based on the book Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets by Andy Standly

Someday you would like to be able to sit down or lie down with your kids or grandkids and tell ’em your story. Your entire story. And as they get older, you would like to be able to add layers and details rather than hoping they don’t ask.

If you’re single, you want to someday sit across the table from someone you hope to spend the rest of your life with and tell your story. All of it. We all want that. But it will require you to stop mid-decision and ask: “What story do I want to tell? When this crisis, this opportunity, this temptation is in the rearview mirror—when it’s reduced to a story I tell—what story do I want to tell?” Which of the available options do you want as part of your story?

Every decision you make becomes part of the story of your life. Every relational, financial, and professional decision and the outcomes of those decisions become permanent parts of your story. We’ve all lived long enough to have a few chapters we wish we could erase. No doubt you have a few stories you wish you could rewrite. We all do. We call it regret. But chances are, the decisions that led to your greatest regrets could have been avoided if you had paused to ask yourself, “What story do I want to tell?”

From here on out, write a story worth telling. Write a story you’re proud to tell. If you’re in the middle of making a decision right now, stop and ask yourself: Of the available options, which one do I want as a permanent part of the story of my life?

A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children, but a sinner’s wealth is stored up for the righteous.

Proverbs 13:22

The righteous lead blameless lives; blessed are their children after them.

Proverbs 20:7

Then the Lord your God will make you most prosperous in all the work of your hands and in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your land. The Lord will again delight in you and make you prosperous, just as he delighted in your ancestors, if you obey the Lord your God and keep his commands and decrees that are written in this Book of the Law and turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

Deuteronomy 30:9‭-‬10