One of the most important life skills is the ability to start over

I already forgot why I came up with this topic few days ago. But immediately I have seen many examples in the past two days.

First, is from watching football. We can see there are many times where we need to start over, both inside a game, and across games. In each game, the players need to build from the back or the middle to the front. And in football (I am referring to soccer), it is not easy to score goals. So there are more failures of scoring than success. This means they need to repeat on and on without a guarantee of a success as the game can end up with a draw. Then across the game, it does not mean that if they can beat a more successful team, then they can repeat it again with easier team. On the other hand, if they lose, it does not mean that they will lose again. One thing for sure is that they need to start over again.

Then, yesterday was my first meeting with a new team. Almost everything are new and I need to repeat again the process of adjusting. Of course, now I know how my company works and I know all my teammates as I am still under the same manager. But the process of learning from scratch is not something we can naturally like as we need to go out from our comfort zone.

By the end of yesterday, I was exhausted. I was stressed. I was overwhelmed. Perhaps because I did not want to start over.

Thanks to God, my wife, and my friend who encouraged me to start over again today. So I tried. I looked at again on the notes on perfectionism trap, set a time budget for each activity, and make a commitment to stop when time is up. And amazingly, today was a very great day to me. I completed what I wanted to do and I talked to people and learned a lot. It is very surprising as yesterday was a complete stress and today seems to be a complete success.

At the same time, a happy day today does not guarantee another happy day tomorrow. We just need to start over again and appreciate the process of being vigilant and hopeful at the same time for each new page that we are going to write.