Second chances. Have you gotten one lately? We all secretly wish for them, don't we? And occasionally, they do arrive. But have you been busy preparing for your second chance in the interim? If not, you'll likely repeat your mistakes rather than overcome them. Be vigilant in your preparation because as you'll see from my experience, the years might pile up in between first.
Second chances in life can be few and far between. When you get one, it's a unique opportunity for a new choice or behavior - different than the first chance where the choices made turned out to be missteps. Meaningful second chance opportunities don't come around often. By meaningful, I mean those few important times in your life that you'd like to have back again - to act differently - to choose differently. Most often, we take the lessons learned from those original instances and apply them in other similar instances going forward but rarely, if ever, do we get a second chance at the exact instance. Lately, my own life has experienced a series of meaningful second chances that completely took me by surprise.
As I've mentioned before, I don't live in the past. I live quite contentedly in the present, totally at peace with my past missteps. Some of those missteps were pivotal in my personal development despite the pain caused or endured. Like many other people, I've bungled a few critical moments in life. Some lessons I've learned, others I'm still learning, and undoubtedly, there are some I'm probably destined to never learn. Such is life. We do the best we can. The key is to remain a willing pupil throughout.
Strangely, the second chances I was presented with were several decades old. I accepted and resolved my particular missteps in those situations a long time ago. I had no desire for an exact second chance on either front. Getting an exact second chance is a scary test of if you've really learned anything. If you fail it, it's a case of 1 step forward and 2 steps back. Not fun. In my own case, two second chances arrived nearly simultaneously, and my initial reaction was to avoid taking either test. I quickly realized, however, that's a case of 1 step forward, 1 step back. Stuck, not going anywhere. I equated that with failure because actually taking the test offered a chance to progress. My advice is to embrace the second chance for better or worse.
The first of my second chances was my 30 year high school reunion, that I initially sought to avoid. I'm glad I didn't - 2 steps forward. The other second chance, an exact carbon copy, was professional and dealt with matters over a decade old. I'm confidently determined to make different choices because I faced my original failure and resolved it long ago, never expecting or desiring the second chance thrust upon me. But I'm increasingly thankful about getting it nonetheless. I suppose I'm about to find out if I've really learned anything.
My point today is that you never know when or in what form that second chance opportunity might occur in your life. The two personal instances I shared stacked several decades in between first. Probably a fortunate thing for me, because I'm fairly sure I'd fail the test if they had come sooner in my life. I didn't realize it explicitly until afterwards, but I've been preparing for those second chance tests for several years, applying and re-learning the lessons of ill-fated choices and behaviors through the 7 Cornerstone principles of Discipline, Faith, Determination, Perseverance, Sacrifice, Patience, and Loyalty. There is no secret formula for living - only useful guides for the grueling process of improving - so you can be better prepared for your second chances.
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