My husband and I enjoy listening to audiobooks before bed, and our most recent one was The Stolen Child, a fantasy novel about changelings—fairy folk who secretly replace human children.
As entertaining as the story was, it wasn’t the fantasy that stayed with me. It was the identity crisis both of the main characters experienced.
Both characters spend the entire novel asking similar questions:
Who was I?
Who am I now?
Should I try to be the person I used to be?
Or is it possible for me to be satisfied with this state of becoming someone new?
Long after we finished the book, I found myself wondering something unexpectedly personal.
How much of who I believe I am is actually me?
And how much is simply a story I’ve repeated for so long that it feels like truth?
We don’t live according to our goals.
We live according to the stories we believe about ourselves.
People don’t fail to reach their goals because they lack motivation.
They fail because motivation collides with identity.
Goal: I want to exercise.
Story: I’ve never been athletic.
Guess which one wins?
Goal: I want to eat healthier.
Story: I’ve always had poor self-control.
Guess which one wins?
Goal: I want boundaries.
Story: Good people don’t disappoint others.
Guess which wins?
The story wins.
Every time.
Why?
Because the brain is designed to preserve consistency before it pursues change.
One of the brain’s primary jobs is prediction. It craves consistency, predictability, stability, and control.
The brain values familiarity far more than novelty.
It isn’t trying to make us happier.
It’s trying to make the world predictable.
If you’ve spent thirty years telling yourself:
“I’m always late.”
“I’m bad with money.”
“I’m overweight.”
“I’m a spaz with a lot of anxiety”
“I’m a failure.”
Over time, the brain begins to anticipate and favor behaviors that are consistent with the identity we’ve rehearsed for years.
It notices evidence supporting that story and ignores contradictory evidence.
Our brains also participate in lots of chicanery, through cognitive distortions, mental shortcuts, and countless other ways of protecting the stories we’ve learned to believe.
Identity protects itself.
People don’t resist change; they resist becoming someone unfamiliar.
That’s an important distinction.
Imagine someone who’s always identified as:
The caretaker.
The achiever.
The funny one.
The victim.
The perfectionist.
The independent one.
If those identities disappear…
Who are they?
That uncertainty can feel terrifying.
The nervous system often prefers familiar suffering over unfamiliar freedom.
Identity change always involves loss.
Every identity we hope to outgrow requires us to let go of a version of ourselves that once served an important purpose.
We don’t simply change identities—we grieve them.
The perfectionist, the people pleaser, the workaholic, the caretaker… these parts of us weren’t born overnight.
They developed because, at some point in our lives, they worked.
They protected us from criticism, earned approval, reduced uncertainty, helped us feel valued, or simply helped us survive difficult seasons.
They weren’t flaws—they were adaptations.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a common thread running through conversations with family members, friends, and practice members.
Although their circumstances were very different, they were all wrestling with the same underlying struggle:
becoming so identified with a story that it began to dictate how they lived their lives.
I’ve heard stories like:
“My self-worth comes from being needed.”
“If I’m not constantly sacrificing for other people, they won’t respect or appreciate me.”
And perhaps the most heartbreaking of all:
“I’m already a total f**k up, so I might as well not even try.”
These aren’t just passing thoughts.
They’re identities.
When we repeat these stories often enough, they become the lens through which we interpret ourselves, our relationships, and our future.
They quietly place a cage around our potential, narrowing what we believe is possible and limiting the choices we’re willing to make.
The painful irony is that the identities that once kept us safe can eventually become the very identities that keep us stuck.
We begin neglecting our own needs, growing resentful, becoming exhausted, and slowly losing sight of who we are beneath the roles we’ve learned to play.
I’ve come to believe that getting stuck isn’t usually a failure of motivation or productivity.
More often, it’s a failure of imagination.
Because people cannot become someone they cannot imagine themselves being.
The first step in rewriting our story isn’t changing it.
It’s noticing it.
Awareness requires honesty.
It requires noticing when shame, fear, or defensiveness begin writing the next chapter for us.
We can’t rewrite a story we’re convinced is the only one we’ve ever been given.
Instead of:
“I’ll never lose weight.”
Practice:
“I’m noticing I’m telling myself I’ll never lose weight.”
That tiny change creates psychological distance.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a framework that I love and that was brought into being by a brilliant researcher/clinician named Steven Hayes, calls this cognitive defusion (more on ACT in future blogs).
Not only are awareness, acceptance, and creating psychological distance from our inner critic important in the process of becoming the person we want to be, but action is the force that drives change.
Every action becomes another sentence in the story you’re writing about yourself.
One walk doesn’t make you athletic.
One healthy meal doesn’t make you someone who eats well.
One difficult conversation doesn’t suddenly make you courageous.
But stories aren’t written one chapter at a time.
They’re written one sentence at a time.
Every healthy choice writes another sentence.
Every boundary writes another sentence.
Every act of courage writes another sentence.
Eventually, those sentences become paragraphs.
Those paragraphs become chapters.
One day you look back and realize you’re no longer reading the same story.
You’re writing a different one.
This perspective can be incredibly helpful when you feel stuck or overwhelmed.
Instead of asking, “How do I completely transform my life?”
Ask yourself, “What would the person I’m becoming do next?”
Then take one small action in that direction.
That single step may seem insignificant in the moment, but it isn’t.
We often wait to feel confident before taking action, believing confidence will make the journey easier.
In reality, the opposite is often true.
Confidence isn’t what starts the journey. It’s one of the rewards of staying on it.
Every time you repeat a behavior, you’re walking the same trail through the forest.
At first the path is difficult to find.
But every return makes it easier.
Your brain works much the same way.
That’s why what once required enormous effort eventually begins to feel natural.
Each repetition becomes another sentence in a different story about who you are—a story in which you are capable, disciplined, resilient, compassionate, and courageous. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the old narrative begins to lose its grip while the new one gains credibility.
This is why the journey toward a goal is often more transformative than the achievement of the goal itself.
The finish line is a moment.
The person you become along the way can last a lifetime.
The changelings in The Stolen Child spent their lives wondering,
“Who am I now?”
Maybe that’s the wrong question.
Maybe the better question is:
“Who am I practicing becoming?”
Because whether we realize it or not, we’re all writing our story every day.
Through the conversations we have.
Through the boundaries we set.
Through the habits we repeat.
Through the beliefs we choose to keep—or finally let go.
We don’t get to choose every story we’ve been handed.
But we do get to decide whether we’ll keep telling it.
So I’ll leave you with one final question:
Who is writing your story?
If it’s still your fear, your shame, your inner critic, or your past…
perhaps it’s time to pick up the pen.