As many of you may know, this past year I closed a business and got a divorce all within a 3 month period.

As I was going through those 2 life-changing events, my focus was put in 2 places...

About 70% of my time was spent focused on the present...mostly trying to work through the mental gymnastics caused by the chaos. 

The remainder of my time was focused on the past...thinking about what had gone wrong to get me to this point and wondering if I should've made a different turn somewhere along the way.

During that time, I didn't make much progress, I was stuck in place, and I felt out of control.

Eventually I started to shift my focus and my thinking...

I started shifting some of my focus to the future...planning what I would do next and figuring out how life looked moving forward...

I continued putting most of focus on the present, but I put more attention to taking action on things that were going to create the future I had envisioned...

And I spent very little time thinking and ruminating about the past...because once I had learned my lessons, there was very little use for the rest of it.

It was once I shifted my thinking away from the past and toward the future that I felt the breaks let off and life start to move forward again.

ACTION:

Knowing how to use the past, present, and future is an essential skill. When it comes down to it, spend 20% of your future thinking about planning for the future...

spend 79% of your time taking action in the present to move you towards that future...

and spend 1% of your time learning lessons from mistakes...then let those mistakes go and reorient your attention to what moves the needle forward.

Until next time, here's to your 1% growth everyday...

Jerry