This time last year I wrote about Groundhog day, the film in which Bill Murray finds himself stuck reliving the same day until he gets it ‘right’.
There is a similarly themed film called About Time where the men in the family can go back to any time in their lives they like and do things differently.The hero eventually discovers that, after going through a period of living every day twice, just by making the most of each day as it happens he can have a great life without having to go back at all.
It’s an intriguing idea.
After all who amongst us has never had a time we wish we could relive and change the way we behaved, or the irreversible decisions we may have made?
Most of us in business have at some point – or indeed most points – felt we are making things up a little as we go along. None of us have crystal balls so we cannot see the effects of our decisions before we make them.
All we can do is make the best choices we can given the information we have available at the time. We cannot go back and change decisions we have already taken. If it turns out a decision was wrong there is no point worrying about something we cannot change. We have to make the best of the circumstances we find ourselves in and learn from the mistakes we have made.
In fact most very successful business people have made huge errors in judgement at one time or another. What often differentiates them from the rest of us is that they don’t dwell on these errors.
In the words of Richard Branson, who has had his fair share of business failures: “Over the years, my team and I have not let mistakes, failures or mishaps get us down. Instead, even when a venture has failed, we try to look for opportunities, to see whether we can capitalise on another gap in the market…[after all] business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another coming along.”
I think taking this approach is the way for us to take the worry out of making the wrong decision. If it can work for multi-millionaires – why not for us!
Fiona:)
