It Starts With You.
Disappointment, the bottom, the anger that becomes a decision, the lost point in between – her honest map of the middle of the way.
She opens by rolling her eyes at her own headline: it all starts with you – banal, worn out, throw it out the window. And then she stands behind it anyway, because the truth doesn't get less true for being annoying. What follows is the most honest map of the middle of the way she has written: the stages nobody advertises – disappointment, lost faith, the bottom, giving up, and finally the anger that turns into a decision.
The middle holds the part most guides skip: old pain surfacing, the brain begging for its familiar settings, the feeling that you're cringe, and the strange lost point where the old life is no longer livable and the new one hasn't arrived – so how do we live? The Art of Letting Go describes the same passage from the inside: what empties you first, and the room that the emptiness turns out to be. Her answer at the lost point is the article's answer too: don't stop – go in deeper. The answers come.
And her guarantee is the only kind worth having – not a promise that life will change, but the correction that matters: it isn't life that changes. It's you.
It all starts with you! Banal, worn out, sometimes the phrase is downright infuriating – I completely understand. It irritates me too sometimes; I want to throw it out the window.
But unfortunately it's the truth, and the truth, as we know, isn't always pleasant.
In life, as in sport – if you want change, you have to work hard. But there's a pleasant bonus in all of it: later, it starts to bring joy. You have to pass through all the stages: get disappointed, lose faith, hit the bottom, give up – and finally get angry enough that the desire to change everything appears. And that's where your new life begins. At first it's very hard; the brain resists, doesn't understand what's wanted of it, wants to go back to the long-familiar old "settings". Here the main thing is not to drop your hands and to keep going. In the moment, things start coming out that have been sitting there a long time – maybe pain, maybe resentment. And the desire to stop it all – and here you have to overpower yourself. And then relief comes, a kind of pleasant emptiness. And room appears for something new. It's yours to decide what to fill yourself with: pain and disappointment again, or something new and good. And of course, along this whole way you will doubt many times, there will be the urge to drop everything – though at some point that already feels almost impossible. There will be more doubts – why do you even need this? Skeptical questions, not understanding what you're doing, even the feeling that you're cringe ))) The universe will keep running its checks – how well you've learned the lesson, how ready you really are to move to the next level. And with every level you'll feel better and better. At a certain point there will be a moment when you get a little lost. That happened to me and my husband this summer. We knew we could no longer live as before (before the practices), and the new was still only on its way, and we didn't understand: "so how do we live?" Here the main thing is not to give up and to go into it even deeper – and the answers will come to you. And life will change; it really can change. But don't wait for a magic wand: it isn't life that changes – it's YOU. And you'll notice how everything around becomes different. And it's worth it. As someone who has walked from darkness to light, I can say with certainty: I stand behind my words.
And to everyone who reads me, and to those still to come – I wish you to explore our beautiful world and to change what has long kept you from breathing with a full chest.
Thank you for reading.
If her words reached somewhere mine don't – good. That's what this blog is for. Take what fits and leave the rest.
– Jan