Do you ever find yourself longing for a season of your life that you wish you could get back? Maybe you remember a time when you felt loved, found meaning, and had a sense that you truly belonged. If you’ve ever wondered why it’s so difficult to move on, this week’s topic may resonate with you.
In my blog post last week, I wrote that leadership development is identity work. Since then, one of my readers asked a related question: If seeing yourself as someone new is so important, why do many capable people stay stuck?
If you feel like you’re stuck in a rut, I don’t think it’s because you’re afraid of the future. I think it’s because you’re attached to your idea of the past. And I don’t mean you’re longing for the past events themselves. I mean you’re attached to the identity you experienced while living them. You’ve become invested in who you were during that season of your life.
This realization didn’t come all at once. Looking back, I can see that this kind of attachment has happened to me more than once. Whenever life seemed to be going well, I had a habit of falling in love with that time and place. I found myself surrounded by people I trusted. We were doing meaningful work together. I felt respected and recognized. And perhaps more important than any of that, I felt like I belonged.
Then, as inevitably happens, things changed. My trusted colleagues left for new opportunities. New people arrived who didn’t necessarily share the same values or vision. And subsequently, the culture changed, and the work changed, and eventually, even the way I was recognized changed.
But in spite of all of these changes, I continued. I didn’t stay because the environment was still what I loved. Trust me—it wasn’t. I think I stayed because I kept hoping things would go back to the way they used to be.
I can look back and see things more clearly now. You can put a Jay Gatsby-esque amount of effort into trying to recreate an idyllic past, but the truth is that the past does not come back; it never can. The people who I loved working with had moved on and started the next chapters of their lives.
The season that I loved was not temporarily broken and waiting to be fixed. Rather, it was simply over. And when you get attached to how good things used to be, that’s a difficult distinction to accept.
Here’s something else I noticed. Earlier I said that the experience of attachment has “happened to me” several times. I increasingly listen to my own choice of words. “That happened to me.”
At first glance, these words seem harmless. But they quietly assign all of the power to circumstance, as if I were some passive bystander in my own life. Belonging happened to me. Great work happened to me. Recognition happened to me. The implication is that if I simply wait long enough … maybe those things will happen again.
Eventually, I realized that what I was grieving was not the events of the past. I wasn’t attached to the company, or the project, or even the people. I was attached to the person I had become while I was there. I was attached to the sense that I belonged, and that I mattered to someone. It was that sense that informed my understanding of my identity. And when those things disappeared, I assumed that my identity disappeared with them.
Now I see it differently. Belonging isn’t something that happens to me; it’s something I can create. Meaningful work isn’t something I stumble into, it’s something I choose to pursue. I don’t have to wait for the perfect environment before I become the person I want to be; I can choose that person first, and then go build the environment that supports what I want to create.
This is why executive development is identity work. Every significant transition requires letting go of an old version of yourself. The manager who becomes an executive can’t simply add new responsibilities. They have to release old assumptions and habitual ways of being. Sometimes they need to shed their previous sources of confidence, or the relationships that no longer serve them. There is a period in between where neither identity – old or new – feels entirely comfortable.
It’s a little like the metaphor of the circus trapeze artist. You have to let go of one trapeze before you’ve grabbed the next. For a moment, you are suspended in midair. That uncomfortable feeling is usually the point when people are tempted to look back and grab that old familiar bar. After all, it may have been uncomfortable, but it was not unknown. But it turns out, the old place where you were comfortable is not where any kind of growth is happening. Growth happens when you trust yourself enough to reach for what is next.
So how do you get started in this process? Recently, I came across an old leadership expression that perfectly captures this idea. Move off the dime.
Today we use it to mean, “Stop overthinking. Take action.” But its origin is surprisingly fitting. In dance halls nearly a century ago, couples were expected to change partners with each song. If they stayed with the same partner for more than one dance, no new ticket was being purchased, and that meant that the dance hall wasn’t making money. So the floor manager would yell, “Get off that dime!”
Maybe that’s good advice for more than just dancers. Sometimes the hardest part of leadership isn’t deciding where to go next. It’s accepting that the dance you loved has ended—and that it’s time to move on.
So let go of that old identity and start seeing yourself in a new way. The next version of “you” won’t begin until you move.