Tag: future

Should or could

Posted on by philipdodson

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‘Should’ is a commonly used word in life and one that expresses regret.

‘I should have known better’ – well you didn’t. ‘I should have said…’ – well you didn’t. The pattern will repeat for every ‘I should have…’.

Regret is a waste of time once you accept that we live in a determined world, that the choices you make were the only ones you could have made at that moment, based on your experiences, knowledge, mindset etc up to that point in your life.

What has happened has happened. No change can take place.

‘Could’ is a word rarely used and it expresses optimism, change, opportunity, and applying the knowledge we’ve gained. ‘I could choose not to do that again’ or ‘I could choose to say this next time’.

Firstly ‘could’ has more than one option and secondly it as all about something we can alter, shape and change – the now and the future.

‘Should’ in the past is futile. ‘Should’ as in the future tense is negative, limiting and applies a pressure to you, where ‘could’ gives us infinite options including not doing it.

Perhaps we could start using ‘could’ more.

What might have been

Posted on by philipdodson

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Life is full of them, what might have been.

We have all sat and looked at choices we’ve made in life and thought what if I had chosen the other option, the other path, to say something different, to not leave that job or person.

We can often allow this to weigh us down with regret. It can then affect our future decision taking as we fear repeating bad choices.

Well, no one knows in advance that they are making a bad choice, otherwise, we’d be unlikely to do it. Additionally, there are no bad choices.

We focus on what might have been, as in something we don’t have. We could instead focus on what we do have. The grass is rarely greener, it is just a different shade and we can not have every outcome. The colour of the grass is how we choose to look at it and we can see it however we choose to.

So be positive about the choice you did make and if it turns out not to be the outcome you wanted, then choose a different path, learn and move forward. There is no gain in regretting choices as time machines have yet to be invented.

If we could go back, we would make the same choice as we wouldn’t know the outcome of that choice. We can only make choices on our experiences to that point in life and the current mindset that we had when we choose.

So perhaps it is better to say with a spring in our steps ‘look what has happened’ instead of what might have been. Even if it is a bad outcome, nothing is forever, change it and move on. It is all part of a magical journey and if we could make choices without risk and with total certainty, then life would be dull.