Try, Try Again

Not a day goes by that isn’t marked by some special occasion. Today, June 5 celebrates National Gingerbread Day, Ketchup Day, Veggie Burger Day, and Moonshine Day. It is also the annual celebration of “Start Over Day.”

You may associate starting over with failure, recalling the adage “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” But you can try again even if you are successful at what you do. It is a way of expanding your world, lengthening your reach, and increasing your awareness. In a recent post we wrote,

It does not sound like a recipe for success, but not knowing how to do something is not a good reason to not try. Popsicles, penicillin, and potato chips are among the myriad of items invented or discovered by accident. Harrison Ford, Johnny Depp, and Mel Gibson never auditioned for their respective breakout roles. Had it not been for three inventors figuring it out, we’d not have tea bags, Post-It Notes, or microwave ovens.

Only because those people decided to start over, do we have some of the most significant inventions and have been exposed to some of the most compelling performances fo our time.

In a much older post, Diem wrote of  the significance of each day.

What’s the most significant day of your life?

That is the favorite conversational question of my father’s.  Growing up I have heard many responses, all of them preceded by a long pause. I could see the brains racing through the events of the years to pick that life changing one, noteworthy and profound enough to share. There are many to choose from, too numerous to sort through at the time as if the silence was too long to wait. Almost everyone answers my father’s question with a milestone: graduation, wedding, birth of a child, death of a parent, or an event that has profoundly affected them such as an end of a war or 9/11. They then explain in detail how that changed the course of their lives. I can see their faces soften and their eyes twinkle as they recall that moment.

We are undoubtedly shaped by the circumstances and people around us, directly and indirectly. Sometimes we have input in the outcome and sometimes choices are made for us. In our work as caregivers and gatekeepers of medicinal treatments, we are given great trust to dispense hope as we dispense the remedies to alleviate pain and disease. We are held in high esteem by the patient as healers.

Imagine that someone’s most significant day is the day that person received a lifesaving treatment that you facilitated! Every interaction you have is an opportunity to make a difference on somebody’s life, and that ripple extends to their circle of influence of family members and friends.

There is no way to tell while something is happening if it will be a significant event or just another part of another everyday day in your life. You can tell something is significant as Diem noted that when you tell the tale of it, your face softens and your eyes twinkle as you recall the moment.

Not knowing if you should start over may be more anxiety provoking than accepting that your first attempts were less than total successes. That’s when “Start Over Day” comes in handy as it offers you a chance to accept your setbacks, even failures, and try again. Learn from that disappointing experience, change a few things, and start from scratch to make it better.

Taking another chance and starting over can mean the beginning of a new adventure.