No such thing as might have been.

Tim McGraw once wisely said “You do what you do and you pay for your sins, there’s no such thing as what might have been. That’s a waste of time; drive you out of your mind.”

When you think about it, we really do waste so much time on what we should have said, what we should have done, where we should have been when really, we cannot change the past.

The definition of regret is “a feeling of sad, repentant, or disappointment over something that has happened or been done.”

What the definition leaves out is a feeling of anxiety, that nagging voice that keeps you up at night replaying life’s events over and over again. That knot in your stomach that makes you question yourself, might even hold you back from giving things another shot.

We can’t do that. We have to change stop dwelling on the past and start focusing on the present, on the things we can actually impact.

There really is no such thing as what might have been; no one knows what might have been. You will drive yourself crazy with that one thought “what if.” You pay for your sins and you learn from them and you move on.

You tell that voice to be quiet, you hold your head high, and you say,” yep I did that and I certainly won’t do that again” and you grow. You own your actions.

The best teacher is regret. You learn what you want from life, or what you don’t want, and you improve your future.

I’ve never met a strong person with an easy past.

I personally have had my share of regrets, and I have let them in. I have let them take hold and drag me down. I didn’t see them as a learning tool; I saw them as a barrier. I was so self-conscious of moving on. I wasn’t sure that I could. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough.

But then I realized what has always been said to me…. night is always darkest before the dawn. In that darkness you look for the stars and you let them guide you until the breaking light of dawn appears, because one thing in this life is certain…. There will be night, and a new day will always follow.