Letting go of your old-self

Change 

‘Something that no longer remains the same’ 

‘An act or process through which something becomes different’ 

For me, I am always looking forward, into the future. What’s over the horizon. What is the next goal. What is next on the to-do list. I can struggle to stay in the present and can struggle to think of the past. 

But if we want to change. If we want to become something different. We have to become something new. 

I can have a tendency to concentrate on what that new me will look like. What would they do? How would they think? How would they behave?  

I forget to consider that to become something new I have to let go of the old. I have to realise I will be letting go of the old me. I have to let go of the person I was yesterday to become the person I am today. I have to let go of the person I am today to become the person I want to be tomorrow. That feeling of letting go of your old-self may be difficult for some of us. 

It is like the caterpillar, the chrysalis and the butterfly. In the beginning, we go around life as the caterpillar. Enjoying life. Consuming as much as we can and changing on the outside. Then we realise we need to change. We cast off the caterpillar to become the chrysalis. Then we change on the inside. We become dormant to the outside world. We then cast off the chrysalis to become the butterfly. We open our wings and fly free. 

We know to become the butterfly, we need to let go of the chrysalis. To become the chrysalis, we need to let go of the caterpillar. 

But what if we were happy being the chrysalis? What if we were happy being the caterpillar? 

It’s not all bad 

Perhaps I should put it a different way. Life is not perfect. There are going to be parts of ourselves we are happy with, and parts of ourselves we are unhappy with. Some parts we can change, and some parts we cannot change. 

We know our life is not all bad and it can be difficult to let go of those good parts. 

When I had two small children both under the age of two, life was hard. Sleep deprivation is a killer. There is nothing like depriving someone of sleep to push them to their limits. The armed forces do this all the time in their training. They deprive the recruits of sleep and force them to keep going. To see when they would break. And they would break, it would just be a question of when. 

Parents go through this all the time. It’s happening right now. All around the world. Parents are being deprived of sleep and are forced to keep going. 

To make things even more difficult, your kids don’t come with instruction manuals. Not even a general one. And you received no training before starting the job. Any decent employer knows to train the employee. The employee will then be better at the job. Yet parents receive no training. And no instructions. 

I wouldn’t give my kids away (however tempting at times). There are still those precious moments. The first smile. The first laugh. The first steps. Was I such a bad dad. Am I happy to throw away that person who enjoyed those moments? Who made these children and was present to experience those moments. Do I want to throw that person away? 

Then I think of the parent I could be. The parent I want to be. Who spends less time at work and more time at home. Who says yes to going to play instead of no I am too busy. Who laughs and cries with his children instead of being strict and serious all the time. 

We are not bad people. Not all our life is bad. There is some good. And it can be difficult to let go of that good. But we need to let go so that we may make more good. And make less of the bad. I am not a bad parent but I need to let go of my old-self so I can be a better parent. So I can make more of the good. 

Accepting we are not good enough, yet 

Through change, we cast off our old-selves to become something new. In doing that, we accept that who we are today isn’t good enough. We want more. But that sounds quite negative. With stress, anxiety and depression it is easy to say we are not enough. It then becomes easy to fall down a well of despair. 

We have to change the perspective a little. We do need to be kind to ourselves. We do need to tell ourselves we are good people. That we are enough. I think the better perspective would be to see potential in ourselves. That we have the potential to be better.  That we may not be able to do something today, but there is no reason we can’t do it someday.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. It is easy to say we would have made a different or better decision afterwards. Knowing what would happen. Knowing the outcome. It’s easy to beat ourselves up about it. 

We have to be kind to ourselves and accept that we made the best decision at the time, with the information we had. 

That we can learn and grow from the experience. That if we didn’t like the outcome, that we could do something different next time. That we can grow. That we can improve. That we can get better. 

When we go through change we need to be kind to ourselves. We can’t beat ourselves up for not being good enough. We have to have a positive attitude. We have to accept that we did the best we could, at the time, with the information we had. That we are enough as a person. But we have potential. We can get better. We are just not good enough, yet. 

Security blanket 

I have talked about change and moving from old to new. Casting off our old-selves to become something new. But it can be difficult to cast off our old-selves.  

We know who we are today. We have had time to get comfortable. We have worked towards becoming the best we are. We may really like who we have become. We can hold onto our current self as a security blanket. We might not want to let go. 

Getting to our current self was hard work. We had to do things that were uncomfortable. Things that were difficult. Even dangerous. We celebrate these achievements and wrap ourselves up in the person we have become. We can be reluctant to keep growing and keep moving forward because we know it is going to be hard work. It is going to be uncomfortable. It is going to be difficult. 

When I started at Toastmasters, getting up to speak in front of a group of people was petrifying. However nice the people were. But over time. Little by little. I grew used to the club. I raised my tolerance for speaking publicly. I can now chair the meeting, speak at the meeting, evaluate the meeting. I am proud of who I have become and I want to keep hold of that. 

But when I speak at a group that I don’t know at all, then that fear, that discomfort returns. I know that to grow, to get better, I need to go outside of the club to speak. But it’s hard. It requires effort. I know it is going to be uncomfortable. It’s going to be difficult and I resist. It is easier to stay where I am, doing what I already do.  

If I have a vision of where I want to be. Of what I could be doing. And if that vision is giving speeches to people I don’t already know, then it is clear what I need to do. I must go on. 

When we go through change we can already be proud of who we are and what we have already achieved. It can be easy to hold on to our current-self. To not let it go and stay our old-self. Because what we have already done was difficult and to keep changing is also going to be difficult. We resist. We just want to wrap ourselves in the person we have already become. 

Takeaways 

To change we need to let go of our old-self to become something new. And that can be a difficult thing to do. 

You can look at your life and see both the good and the bad in it. You know you are not perfect, but you can cling on to the good parts. If you let go, you have an opportunity to change into someone who does less of the bad things and more of the good.  

You can look at your life and be hard on yourself. You can punish yourself for not being good enough. You can easily go to a dark place. Be kind to yourself. See your own potential. You may not be able to do something today, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to do it someday.

You can look at your life and see how much you have grown. How much you have already achieved. The difficulties you have already gone through. It can be easy to be satisfied with that and stay where you are. Because to get better you need to face more challenges. You can resist more change because it is hard. You comfort yourself with who you are today. If you have a dream of who you want to be, and you are not there yet, keep going. 

Footnotes 

The idea for this article came from a line early on in the following book: 

The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz  

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Examined-Life-Lose-Find-Ourselves/dp/0099549034/ref=nodl_