If you are unwilling to accept your current reality and are always looking back to your lost chances, then you have a hard time creating a compelling future. So in recalibrating your focus to the present and upcoming future, you should rethink how you can use your passion and talent today and how you can built on it. Maybe there are ways where your scientifically trained mind can come up with an improved way of training pilots. Don’t think that simply because you didn’t get a degree that your talent is wasted.

One of my favorite speeches is Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech. Especially his talk about “you’ll only know in hindsight how your dots are connected”. Maybe you’ll find inspiration by realizing that a vast amount of breakthroughs came from people who didn’t have a degree at all. So follow your bliss, forgive yourself and remember “you don’t know yet, what all this is good for”. But in hindsight you will see that it all made sense. So relax and think about how you can inject your gifts and talents into your current reality to create a great future for yourself and others as well.

You were not send here (by God or whatever you believe in) to beat yourself up and agonize about your past failures, but to stumble and rise again, so you learn to walk. Have you ever seen a baby that walked without stumbling often in the beginning. What if such a baby would give up and refuse to learn walking. Hmm – the baby knew that making mistakes isn’t bad in itself but necessary to learn walking. Why do we adults think that making mistakes is now something else.

So stumble and rise again. I will be curious how your dots will create a brilliant future for lots of people around you.

First, i would like to say that the way you have been personally giving reply to each comment here is really wonderful.who does it usually? Yaa i also hope to get your reply. Anyway I have been since past few years punishing myself. I understand as per your article that i have a ‘continuing guilt’ and i need to forgive myself but how do i ‘improve’ or change’ the past? My problem is that i didnt get admission in good enginneering colleges because i didnt study during entrance exam and now i am doing something so removed from science and my talent- commercial pilot training. Yes, its a good career but somehow i am not able to forget/forgive myself as i cannot say go back in years to school ,study & write the entrance exam again! i think i need to accept the new reality but it hasnt sink in me till. Please suggest something.

It is not about not caring about things or just letting them happen without learning a lesson from it – quite the opposite – frustration with a situation is really welcome – as an indicator or an entrance point for a repentance process. Because the whole process of absolution and repentance is not about not changing. It is SOOO MUCH about changing, about becoming a better version of you, about Constant Improvement on your side (and yours alone).

But unless you can forgive yourself improvement of your whole being is not possible.

I hope that helps you a bit in finding YOUR balance.

I must ask you though, how much of it is a balance? What I mean is, there’s a fine line between cursing yourself for your mistakes, trying to be a perfectionist, and letting things happen, without learning from any of your experiences. I have my own ideas about where the balance is, but I’d be more interested in hearing yours. Keep up the good work Patrick

I beat up on myself for years and it’s a completely unloving and a waste of time. I like your steps…everyone deserves their own love and self-honoring! Thanks Patrick!