Keep Your Eyes Forward
I’ve learned the hard way that looking back is expensive. Here is how we keep our eyes looking forward.
Be forgiving with your past self.
Be strict with your present self.
Be flexible with your future self.
James Clear
Writing a newsletter (The Kirk Report) for 22 years teaches you a lot about yourself, other active investors, and the markets.
One thing we all seem to have in common is regret. It usually comes from these five common mistakes:
1. Selling winners too early: The biggest drag on long-term returns. Fear of giving back gains cuts compounding at the knees.
2. Not staying invested: Trying to time every top and bottom results in poor performance. Staying aligned with the overall trend is key.
3. Letting fear override process: Fear of missing out, fear of loss, fear of being wrong, fear of regret. The fears that cost you from achieving everything you want.
4. Over-trading: The key is to do less, not more. Costs, taxes, and mistakes hurt returns. Activity masquerades as skill.
5. Ignoring risk management: Position sizing errors, risking what you have for what you don’t need, and letting emotions override your process.
I could go on, but the point is: you will always have regrets.
This is why we all have to learn to become great regret managers.
How do we do that? We do not allow the past to hinder us from making the right decisions today. What matters is what we do next.
I often have to remind myself to “keep my eyes forward.”
This is a personal mantra I learned a long time ago. It applies to my investing and to life itself. Instead of criticizing and dwelling on my past, I try to keep my eyes forward. At all times.
Take it from me. I know a little something about regret.
It is easy to go down the road of regret in my own life.
Up until October 2023, I was living my best life. Everything was working well, mostly how I desired and planned.
Sure, there had been many peaks and valleys along the way.
It was not easy. It took tremendous work. It took good luck. It took help and mentoring from many others.
And on this day in October, I was a lot closer to the peak than the valley. I joined a good friend on a short adventure on a free Sunday.
We took our ATVs to ride the sand dunes in Christmas Valley, Oregon. We were just exploring and looking around on a warm, beautiful Sunday. Nothing crazy or extreme.
On that day, we were being careful. We were not seeking thrills. We just wanted to be with each other, in nature for a little while, to have some time away from our screens.
After a nice morning on the dunes, we stopped for a packed lunch. Having a good time so far, we decided to extend our visit for a little while longer before heading back. The days were short then, and we knew we needed to leave soon to avoid the darkness.
About a half hour later, while riding near the top of a dune, not far from where the photo above was taken, the sand gave way. My ATV rolled over four times. The last roll broke my spinal cord completely in two at the T4 level.
I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The area I landed on was hard as a rock; there was no cushion to soften the blow. When my friend found me, the ATV was upside down on me, leaking gas and oil.
As soon as he saw what transpired, he stopped his ATV at the top of the dune to protect us from anyone going over the dune and hitting us down there. He then ran down to me, and got the ATV off me immediately, which is not easy to do. Then he started putting sand on the surrounding pit to avoid a fire.
I knew instantly I was in BIG trouble.
I couldn’t feel my legs or anything below my stomach. My stomach area became extremely distended, so much so that I could not even see my legs.
At first, I thought the wind had just been knocked out of me. I had to get my helmet off because I was finding it very tough to breathe. My friend didn’t want me to remove it as he feared I could hurt myself further. But I insisted. When you can’t breathe, you can’t breathe. So I convinced him to let me remove it. Slowly.
The helmet was cracked. Hard to get off. But, as I was later going to discover, I hadn’t only cracked my helmet. I had snapped my spine in two and broken a dozen ribs.
Oddly, I wasn’t in panic mode. I was perfectly calm and clear-minded.
However, I felt really bad for my friend.
Here I got myself hurt on our fun Sunday. The last thing I wanted to do was spoil our time together. I know that may seem odd, but as someone who tends to be a people pleaser, I assure you it was my first thought.
Meanwhile, it felt strangely like my legs were standing straight up. I asked my friend to take a picture of me so I could see below my legs. And from that angle I could see I was laying flat in the sand, in the shape of the letter C.
I’ve since learned from doctors that this is common in injuries like this. It was likely the last position I was in right before my spine broke, and my brain held onto that last signal from below my chest. Like hitting the pause on your tv remote.
My friend then couldn’t get any cell signal, so he told me he would have to leave me for a while to call for help. He was completely calm, all business. I knew that if there was anyone in the entire world I wanted to be with me right now, it was him. Having worked as a supervisor for the Forestry Service, he knew exactly what to do to save me. If I was going to die here, there was nothing anyone could have done.
After struggling for a time to get a signal, checking on me every 15 minutes from afar, he was finally successful. While waiting for the rescue to arrive, my friend asked me if I wanted him to call my wife and let her know what happened.
I asked him not to call.
The longer she could go without knowing what happened, the better. I imagined her getting a call from my friend and having her entire world turn upside down. That was the very last thing I wanted to do. If she could enjoy just a little while longer of our beautiful life together while I was away having fun, that would be better than the alternative. After all, there is nothing she could do from home.
When my friend went up to higher ground to watch for help to arrive, I was left alone for a little longer. In total peace and quiet. All I could see was the beautiful, remarkable blue sky above me.
We were quite a way off the grid. I remember thinking: “If this is the end, which it could be, I lived such a wonderful, full life. Everything I could ever want, I had, and I was so very grateful.” I smiled while tears filled my eyes.
But as the minutes passed, my gratitude turned to sadness.
I felt so sad about my wife. Just a few months prior, we had celebrated our 30th anniversary. She asked me what I wanted most as a gift back then. The only thing I said, and I truly meant it, was, “I want 30 more years with you!”
Now, it appeared that I would only have 3 months more instead.
Thoughts of sadness filled me as I thought about my Mother, too. She would be left completely alone in the world, having lost her husband too early in life and now her son, too. Unable to have her son take care of her as he promised he would do until the very end.
It was not supposed to end this way. This was NOT my plan.
“We plan, God laughs.”
Unless you are one of the many who have told me that “everything happens for a reason” or that “it is God’s plan.”
While that sentiment may help some people, all I have to say is that this was certainly NOT my plan!
I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “We plan, God laughs.” I have given Him a lot to laugh about. I give Him plenty to laugh about every day since.
If I’m being honest, I haven’t forgiven myself for it. Nor have I forgiven God!
Barring a miracle, I will remain completely paralyzed from the chest down for the remainder of my days. With it comes every challenge—peeing through a catheter, devastating nerve pain throughout my body, and dependence on daily caregivers just to name the top three.
FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.
It is a reality you think you can imagine, but you cannot fully understand unless you are walking in my shoes. And I struggle with those shoes every single day.
I often tell friends that I suck at being a paraplegic. They laugh and assure me that is not the case, even though I think they are lying or just don’t want to criticize. It takes everything we can muster each day just to get me up, out of the bathroom, and to my wheelchair where I sit for the remainder of the day.
But, I am not alone in having struggles.
I know you struggle too!
There’s no shred of doubt I have about that. I’ve seen enough people and their lives firsthand to know that life spares no one from times of sheer misery. And from regret.
The longer you live, the more regrets you will likely have. Some mistakes, like my own, you will never have a chance to undo.
So yes, I know a little something about regret.
If I had known of even the remote possibility that I would be left paralyzed like this, I would never, ever have bought an ATV. I bought it primarily to help me clear snow off our long driveway. I would also use it to clear the snow for my neighbors.
It was my small way of giving back my time to help others. Now, I rely on the help of others just to live.
Worse, this new life hinders me from being who I wanted to be the most. The person I planned to be from the beginning and worked so very hard to achieve.
To be an awesome, loving husband. A protector and provider through thick and thin. A wonderful, helpful son to my elderly mother. A favorite family member. A good friend. A skilled pickleball partner and fierce competitor, too.
And, for you, too. To be a helpful, if not inspiring, mentor to everyone who follows what I do and the words I share each week. All these years. Sometimes decades.
Yet, I have to admit to you, I don’t feel inspiring. Something to look up to. A leader. Rather, especially on the bad days, much more like a cautionary tale. A person who, like Icarus, flew too close to the sun, only to have it all come crashing down upon him.
Through my writing, I always wanted to inspire you to achieve your dreams. To help you live your best life. To accomplish so much more in the markets and beyond than if we had never met.
Yet, none of this regret truly matters today!
None of us can change the past. I know I can’t. If I could, I would have already. This is the one time in my life that I really needed a do-over. Yet, life doesn’t work that way. Sometimes no matter how much we want, we can’t repair what has been done.
There are no mulligans in life. No matter how much we may wish there were. No matter how desperately at times we pray that we could go back and make it right.
The only way I’ve been able to work through this challenge of a lifetime is to remind myself, sometimes many times each day, to keep my eyes forward.
“I am not willing to let this be my final chapter.”
What does that mean?
I must focus on what I can do now, today, this week, this month, this quarter, and this year. I must do what I can to live my life the way I wanted before the accident, as well as in this new life right now. No matter how broken I feel. No matter how challenging it may be to fulfill.
I understand that may not be possible. But in life, we can only control what we think and what we do. And I will keep trying.
I am not willing to let this be my final chapter. After all, I still have much to do. Much wisdom to share. More fun and friendship to be explored with all of you.
I want to help you, as investors and as human beings, figure out ways to minimize the potential for regrets. And, when you have them, to manage them the best you can.
That’s why I say that here we focus on opportunities to learn, grow and prosper.
How do we do this? Honestly, I must admit, I don’t know. I don’t have all of the answers. But I’m trying to figure it out.
In the past year, I have read a lot about regret.
One of those books was written by Bronnie Ware, a hospice nurse for over 25 years. In her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, she shared the five most common regrets expressed by people near the end of their lives:
1. “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” Many people realized too late that they had sacrificed personal dreams to meet others’ expectations.
2. “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.” This regret was especially common among men, who felt they missed family life, friendships, and simple joys.
3. “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.” People often suppressed emotions to keep peace, which led to resentment and unfulfilled relationships.
4. “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.” As life grew busy, meaningful friendships were neglected, and many deeply missed them at the end.
5. “I wish that I had let myself be happier.” Many realized happiness is a choice, and they had remained stuck in habits, routines, or fears instead of fostering joy.
Minimizing these regrets requires change. It requires courage.
I understand that. More than you think. But it is necessary to get the opportunity to live our best life forward.
When your final day arrives, I want you to feel like I did on that October day: That you had achieved everything you wanted and then some. And that you were grateful for the opportunity.
Since the accident, I’ve been searching for why I didn’t die that day. I should have. Most people would have. But I’m still here. Which means I still have work to do. At least that’s the way I want to see it.
How are we going to accomplish this?
We keep working and become great regret managers. We learn to avoid making them, and when we do make them, we actively work on repairing them quickly by doing the best we possibly can now.
May you too, my friends, find a way to shove your regrets aside and keep your eyes forward this year and always. I will do everything in my power to help you.
Picture yourself at the end of 2026. What would you regret most NOT doing?
Make that a top priority by listing all of the steps you can think of to achieve it. Then get to work! Not someday, but TODAY! And every day after it.
Additionally, what are regrets you have about things you’ve done in the past? How can you repair those too, with the time you have left?
Then work on those things one day at a time, too.
That’s what I did throughout 2025. I devoted an entire year to pondering and preparing for this transition from my old report into something new, hopefully far more helpful and powerful than anything I’ve done before.
This is a new chapter. A new opportunity for me to provide my best. My legacy.
While I may very well fail in everything I wish to achieve, I’m going to give it a hell of a try. For as long as I remain alive.
I know where I want to be a year from today. I think I know how we might get there, or at least we will figure it out along the way. And I’m so grateful that you decided to join me along the way. It is my plan to make every minute worthwhile. For as long as I can.
I thank you for your kindness, friendship, and this truly amazing opportunity.
- C.E. Kirk
“No one owes us anything. We only owe ourselves to get off our backsides, count our blessings, and face our challenges. When you live from that perspective, the gifts pour forth.” - Bronnie Ware