If you had access to a time machine, would you change your life?

A friend and I engage in a what-if game from time to time:

If you had access to a time machine, would you go back and "do over" something in your life?

Both of us engage in fanciful thinking: Yes, of course, I'd go back to X and change Y.

I find two things when I play that game, though:

1) I can never go back far enough. I start with something within the last 10 years, then realize I would rather change something in the last 20. Pretty soon, I'm back to conception stage. And then, the inevitable, "What if my parents had never met? What if I were the combination of two other people?"

2) I am who I am today because of all of those things that I would like to do over. How boring would I be if I never made mistakes? Even changing something as benign as "I wish I had never made that stock investment" means that, instead of making a $500 mistake putting money into an industry and company that I knew very little about, I could make a $10,000 or $100,000 (or more) mistake later. And who knows what problems I might be dealing with today if I went back in time and bought Apple or Google at their lows? (Granted, I think I'd be willing to roll the bones and try to deal with those problems)

Ultimately, my "do overs" are all based on me wanting to impart current wisdom on my past self. Wisdom, I realize, that usually came from the same experience that I would want to do over.

Perhaps one of the most humbling experiences of my life was signing myself into a treatment facility for an eating disorder. My parents tried to hospitalize me. They couldn't because I was a legal adult. To get help, I had to sign myself into the hospital. I did it, not to get help, but to get away from my family. At the time, I rationalized that suffering through art therapy would be easier than living with my family trying to keep me from my addiction.

Regardless of my rationale, the paperwork I had to sign (which I read, because you should always read any legal document that you are signing) stated that I acknowledged that I was unable to care for myself. Other papers listed a variety of personal freedoms that I agreed to give up to receive treatment. I almost didn't sign because I felt that my signature under those statements would be legal proof of my failure as a human being. I wasn't sure if suffering through art therapy were worth agreeing to publicly acknowledge that fact.

Except, as with most things change-related, it was a very painful choice that resulted in a much better quality of life for me.

My perfectionism had made me very myopic. The entire world became pass-fail. Through my disorder, I viewed myself on the "fail" side. Instead of looking at my strengths, I concentrated on my weaknesses. Instead of looking at what I value and what I want to accomplish, I looked at how I compared to others in very surface areas, like academic success and physical fitness.

Going through treatment set me on the path to be the person I am today: someone who is much more well-rounded, more empathetic (perhaps too much so at this point), and more laid back.

None of those things happened immediately after my two weeks of treatment, but none of them would have happened without it.

As I wrote before, I'm still who I am at the core. Some things can never be changed. I will always be a "perfectionist." For me, at base, "perfectionism" means that I am driven to succeed.

My definition of success has changed. I've eliminated the majority of my "pass-fail" mentality. Instead of measuring myself against others, I measure my actions against my goals. If I "win," others don't have to "lose." In fact, life is better when you can celebrate success with others. I consider increasing my knowledge to be a measure of success. Instead of fearing not being the best my first time out, I recognize the knowledge that is learned when I try to master something new. I've also added "fun" as an indicator of success. The ol' "it's not how you win or lose; it's how you play the game."

Today I am grateful for perspective, for the ability to see all aspects of a situation, which would not be possible without the change experiences that I've gone through in my life.