How to Walk into a Room
The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away
-
-
4.5 • 11 Ratings
-
-
- $6.99
Publisher Description
New York Times Bestseller
2025 Nautilus Book Awards Silver Winner
If life were a house, then every room holds a story. What do we do when a room we’re in is no longer a room where we belong?
What do you do when you start to feel a shift and must decide if it’s time to make a change? When it comes to navigating big decisions about when to stay and go, how can we know for sure when the time is right? Though we enter and exit many rooms over the course of our life—jobs, relationships, communities, life stages—knowing how and when it’s time to leave is a decision that rarely has a clear answer.
Podcast host, spiritual director, and bestselling author of The Next Right Thing, Emily P. Freeman offers guidance to help us recognize when it’s time to move on from situations that no longer fit, allowing us to find new spaces where we can flourish and grow.
How to Walk Into a Room helps us begin to uncover the silent, nuanced, and hidden arrows for anyone asking questions like: How do I know if it’s time to move on? What if I stay and nothing changes? What if I leave and everything falls apart?
Through thought-provoking questions, spiritual practices, and personal stories, How to Walk into a Room will help you to know and name the caution flags in your current spaces, discern the difference between true peace and discomfort avoidance, navigate endings even when there is no closure, find peace for when you feel ready but it isn’t time, and courage for when it’s time but you don’t feel ready.
For anyone standing in a threshold, here’s a book to help discern the how, when, and what now of walking out of rooms and into new ones with peace, confidence, and a whole heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Next Right Thing podcaster Freeman (The Next Right Thing) offers a level-headed and spiritually inflected guide to starting over. According to Freeman, if life is a house, "at some point we'll find ourselves... looking around at familiar rooms and questioning if it's time to move on." She encourages readers to recognize when a job, community, relationship, or commitment "no longer seem to fit"; take stock of power dynamics, expectations, and emotional associations ("What's not working here? To what extent can I be myself in this room?"); and consult their own values to determine "what is worth protecting," what should be cast away, and what must be changed if the decision is to stay. Later chapters touch on regrouping after seismic upheavals, finding closure (or accepting the lack thereof), and entering "new rooms" that better align with one's personal values. Freeman's abundant questions, prayers, and exercises will inspire productive reflection, but the emotional center of this guide is the author's decision to leave their church of seven years after one of their children began questioning their sexuality. Freeman's firsthand knowledge of how pain and resolve can coexist during life's turning points suffuses the narrative. This is a wise and compassionate resource for those looking to begin their next chapter.
Customer Reviews
Thank you!
If you're in a season of transition, please read this. This book has been so deeply meaningful to me and my family. Thank you Emily, for the light you’ve brought to the beauty of walking in to a room.