Reinventing Yourself Might Be The Healthiest Thing You Ever Do
At the age of 29, I moved from a small northeast Kansas town to Chicago. I didn’t know anyone, and no one knew me. That was by design.
My high school friends were getting married, having their first kid, or even planning their second kid. I, on the other hand, was divorced, single and in need of a bigger job market to reach my career goals. But it wasn’t just that—I’d started to not like who I was.
I kept repeating the same mistakes over and over again, dating-wise. I kept wishing I could be more confident. I kept wanting to take risks that I could somehow never make a reality.
So I moved to a huge city where no one knew me—and set about remaking myself.
It’s pretty common knowledge that we develop all kinds of coping mechanisms as kids. Ones that kept us from getting yelled at, or getting hurt, or getting made fun of. Which is great, when you’re a shy, defenseless 8-year-old.
But once you become an adult, you tend to stick to the same rules that 8-year-old you devised to keep you safe and secure. Your brain doesn’t automatically update its operating system like your Mac. And most of the time, not only do you not need those old coping mechanisms, they can actually hurt you and your personal relationships.
Here are some specific childhood coping mechanisms I developed that did not serve me well in adulthood:
- I desperately wanted to be seen as “good” as a child. This turned into me being a people-pleasing doormat as an adult.
- I associated being quiet with not getting in trouble as a kid. This led to grown-up me not speaking up in meetings or not taking credit for my ideas.
- As the middle child, I learned it was easier to “go with the flow.” So I ended up not being perceived as a leader in the workplace.
- The kid version of me felt terror around angry people. So as an adult, I pushed all my anger down—were it festered and became resentment—rather than express it.
Any of those sound familiar? Most likely, they do. And they’re really hard to shake. Because not only have you been living those stories your whole life, you’re constantly surrounded by people who expect those behaviors from you. The expectations of others has an incredibly strong effect on our subconscious.
That’s why, for me, the only way to stop living out the behaviors based in childhood coping mechanisms that weren’t getting me what I wanted in life was to leave them behind.
I had visited Chicago twice before moving there, so I was relatively comfortable with it. Still, moving there with no support system was an enormous risk. One that I’m still amazed I took—my sister said at the time that it didn’t seem like something I’d do.
That’s how I knew it was right.
It took me a while to unlearn all those behaviors that kept me in a holding pattern. But in the end, I think successfully reinventing myself came down to two things:
- To survive in that city, to really stand out, you had to be willing to go after what you wanted.
- There was no one there to tell me that my behavior “didn’t seem like me.” I was free to be whoever I wanted.
If I wanted to appear confident in meetings, there was no one to question why I was behaving so strangely. If I was angry about something, I could say so—no one was used to me seething in silence. And it didn’t stop there, either. If I wanted to wear red lipstick out for drinks or dress a certain way, there was no one there to accuse me of trying to be someone I wasn’t—someone more bold, more self-assured, and more willing to be in the spotlight.
After a few years, I noticed that not only was I happier, I felt healthier, too. Less anxious. More in control of my life. I was also earning more, crushing my goals and comfortable ending any dating situation that wasn’t right for me.
Of course, this meant that whenever I went back home, family members commented that I seemed “different”—which I was. But while it was a wonderful thing for me, it was an uncomfortable thing for them. I no longer fit in the role they’d cast me in.
For me, the their discomfort and their comments were worth it. I’d become the kind of person I always wanted to be.
Okay, so maybe you personally can’t just pick up and move 600 miles away from everyone and everything connected to “the old you.” But even if you can’t, you can still audit your behaviors and begin letting go of the ones you don’t like. Here’s how.
1. Spend less time with the people who bring out the worst in you.
You know that friend who always talks you into ditching your workout plans—which you feel guilty about later? Or that family member who always leaves you in a blind rage after making a racist comment at a holiday celebration? Start limiting your exposure to people like that. You might feel like you don’t have a choice, but unless it’s your spouse (and that’s a whole other problem), you can control how much time you spend around most people.
2. Spend more time with the people you want to be more like.
Maybe it’s a mentor. Maybe it’s a friend who seems like he or she always has their shit together. (For the record, no one does, they’re just good at making it seem like they do.) Maybe it’s someone who doesn’t hate their own body, and you’ve always admired that about them. Learn their secrets, their mantras, their approaches to hard situations. Co-opt the ones that feel genuine to you.
3. Try something you’ve always been curious about, but don’t tell anyone you’re doing it.
Learning a new skill or trying a new activity can bring positive changes in your personality and help you let go of old ways of thinking. Mastering something tricky like slacklining can make you more confident, or joining a Toastmasters club can make you more comfortable in a crowd of strangers. But keep it on the DL. Sharing can make us feel like we’re accountable to the people we told—making us more wary of failure than if we’d kept it to ourselves. So take a risk, but keep your lips zipped about it while you’re a work in progress.
4. Call yourself out.
Make yourself accountable to the parts of your personality you dislike, and own up to them. If you hate how you’re always flying off the handle, the next time you do it, admit it with something like, “I’m sorry, that response came from a place of anger and it wasn’t necessary. What I should have said was…”
5. Thank your inner child for trying to protect you.
This might sound weird, but it’s actually helped me on a few occasions. Let’s say you end up in a situation that requires you to confront someone, but the kid inside you is screaming at you to run and hide. Imagine being able to speak to yourself as a child. Thank them for trying to keep you safe. And then with as much compassion as you can, tell them you can handle it from here.
In the end, working on your personal behaviors might cause some discomfort to the people who are used to seeing you a certain way. But remember, it’s your life. They’re just giving color commentary from the sidelines.
