When growth makes your old life feel too small
Feeling like a stranger in your own life? Here’s why it’s actually a sign you’re evolving.
You’re not just burnt out—you’re becoming someone new. The Good Space is your guide for self-reinvention in a rapidly changing world. Subscribe here for grounded reflections that help you regulate, reconnect, and rewrite the story you’re living.
There’s a moment in every reinvention when your old life no longer fits — but your new one hasn’t fully formed yet. It can feel disorienting, even lonely. This week’s reflection is a guide for that in-between space, helping you trust the process of becoming before everything around you catches up.
Why transformation feels so uncomfortable
If you’re in the middle of a reinvention or transformation, it can feel like you’re a stranger in your own life. That’s normal. Keep going.
When you’re making real shifts, you shed your old skin. Suddenly, you have new standards. The people or habits that once felt like home can feel foreign, even jarring. Those familiar things become obstacles and energy leaks.
It doesn’t mean anything’s wrong—it means HER, the version of you you’ve been becoming, is finally here. Mentally and energetically, she’s arrived. It just takes time for your physical world to catch up.
Rewiring your environment for who you’re becoming
Even when you know who you’re becoming, you still need time to rewire and embody HER—emotionally, mentally, and physically. That means giving yourself space to add and subtract so your environment supports her better.
After I got clear on where I was evolving, I suddenly felt foreign in my own home. I ended up ruthlessly eliminating 80% of my clothes, donating home décor, and letting go of anything that contradicted my future self.
You also start to experience familiar situations in new ways—to reorient your sense of place, processing, and identity. For me, that’s been happening through my new work environment.
For years, my work history involved toxic dynamics that left me burned out and bitter. Now, I’m in a space that’s not only supportive but helping me reimagine how I show up in the world as this new version of me. I’m rewriting old beliefs about what it means to work for someone else, and it’s been surprisingly healing.
The strange feeling of returning home to yourself
It’s not obvious that feeling like a stranger in your body is part of the process. One morning, after noticing a disconnect in my morning ritual then during a work call, I texted my coach.
She reminded me that the reason we feel out of place in our own bodies is because we’re returning to authenticity. Before, we were masking or morphing to fit in.
That landed deeply. It helped me understand why so many people try to change but end up reverting. No one teaches us how to process transformation—how to sit with the discomfort of feeling foreign in familiar places.
It’s even harder when you know a person no longer fits. Often, the pain of letting go of something known—even if it’s bad for us—feels safer than facing the unknown.
The pain of certainty vs. the power of possibility
Dr. Benjamin Hardy says most people prefer a worse certain to a better uncertain. And this is where many of us get trapped. As Ellen Langer puts it:
“Certainty is a cruel mindset. It hardens our minds against possibility.”
If you need certainty, you lose access to choice. But uncertainty, while uncomfortable, “creates the freedom to discover meaning.”
Either way, there’s pain. The question is: do you want to keep living with the pain of what’s known, or step into the pain of the unknown that holds endless possibilities?
When you make meaningful choices, uncertainty will always follow. But the payoff is far more rewarding when you’re building meaning, not walls built from fear.
So if you’re feeling uncomfortable in your reinvention, know it’s because you’re evolving. You’re making meaningful choices. You’re learning to make your world one that HER, your future self, would want to live in.
Take a breath. Feel the space you’re creating between who you were and who you’re becoming. That’s where the integration begins.
💌 Know a woman in the middle of a transformation? Share this with her. Sometimes we all need a reminder that discomfort can be proof of growth.
💭 Regulate + Reflect
I am safe in my becoming. Every shift brings me closer to my truest self.
(Save the image below if you need the reminder later.)
🖋️ Feeling curious?
Try this reflection:
Where in your life do you feel like a stranger right now, and what would it look like to make that space feel like home again?
No pressure to write. Notice what stirs when you ask.
📺 Good Book (or this week’s cozy reset)
No new book this week. Instead, I’ve been rewatching all the Harry Potter movies to ease into the Halloween season.
After long, fulfilling days of work, they’ve been exactly the balm my soul needed. My body exhales as I slip into that fall world of magic and nostalgia.
If Harry Potter isn’t your seasonal go-to, what’s your favorite way to welcome this time of year?
🩵 Good Finds
Some good things worth mentioning . . .
Read: The consistency trap: why women need to stop living by male biology—A powerful reminder that our rhythms aren’t meant to mimic men’s. Learn why redefining consistency could be the key to sustainable success. ( by
)Quote: A gentle push by Ellen J. Langer to question what you’ve accepted as “just the way things are.”:
“The hefty price for accepting information uncritically is that we go through life unaware that what we’ve accepted as impossible may in fact be quite possible.”
Recalibrate: Start your morning with this deeply centering meditation by Dr. Joe Dispenza to reconnect with your higher self and recalibrate your energy before the day begins.
What’s one thing that resonated with you in today’s post?
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I am safe in my becoming. Beautiful, and I felt it right in my chest.