246. Imagination – Part 2
Here’s another way (in addition to day before yesterday) that I use my imagination and it often backfires on me. My daughter called me on it once and I’ve been more aware since then. It’s usually a situation where I am looking back and feeling regret (guilt) about a decision I made. When I was talking to my daughter, I was regretting some decisions years ago when my four children were all teenagers.
She said, “Wait a minute—are you doing the guilt thing on yourself?” I said yes, that I guess I was. She said, “You know you are letting yourself think that if you had just made different decisions when we were teenagers, that the things we actually did struggle with wouldn’t have even been there. You’re imagining that things would have turned out much, much better. And the reality is they might have turned out much, much worse.”
I told her I didn’t think of it that way. She said, “Well, it’s not really helpful to imagine how things would have turned out if you had made a different decision, because you just don’t know. You have to take a breath and know that you did the best you could at the time and made the best decision—you were trying your hardest.”
All four teenagers made it through those crazy years. All four of them are loving adults that I am proud to be related to. And just as I tried to talk sense to them years ago, they now talk sense to me. Thanks!
