One of the most important lessons I learnt in my life is how to start over when everything falls apart. The end is a new beginning, isn’t it? So when what I did for most of my life stopped working for me, when my low self-confidence paired with feeling like a fraud brought me to a breakdown, I understood it was time for a change.
I needed time to let go of what I wrongly called security. And of my never-ending list of should. While walking away from there I started feeling a strong sense of discomfort. I found myself in a place where my deepest fears were waiting for me: the fear of losing security, of trowing away everything done so far, of restarting from zero while being less ok with compromises than I ever was before.
Everybody tried to give me advices but nobody really knew the best thing to do and the results was a million chats, calls, blog reading, books buying and building strategies to manage the unknown. And the hard truth? I had to admit that nobody had a strategy to start over. I had to build mine.
Because starting over is like starting, putting one step after the other, being scared and uncertain some days, curious and excited some others and full of doubts pretty much always. Until one day, the answer about starting over appeared so clear and simple in front of me. ‘Start where you are’ – I said – ‘do what you can, learn and grow from there’.
Easy, right?
So that’s what I learnt. Starting over is like starting, with the advantage that all you have done so far is not lost. The experience, knowledge, lessons learnt from mistakes don’t go away just because you use them in a different career path. They are still there to fill your pockets and build up your self-confidence.
So starting over is actually less scary that starting. And that’s how I started.
