Perspective can be a beautiful thing.
It shows us where we are now and where we came from.
But it can also be a bugger.
Here’s why.
Because if now we know differently, perspective can make us wish we had made a different choice.
And regret over a past choice that was right to us back then?
Not a great feeling.
And more?
Regret over lots of choices we wish we’d made differently?
Can be debilitating.
I met someone recently who is so engrossed in the right now she blew my mind.
And I thought I was about the right now.
Every single day?
She deletes at the end of the day every single post or photo she’s put up on the web.
Her site?
A scrolling stream of her right now…for 24 hours or for however long she chooses to keep it live.
This hit me deeply.
Because she is so conscientiously striving to own the moment and not regret a single choice, she doesnt have any need to save a collection of that day’s postings.
Love that thought.
Because if I extend it further, there’s no real time in our lives that should be more valuable or meaningful than this very second.
Since meeting my friend, I’ve been thinking a ton about the online presence I have…the plethora of posts, photos, tweets and the like….and very inspired to delete most of it…because it’s not necessary to keep it up on the web anymore than I can walk back into the rooms I’ve rented or the subleases that were home to me for a time.
But dern it anyway if regret didn’t have a way of sneaking into my thinkeroobie and making me feel sooooo weighed down over choices I’ve made in the past recent years…
Essentially I built a life around a dream I still hold and cherish deeply much but I gave up everything for it and got nowhere slowly toward it. Not at least on the surface. And here’s the other awesome: I found another dream in the process. And that just makes me wow’d inside…not full of regret…but full of gratitude to infinity and beyond.
Yet, while chiseling away at that original dream?
I never realized how vastly difficult it would be to live in an area that I’m not from and at that to find housing that suited my needs.
It’s been a very mobile and challenging several years.
And? I’m nowhere close to being done with the sculpting of the dream.
So in going through facebook and this blog and my tweets…I’m seeing a whole history of determination to show up and sculpt a dream.
I used these spaces to radically stand, own my voice, and insist my work mattered, my being mattered.
So when regret busts through my thineroobie door without even knocking and just barges in?
Ya know what I am doing instead of listening to its pulls?
I’ll tell ya:
1. I’m owning the fact that in those moments, I was fully being nudged by divine Love. No choice willy nilly. No decision stupid or weak.
2. Because I’m attributing divine Love with the credit of nudging each footstep, I’m insisting that in responding, I made no mistakes. None. Zero. Nilch. Nada.
3. I’m on my knees grateful for each and every decision. Each and every choice.
And why are these three steps helping me?
Because if we for a moment believe we made a too in haste decision or a too abrupt choice, when we know full well there was a ton of prayer that we poured into those moments, then we’re essentially allowing ourselves negate Love’s nudges…
And I just dont buy it that any of us are ever operating solo.
Not for a moment.
We each are always readily hearing those nudges of Love.
That’s why you hear me talk so much about heeding the nudge over and over again.
We are each always listening.
We are each always hearing.
And when honest and sincere, we’re responding to those nudges.
So. If you’re facing mountains of regret….and telling yourself you did the best you could with what ya had aint cutting it, try to go deeper. Try to do these three things I mentioned above:
1. You were led by divine Love, never were you alone in your choices.
2. You didn’t make a mistake…not for your that moment.
3. You can be grateful for heeding the nudge you needed to at that moment.
We are always growing spiritually.
Always.
We would want to be making better decisions this moment than we did 5 years ago or even yesterday.
But to listening to the pulls of regret not only robs us of the victory of heeding the nudges that we did but also assumes that there was ever a moment we were separated from divine Love.
Simply not true.
So join me in hushing the angst and pulls and derogatory impact of regret.
Own the right now and trust you are able to hear and are hearing Love’s nudges…
Trust me, I’m heeding ’em right with you.
Til soon, big hug,
Tre ~