In your life’s experience, “everything” is actually only “one thing.” Every isolated moment, every separate event and every end of day, when totaled, adds up to “your life.”
Since you have a singular influence on your life’s trajectory, you deserve to celebrate your accomplishments and should be obligated to reflect on your failures. Your life’s example also greatly influences your children, your extended family and your community. You do not get to separate the best of you from the worst of you. You are simply YOU. You are every bit of you. For goodness sakes, OWN your YOU!
Who are you when no one is watching? Are you charitable when you are not writing a donation check? Are you honest enough to speak up when no one will? Do you self-contemplate? Can you forgive yourself, and others, and correct for past mistakes with the passage of time and self-reflection? All of the above are the history of you and the most likely influences on who your children will become. Each past moment offers an opportunity to reflect, each decision offers the opportunity to change your mind, each outcome influences every future input.
One of my daughters recently gave me a lesson on perspective. She revealed to me a personal bias she saw in me that allowed me to think I was “open minded” while in fact I was being part of a close-minded problem. The subject was the Black Lives Matter movement which was so much in the news during the Trump presidency and the early stages of the “pandemic.”
Without going into the details, my self-congratulatory liberalism provided me….and I realized a huge segment of the “liberal” left, to opt out of doing the hard work of actually creating systemic change. Reflection can replace regrets and celebrate achievements. Reflection may also provide a certain satisfaction that the vast majority of your changeable moments were perfectly acceptable just exactly as they unfolded. And, If they were not the exact right thing to do, in the exact moment they occurred, then ”good enough” is most often a really, really acceptable result.
It is possible that a very small percentage of those things that you can, should, or will change… upon reflection…are what may have the greatest impact on how your children and THEIR community will continue to be influenced and your legacy remembered? The EVERYTHING that you are is the role model your children are most likely to adopt, your community most likely to remember, and your family most likely to talk about!