Accept the past, shape the future...

If I were asked to define myself and my personal philosophy, I would say that I believe that the most important way to leads one's life is to fully accept the past and use today to keep on shaping-up the future. This is what works best for me. Accepting the past is pretty self-evident. Whether we like it or not, we can't change it; it's water under the bridge and is set in place permanently. Similarly, we can't change our origins, our circumstances and our vast and rich experience accumulated through good and bad times.

We simply have to assess it by focusing on its positive elements. Once we can embrace what's behind us we become much freer to start anew everyday, and it becomes up to each one of us to use the present as a springboard to imagine, dream, plan and prepare for the future that we still have ahead of ourselves, whatever we want that future to be. Another way to look at this is to be able to discover in our past, our own life treasures, and shape our future from the rich assets we already have, building around them all the most positive and powerful elements of our lives...