A new day

Have you ever felt that you need to start again; reset and start from scratch ? It could be a relationship or career or entirely something else. Most folks tend to get scared when they get this feeling of having too restart. We all love to cling to the past; it is something that we have become accustomed to and are comfortable with.  

We all make plans and execute these plans both on a personal front and on an interpersonal front and then to get exhausted, harried, impatient and irritated. We get so caught up in the original plan that we tend to overlook the fact that life is now out of balance. We also forget our original goal and why we are doing what we are doing in the first place. Life is never in balance it is near impossible to do so and be in a state of constant balance. Even if we reach a state of balance there is always something that will knock us off balance, more so when we are highly focused on the goal or the mission we started out with.  

We put a high degree of importance on the the idea that our value is defined and directly related to the output of our effort. In putting in the effort of trying to achieve, more often than not we tend to forget personal values and tend to overlook the choices that we make on a daily basis. 

Our actions are out of sync with our morals and ethics. We realise this contradiction and then try to restore parity by making corrections for actions in the past. It might work but there is no guarantee that the outcome will be in line with the original goal that we might have. This imbalance along with the belief that corrective action might bring life back into sync that keeps us clinging to the past. We are either too afraid to take action i.e we would like to bury the past and in doing so cling to it; Or in taking action we land up repeating the same actions and the outcome no different (again we cling to the past because we have not learnt anything from our previous action). The drive to be the hero in our own story and a reluctance to forgive ourselves for past mistakes that also contributes to us clinging to the past. 

The question then is what would be the best way to keep life in balance ? Should one not make plans ? Should one not have a goal ? On the contrary a goal and a plan is needed. It is the goal and the plan to achieve the goal that helps us grow. We however need to temper our actions with the understanding that the outcome is not in our control. We need to learn from the outcome and be ready to course correct and make a new plan. To err is human. To forgive more so. We don’t forgive ourselves enough and as such don’t learn as much as we could from our own action. 

I have reset my professional career more than a couple of times. I have been fortunate enough and lucky enough to understand that I needed to have a brand new plan with a new goal. It was hard the first time I did it. My plans were my babies and to see something go south and have to abandon it after years of effort requires immense mental fortitude and resilience. I have also realised that one needs to do this on a daily basis. Yesterday is dead and gone, tomorrow is but a dream. All you have is the now. 

C