This graphic from my real estate company offers good advice, but perhaps not enough.
Certainly starting over does provide an opportunity to build something better, but only if you have learned from your past failures and take a different path this time.
There is an old saying that insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Sadly, too many people take that approach to life. Most don’t stop to analyze why they failed the other times that they tried. They convince themselves that if they just work harder along the same path that they took before they will succeed. Often, that approach leads only to a slightly different failure.
Thomas Edison was famous for telling people how many times he failed at some of his greatest inventions before he got them right. Edison learned from each failure and took a slightly different path on each try.
Starting over also allows one to modify their goal and define a new end point or expected result. That is important because failures allow you to examine those goals or your definition of success. It might also allow you to set more realistic and achievable short-term goals on the way towards a larger long-term goal. That way you can celebrate those short-term wins to keep yourself motivated for the long haul.
One roadblock to starting over that many people allow is to become fixated on the “sunk money” or “sunk time” that you have invested in your failed approach. You may think that “I’ve come too far to start over”. Give yourself a break. Congratulate yourself instead for being too smart to continue down that dead end path. And don’t waste any time looking for a scapegoat to blame. Own the bad choices that you made; learn from them and move on.
A good habit to adopt is to frequently stop and evaluate what you have done, what you are doing and what you think will come next. Are you making progress against your short and long-term goals? Is there anything that needs to be adjusted or perhaps even abandoned and a new direction taken? Regularly reviewing and evaluating where you are and what you think is next will keep you from going too far down rat-holes and wasting time and resources.
So, don’t be afraid to start over, just make sure that you take a different path this time. Persistence and perseverance are not good traits to have if you use them on the wrong path. Learn from your past mistakes and build something better this time.
Posted by Norm Werner 
“What would Jesus do?”, but I submit that doing so abstracts the process too much. These are our decisions to make and it is up to us to make them. Perhaps a better way to phrase that last saying might be to ask yourself, “What would a person who follows the teachings of Jesus do?” That at least brings us full-circle back to thinking about the person that we’d like to be – a person who follows the teachings of Jesus.
against the stream of what appears to be commonly accepted practice. That requires courage and a strong belief that what you are about to do is the right thing, the thing that the person that you wish to be would do. Steve had a great quote for that –
protest the treatment of people of color or ethnicity. It takes courage to stand up and say that I will not be treated like an object anymore or take any more of your abuse. It takes courage to decide that you are not going to continue to “go along to get along” anymore. Be the person that you would like to be and act now, before “not now” becomes never in your life.
get yourself into and the reactions that you have to them. Ask yourself how the person that you would like to be would act and react in those situations. Would that person show courage or cowardice? Would that person act without thinking or think about it without acting and perhaps let not now become never?
they don’t know enough to handle customer situations. They quite correctly surmise that the training that was required to pass the real estate licensing test is pretty much useless for the day-to-day job of actually being a Realtor®. Real Estate One does provide them with additional training (marketing classes and in-office training on the details of the real estate process); however, they quickly see that there is a ton more to know and the fear of not knowing everything becomes a major roadblock to even trying. Some never overcome that fear and drop out because no business came to them and they were afraid to go after any new business. They feared looking like a fool in front of customers, instead of developing the ability to say, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out”, as they really learned the business.
adventure and the self confidence that they will be able to tackle any challenges that come along. If they fail, they fail; and they are OK with that because they will view it as a learning experience. The examples that Clear uses also show that they don’t let temporary setbacks stop them. They find a way to recover and move ahead. Some successful people have said later in life, “I was too dumb to know that it couldn’t be done, so I just did it.” They weren’t dumb; they just weren’t afraid to just get started.
Instead of focusing upon the things that you don’t know and the things you fear that someone may ask of you, focus instead of doing the best that you can, being as honest as you can and being unafraid of saying, ”I don’t know, but I know how to find out.” Just get started and take the rest as it comes. Successful people tend to be good problem solvers, but the problems that need to be solved, in order to reach success, will never occur, if you don’t get started.
self in the drive to get up and go to the gym every morning before work (or after work) or it might be the discipline to get that homework done before watching TV or playing a video game. Sometimes it’s just the will not to be beaten down by the trials that life hands you. When I think of the everyday winners that I’ve met or heard about, I think of the many single moms raising a family by themselves and wonder at their will to win, not for themselves so much as for their children. I also think of the caregivers, especially those caring for a loved one who can no longer even recognize them, but who have the will to continue trying to make their lives safe, secure and as 
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