Starting a new chapter
All of us fall into unhelpful or destructive patterns at some time in our lives. It’s one of the consequences of living in a profoundly sick society: we end up with aspects of ourselves fighting for dominance. A part of you wants to move on, live your best life, make good choices…but other parts of you want to sabotage your progress.
The most obvious example of this is addiction, but we can fall into repeated cycles in our thinking and our feelings very easily. You think you’ve dealt with something, overcome it, moved on…then you notice you’re doing it all over again. Your life takes on familiar, unhappy shapes. The way you connect with others gets sabotaged by an old, bad habit. You find yourself eating foods that you know will make you feel bad. There are so many examples of this.
Today I’m going to talk about a way to break out of old cycles and patterns by listening for the clues that we’re ready to begin a whole new chapter in our lives.
Familiar patterns and cycles
Cyclical patterns of thought and feeling work like this:
Realisation
This might be "damn, I'm doing that thing again" or "I'm so unhappy, I have to change something" or "I handled that situation really badly"
Decision
"I'm going to do something about this". This can be really hard if you realise you’ve fallen back into something that you’ve faced (and overcome) before.
Action
Learning new skills, or dusting off old approaches that you found work better for you, or getting help and support. Start putting your new approach into action.
Relapse
Without noticing, you begin to use the same old patterns and strategies, slowly drawing you back to the place you were trying to escape from.
All of this can happen in half an hour, or it can take years to run. Some people can remain stuck in the same cycle for months, years… or a whole lifetime.
We might notice the same things cropping up again and again in our relationships, at work, in the way we treat ourselves, in how we handle our free time...
When we notice them, cyclical patterns can feel familiar, annoying, frustrating, or intensely boring.
A part of my job as a coach is to ask the difficult questions, to disturb patterns of thought and challenge deeply held beliefs. I will drop an unexpected question at the right moment, and it can change everything. That's part of the value of an experienced coach.
But you can do this for yourself. Certainly my book is all about shaking up expectations and freeing yourself from limiting ways of living, and that's a skill you can learn. But I've noticed that life itself has fascinating and mysterious ways of aligning things in our lives that clearly say "right, it's time to change direction". You might have noticed this from time to time. When it happens, an uncanny number of things all start happening a once. People keep saying the same thing to you. Things that aren't right for you begin to feel uncomfortable, and an opportunity arises to let them go. New ventures open up, new people enter your life. Sometimes it feels like you're being called towards something new. Sometimes it take the form of a profound crisis, which I've written about before, are you simply can't keep doing the old stuff any more.
New chapters can be refinements to the direction of your life, subtle but powerful changes that might look minor from the outside but mean everything to you.
Sometimes they are significant and ground-breaking: a new job or career; a new relationship; moving or travelling; activism; a spiritual commitment or a new way to relate to other people.
Sometimes, they look like a whole and complete change, a washing away of an old life and the beginning of a new one.
When any of these things happen, you have reached the end of a chapter in your life. The final lines are being written, and when you turn the page you will begin something entirely new.
You may not fully want this. You probably won't feel ready for it. It will be frightening and heavily laden with the unknown. But it will be right for you, and you will know it's right.
Consciously beginning a new chapter
Sadly, most people don't choose to turn the page. We might know in our bones that this is the right thing to do, but it's safer and easier to ignore it, stay with what we know and let the opportunity pass. And sometimes commitments we've made stop us taking the massive steps that we're ready to take. We've all done this.
But if things align in your life and you're ready to start a new chapter, my main piece of advice to you is: do it consciously. End your old chapter with grace and determination. If you need to sever connections, don't be reckless or cruel. If you need to close doors, do it with courage and presence. Much more often, you'll be bringing your connections and relationships with you, so be open with your friends, partners, colleagues about what's going on for you, ask for their support and blessing.
Let an aspect of your past die, with the seriousness that death deserves, so that a new chapter can be born.
Walk forwards into this new chapter with your eyes wide open, a brave heart and curiosity about what's going to be different from now on.
It's ok to change. It's ok to grow. Many people avoid this and many others hold each other back for fear of looking at their own challenges and growth. But every human being needs to grow, change, evolve and overcome. It is at the heart of our nature. It's ok to shake things up, be a radical, make changes that others don't understand.
Turn the page. The page is blank, and you can write whatever you want. What will your next chapter be like?
If you'd like to explore this further, my book is a much deeper dive into this kind of thing. Pick up a copy of 12 Words That Will Set You Free: Finding Confidence, Purpose and Passion in Troubling Times now.