There are decisions where I have felt very clearly that something no longer belonged in my life, and yet I stayed longer than I could later explain to myself. Not because the situation was good for me, and not because I saw no other possibility. It was more the strange familiarity of what I already knew. Even something that makes me unhappy can offer a sense of security when I know how it works. I know my role within it, the routines, the people, my own reactions and even the difficulties. The unknown has none of that familiarity. It may promise freedom, but it cannot tell me how I will feel there. In this, I came to recognise a side of the fear of change that I had previously underestimated: we are not always afraid that the new will be worse. Sometimes we are simply afraid because we do not yet know who we will be within it.
Change is often presented as something we simply need to be brave enough to welcome. But I have never experienced it as being quite that simple. There are changes I genuinely want and that still frighten me. A new path can feel right and at the same time unsettle something within me. A farewell can be necessary and still hurt. Even a development I have hoped for over a long time can suddenly create a strange unease once it truly becomes possible. This has taught me not to see fear automatically as a sign that I am on the wrong path. It can also appear where something familiar is losing its hold and my inner world has not yet found a new order.
Our minds love predictability. They draw on experience, recognise patterns and try to judge what might happen next. This is not something I want to overcome. It is part of us and protects us in many situations. But that same ability can also make change difficult. What is familiar can be calculated, even when it is unpleasant. With the new, there is nothing to compare it with. My mind then begins to imagine possibilities, weigh up risks and fill the gaps with ideas. What is striking is that these are not automatically the most beautiful scenarios. The mind often asks first what might go wrong. In this way, a future that does not yet exist can already feel more threatening than a present I have long known no longer fulfils me.
For me, change goes deeper still when it affects not only my circumstances, but my image of myself. Over the course of my life, I have taken on roles, developed beliefs and built stories about who I am. Some of them support me, while others I eventually outgrew without noticing straight away. When something changes fundamentally, one of these stories can begin to falter as well. Who am I if I am no longer the one who always holds everything together? What remains if I stop orientating myself around an old expectation? What does my life feel like if I let go of something that has defined me for years? For me, questions like these touch a very quiet place. It is no longer only about a new situation. It is about the possibility that I may come to know myself differently.
In my spiritual exploration, I have therefore encountered the idea of letting go again and again, although I see it more soberly today than I once did. Letting go often sounds peaceful, almost natural, as long as it remains a beautiful phrase. In real life, it can mean giving up one form of security before another has appeared. It can mean no longer having an answer, seeing a relationship differently or being unable to maintain a familiar idea of yourself any longer. I have found that such transitions do not become easier simply because I immediately give them some higher meaning. Not every change has to be a cosmic message, and not every loss is automatically a spiritual test. For me, a spiritual perspective begins much more where I become honest enough to tolerate not knowing.
It is precisely this not knowing that, for me, has something to do with trust. Not with the promise that everything will turn out well. No one can give me that promise. Trust means more to me that I do not have to possess every answer for tomorrow today. I can make a decision and still feel uncertain. I can sense that a chapter is ending without already being able to name the next one. I can feel fear and still recognise that it does not have to decide everything. Over time, I have come to understand that inner security arises for me less from being able to control what is coming and more from knowing that I will still meet myself there, even where I do not yet know what awaits me.
At this point, the subject connects very strongly for me with I – Your Best Liar. In the book, I explore the stories through which we preserve familiar patterns even when we have long sensed that they are limiting us. Especially before change, such stories can become particularly convincing. Suddenly, I find many perfectly reasonable reasons why now is not yet the right time. Why the old situation was not actually so bad. Why security matters more than whatever has already been calling me inwardly for some time. What is interesting is that these reasons do not have to be completely false. Self-deception is often far more subtle than that. A genuine concern can become so large that it overshadows everything else. Caution turns into stagnation, and I barely notice when that boundary has been crossed.
I therefore see change today less as the moment when something new begins. Often, it starts much earlier. In that barely visible moment when I can no longer fully believe in the old. Something no longer fits as naturally as it once did. A familiar thought loses its strength. A role begins to feel tighter. Nothing has yet been decided and outwardly everything may still look the same, yet inwardly a movement has already begun. For me, these periods are particularly delicate. They do not require quick answers, but honesty. Because before a new path becomes visible, I sometimes first have to admit that the old one is no longer taking me where I truly want to go.
When I look back today on the greater changes in my life, courage is rarely the first thing I remember. I remember more often the quiet uncertainty that came before it. The moment when I did not yet know whether I was losing something or making space. The strange feeling of still having one foot in the familiar while the other was already touching something that had no name. Perhaps this is where the spiritual depth of change lies for me. Not in the idea that it automatically improves us or takes us to a higher level, but in the way it sometimes brings us to a point where the old answers no longer carry us and, for a moment, we are left standing without them. And it is precisely there that I have sometimes felt myself most clearly.