Day #37 in A Year of Positivity

“If you can change your mind, you can change your life.”
– William James

Hello and welcome to Day #37 in A Year of Positivity! I hope this post finds you well and in good health. Today’s quote comes from William James, “If you can change your mind, you can change your life.”

Nothing you do is written in stone. It’s never too late to change your mind on something, especially if you feel the previous decision wasn’t the right one. Every decision made, or not made, will lead you down to something different in your path of life – whether it be good or bad. I recently read an article about small decisions made in history that had enormous impacts on the world. One event that fascinated me the most was the Soviet nuclear false alarm incident during the Cold War on September 26, 1983.

A man named Petrov Stanislav, who was in the Soviet Air Defense Forces, saw four missile attack warnings on the early warning system from the United States, which he somehow suspected to be false alarms. He waited for corroborating evidence before telling his commanding officer what he saw on the system. No further evidence was found that the U.S. actually launched any missiles, and some time later, the satellite warning system confirmed the four missile attacks on radar were actually a computer malfunction. Had he told his commanding officer, a full-scale nuclear war would have occurred, and who knows what life would be like today.

This just goes to show that one decision, no matter how small, can have significant impacts. This also applies to when a person changes their mind on something. If you’re on the fence about something, though, keep in mind that you can’t stay on that fence forever. Some decisions aren’t easy to make, but when you do finally decide, or when you change your mind, it can really change your life. Seriously.