In work and in our personal lives, we constantly make choices. Some are easy. The right course is obvious, expected, or even required. There really isn't much of a choice.

Other decisions are much harder. We may have incomplete information, limited time, and no way of knowing what the outcome will be. Those decisions can be agonizing and consequential.

Executives face this problem all the time. A business is losing money, and something has to change. Should they cut costs, lay off employees, raise prices, discontinue a product, or invest even more money in hopes of turning things around? They rarely have all the information they would like. Yet waiting for certainty may itself be a decision. They make the best choice they can with what they know at the time.

Our personal lives aren't much different. We make decisions about relationships, careers, money, family, and countless other things without knowing how everything will turn out. Sometimes we get them right. Sometimes we don't.

Looking backward is much easier than looking forward. Years later, we may recognize something that wasn't apparent at the time. Or perhaps we knew better and simply made the wrong choice. Then comes regret.

We are often told that we cannot change the past. There is no time machine. Let it go. Move on. Get over it. That's true but only partly true. We cannot change what happened. But we can change what we do about it today. I have come to believe a simple idea: It's never too late to do the right thing.

You can look honestly at a decision you made years ago and admit that you were wrong. You can apologize. You can ask for forgiveness. You can repay a debt, repair some of the damage, or simply acknowledge something that should have been acknowledged long ago. The other person may or may not forgive you. That is their choice, not yours.

Doing the right thing isn't a transaction in which an apology automatically erases the past. Some consequences cannot be undone. Some relationships cannot be restored. Sometimes the person we need to apologize to is no longer here. But that doesn't relieve us of responsibility.

Doing the right thing begins with accountability. It requires enough humility to admit that we made a mistake and enough courage to do something about it. There is another benefit. Looking backward honestly can change how we behave going forward.

We can listen more carefully. We can admit mistakes sooner. We can apologize without adding excuses. We can treat people better. We can make different choices.

Perhaps that is one of the benefits of getting older. We accumulate enough mistakes to recognize that being right isn't nearly as important as doing what is right. Just ask me about my list of dumb choices. Its a long list.

I certainly haven't gotten every decision right. Nobody has. But yesterday's mistake does not require tomorrow's repetition. We cannot go back and do the right thing then. We can still do the right thing now.

John Bradley Jackson
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P.S. Other people matter. It is not all about you.