What an intriguing and, for many, frightening idea. Who hasn’t at some point wished that they could just start over? Of course, the wish always comes with some very specific strings attached! Strings like “I’d like to start over knowing what I know now.” The problem is that if I try to start over knowing what I know now I’m obviously not truly starting over. The challenge (and this is why most won’t or can’t do it) is to start over by forgoing what I know now – at least long enough to truly assess today free of the filters of yesterday.
This is why sustaining something is so difficult. What’s seemingly impossible not to do is look at our current reality through the filters of lessons accumulated, experiences had and decisions that have worked and not worked. We seldom are able to approach today with a fresh set of eyes. We seldom consider the data, facts, and information in front of us without assigning meaning to it. Meaning that is generated through the influence of all we “know now”. And, as soon as meaning has been tacked on to something our behavior lines up right behind it and we end up doing life the way we have always been doing it. In the words of Peter Drucker, the sage of management and organizational studies, “the source of your success will be the source of your failure.”