The Closer You Get To The Small Room
“The closer you get to the small room, the more you have to go.”
You can be driving along, completely fine. It’s there, that urge, it exists, but it’s manageable.
Then you see the sign | Rest Area – 5 Miles | and something shifts. Not quite urgency. Not pressure. Just awareness.
Now that bathroom is on your radar.
And as you keep driving — 2 miles, 1 mile, 1/2 mile—that’s when everything changes.
Nothing physical actually shifted in those moments, but your experience did. What was manageable becomes immediate.
That shift has nothing to do with the bathroom. It has everything to do with PROXIMITY.
That same shift happens in real life, especially when you’re moving toward something you deeply want.
At the beginning, it lives at a distance. You can want it—even desperately—but it doesn’t feel tangible. It’s more of an idea than an experience. There’s space between you and it, which makes it easier to live with, even if it’s not what you actually want.
That’s where I lived for a long time when it came to healing.
Healing wasn’t absent from my life. It just wasn’t real in a way I could experience it.
I functioned. I moved forward. I did what needed to be done.
But the idea of actually feeling whole—settled, free of what had shaped so much of my internal experience—felt like something other people accessed.
I was always searching, trying to understand, looking for something that would actually create change.
But there was still distance.
That changed in my mid-50s.
Not because I suddenly decided to heal—but because I found something that made sense in a way nothing else had. At 54, I came across a model of change that aligned with how my brain actually worked.
It wasn’t abstract. It wasn’t theoretical. It was something I could apply and experience.
And that’s when the shift happened—not all at once in the healing itself—but in my proximity to it.
For the first time, healing wasn’t something “out there.” It became something I could see, feel, and begin to experience in real ways.
And that’s when everything intensified.
There was a very clear sense of:
💥 This is it. This is what I’ve been looking for. I want this… all of it… NOW! 💥
That wasn’t impatience.
That was proximity.
When something moves from maybe to real and within reach, your experience changes.
The desire sharpens.
The pull increases.
The gap becomes visible.
💥 And when the gap becomes visible, the intensity increases. 💥
At this point, it’s no longer something you’re casually thinking about.
You feel it.
This is where people start to think something is wrong.
Why does this feel harder now?
Why do I want this more now?
Why am I more aware of what I don’t have yet?
Nothing is wrong.
You’re not further away.
You’re closer than you’ve ever been.
Why this matters. . .
That intensity doesn’t mean it all happens at once.
❤️🩹 Healing didn’t come in one sweep just because I found something that worked.
It happened in stages and different areas of my life, at different times, in layers that built on each other.
One shift made the next one possible.
You can feel something deeply and still be becoming it. You can see what’s possible and not yet be living it fully. You can be right there and still have more ahead of you.
That’s the “hurry up and wait” feeling.
Not because you’re stuck.
Because you’re in the part where it’s real—but still unfolding.
This doesn’t just apply to healing.
It’s building a life. Making decisions. Creating something new. Stepping into what’s next.
The closer you get, the more real it becomes. And the more real it becomes, the more you feel it.
There’s a reason for that.
The brain is constantly predicting what matters next. When something is far away, it treats it like an idea—something interesting, maybe even important, but not urgent. When it gets closer, it treats it like something that requires attention.
It starts to focus, anticipate, and prepare, and that shows up as intensity. Not because something is wrong, but because something is now within reach.
(See below for the more in-depth science behind this.)
When you see the entrance, you don’t question the feeling. You don’t analyze it. You understand it—and you keep going.
Because that feeling isn’t telling you to stop.
It’s telling you you’re getting close.
THE SCIENCE OF WHY THIS HAPPENS
There’s a real, biological reason that proximity changes how something feels.
Your brain is constantly predicting what matters next. When something is far away, it treats it as conceptual—interesting, maybe even important, but not urgent. As it gets closer, it becomes concrete, and your brain shifts how it responds.
Several things start happening at once.
First, your brain prioritizes what’s immediate. It ranks things based on how close they are in time and relevance. When something moves closer, it automatically becomes more important in your system, even if nothing about the situation itself has changed.
Second, dopamine increases as you approach, not just when you arrive. Dopamine isn’t just about reward—it’s about anticipation. As something becomes more real and within reach, your brain increases motivation, focus, and desire.
Third, the gap becomes visible. When something is far away, the difference between where you are and where you want to be is vague. As it gets closer, that gap becomes specific—and harder to ignore. That’s what creates tension.
Fourth, your attention narrows. Your brain starts allocating more focus to what’s now relevant. You think about it more. You notice it more. It feels bigger—not because it changed, but because your brain is now locked onto it.
And finally, your body joins in. Just like the bathroom example, when the brain predicts something is near, your physical experience intensifies. Sensations feel stronger. Urgency increases. The signal gets louder.
Put all of that together, and you get a very specific experience:
it feels more real
you want it more
you feel the gap more
the intensity increases
This isn’t impatience.
It’s your brain recognizing: this is within reach.
