our future is far more choice than prediction

​It's Groundhog Day. No matter the outcome, whether Phil sees his shadow or not, I think I'll celebrate tonight by watching one of my favorite movies: Groundhog Day.

You know the movie. The one where the Bill Murray 'Phil' gets stuck living the same day over and over.

Only in the movies, right?

Not always.

I look back on my life and see periods of a groundhog day movie. Waking up and living the same day over and over again. Only it's taken me a bit of time to understand what Phil comes to understand in the movie:

The value in knowing what happened yesterday is taking its lessons into today.

Once Phil discovered he could make his day better by knowing how that day was going to unfold, and by correcting the mistakes me made on his previous attempt at living that same day, he managed to build a more fulfilling life.

Don't we all have that chance, really? I mean today isn't Thursday again. It's Friday. But I know exactly what happened yesterday. And I know the areas in my life that didn't work out so well for me yesterday that I have the power to address today.

Isn't that a gift?

Maybe I don't get to fix Thursday, but Thursday can go a long way in helping me shape my Friday. Maybe exercising that power is the difference between moving forward and staying stuck.

We will all crawl out of our holes this morning. Maybe we will see our shadow in the midst of a bright sunny day; maybe there will be no sun to be seen at all. But either way, we have a lot more power than a groundhog in Pennsylvania to predict our future.

Will we move forward, making use of everything we learned yesterday? Or will we stay stuck, lamenting or wallowing in the yesterday that just didn't go our way.

It's a choice, not a prediction.

Our future often depends on us knowing the difference.