The Practice of Becoming Myself

Beneath the Surface: Who Am I Without Achievement?

Who would you be if you stripped away all the externals—the job, the title, the home, the community, the money? Strip it all away. What’s left?

In my previous post, I made a personal commitment to live in the moment.

The life I longed for isn’t in the things I accomplish tomorrow. It’s in the choices I make today.

Because of this, I’ve been wrestling with this question a lot the last few weeks.

I’ve had to dig down into the core of who I really am. Without all my external accomplishments or attachments, I’d still be a man of integrity and grace. I’d still pursue growth. I’d care for my health. I’d love my wife and family.

Stripped of externals, I would continue to serve others—perhaps even more than I do now. I’d read. I’d write—not for affirmation, but because I’m a writer. I have things to say.

I would think and learn and grow. Be happy. Be at peace. I would see the person I was designed to be. A thinker. A teacher. A servant. A man who loves others. A leader.

I think I know who I am. But ever since committing to living more authentically, I’ve found myself faced with a dilemma. Who am I if I’m not defined by the person I will ultimately become?

Unraveling the Vision: Lessons in Letting Go

Some recent painful lessons in letting go have forced me to confront these difficult questions.

For years, I carried around this image of the ideal father—the one who raised wise, grounded, empowered kids. The kind of dad whose adult children still came to him for advice. I clung to that vision tightly. I lived for it. I pushed my kids way too hard when they didn’t fit this vision. And when things didn’t turn out that way—when each of my kids cut off contact while they were still teenagers—I didn’t just lose relationships. I lost the mirror I’d been using to tell myself I was becoming someone good.

One relationship is slowly rebuilding. The others are still distant. And though I’ll always be their dad, I’ve had to start letting go of the belief that I can shape their story anymore—or that a close, honest relationship is still in reach. Letting go of that vision has been brutal.

And it wasn’t the only one I had to release. My career followed a similar path. I imagined becoming a bold, strategic leader—someone who inspired respect and made a mark. For a while, it looked like I was becoming that man. I had the title. The global team. The international travel. I loved introducing myself with my job. It made me feel like I mattered.

But while the title looked like success, keeping it meant slowly trading away parts of myself—my presence at home, my desire to serve, my creative voice. Eventually, I realized I wanted those pieces back more than I wanted the title.

I thought the discontent I was feeling came from work dysfunction—bad processes, internal politics. But when I finally asked what I actually wanted next, the answer surprised me: I didn’t want to stay in corporate life at all.

That realization was unnerving. If I wasn’t climbing toward some big professional future, then who was I becoming? I no longer had a clear answer to the question, “So what do you do?” I still don’t. I have a few blog posts and a half-formed dream. Calling myself a writer feels both honest and uncomfortable.

Letting go of my corporate ambition didn’t just mean stepping out of a role. It meant giving up the illusion that I was climbing toward some noble future self. It meant facing the fear that I hadn’t been heading toward a true destination at all—just following a sense of forward motion that gave me the illusion of meaning.

It wasn’t until I started trying to live in the moment—really live in it—that everything surfaced. Without the forward pull of who I was striving to become, I came face to face with the self I had built my life around: the aspirational self. Letting go exposed more than loss. It forced a confrontation with the person I thought I had to become. And in that quiet undoing, a new question emerged: what if the real work is living from who I am now, not who I’m trying to be?

When Aspiration Becomes Identity

For most of my adult life, I chased a future version of myself. He was calm under pressure, grounded in wisdom, admired by others. He led well. He parented well. He wrote with clarity and lived with impact. I called it growth. I called it vision. But really, it was a story I used to measure myself against—and I was always coming up short.

Trying to live in the moment disrupted all of that. When I finally stopped looking ahead, I felt disoriented. Nothing to aim for. I didn’t know how to be okay with that. It felt less like freedom and more like withdrawal. An aching detachment from the thing I had once relied on to tell me who I was and why what I did mattered.

That aspirational self had become the foundation for my entire sense of purpose. Once I tore it down, I didn’t know where to stand. Underneath it all, there was fear—not of failure, but of insignificance. The quiet dread that if I didn’t do something great, my life wouldn’t matter. That I wouldn’t matter. I didn’t talk about it often—not even to myself. But it was always there, beneath the surface. Like I had to earn my place in the world.

It’s a hard fear to name, but an easy one to follow. It drove me, quietly, until I finally stopped and asked: what does it even mean for a life to matter?

I don’t have the answer. But I’m learning to sit with the question—not to conquer it, but to let it ground me. To let it turn me back toward the present—toward the life I’m already living.

Relearning Presence: Finding Joy Without a Goal

For a long time, I was hoping that future version of me would be easier to accept. But I’ve been slowly learning to turn toward what’s present. What’s real. And maybe for the first time, I’m beginning to discover a truer self underneath all the striving.

The authentic self isn’t loud. It isn’t obsessed with outcomes or legacy. It just asks: is this true? Is this good? Is this what I value?

There’s a freedom in that. A surprising joy. I can read a book because I love the way it makes me think—not because it fits into some growth plan. I can go for a walk because it clears my head—not because it fits into some bigger fitness plan. I can write, not to build a platform, but as a form of deep self-expression.

This isn’t a resolution. It’s a reorientation. A different way of existing in the world. One that values presence over performance, depth over image, and wholeness over achievement.

It’s not that I’ve stopped growing. I’m just setting aside striving to become someone else. I’m learning, slowly, to be faithful to who I already am.

Even now, I still feel the pull of aspiration. It hasn’t disappeared—and maybe it’s not supposed to. We were designed to improve ourselves. There’s something human about reaching for more. But I no longer want that reaching to define me. Let aspiration take its proper place—not as my identity, but as a vision of what’s possible. Something that can inspire, without demanding.

This is also a part of authentic living: allowing space for movement, for hope, for growth—without turning those things into a new set of expectations. The authentic self isn’t a fixed point. It’s not another ideal to live up to. It’s a way of being that trusts presence over perfection. A way of becoming that begins by being fully here.

A New Way Forward

So I don’t need to reject aspiration. I just need to hold it differently. I can still want to grow, to heal, to create. But I want that desire to come from love, not fear. From alignment, not pressure. I want to move forward not to become a “better” self, but a truer self. I’m learning to believe that who I am—right now—is already enough. And on the days I forget, I can begin again.

This is a choice. Not once, but each day. To stop performing. To stop proving. To stop waiting for a different, more acceptable version of myself. And instead, to be present to the life I’m actually living.