The Quiet Ways We Become Someone New | Why You're Not "Lost"—You're Becoming

Here's a phrase I've actually come to loathe when people talk about personal growth…

“Finding yourself."

I get that it’s usually meant with good intentions. It’s become a very trendy way to say you’re working your way through a major life transition.

But I hate it.

Lose a job? Go find yourself.

A relationship ends? Go find yourself.

Retirement? Time to find yourself.

To me though... that whole idea of “finding yourself”?

Well… it’s just bullsh*t.

The reason I think that? Because I don’t think most of us were actually lost in the first place.

And I don’t think that just because we’ve changed, or we’re searching for more, we had to be lost to do it.

I’ve lost lots of things in 60 years of living life. I’ve lost direction... I’ve lost confidence… I’ve lost people I loved… I’ve lost certainty about who I thought I was and what I thought my life was going to look like...

I’ve lost my keys more times than I can count…

But I wasn’t lost.

Something in my life might have changed, or I had to navigate through some kind of uncertainty… but I wasn’t lost. They are entirely different things.

While I was reflecting on the first fifty episodes of my podcast, I found myself thinking less about the podcast itself and more about what had quietly happened to me in the process of making it.

When I first decided to podcast, I thought I was simply creating something that I hoped would help other people.

A place to talk about resilience… about grief… about rebuilding after trauma… about some of the things I’d learned through losing my son, through my work with Threads of Life, and through sixty years of living a beautifully imperfect life.

What I didn’t expect was that whole endeavour would create changes in me too.

Quietly.

Almost invisibly.

Not even all that noticeable until I stopped to look in the rearview mirror… and back on the journey.

I would sit down to write what I thought was going to be an episode about a particular topic. Boundaries. Stress. Comparison. Mindfulness. Grief. Uncertainty.

And I would often make an extraordinary discovery…

You can’t spend hours researching boundaries without noticing where your own boundaries are a little weak and in need of some attention.

It’s pretty hard to write honestly about comparison without catching yourself comparing your own work.

You can’t explore self-trust without asking yourself some pretty darned uncomfortable questions about where your own doubts come from.

Somewhere along the way… the conversations stopped being only about things I had been through… and started to become about the things I was still living.

And that changed everything.

Something else quietly snuck in as well.

For a long time, I described myself as "someone who has a podcast." It was a little something I puttered with on the side… something I did without really taking myself seriously about it.

After all… I wasn’t about to become famous for talking about resilience… or laughing at myself and the absurdity of life while still in the messy middle of learning just one more lesson it was trying to teach me…

But one day – literally without realizing it until after it had happened a few times - I heard myself say something different.

"I'm a podcaster."

No one gave me permission to say it. There was no certificate in the mail or a magical download number that suddenly meant I’d earned the title.

It simply became my truth because I kept showing up. Over and over again. During the quiet times… the hard times… the super busy times… it was becoming part of who I am.

And well… eventually my identity caught up with my reality.

Which made me wonder how often we do this in other parts of our lives.

Tell ourselves that we’ll call ourselves a writer when the book becomes a bestseller.

An artist when someone buys our work.

A runner when we complete a marathon.

A leader when someone gives us the title.

A resilient person when life finally stops being difficult.

We fight against believing something that is already true while we wait for external validation.

But what if we’re thinking about it all wrong? What if identity doesn’t arrive after success?

What if it quietly forms while we’re doing the work?... While we’re practising… While we’re failing… While we’re learning… While we’re becoming whatever it is we are trying to be.

What if it doesn’t happen just because someone else finally notices? But instead, because one day we look back and realize that the person who started… just isn’t the same as the person anymore.

Maybe we don’t become someone completely different.

The truth is… I’m still me.

I still have days where imposter syndrome tries to convince me I have no business talking into a microphone.

I still second-guess myself (it’s called “Tuesday”).

Of course I still make mistakes and have messes and re-dos.

I still have grief waves and there have definitely been lots of growing pains.

Because I’ve said it more than once… growth, it turns out… can be a complete sh*t-show.

But do you know what else I’ve come to realize?

Growth isn’t always about becoming “more” anything. Sometimes it turns out to be about uncovering something that was always there.

We learn to bury old beliefs and old stories. We learn to let go of old fears and old versions of who we thought we had to be.

And uncover parts of ourselves that had been hiding in the shadows… just waiting for us to remove the layers of debris so they could shine.

And I think that’s why I struggle so much with the concept of "finding myself."

I don’t think I was ever missing.

I think there were simply parts of me I hadn’t uncovered yet.

So if you’ve been feeling like you’ve lost yourself lately... I don’t think you need to pack a suitcase and go in search of yourself.

Maybe you’re only feeling lost because you’re standing somewhere in the messy middle of becoming.

And maybe one day, when you least expect it, you’ll look back and quietly think...

"Hmmm..."

"I don’t think I’m quite the same person anymore."

And maybe...

That’s exactly the point.