What do you do when you’ve opened too many programs on your computer and it hangs? REBOOT IT! What’s the best thing to do when your phone’s memory is jammed by too many open applications? RESET IT!
What happens when you reboot/reset electronic devices? The unwanted data disappears from memory and the device starts functioning the way it was supposed to.
Many years back I had a boss who used to do exactly this. He used to start afresh. He used to RESET himself. EVERY SINGLE DAY! Every day he told himself – Today, is the first day of the rest of my Life! Every Day. And that was his Reset button. The moment he pressed that button, he forgot every negative, unpleasant thing that had happened to him till the day before. He had made it a habit to learn IMMEDIATELY from every mistake he made, because he knew that in a day’s time, the learning would stay (on his hard disk, you might say..) but the incident was going to vanish from his memory.
And trust me, like every other human being he used to have his share of ups and downs. He used to wake up with many of these negative emotions in the morning.
“I wish I had not said SUCH AND SUCH A THING yesterday.”
“I wish I had done SO AND SO THING yesterday.”
“I wish I had DONE better yesterday.”
Like all of us he was tempted to continue from where he had left off. But NO. Within seconds those feelings, those emotions vanished into thin air. As he reset his mind.
And told himself – “Yesterday is History. Today is a fresh day.”
“I am not an inefficient person, because I couldn’t finish xyz things yesterday. That is who I WAS!”
“So what if I was excellent yesterday. Today, I will be a million times better.”
The result? Every morning, all he had was a huge archive of learning. Minus the baggage of fear, regret, jealousy, anxiety.. he never seemed to have any of these feelings cluttering and clogging up his memory. Imagine doing this every morning. You might think “I could go NUTS doing this!” But it helps. Over the years I started doing this myself. Well not exactly every day, but more frequently than most humans on earth. And it works. And thanks to this exercise I never have those feelings of “How I wish..”, “I could have..”, “I should have..”
Do you know which THREE things are LEAST important to a pilot?
Altitude ABOVE you!
Runway length BEHIND you!
Fuel BACK AT the airport!
So stop wasting your time and energy clogging up your mind with things that don’t matter. Learning is important. So learn. IMMEDIATELY. And then – HIT the reset button. Start your life afresh. EVERY SINGLE DAY.
As I write this, I realize that at 43, I’ve perhaps reached the halfway mark in the marathon of Life. And I take a resolve once again. WHY on earth would I want my next 43 years to be similar to my last 43? How could I make them DRAMATICALLY different? I know.
Time to hit the RESET button. AGAIN.
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