About five years ago, I decided to dismantle my life.
This is not a melodramatic overstatement. I was living in Boston at the time. I had a long-term partner, an apartment, a gratifying full-time job at a community mental health clinic, a small side business, and a circle of friends. And one night, I was simultaneously struck by two revelations:
- I didn’t want to be in my relationship anymore.
- I wanted to go home to Los Angeles.
So I gave myself a few months, and brick by brick, I disassembled every part of the life I had built. I broke up with my partner. I helped him find a new roommate, who would take over my part of the lease. I gave notice at my job and helped my clients find new therapists at the clinic, and informed my private clients that I would be moving. And I tearfully bid my friends farewell.
Over the course of four 14-hour days, I drove across the country and arrived the day before Thanksgiving (Thanksgivukkah?), worn out and emotionally depleted, in my parents’ driveway.
It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. And perhaps also the most transformative and important.
Tear It Down to the Studs
A lot of the time when clients call me, they’re at a point in their life when they’re really unhappy. Often, this means they’re on the precipice of a major life change. A few years ago, I wrote our clients an open letter describing how by the time I meet them, they’ve probably tried everything “comfortable” to fix their problem, and they’re on the brink of doing something truly courageous.
Such as, perhaps, dismantling their life.
But making a big leap like this, no matter how hard you try to protect yourself, usually hurts more than people expect. After all, growth always does.
Here’s the metaphor I like to use: Imagine you’re shopping for a house, and you find one in your perfect location: close to work, in a charming neighborhood, with a great school district. The lot is sizeable, and the price is right. The only problem is the house itself, which is a complete fixer-upper.
But you’re ambitious and you like a good project, so you bring in a great contractor and a wrecking ball and knock it down to the foundation.
And then it’s time to get to work on building your dream home. In the meantime, though, what you have appears to be… kind of nothing. My old supervisor from that great Boston-based community mental health clinic would have said you’re in the gap.
But you, instead, might say, “oh my goodness, what have I done?” Because to the naked eye, it appears that after dropping a chunk of change on a piece of Los Angeles real estate, you now have nothing but a plot of land.
That’s where I was during that four-day cross-country drive. And let me tell you – when you’ve just dismantled every piece of your life, four days in a car is a lot of time to think.
This New Year, Give Yourself Space to Build it Better
When you’ve just taken out a huge mortgage, tearing down the house is terrifying… but you can’t build your dream home from the remnants of the fixer-upper. Only by completely shedding what doesn’t serve you can you build something truly amazing.
Often, around this time of year, we reassess what we’d like to do more or better. But I think that’s the wrong question to start with.
Here’s the right question: What can I do without? What’s standing in the way of my fulfillment?
Maybe it’s your relationship or your job. Maybe it’s wishing you lived closer to your family. Or perhaps it’s something smaller, like wasted hours on Facebook, or a friend who sucks up all of your time and energy.
As we approach the New Year, before you try to build more things into your life – more exercise, more willpower, more money, more focus, more dating, more socializing, more intimacy, more mindfulness – pause to ask yourself what you could do with less of?
And once you find a path to having less of the things that don’t serve you – late work nights, one-sided friendships, toxic relationships, self-criticism, mindless social media – you may find that you’ve given yourself just enough breathing room to grow.