Entertainment
Untold Truths: There Is No Final Version Of You
For a long time, I thought eventually one version of me was supposed to stick; that somewhere along the road I would arrive at the definitive Sally, plant a flag and announce: this is who I am now and forever. I thought consistency was identity.
Life apparently did not receive that memo.
I trained as a barrister and have worked in governance, regulation, project management and sales. I became a writer, then an author, built a brand, became a podcaster and columnist. I have created things, managed things, abandoned things and resurrected a few things I was certain had finished with me.
There are other versions too: the they need sunglasses. mother, the migrant, the runner, the entrepreneur, the King, the woman who thought she knew exactly what she wanted and the woman who later discovered she absolutely did not. At different times, each identity has felt completely true, and that used to bother me.
I wondered whether my restlessness meant I lacked direction. Shouldn’t grown adults eventually decide who they are, pick a lane and stay there? Surely repeatedly changing direction suggested something had gone wrong.
Recently, after an extended period of difficulty, uncertainty and more introspection than I would have voluntarily ordered, began to see it differently.
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Perhaps there was never supposed to be a final version. Perhaps there are only seasons, and every season has work to do.
Some versions of us arrive to build while others help us survive. Some teach confidence, expose weaknesses, make mistakes, fall hopelessly in love or learn how to leave. Others discover that even discipline without flexibility can become another kind of prison.
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Eventually, the season changes.
The trouble is that we are often encouraged to treat changing our minds as suspicious. If you spent years building a career, surely you cannot suddenly want something else. If people know you as one particular person, perhaps you feel you owe them continulty. If you announced a dream loudly enough, abandoning it can feel embarrassingly close to tailure.
Even #Unshakable has taught me otherwise.
The brand has worn several faces. At times it has been louder, more commercial and product-led. At others, the podcast became its strongest voice. Writing eventually moved towards the centre. Sometimes the whole thing seemed almost dormant, quiet enough for me to wonder whether it had lost its pulse.
I used to interrogate those pauses and wonder where the momentum had gone.
Now I wonder whether those periods were not comas at all. Perhaps the brand was simply walting for me to catch up with the woman 1 was becoming.
A brand bullt around a state of mind should probably be allowed to change its mind. So should we.
That does not mean every impulse deserves to become an identity. Reinvention can become avoldance if we constantly run from difficulty.
Some seasons require staying long enough to learn what they came to teach us.
Staying because something remains right, however, is very different from staying because other people have become comfortable with our predictability.
External perception has a pecullar way of freezing us in old photographs.
People remember who we were when they met us, what we belleved, tolerated and wanted. Sometimes our evolution unsettles them.
Familiarity, however, is not a contract.
We are allowed to gather new information about ourselves. We can discover that a
dream belonged to an earlier version, become interested in something unexpected, return to something abandoned or retire an identity that once fitted perfectly.
Most importantly, we are allowed to love the temporary versions too.
ambition matter so much?
I have looked backwards and questioned previous versions of myself.
Why did she stay?
Why did she believe that? Why did that
Increasingly, I think that is an unfair way to remember her. She was working with the information avallable to her, and she got me here.
Every version does not need to accompany us forever to have served a purpose. Some people enter our lives for a season, so why should our identities be any different?
Perhaps maturity is recognising when a version of yourself has completed her assignment, keeping what she taught you and allowing her to leave without turning her departure into a tragedy.
There is something wonderfully liberating about knowing i have not finished becoming. I do not know exactly who I will be five years from now. I hope she surprises me.
Perhaps the #Unshakable truth is this: there is no final version of you. Every season has something to teach, build, heal or reveal. Honour the person you were, inhabit the person you are and leave enough room for the person you have not yet met.
One day, today’s version of you will also become someone you used to be. May you remember her fondly because her work mattered.
‘See’ you next week.
IG Handle: @unshakable.is.a.state.of.mind
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