Carrying Bricks

Picture this: It’s a Sunday evening in early spring. The light is different. It’s softer, longer, and something in you stirs. Not quite restlessness, yet not quite longing. That particular Sunday feeling, the one that sits somewhere between who you have been all week and who you want to be tomorrow.

You look around. Maybe it’s that closet you’ve been meaning to tackle, or maybe it’s the stack of things you moved from the last place, and the place before that. And somewhere in the looking, you realize you are not just surrounded by stuff, you are surrounded by chapters, by evidence of lives you have already lived.

Spring cleaning we call it, but really, what we are doing is something far braver than tidying up.

Recently at SoulCycle, an instructor stopped mid-climb and said something that hit me square in the chest. One of those moments where you stop pedaling, even though the music keeps driving forward, because something just landed.

“If you keep carrying the same bricks, you will build the same house.”

She wasn’t talking about clutter. She was talking about the mental, emotional, and physical weight we keep hauling from one chapter of our lives into the next and then wondering why nothing feels different.

The Psychology of Emotionally Charged Objects

Here is where it gets interesting, and where I think the conversation around spring cleaning rarely goes deep enough.

Researchers call the items we can’t seem to part with, “emotionally charged possessions,” and they serve a profound psychological function. They give us continuity. They whisper, “I existed. I had a life. I mattered.”

That is not wrong. That is deeply human.

But here is what I have been sitting with: we don’t just carry emotionally charged possessions in our closets, on our shelves, in our personal relationships, and our hearts. We carry them in our professional lives too; and we almost never talk about it.

Think about what you are still carrying at work:

• A title you have outgrown — but it’s what people know you as, so you keep operating inside its boundaries, even when your capabilities have long since exceeded them.
• A leadership style that worked in your last chapter — the command-and-control approach that got results when you were managing a team of 5, now quietly suffocating a team of 25 that wants something different.
• A narrative about your own limitations — “I’m not a tech person.” “I don’t do conflict.” “I’m better behind the scenes.” Stories we inherited somewhere and never thought to question.
• A relationship dynamic you are quietly maintaining out of habit rather than joy — the colleague you always defer to, the meeting you always run the same way, the conversation you’ve been avoiding for three years.
• A longing you have been quietly talking yourself out of — the career pivot, the new venture, the version of your work life that lights you up when you let yourself imagine it. Not because the dream isn’t real, but because the fear is louder. So, you stay. And you call it practical. And you carry that unlived possibility like a brick you are not sure you are allowed to put down.

These aren’t just professional habits. They are bricks. And we’ve been carrying them for so long we’ve stopped noticing the weight.

Why We Hold On

The research on this is fascinating. Psychologists have found that we develop what is called a “possession-self link”—objects (along with roles and stories) become extensions of our identity. Letting them go doesn’t just feel like losing a thing, it feels like losing a piece of ourselves.

And here is the paradox: the more meaningful something once was, the harder it is to release. The award that represented a hard-won achievement. The leadership role that defined a decade of your life. The way of working that got you here. But also, and this is the part we talk about even less, the objects we have inherited. The china you will never use but can’t give away. The gift from someone you loved that does not reflect your taste, your home, or who you have become. The heirloom that carries someone else’s story more than your own. Releasing any of it can feel like betrayal. Like you are erasing something (or someone) that mattered. But here is the question I keep turning over: just because something was given with love, does that mean you are obligated to carry it forever? Can you honor the person, and still choose not to keep the object?

What if you could honor what those things represented and still choose to put them down?

What if giving yourself permission to release something you once cherished is not a betrayal of who you were, but an act of radical trust in who you are becoming?

The Harder Questions

This spring, I am not just cleaning out my closet. I am asking myself harder questions. And I am inviting you to do the same:

• What belief am I still carrying that no longer fits who I am today?
• What relationship dynamic am I quietly maintaining out of habit rather than genuine connection?
• What story about my own capabilities or limitations am I ready to set down, carefully, gratefully, and walk away from?
• What would I do differently if I were not still carrying the weight of who I used to be?

I don’t think spring cleaning is about minimalism; it’s about intention. It’s about making room, mentally, emotionally, professionally, for whatever wants to grow next.

The Wondering

 I keep coming back to this:

What if the life you want is already possible, but you can’t see it yet because you are standing in front of a closet full of the life you have already lived?

What beliefs, roles, dynamics, or stories might you be ready to release, not because they were wrong, but because you have simply grown past them?

A 5-Minute Exercise: The Brick Inventory

Find a quiet moment and take out a piece of paper (yes, paper. There’s something about handwriting that bypasses the editor in our brains and gets to the truth). Write at the top: “What am I still carrying?”

Then sit with one question from each of these three areas:

• Self: What story am I still telling myself about who I am (my limitations, my possibilities, my worth, etc.), that I might be ready to rewrite?
• Work: What role, habit, or way of leading have I outgrown, but am still showing up inside of, because it is what people expect of me?
• Family: What have I inherited, an object, a dynamic, an unspoken rule, that I am carrying out of love or loyalty, but that no longer feels like mine?

You don’t have to act on anything today. Just noticing is enough. The first step in crafting a life you want is simply to get honest about what you are still carrying from the life you have already lived.

My Intention

A year ago, I was carrying a very large brick(s). The longing I kept talking myself out of —the version of my work life that lit me up when I let myself imagine it and terrified me when I let myself believe it was possible. I called it practical to stay, but deep down I knew the real anchor holding me back was a large brick labeled, “fear.” What I have learned since is that courage did not look like certainty, but rather it looked like putting one brick down and seeing what happened next.

Look at me now.

This spring, I am giving myself permission to keep going. Permission to wonder what else I might be ready to release. Permission to honor the chapters those things represent and still choose to walk forward without them.

And I am offering the same to you.

Not a to-do list, or a decluttering methodology. Just a question, held gently: 

What bricks might you be ready to put down?

The wondering continues.

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