Sometimes, you need to hit the reset button.
I’ve written before about needing to audit your life, and sometimes a total teardown is necessary. Sometimes there’s nothing worth keeping, and you need to cast it all aside in order to make way for new and better things. It’s just so liberating to get rid of everything. I remember living Brooklyn, and when it was time to leave the apartment we’d lived in for three and a half years, I kept the bare minimum. My neighbor across the street was the property manager, and he told me he’d take care of the rest. Of course, that’s taking it literally, but you get the idea. Sometimes you take only what you need and leave the rest, knowing that you’re better off without that clutter.
There are also moments when you don’t have to take drastic measures in order to reinvent or renew yourself. In these cases, the foundation of your life is set the way you want it, but there are a few changes you need to make. Maybe you need to change your job or your group of friends, but overall, you like most of what you’ve established, and you know that you don’t want to get rid of it all. Some of it is allowed to stay, and maybe that’s progress. Rather than wanting to totally get rid of everything, you want to keep a good portion of what you’ve built.
Sometimes you find yourself in a situation that you can’t extricate yourself from, or the end date is somewhere in the future, and it’s not right now. You can’t just pick up and leave, no matter how much you might want to. You have to gut it out and try to make the best of it. You may have been excited at the beginning when you started this whole endeavor, but now you’re stuck with the choice you’ve made and you’re stewing in it. Sometimes, the only option you have is to try and reap some benefits before quitting time. You can’t control much in life, but you can control your approach and how you react.
In this case, it’s time to forget past history and hit the reset button. Don’t think about how long you’ve been involved, or what’s already happened. Instead, I want to wake up tomorrow as a changed person. I want to see things through brand new eyes, and walk in fresh, as if I’m seeing things for the first time, even if I’ve seen them a thousand times before. I want my judgment to not be clouded or influenced by past experiences. I want to live in the moment and to see things as they currently are, forgetting all that came before. In short, I’d like a do-over, a chance to see if maybe I am in the right place at the right time, and not to be held back by the past.
It’s the reset you want. Not the hard reset, just a reset. You want to keep so much of your life that’s already there, but you know that something just isn’t working. Maybe it sounds far-fetched, but there are times in my life where I’ve been successful with this tactic. I’ve pushed the reset button with certain people, and sometimes there are surprises. Sometimes you realize that people aren’t always forthcoming or social when you first meet them, that they take some time to adapt to you, and when you hit that button, you’re able to form a meaningful relationship and move forward. You clear the board, throw away the pros and cons lists, and just interact with that person in a different and more positive way.
When things are different, it’s refreshing and wonderful, and there’s something to be said for offering someone a second chance. I’m not always at my best when I first meet people, so I try and offer people the chance I hope they’d give to me. Know that it’s possible to change the way you look at something, to change the nature of the association or relationship, and that it can be wonderful to find out that your past judgments were misguided or even wrong, especially if that thing enhances your life in a meaningful way.
There are also times when it doesn’t work. Sometimes people or things don’t change, and you don’t either, as much as you’d like to reset and pretend that you’re seeing things differently. You wake up and try to clear your head, wipe away your preconceived notions, and despite the change you’re hoping to feel, when you see that person, or whatever that thing may be, the old feelings surface and you know that there’s nothing you can do, that this person or thing can’t be a part of your life going forward if you want to retain your sanity.
Being a human is so challenging. We get older, hope that we are wiser, and we pray that the binding decisions we make are the right ones, the right ones for us and for the people we care about. Try as we might, it doesn’t always play out this way, and sometimes you’re left with regret. Hopefully it’s not all bad, the decision that you’ve made. Hopefully you’re able to learn from it, and you’re able to salvage something from the wreckage that sadly looks exactly same as it did before. Either that thing will be different, and you’ll look upon it with a renewed or differed perspective, or it’ll be the same, and no matter how much you try and reset yourself, there’s nothing you can do to alter your reality.
So many things will change in your life. You’ll change things like your job, where you live, or your significant other, maybe even all three. The goal is to get to a point where you’re still making changes and improving, but you keep more and more as you go along. I’m not saying you don’t change at all, but the goal is to learn about yourself as you’re on this journey, and the hope is that you make better decisions based on your experiences. If you do find yourself needing to make some changes, you don’t always need to cut everything and everyone loose. Maybe all you need one good reset to get yourself back to normal. Thanks for reading.
adam's blog about life 