A Fresh Coat of Paint

Dear lovely people,

It’s true and a fact that painting is a way to make a house look pretty. It equally protects the exterior from adverse environmental effects. To do it, you prepare the surface well and apply the best paint you can afford. In preparing the house, you have two options: touching-up or stripping bare. You can try periodic touch-ups with oil but the paint will continue to peel as it oxidizes and becomes brittle. When it does, you can scrape off the peeling portions, prime the bare spots and repaint with latex. Alternatively, you can strip the house down to bare wood and start over with latex. Take this route if you discover widespread paint failure such as cracking or flaking.

For blistering, peeling, or wrinkling — which are normally caused by excessive moisture, heat, or humidity — you'll have to correct the moisture that's causing these problems before repainting. Wow! What an apparently wearisome painting class isn’t it? Whichever path you choose, remember that painting your house with the best paint over an unprepared surface is like trying to hang a plain piece of paper on a refrigerator without a magnet: it just won't stick.

Do you see where I am driving to? Consider for a moment your life and your dreams, reflect for a second on your beautiful plans and strategies to realize your fondest dreams. You’ve been told over and over that even when the rough keeps going, NEVER Give Up, I agree but I want you to keep it at the center of your mind that the statement “NEVER Give Up” has NEVER on any occasion imply that you keep using the same old strategies and approaches that have not worked down centuries to face your dreams.

Some of those plans and strategies you thought where the best soon become old-school and outdated. Come-on, time changes, contexts do change and new ways of doing things come up such that your old and worn-out strategies become like old paint on the cracked, flaked, blistered, wrinkled and peeling walls of your life and dreams.

You’ve got to either touch-up or strip-bare the obsolete strategies you’ve been hanging onto before putting on a fresh coat of paint of reviewed strategies, redirected vision and energy and focus. That is exactly what it means to NEVER Give Up. The good news is that, it’s never too late to start all over as long as you are starting NOW. Maybe NOW is just the best time to go for a fresh coat of paint.