"That's just who I am."
I've always found those words interesting. Are we the same person we were at five, fifteen or twenty five? Are the things we once believed about ourselves still true simply because we've believed them for a long time?
Imagine a child learning to walk. They stand, they wobble, they fall, and then they try again. What if, after enough falls, we decided that's just who they are? Not a walker.
Of course we wouldn't. We encourage them to get up, again and again, because falling isn't evidence that they can't walk. It's part of how they learn.
Somewhere along the way, though, we grow up and start treating our current limits as permanent descriptions of who we are. Sometimes those descriptions aren't even ours. They were handed to us.
I carried some from school for far too long. Not good enough. Not bright enough.
The strange thing was that, eventually, the evidence stopped matching the story. How does someone who isn't bright enough earn a master's degree? How could I keep telling myself I wasn't good enough while looking at a life that holds so much I'm grateful for? The people I love, the experiences I've had, the places I've lived, the challenges I've faced, and the things I thought I couldn't do but did anyway.
At some point, I had to choose: keep believing an old story, or believe the evidence of the life I had actually lived.
Perhaps you've carried a story like that too. Something somebody said. Something that happened. A judgement made about you when you were young, or a failure you turned into an identity. I'm not confident. I'm not clever. I'm not adventurous. I'm not good at relationships. I'm just not that sort of person.
Maybe there was once evidence for the story. The question is whether there still is.
Viktor Frankl's work stopped me in my tracks the first time I read it. His writing about our ability to choose our response, even when so much else is beyond our control, has stayed with me ever since. We don't control everything that happens to us. We do keep choices about what we do next, and those choices, repeated over time, shape a life.
I've changed enormously over the years. I've lived and worked far from where I grew up. I've challenged myself to do things I wasn't sure I could do. I've listened more carefully to what makes me happy, and to what matters and what doesn't.
Fun matters more to me now. So do courage, joy and kindness. Being there for the people I love matters. Helping others see more possibility in themselves matters.
Perhaps that isn't becoming somebody different. Perhaps it's becoming more authentically me.
I don't believe we ever arrive at a perfect, finished version of ourselves, and I hope I never do. The journey is the destination. I want to keep learning and growing, to question what I think I know, and to change my mind when the evidence tells me to. I want to do more, be more, give more and contribute more. Not because who I am today isn't enough, but because I'm still alive, and while I'm alive, I'm still becoming.
There will be difficult weeks, of course. Sometimes it rains. Sometimes there's thunder and lightning. None of that makes everything we've become disappear. Weather passes. A hard week isn't an identity. Neither is a mistake, and neither is falling down. Remember the child: falling was part of becoming a walker.
Something else gets in our way too. We spend a lot of time trying to become who we think someone else wants us to be. The perfect partner, the perfect daughter or son, the perfect friend. The person with the right career, the right home, the right clothes, the right life. We can pour so much energy into meeting expectations we never consciously chose.
What if we stopped and listened to ourselves instead? What brings me joy? What matters to me? Who do I want beside me? What do I want to contribute? Who do I want to be when nobody is watching?
I'd rather be an imperfect version of myself than a perfect version of somebody else's expectations.
Some things will always be outside our control. Circumstances change. Doors close. Plans don't work. People disappoint us, and sometimes we disappoint ourselves. None of that means we stop becoming. We adapt, we learn, and we choose again.
I'm not special. I'm simply me, and perhaps that's the point. The journey isn't taking me towards the person I'm supposed to become. The journey is where I'm becoming her.
There will be limits I can't control. I just don't want to spend this one precious life adding unnecessary ones of my own.
So the next time you hear yourself say, "That's just who I am," pause for a moment. Look at the evidence. Look at everything you've already become. Then ask yourself: who might I become if I stopped treating yesterday's story as tomorrow's limit?
Reflection
What story about yourself have you carried for too long?
Does the evidence of your life still support it?
Who are you choosing to become next?
Nova x
