A few years ago I was talking with someone close to me. He was lamenting the fact that he had spent what he saw as his “best five years” working for a guy who used him up and spit him out. Without thinking I said, “Those weren’t your best five years. Your best five years are your next five years.” I’ve tried to remember that insightful moment since then. Way too often we waste time thinking about what might have been….
The other day I was thinking about a time in my life that wasn’t very pleasant. I went through some struggles and faced a few challenges. I began to wonder about some of the decisions that I had made back then. I started thinking about whether my life would be better now if I had done some things differently back then. After a while it occurred to me how useless that kind of thinking is. The brutal truth is that…
I recently spent a weekend in North Myrtle Beach with my family. One morning, I went for a walk on the beach with my wife and son. We walked to the Cherry Grove pier. The walk was pleasant even though it was a cloudy day. We made it to the pier and turned back toward the resort where we were staying. About halfway back, it occurred to me that the walk going to the pier seemed much shorter than the…
There’s an adage that says, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” The other day, I was looking for a notepad on my desk. I needed it to write down some information that I wanted to be sure to remember later. My desk can get kind of messy. OK, it can get very messy. Stuff was piled all over the place. I looked and looked. No notebook. I moved some piles around….