Leading Growth

Acknowledgment

OVER THE COURSE of four books, I have thanked the hundreds of people who have supported me and my work as a writer and author. I am grateful for each of them, but what follows here will be a different type of acknowledgment.

Each of us has certain experiences that provide lessons, some painful, some that leave a mark. Some of these marks are visible to the human eye and others are invisible, but they exist all the same. The internal marks tend to be the ones that cause the most damage. Most of us are softer on the inside than the outside. You know this to be true if you have had the experience of both breaking a bone and having your heart broken by someone you believed loved you. The heartbreak may hurt more than the broken bone.

The nature of our Universe doesn't allow you to reverse time and provide you with a second chance to avoid your mistakes, missteps, and misjudgments. Many people wish for an opportunity to take back certain decisions, believing their lives would be better had they taken a different path.

There is no evidence that the person following a different path would find themselves in a better place. There is, however, evidence that having made a poor decision, the harsh lesson that followed prevented you from repeating it. Nothing prevents one from being burned like touching fire. Most of what you learned came at a price. Having paid dearly for a lesson keeps you from paying for it a second or a third time.

This is an acknowledgment that the ...