Yes, life happens!! We win, We Lose!! it’s all embedded in the journey. When you fail at anything, there is every tendency to give up, and that is why you shouldn’t give up. If you are reading this article, then you have made a choice to start over and I must commend you because this time you will succeed using these tips I will share as you read on.
The feeling of being stuck in life is real and sometimes we all feel we need to start afresh. But having a fresh start is not just something to merely desire. It is something you can have and it is needed in life sometimes.
No matter how far you have gone in the wrong direction, you don’t have to spend another day in that direction. You can take a turn right now and practically start your life on a new course like the old never existed.
How To Start Over (Watch Video Below)
With my experience of failures and trying again until I succeeded, I will share 10 golden rules on how to start over in life after a major loss, setback or disappointment.
1. Stop Beating Yourself Up
2. Reassess Your Desires and Dreams
3. Identify Your Pitfalls
4. Set New Goals
5. Commit To What You Can Control.
6. Set Your Environment To Your Favor
7. Identify Your Triggers To Avoid Them
8. Ask For Help: Get Counselling And Knowledge
9. Reevaluate Your Life Periodically
10. Have A Positive Mindset Towards An Expected End
1. Stop Beating Yourself Up
It is true that for you to have gotten to this point in your life you must have made several poor choices, but guess what?
Everybody has!
You are not a jerk for following the wrong path. On the contrary, the fact that you are reading this is proof that you have a growth mindset and want to make meaning out of your life.
Since this is true, you must immediately stop beating yourself up and living in guilt for your past mistakes and poor choices. Guilt and progress cannot coexist.
When you stay guilty, your mind is focused on the past and nobody goes forward looking backwards. Rather than make things better, what guilt does is increase the likelihood of you repeating those mistakes.
If your mind is focused on the past, it means you’re only giving minimal attention to the present and the future.
Because of this, your chances of missing out on some important details are increased and you’re one step closer to failure again. Save yourself the stress and forgive yourself.
Focus on the present and what you expect of your new course in life.
2. Reassess Your Desires and Dreams
One of the greatest tragedies of going through difficult times and failing is the loss of our dreams. Your dreams are what keep your drive for life alive.
Once they are no more, living becomes routine and drudgery. So this is the first asset you must reclaim to start over in life.
Dig deep into your heart and sincerely ask yourself, “what do I really want?” “What do I want my life to look like?”
If these questions are too difficult for you to answer as they are for many after unpleasant experiences, you can break them down.
- What five causes or activities do I feel are cool to be engaged in although they are a bit out of my reach?
- Which three people are currently living a kind of life I admire?
- What can I get that will feel like a good payback for the years I’ve wasted?
- What kind of stories will I enjoy telling about myself in the next five years?
These are questions that can rekindle your desires and dreams. As much as possible, make sure your answers are not being influenced by your past failures.
To some people thinking, “I know I can’t do this thing because I’m a mess. But if I were not a mess, what would I do?” helps them reach those lost desires.
After identifying them, you then delete “I am a mess” from your mind because you truly are not a mess.
You can also try talking to people who think highly of you and listen to them talk about what they think you can do. The goal here is to reach your innermost dreams and desires again.
3. Identify Your Pitfalls
Now that you have identified the kind of life you want to live, you need to identify the mistakes you have made that stopped you from living that dream life.
This is not to make you feel bad again but to map out a correction plan. If you don’t know what you did wrong, chances are you will repeat them.
For example, if you have had several failed relationships and your heart is completely broken and you want to start over, identifying what went wrong in those relationships will put you at an advantage.
Failures can either be treated as lesions or lessons. They are lesions when you can only identify how hard they hit you and how awful you feel as a result.
They are lessons however when you know, the “99 ways not to make an electric bulb” like Thomas Edison.
So if you noticed that in all those failed relationships you constantly were allowing the other persons to cross your boundaries, you are empowered with the right approach for your next relationship.
Making mistakes doesn’t make you a dumb person. It makes you wiser when you pick lessons from them.
If you can’t find what you did wrong that brought you to this point, you might want to pick up some books in the areas of your desires or talk to an expert in that field.
A book on healthy relationships will, for instance, point out wrong steps you may have taken along the line
4. Set New Realistic Goals
Now that you know what you want and what stopped you from getting it, the next step to starting over is to set new goals.
Goals are simply statements of desired outcomes within specific timeframes. For instance, I want to increase my monthly income to 7000 dollars by the end of this year.
You probably will not see a teaching on goal setting that doesn’t tell you to set SMART goals. Well, I’m telling you too.
Your goals must be SPECIFIC. What exactly do you want to see? “I want my life to be better” is not a goal. How should your life be better? Get specific.
Your goal must be MEASURABLE. “I want to make more money” is more specific than the first but it is not measurable. Your goal is measurable when it has an end and you can tick a box saying completed.
A $1 addition to your income is more money and 1 billion dollars is also more money. How much more money do you want? Make it measurable.
Your goal must be ACHIEVABLE. I want to smile every second of my life is not achievable. You can’t smile while spitting. lol.
Next, your goal must be REASONABLE. Some other goals are achievable but not reasonable. It is possible to make 4 new friends every day but it is not reasonable.
You won’t have enough time in your life to keep up with all of them.
Lastly, your goal must be TIME-BOUND. It should have a deadline.
For starting your life over, I wouldn’t advise your timeframe should be two weeks. 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years are more reasonable time frames because that’s how long it takes to see significant changes in your life.
After all, these, ensure your goals are written. Written goals have a way of keeping you more committed than goals you keep in your head
5. Commit To What You Can Control.
This is especially important to state after telling you to set goals. There are two types of goals. They are outcome goals and input goals.
Outcome goals are all the examples we have considered so far. I want to be happier, I want to be richer, and so on. They are results you desire to get.
On the other hand, input goals are actions you must take for those desires to manifest. Making more money is not something you can control but work more hours is something you can control.
Learning a new skill is not something you can control but spending two hours practising is something you can.
Stopping your friends from leaking your secret isn’t something you can control but what you tell them is. You get the point.
For every result you want, tear it apart and identify what you can do, and commit to just that. Don’t fuss about the outcomes. They will come as long as you’re committed to the input.
Again if you don’t know what input can bring your desired outcome, pick up a book, listen to a podcast, or talk to an expert.
6. Set Your Environment To Your Favor
This is certainly not the first time you are setting goals, but how far have you gone in achieving them? If you don’t do things differently you won’t see different results.
So don’t expect that you’ll automatically commit to your plan and achieve your desires. You have to set a system around it. James Clear is famous for saying, “you don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
Your systems give you discipline. And don’t get too overwhelmed. Your system simply means your environment. Controlling your environment is outsourcing discipline.
If the way you want to start over is to change your diet patterns and begin to eat healthily, you can outsource discipline by making sure your fridge does not contain cakes or anything you want to avoid.
Tell your family and friends so they don’t invite you for lunch with that menu. Avoid staying too long on the row where they are kept in the supermarket before you “mistakenly” add them to your cart.
This is reducing the demand for you to resist.
Depending on your goals and the kind of life you want to design, your environment includes the books you read, the friends you keep, the movies you see, the places you stay, and the songs you listen to.
Make all these supportive in pushing you towards your goals. Ultimately your environment creates you, fortunately, you create your environment.
7. Identify Your Triggers And Avoid Them
This step is also focused on helping you move toward the new life you desire. Since this is a path you haven’t taken or committed to before, there’d certainly be triggers that will draw you back to what you are used to.
You must identify them to avoid them. If you want to start over and live a life free of depression, you know that your triggers include staying alone in dark rooms and binging Netflix.
Although the temptation will be tough, you must intentionally avoid that posture whenever you see the likelihood of it coming.
If all your siblings begin to leave the house and it is seeming like you’ll be the only one at home, you can quickly call a friend while you are still excited by the presence of family and go over to their place.
Don’t wait till you’re left alone. At that point, you have given your trigger an upper hand and it will be more difficult to escape.
You can do this in any situation. Pay attention to the patterns you follow when you go back to the habit of your past life then quickly alter the sequence once the pattern begins to play out
8. Ask For Help: Get Counselling and Knowledge
Do not try to restart your life in isolation. You can, but it’ll be easier when you have a support system.
You should have people who are more experienced than you, whose insight you can learn from. Whenever you are facing difficulties or it seems you can’t progress in this new path anymore, quickly run to them.
Having someone to run to makes a whole lot of difference.
You should also have people going through similar transformations as you are who you can get encouragement from. They will make you know that you are not alone and you can share experiences.
You can always find people living the kind of life you want to live on the internet. There’s a Facebook group for it, there’s a YouTube channel for it, and there’s a blog about it.
Although these online platforms might not be as effective as having them physically, it helps give you a sense of belongingness.
Lastly, you should also share your journey with someone who has not gotten to this point in their life like your younger siblings or neighbours.
We have a sense of accountability when we know that someone is looking up to us for the right example. This sense of accountability doesn’t even come from having a mentor or coach; it is more intrinsic and effective as well
9. Reevaluate Your Life Periodically
Now you have come a long way since you started your life over but you can easily slip out of the part without knowing.
The solution to this is to re-evaluate your life from time to time.
Pick up the book where you wrote your desires and goals (one of the reasons why I said you should write them down).
Measure how far you have accomplished the outcome goals (remember your goals are measurable).
Identify the mistakes and challenges that are coming up on this new path and strategize on how you can overcome them.
It is not strange if after some time you discover that your desires and goals have changed.
That’s the point of revaluation. If you discover that you now want a different trajectory for your life, repeat the process and continue to move.
Your life mustn’t be stuck in one direction. You should keep moving as long as it is a path that is satisfying to you
10. Have A Positive Mindset Towards An Expected End
Never think of the negative when starting over. Keep a positive mindset as this will help you press forward. Even in areas where you have failed before, keep your expectations right. A positive mindset is needed to start afresh, especially after a major loss or failure.
It is highly recommended that you must have the right attitude always and this is why it is the 10th rule. After following all 9 rules above, this is the jackpot or the icing on the cake.
Conclusion
How to start over after loss or failure can be summarized as forgiving yourself, reassessing your dreams, identifying your pitfalls, setting new goals, committing to what you can control, creating the right environment, avoiding your triggers, asking for help, reevaluating your life, and having a positive mindset
Life is a journey of adventures, enjoy the adventure and own your life.
