Picture Perfect Past

There is a classic cartoon line that Bugs Bunny always used when he found himself in trouble. "I must have taken a wrong turn back in Albuquerque." (seriously, that is how you spell it) In that statement he did something that many leaders struggle with... he admitted a mistake. He looked back on his past decisions and identified that one of them was wrong, and that the wrong decision led him to a wrong destination.

As I have been thinking about vision and focus and the goals that drive our lives, I have seen many people who really struggle with admitting that their past decisions may have been wrong. Though they would not use these words, it is as if every past decision was the right one, but somehow the path itself has caused them to end up in a place they did not want to be.

In their attempt to avoid responsibility for their actions they are also forfeiting something very valuable. Possibility to change. Most of the people that I talk to who are unwilling to own up to their mistakes in the past are also unable to see the possibility of change in the future. They feel stuck in their current life and see no way that it could ever be different.

When we are willing to admit our mistakes and then learn from them we often discover the path to change. I have found one great tool that helps in this process... the question "why?". Why did I make that decision? Why did I partner with those people? What was I trying to find, avoid, or fulfill in my life with that choice? Never be satisfied with the first answer... but dig a step or two deeper to find the Why to the Why. It is then that I begin to discover my motives and my true desires. And, that is often when I realize that my past is not so Picture Perfect. My choices were not perfect choices because I was not a perfect person and I did not have perfect information. And, just because it may be difficult to change a decision I made in the past, that does not make it any less right to do so.