When Your World Feels Small, Walk Away

When I recorded my message for my son’s 16th birthday, (family from all over the world sent short messages, memories, and bits of advice) I surprised myself with what came out. My advice wasn’t about happiness, success, working hard.

It was this: if your world ever starts to feel small, boxed in by a job, a situation, or a relationship - remember that walking away and starting over is always an option. Your world doesn’t have to stay small.

Basically, my advice was to live and to live free.

That came after telling him to take care of family relationships, because in the end, family is what stays. I’ve lived in different countries, moved for work, built and rebuilt communities, and started over more times than I can count.

And yet, the thing I didn’t always do well was letting go. I stayed too long in situations because I was afraid of change, even when walking away would have been kinder to myself.

There’s a fine line between quitting and knowing when you need a change.

I know it’s almost a cliché now, but many years ago I attended a work training called Who Moved My Cheese. It happened, coincidentally, just a few months before a really stressful situation where we had no choice but to accept change…or perish. I’ll always be grateful to that trainer for preparing me to be Sniff and Scurry… well, maybe Haw.

Not everyone has the same choices, of course, and I only have my own experience to draw from. But I do believe that simplicity helps. When you don’t need much, when you don’t build a life that traps you, you keep your freedom.

That’s what I want him to know: protect your family relationships, live simply, and never forget that you can choose a different life.

I told him not to live in fear.

Life is big. The world is large. And sometimes the bravest, healthiest thing you can do is to walk away and start again, even if that means leaving everything behind.

I wanted him to know that no place, no group, no situation has to be forever if it stops being right for him.

The simplicity (I value it, I strive for it) is another form of freedom. When we release the “connoisseur lifestyle” and shed unnecessary attachments, we create space for what truly matters. We live at the Level of F…. you. I love being there.

As I was saying this to him, I was reminded of something I said to my daughter several years ago.

She must have been six or seven at the time. She was stuck in a painful little triangle of a friendship. Three girls, one of them passive, the other two (my daughter being one of them) competing to dominate over her. My daughter came home in tears more than once, confused and hurt and trying to work out what she’d done wrong.

It was painfully familiar. I had lived that exact dynamic as a child. I remembered my own mother sitting with me, trying to help me come up with plans to fix it, to say the right thing, to stay in it and make it work. I never really escaped my triangle, and it followed me through much of primary school (that’s almost eight years of suffering!)

So this time, I said something different to my daughter.

I told my daughter that we could analyse it all we liked and come up with strategies, but I wanted to tell her something I wished someone had told me back then.

Move on.

Leave them both to it.

There are billions of people in the world. Don’t get hung up on two who make you unhappy. Let them be. Find someone else in your class. Start again.

I wasn’t sure she’d take it in. But she did.

She made new friends. Three years later and those two girls are an afterthought. Watching her do that, so simply and without drama was … healing.

I think what traps us, as children and as adults, is a kind of scarcity thinking. We believe this is it. These are the only people. This is the only place. If we leave, we’ll lose everything.

But the world is not small, even when our corner of it feels that way. Walking away isn’t failure. It isn’t giving up. Sometimes it’s choosing yourself.

This applies to friendships, places, jobs, relationships, and entire chapters of life. Not everything needs fixing. Not everything needs endurance. Some things simply need leaving behind.

If there’s one thing I hope my kids carry with them, it’s this: don’t live small out of fear. If something makes your world shrink, you’re allowed to make it big again.

Even if that means walking away.

Reflection

Scarcity thinking keeps us trapped

We cling because we think options are limited

Walking away isn’t failure, it’s choosing yourself/choosing life

This applies to friendships, places, jobs, and whole chapters of life

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Living at the Level of F* You

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