Your Old Self Is Fighting for Her Life (and Losing)

Becoming her feels exhausting because you are holding two identities at once.

The old you, the one you have grown comfortable with,
she has held you down for years.
Decades.

You have been a version of her your entire adulthood.
She is cozy.
She is familiar.

She is the reason you have the degree.
The family.
The friends.
The memories.
The accolades.
The stability.

She kept you safe.
She kept you functioning.
She kept you accepted.

Why change what has always worked?
Why evolve when she has been enough for so long?

Psychologists call this self-discrepancy. It is the emotional load you carry when two versions of you are activated at the same time.

The desired version of you requires a lot.
So much that it can feel exhausting just thinking about her upkeep.
Her goals.
Her discipline.
Her mindset.
Her boundaries.
Her curiosity.

She feels foreign because she is unfamiliar, not impossible.

Your brain has never rehearsed her before. That alone creates pressure.

Let me be frank, your current identity can fight. I mean throw hands. Even if you are a lover girl like me, she is not. She wants to stay the same, so she fights, and she has been winning championships against your desired version of you.

But here is the plot twist. She is only winning because you have been unknowingly coaching her.

Every time you choose the familiar pattern, you reinforce her skill set.
Every time you avoid discomfort, you hand her a trophy.
And every time you look at your future self with doubt, your identity signs another contract.

She is fighting for her life, but she is only strong because you kept feeding her.
Once you stop nurturing her, she cannot keep up.

All that fighting has you tired, exhausted, and overwhelmed.
Identity conflict drains energy.

It feels like driving with one foot on the gas and one on the brake. The car moves and then slows, burning out your internal engine.

Your new habits are forming.
Your old patterns are calling.
Your brain is glitching between the two versions.

You are depleted, wanting more but operating from less.

Neuroscientists call this limbic friction, the internal tug of war between your comfort and your calling.

This is when you must incite the death of your old identity. You have to literally mourn her.

Grief is the price of evolution. You are not just changing habits. You are burying a version of yourself that once kept you alive.

For me this felt very lonely and isolating. I no longer related to certain people because our relationship was based on trauma bonding. We bonded on something I no longer acknowledged to be true or accepted as my reality. Once I broke that belief, I felt lonely, but also powerful.

Old me could never be this brave. She was a punk actually.
She survived, but she never self-actualized. And I could not keep trading my evolution for her comfort.

Old me was experienced, sure I will give her that, but that victim mindset was disempowering in every aspect of my life.

I no longer wanted to perform strength. I wanted to embody evolution.

These competing neural pathways created the emotional fatigue I kept mistaking for failure.

And that fatigue made me think I was going backwards when in reality, I was finally evolving.

This is exactly why I built 100 Days, One You.
One habit at a time.
One shift at a time.
Because you cannot create a new identity while juggling twenty-one old patterns. You stabilize one change, you build trust with yourself, and then the desired identity finally has room to breathe.

Here's a peak into my evolution of unbecoming.

Science Square: The Science of Feeling Stuck
Hypothesis: I thought I was tired from the work, unable to sustain my progress.
Observation: I realized I was exhausted because two identities were active at the same time.
Data Point: Competing neural pathways create limbic friction and emotional fatigue.
Insight: Fatigue is not failure. Identity conflict is part of becoming.
Application: Stabilize one habit shift at a time so your brain knows which identity to follow.

How to Make the Transformation Real Without Being a Phony
Becoming requires you to unbecome at the same time. And what is unbecoming about you requires its burial, a burning to ensure it is gone forever.

Simply put, you cannot resurrect the future version of yourself while keeping the old version on life support.

Imagine programming a desktop from 1975 with 2025 software. It does not even have the hardware to understand the updated coding.

Identity fatigue is the sacred space where ego dies, outdated patterns dissolve, and your nervous system learns a new way of being.

No one prepares you for this part. It is like when your phone updates and it is loading, onboarding the new software.

Have patience while being diligent.
Keep training yourself to name resistance. Old you can fight well. You need easily accessible defense mechanisms.
Make all decisions from the footing of the desired you, from the food you eat to the calls you agree to get on.

And it will seemingly happen overnight.

You will look back and realize that your daily awareness added up, equating to you becoming the embodiment of your desired self in the present moment.

Next Saturday I am breaking down why your progress is still happening even when it feels like nothing is moving.

Until then, Peace Out, Peace In.
Spivey J.