Question: I often try during the day to start over, but quite honestly, no matter what I tell myself, I rarely feel anything dramatic happening. I may become aware of myself for a moment, but I can't seem to get free of my anger, or nervousness, or whatever else I'm feeling at the time. Maybe I'm trying too hard, but it seems that nothing new ever happens.
Response: To really "start over" is not a mental process, although the mind must be used for the approach -- much as a ladder leads up to a wall -- but can't take you over to the other side -- a leap is needed.
Your Real Nature, call it what you will, is a present being. This elevated self does not need to start over because it dwells permanently in the now. These aren't just words. There really does exist this nature, as well as the possibility of our dwelling within its ever-present life. Defeat and its myriad problems don't exist for this self, because it has no past. It's new now. And so can we be new now, if we're first fed up inwardly with our old, false nature; and secondly if we're willing to really let go of this nature as we understand what that means. That's what our higher studies are for: to grow in greater and greater understanding that leads up to a whole new and now nature.
In short, we need to wake up. You can do it right now. Put this letter down and just be quietly aware of yourself -- without thinking about it. This kind of awareness suspends habitual, self-referencing thought, and in that momentary absence of the mechanical thought nature, we touch another life: one whose nature is the same as "starting over."
The truth is that nothing in life can stop you from starting your life all over, at anytime, because the true fabric of life is a cosmic weave of ceaseless beginnings. That's right. Your power for starting over is backed up by Reality itself, which will place its supreme strength on the side of whoever chooses it over self-ruinous states. All that is needed to put the power of this ever-renewing truth to work in your life is for you to consciously agree to view any unwanted or unhappy moment not as some unavoidable ending, but as the temporary and passing condition that it really is.