BEGIN AGAIN TO AVOID PERMANENT QUITTER ATTITUDE

Failure awaits those who forget to begin again.

It’s one thing to walk away from mistakes, and only one way to make it better.

You need to look at what happened, and begin again.

Make a new mistake, learn from the process and fail better.

I can’t recommend it as an every day thing like I do on this blog, but the rewards are many.

What exactly are the benefits of starting over?

The first is knowing you’re not a quitter. If you’ve ever been called a quitter, you know the sting.

Whether you believed someone else’s evaluation of you as a quitter, or not, no one needs to carry that around.

“Why did I quit? You knew I was a quitter when I started. That’s what we do, we quit on things, people, and places.”

For personal well being, make an effort to correct that opinion. Good mental health says the image of yourself as a big old quitter is a bad idea.

Delete that image by trying what you failed at one more time. Is it better to be a failure than a quitter?

Consider the seven times married man. He’s no quitter.

Instead, he embraces his failures and tries again. And again and again. That was my Granddad. He said he liked a new car and a new wife every seven years or so.

The Planned Failure To Begin Again

Consider the beginning wood worker. They make a box for practice. Cutting practice, sawing practice, joinery practice, clamping practice.

The first box needs more accurate measuring, better angles, and tighter joints.

A second box looks better, as does every box after, until they can knock out precision cut masterpieces worthy of museum collections. Do that and you can build anything, or feel like you could build anything.

The difference between the first box and the last is the same difference between a difficult piece of music and an easy piece. What makes the difference?

Practice.

John Lennon and Pablo Picasso share share a quote about art. They say everyone is an artist as a child, and stay an artist until they grow up and someone tells them they’re not an artist.

What happens to the creative interest to make something, then begin again on a new project?

Think about that the next time you some some embittered old man spew his bile into a microphone to explain why you suck if you don’t agree with them.

Fox News has a 24/7 channel for reminders, and it works. They’ve wormed their failure message into tens of millions of Americans convincing them they are being replaced, or canceled, or ignored.

Authority Fashion In Your Face

We grow up listening to authority figures. Parents, teachers, ministers. If they were men they all presented the same image: shirt and tie and jacket.

So we grow to assume any jackass in a shirt and tie and jacket has our best interests in mind.

Then, if we’re men, we put on a shirt and tie and jacket and what happens? We are instant authorities.

I met a man in commercial real estate who said no one paid him any attention in his twenties. Saying the same things and wearing the same clothes, he turned thirty and the same people found him to be a wealth of information.

Are we that easily swayed? Can someone look like a trusted resource and still be a low down skunk? We’re living in that reality today.

Let’s begin again and ignore the image of authority and trust to focus on the message that promises better outcomes.

Ignore the shitheel governor in the blue suit, white shirt, and red tie claiming medical knowledge on how to best handle covid.

People who need people to believe them no matter how far fetched they go are just another poison.

“Don’t get vaccinated, don’t wear a mask, and join any large group of mouth breathers and you’ll be fine,” is the wrong message. It’s wrong in Florida, wrong in Arkansas, wrong in Texas.

Follow Picasso Instead

This man was a leader in his field, famous far and wide as one of the greatest of all time. Go back to the top image to see a real authority in his field in his studio work space.

The images reveal large rooms cluttered with paintings, sculptures, and drawings — some still in progress — that speak to the sheer volume of art-making their walls witnessed as well as to the variety of material with which Picasso worked. 

This guy started something new all of the time.

I was surprised to learn that he wasn’t as well received by other artist of his time.

During a walk around the Paris neighborhood of Montmartre I listened to a guide explain why Picasso was banned from his fellow artists studios.

“He would see their work, copy it, do it better, and have it on the market before them.”

How many artists of the era pulled the curtains and shut the door on Picasso? Did Matisse? Cézanne?

Picasso is famous for his shirtless pictures. No suit and tie for him, but he was a guiding light.

Taking advice from a talking head on a television screen is as easy as believing that people storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan.6 was a simple tourist visit.

It wasn’t. Neither was the Bombing of Guernica.

When circumstances spiral down and it feels like it will never stop, start something new.

Go ahead and begin again to clear things up. Tell me how it’s going in comments.