The power of the reset button

It is a well-known fact that many routes can lead to most destinations and the smoothness of our journey to a specific destination depends largely on the condition of the roads we travel on.

Many of us prefer to have a smooth journey and a lot of people actually experience that but I think unfavorable travel conditions sometimes lead people to re-route their journey and or adopt a new strategy. This process is not always fun as they may have to go back to their origin to re-strategize or to tweak their driving skills in response to the road conditions during the journey. For the purpose of this write up, let us call the process of re-strategizing at the origin the “reset”.

The truth of the matter is that there are many options at our disposal to reach a desired destination but the decisions we make as we move and the actions we take will determine if we will get there within the expected time frame. This short piece will focus on the importance and benefits of a reset at certain times in our lives.

At every point in our lives, we have different goals. Some are short term while some are long term. I find that we manage the short-term goals better because the weight they carry in our lives cannot be compared to that of our long-term goals. The resulting effect is that we can easily move on to other things even if we fail to accomplish some of these short term goals. Our long-term goals on the other hand require a good deal of our time and they vary depending on the stage we are in life. So,usually we don’t naturally move on quickly because of the time and resources invested if they do not work out for any reason. For some of us, it is starting a career and gaining experience. For others, it could be switching careers or getting a better job, getting married, starting a family, starting a business, getting into public service, volunteering, traveling, ministration and the list goes on.

Let us take a moment to think of these goals as the destinations mentioned earlier and the roads to these destinations as the platform on or through which we get there. It will be easy for me to come up with with different scenarios to show the common difficulties most people encounter in their journeys and also how they made a reset or a series of resets in their lives but I would like to make this personal to you and I so that way we can relate better. It is easy so let us dive into it!

Take note of your achievements in life up until this point as they relate to the goals you set for yourself at some point. Then think about how smooth your journey was to certain destinations and also how difficult it was to get to the other ones. The smooth journey often entails you following a laid down template and things working together for your good as expected. 

Now, think about when you had to tweak your ideas to adapt to unexpected conditions just for you to be able to accomplish your goals. You still had to follow a sort of laid down template but used a different option and things worked out for good in the end for you.

These two scenarios show that you had some form of control or maybe you had to discover how to control things DURING your journey. There is one more scenario.

Do you remember the time(s) that you had to go back to the drawing board or simply put make a complete reset? These times for some are called terrible or dark times and it looked like the journey was not meant to be or your methods of executing your daily tasks to yield the desired result(s) were just NOT working. You probably thought you lost control! This outcome probably forced you to travel an entirely different path or adopt new methods to execute the required tasks(you tweaked your driving skills - paragraph 2). Think about how this relates to your finances, business ventures, marriage and marital life, freedom, education, health and fitness, religion, acquisition of assets, doing away with bad habits and so on and so forth. 

For those who made a reset and re-embarked on their journey to achieve their goal(s), these are some of the qualities I strongly believe they possess:

1. Admission of failure or things out of their control
2. Humility
3. Resilience
4. Desire to improve
5. Confidence
6. Experience
7. Determination; and
8. Action

**You can add more if you want**

The first solution to a problem is admitting there is a problem so this is vital to activating the reset button. It is note worthy though that admission of failure is not admission of defeat and it is not always our fault when things do not work out because other factors play massive roles in our endeavors as well. If we take responsibility, chances are we will get back on track in no distant time. 

It takes a humble man to admit certain things and a resilient man to not give up in the face of adversity. The desire to improve takes us to the drawing board to map out a new plan or to choose another route. Confidence helps us to set out AGAIN. 

Experience allows us to see things better, maybe quicker and adapt real quick while determination fuels the execution of our plans. 

Finally none of these would mean or result to anything if action is not taken so you all embodied these characteristics.

Life is a cycle and we may need to do these over and over again as we venture into new things. For those of us who have re-embarked, congratulations! And for those who have not, I pray we would be able to do that when the time is right. Is that time now??

My hope is for our journeys to be as smooth as possible but I think we should not waste time when it becomes clear that we need to get back to the origin to make that RESET. 

Push the button with your chest out and your head high!

Thank you,

Jide Dawodu