We did not come here to fear the future. We came here to shape it.

Justifying the past mattered less than planning what to do next.

I reminded myself that every president felt saddled with the previous administration's choices and mistakes, that 90 percent of the job was navigating inherited problems and unanticipated crises. Only if you did that well enough, with discipline and purpose, did you get a real shot at shaping the future.

Every one of us is called upon, perhaps many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job...And onward full-tilt we go, pitched and wrecked and absurdly resolute, driven in spite of everything to make good on a new shore. To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another--that is surely the basic instinct...Crying out: High tide! Time to move out into the glorious debris. Time to take this life for what it is.

Move on. Walk forward into the light.

As a college quarterback, one of my sons learned to snap his wristband between plays as a kind of mental checkoff whenever he or anyone made a "setting back" mistake, so the last mistake wouldn't affect the resolve and execution of the next play.

I can change. I can live out of my imagination instead of my memory.

Many people experience a similar fundamental shift in thinking when they face a life-threatening crisis and suddenly see their priorities in a different light, or when they suddenly step into a new role

One if the hardest things in life to learn are which bridges to cross and which bridges to burn.

Consider all the past as nothing, and say, like David: Now I begin to love my God.

Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it well and serenely

You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.