Whenever we mess up we feel bad. When something bad happens to us or a dear loved one we feel devastated. The time around these occurrences creates a fog in our lives that keeps us from seeing a better tomorrow.
In our lives, tomorrows are always made up of next chances. If we are romantic, we will blindly say that the next chance will be different. It will be better. That the newness of the next encounter will make everything right.
But is it really so?
Next chances always have the power to change our lives but only if we bring with us to that moment some friends. The first is self-reflection where we try to understand what we did wrong the last time. Interestingly, we may know what we did wrong but then the fast twitch muscles in our brain and body short-circuit our learning about ourselves and we end up doing the same bad thing again.
Discipline and self-control then become brutally important in bringing the next chance the strength to propel you to a different & better outcome. They must keep your fast twitch muscles from pushing you to mindlessly make the same mistake.
Patience is then needed to help bring us the perspective to temper our expectations. To help provide us the wisdom to know that the next chance may only move us inches in a new direction the first time we choose differently.
Working together with discipline and self-control, patience gives us both the hope and passion to try again when our next chance appears knowing that over time, small things (that bring better outcomes) repeated over and over, become quite large seeing them grow over time through repetition.