On Doubting

Part of the trouble with being afforded so many options is having so many options.  How could you ever be sure you made the right choice when there are so many things to choose from?

I often find myself playing the shoulda, coulda, woulda game.  I must subconsciously like it a lot more than I think I do, because I play it all the time.

I wonder how much energy each of us expends over the course of our lives second guessing ourselves?  My guess is it would be an uncomfortably large amount.

And we aren’t content to just second guess.  We dwell.  We beat ourselves up.  We convince ourselves that we made the wrongest decision in the history of wrong decisions.

But we didn’t.  We made the right decision for the life we are living right now.  And if we don’t like that life, than we should do something differently.  And if that doesn’t work, do it again.  Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

So here’s my proposal.  We should stop digging our own ruts.  We should stop undermining our own progress.  We should stop sabotaging our own happiness.

Instead we should live for the future.  We should not be afraid to make mistakes.  And when we make mistakes, we should acknowledge them, take the lesson offered and leave the rest in our wake.  We should continue to grow and to change.  We should laugh in the face of adversity, smile when the going gets tough and revel in how much life exists in hard lessons.

Let’s face it, life is short.  If you spend the majority of it ruminating and how badly you’ve done it so far, you’re squandering your opportunity to do it better.  So just do it better.