This material is for informational and educational purposes only and is not medical, psychological, or psychotherapeutic advice. If you are experiencing an acute psychological condition or need professional support, please contact a doctor, psychologist, psychotherapist, or crisis service.
Maria was 28, working in local television and living with a partner. Her wish to make music eventually led her to move away alone. There were doubts and regrets, while her new life brought work as a bassist in a small band. Psychologies recounts her story in an article on wanting change, alongside reflections from psychoanalyst Juliette Allais, family psychologist Svetlana Loseva and Gestalt therapist Ashe Garrido.
Someone else’s experience may resonate, although your decision still needs to fit your circumstances. For some people, change is overdue; others primarily want something painful to stop. Both reasons deserve attention.
What attracts you to a new life
In Allais’s psychoanalytic reading, desire connects with feeling alive and finding a direction of your own. You may notice it in activities you return to, encounters and books that stay in your mind. These impressions provide material for considering what matters to you.
Alongside them, picture an ordinary day after the change. If you want to work in music, what are you prepared to do regularly? What training would you need, how would you find work and what would support you initially? Specific questions test the attractive image while leaving room for curiosity.
What you want to leave
In the same publication, Loseva describes a client who dreamed of love and living beside an ocean in America. Conversation revealed a wish to leave an uncomfortable parental home. Asking about the particular place helped move from a broad dream to a present need.
Wanting to leave difficult conditions can itself be sufficient reason to seek a way out. Consider safety, housing, money and support at the destination as well. Sometimes the immediate problem can be addressed separately, leaving more space to choose a longer-term direction.
Loseva also recalls speaking with medical students, many of whom linked their choice of study to their parents’ wishes. This episode from her experience raises a personal question: which parts of your current path remain yours, and which are sustained mainly by other people’s expectations?
What we gain and what we pay
Another person in the article, Irina, began making woollen rabbits after a separation at 48. Buyers gradually appeared, and four years later the activity had become home-based work. She gained time with her children, while her income fell by roughly half. Both gains and costs remain in the account.
Before your own change, make a similar estimate without demanding complete foresight. What would you gain immediately? What might you lose? What reserve would help if the first months prove difficult? Who else would be affected, and what needs discussing with them?
Where possible, try a small version of the future activity: complete one commission, take a short course or speak with someone in the profession. An actual attempt provides more experience for a decision than another evening of imagining it.
Age and available possibilities
The selection also describes a traveller who remained active after eighty. Her story recalls that interest in something new can remain at different ages. Health, finances, caring responsibilities and accessibility nevertheless shape how someone can pursue an idea.
Consider what is available now: a shorter journey, an accessible route, company or a different pace. Life before a change also had value. Beginning something new is easier without having to prove that all earlier years were wasted.
Living through the interval between decisions
Garrido suggests attending to the uncertainty that appears when an old approach no longer fits and a new one has yet to develop. You may want to do anything just to obtain an answer. Sometimes attending first to sleep, food, support and a clear review date is more useful.
Record what you know, what information is missing and how you will obtain it. For example: check course conditions by Friday, discuss the budget at the weekend, then revisit the decision. A pause gains boundaries and substance when it contains rest or a particular inquiry.
An online journal or notebook can hold three things: what attracts you, what you want to leave and a manageable step you choose now. Return after a real attempt. Your wish may become clearer and your direction change with what you learn about yourself and the activity.
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