Let yourself change.
The most profound lesson of the changeover is this: You do not need to add things to your life to change. You need to subtract them.
Here is the answer you don't want: As long as it takes.
You will be yours . And that is infinitely better. If you are reading this right now, sitting in your own metaphorical grocery store parking lot, feeling the walls of your old life crumbling around your ears, let me tell you what no one else will: The Changeover
You will not be younger. You will not be more innocent. You will not be more popular.
The person you are becoming is already standing on the far shore, waiting for you to stop swimming back to the sinking ship.
Do not go back.
We try to stop the collapse. We white-knuckle our way through therapy. We take up running. We drink more wine. We scroll through old photos to remind ourselves of the "good times." We do everything to preserve the architecture of the old self.
Because on the other side of this—and there is an other side—you will finally understand what the mystics have been saying for millennia: That every ending is a disguised beginning. That every loss is a secret apprenticeship. That every changeover is a resurrection.
There is a specific, razor-thin moment in time that exists between the death of one version of yourself and the birth of another. It doesn't announce itself with fanfare. There are no gold watches, no retirement parties, no confetti. In fact, most of us sleep right through it. Let yourself change
For me, it was a Tuesday afternoon in March. I was sitting in my car in a parking lot outside a grocery store, holding a receipt for $47 worth of groceries I didn't want to cook, and I suddenly couldn't breathe. Not a panic attack, exactly. It was more like an eviction notice . My body was telling my soul that the lease was up.
In the void, you will feel like you are failing. You are not failing. You are fallow . A field cannot grow a new crop until it has been left empty for a season to let the soil regenerate. You are not broken. You are being prepared. You cannot build a new cathedral with the blueprint of an old toolshed.