires.

We huddled up on the couch and tried to focus on the show but we couldn’t. We were distracted. Distracted by every new sound we heard through the open window, every voice, every car door, every little breeze, every normally unnoticed sound you notice because it’s the first time you’re hearing it. 

Don’t get me wrong…we were filled with the excitement of new. This was what we had wanted to do.

But just hours earlier we had lumps in our throats and tears in our eyes as we closed the door for the last time on a place that, just 9 years earlier, had been the beginning of our biggest adventure together, a place where so much had happened.

It’s funny how you can see history in an empty room. It’s strange how you can touch a door handle and a flood of memories go through you.

And while you can also see the future in an empty room, it doesn’t impact you the same way.

The future seems to be more of a dream. It’s not so clear.

It’s because the past, even though it’s gone, holds the power of being the way things have always been. Or so it seems, because it’s been so long since the last change.

It doesn’t matter whether that’s in our personal life or in our work.  The past has power.  

So if you’re a leader who needs to help people through change, that is what you’re up against. The past has an incredible hold on most people. Especially if it has been a good past, a great past, a past that has served you well.