Die, old self.

A post about loosening your grip when life doesn’t match the plan and learning to release old versions of yourself with brutal honesty.

I have been thinking about this notion of killing my old self in order to reinvent who I want to become, but I struggle with whether or not I need to think so extremely about this matter. Who is my old self anyway? And why does she have to die?

How many selves make up our identity, this is a question that is worth wondering about. If I think about it, there was a part of my old self, my corporate self, that I was immensely proud of. There were also parts of my old corporate self, that I was not aligned to. The exercise of unpacking this live with you here and now, hopefully will give me some perspective.

To unpack this a little deeper, I will need to think about the parts of my corporate self that I was attached to. A sense of personal growth, achievement, building or solving things, collaborating and developing others. I was extremely attached to all of those positive elements, but somewhere along the way, at times, I felt like a part of myself abandoned who I really was or who I really wanted to be. A part of myself would also trade off my needs, for the peace and for the outcome. I probably did not realise it at the time, but all of those little trade offs, can come at a high cost. Little cuts that eventually turn into a bleeding wound.

If I think about who I am becoming, and who I want to be, an exercise that really helped me was understanding my values and the purpose I want to chase. I have always thought of life in a series of chapters and have always believed that you can go deep for a decade, achieve the things you want and move or transition into another decade. I came up with this concept after reading about China’s 100 year planning and strategy, and it got me thinking about splitting my life into decades. I spent most of my 20’s partying, getting educated, travelling and dabbling. I spent my 30’s dedicated to building a corporate career, travelling, educating myself on financial independence, investing, divesting, and building many skills that I am so grateful for.

I have been thinking about how I want to spend my 40’s for a while now, and I have always had a pull towards creativity and giving back or doing more good. I had fun in corporate and have had many great experiences and learnings along the way but it was not making an impact in the way that I want to spend the next decade of my life. And I need to also think about how I want to spend my 50’s, 60’s and 70’s as I don’t believe in retiring. That to me, would be a waste of my life. There is so much life to live and experience, and I want to embrace the process of reinventing myself, hopefully many more times over.

Things really changed for me, when my husband and I incorporated non-for-profit work into our lives. The juxtaposition of sitting in a hospital ward versus a boardroom with skyline views just felt different. The space between both worlds, grew larger as I started to get deeper into it. The experience of volunteering has really helped me sort through and reorganise my values. It has challenged my ego in many ways and has helped me prioritise the attachments I have had to status, title, achievement, money and meaning.

I do not want to go from one extreme end to another though, as I really liked many elements of my old corporate self. I enjoyed helping others, solving problems and developing ways to grow. I also come from an entrepreneurial family and I think this is part of my make up that I don’t want to let go of, I believe that chasing down opportunities, personal growth and creating value is an exciting part of life. However, I am challenging myself on what that looks like and incorporating some of my other values that has been neglected or traded off over the years. I’m craving meaning, community and creativity more than ever, and sometimes it takes something to get you there.

So, does my old corporate self have to die?

I think so, at least temporarily.

But can I just freeze her and unfreeze her at a later date? Just in case I need her?

This is an interesting position as I think we all carry old versions of ourselves around, maybe those versions of ourselves had some good that we want to keep. I don’t even know if you can compartmentalise parts of yourself in that way in a seamless manner. I think maybe the process of killing my old self, might be more about reviewing the versions or attributes of my old self that I must shed, to rebuild.

If I think about my life, and when I have killed parts of my old selves, I can recall maybe two instances. Both of those instances involved the pain of betrayal, and a part of my old self, dying in the process of healing. I have also gone to extremes and blocked out triggers, whether people or places, that would bring me to a dark place as I was healing. I think this really helped me find balance during a time when I needed relief.

So, maybe I don’t have to kill my old self entirely.

Maybe I’ll forget aspects of her for a while as I embark on this creative project more deeply.

I’ve been discovering and utilising parts of my brain that have not been active in a long time, or even ever before. There is something beautiful and scary about starting over, some days are daunting and other days, I am filled with immense joy and gratitude that I get the opportunity to do this.

So, for now, I’m going to commit to releasing my old corporate self, to discover and build my new self.

And if there are parts of my old self that I miss or need, I might just slowly incorporate those parts back into my life.

I would love to hear if you have had any experiences about letting go of older versions of yourself in order to become someone new.

Thanks for reading.