Groundhog Day and other Do-Overs

Phil: What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?
Ralph: That about sums it up for me.

January is almost up Groundhog Day is fast approaching. What? You don’t celebrate this wonderful holiday? Perhaps you should! Groundhog Day is a holiday celebrated on February 2nd in the United States and Canada as hundreds of people wait to hear from either Punxsutawney Phil or Wiarton Willie if they are in for six more weeks of winter. By the way, their accuracy rate isn’t very impressive. But for me the only Groundhog Day worth talking about is Bill Murray’s 1993 movie with the same name. The main character Phil, played by Murray, was stuck in a time warp, and he relived the same day over and over and over again, and it was a movie that drove me crazy to watch. But the message and the metaphor of the movie is still superb and that is if we always do what we’ve always done, we’ll end up where we’ve always been, meaning the same old place! To grow and change our lives we have to do something different!

Einstein once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” So this is about countering the “insanity” and making room for the possibility of a “do-over” just as Bill Murray’s character got to do. Do-overs are second chances. But they are second chances that we make for ourselves. Like the man who, after being devastated at not making the basketball team in high school, tried again years later and got on a team as an adult. Or for the woman who had to go to work and missed out on university, but enrolled years later as a mature student. Saying “I’m sorry” is another type of do over. We don’t have to get stuck in the entrenched rhetoric of our interpersonal relationship conflicts. “I’m sorry” helps us move on.
What would you like to do over? I have a fridge magnet that says, “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood!” As an adult, you can change your mindset and attitudes and do things differently than you were taught to do as a child. You can make different choices. However, sometimes what is needed is forgiveness….of ourselves and our original choices and this if often a good place to start. If you’re not exactly sure how to go about this, use your dreams for guidance (which in personal growth and healing circles means, G(od) U+I +dance). Your dreams will tell you what is out of balance or needs changing if you take the time to listen. In the end, Groundhog Day is about overcoming our stuck places and allowing ourselves to transcend the “small stuff” (as in Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff”).  

At one point in the movie, before he finally gets his tomorrow, Bill Murray’s character, Phil (who is a weatherman) says, “You want a prediction about the weather, you're asking the wrong Phil. I'll give you a winter prediction: It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life.” ……..Unless you choose to do something differently! So let’s celebrate Groundhog Day as the day we do something different and start all our tomorrows heading in a new direction.