Starting again is not a instant change. It is process and as with many types of processes, it can be frustrating - painful even. There's something powerful about starting again. It is a realisation that you are no longer where you thought you once were, that you have lost something you thought you once had. Starting again in this sense requires you to be honest with yourself and your capabilities - it requires a form of maturity that inconveniences your pride, its a quiet realisation, an inner knowing. Something you feel before you articulate.
When you pride yourself in your accomplishments, and join your sense of self with what you can produce, starting again can be very difficult. It's understandable, a perceivable failure in what you produce can look like a failure in who you are.
The much needed truth is that 'failure' or mistake-making (the type that requires you to start again) is a key part of growing up. Understanding that current things need to change is a sign of maturity. Be proud of yourself!
Life is funny in the sense that in one moment you can be feeling completely in control and on top of the world and in the next everything can come crashing down. We can't always control how we receive the things life throws at us. For some people a critical word from a loved one can be enough to send them spiraling into self-doubt, for others it may be a public mess up, or bad reception of their work. Some days we may be able to push past these sources of de-motivation, on other days we may be less tolerant of them. Nevertheless, starting again is part of life, and the comeback, the period of self-reflection and improvement, is a process. Nothing is restored in a day.
Restoration is rarely rosy. It can be painful and even humiliating. Starting again breaks down your pride, you have to admit that your usual way of doing things no longer works, you have to address the areas you have fallen short. Starting again also requires courage, the temptation to sit in self-pity is strong, it takes courage to get up again and pursue the change you desire. It requires honesty; and within this honesty there is power. We are no longer blinded to our short-comings, they have been put in the light, plain for us to see. Through the process of building ourselves back up we begin to discover more about the areas in our lives which need improvement and we start to make amends.
You are not always given the luxury of distancing yourself from your mistakes, often you will find yourself having to address them daily. If I can encourage you in any way I'll let you know that time heals many wounds, and that if you keep showing up for yourself daily, one day you'll wake up and before you think to show up for yourself, you'll realise you already have.
Time and presence. You will look back with wisdom and maturity and see that starting again was by no means easy, but it did build within you something you never would have had, had you refused to make that decision to build your way back up.
