My wife and I were watching the movie “The Guardian” last week. The movie is about coming to terms in life with some difficult events that happened to a young high school swimmer and an old salty Coast Guard sailor.

They are both at the Coast Guard Diver School, one a student and the other the senior instructor trying to come to terms with accidents in life that they did not control costing lives of friends and strangers.

The young gifted swimmer wants to be the best rescue swimmer ever. He wants to save more lives than anyone recorded. He continues to try and find the “number” from the instructor, which has the record.

After weeks of prying, the instructor finally gives the young man the number, “twenty-two”.

Confused the young student claims, “that’s not too bad”. You saved “twenty-two” lives.

The instructor calmly corrects the misunderstanding, “twenty-two is the number I could not save”

What he says next is a lesson.

The instructor tells the young man to “honor your gift”, save all that you can and let go of the one’s you can’t.

Do you hold on to your failures?

Are they holding you back from moving forward?

In life we all have something weighing us down.

My goal each day is to move forward by reading and listening to and applying new information. I never want to forget I have a gift of encouragement.

Encouragement is not free. It takes time to listen and find the words that might help one person move forward. Just a reminder you can make more money, but you can’t make more time. So when I give my time it is the greatest gift I have to share.

If it were not you today, come back tomorrow and I will try again.

And by chance if it were you, pay it forward. Give the free gift of a smile to a stranger.

I hope you have a great day.