Hindsight is 20/20

Do you think about the choices that you make and the things that you do? Of course you do, we all do. We want to make the best possible choices that we can. So, we review the facts and weigh our options before making any big decisions. But somehow we still often end up with different results than what we were shooting for. Nobody gets it all right the first time.

Why is that? Sometimes there are options that we don't see when we are putting all of the data together. Or other times people don't act the way we had expected them to. Simply put, we can't possibly know what the best possible option is without knowing every single little detail that could possibly come to play in a given scenario. And since there are so many different variables in every circumstance, that is practically impossible.

Once the moment we are preparing for has passed however, everything is set in stone. It has already happened. Then the choice that we should have made becomes ultra clear. That is the reason for the saying hindsight is 20/20. We can see with perfect clarity of vision exactly what we should have done.

You may say, but what good is that? The moment has passed. And that certainly is true. But we can take the knowledge of that circumstance with us into the future. We can learn from our mistakes. We may not have known what to do in that particular situation, but the results will show what are likely to be the better choices in similar situations in the future.

In the beginning, when we are young, in each individual scenario of our lives, we have no experience. So we just make broad uneducated guesses about what we should do. And in all probability we will fail just as often, if not more often than we succeed.

But over time, using hindsight as a tool, we can and should begin to succeed more and more as we learn to more tightly focus our options. We begin to know with certainty, due to experience, which options are just not going to work and which ones are more likely to.

Each of us does this instinctively, due to an innate desire to fail as little as possible. And some of us are better at it than others. But like any other skill we have, it can be sharpened by repeated intentional use.

My suggestion, challenge, and request of you, is to do more than just instinctively use this tool. I ask that you do it on purpose, daily. Set aside some time. It doesn't really matter when. It can be when you first wake up, during your lunch hour or just before you go to bed. Whenever it is easier for you to take a few minutes, maybe ten at most, and reflect on all the things that have happened in the past twenty four hours.

Think of all the circumstances that you have been in, all the choices that you have made, all the people you have interacted with. Think of the way every event you can think of turned out. Be honest with yourself about your triumphs and your failures. Look at every situation and congratulate yourself on the things that worked. Then ask yourself what things you could have done or said differently in the places and times that you failed.

Make new decisions about how you will handle things in the future based on what you learn from the things that have happened in the last day. Do this every day for two weeks and I guarantee you will see positive results. Make this way of being a habit, a permanent part of your life, and your life will  transform for the better. I guarantee it.