Warning: Be careful what you ask for

Sparked #370 - One question. A year of consequences.

Last year I wrote an audacious intention on the front page of a brand new journal.

I want to become unrecognizable.

I was longing for radical transformation. To finally destroy the patterns I knew in my gut were holding me back and holding me down. Habits that were suffocating me, like:

• the need for approval

• over-explaining myself

• taking things personally

• constant comparison

• over-accommodating others

• playing small and playing safe

(just to name a few)

I knew that I needed to change. That I had outgrown the old structures that kept me safe and others comfortable around me.

And so every day I would write this question in my journal.

Where in my life am I still performing or pretending?

And then I would answer it.

I was asking for nothing less than a burning down of self.

Warning: Be careful what you ask for.

This question didn’t just spark change in my life. It was like a match that lit a bonfire.

Answering it, I started seeing the truth of how I’d been lying to myself. Almost overnight.

How I needed to be liked.
How I needed to feel important.
How much I feared going invisible.

And walls began to crumble.

I finally let go of an old friendship.
I stopped trying to “fix” my family.
I stopped explaining myself.
I challenged ridiculous beliefs, like the idea that more likes and subscribers meant more success.

Day after day, I’d asked the question.
And day after day I’d see the truth more clearly.

The fires kept burning and the scaffolding of my personality continued to crumble.

My schedule opened up.
The to-do list got short.
Life felt unstructured and, at times, lacking purpose.

Without the old stories and the buzz of ambition, I felt raw and tender.

I was standing on shaky ground.

And yes, I’d become unrecognizable.

Gone was the high-performer, the people-pleaser, the get-shit-done-at-all-costs kind of girl.

She’d been replaced.
I’d become softer, less performative, and dare I say, happier.

That audacious intention came at a cost.

I can say it was worth it.

Even now.

Even with uncertainty about who I am still running high.

Even with the ground still shaking beneath me.

P.S. More simple truths land every Tuesday.