Before an Identity Crystallizes, It Samples

I thought I was giving my daughter wisdom about becoming her future-self. Instead, I got a download from a simple sentence she said about clothing style that oddly transcended being about clothes at all.

This last weekend I was out shopping in Las Vegas with my 21-year-old eldest daughter. I pointed to the sandals I was wearing and mentioned I’ve owned them since 2017 but was ready for an upgrade. She couldn’t believe I’ve owned them that long.

I took that opportunity to introduce her to her future-self in a way I never considered as a twenty-something.

In all my shopping wisdom, I told her I noticed I tend to buy and keep items not just for a season or two, but years and sometimes a decade (hey, I got that kind of runway of time!). So now I shop for what I love today and what I believe I’ll still enjoy wearing in two or three years.

This was my stealth way of connecting the dots to my aspired future-self and buying for what’s aligned for my future-self in that timeline. My daughter conceptually understood buying clothing today that will last in quality and in style for years to come, and that was a good enough bridge.

But then she said, “I don’t know who I am fully yet, so right now I’m trying on different styles. But when I do discover my style, that’s a good idea.”

I sat with that for a second longer than the conversation probably called for because what she’s doing and what I taught her aren’t actually two different things. They’re the same process, just at different points in the cycle.

Trying on is how you discover “her” the aspect of yourself that is wanting to emerge more fully. The process is wide, exploratory, and often low-resolution — you don’t know yet what fits, so you sample a style, a way of speaking, a version of a career, a relationship dynamic and more. You’re gathering information about what resonates and what falls away.

Tapping into your future-self is what happens once enough trying-on has crystallized something specific enough to name and really resonate with that energy you desire to call in. For example, I tapped into the version of me speaking to rooms full of people and hosting my own podcast — long before either was real. Now I’m stepping onto two stages this fall and launching that podcast. Those aspects didn’t stay part of a future-self I was chasing. I actually embody her as a lived experience now.

I notice what that version of my future-self wears, how she shows up, and the actions she takes — and I align to her, energetically, sartorially, behaviorally, until I quantum leap into being her instead of just admiring her from a distance.

That’s not a contradiction of the trying-on phase. It’s what trying-on becomes once it’s done its job.

And even she — the future self I’m aligning to right now — isn’t the final stop. Once I’m fully her, something in my identity will complete itself too, then recede, making room for whoever’s next. The cycle doesn’t end: Trying on, then crystallizing, then embodying, then trying on again. It just gets more precise each time you move through it and at even higher octaves.

Identity was never meant to be cemented. It’s something we keep expressing, and in the expressing, we integrate what’s ready to stay and release what’s finished.

As we walked out of the store — POP! One of my old sandals broke. My daughter laughed. “Well… I guess it really was time.” I laughed too. Then I looked down at the sandal, split clean at the sole.

Those sandals carried me through nearly a decade. That version of me was finished — the same way every version of us eventually finishes, stepping back so the next one has room to stand.