8 Things That Happen Right Before You Step Into A New Life
It is a common misconception I have come to realize throughout my life. Positive change is often planted through seeds that can sometimes make us feel more uncertain, fearful, and anxious than anything else.
This is because we often don’t think to change our lives until change is the only option we have. We are hardwired for homeostasis. We are designed to remain in comfort, which is just familiarity. But this isn’t always what’s best for us, and deep down, we know that at some level. We often find that when we do not heed our own intuitive nudges, life tends to present us with circumstances that make us move forward regardless.
Instead of fearing this process, we should learn to honor it, because it means that something greater is often waiting for us on the other side.
These are the 8 things that happen right before your life changes for the better.
1. A catalytic event occurs
Sometimes it’s massive, sometimes it’s subtle. For many people, the catalyst that prompts them to begin a process of positive disintegration is often the loss of a major relationship, job, or family member. In one way or another, something that you expected to be around for the foreseeable future was taken, and in that, your sense of safety was removed as well.
Other times, this event can be much harder to detect. In fact, you may not realize that anything has happened at all. Instead, what’s been planted is a seed of doubt. Maybe you saw an old friend and it prompted you to evaluate your progress in life. Maybe someone close to you is moving on with their life in a big way and it’s made you rethink what you really want. Maybe your stress and dissatisfaction have simply just started to compile and you find yourself wondering how much longer you can sustain your current routine.
Regardless, life almost never changes for the better unless a disruptor is present—something that makes us question, and dare to change, our own status quo.
2. You’re forced out of denial
The thing about things we lose is that they weren’t working for a very long time, we just didn’t realize it.
With the exception of an abrupt and sudden loss of someone you love or the closure of a company you assumed would be around forever, almost anything we lose in life has often been foreshadowed for a very long time.
That relationship that ended? It wasn’t working for a long time, that’s why it’s over. That job that you abruptly left? It wasn’t working for a long time, that’s why you quit. That lifestyle you were desperate to keep up with? It wasn’t you, which is why you couldn’t sustain it.
It’s really hard to accept this, but so important to acknowledge: almost nothing in life leaves us without purpose. It’s only a matter of when we accept this truth.
3. You feel swells of anger and fear
In the aftermath of the loss, you often find yourself going through the grieving process, even if you didn’t actually lose a loved one.
All of these emotions are extremely valid. It is healthy and normal to feel anger when a boundary has been crossed or you are facing some sort of injustice. It is healthy and normal to feel sad and scared when life abruptly changes and you’re not sure what’s next.
The longer you resist these emotions, the longer they linger. They are part of the process of great change and offer within them the seeds of more profound wisdom to come.
4. You begin processing old emotions and memories
Before you know it, this seed has sprouted into a thousand other spirals, all of which have left you questioning all that you are, and all that you once hoped to be.
This did not create these fears and feelings, it revealed them. Everything that you were clasping so tightly to was a way in which you were shielding yourself from these emotions, many of which you’d buried so deep inside, you assumed they were gone forever.
Emotions often remain within us until they tell us what it is we need to know. That message is not that we are worthless and unlovable, as they may often feel. Instead, the message is usually that we are not holding ourselves within life circumstances that fully honor our worth, and we are not acknowledging just how loved we truly are, and therefore, we aren’t seeking relationships in which we feel and see that truth reflected at us.
In this process of simply remembering what had hurt you in the past and how you felt about it, you will likely realize that a lot of your self-belief was created by experiences that compounded upon one another, and now, you’re giving yourself the chance to unpack. You’ll have a lighter load to bear on the other side.
5. You get a glimpse of a better path
Usually, towards the end of the unraveling process, right about when you feel like giving up for good, you will probably get a peek at the light at the end of the tunnel.
Maybe one day, out of nowhere, you come up with a novel idea. Maybe you happen to connect with someone who has a job offer that would be perfect for you. Maybe you’re prompted to start the business you had been thinking about. Maybe you meet someone, maybe you move, maybe you get the feeling that any one of those things is in your immediate future.
In one way or another, you start to get the sneaking suspicion that there might just be something really good around the corner, but at this point, you probably don’t quite believe it. That’s okay, you don’t have to.
All you have to do is keep stepping forward.
6. You start making small adjustments
With those new visions in mind, you start making small changes.
Maybe all of your processing and discomfort has prompted you to change the way you style your hair or approach your work, or what you do with your spare time. Little by little, you start adapting to your newly emerging self. You find new truths, new staples, and new routines, ones that suit the person you’re becoming, not the person you’ve been.
7. You take a big leap
Finally, those adjustments start adding up to something, and you know it’s time to leap forward.
This might be actually starting the new job or leaving the old one, moving, or changing something else about your life that once felt completely unmovable.
This part of the process is vital because it’s the scariest, and also the most important. To truly usher in new and positive things in your life, you often have to reach for them. This means that you have to step out of your comfort zone, think and act in ways you never have, and believe in yourself and your vision more than you’ve ever believed in anything else.
This is the leap that the beginning of the process was preparing you for. This was the dream that was hiding deep within you, the one that was nudging you to let go of what you had before, to address the feelings that were blocking your vision and your flow, and the one that is finally ready to become reality.
This has existed within you all along. It’s been waiting for you this entire time. You just had to find the courage to choose it, and sometimes, that means not giving yourself any other choice.
8. You see the purpose in the pain
Finally, you’re past the breakthrough, and into your new life.
If you’re one of the very lucky ones, you’ve made it far enough to understand that there was a purpose in all of this, especially the uncomfortable moments.
If you’re aware enough, you might realize that had you not originally been so uncomfortable, you might have gone through the rest of your life with unrealized dreams, holding yourself back out of small and irrational fears, and living half the life you were destined to, all because you didn’t have the courage to change.
Sometimes, when we don’t step effortlessly toward what it is we’re meant to be doing, we create circumstances for ourselves that make it impossible to do anything but move forward. Destiny cannot be denied.
Perhaps, in this, you might find some peace. Maybe you will realize that your emotions are nothing to be afraid of, because the storm often clears the skies and waters the seeds for the life you had been asking for, dreaming of, and planning to actually live all along.
