Is your life what you want it to be? Do you feel satisfied and happy? Perhaps there’s been a disruption in your plans. Whether avoidable or unavoidable, life can contain curve balls that make you question where you are at or force you to start over.
If starting over makes you feel afraid, you don’t need to be. Starting over is a way to improve your life, improve your skills and abilities, and make your life work for you. The rewards of starting over are impressive and can give you a better life than before, no matter why you’re starting over.
7 reasons not to be afraid of starting over:
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Build Better
No matter where you are now, you are not at the apex of where you could be. Even the most accomplished person still has dreams and goals. Starting over allows you to fix whatever is holding you back in life.
Life is like cooking by following a recipe. If you make a mistake following the directions, you can ruin the whole dish. No matter what you add, you may not be able to fix the problem enough to make your dish taste good.
Instead, it’s better to start over and try again. You can do better the next time and make a dish worth eating. Rather than serving a dish you’re afraid won’t taste good, you can do better and be confident with the outcome.
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Don’t Be Afraid of Fear
In the TV series Star Trek, the crew is tasked to “Boldly go where no one has gone before.”Starting over in your life can be scary, but you have the power to learn, grow, and overcome that fear. According to psychologists, fear of the unknown is an ancient human trait. And so is overcoming that fear to explore and learn about the world around you. Acknowledge your fear and learn to work through it.
Another thing people often fear is failure. What will you do if starting over in your life doesn’t work? Successful entrepreneurs look at each loss as a lesson. The more you fail, the more you will learn, and the better you will do the next time. Pushing the reset button isn’t a one-time thing. You can start over as many times as needed and build on the experience you’ve gained
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Be Creative
Starting over allows you to reimage your life. This is an opportunity to consider what you want. What are your hopes, dreams, and goals? To help visualize your new life, ask yourself these questions:
- What makes me happy?
- What makes me sad?
- What do I want to accomplish?
- What can’t I live without?
- What don’t I want or need anymore?
- Where do I want to be in six months, a year, and five years from now?
- How do I want to be remembered?
To be successful in starting over, you need to know what you want to accomplish when you push the reset button. Take time now to plan your new life and how you will get there.
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You
What do you want out of life? If you’ve lived your life pleasing others, figuring out what you want can be scary. If a disruption has changed your life, now is the time to truly consider what you want your life to be in the future. Starting over and creating the life you want may take time, but you don’t need to be afraid. Ask yourself these questions to help you envision a new life:
- What makes me happy?
- What makes me sad?
- What am I tired of doing?
- If I could do anything, what would it be?
- How do I want to be remembered?
Thinking about your answers to these questions can take the fear out of starting over. Knowing what you want provides you with goals and can help you create a plan.
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Learn More
Who do you admire? Most likely, it’s someone who seems to know what and how to do things. Starting over allows you to learn more and expand outside of the boundaries of your old life. Mistakes and failures are part of learning. Starting over is the perfect opportunity to try, fail, and learn to be and do better.
Remember playing with modeling clay or drawing as a child? If you didn’t like what you had created, you could squish the clay back together and start over or turn the paper over and draw something else. There was no reason to be afraid because you knew you could try again. Starting over at any age is like that. You can create what you want and work at it until you succeed.
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Rewards
Having a better life that’s full of opportunities is the reward for starting over. The best part is that you don’t have to wait until you completely change your life to benefit. Each step you take on your journey of starting over offers rewards as you learn and grow.
If you didn’t like your life before, starting over is how to make changes that benefit you. If your life was disrupted, starting over can help you regain what you’ve lost or even find bigger and better things to accomplish.
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Time
Life is finite. Fear about starting over wastes the time you have to live your best life. Life can surprise you, for good or for bad. Starting over means you have time to work toward your goals instead of resigning yourself to having and being less than you could be. No matter how far you get, the time you spend starting over is never wasted.'
Four Top Practices to Begin Thinking In The Present
Most adults have had to or wanted to start over with something in their lives. Maybe the job has become a bit too un-mental. Challenging your personal life is not how you pictured things going by a certain age.
We often find ourselves staying with the same relationships and activities out of fear of change.
What if you fail?
When you have tried new things in the past, the same outcome seems to take root in your life. For example, when you were 18, you found the “love of your life,” only to find out after a few years of marriage that he wanted a divorce.
Since then, you have dated the same type of men, never understanding why they all wanted out after a short period. You have become accustomed to the behavior out of fear of change.
How you see yourself today can be all about how you were prompted to see yourself earlier, ranging from incidents during childhood and adolescence to disappointments and discouragements as a younger adult. Overall, how you viewed the implications of your words and actions formed your central sense of self.
- Forgiving the mistakes – Instead of working on forgiving the people in your past, try forgiving yourself first. “I forgive myself for not seeing the red flags.” Now, break that down even further. “I forgive myself for not acknowledging that his temper scared me during our arguments.” After working on your personal apologies, make yourself a promise that you will not punish your future relationships with old memories. That is precisely what they are: memories. Nothing more.
- Recognize and acknowledge your negative thoughts -- The ability to recognize the multiple places of your negative self-talk is the first step to rectifying outdated perceptions and conclusions about you and your mental environment. Now, write down all the different negatives on a sheet of paper. Below each statement, write a positive way you could have responded. Read them to yourself. You will find that over a short period, your mindset will change to a positive response to yourself and the people around you.
- Leave the door open – While it is perfectly normal to hold back in any new relationship, after some time, if you’re still feeling apprehensive, check in with yourself. Are you punishing yourself out of fear that the new person will be just like others from your past? You might be punishing yourself for thinking you do not deserve good relationships.
Either way, ask yourself what the outcome of your fear is. Likely, one would be the new person who walks away. Stop punishing those that were not a part of that memory. Allow them to earn your trust and love. Base your thoughts on that behavior, not your personal negative thoughts.
- Speak up – Most likely, somewhere in your life travels, you have heard the adage, “I can’t read your mind!” Many retort with, “You should be able to tell by my body language.”
While this may be helpful when speaking face to face, body language is not used to gauge emotions while communicating by phone or computer chat. In a study conducted in 2004, the National Center for Biotechnology Information surveyed over 14,000 adults, 18-64 years of age, on how many emotions they felt across the board daily. Collectively, the data showed that they had good thoughts 41 percent of the time. In comparison, only 16 percent experienced negative thoughts throughout their day.
The numbers that showed alarm were that over 33 percent showed mixed emotions for several hours during the day. Share what you are feeling with your peer relationships. Acknowledge your fears out loud. You might find they also feel like that and have been nervous to tell you.
Things To Remember
Give yourself a pep talk every day. Congratulations on the good thoughts or actions you had with others. Remember that no one is perfect. We all make mistakes, and that is okay. As Author Roy T. Bennett quoted in The Light in the Heart, “If you want to be happy, do not dwell in the past, do not worry about the future, focus on living fully in the present.”
If you enjoyed this article and would like to set up a free 15-minute consultation call to get started on your journey together to explore more in-depth on starting over.
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