The Death, Unfolding & Becoming

Who do you need to become to get what you want?

It’s Friday & I can feel the spring in my bones! I say: let’s “die” a little, so we can make room for new things!

If you feel like you need a mental spring clean & want want to do it in my company, here’s your chance.

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What if the greatest obstacle to your success isn't your knowledge, skills, or even your circumstances—but the very person you believe yourself to be?

Here’s my take: It's not that important what you know or want—it's more important what you believe to be true and how you perceive yourself (the story you're telling yourself about yourself).

Our beliefs largely shape our perception of the world around us, and that drives how we show up in the world.

If you want something but aren't getting it, chances are you need to become someone you're not. Yet.

It's uncomfortable to read that sentence. Even more uncomfortable to feel its truth. But most of us are living in a perpetual state of wanting, trying, failing, and wanting again—never quite understanding why the things we say we desire remain stubbornly out of reach.

Here's why: most of what we want requires us to become a different person.

Not just to do different things—but to be different.

It's the uncomfortable truth that explains why most personal growth efforts fail. We focus on behavior change while desperately clinging to who we are, never realizing the contradiction.

The Identity Trap

Think about it. If you truly believed—down to your bones—that you were someone who could have the thing you want, wouldn't you already have it? Or at least be moving steadily toward it?

The fact that you don't have it suggests that somewhere, hidden beneath your conscious desires, lives a person who either:

• Doesn't really believe they can have it

• Doesn't really believe they deserve it

• Is afraid of what having it would mean

• Is protecting something they value more

The bigger question is: why? What experiences — or more precisely: how you interpreted them at some point in your life —led you to this place.

This is the invisible electric fence of your identity. You won't notice it until you get close to crossing it. Then suddenly—ZAP—you're jolted back into place through procrastination, self-sabotage, or a hundred other creative forms of resistance.

And after a few shocks, you learn to stay safely in the middle of your invisible cage.

Why We Become Our Own Jailers

Why do we do this to ourselves? Because identity isn't just what we think about ourselves—it's the fundamental operating system that gives us a sense of safety, belonging, and meaning.

Your current identity, with all its limitations, has gotten you this far. It's kept you alive. Maybe not thriving, but surviving. It's maintained your relationships, however imperfect. It's given you a sense of who you are in a chaotic world.

To change it feels like death. And in a very real sense, it is.

Before the butterfly emerges, the caterpillar dissolves into formless goo. Total disintegration precedes transformation. This isn't poetic metaphor—it's biological fact. The caterpillar's immune system actually fights the transformation, attacking the cells that initiate the change as if they were a threat.

Your psyche does the same thing.

The Messy Middle

When you start to outgrow your current identity, you enter what anthropologists call "liminal space"—the disorienting threshold between who you were and who you're becoming.

It's a psychological no-man's-land where the old rules no longer apply, but the new ones haven't formed yet. You're no longer the old you, but not yet the new you. Just formless potential.

This state feels like:

• Constant uncertainty about who you are

• Disorienting loss of familiar reference points

• Questioning everything you thought you knew

• A strange mix of grief and excitement

• Deep discomfort with no clear end in sight

Most of us retreat from this space as quickly as possible, rushing back to the comfort of our old identity. We call it "finding ourselves again" when really, we're just refusing to let ourselves become someone new.

And then we wonder why nothing changes.

The Risk Is Real

Let's be clear about something: the fear isn't irrational. Becoming someone else is dangerous.

It threatens:

• Relationships built around who you've been

• Social standing tied to your current identity

• Security that comes from predictability

• Your sense of competence and mastery

• Commitments you've made based on your old self

Your brain is wired for consistency and belonging. Identity shifts risk both. Your resistance isn't weakness—it's your evolutionary heritage working exactly as designed.

The problem is, that same protective mechanism can trap you in a life that's too small. Either way - prepare for a bumpy ride.

Why Knowledge Isn't Enough

You've probably read books, attended workshops, or consumed countless pieces of content about whatever change you're trying to make. You understand intellectually what needs to happen.

But transformation doesn't happen in your head. It happens in your body, your nervous system, your unconscious patterns, your reflexive responses to stress and opportunity.

You can't think your way into being someone new. You have to experience your way there.

This is why information alone rarely creates transformation. You don't need more knowledge. You need embodied experiences that contradict your limiting identity—repeated enough times to rewire your default settings.

What you believe shapes your perception far more than what you know. When your inner narrative says "I'm not the kind of person who can do this," that belief creates a filter through which you interpret every experience, reinforcing your limitations rather than your possibilities.

The Death Before Rebirth

Any significant transformation requires a kind of death. Not of your entire self, but of aspects of your identity that can't coexist with who you're becoming.

If you want to become truly confident, the perpetual self-doubter in you has to die.

If you want to build wealth, the part of you that identifies with struggle must die.

If you want deep intimacy, the self that finds safety in emotional unavailability must die.

This death isn't something to rush through or avoid. That part of you developed for a reason. It protected you. It helped you survive circumstances you may not have been equipped to handle otherwise.

But now it's in your way.

Beyond Resistance

When you hit resistance—that powerful force that seems to emerge from nowhere just when you're making progress—you've discovered gold. Not an obstacle, but information.

The exact location of your identity's boundaries. It tells you that something is at stake: you will have to trade one thing for another.

Instead of pushing harder or retreating, get curious:

• What exactly am I resisting?

• What feels threatened by this change?

• What part of my identity is being challenged?

• What am I afraid will happen if I change?

• What am I afraid I'll lose?

Resistance isn't the enemy of transformation. It's the messenger that reveals exactly what needs to transform. Don’t kill the messenger.

How to Become Someone Else (Without Losing Yourself)

So how do you navigate this treacherous territory? How do you become who you need to be without triggering all your psychological defense mechanisms?

1. Create Identity Bridges, Not Identity Leaps

Instead of trying to jump from who you are to who you need to be (which almost always fails), build a bridge of transitional identities:

• "I'm someone who is learning to speak confidently" feels safer than "I'm a powerful public speaker"

• "I'm exploring what it means to build a business" creates less resistance than "I'm an entrepreneur"

• "I'm practicing being more direct" is easier to embody than "I'm an assertive person"

These transition identities reduce resistance by preserving continuity while allowing growth.

2. Find Your Future Self's Mentors

We become like the people we spend most time with. We may not like or agree with the people around us, but they still influence what we think, and how we operate. To become someone new, you need to surround yourself with:

• People who naturally embody the traits you're developing

• Those who see your potential rather than your history

• Communities where your emerging identity is the norm, not the exception

Their way of being will rewire your sense of what's normal, expected, and possible much faster than a book or a course.

3. Create Embodied Experiences

Remember: intellectual understanding isn't enough. All real learning is experiential. You need direct experiences that contradict your limiting identity:

• Small experiments that provide new evidence

• Controlled exposure to situations that trigger your old identity

• Regular practice of the behaviors that feel foreign

• Physical environments that support your emerging self

Each experience creates a data point that challenges your old operating assumptions.

The story you tell yourself about who you are shapes how you perceive opportunities and challenges. By consciously creating experiences that support a new narrative, you gradually shift not just what you do, but how you show up in the world.

4. Embrace the Disintegration

Instead of fighting the discomfort of the in-between state, recognize it as necessary:

• Give yourself permission to not know who you are for a while. Yes - easier said than done, but at least try to show yourself some grace. It's tough. You need allies. You should be one of them.

• Create space for grief as you let parts of your old identity go. You've been together for a long time.

• Allow for periods of rest and integration. It may feel like you're stuck, but it's different. Chances are, the roots are growing.

• Trust that clarity will emerge from the chaos, not before it. That requires hope more than optimism.

The discomfort isn't a sign that you're doing it wrong. It's evidence that the transformation is working.

5. Expand Rather Than Replace

Frame your transformation as expansion rather than replacement:

• "I'm still the careful, thoughtful person I've always been, AND I'm developing the ability to take bold action without perfect information."

• "I'm still deeply compassionate, AND I'm learning to set boundaries that honor my needs."

• "I still value security, AND I'm discovering how calculated risks create greater stability in the long run."

This "both/and" approach reduces the threat to your existing identity while making space for new possibilities.

Becoming

The hardest truth about transformation is that it's never finished. There is no arrival point where you're finally, permanently "transformed." Each level of growth reveals new limitations, new aspects of identity that once served but now constrain.

The question isn't whether you'll need to become someone else. It's whether you'll do it consciously and purposefully, or be dragged there by crisis and circumstance, and you will be reactive rather than creative.

Either way, who you are now is already dying. The only choice is whether that death will be fertile—creating space for who you're capable of becoming—or merely the slow decay of potential never realized.

The butterfly doesn't get to keep its caterpillar identity and still experience flight. Neither do you.

So if there's something you've wanted for too long without getting it, stop focusing on what you need to do differently. Start asking who you need to become.

Then have the courage to let parts of your current self die. Or, at the very least, examine your core beliefs, and get curious about the person who could achieve the things you want.

Not everything that defines you today deserves to survive the transformation. But what emerges might just be worth the loss.

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If what I wrote above sounds heavy and volatile- don’t worry. When you frame the whole process well —as an invitation to an adventure — lean into your curiosity over fear, and focus on the possibility over loss, it can actually be FUN.