No Regrets: Making the Most of the Hand You’re Dealt

Last week, I attended the funeral of a good friend’s father. He was a man who was quite obviously loved by his family and friends. At the service, they displayed pictures of him during happy times with his wife, children, and grandchildren. The people who spoke at the funeral talked about a caring, generous man who was proud of his family.

All of this, as funerals tend to do, caused me to think about my own life. Do I have my priorities straight? Am I making the right choices? Do the people most important to me know how I feel? Am I living my life in such a way that when I’m gone people will reflect on their time with me fondly as they clearly did this gentleman?

I’ve always said that I want to live my life with no regrets. I’m not talking about packing everything I could ever think to do into my time here on earth. I don’t have a “bucket list” that I’m working my way through. I’ve always considered living my life without regret as making the best of the cards I’ve been dealt.

Things don’t always go the way you’d like. Things don’t ever turn out exactly the way you might hope. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make the best of every situation. It’s often tough for successful, “Type A” personalities to understand that they aren’t in control of everything.  But sooner or later you’re going to be faced with a situation in which you learn that someone else is calling the shots.

I learned this lesson early in my career. I was working for a successful, high-growth company in a job I really enjoyed. The company’s rapid growth provided tremendous challenges and opportunities for me as a young manager. Then one day, the founder announced that he was selling the company and that I would have to move to the acquiring company’s headquarters on the East Coast if I wanted to keep my job.

Not exactly the news I was looking for. My wife and I had just had our first child a month earlier. My in-laws lived in the area and were quickly bonding with their new grandson. And now I had to go home and tell my wife that I wanted to pick up our young family and move halfway across the country. Not only that, I had to break it to my mother-in-law that I was taking her daughter and new grandbaby away!

I could have lamented the fact that my former boss and mentor had dealt me a crappy hand. How dare he do this to me and my family? Things were going just fine until he decided to cash out and sell his company. But it was the right thing for him to do for himself and his family. He set himself up for life.

So I had a choice. I could fold and go home or I could play the cards I’d been dealt. I stayed with the company and made the move east. I stayed another three years with the company and learned an incredible amount in that time. I developed skills and relationships that have continued to serve me well to this day. I know that I wouldn’t have had the experiences I’ve had, if I hadn’t accepted that position with the acquiring company.

My point is that life is what you make it. If you want to wring your hands and complain about how unfair life is, you’re not going to have a very successful existence. But if you make the most of every situation, even those that don’t appear to be very good, you’ll be able to look back and say that you don’t have any regrets. You’ll understand that you can’t control everything that happens to you, but you can control how you react to it.

Some of the best lessons you’ll learn in life and your career will come from the difficulties you face. It’s the old analogy about how diamonds are only created under extreme pressure. It’s the difficult times that create truly strong leaders.

So many young people coming out of college have experienced nothing but success in their lives. They’ve been a top student or athlete. They’ve grown up in a culture where everyone is a winner and everyone gets a trophy. But it’s the tough times that will really determine what they’re made of and that will provide the valuable lessons necessary for them to become strong leaders.

Take a hard look at how you deal with adversity. Are you a victim or do you work hard to turn those difficulties into opportunities for learning and growth? If you can do the latter, you’ll be able to look back on your career knowing that you did the best with the hand you were dealt and that should leave you with no regrets.