You Can Change Without Erasing Who You Were
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Welcome to REWIRE | REBOOT, a weekly newsletter where I share reflections from my ongoing personal growth journey and provide tested ideas, frameworks, tools and practices to help you create the life you want.
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In this issue:
- Rewire - Changing Seasons
- One Action - The Shape of You
- Reboot - Progress Is a Powerful Motivator
Rewire - Idea I'm Exploring
Changing Seasons
Walking through the forest last week, I was enamoured by the beautiful colours beneath my feet. Fallen leaves covered the ground in a mosaic of bright yellows, oranges and reds.
Their season on the tree branches had come to an end. Over time, they would break down, adding organic matter and returning nutrients to the soil that supports the forest’s next season of growth when spring returns.
Our lives are a series of seasons, too.
Some are easy to recognize. We leave school, become parents, change careers. Others pass more quietly. A concern that once consumed us loses its hold. Something that used to feel impossible becomes an ordinary part of our day. Often, we only recognize how much has changed when we look back.
My first thought was that perhaps parts of us need to die so we can become someone new. There are certainly habits and ways of thinking I have wanted to leave behind. Some I have changed. Others still need work.
But the leaves made me think about it differently. Their form was changing, yet they would become part of what came next.
Becoming someone different doesn’t require the complete disappearance of who we were.
The parts of us that we’ve worked to leave behind don’t die. Just like the leaves on the forest floor, they may disappear from view, but they still remain a part of the ecosystem. They remain a part of us. They're all part of what shaped us as we’ve grown into a new season.
I think about the person I was when other people’s opinions occupied far too much of my attention. If I said something I thought was stupid or did something wrong, I would worry about what people were thinking or saying behind my back. Before a meeting or presentation, I could become consumed by what they might think of me.
One memory has stayed with me since Grade 6. I had just moved to a new school and didn’t know anybody in my class very well. I had a presentation to give and two weeks to prepare.
For those two weeks, I worried almost constantly. I was so nervous that I had trouble eating and sleeping. But I didn’t tell anybody what I was going through.
When the day came, I stood up and started speaking. About 10 seconds in, I suddenly felt comfortable. More than that, I felt elated. I was doing the thing I had been so afraid of and the experience was nothing like I had feared.
I didn’t become a different person that day. Learning to stop living in anticipation of other people’s judgment took much longer.
But that experience gave me something I understood more clearly as I grew older, and a lesson I’ve passed on as a parent. Anticipation is often far worse than the experience itself.
Over time, reading, studying behavioural psychology and philosophy and working on myself helped me learn one of the most important lessons in life: focus on what’s within my control and let go of what isn’t.
I could prepare. Take responsibility for what I said and did. Learn from a mistake without continuing to relive it.
What someone else thought or said about me was ultimately theirs to decide.
That distinction has been the most freeing change I have made in my life.
That anxious boy is part of my history. I can still remember how he felt. What I learned from his experience has helped me become the person I am today.
In another season, the forest will look different. The fallen leaves will gradually break down, returning nutrients to the soil that supports new growth. What belonged to an earlier season will help sustain the next one.
Similarly, we change our behaviour and carry forward what the experience taught us. A mistake can inform a better decision. An ambition we no longer pursue can leave us with skills we still value. Even a fear we’ve moved beyond can remind us of what we’re capable of facing.
I am still becoming the person I want to be. There are things I want to change and practices I need to keep practising.
But I’m entering each new season with something I didn’t have before: what I learned from living through the last one.
One Action
The Shape of You
What's one change you've made with the goal of leaving something or some part of you behind?
Reflect on that past season and what you carry forward from it. How did the experience, and the effort to move beyond it, help shape who you are?
Let me know by replying to this email.
Reboot - Health & Longevity
Progress Is a Powerful Motivator
Some of the most motivating experiences of my younger life happened in the gym.
I remember a period when it felt as though every time I returned for my next training session, I could lift more than I had the time before. I could see myself getting bigger and more muscular in the mirror. I could see changes on the scale.
It was an amazing feeling. I was doing the work, and the results were visible and measurable. That made me want to keep going.
Exercise has been one of the clearest examples in my life of effort producing a change I could see. It made the connection between what I did today and what I might be capable of next time feel real.
Setting a goal, doing the work and seeing the results as you progress. A powerful example that carries over to all other areas of your life.
That’s a reason to pay attention to the progress we make. It’s easy to keep looking at how far we have to go and miss the evidence that something is already working.
There is research behind the value of keeping track. A meta-analysis of 138 studies involving almost 20,000 people found that, across a range of goals, interventions encouraging people to monitor their progress improved goal attainment on average. The effects were greater when progress was recorded.
The practical takeaway is simple: give yourself a way to notice change.
If you’re struggling to stick to a plan and stay motivated, try tracking your progress.
I track every workout: every exercise, weight, set and rep. I also keep notes on the time of day, what I ate beforehand, my energy levels and anything else that might help me understand my progress.
You don’t need to track as much as I do. Start with one or two useful measures, such as the weight and repetitions of an exercise or the time and distance of a walk.
Progress doesn’t mean setting a new personal best every workout. Progress can slow. Injuries or other setbacks can interrupt a routine. A tracking record helps you look across weeks or months, see what has changed and decide what to adjust.
Depending on your circumstances, your next step might be a gradual increase in difficulty, better technique or simply consistently continuing a routine that fits your life.
You start by showing up. You build the habit. Noticing the results can help provide the motivation to keep going.
Inspirational Quote
“For what now is, is in a manner the seed of what shall be.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.36, George W. Chrystal rendering
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Until next week,
Kevin
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