What 'could have been' is never as good as 'right now'
The following is a ‘re-air’ of my Purposeful Strength newsletter from Tuesday February 23rd. The message this week is simple: never, ever think about what could have been.
Enjoy!
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Motivating Hindsight
Over the past month I’ve found myself thinking about what could have been.
Being perfectly honest, It’s been eating me up.
I call this a trapped mindset.
Any time I’ve found myself thinking about the ‘what if’s’ or the ‘what could have been’ or even worse, ‘if I did this, then my life would be at this point’. No matter the way you frame it, it’s a trap.
It’s a trapped mindset.
I don’t know if a ‘trapped mindset’ is a real thing, but that’s what I call it.
All of those hindsight questions put you so far in the past that they limit your ability to see what’s in front of you.
It definitely limited my ability to see the opportunity that was in front of me.
Yes, I said opportunity.
Let me backtrack a little bit.
When I was in business school taking finance courses, the professor always said the best day to invest your money was 10 years ago. I’m a believer that this mindset holds true with ALL opportunity, not just those in finance.
That secondary opportunity is what pulled me out of my funk.
Instead of ‘what if-ing’ myself out of my second opportunity, I confronted it head on. I wrote down WHAT I missed out on.
So I started my list. By the time I was done I had 8 solid bullet points of different facets I missed out on HAD I did things differently a decade ago.
8 big ‘ol sentences punching me in the face.
And when I stared at the paper I realized. I realized that the majority of that list was derived because of the experience I had gathered during the time that passed.
I know for a fact that my level of thinking today is worth more than my level of thinking 10 years ago.
My opportunity today, though different than 10 years ago, is uniquely awesome today.
My investment in myself started 10 years ago. Hindsight tried telling me that I made a mistake. My growth as a person begs to differ.
Don’t let your what could have been or what if’s ruin the best investment you can make. The return on investment in yourself is the greatest return you can get.
You got this.
Have a great week everyone,
Casey