1
It’s difficult to know who you are when you’re habituated by the people around you to acting in certain ways. They will pull you towards being who they want you to be, imprinting their values and beliefs onto you. Notice how you’re one person with your family, another with your friends, and another with your colleagues. This is neither good nor bad, it’s simply the interlocking nature of society, without which we would have chaos.

One consequence of this is it can be difficult to tell where your values end and where others’ begin. One might not even realize there’s a difference.

But there often is.

2
You can change your social environment to try to shake off some baggage. Some values will fade, and others will rise. But they can be sticky: even if you haven’t seen someone for a while, their influence may linger on in your worldview and expectations. For the deepest bonds, this can last for years.

Another problem is that when you’re lost and confused, it’s easy to end up in a different crowd with a compelling value system that still isn’t your own.

But realistically, old bonds are often the strongest and you’ll end up with your feet in different worlds. Still, the journey is likely to teach you a lot about yourself and hand you the new problem of figuring out how to live in accordance with your new values.

3
Imagine a block of wood. As you think and act, you carve grooves into that block. The more you follow a certain path—certain thoughts, certain behaviors—the deeper that groove becomes. Next time, it’s easier to follow the same path, because you slip into it.

Then you’re an adult, and you realize your life isn’t going well. You want to change. You make a firm resolution to change. You read a lot of books on how you’ve been f—king it up. But you still keep slipping back into the old grooves.

Change is hard. It happens in brief, rare windows where the old pattern is kicking in but you catch it in time to alter your course. Most of the time you breeze through on automatic and don’t notice until a week later that you’ve done as you always do.

But the regret of missing the window sharpens your attention for the next opportunity, and you even start to manufacture some of these rare windows.

So you make a plan, you catch that moment, you act differently and leave a faint groove in the new direction. You likely feel more bewildered than satisfied, in uncharted territory. But it’s Good.

Then you understand that fighting your nature isn’t pleasant, and it can take years to alter aspects of your core personality. It’s a life’s work that few finish, like learning a language.

You have to be realistic about what’s possible. Sometimes it’s easier to accept yourself and work around your shortcomings. This is not to be pessimistic, you just have to pick your battles.

4
You strive to change, but your bonds expect you to stay the same. As you push to break out of your old mold, some bonds will break, some will change, and new ones will appear.

You can use this. Change is much easier in new contexts where you can metaphorically flip the block to a fresh side where you haven’t carved any grooves. We all have better and worse sides waiting to be brought out. Find people that naturally pull you toward your better self.

Which means being careful with who you allow into your life. Their values and desires will rub off on you. They may be attractive, but do you want your soul to look like theirs?