Last update: 19 March, 2016
Believing that you have the future in your hands is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it gives us security and vitality, but on the other, it can be the source of an enormous emptiness. Starting over involves closing chapters and letting them go, because something did not go the way we wanted and, perhaps, it even hurt us.
Starting over means accepting the fact that something in our life has to change and that it is necessary to heal the wounds in order to look towards the future again.
“Nothing is lost if we have the courage to affirm that all is lost and that we have to start over”.
-Julio Cortazar-
It is possible that, as sometimes happens to everyone, you feel the need to abruptly rein in your life to give yourself a new opportunity to be happy. You will see yourself spinning around the same memory of the facts, without a direction, and you will not know how to get out of it, but you will be aware of the fact that you have to get out of it. It works like this, in the beginning it is enough to know that we need our times and that these depend on many factors.
You can't start over if you're not ready to do it
As we were saying, time is of the essence in situations where we feel lost, as it allows us to rebuild our principles. From the first moment we realize that we need to start over, we notice that something has changed within us and that we are no longer the same: it is necessary to go back to recognizing ourselves.
Knowing who we are after the emotional blocks we have experienced is mandatory to undertake relationships with new people, to develop the person we are in all areas of life or, simply, to be happy with what we do.
It is obvious that, in these cases, not giving ourselves the time we need is one of the most common mistakes: we are ready to start over when, perhaps, the wound has not yet healed.
Not taking your time can be a step backwards
As we have said, being ready is an obligation that takes its own time. These times are personal and very relative: there are no rules, as these depend, among other things, on the degree of inner loss, suffering, will and strength. Each of us is different and so is our ability to deal with various situations.
The memory of the heart eliminates bad memories and magnifies the good ones, and thanks to this artifice, we are able to overcome the past ”.
-Gabriel GarcĂa Marquez-
What is certain is that, as in all processes, starting over follows its own rhythms and, if we do not respect them, this can represent a step backwards: sometimes we think we are ready to face a new beginning, but then reality comes and wakes us up as if a bucket of water had been thrown at us. This is his way of telling us that we were wrong and that there is still a long way to go.
An enormous effort, at the end of which the reward arrives
This process we were talking about has its ups and downs and involves one of the greatest efforts we have to make in life: do not look back, if not to continue, it is difficult; accepting something we don't understand is hard; learning to be ourselves without something we relied on is devastating; seeing how someone comes out of our life sooner than expected can become too much ...
Nevertheless, starting over teaches us many other things that, at the beginning, are not evident, but that make us grow. The effort we make when we have to deal with such a situation ends up becoming a positive reward that can fill us a lot, in the form of experience and well-being.
"It is only through painful effort and effort, for dark energy and resolved value, that we move on to better things."
-Theodore Roosevelt-
Finally, after so many sacrifices, we will feel free and complete on an emotional level: we will know what we have lived and we will keep with us only what is really useful to us, we will have learned to live with what we have in the present and we will be able to lead our lives according to the new principles we have rebuilt. Starting over is already the new beginning born from the end of a phase that should have been part of our life and which is now part of the past.
