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Starting Over: Your Life Beyond Regrets
I wish I had loved more. I wish I had been smarter about money. I wish I had thought about God more. We all have regrets about the past. Many of them come from our attempts to fulfill unmet longings. Dave and Jon Ferguson call this back and forth between longing and regret the Sorry Cycle—and they want to help us escape it. In Starting Over, Dave and Jon show us how to recognize specific regrets and then release them to God as we learn to see our regrets as opportunities to start over. Finally, we can see God redeem our regrets as he takes the worst things in our lives and uses them for a greater good. Your regrets don’t need to keep you from the joy God has for your life. As you apply the recognize-release-redeem process to your financial, relational, and personal regrets, you will find new freedom in living out your God-given dreams.Fall in Love with Your Regrets It sounds impossible. How can we learn to love our mistakes and failures? Instead, we go over and over them in our mind. Could they ever bring us—or anyone else—good? Drawing from scientific research and biblical truths, Jon and Dave Ferguson give us tools to redeem our mistakes in five key relationships, health, purpose, finances, and spirituality. Along the way, they teach us lifelong skills for getting unstuck when regret threatens to trap us again. We also learn how to help others escape the Sorry Cycle and experience the Starting Over Loop. It is possible to learn to love our regrets because through them we see God at work. We see that our weakness does not limit what God can do. Whatever regret is trapping you in the Sorry Cycle, God is big enough to redeem it. What could you do with a life beyond regret?
208 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 20, 2016
33 people are currently reading
205 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 14, 2018
A powerful message about God's love and overcoming regrets. Definitely helped me examine my spiritual relationship and move forward.
April 7, 2018
Staring Over: Your Life Beyond Regrets by Dave and Jon Ferguson is an okay book. It's a book that I kind of wish that I liked a little more than I do, but I also know some of the reasons I don't like it. The concept seems good enough, we all have regrets, and God can help us work through and deal with these regrets. I felt the execution was lacking in some pretty significant ways that brought down the original concept.
Let me start with what I did like about the book though. The strongest thing I think they had going for them is presenting the idea that there is a God who cares about our regrets and wants to redeem them and use them for his glory. They maybe get a bit simplistic on this point, but I do think this is true. I'm a Christian so it's not the ideas about Jesus or God that turned me off from this book.
The book is also pretty straightforward in terms of organization. You know where they're heading with each chapter and it gets into a rhythm. It would be easy to find an area you want to go back to and reread that particular type of regret that they're talking about and try to work on that type of regret.
Now to what I didn't like so much. The biggest thing I wasn't a fan of was that this book walks a dangerous line between the real struggles of this world and God making everything wonderful. That's a difficult trap to avoid with books like this and most of the time I don't feel like they really present the reality that even as we work through our regrets honestly while relying on God, they can still hinder us or not lead us where we thought we wanted to go. It's felt a bit too much presented like if you pray this prayer, rely on God, and go through these steps you'll be good to go. They do temper this idea in places, but the overall tone is triumphant (which can be nice and I do believe does happen, but can also be really frustrating when our own attempts to follow the formula doesn't produce results). The fact that they mention presenting a formula in the early pages of the book didn't help either.
I also felt that the book just rather disconnected from the audience. It felt like being talked at rather than talked to. With a book about regret and the common refrain of we all have regrets and even writing about some of their own regrets the snap back to a very authoritative kind of writing just didn't work for me. It doesn't help that I was reading this after reading Daring Greatly by Brene Brown who did this oh so much better in my opinion. It just made that difference stand out even more to me.
I could put more, but I'll end with one last problem I had with the book. This is that the Ferguson's base their chapter on money fully on Jesus' parable that is often called the "Parable of the Talents". While I understand how easy it is to make this parable solely about money, I do not believe that Jesus' concern was primarily about money here. To present that as such just really frustrated me. It's not even that the rest of the chapter was terrible, but I wasn't a big fan of their treatment of Scripture in that case.
Overall, Starting Over: Your Life Beyond Regrets is an okay book. I'm sure that some people would like it more than I did. However, the book was a bit too formulaic and triumpalistic for my taste. It felt like the authors didn't really do a good job of relating with their audience and I wasn't a big fan of some of their use of the Bible. I'd probably recommend a book like Daring Greatly over a book like this due to their similar themes. This one is more overtly Christian, but I felt that Daring Greatly was the better book.
Let me start with what I did like about the book though. The strongest thing I think they had going for them is presenting the idea that there is a God who cares about our regrets and wants to redeem them and use them for his glory. They maybe get a bit simplistic on this point, but I do think this is true. I'm a Christian so it's not the ideas about Jesus or God that turned me off from this book.
The book is also pretty straightforward in terms of organization. You know where they're heading with each chapter and it gets into a rhythm. It would be easy to find an area you want to go back to and reread that particular type of regret that they're talking about and try to work on that type of regret.
Now to what I didn't like so much. The biggest thing I wasn't a fan of was that this book walks a dangerous line between the real struggles of this world and God making everything wonderful. That's a difficult trap to avoid with books like this and most of the time I don't feel like they really present the reality that even as we work through our regrets honestly while relying on God, they can still hinder us or not lead us where we thought we wanted to go. It's felt a bit too much presented like if you pray this prayer, rely on God, and go through these steps you'll be good to go. They do temper this idea in places, but the overall tone is triumphant (which can be nice and I do believe does happen, but can also be really frustrating when our own attempts to follow the formula doesn't produce results). The fact that they mention presenting a formula in the early pages of the book didn't help either.
I also felt that the book just rather disconnected from the audience. It felt like being talked at rather than talked to. With a book about regret and the common refrain of we all have regrets and even writing about some of their own regrets the snap back to a very authoritative kind of writing just didn't work for me. It doesn't help that I was reading this after reading Daring Greatly by Brene Brown who did this oh so much better in my opinion. It just made that difference stand out even more to me.
I could put more, but I'll end with one last problem I had with the book. This is that the Ferguson's base their chapter on money fully on Jesus' parable that is often called the "Parable of the Talents". While I understand how easy it is to make this parable solely about money, I do not believe that Jesus' concern was primarily about money here. To present that as such just really frustrated me. It's not even that the rest of the chapter was terrible, but I wasn't a big fan of their treatment of Scripture in that case.
Overall, Starting Over: Your Life Beyond Regrets is an okay book. I'm sure that some people would like it more than I did. However, the book was a bit too formulaic and triumpalistic for my taste. It felt like the authors didn't really do a good job of relating with their audience and I wasn't a big fan of some of their use of the Bible. I'd probably recommend a book like Daring Greatly over a book like this due to their similar themes. This one is more overtly Christian, but I felt that Daring Greatly was the better book.
December 24, 2022
Getting out of the sorry cycle is difficult when dealing with regret. This book was a good text with stories and examples of how to break out of that sorry cycle. This was good for me based on when I read it.
January 5, 2020
Lead a small group with this book. (I am proud to say that I know one of the authors, Jon Ferguson.) Not only is this a great book for personal reflection; it is a great small group study.
September 15, 2016
Starting Over: Your Life Beyond Regrets by Dave Ferguson and Jon Ferguson is the definitive manual for Christians looking to redeem their lives after regrets and mistakes, big and small. They identify what they call the Sorry Cycle and then show us how to get out of it. Starting Over is divided into four sections: Starting Over, Starting Today; Breaking Out Of The Sorry Cycle; Redeeming Your Deepest Regrets; and Starting Over Every Day. The book description reads:
"I wish I had loved more.
I wish I had been smarter about money.
I wish I had thought about God more.
We all have regrets about the past. Many of them come from our attempts to fulfill unmet longings. Dave and Jon Ferguson call this back and forth between longing and regret the Sorry Cycle and they want to help us escape it.
In Starting Over, Dave and Jon show us how to recognize specific regrets and then release them to God as we learn to see our regrets as opportunities to start over. Finally, we can see God redeem our regrets as he takes the worst things in our lives and uses them for a greater good.
Your regrets don t need to keep you from the joy God has for your life. As you apply the recognize-release-redeem process to your financial, relational, and personal regrets, you will find new freedom in living out your God-given dreams.
Fall in Love with Your Regrets
It sounds impossible. How can we learn to love our mistakes? Instead, we go over and over them in our mind. Could they ever bring us or anyone else good?
Drawing from scientific research and biblical truths, Jon and Dave Ferguson give us tools to redeem our mistakes in five key areas: relationships, health, purpose, finances, and spirituality. Along the way, they teach us lifelong skills for getting unstuck when regret threatens to trap us again. We also learn how to help others escape the Sorry Cycle and experience the Starting Over Loop.
It is possible to learn to love our regrets because through them we see God at work. We see that our weakness does not limit what God can do. Whatever regret is trapping you in the Sorry Cycle, God is big enough to redeem it. What could you do with a life beyond regret?""
I loved this book. Like many people, I have regrets in my life and can often get stuck in the cycle of thinking my life is ruined, I can never move past this, my mistake was too big to get over, etc. This book showed me not only that it's never too late to undo a mistake, turn around, and start over, and gave me a specific action plan to turn around. It also includes a worksheet to help you work through the process. I highly recommend this book to any Christian who needs a fresh start or is stuck in a cycle of regret.
I received an advance copy of this book from Blogging For Books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
January 1, 2017
Starting Over: Your Life Beyond Regrets by Dave Ferguson & Jon Ferguson is about learning from your past regrets in order to move on from the Sorry Cycle, find redemption, and live beyond your regrets. This book is divided into four sections. The first explains the Sorry Cycle, the three types of regret (action, inaction, and reaction), the God longing, and the need to learn to love your regrets. The second explains how to break out of the Sorry Cycle by recognizing your regrets, releasing your regrets, and redeeming your regrets. The third section focuses on the most common categories of regret (spirituality, relationship, health, finance, and purpose), walking you through examples of each and suggestions on how to break free from the Sorry Cycle that each may trap you in. The last section is about starting over every day, learning to turn the Sorry Cycle into the Starting Over Loop. There is also a "living beyond regrets work sheet" at the back to help you break down your biggest regret(s) and follow the authors' step-by-step process in order to find healing and peace.
The letting go process for each regret is the same; ask forgiveness of others, forgive others, ask forgiveness of God, forgive God and the world, and forgive yourself. The concept behind this is that if you're stuck ruminating over a regret, then you need full spectrum forgiveness to truly be free to learn and move on. This is great for those regrets that hold your focus and keep you from letting go enough to reach your potential. However, I personally found that my biggest regret (trusting someone I shouldn't have) is not quite the match for their prescription. It's categorized as a reaction regret (regret over something someone did to me) in the relationship category (chapter 7). So far so good. But when the shockwave effects of some things go beyond those replays and reenactments in your head, their problem solving method is somewhat lacking. This is not to say that I don't agree with their method; on the contrary, I think it's wonderful - for the right degree of regrets. If your regrets are the type that leave you holding yourself back because of what you did or didn't do or how you did or did not act, then this book is awesome. However, if your regrets run deeper than that, and have left you with nightmares and feeling as though you have gaping wounds in your soul, then this book may not run deep enough to leave you truly feeling capable of resolving those issues and starting over. 4/5 stars.
*Disclaimer: I received a proof copy of this book from Blogging For Books in exchange for this honest review.*
The letting go process for each regret is the same; ask forgiveness of others, forgive others, ask forgiveness of God, forgive God and the world, and forgive yourself. The concept behind this is that if you're stuck ruminating over a regret, then you need full spectrum forgiveness to truly be free to learn and move on. This is great for those regrets that hold your focus and keep you from letting go enough to reach your potential. However, I personally found that my biggest regret (trusting someone I shouldn't have) is not quite the match for their prescription. It's categorized as a reaction regret (regret over something someone did to me) in the relationship category (chapter 7). So far so good. But when the shockwave effects of some things go beyond those replays and reenactments in your head, their problem solving method is somewhat lacking. This is not to say that I don't agree with their method; on the contrary, I think it's wonderful - for the right degree of regrets. If your regrets are the type that leave you holding yourself back because of what you did or didn't do or how you did or did not act, then this book is awesome. However, if your regrets run deeper than that, and have left you with nightmares and feeling as though you have gaping wounds in your soul, then this book may not run deep enough to leave you truly feeling capable of resolving those issues and starting over. 4/5 stars.
*Disclaimer: I received a proof copy of this book from Blogging For Books in exchange for this honest review.*
October 10, 2016
This book is all about examining our regrets and starting over again to have a more fulfilling and spiritual life. The authors outline what they call the “three R’s” for breaking out of the Sorry Cycle – Recognize, Release and Redeem. This book is for anyone who has regrets – and isn’t that just about everyone?
Starting Over is only 182 pages, yet it took me almost a week to finish. Not because it was difficult, awful or tedious. That was far from the case. This book is so filled with thought-provoking and valuable information that I found myself slowing down, taking notes and contemplating everything that was said. It’s that good! It gave me so many insightful points to think about. Starting Over had me thinking about my own regrets and how my life could be improved by letting go of them.
The writing style is conversational and friendly. There are plenty of real life examples used to show readers how the Starting Over Loop can be achieved successfully. The authors are pastors and God’s message to us is clear and front and center. Yet, I never found the writing to be overly preachy. It’s a perfect mixture of practical advice and Biblical teachings.
I enjoyed this book immensely and am now planning to pick up the authors’ previous book, “Finding Your Way Back to God”. I highly recommend Starting Over. Thank you to Blogging for Books for providing a free copy!
Starting Over is only 182 pages, yet it took me almost a week to finish. Not because it was difficult, awful or tedious. That was far from the case. This book is so filled with thought-provoking and valuable information that I found myself slowing down, taking notes and contemplating everything that was said. It’s that good! It gave me so many insightful points to think about. Starting Over had me thinking about my own regrets and how my life could be improved by letting go of them.
The writing style is conversational and friendly. There are plenty of real life examples used to show readers how the Starting Over Loop can be achieved successfully. The authors are pastors and God’s message to us is clear and front and center. Yet, I never found the writing to be overly preachy. It’s a perfect mixture of practical advice and Biblical teachings.
I enjoyed this book immensely and am now planning to pick up the authors’ previous book, “Finding Your Way Back to God”. I highly recommend Starting Over. Thank you to Blogging for Books for providing a free copy!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews