Giving Up and Starting Over

You know what's worst than giving up? Starting over! It's easy to give up after you put in so much hard work to accomplish something. But man, when you have to start over, you have to do all of that hard work ALL OVER AGAIN!

But you know what? Sometimes, you just have to suck it up and hit the re-start button.

In our ZUMBA classes, we have participants who were faithful to our classes. You would see them come at least once a week, sometimes twice a week. They are committed for months and months.

Then, they just drop out of nowhere, never to be heard from again.

Then one day, they show back up. They might have gained some weight, lost some muscle, and their endurance have definitely weaken. But would it be better for them to just stay at home and accomplish nothing, or to start again and gain something?

There is a saying that if you're tired of starting over, then stop giving up. Sounds motivational...unless you're the person who has already given up. In reality, we give up and we give up very frequently. I don't know anybody who has never given up on something, I don't care how goal-oriented that person is.

Right now, the inside of my car is a mess! I was determined to keep the car clean and to put rules on my kids when it comes to what they are allowed to do in the car. I always hated a dirty car. A dirty car is a stinky car and I am never fully at peace in a dirty car.

So, what do I do? I just have to get to work, don't I? The car would just get dirtier and stinkier unless I do something about it now.

Your situation will not get any better unless you do something. Yes, you've given up and you feel badly about it. And yes, you have a lot of work to do to get back to where you left off. But it's better to re-start and go somewhere, than to sit around and go nowhere.

It's discouraging to think how much of your hard work went to waste. But think about the ants. They work hard to build their mounds just to have you be mean and knock it down. We've all done it, right? We want to see the ants explode from their mounds. And do you notice what these ants do? They just get to work re-building the mound....that you knocked down because you thought it was fun.

In the same way, we need to just get to work and re-build what was destroyed. We need to get back to where we lift off. We just need to start again.

Remember this: as long as the opportunity is available, it's never too late to start again.

• You've gained 50 lbs since you stopped exercising. As long as you are physically able, you could start back on your journey.
  
• You've forgotten almost everything in your French class. As long as you still have a fairly working brain, you could start learning French again.
  
• You pretty much destroyed your marriage and your kids hate you. As long as you are alive, you could spend your time re-building your family.
  
• You stopped writing your novel years ago. As long as you still have the ability to use your hands, you could just pick up where you left off.
  

Don't look at how much work you'd have to do to catch up. Just assume that there will be a lot of work to do. Let's not sugar-coat it. You may have to work your behind off to get back to where you left off. Maybe you might be fortunate enough to not have to work so hard. But don't hold your breath. Admit to yourself that you shouldn't have given up in the first place and accept that you may have to do a lot of work to catch up.

But simply doing nothing is a guarantee way of not getting what you want.

We all have at one point had to start over. Have you spent an entire night writing a homework assignment on the computer just to lose EVERYTHING because you didn't save your work. I have! And it stinks! But, I just had to suck it up and start over again.

• Accept that you will have set backs in life.
  
• Accept that you will experience some delays.
  
• Accept that your work may be destroyed.
  
• Accept that you may have to start from scratch.
  

And when you accept these things, roll up your sleeves and get back to work. You have a long journey ahead of you. But that's okay. Just start walking. One step at a time, and soon enough, you'll be back to where you started and would even go FURTHER!

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