Many of us know people who have started their entire lives over from scratch — often in ways that bore no resemblance to the life they were living before.
It can be astonishing to see how much these people change after taking the leap, but we don’t often hear about the process that brought them to that transformational moment.
The signs listed below are experienced almost ubiquitously by those who rebuild completely new lives, and they often occur just before they take the leap to do so.
7 feelings a person might experience that indicate they’re ready to start life over:
1. Feeling “itchy” on the inside.
This feeling can manifest in a number of different ways, depending on the person. One individual may feel anxious or extremely depressed, while another might try to find any excuse to stay away from home.
Basically, it feels like a pressing feeling of wanderlust that’s prodding them to move around and do something completely different.
They may not know where they want to go or what they want to be doing: all they know is that it needs to be something different from what they’re doing right now. And it has to happen as quickly as humanly possible.
2. Constantly daydreaming about a completely different life.
You may be sitting at your desk, procrastinating instead of doing your work because you’re daydreaming about what life would be like if you bought a hobby farm in Montana or transformed a rural Irish cottage into a pub.
If you’re single, you may wonder what it feels like to be married, and if you have a big family, you may contemplate what it would be like if you lived alone.
When this occurs frequently, it’s often the result of having repressed the desire to change for quite a long time. You might have been in denial about the fact that you were feeling unhappy and unfulfilled, especially if you fought long and hard to achieve everything you have.
It’s difficult to accept the realization that the things you invested in so fiercely aren’t what you want anymore, but you can only run away from that epiphany for so long before you have to take action. And for some people, that action involves starting all over again, completely from scratch.
3. No longer recognizing who you’ve become.
Years ago, when I was getting ready to leave an unhealthy marriage, I found that I couldn’t bear to look at my reflection in the mirror anymore.
Quite simply, I didn’t recognize the woman looking back at me.
I’d been so stressed and upset for so long that I didn’t bear any resemblance to the person I had been years before.
This is a distressing thing to experience, especially since it seems to come out of nowhere. The reason being that many of us disassociate from things that upset us for a long time before we’re ever able to act on improving our lives.
It usually takes something quite shocking to startle us out of the torpor we’ve been stuck in so we can take action to free ourselves from it.
4. Suddenly hating everything familiar.
There’s a scene in the first Tomb Raider film in which Lara Croft’s mansion gets destroyed, and she explains its state to a UPS driver with a deadpan, “I woke up this morning, and I just hated everything”.
When a person is ready to start over and rebuild their life from scratch, they often experience something very similar: they suddenly despise everything that up until now has made them feel comfortable and at home.
They may look around their homes and despise all of their furniture and decor, or make the decision to dramatically change their hairstyle or color.
Instead of being happy with their family life, they may be short and irritable with their partner, children, neighbors, and so on.
Similarly, the job they used to love may now be too annoying for them to tolerate, and they’re suddenly so hyper-aware of every small-but-excruciating noise in their home that they want to scream.
5. Having your old life completely fall apart.
Quite often, individuals who start over again have no other choice but to do so, and sometimes this happens because they unconsciously sabotage the life they were living.
This happens because people tend to cling to familiar, comfortable pathways and experiences even if they aren’t healthy or productive anymore. Eventually, though, they get to a point where they can’t take it anymore, and they blow up their lives so that they have an excuse to leave them.
For example, you might pick a fight with your partner over something completely inconsequential and damage things badly enough to trigger a breakup.
Though you didn’t consciously plan it that way, this sabotage has acted as just the catalyst you needed to tear everything down and rebuild your life from scratch.
6. Things that used to make you happy simply don’t anymore.
Someone on the verge of starting over may think about the things that used to bring them joy, and discover that they don’t really care about them anymore.
For example, they may try to feel enthusiasm about creative pursuits that they used to pour a lot of time into, but if they do partake in them, they’re simply going through the motions instead of enjoying the process.
Similarly, they may not enjoy the foods they used to love: everything they eat or drink just seems flavorless now. They might lose their appetite, or alternatively they may comfort eat in an attempt to fill the hollowness inside them, not because they’re actually hungry.
This experience can be frustrating and confusing, especially for a person who has felt fairly content with everything in their life up until this point.
One day they feel like they have everything they’ve always wanted, and the next they feel like imposters prancing around in their own clothes.
7. Suddenly feeling terrified of being stuck in the life you’ve been living.
This is a bit like wearing a jacket or coat quite comfortably, until the zipper suddenly stops working. Instantly, instead of feeling warm and cozy, you feel trapped.
You panic, trying to force that zipper to open while your face gets hotter and sweat starts to run down your back. If the zipper doesn’t comply, you might wriggle out of the coat or even take drastic measures and cut yourself free with scissors.
When you’re ready to start over and rebuild your life from scratch, you may suddenly feel the same way.
Instead of a jacket making you feel trapped and claustrophobic, it’s the life you’ve been leading up until this moment.
It’s only when you get to this point that you recognize you’re ready for extreme change, and it needs to happen as soon as possible.
In the beautiful words of Anaïs Nin: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
Final thoughts…
Starting over is scary and overwhelming, and isn’t something that most people are eager to do. Nor is it something that most people do lightly or at the first sign of trouble.
When a person gets to that point, they’ve usually tried to resolve other things in their lives for a really long time. Ultimately, they’ve finally accepted that the only way they can improve anything is to wipe the slate clean and start anew.
It’s a daunting endeavor, but a necessary one for them.
Hopefully, if the signs listed here start to manifest for you, the awareness of what they represent can make the transition to a new life a little less terrifying.
