Focusing on the present choice is one of the most important things in life.
Looking at past choices, especially those you don’t like, with the perspective of “why bother, I keep making bad choices” is a fruitless endeavor.
I sometimes look back at the many things I’ve done in life and either discount my successes or dwell long about my failures, thinking that the failures alone define me.
The truth is, each of my failures and successes define what I did at that moment.
I should look back at the failures from the perspective of how I can avoid making the same poor decisions again, but veer away from thinking I’m damned and can never recover.
This is where playing compassionate to myself is important. I need to forgive myself while learning from past decisions, whether they were good or bad.
I’m the subject of my own experimentation, and each decision is an experiment based on the matrix of what I know at the time, what decision tools I have and can remember, as well as my emotions and chemical interactions in my body that influence my actions.