Die another day...

"Live as if you will die tomorrow, learn as if you will live forever..."

It seems as though a lesson is a structured period of time in which we are expected to learn...insight gained...yet there are so many lessons that pass like water under a bridge.  We go through life experiencing easy lessons, hard lessons, long lessons, short lessons and hope to learn some sort of, well, lesson - because after all, that is the purpose of a lesson, LEARNING - as not to make the same mistake again.  We experience a hindsight bias...Like staying up too late to watch an award show knowing the result won't be good the next morning, speeding when you know you'll probably get a ticket, or drinking more than you should, knowing something bad is likely to happen.  We all can see what the possible outcome might be, yet we continue to play with matches and just hope we don't get burned.

"There's mistakes that I have made, chances I just threw away, some roads I never should have taken..."

These "lessons" bring us to some sort of crossroad, whether big or small, and we have a choice to make.  Do we continue living life the way we have and hope for a different result or do we take different steps day by day in order to achieve an outcome we may not have desired in the past, but realize as time goes by that it just so happens to be the outcome that causes us to change/better ourselves?  Change is a process.  It requires choices throughout the day, wise choices...the decision to gain a better consequence.  

Operant behavior "operates" on the environment and is maintained by the consequence - therefore, when one decides to change his outcome he must change his environment.  If a drug abuser wakes up one day and says, "I'm not living this way anymore," he simply cannot continue living in the same situation and expect a different result.  However if he changes his friends, hang-outs, living arrangement, everything associated with his usage, he has a much better chance of overcoming his past and moving forward towards a different result, a better result.

Habits are hard to break, but they can be broken...with effort, perseverance, time, ambition, and wise choices...anyone can change his stars.