It is the fall of 1967.  My teammates and I are playing in the football playoffs for a chance to be champions in Southern California.   It is tight game.  The score goes back and forth, but in the end our team loses.   It is a devastating sense of failure.  For a long time my mind holds tenaciously onto the loss as I replay all of the the things I/we did that could have turned the game around to be the winners.   Not surprisingly nothing I do in my mind helps.  No matter how many replays and switches the score never changes.

All of us have these kinds of memories where we felt devastating loss that we know could have had a different outcome.    It is leaves us defeated.

What is wrong with my thinking in the above scenario?   Among other things the only possible outcome that I gave myself…