DaveWitwicki.com

Lately I’ve found myself ruminating on past choices I’ve made. It’s easy to get lost in the mental maze of “what if”. What if I’d taken that job, what if I hadn’t said that, what if I’d been more active in X. These lines of thinking can really sap your motivation. Especially since we generally don’t consider the positive choices, only the seemingly negative ones.

As a rule, I try not to regret past choices. I choose to believe that the current state of my life is a result of those choices, both good and bad, and while I may not be totally satisfied with my current state, I’m generally happy with the way things have gone. Keep in mind that if you’re totally satisfied with your current life then you have no reason to change/grow and that leads to stagnation.

So how do you break out of the cycle of mulling over past choices? What can you do to look forward instead of back?

1. First and foremost, you can’t change the past. There is absolutely nothing you can do to make it different. Sure, you can try and make amends but that doesn’t change the original choice.
2. Remember that even if a choice you made turned out totally wrong (from your perspective), at the very least you learned something. You might have to spend some time trying to determine what you learned but it’s there, keep looking.
3. Consider that maybe the choice you made was actually the right choice given the context of the situation. It’s quite possible that you weren’t ready to handle the demands of a given situation and would have found yourself feeling worse than you do now.
4. Check if it’s possible to make that choice again. Some opportunities do come around more than once. Say you turned down a job (or chose not to even apply). Check with the company again. It’s quite possible that the person they did hire is not working out or that they have an even better opportunity now.

It’s important to remember that life is a journey. We can choose to get stuck living in the past, always wondering “what if” or we can choose to live in the now, accepting the choices we have made and looking forward to the magnificent experiences yet to come.

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.
- Eleanor Roosevelt