If I Change My Behaviour, Will I Still Be Me?

Thank you to everyone who attended the Confidence Circle session last week.

We explored a couple of issues, which led to a deep conversation.

I am honoured to facilitate these sessions, and I appreciate your vulnerability, honesty and willingness to hold a safe space for one another.

In one of our previous sessions, we explored the question:

How do I know if I’m on the right path?

This week, we took that a step further and asked:

How can I let go of an old pattern of behaviour without rejecting the person I am?

These questions are connected because they point to patterns of behaviour that may once have helped us feel safe, accepted, creative, loved or needed.

Over time, they become so familiar that they form part of our identity. So, when we begin to break the pattern of behaviour, it can feel like we are losing part of ourselves.

We feel the need to check whether we are going in the right direction when it starts to feel uncomfortable. We think being on the right path should feel good. It will, in time, but at first, it will feel uncomfortable because we are starting to behave differently. That is scary for our nervous system because it is unfamiliar and its outcome is unknown.

We start to wonder, ‘If I change my behaviour, will I still be me?’

This is natural, and it’s okay because the aim isn’t necessarily to eliminate the behaviour. It’s to change our relationship with it.

Returning to yourself doesn’t mean changing your identity. You are removing things that are not part of your identity. We are not trying to become some ‘pure’ version of ourselves. This is alignment, not perfection. That’s why I have started using the expression ’flawsome.’

If you have spent years trying to please others, you may feel guilty when you start to say no.

If you have found a way to escape uncomfortable feelings, you may feel exposed and vulnerable when you stay present with them.

If your very identity has been built around what you do for others, your life may feel empty when you realise people no longer need rescuing.

There is nothing you have to give up. I like the analogy that we collect lots of stickers over our lifetime with words like:

• You are

• You must

• You should

• Why don’t you?

• You can’t

• You must not

What we are doing is taking off each sticker and, if it still serves us and we want to keep it, putting it back. If not, away it goes.

If you want to be kind but stop being a doormat, that’s okay.

If you want to live in the present but keep a vivid imaginary world as a safe space in hard times, that’s okay.

If you want to set boundaries that can be flexible when you want them to be, that’s okay.

You don’t have to throw away everything that helped you survive in order to flourish. You get to decide what still belongs in the life you’re creating now. The difference is you are now in control.