James Bond said it this way. Never say “never again”.
I’ve simplified it to Never Say Never.
But the sentiment is the same.
It seems that each time we say that we will never repeat something, it almost calls it into existence, destined to happen again.
My personal belief is that painful or distasteful things repeat themselves because we don’t learn from them the first time around. This comes more from my experience as a parent than from business, but nevertheless, this is a definite ingredient in the success soup.
The best way to avoid painful and distasteful things in your life is to do a “post mortem” on each one. Don’t just put it behind you and hope it won’t happen again. Wishing won’t make it so.
Unpeel the onion. Figure out why it happened and purposefully determine how to keep it from happening again.
Make sure that you have someone in your life that was NOT involved in the event or situation and walk through it with them. Ask them to help you through your post-mortem process. Accept their input and observations. I refer to them as your Never Say Never Mentor.
Write a letter to each person involved in the event that you do not want to repeat. Write the letter with pen and paper, NOT online. There is magic that comes from putting it on paper. I can’t explain it, but it works.
You don’t have to mail that letter (and in fact should NOT mail it, ever), but read it out loud to the person that has agreed to help you work through this. In fact, don’ t just read it once, read it twice. The first time will be from your head. The second time will be from your heart. All your NSN mentor needs to do is listen. The real work will be happening behind the scenes.
Then go back and take off the gloves and rewrite the letter and say everything that you held back initially. Read it out loud one last time to your NSN mentor.
The amazing thing is that even if your mentor doesn’t say a word, here is what happens. By this time you are absolutely DONE with the past experience and you don’t want to tell or retell it ever again.
The really cool thing is that you also never want to live it again. And you are truly recrafting the future by taking control of removing the power of the past to repeat itself.
Don’t believe me? Try it.
Then we can all repeat the words with Sean Connery. Never say NEVER AGAIN. Because you don’t have to. You have stripped your “never again” of its power.
Thanks MK for being my NSN mentor. You changed my life!
Stay tuned. Finding an “O” for our success soup is tomorrow’s challenge.
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