Ep. 8 Repair or Redo? The Benefits of Starting Over From Scratch

Do I use my Animal Crossing island as an example of the power of starting over from scratch? Yes, yes I do... 😂 There are actually so many things in our lives that could benefit from releasing and starting anew.

I personally did this with my social media accounts, and it was so liberating! So I'm excited to share this 'modern magic trick' of what I call, "Shed the Sh*t." This episode is all about the different parts of our lives that could benefit from restarting, rather than trying to fix, repair, or reorganize. Whether it's our wardrobe, social media accounts, relationship, job, or Animal Crossing island, it may be time to "let go of everything and see what returns." 👋🏼

Letting go and starting from scratch can bring a sense of freedom and allow us to align our lives with our true Selves. We evolve, so it's healthy to release baggage that we've been dragging along with us. 🗑

I also share my update from the past year, living in Macedonia, Vietnam, and now back in Bulgaria. I'm so happy to be back!! ✨

Stay tuned for the end when I do a collective Tarot card pull, and it may bring some insight into your near future. 🔮

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Thank you so much for listening, it truly means the world to me. I would love to connect with you!

Instagram: @dreamlifeconnection
Website: Dream Life Connection
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Grateful for you. You are MAGIC! ✨

With love,
Andrea

Transcript

Andrea [00:00:00]:

Hello and welcome to Dream Life Connection, your hub for magical personal development. I'm Andrea Morrison. This podcast is a blend of whimsical and grounding topics that will inspire you to live the life of your dreams. In each episode, we'll take a mini journey through a dreamy topic, learn some modern magic tricks, and I'll share my stories as a traveling dreamer and digital nomad. Thank you so much for being here. I would love to connect with you at Dreamlife Connection on Instagram and TikTok. I'm so glad we found each. Hello.

Andrea [00:00:40]:

Hello and welcome back. Oh, my gosh, it has been a while. It it has been a while since I have sat down and pressed record and recorded an episode. The last episode I published was back in October. It's been almost a year. And you know what? I have done my best not to be hard on myself about that. When you start out with something, of course it's exciting. There's adrenaline, there's all this momentum.

Andrea [00:01:17]:

And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to be a podcaster. And then life just sort of happens. And I know in my last episode, I was talking about my life Update, about becoming a virtual assistant and, yeah, life has been absolutely wild the past year, and I have made sure to be easy on myself and I always, always had in the back of my head, you're going to bring back the podcast. One day, you will bring back the podcast. It's okay. I think that these days, especially in social media, they say over and over and over, you need consistency. You need consistency post five times a day. And so I was kind of beating myself up over the fact that I hadn't recorded an episode in so long and I thought I was kind of a failure.

Andrea [00:02:16]:

I was like, okay, well, that project didn't work out. But you know what? I always had this in the back of my mind and I knew it would come back. And I have just been really easy on myself, and I think we all need to remember that it's okay to take our time with things. Sometimes we'll let projects go completely. Sometimes we'll take long breaks, maybe even a year break. And if we come back, then that's great. And if we don't, that's great too. So welcome back.

Andrea [00:02:48]:

I'm so happy you're here. I am not going to lie. I have been so full of love when I receive messages from people, you know, who you are, who say, when are you bringing your podcast back? Even though I only had about seven episodes, I still had people reaching out to me even recently asking me about my podcast. And it's like, it's on my mind too. So today's the day I'm bringing it back. So I thought I would obviously give a little Life Update from the past year before I get into today's topic. But there's been this thought brewing in my mind a lot about the concept of starting over. When should you know if you should start something over, or if you should continue repairing, remodeling, fixing things? There's a lot of things in our lives that it might actually be to our benefit if we just completely start over from scratch.

Andrea [00:03:50]:

Sometimes we don't even realize it, but it can be very, very healing and freeing if we just completely cut something out and start over fresh. So that's the topic today. And then at the end of the episode, I would love to pull a Tarot card for you. I want to do a collective card pull and have a message that we can all incorporate into our lives the next week or two. So before I talk about today's topic, I thought I would just know I'm a nomad. I've got kind of a wild life, and in my last episode, I ended the episode saying, cross your fingers that I make it to Asia. A year ago, it was still kind of wishy washy with travel. There were still some restrictions.

Andrea [00:04:41]:

And so my boyfriend and I, we weren't really sure what we were going to be doing, and we ended up in Vietnam. We loved Macedonia, we had three months in Macedonia, and then we ended up going back to Vietnam, which is where my heart feels so happy. It was so nice being back there. And the only thing about being back in Vietnam was they only had month long visas. So that meant I literally had to leave the country once a month. I had to take a day. So what I would do is I would go to the airport in the morning, fly to Thailand, have my kaosoy, lunch in the airport, and fly back and get a new stamp. So every month I did this, and you can imagine it gets kind of draining because you can never fully feel settled.

Andrea [00:05:35]:

So it was like you would land and you'd have like a week where you wouldn't have to worry about it. And then the second or third week, you're applying for the visa, you're buying your flight. I always get nervous I'm going to get flagged. Like, oh, you've entered Vietnam so many times now. Denied there's always that little bit of fear, but I did this for a good three, four months. And then by the fourth month, we started wondering, all, we are going to continue doing this. Like, what's our next step? Should we just go back to Thailand? So it was kind of this unknown and we ended up staying in Vietnam for six months total. And it was tough because it never was a fully committed, we're in Vietnam for six months.

Andrea [00:06:17]:

So it was like, every month we're kind of wondering, are we doing another month? So it was a challenge. I mean, I was so grateful for the time there. And then after that, we both visited our hometowns. I went home to spokane for a while and my boyfriend went home to Germany and we spent time with our families and it was so nice being home. It was wild, though. It was reverse culture shock for sure. I just about cried when I walked into Target, going into Target and Costco and being able to shop on Amazon, whoa. It was definitely culture shock again for me.

Andrea [00:06:59]:

And then after about two months, I went to Germany and I reunited with my boyfriend and we spent some time there and that was amazing. I love Germany and now we're back in Bulgaria. So Bulgaria was where we were a little over a year ago in a little mountain town of Bainsko. So it was kind of cool coming back here and already knowing the lay of the land. We've got our apartment again and we know where all the cool spots are and favorite cafes, all of that. So we're back here and I am just in I don't want to say hustle mode, but I just feel so focused now because when I was in Vietnam, it was again, that kind of monthly, am I going? Am I staying? What are we doing? And I didn't have that kind of stability to say, okay, we're here for three or six months. So with Bulgaria, we're here for sure for three months. And then our plan is to go back to Vietnam because they thankfully brought back longer visas.

Andrea [00:08:04]:

So that is super, super nice. So I'm excited because we kind of landed in Bulgaria and it's like, all right, three months, let's go. So I've been diving deep into work and self care and all of that, and yeah, the past year has just been wild with my business. I have picked up so many wonderful, beautiful, magical clients and it's just kept me really busy and I'm very happy with that. But I'm at a point now where I've got a good flow. Like my last episode was about being in flow. I've got a really good flow with everything now, so I'm like, all right, it's time to start bringing back these things that I really care about. And one of them being is this podcast.

Andrea [00:08:50]:

What I do almost every day is I record a voice message. It's pretty much my favorite form of journaling. I journal all the time, but doing voice messages is one of my favorite ways of journaling because I just get to release it all. I just get to press record and start talking, and you kind of forget that you're even recording and you just talk and talk and talk and you can release everything. And then when I'm on my long flight, I go back and I listen to these messages and it's so powerful. And so I've always believed that doing a podcast is going to be a great way to express myself, to channel my experiences and everything that I've learned and try to share them with you. I don't want to come off like I'm some expert. I'm not.

Andrea [00:09:41]:

But I love being a guinea pig for people, and I love sharing the things that I've learned, and that's what I look for in a podcast. So here I am trying to do the same for you. So thank you so much for listening. So I want to jump into this topic of starting over, starting from scratch. And you could even say, I had this thought about my podcast. It's like, okay, it was kind of lying dormant for almost a year. Should I just completely cut it and start over? Well, no. I feel like I have a good foundation with this.

Andrea [00:10:13]:

It feels good. It's within my brand, within my business. It just took a pause. But there are definitely some things that can benefit from letting go and releasing and starting from scratch. So why is it even important to start from scratch? It's something that maybe we don't really think a lot about, but even thinking about your wardrobe or your home decor or social media, it might be something you're just so in the routine with all of this that you might not even think, do I need to start over from scratch? So sometimes we're just stuck. It's like a broken record, and it's kind of the day in, day out, same thing. If it's fine, then just keep going with it. But I think it's important to take a pause and look at these things.

Andrea [00:11:03]:

The first step of recognizing if you should start over from scratch is awareness. So take a look at some of these things and think, is this actually helping me or is it hurting me? So a good example I'll share is social media. So I had an old Facebook account. I had an old instagram. I had had them since pretty much the beginning of time that they began. And I realized actually a couple years ago. And I was like, I think I've grown past this Instagram account or this Facebook account. There are so many people, I could go through the list and unfollow certain people.

Andrea [00:11:44]:

I could do all of that, which would take a lot of time. But I felt deep, deep in my heart, really, as cheesy as that sounds, I was like, I need to let this account go, because this isn't the current me anymore. This is the old Andrea, and this is attached to so many people and so many accounts that don't serve me anymore. They didn't feel aligned with me anymore. So I thought, do I want to go through and unfollow almost hundreds of people that don't spark joy anymore? Or do I just want to start over? So I deactivated my Facebook, I let go of this Instagram, and I started a new account. I started my dream life connection account. And it was so liberating to let that go. I thought it was going to be really hard.

Andrea [00:12:36]:

I was nervous to completely start over. But it was the best thing I've ever done, because now, oh my gosh, my algorithm just fits this current me. The people that I'm connected with now are the people that feel aligned with this present. Andrea I don't feel overwhelmed or bogged down anymore. So you can think of things like your social media or think about your wardrobe, for example. Maybe you go through all your clothes and you're like, oh my gosh, I don't feel like I have anything to wear. And you go and you shop and you buy this piece. You buy that piece and you add it, and then it just adds to the clutter.

Andrea [00:13:18]:

Sometimes it's good to just go through and just get rid of maybe not all of it, but a lot of it. And I have done this many times, having moved abroad multiple times. I call it shed the shit. So every time I've moved abroad, which I think I'm on my fourth or fifth round, every time I go home, I go through my storage. And it's not like I have a ton of storage, but I go through and I just release so much stuff. I'm getting close to not having much at all, which is so nice. And there's so many benefits to doing this. There's so many benefits to starting over from scratch, because we evolve.

Andrea [00:13:57]:

We don't want to carry all this baggage with us. We want the fresh start. We end up receiving all this mental clarity when we start over. And when we have this clarity, it sparks creativity. We have all this room for new ideas for this new version of you. So there's the quote, let go of everything and see what stays. So it's like when you're able to release all of that, see what comes back to you. And I've kind of been doing that with a lot of things in my life.

Andrea [00:14:26]:

And I knew, I knew, I knew the podcast would come back to me. I knew it was important. So as you go through this process with a fresh start, you're this new version of you. You have a new awareness. And there's the thought of, I wish I knew then what I knew now. So when you start over, you can implement what you know now. So I know this sounds like a really silly example, but I always think of Animal Crossing. I'm sure you've all heard the Nintendo game.

Andrea [00:14:57]:

Animal crossing. It's the perfect way to demonstrate in kind of a silly way, the benefit of starting over from scratch. So when you are start, or at least when I was starting Animal Crossing, I didn't know how it worked. I didn't know about anything with how you get your villagers, how you get materials, how you decorate, how you TerraForm, all those things. And it's a learning process. And during that process, it becomes a little cluttered because everything's new, so you don't really know what should I keep? What should I sell? Who should I keep? Who should I get rid of? So then you get far along. You understand the mechanics of the game now. So then what a lot of people do is they completely start over the game, and then they're able to start it with this new knowledge.

Andrea [00:15:47]:

They're able to get through things way faster. They're able to start with kind of an idea of what they want. Like, for example, for me, my house on my animal crossing is so random because it was all in the beginning. Like, okay, I'll hold on to this furniture. I'll hold on to this. But now, if I were to delete my island, I would know exactly what I'm looking for. I would go in with the idea of what I want my island to look like. I know it sounds so silly, but it's such a good example.

Andrea [00:16:15]:

And you can apply this to everything. You get this new knowledge and then when you start over, you can apply this knowledge and everything feels smoother. To be honest, it goes a lot faster too. You can kind of fast track to this goal that you have. Even my boyfriend, oddly enough, and this is why I knew I had to talk about it on this episode, because the synchronicity was crazy. So my boyfriend is also playing a video game and he said the same thing last night without even knowing that this was my topic for this episode. He started his game over and he's like, I'm so happy to start over because now I understand it more and I feel like I can enjoy it more because I know exactly how the mechanics work and I can do things faster. Or I know that there are certain things you need to do in certain places.

Andrea [00:17:10]:

So you can apply this to so many different things. Instead of trying to clean up the clutter or filling in these gaps, it might benefit you to just completely get rid of something and start over from scratch. So I hope that helps. I know that that's something I'm sort of implementing these days. And having moved to Bulgaria again, I went through this process, so it's kind of top of mind and it really is so freeing. I just really want to stress that. So sit down and take a pause and think about the things in your life that would benefit from completely starting over. Rather than trying to clean up the clutter or filling in the gaps, it might just be better to just completely start over.

Andrea [00:17:58]:

And I think I'm a good example. I can tell you from my example, especially with the social media and starting a completely new Instagram from scratch, it felt so mentally and physically clearing to me. It was like healing. It was therapeutic for me. So I definitely recommend doing that. So I want to end this episode with a tarot card poll, this Tarot card. Let's see what we get. I just wanted to pull something for us as a collective.

Andrea [00:18:32]:

And when I pull Tarot cards, I like to ask the question, what message do you have for me? So that's what I'll do for this poll right now. I've already shuffled the cards and I'm going to pick a card right now. So let's see. Okay, I've got the card and we're going to see what it is. Here we go. Two of wands. And this is all about choice and making decisions and choosing a path. I mean, it's very symbolic of do I want to continue on this path or do I want to completely start over? It could even be something like a job or a relationship or a video game, maybe your animal crossing island.

Andrea [00:19:14]:

It's time to make that choice. So this is the perfect card to pull right now. It's time to make these choices. It's time to pick a path, really. So I hope that this is helpful for you. I am so glad that you are here and listening. As I always say. I'm so grateful for you.

Andrea [00:19:35]:

I would love to connect with you on social media. You can find me on my new Instagram account, Dreamlife Connection. Reach out to me anytime if you have any questions, any thoughts. I really, really want to connect with beautiful spirits like you. I want to know who's listening. I want to know who has somehow stumbled across my podcast. I would love to meet you. I would love to connect with you.

Andrea [00:20:01]:

So definitely reach out. Dream life connection. And thank you so much for being here. I definitely plan on getting back into this podcast. I'm not starting this over completely. This is something that already is in a good flow. So I'm just going to keep on going. There is no rush.

Andrea [00:20:19]:

And that is the beauty of life, of business, of this podcast. There's no rush. There's no expectation. It's all good. And I want you to take that too. With whatever you're doing, there's no pressure. Just keep going. If it feels right, just keep going.

Andrea [00:20:37]:

But there's no rush. Just take your time and enjoy the process. Thanks for being here. Have a great magical day.