How to Walk into a Room: The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away

by Emily P. Freeman

Should I stay or is it time to leave? Am I allowed to even ask that question? How bad does something have to be before I can let it go? What if I helped to build this place? What if this place built me? What if I stay and nothing changes? What if I leave and everything falls apart? Our whole life is like a house, and every

Maybe you need someone to tell you that no matter how much you wanted something, prayed for something, or worked hard to get it, if the room no longer seems to fit, it’s good to begin to explore why. You are allowed to ask questions. You are allowed to reconsider. You are allowed to look around and to look again.

How we’re formed informs how we walk into rooms.

The way they walk into the room is informed by what was happening in the last room they left—if they have a struggling child at home, a big deadline looming at work, a rift in a friendship that will be waiting for them when they return. How we’re formed informs how we walk into rooms. And how we walk into rooms has an impact on what happens once we get there.

If life were a house, then every room would hold a story.

Entering rooms (or deciding to exit them) can feel a lot like boarding trains: frantic, disruptive, panicked. Before we can discern where we’re going, it’s good to name where we are, every obvious bit of it.

we can point and call on the thresholds of our lives to keep ourselves soulfully grounded in times of potential change.

Is it time to leave the room? Or is it time to change the script?