Freedom from Your Old Self

Why Safety is the Enemy of Growth

About six years ago, I was sitting in a café in San Francisco, probably my fifth latte of the day, staring at my phone. I was carefully writing a text message to refuse an opportunity to attend a post-book launch event with an author (and it was a book I loved). I probably said something like "The timing isn't right." I could imagine myself standing in a room full of people I didn't know, likely chatting about stupid stuff I didn't care about. Blech.

It took me another two years to realize I'd been saying "not yet" to the same kinds of opportunities for decades. Different opportunities, same answer. The timing was never right. I was never quite ready. Things never quite settled down. All the while staying in my comfy place of "no."

I was a prisoner.

The Prison You Don't Notice

Here's the strange thing about the cages we build for ourselves: they don't feel like cages. They feel like preferences. Boundaries. Self-knowledge. "I'm just being realistic," we say. "I know myself."

And that last part is true. You do know what you like. That's exactly the problem.

Because the self you know is the self you've already been. And staying that self—protecting it, maintaining it, keeping it safe—means never becoming anything else.

I had a client once who spent years telling me about a marriage she wanted to stop. Every session, same story. He was draining her. Her husband was impossible. She'd wake up with dread. She had enough savings. She knew what she wanted to do instead.

"So why haven't you left?" I asked.

She paused. "Because at least I know what this feels like. I don't want to start over." 

There it was. The invisible bar on the cage. Not fear of failure. Not lack of options. Fear of the unknown feeling worse than the known suffering.

Three Doors You're Not Opening

When I started paying attention to where I was choosing safety over growth, I noticed it in tiny and big ways. I might not say what I meant, or I might stay a decade in an unhealthy relationship. Ultimately, I noticed  three distinct ways that I was locked. 

The first lock: The voices.

You know the ones. "Better to talk about this later." "Why do you keep doing this?" "You tried this before and it didn't work."  

These old recordings play on repeat, narrated by protective versions of you that learned to keep you all snuggled up safely on your mental couch. And boy do they remember: The eight-year-old who got laughed at. The teenager who got rejected. The twenty-something who failed publicly.

They're trying to protect you from ever feeling that vulnerable again. And the way they protect you is by keeping you exactly where you are.

I had a part that said "you're not a joiner-- that's for followers and you're a rebel" Sounded valuable. Felt like wisdom. Kept me from participating in anything for years. Turns out that part was a nine-year-old who never got chosen for sports and decided: never again.

The second lock: The situation.

Sometimes it's not the voices inside. It's the actual architecture of your life.

The relationship that stopped growing three years ago but you stay because you've built a comfortable routine around it. The house where you don't actually want to be but all your stuff is there. The friend group that doesn't really get you but changing it would mean eating lunch alone for a while.

Familiar. Known. It feels so much better than "starting over." Plus, then you'd be a failure. 

I stayed in a living situation once for nine extra years because "it could get better." I knew where to reach for the spoons. I had my morning routine down. My favorite coffee place was two blocks away. I had two dogs. Yes, conflict was high, but I could always find-- as they say in the movie Dumb and Dumber, "a chance." A glimmer of hope I would look for and find. 

When I finally left, I realized something uncomfortable: I'd been arranging my entire life around minimizing disruption. Which also meant I'd been minimizing change. My whole life had become a very well-organized, cushy cage.

The situation wasn't the problem. My need for it to stay exactly as it was, that was the lock. I just couldn't risk it, so I sabotaged it, instead. 

The third lock: The settling.

This one's the sneakiest.

You finally do it. You make the change. You escape the old voices. You leave the limiting situation. You feel free. You feel alive. Yes, you're doing it. You're the king/queen of the world! 

And then, slowly... some times so slowly you don't notice...the new thing becomes the old thing. The new city becomes routine. The new relationship becomes predictable. The exciting job becomes "the grind" The new version of you becomes the self you know.

And the self you know becomes the self you protect.

I watched this happen with someone in the Unfollowing community. He'd done incredible work. Left a job and a relationship that was crushing him. He followed his first love, music. Six months in, he was thriving. Everything felt possible. He had a new partner, too. 

A year in, he's built a lot of success, a million followers on Spotify. Everything he had set for himself came true.

A year after that I checked in on him and he sounded remarkably similar from the first time we talked.

"Things are ok," he said with a tone that sounded like "I haven't slept in months." He told me he had dialed in my systems and was super busy.

"How does it feel to be following your passions?" I asked.

"Honestly, about the same as when I wasn't," he said. "But I know it will get better soon."

He'd traded one cage for another. This one was just a nicer color with his name on the bars.

The trap isn't just the old cage. It's thinking that once you escape one cage, you're done. That freedom is a destination you arrive at and then get to keep.

It's not. Freedom is something you have to keep choosing. Always putting yourself back on that wobbly first ride of the bike, because the moment you stop choosing it, comfort starts building walls again. Before you know it, you're texting and driving. 

What Safety Actually Costs

None of this would matter if safety were free. But it's expensive as hell.

Every time you choose the known over the unknown, you're trading. You're trading the person you could become for the comfort of staying the person you already are.

The job you don't leave. The relationship you don't end. The silence you keep when asked if you're ok. Each one feels like a small decision. Each one feels justified. 

They add up. Years of small "not yets" become a life of "never did."

And eventually, you're in your 60s, and you look around and realize: you've been making the same decision for decades. You've been choosing safety so consistently that you've completely forgotten what growth even feels like. It's a muscle that atrophied so much, that using it again doesn't even seem possible. Or smart. You could hurt yourself. 

That's the real cost. Not that you fail. Not that something goes wrong. But that nothing changes. You become so good at staying exactly who you are that staying exactly who you are slowly suffocates you.

What Unfollowing Actually Means

This is what we mean when we talk about "unfollowing." Not unfollowing Instagram accounts or trends or other people's opinions.

Unfollowing the parts of you that are still running old programs. Old voices. Situations. The lack of brave decisions.

And here's the thing: you probably already know this. You've probably spent years talking about it, journaling about it, analyzing it in therapy. So why are things the same? 

Understanding isn't change.

What actually changes things is giving new parts new leadership. Not through talking. Through experience. Showing them—in your body, in real time—that it's actually okay to let go. That you won't fall apart if you stop controlling everything. That the unknown isn't as dangerous as staying exactly the same forever.

Heck, you might even get a natural high from it. 

The Question

What old identity are you maintaining? What familiar situation are you defending? What comfortable routine have you let turn into a cage?

And here's the harder one: What safety are you willing to sacrifice to become someone new?

Because that's the trade. That's always been the trade. You can have safety or you can have growth. You can have the familiar or you can have the unknown. You can stay who you are or you can become who you're not yet.

You can't have both.

Remember the book launch event? I went to one years later for a different author. Felt awkward as hell. Talked to exactly two people. Left early.

But I went. And a few months later, one of the two people I talked to reached out to me and now, years later, we're still in touch. 

These little proofs add up to a life that feels like yours.