Square One

The Grasshopper popped in one day, years ago, with this phrase:

“Never-ending beginnings.”

That got me curious. What did he mean by that?

I came away with this: We begin each day with a clean slate. An opportunity to start over. To go back to the world’s most famous piece of real estate . . . Square One.

We have a choice.

We can be like the movie Groundhog Day and keep repeating the same day, or we can start anew.

Starting over is often looked at as failure. And yet, sometimes starting over is exactly what puts us on the path to something new.

When we fail at something, our conditioned tendency is to get caught up in the “what I should have done” drama, instead of asking a much more useful question:

“What do I do NOW?”

Even if you’re not a football fan, you can probably appreciate this scenario.

There are 20 seconds left in the game. Twenty seconds to win it or lose it.

The quarterback calls a pass play and tells the receiver, “When you catch the ball, get out of bounds. That’ll stop the clock and give us enough time to try a winning field goal.”

Well, the receiver catches the pass . . . but instead of stepping out of bounds, he runs forward. He gets tackled in bounds, and the clock keeps running.

The quarterback in his frustration runs over and chews the guy out for not getting out of bounds.

And while he’s doing that, the clock runs out.

Game over.

What if, instead of reaming him a new one, the quarterback had simply quickly reset and called another play?

He might have had another chance to win the game.

Instead, he whined out the clock.

We get an opportunity to begin again every moment of every day.

Going back to Square One doesn't erase what happened. It gives us the opportunity to use what happened . . . and the wisdom to call another play.

All the best,

John