The Versions We Leave Behind

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I think we have a tendency to imagine personal growth as something we add to ourselves. We become more confident, self-aware, patient or comfortable with who we are. We learn things that change the way we think, develop habits that change the way we behave and, if all goes reasonably well, we gradually become a better version of the person we were before. That idea was always incredibly reassuring, because it allows us to imagine that the fundamental structure of who we are remains intact. We are still ourselves, just with a few improvements made along the way.

Nowadays I’m less convinced that it always works like that. Some of the most significant changes in my life have involved learning or adding something new, but others have required me to question things I had previously thought were foundational. Not necessarily to remove them, but to understand them differently and allow them to occupy less space. Sometimes it feels as though an old version of us has to be allowed to end before there is room to discover what comes next. That can be surprisingly difficult when the things we are questioning aren’t obviously destructive. In fact, I believe the hardest versions of ourselves to leave behind are often the ones that have worked rather well.

I learned something about this when I first got sober. There was one expression that infuriated me, every time I heard it; “Your best thinking got you here.” The idea was that if my own judgement had been sufficient to solve the problem, I probably wouldn’t have found myself sitting in a recovery meeting in the first place. I understood the logic, but I also thought it was complete nonsense.

My best thinking, as I saw it, had got me to Executive Vice President of a global music company. It had taken me from a small town in Scotland into an industry I had wanted to work in since I was 12 years old, helped me navigate rooms I initially had no obvious reason to be in, make difficult decisions, understand people and build a career that had already exceeded most of the expectations I had for myself. There were plenty of things I could criticise about the choices I had made around alcohol, but I didn’t see why those choices should invalidate all the evidence suggesting that my judgement was actually pretty good. I had spent years trusting my instincts and being rewarded for doing so. From where I was sitting, my best thinking hadn’t got me into recovery at all. My worst thinking had.

What eventually complicated things was the recognition that I couldn’t always tell the two apart. The thinking that had helped me succeed and the thinking that had helped me spiral both spoke to me in my own voice. They had access to the same intelligence, the same experiences and the same ability to construct an argument that felt completely rational while I was making it. The voice telling me to push harder at work could be ambition, but it could also be fear. The instinct to take control of a situation could be good leadership, or it could be my inability to tolerate uncertainty. Wanting recognition could be the perfectly normal satisfaction of having done something well, but there were also times when recognition was doing considerably more emotional work than I wanted to admit.

None of that meant the things I valued about myself were somehow fraudulent. I was ambitious because I genuinely wanted to achieve things, and I still do. I became successful because I was good at what I did and worked hard at it. What recovery gradually forced me to consider was not whether my ambition, independence or desire to succeed were good or bad, but whether I understood the different jobs I was asking them to do.

This is particularly true when an identity has made us successful. If a way of behaving repeatedly produces rewards, questioning it can feel almost perverse. The question isn’t always whether a particular version of ourselves has stopped producing results. Sometimes the more useful question is whether we still need those results to mean what they once meant.

There was a period in my life when professional success did considerably more for me than provide a career I enjoyed and the ability to live well. It also reassured me. Titles made me feel important. Being needed made me feel secure. Recognition gave me something external I could point towards when whatever was happening internally felt less certain.

The complicated part is that recognising this didn’t make me want to stop achieving things. I still care enormously about my work and getting recognition when I’ve done something well is a fundamental motivator for me in the workplace. I am not slowly moving towards some spiritually elevated existence where job titles mean nothing, possessions have lost their appeal, and I spend my mornings quietly contemplating the impermanence of material life. I just don’t need those things to answer quite as many questions about me as they once did.

I’m also wary of the language we use around becoming a “new version” of ourselves, as though we eventually become enlightened enough to discard the defective person we used to be and install somebody healthier in their place. I don’t experience my past self that way at all. There are things I wish they had understood sooner and decisions I would make differently now, but there is also a great deal about them for which I am grateful. That person was resourceful, ambitious and determined. They took risks, survived difficult periods and built a life that gave the person I am today an extraordinary amount to work with. It would feel strangely ungrateful to look back only through the lens of the knowledge I have acquired since.

There is another part of this that I didn’t really notice until earlier this year, when I celebrated five years sober. I posted about it on social media, which was unusual for me. I had talked openly about recovery in my books and on my podcast, and I certainly wasn’t keeping my sobriety secret, but I had never really done the big “I’m sober” announcement online. Five years seemed significant enough to acknowledge, so for the first time I did. Looking back, I’m glad I waited. Not because there is anything wrong with publicly marking the beginning of a change, but because I think I needed some time when sobriety was simply something I was living rather than another identity I was constructing. I had spent enough of my life using external things to tell me who I was. There would have been a strange irony in finally loosening my grip on one version of myself only to immediately build another one and start asking everybody else to recognise it.

But five years of sobriety didn’t feel like becoming a sober version of the person I had been. It changed things I hadn’t expected it to change, including things I hadn’t realised needed changing. Some happened quickly, others took years, and there are still parts of me I recognise instantly from the person I was before. Put me under enough pressure and some of the old instincts can return with remarkable speed. The difference is that I can usually see them a lot faster now. And recognising when something is happening is the first step to redirecting what the outcome would otherwise have been.

Perhaps this is why the idea of letting an old version of ourselves “die” feels both right and slightly ridiculous. It sounds much more dramatic than the reality. There is no funeral and, in my experience at least, very little sense of being reborn. Over time, we stop recreating certain parts of ourselves. Something that would once have devastated us doesn’t anymore, or an outcome we would once have fought to control is allowed to unfold. Eventually there is enough distance to look back and recognise that the person we were has become the person we used to be.

I don’t think we owe that person rejection, and I certainly don’t think we owe them shame. But neither do we owe them permanence. The person I was got me here, and I mean that with genuine gratitude. I just don’t think gratitude requires permanent loyalty to every version of ourselves we have ever been.

Maybe becoming someone new isn’t really about deciding who we are going to be next. Perhaps it is about becoming secure enough to stop constantly explaining who we are and allowing some new truths to evolve before we feel the need to name them.

There is something I often say in recovery meetings that feels increasingly true the older I get: I’m not the person I was yesterday, and I’m not the person I’ll be tomorrow. But today, here and now, I’m happy with who I have become.

E x