Many of us reach a point in life where we look around ourselves and hate everything. Sometimes it’s an epiphany that strikes us out of nowhere, almost as if we’ve resurfaced from a waking coma and suddenly realize we’ve been living a lie. While other times we repress the solid awareness that we’ve been unhappy for some time in order to keep up appearances. Either way, if you’ve experienced any (or most) of the signs below, there’s a good chance you’re longing to wipe the slate clean and start your life anew.
1. Everything in your life feels claustrophobic and wrong.
You find the best part of your day consists of the few seconds you have upon waking, still half in dreamland, before you have to get up and face all the things that make you miserable. You aren’t happy with your relationship, if you have one. You can’t stand your job, you think your home is ugly, your daily commute is excruciating, your hobbies are boring, and you don’t even like the foods you’re eating.
Essentially, if someone gave you a check for ten million dollars, you’d take it and run from everything in your life without a second glance. The things in your life that others admire feel like a millstone around your neck, weighing you down and smothering you instead of nurturing your light. Neuroscience News talks about these transformative life transitions, and how people usually only make major changes after some sort of upheaval, or when pushed to do so because remaining stagnant is too excruciating a possibility to consider.
It’s as author Anaïs Nin once said: “The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
2. You find yourself daydreaming about what it would be like to live a different life.
Whether your attention drifts off while you’re working, or you’re letting your thoughts wander before bed, you find that you’re dreaming about what life would be like if you were a completely different version of yourself. Maybe you picture yourself working remotely from a cafe in Prague or Amalfi instead of being stuck in your office all day.
You might daydream that you have a different partner to the one you have currently, or that you don’t have one at all. Perhaps your mind ponders what it would be like to live in a country cottage instead of a high-rise apartment (or vice versa). These daydreams make you far happier than the reality of the life you’re currently living, and you’ve mused about what it would take to make them come true.
According to Psychologs Magazine, the idea of a “fresh start” is appealing because it offers people the opportunity to leave things like failure and disappointment in the past, with the chance to make themselves anew: better, brighter, and more successful than the previous version of themselves that made them so unhappy.
3. You’re looking at homes or job opportunities far away from your current location.
This is an extension of the previous sign, in which you’re taking daydreams to the next level and looking at the different options that may be available to you. Maybe you’ve updated your CV and have sent it to a few recruiters in other cities (or even countries). Or perhaps you’ve calculated how much you could sell your current home for, and what you could buy elsewhere with the money from its sale.
Behaviors like these often precede a startling life change that seems to come out of nowhere, at least according to the people around you. I’ve had friends who suddenly informed their partners they were leaving them without any previous sign that things were going badly. One friend abruptly left his cushy job as a stockbroker to be a dive instructor in Thailand, without a word of warning to any of us.
4. You keep feeling an intense pressure to run away from your current circumstances.
If you’re having panic attacks at the prospect of going to work in the morning, or you dread the thought of facing your spouse at the breakfast table, those are telltale signs that you’re aching for a clean slate. Wanting to run away screaming from your current life circumstances leaves no room for misinterpretation.
Remaining in situations that are sucking out your will to live can only be detrimental over the long term. In fact, anxiety and depression have been shown to accelerate physical diseases quite significantly. If you feel this intense pressure to run away and change your life, not listening to that instinct can literally make you physically ill (or worsen pre-existing conditions).
5. You’re experiencing general restlessness, with unexplained anger and irritability.
You may find that lately you get angry or irritable at the slightest provocation; things that never really bothered you in the past are now excruciating to tolerate. For example, you might find you’re so restless at home that you need to go for a walk or a drive to calm yourself down, or you can’t relax with a book or a favorite TV show because you’re too wound up.
In the same vein, you may find yourself snapping at those around you with a disproportionate level of emotion than they should have elicited. You may snap at your child for making a noise accidentally, or berate your spouse for not getting the brand of tea you prefer, etc.
6. You’re decluttering and redecorating your surroundings (and yourself).
Maybe you’re throwing things out that you’ve been holding onto for years, or you keep changing wall paint colors, furniture arrangements, etc. Since you may not feel that you’re able to make a significant change happen right now, you’re changing what is within your immediate ability to do.
Similarly, you may switch up your appearance on a regular basis, cycling through hair styles (and/or colors), fashion choices, fragrances, and so on. Every cell in your body is begging for a major change to happen so you can have a clean slate in life, but this may be the best you can do for the time being.
7. You’re avoiding your friends and family.
If your current life is stifling you, you may try to distance yourself from the people who know you well. By doing so, you can avoid shallow small talk about your job, your hobbies, and so on; basically all the things that are making you want to tear your skin off right now.
These are the people who know you best, so they’ll be able to see through your fake smile and hollow platitudes about how things are just fine. If they press you about them, your carefully maintained facade may crumble to dust, and you don’t know if you’re capable of handling the reality of the changes you know you need to make. As such, you avoid any scenario that could put your house of cards at risk until you’re ready to make a move.
Final thoughts…
Many people who want to wipe the slate clean in life think that changing everything external in their world will bring them the fulfillment they desire. In reality, it’s usually something inside themselves that needs to be addressed, and until they confront that and sort it out, it’ll keep making them miserable.
You can’t run away from yourself, so although this new start might be great for a while, you’ll soon find yourself dealing with the exact same issues. Be honest with yourself, address the elephant in the room, and build a new, authentic life from there.
