Don't Look Back In Anger

Well, well, well...here we are...A fresh and crisp Monday morning.  Welcome to another fantastic week here on planet earth.

Firstly...shock...no one wanted a free iTunes voucher...oh well...guess I will just have to

keep it for myself...or make it a roll-over for next time.

For those that are interested...the answer to the cryptic question was...’Slumdog Millionaire’ (Rich Canine Living In A Poor Part Of Town)... and my golf score...well... I don’t think even I could have predicted the correct score.  The Course...Hersham Village...the par...67 (so yes, quite short but very tricky).  I played off a handicap of 15... and shot a NET 61!!! 6 under my handicap with 9 pars and 2 birdies... and a couple of holes I’d rather forget about lol. So all in all a great game between me and Shaggy who had a blinding round too...best short game round I’ve witnessed in a while...long may it continue.

So how can we start the week off in the right mood?  What thoughts can I spark to make you want to get out there and actually ‘do’ rather than just ‘think about it’?

‘Regret’...wow..now there’s a word.  I hear a lot of people say they regret decisions or life choices they made in the past and that actually saddens me.  Regret is such a debilitating thought.  It connects us to bad memories, it keeps us thinking about what might have been, what we could have had.  It eats away at people until they actually spend more time thinking about the past rather than the future.

Here’s the thing...we can’t control the past, it’s done, gone, never to return...the key is to learn from it.  Understand why you believe you could have made better choices.  What would those better choices have brought you?  Are they still achievable?  Write down what it is you thought you wanted and be honest with yourself.  Look at what you’ve written and really think about whether those things would have really made you happy.  Look around you at what you have now.  Would those things be different?  Would you exchange what you have now for what you thought you wanted?

The bottom line is that ‘We make the best decisions we can with the information we have available at the time.  No one means to make bad decisions.  If that information changes over time, well...so be it... how were we to know?  We don’t have a crystal ball.’  So don’t be so hard on yourself.  But DO learn from those decisions because you never know, you might just find yourself in the same situation again... the same opportunity might arise in the future... and you need to be prepared... ready to make the right decision or at least be able to make a better informed decision.  Second chances don’t come by very often.. be ready to grab it with both hands.

So I say clean your mind of those regrets.  Write them down, put them down to experience, then put the list in a drawer out the way...better still....bin the list.  Rid your life of the burden.  Let the weight lift from your shoulders and allow yourself to think about the future...it’s a much better place.  A place where you can actually have an influence.  Start thinking about what you want from life now and in the future.  Focus on what it is you want, whether it be a career, a wife, a family, a house... we’re all different... but generally, our regrets are the same... we didn’t get the woman/man we wanted, we didn’t get the dream house, we didn’t get the job or promotion.  All these things can still be achieved if you just focus your mind on understanding how you need to get there.

As I mentioned, I don’t have regret in my life and yet I recently started to read the book ‘Detox Your Life’... it’s a great way to put perspective on things.  Understand just what you do have in your life that makes you happy, and what makes you sad so that you can decide on whether to continue to do those things or make a change.  Essentially, conducting a SWOT analysis on your life (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunity, Threat).

I’ll be studying this book over the coming week and will put my own take on it for you next week, once I get my head around it... but the key thing is that I ‘know’ that it will improve my life.  It will put me in a better place, even though I quite like the place I’m in right now...nothing wrong with striving for more...so long as that doesn’t turn into greed.

So I will leave you with this...’Don't Look Back In Anger...The past is the past...we can’t do anything about it...No point dwelling on what was...but rather dream about what will be and do something about it’.