Starting Over (Part 1 of 3)

“I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Starting over is hard. It doesn’t seem to matter whether what was in the past was positive or negative, finding our way into an uncharted future just isn’t easy. There are so many questions: What if I fail? What if I’m never able to get started again? (Or, if the past was negative) What if my future isn’t any better than my past? What if I don’t know how, or am too scared, to do anything? Yep, starting over is hard. But the good news is that hard doesn’t mean impossible. Hard may be hard, but it’s still doable.

When faced with the prospect of starting over, we must consider what we’re starting over from. Or, in other words, what we’ve left behind. Because we will be carrying the baggage of that experience with us into whatever future we create for ourselves. For starters, is this new beginning something that has been forced upon us (as in an unwanted divorce) or is it something we have chosen for ourselves (choosing to leave a job or other situation that is doing us more harm than good)? In extreme cases, we may find that we have lost everything, that “life as we knew it,” is gone, and we must move forward. In all these instances, we have to face the emotional baggage that comes with our reason for a new start.

I have found, in my own case, that addressing this baggage and coming to terms with it has been essential to taking those first small steps toward my new life. After the shock had subsided, and I could begin to see even the smallest bit of potential in my situation, I saw that I could “reinvent” myself--and what an opportunity that was! As I revisited my Bucket List and my list of “What I Want to Be When I Grow Up,” I realized there was quite a bit there that got me excited, and I couldn’t wait to get started. And I have also found that when I am fueled by the excitement of doing some of those things I’ve been putting off, the emotional baggage becomes less of an issue. Not that it’s completely eliminated--sometimes you have to actually go through the muck to get to the other side--but that the impact is lessened because I have something else, something positive and exciting, to focus on.