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When I was 18 years old I was invited to try-out for the Canadian women’s Field Hockey team that would be competing in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia . I had been playing field hockey for the past five years as a goalie so this invitation came as a shock, but not as big of a shock when I actually made the cut. Now don’t get too excited for me. To make a long story short, I decided to go to University instead and hang up my kickers (for those of you not familiar with field hockey, kickers are protective foot wear that goalie’s put over their cleats to kick the ball).
Talk about regret. Whenever the summer Olympics were on, I’d mope around the house with the saddest look on my face, acting like a kid who just found out that the Tooth Fairy was in fact my own Mother. Did I make the wrong decision? School could have waited, my career could have started after the game – My God, what was I thinking?
We all, at one point or another, reflect on the choices we’ve made that lead us down the path of where we are today. You know what I mean, those “What If” questions we love to agonize and beat ourselves up over. “What if I took that job” or “what if I could go back to that conversation, I know exactly what I’d say today.” Why do we spend so much time worrying about what would-have-beens, could-have-beens and should-have-beens?
How’s this for perspective: Have you ever noticed how much larger your windshield is than your rearview mirror? Can you imagine how unsafe the roads would be if we all drove our cars the way we lived our lives, constantly looking back at the past instead of facing forward? Don’t get me wrong, the rearview mirror is very important and we should certainly keep our eye on it, but most of our thoughts and attention needs to be focused at the larger picture, the future, our windshield.
The rearview mirror should be seen as a light post, helping us guide our way. We learn from our mistakes and decisions, and in an effort to not repeat the same unfavorable things twice, we need to keep that perspective. Unfortunately though, humans have a tendency to view their life through the rearview window first, then the windshield, living in regret and in a constant state of “What if”.
The question should not be if we do this (cause let’s face it, we all do it), but why we do this. I believe the reason we do this is because no matter how bad the past was, we at least know the ending and sometimes, in life, it is the not knowing that is most scary. If the fear of repercussion didn’t exist and no matter what leap you took in life, there was always a net to catch you, most of us would jump, right?
Take Michael Jordan for example. There is no one in basketball history that was trusted more with the game winning shot than Michael Jordan. But the truth of the matter is that he missed more game winning shots then he actually made in his career. So why did his teammates keep passing him the ball at the buzzer? It is because the future and the promise of Michael Jordan’s success that got him the ball, not the focusing on the missed shots. Michael learned from his past, but he never let those misses define him. Each game was a new day, a new opportunity for him to write a new ending to the story.
So let’s face it, obsessing with things in our past can leave a lot of us paralyzed. Regret is a heavy bag to carry, and walking around wondering what could have been does no one any good. You are where you are in life because that is where you are meant to be. So let yourself off the hook, call yourself human and move on, it’s time - but that’s just my 4 cents!
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