This past Thursday, Don shared with us his presentation entitled “ Groundhog Day” 

Don opened his presentation with the song “ I Got You Babe”, Sonny and Cher’s famous hit that was also featured in the movie “ Groundhog Day” 

In the movie Bill Murray keeps reliving his day over and over again. At first he gets mad and depressed, as he is stuck in the same rut every day and nothing he does gets him out of it. Does this sound familiar to any of you?  How many of you are stuck in your own version of Groundhog Day? 

Don shared with us that for him there are three steps…put it in your past, Forgive and Decide.

He also stated that we are composed of three selves. He recommended starting by working with our past self.

1) our past selves…

Don shared with us that one of the most effective ways to start is by writing a letter to your past self.  For this you should start out by choosing a time that you did or didn’t do something, and by making that decision the course of your life went in a negative way. 

Now the hard part…do one of two things with your letter.  Either rip up the letter, or hide it away somewhere and do not look at the letter again.  Think of this as a cleansing.  This will take you one step closer to moving on to February 3rd.

2) Our Present self…..this is where we need to forgive.  Not others, but ourselves.  Some of us are stuck in our own Groundhog Day loop, because we can’t forgive ourselves for something we did.  Is it possible that these good choices were only proven bad through the lens of time? 

Don shared with us a simple example. 

We decide we need groceries and we head to the store. Something we do all the time and a great decision, right?  But this one time, on the way to the store a drunk driver runs into our car.  Something that is random and unpredictable. Most of us will probably start to question ourselves, what if I had stopped for coffee first on the way?  We start to blame ourselves and beat ourselves up over it.  Let’s face it, we do not know the future. We are more like TV weather people who think we know what will happen tomorrow. But we don’t. 

Don shared that every so often in our group we talk about finding and being our authentic selves.  But what about our past selves?  Could that self of the past be a different authentic self to the one that is here today, our present self?  For most of us that would be true. 

Are you the same person you were 10 years ago?  Most likely not. Our wants, needs and values change over time.  If you’re beating yourself up over a decision that you made in the past, do you think maybe your past self was making the best decision for you at that time?  Maybe our current self should quit beating up our past self and move on.  The past is the past and we can’t change it.  We need to learn from it and move on.  It’s time to flip that calendar to February 3rd. 

3) Our Future selves…..so how do you get to tomorrow?  What does February 3rd look like?  What do you really want out of life?  Stepping out the door into tomorrow can sometimes be scary.  You can promise yourself to continue to come to group looking for a better life. Continue to try and envision your future self. We have no control of how many tomorrows we may have.  We begin to realize that if we don’t go for our dreams today, we may not have all the tomorrows we need to get where we want to be. 

Tell yourself “Today is the day”  Today has to be the day. Tell yourself today is the day to move towards your future self.  Be brave, and try not to waste a minute , because there is no greater treasure than time. And wasting it by being stuck in your present self rather than trying to get where you want to be us nit acceptable for any of us.  The story of your life is much bigger than you think.  Be brave!