April 07, 2021

BACK TO ZERO? WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE START ALL OVER…

"You are never too old, never too bad, never too late, and never too sick to start from scratch again." - Bikram Choudhary

It was midnight and I was sitting, filled with misery and disappointment. My mind was wandering and depressing thoughts were raining heavily and I asked myself "DO I NEED TO START ALL OVER AGAIN?"

This is about my college days when I had started my own company "Events" and I had put forth the greatest possible efforts to make it successful. I was earning handsome profits, had my fitness goal on point, purchased a bike of my own and I also had invested in stocks.

Literally, I had more than any of my college mates and I was feeling blessed. I was having the time of my life.

But Wait! After 2 years uncertainties happened and I lost almost everything I thought I had earned in my life. Lost my business, lost my people and contacts. My self-confidence and self-worth shattered. Most importantly I started to lose weight to which I lost my health as well.

Sometimes in life when we start to think that we are going to make it, life hits us hard and doesn't happen the way we want.

Not fair, right? I know.

But in this situation, we can either choose to stay a victim of our surroundings or we can be the victor and start all over again.

Often we find ourselves in a situation where we have to start over again. And I understand it is frustrating and heartbreaking. The best thing I had learned over time for this situation is to just sit back and relax for a moment first.

And ask ourselves this question: What lessons have we learned in our past, and how would we apply them if we wish to start all over again? What if we had another opportunity to do better, to get better. Shouldn't we grab it?

Well, we all get that opportunity every day. It's called WAKING UP.
Yes!

Every day when we wake up it's a blessing that we should never take for granted. We can choose to live with a clean slate, we can choose today to do better, to start all over again because as the saying goes "Let go of who you were, if you don't, you will never know who you can truly become."

Here are some steps which we can take when we found ourselves in this situation:

1. Start with making peace with reality and accepting it. Work for it, not against it.
2. Revise your purpose and goals. Re-write them and have more clearance about your ambitions.
3. Decide your next move with integrity and acceptance.
4. Reflect on what went wrong in the past and how you can upgrade yourself.
5. Show up every day with courage and humility.

Here is a book that is my personal favourite and plays a bigger contribution to my healing journey :

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

Remember, almost everyone has a moment where they feel to “start all over again”. But just because the past did not turn out as you wanted it to, does not mean your future can’t be better than you have ever imagined.