Many people in life do not want to think about their past because many times people think about the pain associated with it. The reality is that everyone’s past has allowed us to become who we are today, good or bad. Things in the past have happened for a reason, whether we want to believe it or not, and we should all have taken things from the past and learned from all of them.

For example, if you’ve had situations in life where you may have failed at something, I’m sure you not only remember the pain of that failure, but you’ve thought of things you could have done to avoid failing. In my career in the Air Force, I celebrated a lot and didn’t care in the world for anything but myself and the joys of life I was experiencing at the time.

I knew I had a great test to show the Air Force how much I knew about my job to advance to the next level, but I kept putting it off so I could party with my friends. What I didn’t realize was that my friends had already completed their tests and were ready to go. When the day came to take my exam, I lost it by 1 point and was devastated.

I couldn’t blame anyone but myself for my failure, but my mind wanted me to believe that the system ruined me. After two days of thinking about the mistakes I made, I wanted to get it right so I could stay in the Air Force, so I made it a point to let my friends know that I wasn’t going to party for a while and that I would. focus on my Air Force tests.

The day I told them that their answer was “Brother, we thought you had already tried like us” and my answer was “Yes, I did the test and I failed by one point.” The whole room was silent. Shortly after my friends told me, “Man, we’re sorry we should have taken a little better care of you, but we’ll make sure to leave you alone for a few weeks so you can study.”

Two weeks passed and I was ready to test. I woke up that morning and went to the test center to do the test and I was very nervous and my hands were sweating, but I knew I could do it. The test facilitator brought me my test and dived. I finished in about 20 minutes because I knew all the answers and found out that I passed and actually blew it out of the water.

Of course, this was not my only failure in life, but it was one of the most important. I didn’t like the way I felt when I got the results from the first test, so I had to make positive changes in my life and that’s what I did. Now, because of that situation that happened to me, I never put things in front of my number one priority, which is to excel in what I am supposed to do to support my family.

I encourage you to make positive changes in your life so that you don’t have to go through some of the same things that I had to go through. I also encourage you to prioritize your responsibilities in life and make sure you list them in the correct order. You have to establish your own personal list of importance because no one can tell you what is more important to you than you.