You can start over. You can decide not to go down like this. There’s no age limit on beginning again. You can make a sharp right turn toward something better for you. The next hour, the next day, the next decade, pick one. The nature of Creation allows and encourages you to become someone new at any time.
To start over is to be reborn into a hopeful innocence. It’s a way of being that responds to spiritual law rather than observable fact. It’s allowing yourself to fall in love with your life again as if it hasn’t hurt you. Starting over is forgetting and forgiving. It’s understanding that your worthiness is indisputable.
Your history doesn’t dictate your potential for change. You can stop spray-painting the future with painful thoughts of the past and trapping yourself with shame. Go ahead and stop—right now. Old decisions aren’t permanent. Don’t buy into the absurd belief that you can only be one thing in a 100-year life.
Transcend the face value of your situation. Release who you were, and dispose of your powerless victim identity. Dismantle your belief system in the service of a new vision of yourself. Let down your defenses. Respect yourself. Refuse to ignore your needs. Refuse to do the same thing one more time and expect something different to happen.
You start over by giving up the hope that someone other than you will change or become the answer. Stop wasting energy. Your nagging, “helpful” advice or begging won’t change another person. Don’t alienate them or waste your life. Their motivations, character, and results come only from them. Focus on yourself. That’s the only place you have influence.
The only way to change the past is to reorient your perception. You start over by refusing to disown or punish yourself for the mistakes that brought you to this point. The errors that allow you to experience your resilience in a way you couldn’t have otherwise. Respect the rocky road to freedom and refuse to make enemies of the bumps. They are your testimony, your demonstrators of the power of the divine to change a life.
Starting over is releasing all the pain of the past and forgiving everyone, including you. It’s welcoming the joy, health, and success that are yours to claim. You can assume a new identity or character without approval. Tell the truth, drop the guilt, take action, and let the feelings out. Trust yourself, others, and the universe. Let go of current culture’s obsession with age, body, and money. They don’t dictate possibility or success. Refuse to let capitalist comparison kill your joy.
You are who you choose to be. Build a new on-ramp to bolder, more sustainable goals when your dreams shatter. Create self-honoring habits and traditions. Nurture your enthusiasm for possibility. Whatever you dwell in will come to pass. Until then, allow the current version of yourself to exist. Let go of the need for an internal warden.
Take complete responsibility for the content and quality of your life. Recognize that every opportunity to show up for a new experience is an opportunity to start over.
Song accompaniment: Peter Gabriel, Solsbury Hill
Artwork: The Art of Seth