Aaron Huizenga: Let’s clean out that mental clutter 

Your future needs you now. Not tomorrow … right now.

What you are doing right this very moment plays into the future version of who you will become.

The version of you today survived your past and has helped you become who you are now and who you will be tomorrow. And that version of you tomorrow is waiting to see what happens today, so that it knows how to shape itself to fit your script.

Looking backward, your “yesterday you” is in the past and is long gone. You cannot change what happened in the past, so why are you spending time overthinking it? You made your decisions based on your emotions and state of mind at the time, but – and this is a big but – you have come too far to let all of those choices control what and who you are going forward.

Sure, you stumbled. Maybe you failed. But you learned. You took away feedback from those situations. You gained knowledge and wisdom, the most precious things that time and life teach us.

You made it through the past, and those events all blend together in your knowledge of life, love, professionalism and personal growth.

Your past is gone. You have the memories and important lessons you learned, but cleaning out the garbage in your thoughts and moving toward the next iteration of you is why we all had to go through that … stuff.

You are stronger now than you were then; smarter, wiser and more capable of taking on that next challenge. You are better equipped to be the next version of you, if you let it happen.

I encourage everyone to get rid of all the stuff in your mind that holds them back. The stuff that creates self-doubt and makes them overthink. It won’t get you anywhere, other than a downward spiral of questions. You did what you did at the time, made that decision, spent that money, chased that shiny thing and for what?

You chose, you learned and now it is time to move forward.

A friend once told me that what you do today isn’t for right now; it is for the future you. If you don’t scratch that itch, you won’t know that it needed to happen. Take the chance, scratch the itch, see where it goes and adjust the sails accordingly. Looking back, you will always wonder if you should have. You’ll find yourself in another endless, downward spiral of questions, if you will. Your “future you” needs that from you right now.

As the famous Nike slogan says, “Just Do It.”

Full send.

You will be thankful.

The past is past. Let it go. Don’t think about it. You learned your lessons and are better for it.
Move on.

In time, your “future you” will thank you for taking the chance.

Let’s work on your upgrade.

Aaron Huizenga is East Division manager for Lakes Gas in Wisconsin. Reach him at ahuizenga@lakesgas.com.

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