On a Tuesday, at 11 PM, you are lazily browsing Instagram stories of folks you haven’t spoken to since high school on your phone. Their well-chosen lifestyles make yours seem somewhat less significant. Though this has become your nightly ritual and you know you should sleep, you also promise yourself tomorrow will be different.
Right in the corner of your bedroom lies that pricey exercise bike you acquired during the epidemic. Now it’s a pricey clothes rack, silently evaluating you every morning. Though its presence reminds you daily of what you consider to be failure, the guilt of that investment keeps you from letting it go.
Screenshots of inspirational sayings and untested exercise regimens fill your camera roll. While you order takeout for the third time this week, your kitchen drawers bulge with devices meant to make you a master cook. You purchased that March online course? Still seated at 7% complete, it fits the graveyard of other well-meaning acquisitions.
We all act in this way. We tend to cling to things because letting go can be perceived as an admission of failure. Is your subscription to the language study app still active? “I will get back on it shortly.” Those jeans that don’t fit? “At least a few more months will pass.” That poisonous friend that constantly leaves you exhausted? “Still, we have known each other always.”
Actually, we are clinging to versions of ourselves we believe we should be, not only to objects. The aspiring photographer is carrying an unspoiled DSLR camera. The next writer arrives with an empty collection of journals. The would-be businessman with unread business books strewn on the bedside.
The Weight of Unmade Decisions
Consider your daily ritual in the mornings. You spend how many minutes looking for things you hardly use among jumbled drawers? How much mental energy do you waste worrying about unmet ambitions or regret about past purchases? This drains your life force, not just time.
I met someone last week who had finally removed their ex’s number three years ago. They stated, “I kept it just in case,” but “just in case” was preventing “just now.” Sometimes our biggest development results from what we release rather than from our accomplishments.
Your house is full of decisions unmade, not only of objects. Everything you maintain is a small contract with your energy. That craft materials nook is using mental real estate rather than only physical space. Every time you see it, your brain analyzes the guilt, the possibility, and the “someday” pledge.
Embracing Empty Space
Think of empty space as not failing as 2025 draws near. It is plausible. That cleared-out closet invites the future rather than reminding one of money squandered. The deleted social media apps are a reconnection with your current moment rather than a disengagement from the globe.
To become the person you are destined to be, you need not carry all you have ever known. That is hoarding rather than progress. One is discriminating about growth. Saying, “This no longer serves me,” is courageous, even if the object in question has cost years of identity-building, money, or time.
A Different Kind of Resolution
Are you prepared to set a different type of New Year’s goal? Let us subtract rather than add more. Try “New Year, True You” instead of “New Year, New You.” Perhaps your best self is waiting under fewer distractions rather than buried under more acquisitions. Perhaps this is a possibility worth exploring.
What aspect of your life is consuming space? The fundamental question is: should you dare to empty that space, what could occupy it?
Think about this as 2025 approaches: every object you release makes room for a long breath. Every digital purge allows for actual connection. Every farewell to anything that no longer benefits you welcomes the person you are growing to be.
✍️ A Note From the Author to Reader
I wrote this post late one night while staring at my own crowded desk, struggling with the identical issues I’ve discussed here. If these words spoke to you, remember that you are not alone on this road of letting go. Sometimes the boldest thing we can do is just make room for what is most important.
Here’s to your journey of intentional living,
