“Accept yourself, love yourself, and keep moving forward. If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down.” ~ Roy T. Bennett

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This year pushed me out of my comfort zone in ways I didn’t see coming.

The universe has a strange way of shaking things up when you’ve stayed still for too long, and before I knew it, things in my life started to fall apart.

Looking back, it had been building for a while. I was stuck in survival mode—pushing through, overcompensating, trying to do too much and be too much. My body began to whisper, then scream, until it finally gave up. I was running on empty, doing just enough to keep going but not enough to actually feel alive.

The signs were all there, but I couldn’t slow down. And then life made that decision for me. I found myself going down a rabbit hole that was, well, familiar but also unknown in certain ways.

Every time I have found myself struggling, I have turned to inner work, healing, and spiritual wisdom, and I did the same this time as well. But to my surprise, what came through wasn’t plain old wisdom but a call to upgrade myself. My breakdowns led to a breakthrough where I was now being shown what a better, healed, empowered version of me looked like through Akashic records (which I eventually came to learn and offer), but to get to that version, I was also being asked to shed old layers of being.

It’s been difficult but also strangely illuminating. I’ve been breaking down but also breaking open. Shedding old layers and slowly meeting parts of myself I had forgotten.

Sometimes I think I should’ve taken these steps earlier, but maybe I wasn’t meant to. (I think the nine-year Karmic cycle is real!)

Growth doesn’t happen on demand; it unfolds in its own rhythm. You can’t always see it happening, much like the bamboo tree that spends years growing its roots underground before it ever shoots up. For the longest time, it looks like nothing is happening. But beneath the surface, it’s preparing. And then one day, it rises, tall, strong, unshakable.

That’s how becoming yourself feels too—the quiet, unseen work beneath the surface before you rise into your next version. But to truly grow, you have to let go of things, of people, and of the versions of yourself that no longer fit who you’re becoming.

Here are five things you need to let go of, that you need to drop like a hot potato to be able to feel more aligned with yourself:

1. The need to be understood

Not everyone will get you, and that’s okay. Your path is yours to walk, not to explain. When you stop needing to be understood, you free up space to understand yourself better. That’s where peace begins.

2. The need to be accepted

We spend years trying to fit in, shaping ourselves to earn love and approval. But belonging that asks you to shrink yourself isn’t belonging; it’s survival. When you start accepting yourself, the need for external validation fades naturally.

3. The need to prove

You don’t have to prove that you’re enough. You already are. The need to prove usually comes from old wounds, the times you felt unseen or unworthy. But healing begins when you realize your worth was never up for debate.

4. The need to please

If pleasing others costs you your peace, it’s not kindness—it’s self-abandonment. True kindness includes you too. You can say no and still be a good person. You can choose yourself without guilt.

5. The need to hold onto the old story you’ve been carrying

This is often the hardest one to let go of—the identity you’ve built to survive. The one that’s familiar but heavy. Everything has an expiration date, even the version of you that once helped you cope. You’ll know it’s time to release it when the old ways bring more distress than joy. When relationships start to drain rather than nourish you. When your body feels tired of holding on. When some quiet part of you whispers, “I’m done.”

So what’s left when you let go of all these needs?

You start seeing yourself more clearly—who you are, what you want, and what you no longer need to carry. You begin to move away from what drains you because you finally recognize that over-giving, pleasing, and overcompensating were never acts of love; they were acts of survival. You start feeling more comfortable, grounded, and rooted in who you are. Life begins to simplify. You stop forcing yourself into spaces that don’t feel right. You do things that feel natural, not performed.

You begin to see relationships for what they are and people for who they truly are, not for who you wish they could be. You stop fighting. You start breathing again. Being again.

It’s not that these needs disappear; they simply transform. You learn to honor them from a place of self-respect and dignity instead of desperation. Instead of begging or pleading for love, you start offering it to yourself. Instead of depleting yourself to be chosen, you begin nurturing yourself, and in doing so, you allow other facets of your being, the ones that have long waited in silence, to finally come alive and take their place in the world. The fact is that even with all this chasing, most of us still don’t feel seen and understood. Once you drop these needs and breathe a sigh of relief, you start finding your way back to yourself.

“I am not what happened to me, I am who I choose to become.” ~ Carl Jung

Letting go can be terrifying because the new version of you takes time to unfold. The unknown feels unsafe. You might lose people, comfort, predictability. But the truth is, there’s pain on both sides—the pain of staying the same and the pain of becoming someone new. One keeps you stuck; the other sets you free. The bigger question then is: Do you think you are worth fighting for in your own life? There is distress on both sides. Which one are you wiling to tolerate? Because everything extracts a price. In essence, when you operate from self-acceptance, respect, alignment, and choice, you will be comfortable with the price that this demands. On the other side, you may still pay a price, but you’ll be miserable forever.

Becoming yourself isn’t about reinventing who you are. It’s about remembering, peeling away the conditioning, expectations, and masks until what’s left is the truest version of you. Your emotions, your exhaustion, even your body’s resistance, they’re not working against you. They’re showing you what needs to change.

And somewhere along the way, you begin to notice the quiet magic of it all. The more you choose yourself, the more life starts to align. The more you honor what feels true, the lighter everything becomes. The more you come home to yourself, the more you realize that this was never about fixing who you are, but about finally allowing yourself to be.

“Let nothing dim the light that shines from within.” ~ Maya Angelou

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