Throughout my professional and personal life, I have learned so many lessons. This is what life is all about, learning. My wife and I will be celebrating our 46th wedding anniversary in a few months. She claims to know me better than anyone else and I think she is correct in this assessment. For many years, she criticized me for my excess stress that was caused by unfortunate and negative experiences.
Too often, we find ourselves brooding over a mistake or actions that did not have favorable results.
This consumes us and the more it is on our minds, the more it affects our positive thinking, creativity, intuition, and innovation. The sooner we can rid ourselves of this, the quicker we can move on. The lesson here is not to dwell on the past. It happened and it’s over. We have all heard cliches like, “Don’t cry over spilled milk.” The milk has spilled, and we can’t put it back. My boss and mentor always told me, “Control the controllable.” The spilled milk is not controllable. As such, fix what you can, forget about it, and instead, focus on what is next.
For years, I have been complimented for my positive attitude, enthusiasm, and optimism.
I owe my career and life to this. I learned from my mistakes and accepted the criticisms from others which were always direct and truthful. Learning to get past the negatives has helped me to be successful as well as help others to be successful.
Think about a negative experience in the past and how it affected you.
If you don’t let it go, it will always be a burden to you. Once you can let it go, you realize that without the extra weight, you can do so much more.
Little Orphan Annie inspired many of us with her song, “The sun will come out tomorrow.” Look at your career and life this way. No matter how dark and cloudy it is today, tomorrow will be better, and the sun will shine again. If not tomorrow, the next day, or the next, but the sun will surely shine again. The glass is not half empty but half full and we can always fill the glass tomorrow.
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