Sunday, August 28, 2011

Keeping my eyes looking straight ahead

It really is all about choices. We make choices throughout our lives, and once made we cannot change them, we may try to correct them if they were bad choices, attempt to limit the damage done, but we can’t change them.


Often we think, “If only…”, if only I did this or if only I did that things would be different, and that may be true. “If I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently”. But the thing is, we didn’t know then what we know now, so we would have done the same thing. It is okay to look at the past, see the mistakes we made, but don’t forget, you can’t change the past, you can only change what happens going forward.

I think back over my life and some of the choices I made, many of them turned out to be bad, some I knew would be bad others I thought would be good. Looking back, It would be nice to change the ones which were bad, but since I can’t, I don’t dwell on them. Instead I can look back on them, make sure I don’t make them again and move forward, which I believe I have done in my life. In my reflections on my life, I realize there probably was one bad choice I made which was the root of all the others, which I think is more than likely the case with us all. Interestingly enough it isn’t the one people who know me, or at least the ones who know what bad choices I made, would think it is. Had I not made the first wrong choice, there is a good chance I would not have made the second bad choice, the one most visible to people I know, the one people first think of.

Had I not made the first bad choice, my life would be very different now, I don’t know if it would be better, that is a question which I can’t answer, I do know I am very happy now with my life and what is going on with it, as difficult as it can be at times. The good news is I can reverse that choice, or at least choose now 
what I should have done then and take the path that is in front of me. 



At least now I can put myself on the right path, simply by making the right decisions. Does this mean I have become what used to be termed a “Holy Roller” spending my time preaching and trying to convert heathens to Christianity? Not at all. Why not? There is no one answer I can give you for that. It comes down 
to what I believe about people and leadership mostly. Teddy Roosevelt said:

There is a homely old adage which runs: "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." If the American nation will speak softly, and yet build and keep at a pitch of the highest training a thoroughly efficient navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far.Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919), Speech in Chicago, 3 Apr. 1903

To get a point across to someone, it has always been my experience to lead by example, show, don’t tell. Preaching or yelling to someone will never make them change, it will only succeed in turning them off from whatever you message is, and in the case of religious beliefs, this is certainly the case when you are talking to non-believers. I have always tried to be a good example, and certainly now that I have begun to not swerve to the left or the right, but am keeping my eyes straight ahead.

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