Future You Is A Cool Person, Too
A quick bite about why it’s okay to change.
Check out the journal prompt at the bottom of this week and feel free to share your reflections in the comments.
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Has anyone ever told you “you just need to figure out who you are, and then you’ll be content”? I’ve heard this. I’ve said this. I didn’t realize until a late night in a hotel room with one of my best friends that “figuring out who you are'' is only one piece of our self-contentment.
As people interested in leadership and personal development, we talk about growth all the time. How many times do we stop and think about what growth really means? I happen to be watching trees fly by outside of my passenger seat window as I write this, so let’s use a tree as a convenient example. Every fall, the leaves fall off. In the spring, they come back; but the leaves aren’t the same leaves. The tree has added a ring to its trunk and a few inches to its crown, but no one will look at that tree and say it’s “not being true to itself.” People, like trees, will grow and change through seasons.
So what does that mean for you and me? Perhaps it’s that real growth isn’t just about getting “better,” but will include some genuine change over time. Figuring out who we are right now is certainly important; it helps us navigate the world more effectively. But the catch is that who we are now is not who we will always be. It could be that in our younger college years we have no desire to be “tied down” to a committed relationship, but as we begin our career we start to realize the benefits of commitment outweigh the sacrifices. Maybe our field of interest will change, and we’ll shift careers. We might enjoy running as a hobby now, but a decade from now we may take up photography instead. How can we appreciate who we are now while being open to changing in the future?
Enter Shaylee, one of my best friends and past FFA state officer teammates. A profound thinker and perceptive listener, Shaylee has changed in many ways since our officer term over three years ago. So have each of our teammates. After dinner with the group of facilitators at a conference, we headed back to our hotel and inevitably ended up hours deep into conversation. As our conversation turned to how people change, Shaylee offered up these words:
“I’m confident in who I am now, I’m confident I will change, and I’m confident I will like who I am then, too.”
That’s when it clicked: too often, I try to figure out who I am so I can just settle in to whoever that is and coast, or even perhaps grow but still stay within the bounds of who I figured out I am. Now, I’m realizing that perhaps true contentment lies in the confidence that who we are now is not who we will be in the future, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. This doesn’t mean changing aimlessly or being pulled in every direction by momentary trends or negative influences; it means regularly taking stock of who you are based on your place in life and recognizing when it’s time to flex and grow in one area or another.
A great example of this growth and change is in most musicians who are successful across decades. My favorite band growing up was Relient K; in the first decade of their music career, they were undoubtedly a punk rock band. Now, over two decades later, they fall in the realms of indie/pop/acoustic music. Some fans are bothered by this, commenting all over YouTube “WHY DON’T YOU SOUND THE SAME AS YOU DID IN 2002.” But, think about it. Do you really want a band to produce album after album that sounds exactly the same? Why don’t you just listen to the first album ten times instead? The best musicians mature their sound along with their lives; the most contented people mature dynamically, not linearly.
Work on understanding who you are now, yes. Your interests, your pursuits, your hobbies, your perspectives: cherish them all in this moment. Hold on to them, but don’t hold on too tightly. Don’t let who you are now stop you from becoming who you can be in the future, because the world right now needs current you and the world of the future needs future you.
Journal Prompt of the Week
What is one thing about yourself that has changed over the last year? Did you expect it would change?