12,365. That’s how many emails are currently sitting in my main email box. Don’t worry, they’re all “read.” I’m not one of those people that lets the inbox number stay much above 3. But it still seemed like a rather large number when I saw it this morning and I decided to do something about it.

My usual routine is plug an email address of something I receive often into the search bar, and then delete all of those emails. You know, like the Nextdoor emails. Or the promo emails I haven’t used Unroll with yet. Don’t know what Unroll is? Side note… it’s one of those sites/services that basically identifies email addresses as things I might want to gather up in one place as to not clog up my inbox. Basically anything that offers a sale gets thrown in there. It’s the alternative to using a junk email address for coupons. And I’m sure it’s gathering ALL the data on me, but hey, #convenience and #tidyness wins here. Anyway, I digress…

So after a few mass deletings of certain emails, I decided to take a look at my email starting from the oldest to the newest. I forgot I had already done this once. I had gone all the way back to the start of the email (probably somewhere in the 2005 time frame) and just flushed it all. So this time, the emails started at 2013. Six years ago.

If you want to see how much you’ve grown over a period of time, do a sweep of your email. It could be cringe-worthy, but I swear it’s an interesting experience. One that lends itself to being a learning experience if you let it. I think that’s what ultimately prompted me to do a mass deletion of so many emails from my past a while ago. Too many sappy me emails, overzealous me emails, young and really inexperienced me emails. I’m so not that girl anymore. Now Me really doesn’t like how Then Me let people treat her.

As I looked through some emails this morning, I was reminded that a lot can happen in six years. If you’re feeling stuck or like you haven’t been growing, I challenge you to do a quick look at those really old emails. If you don’t see much change in how you might respond to something, maybe it’s time to do some work. But chances are you’ll see you really have been changing and growing all along.