By Leo Babauta

One of the biggest obstacles to sticking with a habit change, a new system, a goal or long-term project … is that we get disrupted.

Something interrupts our progress - we skip a workout day or two - and then some programming in our brains turns that into a message of how we’re not good enough, we can’t do it, we should just give up.

This stops so many people from making long-term progress.

It stops us from simply starting again.

This is because most of us don’t realize the power and magic of a Fresh Start.

A Fresh Start is when we get to start anew, with a blank slate. It’s waking up to a brand new morning, with a day we get to use however we want.

When we miss a few days of meditation, or eat junk for a week because of various celebrations, or fall off from writing our book … instead of making that to mean that this whole thing is a waste of time or that we somehow suck … we can look at it as a Fresh Start.

I’m not simply reframing things to “be positive.” There’s a lot of power available to us in a Fresh Start that we miss out on.

A Fresh Start is magical:

• We can see the habit or project with fresh eyes, as if we’d never seen it before, and bring a sense of wonder and curiosity to what we’re doing

• There’s a sacredness to letting everything go from the past and just showing up in a new moment

• We can learn something from the past failure or disruption, and use this new start as a way to get better at that difficulty, armed with this new information, so that every Fresh Start becomes a new opportunity to learn, grow, get better at something

• We get to reinvent ourselves, reinvent what we’re taking on, reinvent what we want to make our lives to be

• We can recommit, and remind ourselves of why we’re committed to this

This is all missed when we ignore the magic and power of a Fresh Start!

The beautiful thing is that a Fresh Start is available to us not only when we get disrupted or stumble … but in every moment. Every day. Every new meditation or workout or work session. Every new meeting with someone, every new conversation.

Every new breath.