Be Prepared to Leave the Old You Behind

The first thing that you need to do is to prepare to leave the old you behind. That might sound daunting or perhaps it sounds like meaningless hype.

But no: this is the first and most important step to becoming a better you and it’s one that you will find puts up a lot of resistance.

The problem is that many of us feel a certain attachment to who we think we are and to who other people think we are. We all have a sense of self that is based on our own opinions, beliefs and experiences and on the feedback we get from others.

And we jealously guard this sense of self. We cling onto the continuity of being ‘the same person’.

And other people will view it that way too. They’ll want us to behave in a certain way that is consistent with who they know us to be whether they think of us as someone who is very serious or who is very jovial. Whether they think of us as a ‘Mummy’s boy/Daddy’s girl’ a homebody, an adventurer, or a ‘fitness freak’.

But what happens when the adventurer wants to settle down?

What happens when the jovial person wants to be serious for a change?

What happens when we want to change our mind on something that we used to feel passionately about?

This is when we meet resistance. There is immense pressure from other people for us to continue to act the way they believe we should. And we ourselves will often feel as though we are ‘betraying’ who we really are when we change.

This sense of self and our unwillingness to compromise is actually a prison.
But change is not a bad thing. It is a very important thing in fact: adaptability is the key to our survival and our growth.

You won’t be truly free until you believe that you can change your ‘look’ on a whim, change your mind or just act ‘out of character’.

And the irony is: this is being truer to yourself than adhering to your own expectations of who you are.

So, this is the first thing I’m going to ask of you: be willing to let go of your old notion of ‘you’ and to embrace whatever you discover in the personal journey that follows. And remember this too: there is no biological continuity. Your brain is constantly changing shape and your cells are constantly being replaced. The entire notion of ‘you’ is an illusion.