The Gift of Starting Over.

“Though you cannot go back and make a brand-new start by You can start now, and make a brand-new end.“

Every day is an opportunity to start over again with new vigour, making thousands of tiny choices that can lead to sustainable excellence and greatness. We are all given 24 hours, 1,440 minutes and 86,400 seconds to begin afresh, realign our priorities and live our values to the best of our abilities. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift that is why it is called the present. Today is the tomorrow you looked forward to yesterday, seize the day and make today count. Excellence is ultimately achieved by making every single day a masterpiece by showing up daily and doing your very best. Embrace the gift of starting over daily and taking baby steps toward achieving your goals.

Your path to achieving any worthwhile goal will be a rollercoaster of ups and downs, false starts, the messy middle, the temptation to give up, the multiple distractions, self-doubt and naysayers that might hinder getting things done. The struggle is guaranteed, but success is not guaranteed. The key to achieving your goal will be getting up whenever you fall or lose track of your endgame. Start with why, remember why you started, and re-access and review your goals consistently to determine if you are on the right course. Nothing great comes easily; it is going to be a dogfight. As the saying goes, it is not about the dog in the fight but about the fight with the dog. Somedays will be more challenging than the other but you have to see the end in mind and keep showing up, day in and day out.

We often exaggerate yesterday, overestimate tomorrow and underestimate today.

Today Matters ¹

In Today Matters: 12 Daily Practices to Guarantee Tomorrow’s Success, author John C. Maxwell observed that “The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.” Maxwell write:

If you make a few key decisions and then manage them well in your daily agenda, you will succeed. You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. You see, success doesn’t just suddenly occur one day in someone’s life. For that matter, neither does failure. Each is a process. Every day of your life is merely preparation for the next. What you become is the result of what you do today. In other words . . .YOU ARE PREPARING FOR SOMETHING.

You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.

The most successful people in life are the ones who settle their critical issues early and manage them daily . The earlier you settle the critical issues in your life, the greater your potential for success. When it comes to change, there are really only three kinds of people:

1. Those who don’t know what to do
2. Those who know what to do but don’t do it
3. Those who know what to do and follow-through

Effortless Action ²

There are two types of results: linear and residual. Whenever your efforts yield a one-time benefit, you are getting a linear result. Every day you start from zero; if you don’t put in the effort today then you don’t get the result today. It’s a one-to-one ratio; the amount of effort you put in equals the results received. But what if those results could flow to us repeatedly, without further effort on our part?

With residual results you put in the effort once and reap the benefits again and again. Results flow to you while you are sleeping. Results flow to you when you are taking the day off. Residual results can be virtually infinite. Effortless Action alone produces linear results. But when we apply Effortless Action to high-leverage activities, the return on our effort compounds, like interest on a savings account. This is how we produce residual results.

“Nothing is easier than saying words. Nothing is harder than living them, day after day. What you promise today must be renewed and redecided tomorrow and each day that stretches out before you.” – Arthur Gordon

Effortless Action means accomplishing more by trying less. You stop procrastinating and take the first obvious step. You arrive at the point of completion without overthinking. You make progress by pacing yourself rather than powering through. You overachieve without overexerting.

If you want to make something hard, indeed truly impossible, to complete, all you have to do is make the end goal as vague as possible. That’s because you cannot, by definition, complete a project without a clearly defined end point. You can spin your wheels working on it. You can tinker with it. You can (and likely will) abandon it. But to get an important project done it’s absolutely necessary to define what “done” looks like.

Meditations

Daily Calm with Tamara Levitt – Trending

Cultivating our mindfulness practice is something like planting trees in an orchard. If we plant a peach seed, it will grow into a peach tree. And after a few years, it will bear peaches. As one sows, so shall one reap. But it is not enough to drop the seed in the ground and return years later to collect our fruit. We must take great care, returning daily to nurture and tend to it. And we want to ensure that the soil provides a healthy foundation for a vigorous tree.

Our tendency is to be interested in something that is growing in the garden, not in the bare soil itself. But if you want to have a good harvest, the most important thing is to make the soil rich and cultivate it well. – Shunryu Suzuki

If we practice patience, we will grow in patience. If we practice acceptance, we will grow in acceptance. We can set out to achieve our goals without doing the everyday work that will lead us there. We must pour ourselves into the process of integrating mindfulness into our lives. This means making thousands of tiny choices that result in a disciplined and progressive practice, such as meditating when we feel tired, challenging our reactivity in arguments and calling on the breath to calm our surge of anxiety.

By creating these habits daily, we are building a foundation that will grow stronger over time. Like the growth of a peach tree, changing the habit pattern of the mind takes time. Embrace the task of tending to your practice, enjoying each unique growth phase as it sprouts, grows and flourishes.

Daily Jay with Jay Shetty – The Gold That Lies Within

Sometimes, we place protective layers over ourselves because it feels dangerous or scary to display our true essence, yet that clay can harden. What began as a thoughtful act of care turns into something permanent, and our genuine nature stays hidden. We may even forget who we are to the point of overlooking the gold that lies within us.

When there is danger, a turtle pulls in all of its limbs and takes shelter in its shell, but when everything is safe, it reaches out its leg, arm, and head to soak in the sun. Ideally, that is how we want to be, but be discerning, never lose sight of your fundamental beauty, and when times change, let that radiance shine.

Daily Trip with Jeff Warren – Clarity in the Depths

At any one moment, and especially in stressful moments, there can be all kinds of thoughts and feelings pulling us in all directions. With mindfulness, we bring more clarity to the depth.

Podcast