This morning while I was making a pot of tea, I was thinking about playing the guitar. I had taken a course for about a year and I dropped out for some reason. I used to play drums for about eight years and I traveled locally playing gigs in different venues. I gave it up after eight years and stopped playing altogether. I seldom look back on it. But the guitar lessons are something I should have carried on with. That was 20 years ago. If only I had continued I would be a great player now, and it's something I now have time to do. There are times when I would like to site down and just get lost in my music. Should have!



About 20 years ago I took an NLP course and was studying to be a therapist. They were night classes and I easily fit them into my schedule. I dropped out of the course after about a year, because the courses shifted to day time and I couldn't make the trip into town during the day. Twenty years later I am kicking myself, because now I really could use the training. Near retirement, a therapist can work until they die and have steady income. It would have been a great addition to my writing career and a source of endless material to write about. Should have!

The early eighties was my get involved in courses period. Taking courses gave me a great place to meet people and I took the courses to help myself out of my shell. I am reclusive by nature, so the courses forced me into relationships with others. Relationships of all kinds help to define a person as this or that, and it gives one their own identity. Of course being reclusive has its own identity as well, but I knew I was much more than that. You can learn a lot about yourself when you get involved with other people and I was going through an identity crisis. I should have done more courses!

My next course was first aid. I went all the way through the standard first aid courses and was at the threshold of moving into industrial first aid. Just taking the courses had already opened up opportunities for me with job offers, as qualified first aid attendants were in demand. I didn't follow through, I should have continued!

The one thing I could have done and should have done was to keep up with the insurance policies; they would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars now when I could use them and the payments where only $10 or $20 a month. I thought I would be retired at 30 from the money I was making on real estate. In fact if I had kept my first house and the $100 a month mortgage payments, well, I could have tonnes of money now.

I slept through my English and grammar courses at school. Perhaps if I had paid attention I could have taken a writing course and made a living as a great author. It seems that I now have a lot to say, should have done that!

The one thing that I did do was to take several years in typing class, it was a no brainer, and now I can really hammer out the words. Been there, done that!

For all those things that I should have done that I could have done, how would my life be different now? More than likely I wouldn't be writing this article and you wouldn't be reading it.

Things happen for purpose, and we look back at the things we could have done because in our hearts we know that our lives could have been different. We understand intuitively that we made choices that brought us to where we are now.

Lamenting about the past takes one's mind off making decisions about the future. We have been there, we have done that, and we will go on making the same kind of decisions which will find us asking the same questions later, what if I had of done that?

Fear of making decisions puts us in a very vulnerable position of having someone else make our decisions for us, and that leaves us powerless. I believe it is better to have made a poor decision than to not have made one at all. At least we retain the power to make another decision to correct the first one.

All things work for purpose whether you know it, understand it or believe it. Your life is perfect the way it is at this time because you made all the decisions that brought you here. You did this from free choice. You put yourself in the right place at the right time for things to happen. You are part of the formula of cause and effect. You made the choice whether you thought you were doing it for yourself or another. Nothing can happen in your life without you causing it. Know this and you will have discovered the secret to life - you are the creator of life, it is you and no one else - you are the power.