For the last six months, I’ve been craving change. Change that reflects how my business has evolved, how I’ve evolved, and where I see this heading next. I’ve felt a yearning for greater transparency, a slightly different focus, a different way of coaching, and to let go of the old to make room for the new. It’s been less like a desire for change and more like a yearning to start again.
I spent months telling my accountability buddy “This week! This week I am definitely going to sort out my website!” then not doing it (and when you’re a coach, that integrity gap between saying then not doing feels 10x wider and 10x worse). I over-thought the process, experienced perpetual decision fatigue, and managed to turn the whole thing into an existential crisis. Needless to say, for all my good intentions, I didn’t do what I wanted to do.
Until I did.
What changed was this: instead of taking what existed and trying to redo, I just sat down and imagined what it would look like if I started again from scratch.
I opened up a new Scrivener file, asked myself: “If I burned this whole thing to the ground and started all over again, what would I create?” and started writing down everything that came to mind.
The ideas started flooding in. The answers became clearer, and the six-month fog lifted. Were some of these ideas rubbish? Absolutely. Do I have 100% clarity now? Is my expression perfect? Definitely not. But as one of my favourite sayings go, “action beats perfection.”
Starting from scratch gave me the permission I needed to let go of the old to make room for the new; to clear out old language, old site pages, blog posts that are no longer relevant, create the Library, and generally give my online living room a good old spring clean.
That’s been my week, and I’m wondering if there’s something in your life that needs this kind of attention too:
If you could tear it all down and start again, what would you do differently?
The beautiful thing about this question, like all good questions, is that it works in any situation that could benefit from a good dose of clarity: unfulfilling career paths, a project that isn’t working out quite as we’d hoped, muddy lifestyle choices, relationship ruts, and more.
The answer might be comforting, it might be startling, it might be terrifying, but it’s a fast path straight to the heart of what we truly want—and to what comes next.
Further reading: Why the world needs you to start taking yourself seriously & start with why
