The Y.O.L.O. Effect…

  Forgive me for overworking the YOLO cliché, but I’ve got something to say that I know will help you live a little better.  If you think about how many times people use that cliché and it’s context, you’ll find something very interesting.  Almost every time we say it, we are making some reference to getting rid of our fear of doing something with a complimentary urge to “do it” right now.  We are saying that life is too short to not do the things you really want to do.  So, as you can imagine, that got me thinking…

How much time do you spend doing things you really don’t want to do?  Or, how many things do you do because you think they are what others expect you to do?  Or, stated in the positive, do you spend most of your time doing the things you enjoy doing; have passion about and want to do?  And of course closely related to those questions, why are you doing the things you are doing?

As I’ve said a hundred times prior, this ol’ world funnels us into well-worn grooves of expectations!  The subtle and not so subtle message is to get in line; shut your mouth and don’t buck the system.  Do acceptable work; make acceptable comments; have acceptable opinions (not your own opinions, but the popular ones) and for goodness sakes, don’t start questioning things.  If a thing doesn’t make sense to you, it’s not because it doesn’t make sense, but rather because you don’t understand it – so again, close your mouth and get in agreement (now!).  The problem with that “go-along to get-along” mindset is that you no longer get to be “you” in the process.  Now on the surface, you may not think this applies to you, so I ask you, give it a little more thought.

People are employed in a line of work they hate, for decades.  Folks are suppressed in unhealthy relationships or subjecting themselves to unhealthy family members for a lifetime.  We laugh when it’s not funny.  We say the food tastes good when it doesn’t.  We nod in agreement to insane political ideas when those views couldn’t be further from our own.  We don’t play the music we like when others are around.  We get college degrees in subjects we cannot stand.  We tip waiters for poor service.  We devote time to reading books we don’t enjoy.  We trudge ourselves to tired church services and participate in nonsensical observances and even pray to a God we are grossly unfamiliar with!  Why?  Because we are afraid, that’s why!  Fear, often confused with terror, is a subtle beast.  We can all recognize the fright we feel when we see a tiger, but do we acknowledge the slipperier version that causes us to do all of the above?   Why would a man work in a job he loathed for twenty years?  He’s afraid that he can’t do anything else?  He’s afraid what his family would say if he quit?  He’s afraid what society might say if he stepped out of line!  Why do folks put up with family members that are toxic and discourage their growth?  Because they are afraid what everyone would think if they stopped coming around.  Fear.  (disclaimer – this does not refer to my family- )  We agree, we cajole, we acquiesce, we agree because we’re so friendly?  Probably not when you get right down to it.  Fear drives a multitude of things we feel obligated to do.  Then there is obligation’s close companion – guilt.  Guilt is just another form of fear manifesting itself as something you need to do because of something you didn’t do; should have done; or to avoid something because of what you did do (or perceive you might have done)!  Fear…

I’m certainly not advocating morphing into a self-centered douche, parading around town looking out for number one only!  I’m suggesting rather that you take the time to consider why you do the things you do.  There really are only two great motives in life – love and fear.  Love works no ill to its neighbor (or to you either for that matter)  Fear starts bad, proceeds bad, and ends bad.  Working out of fear leads to misery.  Working out of love fans the flames of passion.  Saying how you feel out of love leads to understanding and agreement and resolution.  Saying how you feel out of fear leads to arguments and conflict.  Doing things for other people out of love is the very heart of service.  Doing things for people out of fear leads to slavery and bondage and all kinds of mistreatment.

So the simple acid test is to ask yourself why you are doing the thing that you are doing.  Do you want to do it?  If you had a million bucks would you do it?  I’m sure we all have the fantasy of all the wonderful things we would do if we just became rich enough to do it.  And the reason we cannot do it now?  Fear…  And while you are asking yourself these things in the solemn privacy of your mind, take solace in the truth that you can change anything you want to change.  Sure folks will deride you and chastise you and demand you get back to being who you are supposed to be!  But what you owe yourself is to be the “you” you really want to be!  Don’t you think?  People live frustrated, defeated, unsatisfied lives because they spend their precious lives living as someone else. Don’t let that be you, my friend.

Cliche’ alert – At the end of the day, we all have only one life to live and we all only live once (on earth anyway).  Start today by asking yourself why and then get busy modifying and changing what needs to change.  You oughta be able to be “you,” doing “you” in the ways that make “you” the most happy!  YOLO my friends, YOLO!

Just some good thoughts…

How To Get What You Want, Now!

  How many books have been written that purport to tell you how you can use the “power of your mind” to get something that you need?  It’s an alluring concept for sure, but one that simply isn’t true.  There is no power of the mind other than the power to choose what you will.  I know, I know, this idea runs cross purposes with many famous works such as, “Awakening The Giant Within,” but suspend your disagreement for a little bit and allow me to explain what I mean.

There’s a verse in the Bible that states, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.  (Read that sentence again!)  There’s another one that states, guard your heart with all that you are because out of your heart flows the issues of your life.  Those words have been there for years, but what do they even really mean?  Well, those things we believe in the depths of our heart to be true, shape and form our existence today.  And, by the power of choosing what we will think about, we can guard the heart of our minds; the place where our believing expectation comes from.  Believing expectation forms the essence of our lives.  What we believe to be true will come true if we really believe it.  In fact, your life at this very moment is a direct reflection of those thoughts and beliefs you hold about yourself most dearly.  It is 100% accurate in every way.  Remember it is not what you wish you were or would like to be, but what you truly are at this moment in time.  It is a system that never errs in any way.  God wouldn’t have told us to guard our hearts with all that we are if what we believe in our hearts did not have a dramatic impact on the life we are living.  So, if you think about, believing is not the power of your mind, but rather your connection to All-Power.  However, I must add a caution, believing works with tremendous accuracy for positive and negative thinking alike.  What you fear is also believing; believing that connects you to a different power; one that brings about frustration and defeat.  Negative believing (fear) leads assuredly to negative results also with 100% accuracy.

So, how can you learn to believe for good?  Well, in actuality you are believing something all of the time.  However, most people become so frustrated with life because they believe in accordance with what they think they see and not in accordance with what they want.  For example, the media, your neighbors, your family, financial analysts tell you it is a “bad economy!”  And, it is difficult to get a job in a bad economy.  So, unknowingly, you believe what they said and thus have a hard time getting a job.  After all, it’s a bad economy.  You are believing something that is not necessarily true and limiting yourself in the process.  That belief is not true because what you truly believe to receive, you will receive 100% of the time, in every case.  Imagine, there are many people who are not only NOT suffering in the “bad economy” but are actually prospering.  Why?  They have chosen to believe otherwise.  Can you see it?  You cannot allow present circumstances or conditions to affect what you believe or else you give your power (your ability to choose) over to something else.  And, you will never, ever be able to change your present circumstances as long as you keep doing that.  So, ummm stop it!

So, when is the right time to believe?  The right time, is right now!  Well, when do you want to get the “things” that you want?  Right now or five years from now?  The reason so many things seem to take so long to come to pass is because we are not believing for them to happen right now.  Logically if you imagine your life being full of abundance and peace and love at some future date, it is not going to happen right now.  (Read that again!)  Ask yourself, why does so much time need to go by before I get what I really want?  Good things take a lot of time to happen?  Says who?  Says you!  And thus it is true for you!  If you can wrap your mind around that concept, things can transform in your life, in a hurry.  In order to get what you want in life, you have to see it happening in your mind, right now.  Thus believing (true believing, not wishing) is seeing the result you want in your mind first before it happens in your reality.  Wishing, on the other hand, is always in the future and you cannot live in the future, so it is a futile effort.  And if we are honest, we don’t really believe the things we wish would happen are going to happen, that’s why we continue to “wish” they would!

Believing is therefore seeing your intended result in your mind’s eye first and then holding that image there despite what the whole world tells you to the contrary!  Believing for good things in your life is not going to come without opposition.  In fact, the larger your believing for good things, the more contrary “facts” will show up to talk you out of what you believe.  God forbid you ever learn how much control you really do have over your life, if you only knew it (he says sarcastically)!  Your job and my job therefore, is to not allow the world, the circumstances, the conditions, our limited and finite thinking, to talk us out of the things we really want.

Believing is almost magical.   By believing you can be healed of ANY disease.  By believing you can receive tremendous financial abundance.  By believing you can find the answer to every question and repair anything that was ever broken.  By believing you can transform your life from mundane to dynamic; from so-so to oh-so; from ordinary to extraordinary!

Get what you want out of your life now, folks.  Don’t spend any time trying to awaken the giant within you, instead believe wholeheartedly to tap into the greatest power in the universe, God’s power for good!  God is for it!  I am for it!  Now it’s time for you to be for it!  Get it and get it now!

 

The Simple Joy of Living Today…

   Think back to the last time you were on vacation.  Whether it was lounging on a sandy beach or taking in the gorgeous views during a mountain hike or languishing in your hotel room in a beautiful city or the smell of bacon frying in the morning while camping by the side of the lake; what makes your vacation time so much better than the rest of your time?  You may argue that it is so sublime because you don’t have to go to work.  But many folks exert as much energy playing as they do at work and sometimes more energy.  You may conclude that it is the change of environment; the sand, the trail, the room, the water etc.  Certainly there are many factors involved with vacations that cause us to feel joyful, but there is one common theme that is the subject of today’s blog.  On a vacation intended for relaxation we shift our focus from the past and the future to the wonderful present.  We purposefully don’t think about the bills that “will” be due or the work we need to finish later or what the boss said to us in anger last week.  No, we make some loose plans and then get busying enjoying the wonder and beauty that is today.  It is as if we free ourselves from all the illusory burdens of time and focus ourselves on “right now!”  And since right now is all we can experience, we decide to thoroughly enjoy it.

There is a way to live your life that escapes the thinking of the masses.  There’s a way to make the most of your experiences.  There is a simplicity to life that is so simple we have missed it all our lives.  The culture of our world is ever seeking ways for us to move faster, get more done, accomplish more and maximize our time.  We laud multi-tasking and efficiency and “to get err done…”  Just do it and do it and do it again is the mindset of today.  And for all of our inventions and efficiencies and time savers, where has it gotten us?  Are we happier?  Are we joyful?  Do we feel blessed and content?  I would say no.  Yet it’s not the speed at which we move that bogs us down.  It’s where we have learned to put the focus of our minds.  Humans are designed to live in one time period and one time period only – right now!  The only time we have available to us is this present moment.  Yet how much time do we spend focused on the present moment?  While we are at work today we focus on getting home.  During the week we focus on the upcoming weekend.  During the work year we  focus on the coming vacation.  While we are at school we are thinking about being done with school.  While cleaning the house we are thinking about how great it will be to sit down and relax after the house is clean.  But the real joy of living is found in 100% commitment to the present moment.  It is persisting in a state of experiencing and enjoying right now.  If the duties of right now call for some house cleaning, so be it.  If it’s time to go to work, go to work and be 100% involved in your work while you are there.  Don’t spend one idle moment wishing you were off work as that shift of focus will make your work a misery.  What is the best way to experience school?  Don’t mentally leave the classroom before you physically leave the classroom.  In fact, don’t mentally leave any moment you are still in, as departing from the present moment takes the enjoyment out of it.

Interestingly, the vast majority of our concerns and our anxieties and our fears are found where?  In the future!  Unless a large tiger is currently gnawing on your calf muscle, you probably don’t have anything to be afraid of right at this moment, correct?  So do this moment and refuse to do the future moments.  Can’t you see how huge and life changing this is?  Uh huh, but what about the future?  Am I supposed to just let everything go now and make no plans for the future?  Well of course not, silly!  Make the most grand and glorious plans that you can, then do today, today!  Maybe in your future you see yourself as an author?  Then take some time to write today (smile)…

And what about the past?  How do we handle all of those times we zigged when we should have zagged?  Or that one big thing?  Well, the past is ummm past…  We can’t go back to those moments, can we?  Shoot we can’t even go back to fifteen minutes ago when we were eating those three donuts, to not eat them, right?  LOL  In reality, the past no longer exists.  It’s gone man!  Over.. In the books!  Thus imagine the sheer FUTILITY (yelling now) of spending any of your present moments regretting your past moments.  Sure, encourage your sweet memories; your times of love and success and appreciation, remember the people you cherished, but do it while you are wholeheartedly choosing to live today.

I realize the simplicity of this is almost too much to take.  But if you have ever believed anything I have ever said, believe this; living 100% in the present moments will cause your “joy” and “appreciation” levels to go off the chart!  And while you are seriously giving this a try, take a look at your children or your grandchildren.  Notice the joy they experience by living in the moment?  Oh they don’t have to pay bills?  LOL  Maybe not, but neither do you at this present moment!  (You are reading, right?)

So how can you thoroughly enjoy the simplicity of living life today?  Get your vacation mind-set working for you!  Decide to be fully alive and observant and mindful of these very moments you find yourself in.  Don’t go back in time and don’t go too far ahead in time.  Do, be, live, love and enjoy today, as tomorrow will have it’s own issues for you to deal with “tomorrow…”

Mmmm is that the smell of bacon by the campfire?  No, it’s the smell of many minds that just came back to life!

Today…

What to do when your mind is unraveling…

Have you ever felt like your mind was running all over the place?  You know what I mean, right?  It’s those times when your brain is filled with so many thoughts; many of them anxious thoughts and you can’t seem to get things settled down.  Have you lost your marbles?  Why does that happen to us?  What goes on throughout a day or a week or a year that makes us feel so unsettled and unsure and how can we get back to feeling peaceful, focused and secure?

You might not realize it, but God has given us complete control over our minds.  God will never take over our thoughts or for that matter, replace our thoughts with other thoughts.  He just doesn’t roll like that!  Whenever you hear someone say, “God took away the urge to…” it is never true.  God will certainly help us in life’s challenges.  He will clue us into certain variables and factors that we weren’t aware of, but He will not take over our minds, no matter how bad things may have gotten.  So, what can you do to get your mind under control?  Maybe a better place to start would be to understand our responsibility with regard to our thoughts.

There is a little jewel of truth in the Bible encapsulated in the following verse:

Keep thy heart more than anything that is guarded; for out of it are the issues of life.  Proverbs 4:23

The one great responsibility we have in life with regard to our heart is to guard it!  The heart refers to the innermost part of our minds.  The heart is where our believing (positive and negative) comes from.  Our heart is made up of the thoughts we think the most consistently.  Fleeting thoughts aren’t the issue, but rather the thoughts we hold on to; the ones we hold most dear.  And, amazingly, those thoughts that filter down into our heart form the basis of our believing and actually determine how our lives turn out!  With that being said, God admonishes us to guard our hearts.  We guard them like a soldier guards a garrison.  We don’t turn our minds loose or let them go just any-ol-where.  We guard them.  We watch over them like parents watch over their children.  Their kids aren’t allowed to go to certain places.  So, the basis of a peaceful, focused mind is found in controlling our thoughts.  I’m not talking mind control!  I’m talking you control your mind!  (Okay, glad we got that part settled…)

Now, let’s just imagine that we were unaware of that little tidbit or maybe knew it intellectually but failed to carry it out successfully.  So now what do we do?  What do we do with ourselves when we are all full of anxiety?  Well first perhaps we should know that anxiety is misplaced fear.  Full on fear has a cause that we are intimately aware of yet perhaps still controlled by it.  Anxiety is a little different.  Anxiety is the fruit of some scary thoughts that we failed to confront and now they are scurrying around in our minds like cockroaches.  Anxiety doesn’t seem to have a clear-cut cause that we can challenge.  I digress…~Have you ever been thinking something vaguely and then felt your mood change and then tried to go back and figure out what you were thinking that caused it?  Haha I suppose we all have.  Anxiety is like that.  Often we will have difficulty seeking out and destroying that errant thought (or those errant thoughts) so what should we do?  The very best thing we can do is to control our next thought and our next one and our next one.  There’s really no point to wearing yourself out with endless analysis.  I digress again…~ Have you ever stopped to consider that all that time spent in analyzing your persistent problems is pointless?  Oh I don’t mean analyzing what the problem is or what you need to do about something.  I mean that analysis that travels over the same territory again and again and again always arriving at the same place…no answer, no solution.  Albert Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”  Okay back to the point…

We all have a fundamental responsibility to control or take control of our thoughts.  When things go south on us and we feel lost, we need to take our minds back by the reins and decide what we will and will not think about.  Certain thoughts produce fear and anxiety no matter how open-minded you may think you are.  Stop thinking those thoughts.  Some thoughts tempt us to consider some awful life-threatening potentiality.  Do not consider them.  Resist.  Stop thinking those thoughts.  Some thoughts try to convince us that we won’t be prepared for some dreadful event unless we give it thought.  Don’t take the bait.  Don’t think those thoughts.  Instead think thoughts that are good, useful and profitable for you.  Calling yourself a blankety, blank idiot because you messed something up is not good, useful or profitable for you.  Spending time pondering all the things that are not right about you isn’t good, useful or profitable for you.  I digress a third time…~ Have you ever met anyone that was made stronger by biting, hurtful criticism?  NO!  Strong people decide to stop listening to it or telling it to themselves!  (Now you are getting it) You want the best thoughts?  Think about yourself in the way that God thinks about you (yes, the Bible folks…):

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.  Jeremiah 29:11

The only way that you and I are going to be successful at this game of life is by thinking good thoughts; just some good thoughts.  Your success in life is determined by the things you think about the most.  Get rid of fear! Destroy anxiety!  Unscramble your mind, gather the loose threads and get all of your marbles back!   Decide that your mind is your mind and think thoughts that are good, useful and profitable to you.  Make your mind your friend!  If you persist in this and get serious about controlling your thoughts you will get an odd, unusual feeling on the inside.  It’s called peace of mind.  And, you will find that God was there the whole time waiting for you to do your part!  That is real life my friends!  That’s a life worth living…

It’s there for the taking people ~ with just some good thoughts!

Peace…

The Key to a Good Relationship ~ Communication…

The secret to any good relationship is being able to communicate successfully.  Have you ever been in a relationship with someone and felt like you were fighting all the time?  Well, fighting and arguing isn’t what kills a relationship!  What kills a relationship is when you decide to go into silent mode.  As long as you still feel it is worth the effort to say what you think, or disagree with what someone else thinks, your relationship maintains the potential for good.  But, if the relationship deteriorates to the point where “it just ain’t worth it” or you no longer care to say what bothers you, then the relationship is on the slippery slope downward and destined to end badly.

All of us want to have sweet, meaningful relationships with other people.  When our relationships are mostly sweet, life becomes a joy.  So, how can you have a “sweet” relationship with another person?  Well, you have to take the time to handle the issues that threaten it.  Let’s say you get home from work feeling pretty good and you are met with a bad mood from your partner.  You recognize that they are in a funky mood and now your good mood is being threatened.  Instead of getting mad or matching mood for mood, why not take the time to find out what is wrong with ‘em?  That’s called having a conversation.  Now, lets say every time you come home in a good mood your partner is in a bad mood.  Well, that’s another conversation.  It bothers you, right?  So, why in the world would you spend your days with things bothering you when you can talk it over and get it straight?  If you do it well, you can do better than straight and get to sweet.

The problem with most people is that they do not take the time to get the “air” cleared.  And worse, they let stuff go day after day, quietly seething and thinking evil of the other person.  The best time to talk about things is as the things are happening.  Right now, in the moment, say what you are thinking.  Say what you like.  Say what you don’t like.  Say it, say it, say it!  You’re not looking for a fight, you are looking for the sweet.  If you delude yourself and say things like, “I don’t want the drama!” – you are setting yourself up for the big volcanic eruption.  How could it not turn out that way?  Have you ever heard people say, “I just need to get some things off my chest?”  The reason they have to get them off their chest is because they cannot remain “on their chest” for them to be okay.  If you bottle things up, hold things in, stop talking, and let things go that you shouldn’t let go – you are going to blow!  When you blow you are going to bring up 300 issues that you have been saving and you will bring them up in a way that is all out of proportion to the incident!  In short, you will sound like a crazy person; a stark, raving looney tunes person!   Chances are your anger is going to result in saying a whole bunch of things you really didn’t want to say.  Then, despite your heart-felt petitions towards the other person, your words are going to cut them like a knife.  Slice and dice – and there’s no coming back from that.

So what should you do instead?  Get into the habit of saying what you think.  Emerson said, “I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways….“  Get it?  Upright and vital means stand up and wake up!  But remember your goal is sweetness, not victory over the other person.  You can win an argument, but lose your relationship.  You can browbeat your partner, but find them getting the final say on the way out the door.  It kills me when people say awful, dreadful things and then justify it by saying, “I’m just being honest!”  That’s not honest.  Being honest doesn’t mean you have to say every silly thing that runs across your mind.  Just because you thought it, doesn’t make it valid.  Don’t let anger have its way.  Anger always follows another emotion anyway, so why not be “honest” and speak up when you were experiencing the other emotions (sadness, fear, frustration, guilt etc.).  It seems to all boil down to having some healthy self-respect.  In other words, respecting yourself enough to acknowledge that your feelings are just as important as other people’s feelings, not less important.  Your likes and dislikes are just as valid as someone else’s likes and dislikes.  Again I am reminded of Ralph Dubya (RWE) -

“I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints.”

That my friends, is honest.  There is nothing wrong with “going with the flow” or being “yielding on insignificant matters.”  That’s how we all manage to get along.  But on those matters of the heart; those things  that are important to you – you gotta speak up!  People that really love you aren’t going to stop loving you because you spoke up about some issue.  If you can’t speak up about anything to them, you need to re-evaluate that relationship.  You may surprise yourself and find out something you didn’t know before.  You might even actually learn that you had it all wrong and that the other person wasn’t thinking what you thought at all… (haha)

At the end of the day, life goes by way too fast for drama and hurt feelings.  Your life is worth it!

Those are just some good thoughts…

Suhhhhweeeeeeeeeeet!

Shoulda…Woulda…Coulda…

“You don’t understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let’s face it.”  (On the Waterfront, circa 1954) Sorry for using an old movie reference, but how many times have you engaged in the shoulda…woulda…coulda mentality?  I cannot think of a mental state more pointless or more damaging than focusing on what you should have done, would have done or could have done, when you already done did it!  (bad grammar used for emphasis…)  The laws of life being what they are, none of us can go back in time and change one iota of what happened even five minutes ago, no matter how much we wish we could.  Oh I feel you – I also wish I coulda, but I can’t.  So why even bother to do that to ourselves? 

Let’s start by understanding what you “shoulda” done.  First, you cannot judge your ‘past’ decisions in light of your ‘present’ understanding.  Let me say that again, you cannot judge your ‘past’ decisions in light of your ‘present’ understanding.  All of us make decisions about various things and we make those decisions based on our understanding in that present moment.  For example, you get into a bad habit of going out to the club and having drinks and then driving home.  You know it’s not a good idea really, but you feel you aren’t totally impaired and can handle it.  After all, nothing happened the last four times you did it.  Then, with some wrong thinking conditioning in place, you try it again expecting the same result and woooooooo, wooooooo, woooooo you get pulled over.  You fail the breathalyzer and get a DUI!  Ouch, license suspended, large fine, can’t get to work, court dates etc., etc.  You made a bad decision based on your thinking at the time.  Maybe you “shoulda” known better, but we will get to the ‘shoulda’ later.  The reality is that you made a bad decision and got burned for it.  It happened!  Now, I am guessing that you give some serious thought to taking that chance again (at least I hope…)  In other words, you might not make that choice today knowing what you know now.  But the choice you made back then…you already made.  Now, here’s where the self-abuse really kicks in.  You spend the next six months or however long you remain license-less, kicking yourself for being so stupid, so ignorant, so reckless!  Why?  Can you hear me?  Why?  You already made the mistake and in this case, already paid the price.  Lamenting, kicking yourself, beating yourself, berating yourself, does absolutely nothing to remedy the situation and does not in any way make you a better person.  You weren’t a bad person to begin with!  You made a bad choice, suffered some pain and learned a tough lesson.  End of story.  The rest of the self-flagellation is not the voice of God, my friends, it is you condemning yourself for an event you cannot undo.  The voice of God would tell you to let it go because Jesus Christ paid the price for every foolish, silly, lamentable, wrong, grievous, wacky, crazy, perverted, heinous thing you or I ever did!  Did you get that?  Every wrong thing!  So, in God’s sight what’s important is not what we ‘shoulda’ done, but rather what we do right now.  God won’t turn back the hands of time (though He did do that once in the Bible, in a different context) no matter how much we beg.  (trust me…been there, done that!)  So, spare yourself some lost time and just let it go.  Learn what you can learn and move on. 

Woulda is a similar animal to his brother shoulda.  How many times have you thought about what you would have done?  How about how very different things would have been if only you would have gone to school, would have paid more attention to him/her, would have earned more money, would have worked harder, studied more, gave more effort…if only, if only and more if only.  Okay, you know what I’m going to say, right?  You know today what you know today because of what you learned yesterday and the day before and the day before…ad infinitum (without end).  You cannot possibly put your wiser today brain in your less wise yesterday brain.  Just like you “can’t put an old head on a young body.”  Please forgive the cliché.  I used to lament the fact that I should have taken to writing when I was 25 instead of the present age (sssh), but you know what?  I did not have the capacity to organize even one thought when I was 25 let alone many thoughts.  So, you know what you know, when you know it, not a day before and not a day after.  Capiche?  You arrive when you get there, not when you are almost there or after you are already there.  You did what you wanted to do at the time because it made sense at the time.  Sure, now you would have done it differently, but alas now was not then.  Be a little kinder to yourself and stop doing that.  If what you would have done is still that important, do it now!  If you can’t do it now (I mean really can’t…i.e. play professional baseball) choose another passion and do that now!  Really!

Okay so if you aren’t totally lost in clichés, fragmented words and similar word sentences by now, let’s get to the last but certainly not least beast, “the couldas.”  Of the three, the ‘could have beens’ are the worst.  They are the worst because they represent regrets.  How sad regrets are, you know?  Sad, but unprofitable in every way.  Logically, what can I do about something that could have been, but wasn’t?  There is no end to what could have been, is there?  In the end, what I wanted to do – I did.  What you wanted to do – you did.  It may have been a poor choice; an uninformed choice, a deceived choice, an immature choice, a selfish choice or a silly choice, but in the end we chose it and it is what it is.  Regret is poison to your soul; a poison that corrupts the beauty of today.  If you regret not telling your children more how much you loved them, tell them more now.  If you regret not telling your mom how much you loved her when she was alive, trust me, if you love her that much now, then you loved her that much then, and she knew that even if you didn’t say it as much as you wished.  If you regret that you never went to college, go to college now.  Do you get it?  Don’t poison yourself with thoughts of what could have been, instead embrace today; embrace your life right now and do the thing now!  Now is all we have my friends, right now.  Life just doesn’t last long enough for regrets…

Replace all of those pointless “shoulda…woulda…couldas” with the life you are blessed to live today.  Live today as if it is your last and be everything you ever wanted to be right now.  The world needs your goodness today. The world needs your love today.  The world needs your achievements today.  Be kind to yourself, love yourself and don’t spend a moment in the past.  In the end, that’s the only thing that you ‘shoulda’ ‘woulda’ and ‘coulda’ done!