How to Start a New Chapter in Your Life - Think Deep

How to Start a New Chapter in Your Life

There will come a time when you want to wipe the slate clean, to turn a new leaf, to start a new chapter in your life. The reasons will vary but it will probably (for the majority of people) come as a result of being at a low point in your life.

You’ve realized that you finally hit rock bottom and that they only way is UP now.

You’re ready to start again.

So how do you do it?

How do you start that new chapter in your life?

Is there a “formal” way?

There actually is and chances are, you’ve gone through it.

Whenever someone marks significant change in their life, when they head in a new direction in life, they go through these 3 stages (broadly speaking).

Stage 1: The Cutting Off Stage

Stage 2: The Training Stage

Stage 3: The Acknowledgement Stage.

Not very technical terms but terms that embody each step of the journey nonetheless.

The Cutting Off Stage is the first step of your journey and it makes sense.

Think about it and you’ll see this stage hiding in plain sight – going off to college, joining the military, devoting yourself to a certain religion – they all start with this stage. You cut yourself off from your former life, from your safe, ordinary previous life and you enter into new territory.

You must completely let go of your former self for now. This is important because it signifies that you REALLY mean business – that this isn’t just some phase. You cut your former life off so the only direction to travel to is forward to the next stage.

Then the Training Stage comes and this is usually where, through a mentor, that person learns wisdom and applies it to successfully pass through various trials.

Then comes the ultimate test in which you leverage all that you learned and trained for. When passed, the change is done.

Think of it as finals for college, boot camp for the military, etc.

Then comes the Acknowledgement Stage and this is important because it really imparts the fact that a new chapter has begun in your life. It usually revolves around a social event. Think graduation, people coming back home from boot camp to a welcome party, baptism in front of fellow religious members, etc.

Once those stages have been completed, it marks the beginning of a new chapter in your life.

Notice without going through ALL these stages, it doesn’t really “feel” like anything has changed, that anything is different in your life.

You have to go through all of them – and people usually do even if they are not consciously aware of it.

You can’t go directly from Cutting Off Stage to Acknowledgement. What’s there to acknowledge? No wisdom was learned. No training endured. No trials passed.

You can’t skip the Cutting Off Stage either and go directly to Training because without that Cutting Off Stage, you tell yourself you don’t really mean business. That it’s just a “phase”. And with that blasé attitude, you don’t really throw yourself into learning and training and fail to pass the trials that inevitably come about.

So knowing all this, how can one apply this in their own life?

It’s pretty simple.

You go through the three stages creatively.

Let’s say a person is just morbidly obese. They finally hit rock bottom. So they decide it’s time to change. For REAL.

They cut off all association with their obese friends, throw out all the junk food in the house, and the huge clothes as well (save for a few changes of clothes).

They then begin the Training Stage. They get a personal trainer, join a gym, and start learning all there is to know about weight loss. Little by little, they start losing weight until they finally lost the exact amount of weight they wanted to in the beginning, signifying that they have passed the “ultimate test”.

So they throw a big party with all the new friends made during this journey – fellow people at the gym, family, friends made outside the gym, etc., (serving healthy food of course at the party ;) ) and the new chapter in their life begins.

Yes, a bit corny but you get what I’m talking about.

Having this “frame” is useful because it provides structure when you’re lost. And when you’re lost and trying to start a new chapter, it can get pretty discouraging but now that you know what stages are involved, it’s easy to start taking action.

Some might say that the first stage – cutting off your former life may seem a bit extreme or difficult, but it’s necessary. That’s why those who never go through with this stage, who half ass it – they never really start a brand new chapter in their lives. Have you noticed that?

Maybe they start a brand new paragraph or start on the next page in their book of the same chapter – but a BRAND NEW chapter?

Not really.

They don’t draw the line and make that commitment. They don’t burn the bridge back to their former self so they always have the option of going back.

Cut it off.

Train your ass off.

And throw a big celebration after you pass the big test, acknowledging to yourself that a new chapter has indeed started in your life.

You will definitely “feel” it and be grateful you went through all the stages to write it.

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