Stop letting the past define us

It’s nearing the end of January and, if we’ve lost our way slightly since setting great ambitions for 2026, we don’t need a new year to reset. This is a real-life example of shedding our past to reset our beliefs. And we can do it anytime we want.

Most losingest team

For most of college football history, the Indiana Hoosiers have been historically bad. So bad they earned the term the “most losingest team” in college football. When teams lose that consistently, the story becomes so familiar that acceptance is just part of every season.

Everyone knows: “This is just how it goes at Indiana.”

But eventually, someone challenged that identity.

A guy called Curt Cignetti was hired as head coach of Indiana in late 2023 to take charge of the program. And, this is where the comeback fairy-tale story begins.

In the three seasons before Cignetti arrived, the team won a total of 9 games. The next season, they won 11. This past season they won 16, including the National Championship, beating Miami last week! They won the whole thing, went undefeated for the entire season, and their quarterback also earned the Heisman trophy, awarded to the most outstanding player in the country.

So how on earth does the losingest team in football win a championship?

“This team’s never played here.”

Some commentators are saying that we just witnessed perhaps the greatest turnaround story in sports, so it’s worth taking a closer look to see how it all happened.

It started with an important decision to choose not to inherit the story they were given.

When Cignetti arrived as head coach, he made a simple and clear claim that history is irrelevant. He believed that all those losing seasons didn’t mean anything to the team playing this season. A perfect example is when the team travelled to Penn State, a reporter asked him what he felt about never having won at Penn State. His response was brilliant: “this team’s never played here.”

Yes, the Indiana Hoosiers had played there many times before (and lost every time), but not this team. Not the players who’d be charging the field that day.

It’s funny how simple that is. But it makes a massive difference! The past does not matter.

It’s not disrespectful to forget the past. We just refuse to let it define who we are, or who we want to be. What matters instead is today’s practice. Today’s standard. Today’s execution.

Cignetti’s greatest achievement was changing what his players believed was available to them: their power to focus on controlling what is controllable. Great leaders will do that for their teams, whether it’s sports, business, or life.

Most of the limits we live with today were inherited from old feedback, past failures, environments that trained us a certain way. Our resilience is about fighting those stories and refusing to keep repeating them. And that identity shift was the foundation of this amazing team turnaround.

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The next piece was structure. Cignetti gave clear roles, set clear expectations and wanted clear accountability. Players were asked and expected to prepare like professionals.

“You don’t go to war with warm milk and cookies.” - Cignetti

He knew that when you behave like a professional, the confidence comes later, almost as a side effect. It’s an important distinction because most of us try to affect change by starting with motivation and energy. We think positively, visualize success etc.

But it’s not enough to just do those things. We actually need to build it with evidence. With work. With reps we’ve sweated over. It’s all the examples when we’ve been able to we stay calm in a chaotic meeting, or the moment we laugh off someone else’s attempt to gaslight us. We do those things because we’ve set the expectations of ourselves that we are resilient. As the famous quote goes: “We are what we repeatedly do.”

Indiana proved that they were great to themselves, one rep at a time via clean practices and consistent habits. And the belief followed the behaviour.

Applying to real life

Here are three practical tools we can borrow from the Hoosiers’ turnaround to apply apply directly to our own lives.

1. Separate history from identity. The team stopped taking everything personally. The past of the organization no longer defined them. Instead, the season was a chance for fresh canvas. The question we need to ask is “Is it true, or just familiar?” Honestly, it’s likely that whatever we are hearing is just the story that’s been repeated the longest. But our resilience begins when we loosen our grip on who we think we are and create space for who we might become. Whoever we want to become in 2026, let’s stop taking the past personally and define the future instead.

2. Build standards before motivation. Cignetti made his standards clear. It’s where all great programs and processes begin. What do we expect from each other? And what do we expect from ourselves? This beats motivation every day. One really simple question is to make sure everyone knows the answer to this question: “what does showing up well mean, practically?” We’re not looking for the soft stuff; we’re looking for the work or contribution that each person will make. Resilience thrives on structure, and an understanding of what is required today, and everyday.

3. Let belief be earned. This might be the most powerful one. Instead of trying to convince ourselves that we’re capable, let’s start collecting proof. Small wins and completed reps. We said we’d send the email by end of day, so let’s make sure that’s the priority. Those commitments and kept promises will define who we become. Start small with just one promise. And when the follow through happens, make a note of it. Confidence accumulates one action at a time.

The Hoosiers’ story goes down as one of the great turnarounds in sport. It’s a demonstration that anything is possible with the right identity and structure in place. But more powerful than all of that, is that it shows us that we can begin again anytime we like.

Until next time friends, stay resilient.

Carré at Resilient Minds

PS - there’s plenty more to this story. For example, Cignetti surrounded himself with people he trusted over stars, because he wanted those who shared the same beliefs. I loved that part too, but left it out to keep this tight. If you’re curious, this article goes deeper.