The Best Thing You Never Did

Sometimes that thing not working out for you, is the best thing that could have happened to you.

There are times in the past when I wanted something  so bad, but it just didn’t work out.

Things that should have been, but just weren’t.

Let me give you an example.  When I was playing Junior hockey, and trying out for teams, I had a choice between two teams.  One had placed higher in the league the previous year, and the other had a coach who was ex-NHL, and said he thought I played like he did.

I chose to go with the better team.  They were going to set me up for my choice of colleges in the US, and maybe one day I’d make it all the way to the NHL.

I made the wrong choice… or so it seemed.  That other team went on to finish second in the league, and the team I chose I was turned into an enforcer, and ended up quitting hockey by January of that year.

I was in grade 12, and my hockey career was over.

I thought it was the end of the world.  But it was really just the beginning.

What quitting hockey forced me to do was get my act together academically, and make it into the Canadian school I wanted.

Because I went to the school I wanted, I met Mary, my wife.  Because I met my wife, I now live in Toronto, have two amazing kids, and am writing this to you today.

I’m sure you can think of those pivitol moments, like me choosing one team over another, and that resulted in some outcome you hadn’t planned.

I’m also sure you wonder if you should have done something differently.  Those woulda, coulda, shoulda things all result in where you are today.

Right here, right now, you are where you are because of the choices you made in the past.

It’s time you owned that.

It’s time you stopped blaming others for the past, and where you are, and what you’re doing, and understand that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

You can give someone every opportunity, every advantage, and they can still be miserable.

You have to choose to be grateful for where you are right now, and the choices that brought you here.  Everyone has to start somewhere, so why not here?

There are choices in life that everyone has to make, and take responsibility for.

There are things you want in life, that you’re just not going to get.

There are realities of your situation you’re just going to have to deal with.

And that’s all OK.  It is what it is.

Those things you couldn’t do, that you never got the opportunity to do, those misses are some of the best things that never happened to you.

Because if they didn’t you wouldn’t be right here, right now, thankful for this day.