Transcending Your Former Self: The Psychology of Outgrowing Who You Used to Be

Growth means outgrowing old versions of yourself — and that's both beautiful and painful. Here's how to honor who you were while becoming who you're meant to be.

There comes a point in personal growth where you look back at who you were a year ago, five years ago, a decade ago — and feel like you're looking at a stranger. The beliefs you held, the relationships you tolerated, the choices you made — they don't align with who you are now. This is transcendence. Not in a mystical sense, but in a developmental one: you've outgrown a former version of yourself. And while this is the entire point of growth, it comes with a particular kind of grief that nobody warns you about. "We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person." — W. Somerset Maugham The stages of self-transcendence: Developmental psychologist Robert Kegan describes human growth as a series of "orders of consciousness" — increasingly complex ways of making meaning. At each transition, what was "subject" (invisible to you, controlling you) becomes "object" (visible to you, something you have rather than something you are). For example: at one stage, you are your emotions — anger controls you, fear controls you. At the next stage, you have emotions — you can observe anger, choose your response to fear. The emotion hasn't changed; your relationship to it has transformed. This process repeats throughout life. You transcend your need for external approval. You transcend your rigid ideology. You transcend your fixed identity. Each transcendence is a liberation — and a loss. Why outgrowing yourself hurts: 1. Relationships strain. When you grow, the dynamic in existing relationships shifts. Friends who bonded with your former self may not recognize — or like — who you're becoming. This doesn't make them bad friends. It means the relationship was built on a foundation that's shifting. 2.