Category Archives: Starting Over

Don’t let finish line anxiety keep you from ever crossing the starting line.

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“Don’t let finish line anxiety keep you from ever crossing the starting line.”

—Stephen St. Amant, author of the Savenwood Blog

Image from Unsplash by Joshua Hoehne

Many of life’s races have no specific timeline. Although we often have preconceptions that they exist, we can come to realize that many of them are just made up.

What will be accomplished and by when is often of our own choosing.

Even with this awareness we frequently fail to start because of some false milestone and game plan set by outside forces.

EXERCISE:

How can your most important commitments supersede your comfort to remain in the starting blocks of life?

How will you summon the courage to begin and run your own race?

“This is the world as it is. This is where you start.”

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“This is the world as it is. This is where you start.”

—Saul D. Alinsky, 20th Century American writer

Image from Amazon

Saul David Alinsky (1909-1972) was a Chicago-born community organizer and writer often considered the founder of modern community organizing. He worked to improve the living conditions of poor communities across North America. Alinsky is known for his 1971 book, Rules for Radicals, which counsels activists on achieving change and knowing “the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one.”

The quote and commentary for today came from the Goodreads post for January 30, 2017.

The idea of a realistic radical versus a rhetorical one had me look over the past year and half to assess people in both groups.

EXERCISE:

Where will you start today, given that this is the world as it is?

 

“One of the hardest decisions you’ll ever face…”

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“One of the hardest decisions you’ll ever face in life is choosing whether to walk away or try harder.”

—Author Unknown

QC #742

Today’s quote reminds me of an excellent little book by Seth Godin titled “The Dip.” The subtitle is: “A little book that teaches you when to quit and when to stick.”

Godin believes that winners quit quickly, often, and without guilt, until they discover the right DIP, worth beating for the right reasons. They realize that the bigger the barrier, the bigger the reward for sticking and getting beyond it.

He further demonstrates that people who lose fail to stick out their DIPS when they quit at the moment of truth—or they simply never discover the right DIP to conquer.

EXERCISE:

Consider picking up a copy of “The DIP” to discover for yourself whether you should stay the course or summon the courage to quite sooner or more often.

“You may have a fresh start at any moment you choose. This thing we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down.”

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“You may have a fresh start at any moment you choose. This thing we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down.”

– Mary Pickford, actress

Whenever I’m asked about the value of coaching, I usually say that people who have a coach almost always achieve more than they would on their own, faster than they would on their own. One key reason for this is that they get up more quickly following the setbacks that often occur when they stretch beyond their comfort zones.

A coach supports the propensity for committed action and will often provide a hand – or even a kick in the butt if necessary – to help people get up, brush away the dust of apparent failure, capture the lessons learned, and get right back to it.

Exercise:

Select a setback or failure you recently experienced and discuss it with a close friend or colleague. Request their coaching or support to get right back on the horse and try again.

Schedule frequent touch-points with this individual, so that if you stumble again, you bounce back more quickly and give it another go.