Attack Your Life - What To Do With Your Past

For quite some time I have used the following as my signature on my e-mail. "What happened in my past may have had everything to do with the way I thought yesterday. But it does not have to have anything to do with the way I MUST think today. The way I think today has everything to do with who I become in the future."

I know a lot of therapists (I am not one) and psychiatrists (I am not one) like to focus on your past. I am not in total agreement. Finding the root cause of a problem is nice but does not necessarily mean the problem is going to get fixed.

I guess the bottom line is that I do not really have much use for the past anymore. Dwelling is a bad thing. Acknowledging is acceptable. Understanding is even better. Moving on is the best bet yet.

The difference is some people when they are 28 are still wearing their high school letter jackets and hanging out at the food court in the mall while others have successful careers. If you are still wearing your letter jacket at 28 you have wasted 10 years of your life. This is called not growing.

There is also another problem and that is when you let failure beat you. You are beat when you think that just because you did not accomplish something that you had set out to do that you will never be able to accomplish anything. This is the one that I always had the most difficulty with. Instead of letting failure beat you, let it drive you. Tell yourself you are not going to let it happen again.

Perhaps we should take a lesson from salesmen. The best salesmen love failure. They love to hear someone tell them no. Why is this? Because sales is a numbers game. On average you can figure out how many "no's" you have to hear before you get a "yes".

If I was a positive thinking person who had failed twice at marriage, declared bankruptcy twice, worked over twenty jobs in the last 15 years then I would be thinking success is just around the corner.

Which leads me to the topic for tomorrow's article. You're not going to find that success around the corner unless you get up off your butt and walk around the corner. It does not find you people.