The in-between is where your identity has not yet caught up with your reality you’ve created. To keep up you need to continually back and forth where you identity shifts a little bit then you shift and create results but someone in us is the old identity so we take a few steps back into the familiar. This can be associated to any kind of change: financially, personal growth, weight, whatever. To achieve success at it you need to practice new thoughts and feelings about creating new ways. You need to become that person on the inside in order to become that person on the outside.
Podcast fave Tonya Leigh suggested this doesn’t happen overnight and we’re often in a hurry to make want those changes overnight. It takes practice and sometimes years before you finally get to the point where its integrated enough and its now just who you are.
We self-sabotage by running through those doubting questions in our heads “what if it’s too good to be true?”, “what if I can’t keep this up”? “who do you think you are”? “Its too hard”, “you look silly”. You need to be so committed to your change to be able to keep moving through those doubts if you want to continue to grow and evolve and see what you’re capable of. The pay-off is this awkward in-between stage.
The hardest part of the in-between is the discomfort of letting go of an old identity. TL suggested imagining you have two lines, one above the other, you are at the bottom line right now, but as you start to go towards to top line there’s a space in between. The closer you get to the new identity the more uncomfortable it gets and the tendency is to want to revert to what’s familiar. Muster up the courage to keep going towards that top line. The question that TL poses to people in that in-between space is:
“What would my most expansive self do right now?”
If you want to continue to grow and evolve it will require that you stop contracting your energy. When you’re in the in-between you’ll experience periods of both growth and contraction but when you feel yourself contracting ask yourself that question.
Go to the place of where you want to be and practice being that person, expansive version of yourself. If you think something long enough and feel something often enough and do things to reinforce it eventually that will become your new norm; that upper line TL talked about. You get good at what you practice most.
What do you want to get good at and are you practicing it? Are you willing to wade through the in-between of letting go of old identities and practicing the new ones to the point where it becomes normal.
Know that when you’re feeling awkward and have those two voices battling it out over whether you’re being a fraud or whether you’ve got this and to keep going, remember you get to choose which one to listen to.
Know that this in-between feeling is a normal part of the process. Nothing has gone wrong when you’re having a sort of identity crisis, it is part of the process of change. Be courageous enough to walk through it.
Bells, Bakes & Bettering Myself 