The Sanford Berenberg Experience: Message of the Day

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Message of the Day - Starting Over

Good Morning,

Last Friday, Karen and I attended Temple Shalom for the celebration of the Sabbath and Simchat Torah (where the Rabbi and Cantor read the end of the Torah, or the five books of Moses). As part of the ceremony, the Torah is brought out and is re-rolled up back to the beginning. That is, back to the book of Genesis. During this time, as the Torah is being re-rolled up, the Rabbi and Cantor were pointing out parts of the Torah as it moved by. There was the Ten Commandments, the Tabernacle, and many other parts of the scripture.

This made me think about our lives and how we sometimes have to start over. When I moved to Louisville, I had worked in call centers for some six years at this time and moved to management. After not finding a job right off, I started over and took a position as an front line phone representative. I signed up with Kelly Services and got a job as a front line analyst. I was a Kelly Girl!

Starting over opened the door for me to find something bigger and better for me, which included changing from a person who lived a majority of my life for personal gratification to one who lives to help others.

Had I fought the drive to start over and held out for management, I would have certainly went down a different path (I had already looked for some six months in Washington DC and that did not bode well either). The time I spent looking for a job would have grown longer and the situations in my life would have not been so open for me.

By giving up the urge, the ego driven urge, to hold out for management and not start over, I took what some would call the harder path of going back to square one and doing it all over again. In reality, the return to the beginning turned out to be a far better path, and easier.

We all are going to face situations and times in our lives where we will have to make that decision to press forward in our endeavors or look to step back a few paces and start over.

Some people will consider starting over as failure. Failure only happens when we quit. By going back and starting over, we give ourselves a renewed chance for success. We also reinforce these chances for success with re-learning skills we already knew and of course using our skills to hit the ground running.

What may seem like taking two steps back and one step forward is really taking a few steps back, and then one or two forward, and then a few more forward and so on.

If you are faced with a situation where you just cannot feasibly move forward. Your goals seem dashed, your resources drying up, and your willpower just about spent, then it may be time to look to get back to the basics and regroup.

Find a baseline from your past and look to step back to it. And then start your path to success again.

It may just be the ticket you need to get to your goals and dreams.

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg

Sanford@berenberg.net
http://www.berenberg.net

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
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