How often does that phrase come up when speaking with older, more experienced individuals? That simple statement carries a lot of weight and meaning. I'm never one to enjoy "if only" statements or other statements of regret. I guess what bothers me most about the phrase "if I knew then what I know now", is the fact that we will all go through that stage of regretting our not knowing. And despite the amount of times we have heard that phrase, we most likely won't take heed of it.

I recently completed a project on the topic of transformations. I set out to interview over twenty people between the ages of four and fifty-five. I asked each participant the same set of questions:

1. How do you define a transformation?

2. What transformations have you gone through?

3. What things provoke transformations?

4. What qualifies something as a transformation?

5. What career path are you currently pursuing/wish to pursue in the future?

6. How will your future career transform you and others around you?

Nearly everyone that I interviewed mentioned something. After being asked about a transformation that they had gone through, everyone mentioned how their experience would have been vastly different if only they had know something then that they know now.