Have you ever watched a young child play a game?  If things aren’t going quite right, what do they do?  In case your not sure, I will remind you with a quick illustration.  Child is playing a game, child is not doing well at game, child innocently says: “Wait, wait, let me start over!”  Child starts over.

Children seem to have this ability to recognize when things are not going as they wish.  They also have the ability to start over without mulling over and over what they should have done different.  Children have a short memory.

Somewhere along the way, we as adults, have decided that a “do over” is a sign of weakness and that if we start over we have somehow failed.  Of course we can’t just throw in the towel the instant we don’t like what is going on, as a child does, but we may be well served in having the short memory of a child when things don’t work.

The minute a child says “do over” it is like the previous mistake or situation never occurred.  The child begins to work on a new plan to achieve their intended objective.  They somehow remember what wasn’t working and go about their new business with little or no fear.

I think that as adults we would be well served by learning the art of the “do over” as it has been perfected by millions of children all over the world.  There is nothing wrong with giving ourselves a clean slate.

Here is what I propose for the adult do-over.  Identify what isn’t working, acknowledge it, adapt to it, and start again.  We don’t need to dwell on what didn’t work but we must recognize and remember in order not to keep doing it over and over.

That is where the kids have gotten it right.  They will try and try until they get the desired result without dwelling on how many “do overs” they have had.  When whatever IT is that they want comes to them, they feel like they arrived there with no effort at all.  Because after all, they have an unlimited number of “do overs”  just like us adults!

Biggest Loser, life lessons, Matt Hoover

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010, 11:04 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.