Identity In Motion

December gives us the rare gift of ‘Pause’. And with that pause, I need you to understand one simple but important fact: Identity is dynamic. It is fluid. It moves.

Unfortunately, a lot of us are way too loyal to who we have been that we don’t even have the will to step into the possibility of a new and progressive one.

You are not required to stay the same because you once said something or made a choice. You are allowed to change. That in itself is an honest response to new information, new limits, new responsibilities, and new gains in self-knowledge.

You are allowed to change your mind. You are allowed to outgrow goals, beliefs, and identities that once made sense to you. You are allowed to choose differently when you know better. Holding yourself to past versions of you is self-imprisonment.

Identity is a process, not a prison.

Another thing we get wrong is how we treat who we used to be. People look back with shame, embarrassment, or regret, as if their former selves were that careless or unserious. But that is not always the case. Most people were doing the best they could with what they knew, what they had, and what they could handle at the time.

Growth does not require regret for who you were. That version of you was doing the best it could with the awareness, tools, and capacity it had at the time. The choices you made then were informed by who you were then. The seasons you think you wasted taught you discernment, boundaries, and self-knowledge.

To despise that version of you is to misunderstand how becoming works. Expecting that version of you to perform with today’s insight is unfair and unrealistic.

Growth is a continuum, not a courtroom where your past is put on trial.

Many people carry unnecessary shame for seasons that were actually formative. Growth does not ask that you hate your past. What can do is to learn from it.

Celebrating growth without regret means you stop beating yourself for not knowing earlier. You stop wishing you could rewrite your beginning. You stop apologising for the person you had to be in order to get through certain seasons.

You do not disown your past self. You integrate them. Celebrating growth means you can acknowledge who you were without needing to defend or repeat it.

How this fits into your December: this is the month for alignment, not reinvention. While others are rushing to set bold goals that rooted in pressure, choose alignment instead. Pay attention what has changed inside you, release what no longer fits, and make small, clear promises that reflect the person you are becoming.

These two steps will help you.

1. Choose one thing from your past you will stop carrying into next year. Write it down and tear it up. This is very symbolic.

2. Then, pick one small habit that matches the person you want to be. Ten minutes every day is a start. Keep at it until it sticks.

And listen, you do not have to explain yourself to anyone, and you do not owe your past a repetition.

December is your window to adjust the map you use to move forward. When you let identity move, growth becomes more solid and more true.

That is how you cross into the next year with better footing.

_Chinaza Favour🌱

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