At some point I looked at everything I had changed and thought I should probably feel more different by now.

I had started therapy. I was learning constantly. I had taught myself new skills, started my own business and filled my shelves with enough personal growth books to make a bookseller concerned.

My life was moving.

So naturally, I expected some kind of internal software update.

Apparently that's not how humans work.

I could make a brave decision on Monday and question myself over something ridiculous on Tuesday. I could understand boundaries perfectly well while reading about them and then find myself explaining a completely reasonable "no" as if I were addressing a jury.

I knew more.

I was doing more.

And I was still carrying around some very familiar versions of myself.

Your life can move faster than your head

This surprised me.

I think I expected external change to drag internal change along with it.

Change the circumstances, make some big decisions, learn better habits, start doing things differently and surely your brain will get the memo.

Mine occasionally appears to leave its emails unread.

Because you can know that something is different and still react as though it isn't.

You can know you're capable and still look for reassurance.

You can know you're allowed to have boundaries and still feel guilty when you use them.

You can make your own decisions and then immediately wonder whether somebody else would have made a better one.

That doesn't erase the progress. It just means some parts of us are slower to update than others.

I'm learning to expect that now.

Knowing something is not particularly impressive

This has been mildly offensive to discover because I really enjoy learning. 😂

Give me a book, a podcast, a new idea to research and I'm happy.

Understanding why I do something feels productive.

Sometimes it is.

But I can understand a pattern beautifully and still repeat it at 4:17 that afternoon.

I can read about boundaries for three hours and still add "sorry" to a sentence that absolutely did not require one.

Knowledge helps me see what I'm doing. It doesn't automatically stop me from doing it.

There seems to be an irritating second part where I actually have to practice.

Repeatedly.

In real situations.

With real people.

Very inconvenient.

I started noticing the gap

There's a strange little space between the person you believe you are and the person you're trying to become.

I've started catching it in ordinary moments.

I'll have an opinion and notice the instinct to soften it before I've even said it.

I'll decide to do something and immediately start looking for reasons why maybe I shouldn't.

I'll promise myself something and hear the familiar negotiation begin.

Those moments used to happen so automatically that I barely noticed them.

Now sometimes I catch one while it's happening.

I don't always choose differently.

That's important.

Sometimes I watch myself make the old choice with full awareness, which is a particularly humbling form of personal growth. 😂

But at least now I saw it.

And seeing it gives me somewhere to start.

Maybe identity is more ordinary than I thought

When I first became interested in identity, the word sounded enormous.

Who am I?

Very dramatic.

Possibly requires candles.

But I'm beginning to think identity shows up in much smaller places.

It's in what feels normal to you.

What you expect from yourself. What you accept from other people. The things you automatically say yes to, the things you assume you can't do, the way you talk to yourself after a mistake, how quickly you abandon your own plans when something more urgent appears.

Those things quietly tell a story about who you believe you are.

And if I want that story to change, I probably have to give myself some new material.

That's one of the ideas behind the Identity part of Becoming 366. You define what the woman you're becoming values, believes, protects and chooses, then practice living from those choices until she starts feeling less like some future character and more familiar.

I like the word practice there.

It leaves room for being terrible at something before it becomes natural.

The old version of me is still allowed to show up

This might be the part I needed to understand most.

I don't have to destroy every old reaction before I'm allowed to believe I've changed.

Some of them have been around for years. Of course they know the shortcuts.

The difference now is that I'm starting to recognize them.

There's the version of me who overthinks.

The one who keeps quiet because it's easier.

The one who wants everybody to be happy with her.

The one who makes a beautiful plan and then would very much like to renegotiate it with herself the following morning.

I know these women. 😂

I'm not particularly interested in hating them.

They got me here.

I'm just not letting them make every decision anymore.

And maybe this is the update

I still feel like me.

I think I was wrong to expect otherwise.

I don't actually want to wake up as a completely different person.

I want to recognize myself and notice that I handle certain things differently now.

That saying no is a little less dramatic. That I trust a decision without conducting an unofficial public consultation first. That taking care of myself feels normal rather than something I do when I finally have time. That I recover faster when I fall back into an old habit.

Some of that is already happening.

Some of it definitely isn't.

And for once, I'm interested enough in the process that I don't need to pretend I know exactly how it ends.

The software update is apparently installing one tiny file at a time.

Fine.

I'll leave the computer on.