Forward thinking

We all tend to get excited prior to the start of each new year and think seriously about what New Year’s resolutions we will make. New Year comes and New Year goes and we often find our resolutions tend to fall by the wayside. Some just prove to be impractical, others get relegated to the too hard basket and occasionally we persist with one until it seems to lose its relevance.

Perhaps, rather than wait for the new year to come around, we might take the time to stop and have a stocktake of our life to date and consider what has occurred in our past and what might become part of our future.  The word ‘hindsight’ is always associated with any review we might do of our past.

Perhaps we might regret some things that we have done in the past and don’t really want to rake over these old coals. With hindsight we know we certainly would have acted differently or made entirely different decisions and often we kick ourselves for the errors of the past.

Mentally, we need to tell ourselves that in the past, when we acted in such a way, this was what we felt was right at the time. Nothing can now change that decision, irrespective of what current wisdom hindsight might uncover. So, let’s not dwell too long on the past.

By giving ourselves the chance to look at our past we also give ourselves the opportunity to learn from previous decisions we might have made, so we might react differently should a similar situation arise today.

So, what of the future? Are we brave enough to consider doing or achieving something that has only ever been a distant dream in our subconscious? Perhaps it has never even rated a mention in any of our New Year’s resolutions lists. There will always be numerous reasons that confront us as to why our dream can never become a reality. If we were to put aside the negative reaction and force ourselves to strive towards achieving our dream, it may give us a whole new purpose in our life.

It is my opinion our past and our future can be compared to the inside of our car. That’s the reason why our rear vision mirror is so small compared to what we can see through the windscreen.

I’m Peter Mack and that’s life.

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