The Version of You That Set the Bar Might Not Be the One Living This Season
A client came back from maternity leave a few months ago, working four days a week. Except she wasn't really working four days, she was doing five days of work squeezed into four, unpaid, to keep up with the person she remembered being.
That person, the one who'd built her whole identity around a leadership role, had set the pace for years, every late night and extra yes in service of staying her.
Then she had a baby, and her priorities shifted in a way she never actually noticed happening. Her values hadn't changed. What had changed was which one carried the most weight now, while she kept measuring herself against a life that no longer existed.
"Your values probably haven't changed. You just haven't recognized which ones are carrying the weight now."
What It Looks Like
What she brought into session wasn't burnout, and it wasn't about capacity. She felt like she wasn't doing either role properly, not fully present as a mother, not fully who she used to be at work, failing at both at once. No amount of reassurance touched that, because the problem wasn't external. She hadn't yet recognised, in herself, that her priorities had changed. Once she could feel that and name it herself, the inadequacy started to ease.
Underneath, her values hadn't shifted. The ranking had, being present for her child had moved up, saying yes to everything at work had moved down. The disconnect she'd been calling inadequacy was really the gap between the identity she'd built before the baby and the one that actually matched her life now, and nobody could hand her that recognition. She had to feel it herself.
Why This Isn't Only About Maternity Leave
I don't think this is unique to new parents. It shows up any time life changes faster than your sense of who you are, a promotion that leaves less room for what used to define you, a sector change, a health scare that reorders what matters without asking first. The values underneath rarely shift much. What changes is which one is carrying the weight, and whether your decisions have caught up.
Identity Isn't One Fixed Thing
There's a second angle to this I've been sitting with. We talk about identity like it's one fixed thing, something you either know or you don't. What I've noticed, building something of my own, is that it moves in more than one direction: the identity you've already built, the identity your current season is asking of you, like my client's was, and a third one, the identity you choose on purpose before you've grown into it.
For me, that looked like turning a want into a habit rather than waiting to feel it was true. I'd always enjoyed writing but never thought of myself as a writer, so I committed to writing a newsletter every week, sharing my thinking on LinkedIn, and actually interacting with the people who responded. I don't think I fully embrace getting things wrong in public, if I'm honest. It's more that I'm willing to try something and be okay if it doesn't work, then learn from it.
The clearest version of that was the day I registered a company, in a country where I didn't speak the language, an actual government form I couldn't read. Stepping out of being an employee needed an actual step, not a decision made in my head.
Hers was noticing a shift that had already happened, and that recognition had to come from inside her. Mine was choosing a shift before it had, then taking an uncomfortable step to make it real. Same underlying question, just approached from different directions: who are you actually being right now, and does that match who you want to be.
Reflect on This
Where in your life right now is your daily behaviour still built for a version of you from an earlier season?
If you ranked your values by what actually gets your time this month, not what you'd say in an interview, what would surprise you?
What's one identity you'd want to claim on purpose, before you feel fully ready for it?
This is exactly the territory we're getting into at the Aug 13 Deep Dive: Becoming, who you want to be and the habits that get you there. If any of this is sitting with you, whether it's a season that's shifted underneath you or an identity you've been circling but haven't claimed, come think it through with us, send me an email if you'd rather talk it through first.
With you,
Linda
