Check out part 1 before reading this!

I’ve already mentioned elsewhere on this website that I’ve taught myself how to build WordPress websites. I had no idea where to start, but I buried my head online researching and learning. The first site I built was this one, although it’s better now than it was when I first got it online. I have around ten or so websites now, each with specialised content which I researched and wrote myself.

This has been a huge and enjoyable achievement for me which I probably wouldn’t have tackled if my circumstances hadn’t changed. I didn’t choose the circumstance, but I certainly chose how I let it affect me. That’s what I mean when I say we have a choice.  There’s no doubt in my mind that whichever choice we make will affect the eventual results. This experience has certainly shown me that I’m capable of things I didn’t know I was, and I’m glad about that.

Thankfully I’m not the type of person who looks back and thinks, “If only”. I always remember a story that was told to my school class when I was maybe six or seven years old. A speaker came to our school and he told the story of a young boy who had been given sixpence, yes it was that long ago! Sixpence (2 ½ pence today) was a lot of money to me then, my mum used to give my brother and me sixpence every Friday after school to spend on sweets, we were in heaven!

Anyway, the kid with the sixpence accidentally dropped it down a drain and began to cry. A passer-by stopped and asked why he was crying and he replied he’d lost his sixpence down the drain. The passer-by took pity on the boy and gave him another sixpence. The boy looked at the money and began crying again but even louder this time. The passer-by asked what was wrong, to which the boy sobbed, “If only I hadn’t lost my first sixpence I’d now have a shilling”!

Well of course he wouldn’t have doubled his money, but it really made an impression on me, even at that early age, to not look back at “if only” but to see the “what is” because that opens up the opportunities of “what can be”. Isn’t it strange the things that stick with you as you go through and shape your life, I’m sure you have examples of your own.

Please come back soon for part 3 of this story.