How To Confidently Start The Next Chapter In Your Life
How often do we find ourselves re-playing past events in our heads over and over again? Maybe it was a relationship break up, a lost job, or a terrible event?
What if we were to think about life events as chapters in a book?
“You can’t start the next chapter of your life, if you keep re-reading the last one.” Unknown.
Like any good story, there are difficulties and challenges but there is also hope, anticipation and excitement for the future.
Learning From The Past
When we are replaying events from the past and living in anger, pain or resentment it can feel overwhelming, and we often feel crippled by our thoughts, unable to move through them.
But the truth is, we usually do. And sometimes we are better because of it! Why? Because we’ve learned new skills, we’ve found new ways to navigate through our thoughts and we’ve even learned how to respond differently should it happen again!
Just like a chapter in a book, if we keep re-reading the past we will not be ready to live in the present and start the next one.
Finding Your Mojo
You have the power to put an end to these thoughts and close this chapter of your life but to do so, you need to make peace with your past and cut the strings that keep pulling you back.
“Remember you’re not starting over you’re starting from experience.” Unknown.
This involves looking at the past with a new perspective and trying to learn from it. There are different ways you can do this. It could be talking to someone who can help you detach yourself from previous events, learning how to control your negative thoughts or working with a coach to help you break patterns from your past.
Build a NEW Vision
An exercise I do with my clients when they are struggling to move forward is I help them create a new vision for their future. It helps them shift their mindset into the present moment, start projecting their thoughts forward and start seeing the opportunities and possibilities that lie ahead.
Firstly, I ask them to draw three columns, in the first one they list all the ways they felt when the event happened, in the second column they list all the things they learned about themselves or about the situation and how you would do things differently next time. In the third column, they write about how they would like to feel now. I ask them, what would you like to bring into your life right now? What would you like right now, in this moment?
Once you have your third column, you can then expand upon how you’d like to feel, write it down like you would your next chapter. You can add imagery (vision board – but thats a whole other blog) that inspires you and helps you feel uplifted and more emotionally connected to the future too.
“When you think you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this, you haven’t.” Thomas Edison
Taking Back Control
Creating a vision is really powerful and exciting, but quite often our self-doubt or our imposter syndrome starts to creep back in.
It’s about learning how to cut yourself off from the thoughts and events that hold you back and choosing how we are going to respond to them. Instead of telling ourselves, “your tried before and failed”, or “that’s impossible, you’ll never do it,” we change it to, “oh, here we go, I’m back here again!”
We have to be firm and self-disciplined and say, “STOP! That is not going to help me.” And, “just because it didn’t work out last time, it doesn’t mean it won’t this time”.
When you embrace your vision you have the power to tell yourself something appropriate that will actually self-soothe and setlle you into a state where you are ready to receive new opportunities. Then you can choose to intentionally move forward with more knowledge, more wisdom and more courage than you ever had before.
How a Coach Can Help
If you want to let go of the past, and create an exciting new vision for your future, book yourself in for a FREE 30 minute coaching call here, vickyevans.com/online-booking
I’d love to help you close a difficult chapter in your life and give you the skills and strategies to help you re-write the rest of your book. You can also book a single of block of sessions directly into my diary here: https://vickyevans.com/book-coaching/
Stay well and take care of yourself,
Vicky