There is a phrase I find myself returning to often, borrowed from the Buddhist meditation tradition: beginning again.
In meditation practice, when the mind wanders — and it always wanders — the instruction is simply to notice, and begin again. Not to judge the wandering. Not to catalog how many times it happened. Just: notice, and begin again.
I think this is one of the most useful instructions for living that I know.
The Weight of Having Not Started
Many of the people who come to work with me carry a particular kind of grief: the grief of not having started sooner. Of having waited too long to address something. Of having let years go by while something in them needed attention.
This grief is real and deserves acknowledgment. But I want to gently push back on the story that often attaches to it — the story that says it's too late, that too much time has passed, that the damage is done.
The brain is remarkably plastic, even in adulthood. The nervous system can learn and relearn and continue to organize itself toward greater regulation and resilience. Relationships that have been frozen for decades can begin to thaw. Parts of the self that have been underground for years are still there, waiting, intact.
There is no moment too late. There is only now, and the choice of what to do with it.
What Beginning Again Looks Like
Beginning again does not require having arrived at a moment of clarity or readiness or feeling prepared. In my experience, waiting for those conditions is one of the most effective ways to ensure the beginning never happens.
Beginning again looks like making an appointment you're afraid of. Like saying something honest when the habitual response would be to deflect. Like returning, one more time, to a practice you've abandoned. Like calling the person back.
It looks like the smallest possible next step, taken not with confidence but with willingness.
The confidence, if it comes, comes after. Never before.
An Invitation
If you are sitting with something that has been sitting with you — some grief unprocessed, some part of yourself unexplored, some change you've been circling for longer than feels comfortable — I want to offer you the only encouragement I know to be true:
You don't have to have it figured out. You don't have to know what you want or how to get there. You just have to be willing to begin.
And then, when you inevitably wander, begin again.
Emma Leppo
Licensed psychotherapist and transformational coach based in New York City. Emma writes about depth psychology, the nervous system, and what it means to live with greater honesty and wholeness.