Would I Change Anything?

I’ve been in the journaling mood for quite some time now but the only “journals” I have right now are half-used spiral notebooks and I’m too OCD to start halfway through the pages. One day I will go buy myself a pretty, new journal. Until then, I’ve got this blog :) I can’t tell you how much I LOVE Danielle’s blog over at Sometimes Sweet. She has posted another journal prompt and I’ve decided to take the challenge:

If you had a free pass to go back and change anything in your past, with the promise that it would only affect you positively, would you do it? And if so, what would you change?

I have always been one to say, I don’t regret things, I learn from them. Recently, I started to question that. I hit a point where it felt like I had made a series of wrong turns along this thing called life; turns I wished I had never made. But now as I’m able to shed a bit more light on those turns, I KNOW and TRUST that I made them for a reason. I truly believe, no matter how hard it is sometimes, that everything happens for a reason. It may be days, months, or years before we start to find the answers, but one day we will.

There is a difference between wishing something didn’t happen the way that it did and regretting something. If I could go back and change anything, I would change the way I approached some situations. Looking back, I went into certain times being too naive and caving to pressure instead of standing up for myself. This is a random example, but one of the first times I drove on the freeway, I was in the far right lane and out of nowhere, I looked in my rearview mirror and there was a huge tractor trailer on my tail. I am terrified of tractor trailers. So, instead of keeping my pace and letting him pass me, I caved and hit the pedal to the floor. I had to have hit almost 80 mph in a few seconds. Something bad could have happened.

I’m not some dare devil who flies by the seat of my pants. I’m a planner and I’m usually overly very cautious. But, looking at the past I see that most situations where I wasn’t cautious were when my thoughts and actions were influenced by something or someone other than myself. In the end, I end up letting myself down. I think that while it may take longer and it may inconvenience someone else, if I am making a decision about my life, I should take my time. It will affect me positively in the end.

Here’s another example: Today I was at the pet store. I was at the register, had Stella in her carrier on one arm, my purse hanging on the elbow of my other arm, and my wallet in one hand. The cashier hands the bag, some dollar bills and some coins back to me and starts ringing up the lady behind me. I try putting the change back, and then the dollars but they start to get stuck. I feel like I must be taking forever, so I start to walk away with two bulky things on my arms and money and a wallet in my hands. I should have just taken my time at the register but instead, I made it hard on myself.

While I can’t go back and change what’s happened in the past, I want to make a point of not letting this happen as frequently {or at all} in my future. I want to stay true to myself in all things I do.