The circle is a simple yet powerful geometric shape.    
    
    A bad circle is one that represents the endless frustration of a person who can’t escape a destructive behavioral pattern or perhaps a soul-depleting job.
        
    The price paid for an inability to get to the other side of a circle can be a life of demoralization. 
    
    So it’s really thrilling when a person or team breaks out of a bad circle. Reading the sports pages, nothing excites me as much, or more elevates my spirits, than to learn of a turnaround. People who rise up to break out of a circle of mediocrity or even failure. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does there’s magic and hope for all of us.

    A perennial 3-13 football team makes the playoffs. A previously slumping mma fighter is now consistently winning and rocketing up the UFC hierarchy.  Young entrepreneurs, Dana White and the Fertitta brothers, take a nearly bankrupt sports cult and turn it into a cultural phenomenon. You can’t help but stop to look behind the headlines. What’s the explanation?

    Often it’s a new coach or manager acting as the agent of change. Circle-breaking is more likely when there is input from an outside source. The new energy allows for a revitalized, empowered perspective.

    In 1999, the UFC was trapped within many concentric circles. Lawmakers were working to ban it, while attacking mma as “human cockfighting.” Religious leaders denounced the “senseless violence.” The media characterized it as a sideshow for the immature. Pay Per View and Blockbuster yielded to public pressure and ended distribution.

     Dana White began promoting the UFC for the Fertittas in 2001, and he tirelessly implemented their bold vision. White quickly transformed the UFC into a legitimate sport by working closely with, not against, regulating officials and lawmakers. You won’t find a larger-scale or more sensational inertia-ending story. The UFC’s current success dramatizes how vitality, coupled with fresh strategy, can triumph over circular barriers.
    
    For the individual seeking his own, personal breakout - getting feedback from a trusted advisor is often the missing key. If change is later accomplished, relief and new respect from family and friends is realized. They are left with an appreciation that an imprisoning circle can be broken. A new one can be created in its place - a winner’s circle.

    The breaking-free process, however, often involves a change in how we relate to those with whom we share our closest relationships. Friends and family need to understand the time, energy and commitment needed to help promote a major breakthrough. The initial stages of the turnaround process can be especially awkward, as old patterns get altered.
        
    The loser’s script (“I hate that things are always this way”) gets re-written, erasing the victim language. Optimism must pervade. I’m referring to a blast-furnace type of powerful expectancy.  The resolve that there will be a transformation.
     
    A true turnover is a process of stops and starts. The path is always littered with distractions, set-backs and mistakes. But the defining moment already took place when the major decision was made to create a turnaround, through force of the will.

    Our destinies are played out either inside or outside the circles that make up our existence. Making all the sacrifices, as the gauntlet is run, it’s possible to change the shape of our lives.