This was sent to me by my friend, Scott Carbonara, who is also a speaker, writer, and author of some great books, including Firsthand Lessons Secondhand Dogs. Check them out here! Thanks Scott! -Sam

Winters in the Midwest produce snow. Residents here have three options about how they choose to handle the winter’s bounty: they can enjoy it, endure it, or escape it. Since I’ve yet to the win the lottery, escape is not an option. And most of the time, truth be told, I’m rather like a kid: I love the snow.

But let’s not get crazy. It’s one thing to watch the snow blanket the earth in an even, clean cover of white while basking in the warmth of the fireplace. It’s another thing entirely to have to get dressed up like an Inuit to shovel it.

My kids were out of town visiting family recently. And things were fine for the first couple of days because the temperature remained moderate and the skies blue. However, I woke early one morning to find six inches of snow on the ground and more falling fast. Now I missed my kids for something more than companionship: I was down two shovellers!

By daylight, I decided to suck it up and start attacking the snow. I pushed my shovel down a straight path from one side of the drive to the other. By the time I reached the end, the shovel was too heavy to lift or even move. And as I looked back over my efforts from the place I first began, I was less than pleased to discover that my narrow path collapsed on itself. The only snowless patch of driveway was the first foot I cleared.

I tried another tactic. Instead of attacking the length of the drive, I pushed it from side to side at its narrowest breadths, maybe 12 feet across. Unfortunately, the snow depth was greater than the height of my shovel, and once again the snow spilled over the top and covered my efforts.

I evaluated my options carefully. At one point, I threw the shovel on the ground and headed toward the house, determined to wait until the warmth of spring melted my cares away. But that would be to admit failure. The laziness of that option pleased me more than the thought of the effort that would be required of me to make the snow be gone.

But I’m no quitter. Eventually, I divided the driveway in half. I pushed six feet of snow to the left, six feet of the snow to the right. Some snow still collapsed on what I had just cleared, but I continued moving it, making very slow but visible progress. Within the hour, I had about 30 feet of driveway cleared. Happy dance! An hour after that brought another 30 feet done.

An hour later still, and I could see the end in sight. But it didn’t sound like the end. It sounded more like a snow plow dumping two feet of snow on the end of my driveway that had remained relatively clean!

Isn’t that like the challenges in our lives? We recognize an opportunity for improvement, and we attack it. Sometimes we find ourselves overwhelmed or inadequate to complete the task. So we find another approach; we write another plan. And if we remain focused, we start to see progress. And progress feels good. We get into a rhythm, and it starts getting easier. We can look back at how far we’ve come, and it’s like a giant pat on the back from God. And we keep plugging away, getting happier by the moment….

And then POOF! Something happens. We suffer a setback. It doesn’t matter what caused it or who’s to blame. We find ourselves back to square one.

And our very humanness makes us want to scream “Foul! Foul! Unfair! I was almost done!”

Which is hooey. We are done when we are dead. Until then, we remain works in progress. Fortunately, even if we have to start over, we take with us our experiences about what to do differently or better next time. Where we’ve found some success before, we can find them again. We are no longer novices in our journey of life.

Perhaps this time our journeys will be even richer.

Are we more willing to ask for help along the way? Have we found wise mentors who can shape us as we recommit and start anew? Might this be a time to upgrade to Shovel 2.0….or Life 2.0?

Perfection is a goal, not a reality. What is it that set you back? Did you start smoking again? Blow your diet and exercise regime? Start slipping into old, negative patterns of thinking?

Are you ready to be real once again, to throw yourself back onto the path of success? Because you know, doing nothing will result in no change, no improvement, no potential for future success.

Look forward, not backwards. Past failure proves only this: you have tried at least once before. Try again. Recommit. The outcome might be different this time. Why? Because you are different. You are now experienced. What will you try again today?