The Only People Who Don’t Get Second Chances Died Taking The First One - Grasshopper

I guess that’s The Grasshopper’s peculiar way of saying, “If you’re drawing breath, you still have an opportunity at a second chance.”

Second chances have a lot better odds when you follow the real world advice of fictional, anti-terrorist agent Jack Bauer, “ . . . part of getting a second chance is taking responsibility for the mess you made in the first place.”

 

Making amends is a time-tested door opener for second chances, but many of us transgressors rarely knock. My experience is we fear the perceived wrath more than we want a second chance.

 

The perceived wrath is “being wrong.” The paths we will travel to avoid the direct route of admitting wrong are countless. None of those paths lead to second chances.

 

Being wrong doesn’t fit with our made up image of ourselves. We have come to believe that we are our beliefs and one of those beliefs for many of us is that we can never be wrong. Being wrong shatters the perfection we have assigned to our way of believing.

 

Notice that you can more easily believe in right than you can wrong when it comes to you. That just doesn’t measure up with the laws of probability. You’re just as likely to be wrong as you are right, but you don’t believe that.

 

As long as you have that solidly held belief, your chance of getting a second chance that has a chance is nonexistent.

 

Beliefs that aren’t working for you need to be unraveled. Find a loose thread in that belief and start tugging on it. Pulling on a loose thread is the beginning of dismantling a belief. Continue the practice and before too long you’ll be able to embrace wrong.

 

The door to second chances can always be knocked on. The trick to increasing your odds of getting one is knowing the right way to knock.