October 13, 2025- Moving on

The past is a place of reference, not a place of residence; the past is a place of learning, not a place of living.

~Roy T Bennett

We live, and we learn. We can spend our entire lives telling the story of how we hit the game-winning shot in that JV basketball game decades ago, but that won’t make us a winner today. We can spend our whole lives obsessing over the bad relationship that left us wounded, but that won’t make us have better relationships today. All of our power lives in the here and now.

If we want to make meaningful changes in our lives, and if we want to be able to repeat the behaviors that have served us, reflection is key. We must be able to mentally visit the past, just to take an audit of the alignment, or lack thereof, between our intentions and our actions. We must do that to effectively choose which behaviors to repeat and which to move away from.

We can visit the past, temporarily, without staying there. We do not need to get caught up in that review process of the past. If we do, we may well miss the opportunity to make a good choice in the present, which, in time, will become a regrettable past.

Our power lies in our choices. It is not found in the ones we’ve already made; they are no longer in our control. We are going to define ourselves with the choices we make today.