Sometimes you just have to start over.  There’s a time for persistence and grit and pushing through and there is a time to know when we need to cut our losses.  When something doesn’t feel like us or we feel it doesn’t reflect a certain representation of who we are or who we want to be, the product will feel disingenuous and misaligned—because it is.  We can’t build a full product on half truth and we can’t build a stable foundation half on water half on land.  The life we are meant to live will call to us and we will know when we are all in.  We know when we have something that clicks and feels right.  The world stops and another dimension in the world opens.  Time doesn’t matter, it feels like it doesn’t exist.  So if we feel constantly stuck or like we are starting and stopping over and over again we have to look at why.  Is it because we need to learn a different way?  Or is it because we know that something doesn’t fit who we are?  The inability to commit speaks volumes when we get to the why behind it.

It sucks to start over especially when we’ve dedicated any amount of time to a project we thought had meaning.  The work seems to fall flat, it doesn’t look how we envisioned it, the message isn’t clear, the pieces just aren’t fitting together and it took a lot of energy to find out that the vision doesn’t work.  Look, we all know that projects rarely go 100% on track and stay true to course and we know we need to be adaptable.  However, we’ve all had those moments when something simply won’t work, we face objection and obstacle repeatedly.  It’s then we need to be smart enough to know when to lay down the sword so to speak.  It’s often said that we quit too soon and I can attest to that as well.  I’m guilty of not seeing the project through when I probably should (and definitely could) have finished.  So it’s a fine balance between patience and practicality.

I want to end this with a reminder that starting over isn’t a failure.  We talk a lot here about how there are lessons when things go wrong and that mistakes are valuable learning tools and it’s true.  So if something doesn’t work out how we thought it would, that’s a time to take the new information and try again from a different angle.  Any time we apply a new lesson to what we are working on is a potential positive outcome.  Here’s the thing: even if disaster hits and our best intended plans are no longer salvageable, then that too can be counted as a win because if the scenario is that bleak, at least we are clear that we don’t need to waste anymore time on it.  So always remember that starting over is ok and when used wisely, it can make all the difference.