The Price of Your New Life is Your Old Life

- Unknown

This quote floats around the internet every couple of years and recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the price of my new life being my old life.  When I first read it, I completely resisted it. There was a lot in my life I wanted to bring with me into my new life - my family, friends, city and who I was were important, so I sought to keep select parts of my old life and still achieve my new life.

Yes, I passed the quote along to others as if I understood what it meant and that I was wise enough to have implemented it - Hadn't I done it when I quit drinking 15 years ago? I had changed my behavior, my circle of friends, my leisure activities and even the time I went to sleep at night. Again, in the past three years, I left behind my career, choosing to spend more time raising my children and become the personal coach I had dreamt of. Yes, I was familiar with trading my old life for the new, but until recently, I did not fully understand this quote.

If the quote is to be believed, the price of your new life is your old one. And, as many of us are seeking new lives, this seems clear; let go of our old lives - our jobs, relationships, our locations, habits or our hobbies, right? 

Yep, I fell for the delusion of believing that my old life was the external stuff, but oh no… It turns out the things I was unwilling to let go of were the pinnings of my internal life. And these staples continued to hinder my efforts to fully realize the new life.

I was not willing to give up a lot more than my family or city, I have been unwilling to give up my way of being in the world:

• my victimhood (masked by the below)
• my egoic attachment and identification to my story
• my injustices
• my excuses
• my stubborn self-reliance
• my arguing for my limitations
• my pride
• my justifications

I was willing to dream of the new life, but have found myself in my own way at every turn. I make excuses for why it hasn't happened yet. I justify my inability to make progress through my stories of limitations and blaming circumstances for the injustices. The quote says there is a price to pay for the life I want - Now that I know the true price, am I willing to pay it?