It's Never Too Late to Start Again
It’s never too late to start again… I can hear my yoga teacher’s voice as I write those words. At the beginning of the pandemic I embarked on the journey of participating in another yoga teacher training – this time, 300 hours, virtually. For 6 weeks I meditated every morning for an hour with my teacher and my classmates. One morning during meditation my teacher recognized that some of us might be having difficulty sitting still and that we might feel like giving up. ‘It’s never too late to start again,’ he said. Those words triggered something deep inside me. I sat there, on the floor of my bedroom, facing my computer screen. My eyes were closed but the tears streamed down my face for, what felt like, the entire hour.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who has had the experience of feeling like they had to start again. Some people start again when they get married, when they have their first child, move cross country, or get a new job. Others start again after tragedy - a cancer diagnosis, the loss of a loved one, or in my case, divorce. There are things in your life that happen that are so striking that you are forced to jump into new territory, a new reality. And YOU have to figure out how that new reality will look and feel. Suddenly, you’re seeing life through a different lens. I’m tempted to say that we have to ‘start over,’ but that’s not exactly true. Just because we may experience the loss of the old when we start a new phase of life doesn’t mean our entire life investment was lost. In fact, you might find that you have built on your investment because of your prior knowledge and experience.
This past year we have all been challenged with the start of a new life -we are living with a pandemic. It is the first time everyone is sharing in the discomfort of adapting to a new way of living. Some lost their jobs, others have had to manage education for their kids. Many are finding ways to relieve not only boredom, but loneliness. But not all of it has been bad. If you scroll through social media you’ll get a glimpse of some of the things people have accomplished in this ‘new life.’ My friend, Marci, reached her goal of reading 100 books in a year and one of my colleagues wrote a book. Another friend decided to start a virtual graduate program, and my eleven-year-old daughter said she had never felt so accomplished after finishing off the school year virtually.
Pandemic or not, we all have moments of challenge and change, and change can be difficult. But here’s the thing - every morning we wake up we have the opportunity to start again. Age, ability, experience – none of it matters. What matters is our attitude and our perspective. What matters is how we choose to live each day. You don’t have to wait until new years to start making resolutions. Start now. Mourn your losses, acknowledge the discomfort and feel the pain. Surrender to reality, and then start again.
What are some of the ways you’ve had to start again in life? What are you doing differently this time? Share your comments and reflections below. I’d love to hear from you!
With encouragement and hope for your new beginning,
