One of my favorite features on Netflix is the ability to skip the intro. I just love it and so do many.

When I was young I used to have one thought almost all the time. It was to go back in time and make something right. Sometimes to make the best of the situation or sometimes to just skip it completely as if it never happened.

And whenever I used to think about it, it used to take me on a wonderful journey. A journey where I knew what was going to happen so that I could react perfectly.

Analyzing that made me realize how I’m always looking backward — yearning with nostalgia for parts of my life that have ended, filled up with regrets, and wondering about what could have been.

Don’t you wish sometimes that life had a skip and an undo button?

A single button that will erase your mistakes after you’ve made them? A button that will undo the words that you didn’t mean to say, or skip everything that you are not proud of?

You see, we often forget how much our deeds and words can affect our lives, and we make one mistake after another. Sometimes we are not even aware of how much our actions can harm others until it is too late.

If we realize the very importance of the present moment, we would be able to act better. A shift in the mindset can have a rippling effect on the things we do every day. This does not just mean living in the moment, it also means giving your best.

Setting Aside Your Ego And Controlling What You Can

Many times we make mistakes because of our impatience, jealousy, fear, or impulsiveness. It’s not an excuse, but it’s something that is familiar to all of us as human beings.

The interesting idea here is to apologize for your mistakes right away. If you hurt someone, apologize and redeem yourself. If you did something bad for yourself, think of the best ways to make yourself feel better and start focusing on the things you love and enjoy.

Avoid that guilt trip, that guilt trip is nothing but your excuse to not think about the solution and to just feel bad about yourself. Our mind plays all sorts of tricks to make sure that we don’t do the right thing. It is generally our ego that drives our behavior.

But when you start understanding the reasons for things that did not happen according to the plan; you give yourself a chance to think about what can be improved and avoid it completely next time.

It links to the Stoic way of thinking. It’s a philosophy designed to make us more resilient, happier, more virtuous, and wiser.

“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be One.” — Marcus Aurelius

The chief task in life according to Stoic philosophy is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that you can say clearly to yourself things that are not under your control, and things that are under your control.

In general, 20% of the things that are under your control will have an 80% impact on the things that are not under your control. For example.

If you are in business, these are the activities that drive the most revenues, the highest lead generation, or reduce the most costs.

If you are in school, these are studying the most important subjects, finding the best study environment in which to do so, and studying purposefully.

Make sure to leave no stone unturned.

“Just keep in mind: the more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.” – Epictetus

Hoping For The Best And Preparing For The Worst

It’s important to prepare for the worst. There’s great value in critical thinking, in understanding what could go wrong, and working to mitigate potential disasters.

The popular positive-thinking movement ignores this, to the detriment of many people. We do not live in an ideal world, and smart people don’t get on a plane without a parachute.

Tim Denning in his story mentioned exactly this:

Get a plan together If you were to lose your job, how long could you survive? If you had to take a significant pay cut, how would that look? If you got sick, what’s your backup plan?

But preparing for the worst isn’t the same as expecting the worst. If you’ve prepared yourself to respond to potentially negative outcomes, you can be comfortable knowing that you can handle anything that comes along and that you’ve already prevented disaster. In this situation, it’s logical to assume that things are going to be fine.

So, hope for the best and be prepared for the worst. But don’t expect the best possible outcome, either. You can be content believing in a good outcome, knowing you’ve prepared for problems that might arise. People with really high expectations are disappointed a lot.

And especially in times like this when things are in a bad state with all the layoffs and economic breakdown, you would really wish if there was an undo button to go back and fix things, maybe save some money, or switch careers. And that feeling will make you helpless and sad.

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”

― Mae West

Final Thought

Finally, I would advise you to follow your passion and your heart no matter what you do.

Make your decisions based on growth and self-improvement. When you make a mistake, instead of dwelling on the failure, get up, and try again. It’s the only and best way to fix what you’ve done.

It’s the closest you will get to a real-life skip or undo button.