Stop Living In The World Of “If Only ...”
By Terry Brock, for DSound & Steemit
We all make mistakes. This is part of being human. We all look back and think, “if only such and such didn't happen” or “If only I had done this differently.” However, living in the land of “If only” can be detrimental to you now and in the future. It is easy to blame someone or something for a bad experience in the past. Such thinking is not only demoralizing, but it condemns you to living a life of regret and feeling sorry for yourself.
Stop living in the regret of what you didn't do or what could have been. Some say they had an idea similar to what another company is now successfully doing. “If only I had generated that social media idea I had back when Facebook was getting started.” Sometimes people will regret that someone else didn't come through for them as they had wished. “If only they had bought that product from me, I'd be rich today.”
Stop it already! You can't go back to the past. As the old country boy said, “The past ain't comin' back, so we gotta' move forward.” Bad English, but good advice. The past is not the world we live in, even though we might long for an imagined “good ole days” in the past. Prepare yourself for a continually changing new normal. Break out of the seductive and dangerous thoughts of “if only.”
In business people do this by wishing they had come up with the ideas that now-successful companies had. Often businesses want to be “the next Facebook” or “the next Google.” Peter Thiel discusses this in his profoundly insightful book, Zero to One: Notes on Start-ups or How To Build The Future. There is never going to be another Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple or any other company. They each saw opportunities at one point, took advantage of what was available then, worked very hard, and provided value to the marketplace in a unique way. I like to think of it like a river going by. You can't long for what went by in the past. You can, and have to, plan for what is coming your way now and in the future.
This is what successful business leaders of today and tomorrow, do. They create their own magic, study what the market wants, work hard, adapt and correct for setbacks and keep pushing forward.
Don't be like those who live in the world of “if only” wishing that something would have been different in the past. Get with the program! The world doesn't care about what happened to you or what could have happened to you. Sorry. It is up to you to take the world as it is now, create value for others, and make good happen.
Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, said it well, “Do what you can, with what you've got, right where you are.” Stop complaining about “what might have been.” Move forward embracing and creating opportunities available now and in the future.
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