Another of my mom’s favorite phrases is “When you’re green you’re growing, when you’re ripe, you rot.” Essentially meaning, get out of your comfort zone and learn new things.

But starting over is really really hard. And it’s daunting. It causes us anxiety and sleepless nights and we doubt ourselves and we question everything we knew and we disappoint ourselves and those around us. And you know what? It doesn’t matter. That’s the process of learning.

I am finding that the older I get and the more responsibilities I have and the more of a professional persona I’ve developed, the more freaked out I get when I try to learn new things. This being my primary example…

I turned 40 a few months ago and all of a sudden I needed to do all the things I’d never gotten around to. I pulled out a paint by number kit and decided to learn to sew and also become an investment guru and get my retirement squared away and maybe invest in real estate and become a blogger and maybe a ghost-writer and also start a whole new area of practice and also train for a marathon. All at once. Don’t worry, it took about a week before I came back to myself and stopped trying to be everything there is on the planet all at once. But I did settle into a few things. I did commit to a marathon training plan – I’ve done one before, I run somewhat regularly anyway, this is improving a skill but not starting from nothing. I did begin expanding my law practice and deviating from the areas that don’t fit my future plans and schedule, but I didn’t say no to new cases that are in my practice areas but still fit my future schedule and plans. And I started this blog. It’s alternately an intimidating stretch and also an extension of my current work. I have spent my career helping people face what’s in front of them and working with them to weigh their options and choose what suits them. That’s all I hope to accomplish here as well.

The point is this – you can do both. You can find ways to grow within the skills and interests you already have. If you want to start from scratch, by all means do it! Take a class, build a table, learn a language, paint a masterpiece. But you don’t have to recreate everything about your life.

If you are in a phase of life that is transitional – school is beginning or ending, a job is beginning or ending, a relationship is beginning or ending – look at the parts of your former life that you liked and want to keep, but leave room for growth in the new iteration of your life as well. Strive to keep the core of yourself while you are learning and growing and changing. For me this is especially hard in relationships. I have always been the person willing to adapt to change and adjust to whatever is thrown at me in order to keep a relationship together. Looking back, I cringe at the offers I made to move to different states or take different jobs or even transfer colleges in order to make something work when it was clearly destined not to.

I am so glad I didn’t. I am so glad the people I tried to move heaven and earth to be with wouldn’t let me. I would have absolutely lost myself in that transition.

This season of my life is about finding myself. I spent so much of my early twenties and thirties going to school and building a business and just trying to survive and pay all the bills that needed paying. I didn’t have the time for hobbies or travel or creativity. I was hustling. So now I am working on using my hustle as a creative outlet. I am incorporating travel into my work. I am developing hobbies that I enjoy but that can coincide with other goals I have.

Because new green growth requires a strong established plant to thrive. And we want to thrive.