The Art of Unbecoming: Letting Go of Who You Should Be

At some point, many of us realize we didn’t choose our lives —we assembled them.

Expectation by expectation.

Role by role.

Approval by approval.

Letting go of who you should be isn’t loud or dramatic.

It’s quiet. Often disorienting. Sometimes deeply inconvenient — especially to other people.

And it almost always begins when the version of you everyone relies on starts costing too much.

When You Stop Being “The One”

I remember the moment I decided to stop being the person people knew.

The fixer.

The one who dropped everything and showed up.

The one who gave too much, charged too little, and swallowed discomfort to keep the peace.

At work.

With clients.

In relationships.

I stopped over-giving.

I stopped absorbing other people’s chaos.

I stopped selling myself short just to be agreeable.

And almost immediately, I heard it:

You’ve changed.

You’re not the same.

As if that was a bad thing.

What they really meant was:

You stopped being convenient.

Letting Go of Who You Should Be Is Inconvenient (And That’s the Point)

Letting go of who you should be often disappoints people who benefited from your self-abandonment.

The ones who were comfortable with you:

• Doing more than your share

• Accepting less than you deserved

• Making yourself smaller so they didn’t have to stretch

When you unbecome that version of yourself, it can feel jarring — not because you’re wrong, but because the system was built on you over-functioning.

Unbecoming doesn’t make you cruel.

It makes you clear.

The Exhaustion of Performing a Life

You can feel it when:

• You’re doing “all the right things” but feel strangely hollow

• You’re praised for being helpful but quietly resentful

• You don’t know what you want anymore — only what’s expected

This is often labeled burnout, confusion, or a “rough season.”

But many times, it’s simpler than that:

It’s the cost of performing a life that no longer fits.

What Unbecoming Actually Is (And Isn’t)

Unbecoming is not self-destruction.

It’s not blowing up your life.

It’s not becoming cold or detached.

It’s the slow, honest realization:

This role requires me to disappear — and I’m no longer willing.

Many of us learned early that love came from usefulness.

That safety came from compliance.

That belonging came from being easy.

Unbecoming is how we stop confusing survival strategies with identity.

The Penguin Truth About Identity

Penguins aren’t broken birds.

They don’t fail at flying — they’re built for swimming.

If you’ve felt clumsy, misaligned, or “bad at life,” it may not be a personal flaw.

It may be that you were never meant to thrive on dry land.

Sometimes letting go of who you should be is simply the moment you stop judging yourself for not being a gazelle — and start finding the waters you were designed for.

How to Practice Unbecoming (Without Burning

Everything Down)

Unbecoming doesn’t require announcements.

It starts quietly.

• Charging what your work is worth

• Pausing before rescuing someone

• Letting discomfort exist without fixing it

You don’t owe anyone the old version of you.

And you don’t need to replace it with a new performance.

What to Do Today

Try this reflection:

One place where I’ve been over-giving out of habit — not desire — is…

No correction needed yet.Awareness is enough for today.

A Gentle Return

Unbecoming will change how some people see you.

That doesn’t mean you’re becoming too much.

It means the relationship was built on an outdated version of you.

After the last few years — especially the emotional weight many of us carried through 2025 — a lot of us realized we didn’t need more fixing. We needed somewhere to put the truth. Somewhere to think, feel, question, and rest without performing.

For some, that space is movement.

For others, it’s prayer, nature, or silence.

And for many, it’s journaling — not to improve, but to listen.

That’s the spirit behind our 2026 Digital Daily Alignment Journal. It’s intentionally open and pressure-free — a place to write about whatever this season is asking of you, including this process of unbecoming. We priced it around the cost of a latte because reflection and grounding shouldn’t be out of reach.

If it feels supportive, you can find it here : https://www.karmapenguin.com/product-page/2026-journal

You didn’t lose yourself.

You stopped performing.

And that’s not a loss — it’s a return.