Maybe starting over isn't the answer

Welcome to part two of the November Gratitude Series. This week, I want to talk about something that I usually don’t feel gratitude for: setbacks. These moments may seem like detours, but they can actually shape our journey in meaningful ways.

I’m tired of hitting the reset button on my goals.

I’m no stranger to ending something. I’ve started and stopped so many things – fitness journeys, personal rebrands, creative projects; at this point, I’m a natural-born quitter. Don’t get me wrong, I love the process of starting, but then… call it life, procrastination, or fear – whatever it is, what started out feeling so full of life now lays there incomplete.

Lately, I’ve been feeling the weight of these incompletions.

For the last two weeks, I’ve been trying to find the rhythm to get back into my groove after losing my momentum from a month of traveling. All the content plans I’d created, hitting my goal of running 30 miles in a month, finally establishing a schedule that felt like it worked – all felt like a waste of time. It felt like the progress I’d made was for nothing.

Naturally, I started questioning myself: What’s the point of even starting a journey I won’t finish? If I can’t stick to this, what does that say about my discipline or my ability to follow through? Am I just destined to never reach my goals?

The things I’ve been stumbling across online have only amplified this feeling.

With the “winter arc” fully among us, my feed has been filled with end-of-year reflections of people assessing the dreams they didn’t chase, the goals they let slip away, and the versions of themselves they never became. Each of these reflections shares a common thread: the need to start over fresh, “getting it right” this time.

But maybe the reason we’re not getting further in our journeys is because we keep forcing ourselves back to the beginning every time things stop or go wrong.

It’s easy to romanticize the idea of starting over. And you know what? I get it. It’s much harder to find gratitude in the messy and imperfect middle. It’s hard to feel thankful for missteps and misdirections, to find joy in fucking it up over and over again.

But starting over is what’s actually keeping you stuck.

And while picking up midstream doesn’t come with the dopamine rush of a shiny new goal or the thrill of a day-one mindset, there is power in finding the glimmer in our setbacks and powering through without hitting reset.

When we stop chasing the perfect starts and begin welcoming our imperfect progress, we see that those so-called “incompletions” are really just chapters waiting to be revisited – not erased.

Finding gratitude in our setbacks allows every misstep to become a lesson that can lead to unexpected growth and maybe even a more beautiful destinations.

Today, I’m not fixated on how many times I’ve stumbled backward. Instead, I’m carrying with me a few things to help me find the courage to move forward imperfectly:

1. I’m remembering that the end goal isn’t the focus. I stopped caring so much about the when and the how and instead fixated on the why. Growth happens in the process, not the outcome.

2. I’ve stopped feeling pressured to reinvent and overhaul my life overnight. Our worlds are made to be expansive. There’s no value in repeatedly scraping everything you’ve built to make room for what’s new.

3. I no longer obsess over lessons I wish I’d learned sooner. The timing of knowledge is perfect. I will gain the wisdom God desires for me to have in His perfect time and not a moment sooner.

4. I sit with my desires to “start over”, taking the time to notice whether these thoughts are driven by external pressures to reach perfection or internal doubts.

5. I don’t forget to thank past versions of myself. I congratulate myself for every time I didn’t crumple it up and throw it all away, acknowledging the power of my small, consistent steps.

I now recognize that every choice, even the unfinished ones, adds to the direction I’m heading. I don’t let minor setbacks keep me from experiencing the gratefulness that comes with growth.

This week, I invite you to do the same. Take a moment to reflect on something you once wanted to start over but glad you kept going. How did it feel picking up where you left off?

Maybe you’ll find a piece of wisdom you didn’t realize you gained. Maybe you’ll see how far you’ve already come. Share your thoughts with me, or take a moment to journal about it. But remember, there’s no need to start over. You’re already further along than you think.