Ep 97 Why Fresh Starts Are a Myth: Your Messy Beginnings Hold the Most Power

We’ve all dreamed of hitting reset, whether it’s on New Year’s Day, a milestone birthday, or just another Monday morning. But here’s the truth: fresh starts are a myth. You don’t suddenly become someone new. You carry your history, your habits, and your unfinished stories with you into every new chapter. And that’s not a problem it’s your greatest advantage.

In this episode of The ARTwork of YOU, host Lori Gouhin unpacks why the idea of a flawless new beginning is an illusion and how your messy, imperfect starts hold the most power.

Lori explores the three myths of starting over that keep so many people stuck:

• The Blank Canvas Myth - Why your past isn’t baggage but the raw material that makes your next chapter richer.
  
  
  
• The Closure Myth - How waiting for a neat, wrapped-up ending can hold you back from moving forward.
  
  
  
• The Timeline Myth - Why growth and creativity unfold in their own season, not on a rigid schedule.
  
  
  

Drawing from her own experiences as an artist, coach, and entrepreneur, Lori shares why embracing the mess, the unfinished edges, and the imperfect timing is the real key to transformation.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why fresh starts don’t erase the past and why you wouldn’t want them to.
  
  
  
• How to stop waiting for “closure” before beginning again.
  
  
  
• The danger of rigid timelines and what to focus on instead.
  
  
  
• A new way to approach beginnings: not perfect, but personal.
  
  
  

You don’t need a blank canvas or perfect conditions to begin. You just need the willingness to start; messy, layered, and entirely yours.

Thank you for sharing your time with me and remember to show up in your life like the masterpiece you are because YOU are the ARTwork!!!

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Transcript

Lori Gouhin: [00:00:00] if you've ever tried to reinvent yourself, you've probably noticed that you don't suddenly become someone else. You bring your history, your habits, your half-finished projects, your old beliefs, all of it comes with you, and yet. Instead of that being a problem, what if that's actually the best news? Hello, my friends. I am so glad that you are here with me today because today I wanna talk about something that I think we've all craved [00:01:00] at some point in our life, and maybe you're even craving it now. And that's the idea of a fresh start. And when you think about it, we all love beginnings, right? We love the thought of wiping the slate clean.

Things like New Year's Day, a birthday, the first of the month, even something as ordinary as a Monday. There's an excitement in telling ourselves something like, this is it. This is where everything changes, but here's the question I wanna ask. Do you think that fresh starts actually exist, or have we been sold a myth about starting over?

That doesn't really hold up when you really look at it, because if you've ever tried to reinvent yourself, you've probably noticed that you don't suddenly become someone else. You bring your history, your habits, your half-finished projects, your old beliefs, all of it comes with you, and yet. Instead of that being a problem, what if that's actually the best [00:02:00] news?

And that's what I wanna talk about in today's episode. I wanna look at three myths that I think show up whenever we chase what I would say is the fantasy of a perfect beginning, and they are the myth of the blank canvas, the myth of closure, and the myth of timelines. By the end of the episode, my hope is that you'll see why you don't need a clean slate, a neat ending or the right timing to begin.

You can start exactly where you are carrying everything that's already shaped you in your life, and that might just be your biggest advantage. And so when people think of beginnings, they do often picture a blank canvas, wide open, nothing on it, just pure possibility. And obviously that sounds very enticing, but as an artist, I can tell you canvases are rarely truly blank.

There's almost always something there, whether it's a layer of [00:03:00] gesso, a bit of texture from the cotton or the linen, even the memory of what I painted the last time when I'm starting something new or when I paint over an older work, there are colors and lines and layers that subtly. Or not so subtly inform whatever I'm going to create next.

And honestly, I love that because those layers give the new painting depth and they make it more interesting. A perfectly pristine canvas is not necessarily more powerful. And I would say the same is true for us. When someone says, I just want a fresh start, what they really mean is they want to forget everything that's come before.

But the truth is, as you know, you don't get to, and you don't need to because you're not a blank canvas. You're, I would say more like an underpainting, a whole collection of colors and textures that make your next beginning richer. As you know, I started painting in my fifties and [00:04:00] I did not come in with an art school training or a traditional path, but I did come in with decades of experiences teaching entrepreneurship, raising a family, learning how to think strategically.

Even the failures in traumas. I had already survived. None of that disappeared just because I picked up a paintbrush and wanted to create a new version of myself. It all came with me. And shaped how I approached the work. It's the same with coaching clients. They don't show up as blank slates. They bring their history, their habits, their mindset, of course, their doubts, and while sometimes they think that's baggage, I like to see it more as raw material.

The past is what gives their future shape, and so maybe the problem isn't that we don't get blank canvases. Maybe the problem is that we ever thought we needed them in the first place. Because beginnings are always built on what came before, and that does not make them weaker, It makes them stronger, [00:05:00] and so if the blank canvas is one illusion that we clinging to, I would say closure is another.

We tell ourselves things like I'll move forward once I have closure, once I've wrapped it all up. Once I understand why that happened, once I feel done with it. But have you ever noticed how closure is never quite as neat as we imagined? Endings rarely, if ever, come with that proverbial bow on top. Right.

An ended relationship doesn't give you every answer you wanted. A job that you left where we're fired from. They don't hand you a perfectly wrapped up narrative. Even a project that you've finished can still leave you wondering if it's. Really done. In fact, sometimes the unfinished is what lingers and teaches us the most.

I've had many paintings that looked unresolved to me like they were missing something, and I'd go back again and again contemplating what to add, and then one day suddenly I would realize that it [00:06:00] was complete as is, and all of a sudden it would become one of my favorites. And the incompleteness is part of that story.

Life works the same way too. Closure doesn't mean erasing the past or having a perfect explanation. It's more about choosing to integrate what happened into who you are now. And sometimes closure is as simple as saying, I don't need every answer to move forward. I'm taking what I have, and that's enough.

When I shifted outta teaching. There was no ceremony where someone handed me a certificate of closure. There were still so many what ifs. There were still a lot of uncertainty, but waiting for perfect closure would've kept me stuck. So instead I let it be unfinished, and that's what gave me the space to fully step into being a stay-at-home mom and a business owner and a real estate investor.

So maybe closure isn't something we receive. [00:07:00] It's something that we decide, and just like the myth of the blank canvas, realizing this is actually very freeing because if you stop waiting for closure, you don't have to pause your life until everything makes sense. You can start again anyway. 

and even if we let go of the blank canvas myth and we stop waiting around for the perfect closure. I would say there's still one more illusion that sneaks in, and that is timelines. We love them, right? We love to map out our lives like some kind of mile marker on a highway. Oh, by 25 I should have this by 30, I should be here by 40.

I should be further along. If I don't hit this goal in 90 days, then I failed. Timelines, give us comfort and order, but they can also become traps because real growth and real creativity. As you know, doesn't necessarily unfold on a schedule. For example, some paintings of mine, they come together in hours.

Like they'd been waiting in me all along, right? And the moment I picked [00:08:00] up the brush, they just knew what to do. And others will sit in my studio for weeks, months, sometimes even years until they are finished. There's not a timeline that I can predict. And the same is true with bigger things. I didn't become an artist or a coach on the schedule that made sense on paper.

And if I had judged myself against some external clock, I might have called myself late or behind. But looking back, it was right on time because it was my time. And now, don't get me wrong, I do love good structure. I use 90 day plans with myself and my clients all the time. But the difference is this.

Timelines can be containers, not commandments. They're the tools to give us focus. It's not a be all, end all kind of thing, because when we clinging to rigid timelines, we miss the fact that goals unfold, some of them in an instant, others in a season, and yet others [00:09:00] in a lifetime. And so maybe it's time to stop asking, am I on schedule And start asking, am I in motion?

Am I aligned with what matters to me right now? Because progress is not measured by the calendar. It's measured by whether you're showing up again and again for the life that you want to create. And when you step back and look at these three myths, the blank canvas, closure and timelines, you start to see a common thread.

And that is that we've been conditioned to believe that beginnings have to be neat. We think we have to arrive spotless and prepared with no baggage, no questions left unanswered, and a clear map that says exactly where we'll end up. But again, that's not a beginning, that's a fantasy because beginnings are very often messy, and they're layered and unresolved and unpredictable.

And that's exactly what makes them [00:10:00] interesting. Think about the most powerful turning points in your life. Chances are they did not arrive wrapped in perfection. They probably showed up while you were still carrying doubts, still wondering what to do with the past, maybe still feeling behind in some way, and yet you started.

That's the secret. Beginnings. Don't wait for you to be ready. They wait for you to say yes even in the middle of the mess. 

and maybe that's the part we overlook. The mess isn't in the way. The mess is the raw material, the unfinished edges, your, your layers, and your imperfect timing. Those are what give your new chapter. It's texture right and its depth and its uniqueness. When I look at some of the most meaningful chapters in my own life, starting my art practice, launching my coaching business beginning this podcast, none of them happened under perfect conditions.

There surely was so much uncertainty, self-doubt, fear of judgment. [00:11:00] But what I see now is those exact imperfections gave each chapter its character. They forced me to grow into the person who could handle the next stage. And again, this is where I think people miss something important. Because beginnings are not about erasing what came before.

They're more about transforming it. Your failed business attempt becomes insight that you cannot learn from a textbook or your wrong relationship. That becomes clarity about what you want to create next. Or maybe if you've had a detour in life, that becomes the very path that takes you somewhere that you could never have planned.

And in art, if you stripped away every trace of what came before the work would be flat and in life, if you stripped away the unfinished and the unresolved, your story would become flat. It would lose its richness. And so I would say the deeper truth is this. You don't need a blank [00:12:00] canvas. You don't need perfect closure.

You don't need to be quote unquote on time. What you need is the willingness to create right now with what you have. Because when you stop waiting for things to be as perfect as you imagine, you realize something very freeing. And that is there is no perfect start. There is only your start. And so let me ask you this.

Where in your life are you holding back? Because you're waiting for things to be different than they actually are? Are you waiting for the blank canvas moment, the perfect reset, the magical fresh start where nothing from your past comes with you? Are you waiting for closure? Maybe that clear ending, that final explanation, that sense of being completely finished before you move forward.

Or maybe you're waiting on a timeline, believing you're either too late, too early, or somehow already behind. What would change if you stopped waiting? What if you gave yourself permission [00:13:00] to begin right now carrying with you your history, your unfinished situations, and your imperfect timing? Because whether you like it or not, there will never be a day when the canvas is completely blank and the closure is perfectly wrapped up and the timing is ideal.

But there can be a day, and it might as well be today when you decide to start anyway. And maybe that's what makes your beginning so powerful. Not that it's flawless, but that it's yours. Maybe it's unpolished. A little messy, but it's entirely human. And so as you move into this week, I want you to notice your thoughts and your actions, and then ask yourself, what's one small step I can take with what I already have?

Because your life's canvas isn't blank and it never will be. But again, maybe that's the point. The point isn't that life is neat and perfect, or unschedule. It's not that circumstances finally [00:14:00] line up. It's that you do.