Remembering Yourself

If you've spent years adapting to belong, how do you begin recognising what is truly you?

In this episode, we explore the quiet process of remembering yourself, learning to trust small signals, and discovering that authenticity rarely arrives all at once. Sometimes, it begins with simply listening again.

If today's conversation stayed with you, you'll find more reflections, resources and ways to continue the conversation at lisawestgate.com/exhale I'd love to see you there.

Music credit: Trolldans - Ström

Transcript

Lisa 0:01

Last time, we explored the cost of belonging. The ways we can slowly adapt ourselves to stay connected, accepted, and safe. But if you've been listening over the past few episodes, you might be wondering if so much of who I became was adaptation. How do I know what's actually me? Today I'd like to explore that question. Not by trying to reinvent yourself, but by remembering. Before we get into it, let's breathe in and out. Welcome to Exhale. So w in exploring that question. Thinking about how do we determine what is adaptation and what is what I'm gonna call the true me. How do we determine that? How do you decide? Is it a conscious process? Do you need to get a notebook and draw the line down the middle and pros and cons, or how how do you figure that out? And there's a couple of thoughts that I want to share on this today. First, and possibly most importantly, to understand is this is not a process of creation. This is not sculpting another version of yourself, right? Because that would just be another adaptation or version or performance, right, of inverted commas or the authentic version of ourselves, right? So the way to make sure that you're not constructing your authentic self because then obviously it wouldn't be authentic. What we do, in fact, instead is you uncover it. Because your authentic self, your true self, that me, that you're trying to identify, it isn't missing, it has simply become quieter than everything else. Sometimes when people are doing this kind of reconnection work or personal development work, um we may be influenced by things that we see in media and on social media, and people doing courses and transformations and walking on fire or punching boards of wood with stuff written on it, or you know, there's there's a lot of um theatre sometimes the way that these concepts are offered. And in my experience and understanding, this can lead to people expecting huge revelations. But the truth is, authenticity rarely arrives like lightning. It's not necessarily those thunderbolts of aha moments. It can be and often is incremental and a bit of a a bit by bit by bit by bit uh process of building up evidence of you. So instead, it often sounds like hmm, I actually don't enjoy that. Or I'd rather stay home tonight. Oh, I've always loved drawing. I don't think I agree. Small signals, and when they come, they can feel like they're coming from a different place. To thoughts. Something I think that's important to I know I use that word a lot because I really think this is important work, but I think it's valuable to understand that the processes and and the transformations and the transitions and the discovery and the exploration that we're talking about here in Xhale is not sunshine and puppies and rainbows. There are certainly parts of it that are challenging, that are confronting, that can be difficult because most people find change difficult. From a nervous system point of view, your nervous system as you begin this practice of listening for those small signals may confuse authenticity with danger. If you've spent years adapting, authenticity can feel uncomfortable, unusual, even dangerous. Not because it's wrong, because it's unfamiliar. Something I've said for years, and and you know, if you if you, dear explorer, have listened to my other podcasts or or watched any other of my my content, you may have heard me say this before. I don't call the comfort zone the comfort zone, I call it the familiar zone because people will stay there even if they are uncomfortable. Whether that's a job or a relationship or a housing situation or whatever it is. We are so attached to the sense of safety or the perceived safety of the familiar, even if it's not, even if it's not comfortable. It but it's it's the better the devil you know sort of mindset, right? And again, it's not just a mindset, it's a mindset that comes from your nervous system searching for safety, which is its number one operating system, right? So never underestimate the pull of what's familiar, even if it's uncomfortable or holding you back. In this process of remembering and uncovering, I invite you to start trusting tiny preferences. You don't begin this sort of stuff with, what's my life purpose? What am I here to do? Why am I on the planet? Right? That's a lot. And um, you'll probably be swamped with answers andor silence as your system goes, ah, I don't know. So give it the opportunity to practice with tiny preferences. Do you prefer tea or coffee? Quiet or noise? Are you a morning person or do you like the evenings? Is today time for rest or productivity? Do I actually want to go? These are reps. You're strengthening the muscle of listening. Listening to yourself. And it's important to remember to maintain curiosity over certainty. You may not get answers even to those tiny preference questions. But that's okay, you don't need to know everything for certain. You don't have to know who you are. You only become curious enough to notice. You also don't have to do this in one day or one week. Think about how long you have been the versions of yourself that you have been to fit in in various places, to do the job that you had to do or have to do, to be connected to the people that you're connected to. I dare say it's a really long time. So I invite you to give yourself some space. Cut yourself a break. You don't have to figure this all out like this week You're not broken. You're buried. Buried beneath conditioning and performance and fear and survival patterns and inherited stories and who knows what else. It's remembering someone. It's remembering you that takes time. So give yourself the time. When do I feel like I'm performing? What preferences have I ignored for a long time? What small signal have I been dismissing What would happen if I trusted it today? I'm hopeful that this series, this season one of Exhale the last few episodes have supported you on a discovery journey, an exploration of self. And I'd love to hear from you about what that looks like. I know what this podcast looks like from my end, in me delivering these ideas and these concepts to you. I would love to hear from you at the other end, as the explorer, as the listener of what it is to experience this and have these questions posed to you. What's coming up for you? What has it inspired? Maybe some of it's been challenging or scary. Um in the link at the bottom of the notes, and let me know what's coming up for you as you work through these. I hope you're enjoying it. I hope it's not tortuous. I mean, that was kind of not the idea. Uh, and certainly if you would like some support, more support around these conversations, then feel free to get in touch and we can talk about options. Uh, one of those options is joining the wait list for return circle. Um, so if you haven't uh explored that already, um I'll be leaking some more information around that as well. So as we finish up um today's episode, here are my final little thoughts. Maybe becoming yourself isn't a journey forwards Maybe it's a journey back up or down back beneath the armor back beneath the adaptations back to the quiet signals that never really disappeared. They just became difficult to hear. So I invite you to listen to me for the questions and listen to yourself for the answers.