It’s a fall Saturday and in the United States that means a day of college football. I’m a devotee of American football, both the college game and the NFL. This weekend, both my teams are coming off losses—and it hasn’t been a terrific week for me, either. So I can’t help wondering how all of us are going to meet the challenge of regrouping.

I tend to spend a lot of time rehashing my mistakes and contemplating how I could have done things differently. But top-flight athletes understand that what’s done is done. In order to reach the pinnacle of the amateur or professional ranks, they must be able to walk away from their failures … to live in the moment.

As they jog onto their respective fields of play on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, my college and professional teams will have to leave behind any lingering doubts about their previous performances. They’ll have to put aside the dropped balls, missed tackles, and broken routes. They’ll have to forget the blitzes they failed to pick up and the sure sack that slipped out of their grasp. Instead, they’ll have to laser-focus on the challenge in their immediate path. And if I want the coming week to be more successful than last, I’ll have to do the same. Here are more thoughts on moving forward:

“Seize the day.”

—Horace, Italian poet

“A fool will lose tomorrow reaching back for yesterday.”

—From the song “I’ll Never Love This Way Again,” by Richard Kerr and Will Jennings

“I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.”

—Igor Stravinsky, composer

“Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”

—Leroy “Satchel” Paige, baseball great

“The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.”

—Abraham H. Maslow, psychologist

“The present is the only reality and the only certainty.”

—Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”

—Henry David Thoreau, poet, essayist, naturalist

“Yesterday’s the past and tomorrow’s the future. But today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.”

—Bill Keane, cartoonist, The Family Circus