"Do overs" don't always happen!!

Most of us have benefited from time to time by being given a second chance. Something just didn’t go right when we first tried and then a door opened to give us another chance. We have heard all types of stories of failures turning into success. Our lives are much richer because people tried again and saw positive results. Even though second chances are great there at least three things that we don’t always get “do overs.” Time is something we don’t get a second chance at. We all have twenty- four hours in our day to get things done and we never see that time again. I remember hearing that as you get older time goes faster. I never understood how that could be, but as I get older I do experience how time moves by.

Our words are another area that we often don’t get another chance. Sometimes we say things in way that we might hold the words until we’ve thought of them more. Whether the words are oral or written we should think them through. Sometimes our words can get us into serious problems and take longer to resolve than it would have taken to think them through in the first place, Years ago our insurance agency was having a problem with one of our companies. I wrote a terse letter to an executive and as a consequence we had our contract cancelled. We had been thinking of discontinuing our association with the company so not much was lost, however I learned a valuable lesson. One of my partners advised that I should write the letter, put it away for three days in order to think about it , then get it out, and send it if I still wanted to. Great advice!

Opportunity is also an area where we may not have another chance. When he was preparing me to be a sales manager my mentor Paul Hutsey told me that preparation and opportunity usually don’t happen at the same time. He counseled me to always be improving myself so that when the opportunity I wanted presented itself I would get ample consideration. Over the last forty years I have found his wisdom to be very important as career opportunities unfolded. Sometimes opportunities get past us because we have the wrong attitude about them. They come disguised as problems and we fail to see the opportunity until it is too late. Former Pru Vice President Frank Astolfi called them prob-ortunnities. His view was every problem presented its own set of opportunities. Or, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But, whatever you do, don’t let opportunity pass you by.