Everything that happened yesterday, and the yesterdays before that, is real. It happened.

Perhaps it’s the hard work you did to earn a degree, or a significant error that cost you and others a great deal. Maybe it’s a community you chose to join, or one that you failed to embrace.

All of these costs are sunk. We can’t undo them. They’re a gift from our former selves.

But like all gifts, we don’t have to accept them.

We can say to that former self, “no thank you.”

“I know how hard you worked to get that law degree, but I don’t have room for it on the shelf.”

“I know you paid a price for that transgression, but that price is paid and I have work to do.”

No thank you.

Shanka Senghor has written a poignant new book that puts a face on real costs, costs that live in the past but threaten to overwhelm us each day. On July 25, I’ll be doing a live interview with him and anyone who pre-orders a copy of the book at that link is invited to attend.

His book is a raw memoir, but also a useful framework, a practical way to think about the new decisions we get to make each day. We have generous work to do, and if our story gets in the way of that work, it pays to find a way to rewrite it.