My ex-wife said something to me years ago that I think about to this day. She said knowing yourself is like breathing. If you know who you are, you don’t even think about it. It just happens. You move through the world as yourself without monitoring every choice, every word, every room you walk into.

But what if you don’t know who you are?

Then it’s like having to consciously think about every breath you take. Inhale. Exhale. Am I doing this right? Is this the right rhythm? What if I stop? What if I do it wrong?

She could see what I couldn’t. That for thirty years, I had been paying attention to my breathing.

I built my entire personality out of other people’s blocks.

Their preferences became my preferences. Their comfort became my priority. I calibrated to what everyone else needed so well that I couldn’t have sooner told you what I wanted for dinner, let alone what I wanted from my life.

I had no signal. The channel where my own wants were supposed to broadcast had been off the air so long I forgot it existed.

For some people this is occasional. A moment here and there. For me it was the operating system. I didn’t just accommodate — I scanned. Every room, every conversation, every relationship. There was a constant background calculation running: what does this person need me to be? And I’d become it. Not as a decision but as a reflex. I didn’t even notice I was doing it because I’d never known myself without it.

Where I was is when the performance runs so long and so deep that you lose the original signal entirely. Where you can be in a relationship for ten years and your partner has never met you — not because you’re hiding, but because what’s behind the performance has atrophied.

In that relationship, every decision ran through a background process. Not always for them — for me. Every choice filtered through a single question: will this keep me accepted? Not what do I want. Not what do I think. Will this keep me safe. Will this let me fit. It wasn’t generosity. It was a monitoring system I couldn’t turn off.

Even though I didn’t want it. Even though I was in therapy. Even though I understood the pattern completely.

And nothing changed.

That’s the gap nobody talks about. Not a gap in knowledge. A gap in proof. I had decades of evidence that the performance worked — that I fit in, that I stayed safe, that relationships held together. And I had zero evidence that I could function without it. Not a single data point that said: you can drop this and survive.

Understanding tells you what’s wrong. But your nervous system doesn’t update through understanding. It updates through proof. Through experience. And I had none.

You can’t think your way out of an action problem. I tried for thirty years.

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Nobody tells you that when you finally stop performing, the first thing you feel isn’t freedom.

It’s a void with nothing to grasp at all.

When the performance dropped and the relationship ended and the structure I’d built my identity around fell away — what was underneath wasn’t some authentic self waiting to emerge.

It was blank. Empty. Not emptiness as a flaw. Emptiness as an absence. The absence of anything I’d built myself.

Instead of a personality, I developed a survival strategy. And when the survival strategy was no longer needed, what was left was the space where a self was supposed to be. Thirty years of proof that the performance works. Zero proof of who I am without it.

What I knew was that my dad had just died weeks prior, my marriage was ending, and I didn’t even know where to begin.

I could have kept doing the same things I’d been doing — the safe things, the familiar things, the things that didn’t ask me to be anyone in particular.

But something in me needed to move. Not in a travel sense. In a personal one. I didn’t feel fear as much as opportunity. Or maybe something in me was just finally ready — not me, exactly. It.

So I booked a solo camping trip to Washington state for two weeks all alone. It became the most important choice I could make at that point in my life.

My trip fell apart before it began.

My rental camera gear to document this wonderful adventure didn’t arrive in time. After landing in Washington my phone was at two percent and without a charger that worked. My first stop wasn’t going to be what I wanted, but to wherever I could find a retail store.

Various other issues compounded into one idea: I shouldn’t be here. What am I doing here?

I cried. In the car sitting in the rental lot. Within the first hour.

This was supposed to be a good trip. And instead, my first stop wasn’t a trailhead or a campsite. It was Best Buy.

I wanted to go home. Genuinely. Within sixty minutes of landing, I wanted to turn around and leave. It was the reaction of someone whose life was currently attached by string and scotch tape. Whose life of accumulated nothing was a mess. Who had never made a single significant choice for himself and was now sitting in a parking lot three thousand miles from home wondering what the hell he was doing.

Some time later, I composed myself, did what I needed to do and drove on.

The trip became about choices. Not big, dramatic, story-worthy choices. Small ones. The kind nobody writes about because they don’t sound like anything.

This sounds stupid unless you’ve spent your entire life scanning for what other people want. When picking for yourself and sitting with it isn’t an act of defiance or courage — it’s an act of developing proof.

I went camping because my dad used to take me as a kid. And while we were only starting to get close in adult life, he’d passed away only recently before this trip. I was carrying his death, my separation, and my own unraveling all at the same time — and I chose to sleep in the woods because it was the closest connection with nature and a territory I loved that I could come up with.

I went skydiving. I went whitewater rafting. And while those were fun and scary, those aren’t the moments that built anything lasting. The foundation wasn’t laid by the electrifying stuff. It was laid by the quiet, unglamorous, compounding choices that don’t make good stories.

I picked a new campsite every night to maximize travel distance and coverage. It seemed like making the most of the trip. And I hated it. I couldn’t rest after a long eventful day. I had to set up at night and in the morning I had to pack. I was at the whim of my travel ambitions rather than my desire to rest in the moment. I didn’t know that about myself until I was too tired to ignore it.

One night I slept in a hammock because that’s where the trees allowed it. It turns out I love sleeping in a hammock. It also turns out it’s important to set up the hammock appropriately or else you find yourself with a cold ass on the ground at two in the morning. But that was mine. A preference discovered and taken seriously because I was the only one there to have it. Not borrowed. Not performed. Not filtered through what anyone else would think. I liked it. That was enough.

I picked wrong sometimes. I’d get something and not like it. And that — “I don’t like that” — was information. Real information. Mine. A preference that belonged to me because no one else was there to meaningfully influence my take.

What to eat. Where to turn. When to stop. Whether to stay.

Those were my building blocks. My own, for the first time.

Coming back from San Juan Island I was in tears. Not from pain. From gratitude. Something had opened up over those days and I was so full of it I couldn’t hold it together on the ferry.

Then I pulled into a gas station.

A guy at the next pump started telling me about his latest surgery. In rich, committed detail. His entire arm felt like being wrapped in barbed wire, he said. An electrical current running through it. Ten minutes I stood there nodding. “Wow, man. Yeah. That’s crazy...”

Out of... Well, for some damn reason I didn’t know how to leave. Here I was mid-breakthrough, crying with gratitude an hour earlier, and I was still stuck in this Midwest Goodbye.

Honestly I think I was mostly flabbergasted.

I didn’t have this language then. But I think what was happening is that every choice I made on that trip was a deposit of proof my nervous system had never had.

The right choices built something I’d later understand as competence evidence. Proof that my own judgment could lead me somewhere worth going. That I could pick a trail and it would be beautiful. That I could sleep in a hammock in the woods and discover something I genuinely loved. That I could decide to stay somewhere longer or leave earlier and both would be fine.

The wrong choices built something I didn’t expect, and it might matter more. Tolerance evidence. Proof that a bad call wouldn’t destroy me. That I could pick a new campsite every night and learn the hard way that I need rest more than coverage — and still be standing. That I could drive an hour in the wrong direction, eat something I hated, wake up cold on the ground — and still be okay. Not perfect. But functional. Alive.

The fear underneath people-pleasing was never really “what if they don’t like me.” It was “what if I make the wrong choice and I can’t survive it.” Every wrong choice I survived on that trip quietly disproved that.

I’d had decades of proof that performing for other people kept me safe. And now I was collecting new proof. One meal, one trail, one wrong turn at a time.

The old proof wasn’t erased. The new stuff just slowly became louder.

That’s what evidence-based change actually is. The proof accumulating quietly, unglamorously, one choice at a time until it outweighs the fear. Until your nervous system has enough data.

Understanding tells you what’s wrong. Proof tells your body it’s safe to change. I understood my people-pleasing for thirty years. What I was missing was the proof that I could exist without it.

I couldn’t tell you I’d found myself when I came home. That would be a lie.

This was the foundation of starting to build myself. Out of my own materials, for the first time.

What followed was years of continued choosing. Continued collecting proof. Continued catching myself mid-performance and choosing differently. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Sometimes at gas stations, still nodding along.

Growth is a process, not an end. And the distance between that parking lot where I cried over a dead phone and where I am now isn’t a straight line. It’s years of getting it wrong and getting it right and slowly, slowly accumulating enough proof that something shifted.

There’s an unappreciated beauty to making your own choices. Like how I wrote this to the same album I listened to on repeat during the trip — Carly Rae Jepson’s “Emotion.” That one is mine, too.

I think about my ex-wife’s words differently now.

She said knowing yourself is like breathing. And for a long time, my personality was a conscious, monitored, effortful performance of what I thought would be accepted. Every breath deliberate. Every exhale calculated. Inhale. What do they need? Exhale. What do I become for them?

That shift didn’t come from more understanding. It came from proof.

I don’t have to think about my breathing anymore. I think that’s because my body finally has enough evidence that I can be trusted with my own life.

I’m still building. I’m still collecting. I still catch myself holding my breath sometimes.

But I don’t monitor it anymore.

And that is the most peaceful part of my life.

I’ve chased waterfalls all over the world. The harder they are to reach, the more I want to go. It’s one of the things I know I love because of how fulfilled I feel.

So when I got to the first one and felt nothing, I didn’t know what to make of it.

This is the Waterfall Circuit in the Atherton Tablelands, Northern Queensland, Australia. Three waterfalls — Millaa Millaa, Zillie, and Ellinjaa — all close enough to hit in one day. It’s a popular visit, except for today. It’s foggy, raining, and storming. The kind of day most people would stay home.

That’s never bothered me. I would do the same things, just wet.

The first waterfall — Millaa Millaa — is right off the parking lot. No hike to speak of. Classic, stunning. I had planned to stick around for a while, maybe swim.

But I walked down, took some photos, and checked it off my list. Already thinking about the next one before I’d finished being at this one.

I’d gotten exactly what I came for. Something I supposedly love. And it just felt… flat. Not bad. Not wrong. Just not what I set out for.

I didn’t know why. I just showed up, looked, and left.

The rain was still ebbing and flowing. This next one — Zillie Falls — could also be seen with just a short walk to a nearby viewing platform. This is an immense waterfall. The kind that thunders and makes you yell just so the person next to you can hear you.

Beautiful to be sure. But that view didn’t suffice if I could get closer, and fortunately there’s another much longer trail I can follow.

The hike doesn’t seem too bad. Alltrails describes it as “a bit of a scramble involving climbing rocky and at times slippery steps before reaching the waterfall.” Although the continuing rain made me more cautious than usual.

The trail gave me time to slow down. I started noticing things — the smell of the forest, the ferns, the mushrooms I don’t have at home. Somewhere on that walk I stopped thinking about what I was headed toward and started paying attention to what I was in. I didn’t realize it yet, but that shift changed the rest of my day.

As I near the base of the falls, I reach a point that is about as far as I can go without making a decision.

There’s a gap between two large boulders with water flowing between them. On the best of days I could pass it with a short jump, but that may not be in the cards today. My heavy camera backpack and the rain all day made it a risk I wasn’t willing to take. No one was around. If I hurt myself I’d be in real trouble.

But the waterfall was just ahead. I hadn’t been able to get a good view the entire trail, and with it this close, I couldn’t leave like this.

I had to find another way.

Nearby I notice a crevice between the rocks. It’s small, but I can fit. Deeper inside it and about seven feet up there’s an opening big enough to crawl through — and maybe see what I came to see.

I toss my bag through the opening and start shimmying up the crevice walls. I end up scratched, scraped and bleeding, but after a few minutes of pushing I make it through.

It’s a perfect view of the falls. Exactly what I wanted. And I felt such a rush after wondering if I wouldn’t be able to see it at all, plus showcasing my newly found shimmy skills.

For the first time all day, I was fully here. I felt alive.

At the time I didn’t know how to explain the difference between this and the first waterfall. It wasn’t just that the view was better. Something about being here felt different in my whole body. Like I wasn’t just looking at it — I was in it. The trail, the doubt, the scrapes on my hands, the decision that could have gone either way — all of it was in the moment with me.

I stayed for another hour. Not because I needed to. Because I didn’t want to be anywhere else.

But I still had one more waterfall to go.

The path to Ellinjaa Falls is just as long as the last but far less sketchy. Still, the rain was coming down harder now than it had all day. I was starting to get nervous about lightning.

When I arrived I saw that the falls were by far the smallest of the three.

And I was having the time of my life.

I was soaked. Tired. My feet kept slipping off the wet stones and into the water. The kind of day that would make most people miserable had me standing there, taking it in, and I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to be anywhere else. I wasn’t thinking about the next thing or the thing after that. I was just here — in the rain, in front of a small waterfall, at the end of a day I had every reason to skip.

It was a perfect day. Inside a completely imperfect one.

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Yet there was still the difference between the first waterfall and the others. I was here to seek enjoyment and fulfillment. But why did I start out feeling so flat instead, despite seeing exactly what I intended?

It would be easy to think the difference was the difficulty. That I just needed a harder hike to appreciate the reward. But the last waterfall was an easy-breezy trek, plus the smallest of the three. And yet I was having the time of my life.

The difference was that nothing at the first waterfall asked me to choose. I showed up, I looked, I left. I was on autopilot and I didn’t even notice. A frictionless path to something I wanted — and frictionless meant I could sleepwalk the whole way there.

Everything after that had friction. The rain, the gap I couldn’t cross, the wet stones I kept slipping on. None of it was extreme, but all of it interrupted the autopilot. All of it forced a decision — keep going or take the easy out.

But friction alone wasn’t what changed the day. If I’d been rushing through the trail, frustrated by the rain, on my phone, powering through to get to the view — that friction would have just been a bad time. What changed was that somewhere on that second trail, I started paying attention. I stopped chasing the destination and noticed what was around me. And once I was actually present, every obstacle became something I was choosing rather than something I was enduring.

That’s the part that unsettles me. Not the waterfalls — what they revealed. How many times I’ve taken the frictionless path to something I wanted and arrived feeling flat. And how many times I’ve hit friction and just resented it, because I was too focused on getting there to notice where I was.

Every time I thought if I just get there, I’ll feel better — if I just get the job, the relationship, the thing I’ve been chasing — I ended up standing in front of it on autopilot. I got there. But I didn’t have the feeling I really wanted out of it.

The destination is the same either way. But getting there in a way that feels earned — choosing to stay in it, and paying attention while you do — that’s what determines whether you feel anything when you arrive.

I think about what would change if I stopped waiting for the right moment to pursue something that matters to me. If I stopped looking for the frictionless version of the path. Because that path gets me there. But it doesn’t get me there alive.

And I love that I get to make that choice today.

Nobody warns you about how lonely getting better can be.

You finally start setting boundaries. Finding your own integrity. Figuring out what you actually want. And then there’s this space — between the before and after — where what surrounded you is no more, but what’s in front of you isn’t here yet either.

It is incredibly easy to look around at your shrinking circle and think, I must be doing something wrong.

You might expect that personal growth is supposed to feel positive. That it’s supposed to look like good vibes and connection. So when you start outgrowing people — or outgrowing the version of you that used to fit perfectly into their expectations — it starts to feel like you made a mistake.

But here’s what I want you to hear, and I want you to hear it before we go any further:

The loneliness doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. It means you are in the in-between. The unknown, unclear, messy middle.

it is one of the most painful places you can be and I’m going to tell you how to get through it.

I was 30 years old, sitting at the top of Mount Storm King in Washington State. It was near the end of the day. The sun was going down, a quiet fog setting in. Everyone else had made their way home. I’d just finished one of the most difficult hikes I’d ever done — uphill the entire way, rope scrambles, the kind of trail that asks you if you’re sure about every ten minutes because what sounds real better right now is not this.

I was two weeks into a solo camping trip after separating from my partner of ten years.

A group of kids from out-of-state came up to join me at the summit. We chatted a bit and got to know each other a little. And one of them unknowingly threw a profound banger my way as he observed where I was as “the third stage of my life.”

Because they were right. I’d moved past school, then found someone and built a life. And then that life ended. And now I was standing on a mountain in the fog, at the beginning of something that didn’t have a shape yet.

The third part of my life.

I’ve thought about how life is built in chapters a lot since then. And how that same guy dubbed me the Seattle Mountain Goat.

What I lived through I eventually learned has a name.

William Bridges called it the Neutral Zone. In his book Transitions, he lays out what happens when life changes faster than your identity can keep up: you end what was, you enter the middle, and eventually you begin again. Found, lost, found.

This loneliness is the middle part before you’re found again, where everything falls apart. And where, if you let it, everything gets rebuilt.

Here’s what I think most people don’t understand about this middle: it’s coming for you.

Sometimes because you chose to grow, and sometimes because life made the choice for you. A relationship ends. A career collapses. Something you built your identity around simply stops being true. And suddenly you’re between who you were and who you haven’t become yet, whether you signed up for it or not.

Now — you can refuse it. You can stay in “found.” You can hold tight the shape of who you are today and what you know. But that choice has a cost: you have to keep starving yourself for the comfort of your tiny walls.

You have to keep saying no to the parts of you that are trying to grow because growing means entering a space you can’t control. And most people will make that trade for years — sometimes their whole lives — because the known feels safer than the unknown.

Or you believe you can skip the middle entirely. That growth goes from one version of settled to the next without the shit in between — like a quick flash in a montage. You expect the glow-up without the discomfort. And you believe growth can happen without the seeds we sow in our own pain.

The middle is the whole point.

As far as when and how this appears, this model doesn’t always happen in clean stages. From my own experience it was more like found → lost → what I thought led to found → still a bit lost → maybe this is it → no, still lost.

Then something that felt like close to found again — until something else challenged it.

And I’ve noticed something more: as I actively pursue growth, the more ambiguous the cycle becomes. Where the peaks and valleys of it all don’t go away, but they’re an out-of-focus blur of the process. Found doesn’t become a destination anymore and lost feels more like a chosen-wander. It’s just all together and part of it, largely I think as a result of staying in a state of growth and challenging yourself as often as you can.

Early on, the neutral zone felt like a mountain top crashing toward the Mariana Trench into what felt truly lost. Now I have a stronger instinct of where I am and where I’m going and there is a familiarity and comfort in it all.

I think that’s because when growth happens to you, it is uninvited, unwanted, challenging the comfort of being in a world you know — then you’re just in freefall with no frame for what’s happening.

But the more you choose to grow, the more you recognize the terrain. Not because it gets easy. Because you’ve survived it before. And that survival becomes its own kind of evidence.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

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I remember being in the bathroom at work.

I was embarrassed. Crying. And I couldn’t escape my thoughts: Why did I do this? Why couldn’t I do this better? Why am I such a fuckup? What if I never find what I had, or what I want?

That last one held the terror about the future. What if this is just what my life is now?

What if I made a mistake?

I wanted my old life as I envisioned it at its best. That’s what I remember most. Not certainty, even. Just comfort — even the illusion of it. Just the feeling that something was familiar and safe. Because the absence of that is just the raw exposure of being alone with a life that no longer had its old shape.

And so I did what a lot of people do. I tried to fix it.

I made choices I wasn’t ready for. To make this process stop; to move past it ASAP; to make it to the promised land everyone kept saying existed.

This is where your insecurities and faults project onto your decisions. You want to prove that’s not you. They feel urgent and obvious from the inside but are visibly wrong from the outside.

They’re not the right paths. Some of them have real consequences. But they’re part of how you test yourself.

I didn’t see that when I was in the middle of it. I do now. It doesn’t make someone feel better to know they are where they are supposed to be — when the only thing around them is pain.

But I do want to affirm that being in this middle part doesn’t mean you did something wrong to deserve it.

Because when you’re in this middle part — alone and confused — the most natural thing in the world is to treat your pain as proof that you failed. Everyone else seems to have figured this out. Everyone else seems to be moving forward. And here you are, crying again, unable to explain to anyone what’s even wrong because the answer is: everything changed and I don’t know who I am right now.

That loneliness feels personal.

But you’re not alone because you’re the problem. You’re alone because you’re in a passage that, by its nature, no one else can walk for you. And the fact that it hurts this much isn’t a sign that you did something wrong — it’s a sign that what you left behind mattered to you, and what you’re walking toward matters to you, and you’re standing in the gap between the two.

What feels like failure is the cost of actually growing.

While you move toward the next stage of your life, the practice in self-compassion has to do real work in two different places.

The first is the acute moment in the middle of the day when you’re alone and the voice in your head is saying what if I never find myself. In that moment, you’re in pain, and the only question is whether you beat yourself up for being in pain — or whether you let yourself be there.

That means: do not judge yourself for missing the comfort of what you left behind. Do not judge yourself for wanting to go back. Do not treat your grief for what you lost as weakness.

Let it hurt without turning the hurt into evidence that you’re broken.

The second is slower. It’s the ongoing frustration of being in the middle longer than you want or expected.

You’re trying. Nothing’s clicking yet. Other people seem to move through this faster. You expected that by now something would have happened for you, surely it would have — and it hasn’t. And you start to wonder if you’re just stuck.

This is when self-compassion looks more like endurance.

And here’s the part I want to be honest about: I don’t know how long the middle takes. I don’t know how long this lasts for you or what your valleys and peaks entail.

It takes what it takes.

I hold something to be true that I know won’t comfort you right now — that you will find where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there. I know how unhelpful it sounds from the inside. I’m offering it as something I hold for you until you can hold it for yourself.

The self-compassion is the closest you can get to peace and acceptance while you’re still in the middle of it.

So, you’re in it — what do you actually do?

One option is to wait. Wait for clarity. Wait for the right moment. Wait until you know who you’re becoming before you take a step.

But clarity doesn’t come from waiting or preparing. It comes from action.

Dave Evans in his work with Stanford’s Life Design Lab talks about this as prototyping — small experiments without a thesis. Not grand pivots. Not strategic moves. Just: try something. Talk to someone new. Say yes to something for no reason. Go sit somewhere unfamiliar for an hour. Respond to one person differently than you normally would.

Now — your response may be that, in pursuit of your destination, this seems rather akin to throwing shit against a wall and seeing what sticks. And honestly? It is.

But here’s what’s hard to accept: directionless is actually the more direct path.

Because while you think the better path is straight from A-to-Z, what that really looks like is waiting for certainty before you move. It isn’t short at all. In reality, the most direct path is the one that bounces around, side-to-side, back and forth — because you are human.

And the pace is yours. You can make more experiments and it can accelerate. But it doesn’t have to. No one else is grading your speed of transformation. If all you can manage today is getting out of bed and being kind to yourself about the fact that getting out of bed was hard — that’s not stagnation. That’s someone who’s still in it, still moving, and still here.

The only thing that matters is that you keep moving. That you don’t give up and fall into hopelessness.

I want to tell you how long this takes but I can’t. None of my growth felt like growing at the time. You never know it’s happening until you look back.

Right now it feels like nothing is happening. Like you’re standing still while everyone else moves forward. You’re waiting for the morning you wake up and it all finally clicks into place.

But the ache in you is the growth.

Nobody warns you that getting better can feel this lonely. But nobody tells you this part either: you were never supposed to feel positive right now.

You were just supposed to feel.

For a long time, this is exactly what the inside of my head felt like. It is how my outside world felt. Like waves crashing on rock in a storm, my overthinking and rumination were endless, immortal, chaotic, and never satisfied.

Today, that same image brings me serenity rather than chaos. The awareness I needed may be the one you need, too.

I have been a massive overthinker my entire life, so when I finally figured out what raises it and what eases it, waves of relief washed over me.

What you already know is that overthinking is exhausting. The endless ping-pong in your head is putting you into massive amounts of mental debt, and it’s probably why you’re tired all the time. I certainly was.

You probably also know—although this is harder to accept—that as much as you intend for that cycle to be helpful in preparing you for the unknown, it just isn’t.

Don’t believe me?

Because, of course, you think that if you just spend enough energy trying to figure out every possible outcome, you can perfectly prepare for the moment so nothing will go wrong. It is a way to control what happens in that unknown world.

You tell yourself that you’re just thinking ahead to solve a problem. And if you could just find an answer and be done with it, that would be fine. But the trap of overthinking is that you are never actually satisfied with the solution, so the process never stops.

When was the last time you said, “Hmm. Okay, that sounds like enough thinking.” And then you put the idea to bed and moved on? It doesn’t happen.

Because instead of being satisfied with a “good enough” answer, you look for that one perfect, pain-free solution within a cognitive minefield of a million other disastrous ones.

So here is how we think differently. Let’s trace the logic back to the root:

You overthink to perfectly prepare for every possible outcome. You need that perfect answer because the unexpected feels dangerous. And the unexpected only feels dangerous because you do not trust yourself to handle it.

Even I have to take a breath after that one.

The unexpected only feels dangerous because you do not trust yourself to handle it.

When you stop trusting yourself, your overthinking rises. When you start trusting yourself, it lowers.

So I want to be clear about what trusting yourself looks like, because even I need this reminder.

Self-trust just means you believe you can handle whatever comes your way. That you don’t need every answer. That in the moment, even when you don’t have something figured out, you are still going to be okay.

If this idea sounds scary to you, then I have some great news—amazing news.

You have already done this time and time again.

You have handled the unexpected, the imperfect, and here you are. You made it. And you may not believe it right now, but you have the evidence you need to prove that you have handled and can handle what comes your way.

Here’s what you need the next time you recognize you’re overthinking:

Ask yourself how to handle or approach whatever this situation is. Your first or second answers will be good enough. That’s step 1.

Step 2 now, is to stop trying to solve the problem.

Stop trying to solve it.

Stop.

Breathe into that discomfort.

My favorite take on this comes from Dr. Michael J. Greenberg, who describes rumination as a treadmill we step off of.

He makes the distinction that ruminating is an effort we make; not-ruminating (although with its challenges) is the act of not making effort. And so he describes it as stepping off a treadmill. He says, “Directing attention is like mentally holding onto something. You don’t need to grab onto something else, just to let go.”

The idea is simple, but not always easy. That’s why you must also be kind to yourself, because this is going to take some time and practice before you start to know you’re safe enough to feel like you can completely stop.

But at some point sooner than you expect, you’re going to be satisfied with the first “good enough” solution that comes into your head.

The answer is in the silence.

This same coast, violent and chaotic, looks entirely different to me today. I imagine sitting on a rock by myself with waves crashing around me, and I am serene.

I trust in myself not to know the answer, but to handle what comes my way.

Watch the video here:

I came to this bat hospital thinking I knew what I believed about bats. Turns out, I had no idea why I believed it.

See, I’ve been afraid of bats my whole life. Not because of anything I’d actually experienced, but because I accepted what I was told without ever questioning it.

Once I was willing to look, I realized these bats were about to teach me something I desperately needed to learn.

This is the Tolga Bat Hospital in Queensland, Australia.

They exist because most people get bats completely wrong.

They provide rescue services to rehabilitate injured and orphaned bats. They educate the public, teachers, students, and are active in conservation and habitat improvements.

When I first looked into this rescue, I kind of wondered why it was necessary. I mean, haven’t we been doing a decent job of talking about the benefit of bats over the last few decades? Yeah, I guess not.

Even though I’m here visiting bats and I have some kind of fascination with them, I have a prejudice stemming from when I was a little kid. My grandmother hated bats. Every time we visited her in Arizona, she had me and her grandkids go out and... deal with them. And that’s a part of my life I’m not fond of.

Since then I’ve had an open opinion about bats towards anyone that brought them up. This wasn’t broadcasting a mission - I didn’t have a stake in this. But I didn’t hold back in telling other people that I felt bats were no good.

I was perpetuating what my grandmother taught me.

Of course, I understood then that there were legitimate safety concerns with bats and rabies. I held onto that rigid belief for most of my life.
But I never questioned why I believed it.

And the stakes for better understanding were never high, as I wasn’t directly affected.

I was about to find out what happens when that box is directly challenged.

What you’ll see here are primarily Flying Foxes.

Our group toured the small facility and it was explained that these bats are a keystone species - crucial for long range pollination. This is part of what I did know, but what I didn’t is that the diseases heavily associated with bats are largely misunderstood. According to their website, “Irrational fear of diseases in bats is an impediment to the conservation of flying foxes in Australia and other countries.”

I was starting to question what I thought I knew

What struck me the most was the protectiveness and care being provided. To me this went beyond simple care and rehabilitation for what I thought was at best a ‘useful critter’.

These bats are loved.

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I didn’t expect to see hand feeding - tiny bottles held to tiny mouths. Or bats swaddled in blankets like newborns, clinging to the fabric with their small clawed thumbs.

I didn’t even realize until later this is a volunteer organization.

It made me wonder what that took. What did they see that I wasn’t?

I think about how easily I let this belief become inherited. The larger societal opinion is that bats are gross and dangerous, even if through some effort through the previous decades they’re known as ‘useful’ despite that negative feeling.

I don’t think just knowing that they have a place got me far enough, though.

Most people feel a type of way about bats. Or at least I fit myself within a certain group that did. So, that made sense.

My logic was clear enough. If what I believed made me feel safe, that was all I needed. Even if incompletely, I had enough of an answer and I didn’t have to look further.

But as I watched the love of the bats come through, I knew at my core I was missing something important. I was letting a limiting belief and fear decide what I felt about something else, rather than an understanding of them.

I had to do something about that.

There are some requirements for changing a judgement and part of that is creating and allowing for the opportunity itself.

One of the reasons I bring my camera with me is because it forces me to connect with whatever my subject is. I’m watching it. Taking it in. Often times, appreciating it.

And I am unable to just move on. Getting a good shot takes time. I’m not a passive audience in a museum moving from one talking point to the next.

I have to sit in it.

It isn’t lost on me that my realization that I was wrong is followed by the gift of being able to admit it. I mean okay you can say “it’s just bats, this isn’t that deep.” But this isn’t just about that for me.

It makes me question what else I put into a stupid little box because of a fear, which is just easier for me if it stays there.

It makes me wonder what I’m missing because of being stuck in that - what other wonder of life and appreciation I could be holding and embracing and being enriched with.

Today, I try to take stock of other bias or prejudice I hold.
If you were to survey yourself right now, you’ll likely come up blank. Why would you do it then? Because it leads to the most important result: the humility to be wrong.

This is more critical than even I realized.

It is the ability to ask yourself that question - even when it draws up blank:
“What am I missing here?”

What I’m fostering today isn’t perfect self-awareness, it is my willingness to ask that question and confront my beliefs.

You’ve likely already met circumstances that challenge your belief, and you’ll absolutely encounter more in the future.

How will you spot this?

There is likely a negative belief and along with it, a lack of direct experience around that belief. Look for how you filter information to confirm your belief or if your belief carries an emotional charge.

The most difficult step is being open once you are challenged - to go looking for the answers that would prove your belief wrong.

It’s scary.

There are many reasons why you don’t have to go looking. But if you do, you’ll inevitably be met with compassion and gain a life with deeper connections than you had before.

There will never be a shortage of people who think you should be doing something differently - and no amount of agreement will make you feel safe. You’ll never find fulfillment through other people’s expectations either.

I spent 20 years as the ultimate people pleaser and this is the one true law I learned:

Doing what you ‘should’ do only works until you actually need to show up for yourself.

Those familiar with this have a difficult time changing because they don’t understand the cost of staying in it or the reward for getting out:

• Exhaustion from overthinking. Trying to be the ideal version for everyone means overpreparing endlessly on behalf of others.

• Zero self-confidence. Hesitating, second-guessing, and always letting others lead before me meant I never became the leader I thought I could be.

• Lack of respect. I had little respect for myself and even when others thought me as a kind or considerate person, few people respected (or saw) the real me.

The flip toward self-honesty and authenticity wasn’t instant. I had to work at it.

If it took 20+ years to build, I promise it won’t change in a day. As ‘tough-writing’ as this may be sound, the process for me was incredibly painful. There were countless days spent mourning the person I was and the person I had not yet become.

But the moments I was myself - without fear of judgement - were intoxicating:

• Conversations felt richer in the moments I spoke freely instead of saying what I thought the other person wanted to hear, leading to more laughter and deeper connection.

• Everyday choices gained meaning when I chose what resonated with me, rather than what I was ‘supposed’ to value.

• Goals became deliberate decisions. They were no longer just tasks to achieve, but journeys I could savor.

The day I let myself be fully honest, I felt a genuine love for myself that I hadn’t realized was possible.

Today, the ‘shoulds’ still appear. But I notice them, and they no longer dictate my choices. They are no longer my duty to fulfill.

The self-respect I gained by letting go is more meaningful than I could imagined back then. It only gets better from here.

I’d rather do anything else than write something that will prove I’m not made for this.

It is one day before the new year, and if I measured 2025 by my writing, it would be summarized more by silence than sentences.

It’s not easy for me to admit. Even though the proof - or lack thereof - stares me in the face.

I spent the whole year repeating the same cycle:
- Convince myself to just write anything.
- Re-convince that it has to be life-changing.
- Fold - head face down on my desk.

One felt meaningless, the other impossible. So, I stayed stuck. Each cycle I was left a little more worse-for-wear, a little more defeated, and exhausted from a battle I wasn’t winning. I watched myself from outside the room failing at the one thing I claimed to want.

But not knowing what to write about wasn’t the problem.

This was:
I wanted to matter.

And writing for the world to see and then ignore it, would be the proof that I didn’t.

I didn’t want to write something no one cared about.

Worse still is I know the trap of relying on external validation. And yet I craved it.
I wanted the dream more than the work, and the fantasy more than the risk. To stay in a dream that couldn’t hurt me; far away from a reality that could.

It’s numbing to watch yourself get in your own way. To chase a goal while clinging to the comfort of not trying.

That pattern doesn’t just show up in writing. It shows up in every goal we chase but can’t seem to reach. The habits we can’t quit. The relationships we can’t escape. The futures we keep postponing.

They’re all the same conflict.

We want the change, but we want comfort even more.

I wish I could give you a clear answer on how to break that cycle forever. I can’t.

But if you’re reading this, it means I finally did the one thing I avoided all year: I stopped protecting myself and hit publish anyway.
And for today, that’s enough.

There are countless opportunities I missed out on because it felt safer avoiding them.

Yet, the benefits of these opportunities are incredible: Deeper relationships, core memories to look back on, and perspectives that impact me forever.

Who wouldn’t want that?

Except my scared, insecure self kept those benefits from ever happening.

I kept myself safe.

If the survival tool you used when you were younger is still being used as an adult, chances are what keeps you safe is also holding you back. Keeping yourself small, waiting for just the right opportunity to come to you, and avoiding putting yourself in the spotlight are the same mechanisms that keep you from growing, creating meaningful connections, and finding real security.

If this sounds like you, the good news is you aren’t stuck that way.

The answer is in the opportunity you’re afraid of.

The opportunities we ignore

As my girlfriend and I pull into the campground, I’m beaming. Sure, it’s been a four hour drive, but I’m going to make every ounce of this trip worth it. The area looks beautiful and clean, there are trails nearby to explore, and it’s finally our chance to get away and relax.

If these benefits are so profound, they must come from massive, life changing opportunities — the kind that knock on your door and stop you in your tracks.

They’re not. These are moments that present themselves every day.

What do they look like?

For me, it was when a college friend invited me to play Texas Hold’em with their group. Hours beforehand, I told them I had to drive my mother to an emergency dental appointment. On a Saturday. At 9pm.

It was when I decided my idea wasn’t worth sharing during a brain-storm meeting at work. Someone else proposed the very same idea. It was celebrated.

It was when I stood waiting in line with strangers for hours at an event, waiting for the doors to open. I wanted to strike up a conversation, but was overly worried about saying the right thing. Even after they started chatting with each other, I said nothing. That would have been awkward, I decided. And as I listened, I couldn’t help but notice — it was a great conversation.

These are moments that present themselves every day.

In every moment I told myself ‘I’d rather not.’

Breaking out of that mindset is easier said than done. Your worries take free reign and you make the choice that keeps you safe.

But those worries are lying — they’re not keeping you safe, they’re keeping you comfortable.

Keeping you from meeting someone that could radically influence your life.

Keeping you from a moment that — even if it goes sideways — teaches you a lesson that shapes who you are.

Keeping you from living — instead, just surviving.

An uncomfortable yes

The visitor center is bigger than I expected. I scan the room as we wait for the park ranger to bring our camping permits. Flyers lined the walls.

There is usually some event being advertising at these parks. None of these involved my own plan, so I had little interest in them. Likely obvious enough to my girlfriend, who was met with a, “Oh, yeah, mhm, neat…” when she pointed out one in particular.

This event is early tomorrow morning. It involves meeting with a group of other people. There’s some type of assigned task.

No, thank you. That sounds awful.

After a gracious goodbye to the ranger, I eagerly walk back to the car. Adventure awaited.

“Hey, are you sure you’re not interested?” my girlfriend asks. Her voice is hopeful.

Actually, I am interested. It even sounds like fun.

But that’s not the problem.

Now, the full weight of choice on me. I ruminated for a moment. My choice is between what I know will work out, or something else I didn’t know and felt uncomfortable with.

She really wants to try it.

I say yes, not entirely certain of my choice.

I wish I could say this really wasn’t a hard decision. Just go do the thing, right? I consider myself adventurous.

But it was hard. My discomfort outweighed reason.

The fear was absolutely real.

I could list a dozen reasons why saying ‘yes’ would be fine. But logic didn’t matter. My gremlins were already whispering:

“You’ll feel out of place. You won’t know what to do. What if you regret it?”

These are exactly the opportunities to say ‘yes’ to.

It’s when an opportunity presents itself and your go-to response is, ‘I’d rather not.’

When emotional discomfort begs you to stick with what you know.

When the opportunity is something you’re actually curious about.

When you have no idea what’s on the other side.

As you feel the fear in these moments, recognize it is telling you a story. You can choose to believe it or not.

When we let fear dictate our choices, there is more at stake than just comfort. Every choice you make out of fear impacts how you feel about yourself.

I could list a dozen reasons why saying ‘yes’ would be fine. But logic didn’t matter.

You give up your integrity for the sake of comfort.

These moments might seem small, but they leave a mark. Every time you make a choice that bets against yourself, it stings. These small choices influence how you see yourself.

The good news? The choice always available to you.

You can absolutely bet on yourself.

And the benefits are incredible.

‘Yes’ becomes unforgettable

A dozen or so people make their way towards the cabin while the park ranger waits to give instructions.

Every year, newly hatched turtles seek out the wetlands that will serve as their permanent homes. They could end up traveling many miles towards their destination.

The problem is what’s often between them — in this case, a busy highway.

Our job is to help these baby turtles safely across.

As the park ranger explains, I finally let myself get excited. She explains the process, the different types of turtles we might find, and how to log everything properly.

My worries settle as I realize this isn’t nearly going to be as bad as I thought.

My day continued with one conclusion:

This is pretty damn great.

And it’s wild to me that it almost didn’t happen.

As we left, there was even a local watermelon festival we were ecstatic to check out.

This is a moment I get to hold and proudly share the story of. It goes beyond even cute turtles: This is my moment of choosing courage over safety.

Some of my most cherished memories came from moments I didn’t plan. A close friendship, incredible sights, and even negative events that have shaped my values and greatly impact who I am today.

Those all came from moments I found myself in — in opportunities that present themselves.

A great deal of it is out of our control, yet key moments depend on the choices that lead us there.

Where would I be if I had said no instead?

This is my moment of choosing courage over safety.

These are the lessons and experiences that saying ‘yes’ to opportunities grants us.

It’s from stepping outside of what we do know and into what we don’t.

And I have good news.

Since I decided to say yes to opportunities, not one has turned out as badly as I feared. Some even gave me gifts I can’t imagine being without.

I suspect you’ll find the same.

Say ‘yes’ to opportunities despite the instinct to say no.

The desire to lean into comfort and what you know doesn’t go away.

You must actively choose the life you want to lead.

It wasn’t an accident that brought this opportunity to me. It is because I decided to say yes to something instead of, ‘I’d rather not.’

Look back on your life. How many opportunities did you say ‘yes’ to that didn’t go nearly as badly as you were worried they would?

How many did you say ‘no’ to because your fear took the steering wheel?

And how many of those could have added to your life?

Your choices aren’t over yet.

Here’s how you start

As you pursue this new goal for yourself, here are some milestones you can adopt. Milestones can help you see progress where you might have overlooked it. They are small wins you can celebrate during your broader journey. These are just examples — feel free to make your own.

1) Acknowledge the fear.

Recognize your discomfort when an opportunity presents itself to you. Notice your reaction and tendency to remain in comfort and safety. Pause before instinctively saying no. Interrupt the worried conversation in your head that’s already begun. Consider instead: What if you said yes?

2) Make a small yes.

Practice choosing something low-stakes but still within your control such as trying a coffee shop you haven’t been to before, taking a different route home, join a trivia night or even a nearby conversation.

We do this to practice courage for when an unexpected opportunity comes our way.

3) Reflect after your yes.

As you find yourself in situations that you might normally avoid, deliberately notice how it is going compared to how you worried it would go. Even as you find yourself uncomfortable, is it as bad as you thought it would be?

4) An unexpected yes.

An opportunity presented itself to you — an invitation by someone else, an event flyer on the wall, or a class — something that caught your curiosity which your discomfort clearly tells you to avoid, despite your interest.

Do it. Say yes.

5) Recognize your growth.

Is the fear quieter even if it’s present? Recognize that what once felt terrifying now feels manageable or even normal.

You have my absolute permission and encouragement to give yourself a high-five.

Moving baby turtles to safety is absolutely a highlight in my life. If you’d like to know more about this process and turtle safety, you do so through the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

Big shout-out to the beautiful Whitewater State Park where all of this was allowed to happen.

Originally published at

https://michaelstefl.com

on February 2, 2025.