Personal Growth: Why Letting Go of Your Old Self Is the Key to Real Change

Friends on a beach

Guest Blog by Derek Flint - BSc : Dip Couns : PNCPS (Accred) : Psychotherapist and Addictions Professional

Clients often come to therapy asking questions like these:

• “Why do I feel like I need to let go of my old self to move forward?”

• “How do you change when your old habits keep pulling you back?”

• “Why is personal growth so uncomfortable?”

• “How do I become a different version of myself?”

• “What does it mean to outgrow your old self?”

We cling to the old version of ourselves not because they understood life better, or because they were happier, but because they were familiar. You knew how they thought, how they reacted, what to expect. Your brain, your body, your nervous system ran the same patterns for so long that it started to feel like identity rather than habit. But it isn’t identity. It’s repetition.

Starting to do what makes you happy can be a start. And not that temporary happpiness but that joy, longer term options where the benefits can be felt for longer.

The person you’ve been is simply a version you’ve practiced. That’s a fundamental difference.

Every time you respond to stress the same way, make choices that lead to the same outcomes, and think the same thoughts that generate the same emotions, you’re not responding authentically. You’re playing a recording. A loop. And it happens so automatically that you don’t even recognise it as pattern anymore — it feels like “you.” But it isn’t.

It’s who you’ve been.

And this matters because you can’t step forward into who you’re meant to be while you’re still replaying who you used to be.

Every opportunity, every new connection, every fresh experience you encounter gets filtered through your past fears, your old wounds, your old definitions. Those filters don’t match your present reality, yet you treat them as if they do. So you repeat patterns. You chase goals that feel familiar. But those goals don’t fuel you — they just exhaust you.

This exhaustion isn’t from life. It’s from carrying an outdated version of yourself into every new moment. And deep down you know it’s time to let that version go. But that feels terrifying because letting go of who you’ve been feels, in some ways, like dying.

But here’s the honest truth: you aren’t trying to become new by staying the same. Those two can’t coexist. The version of you that’s holding on tightly has to loosen its grip. It has to change. Not in one dramatic blink, but in the quiet realisation that the thoughts that got you here aren’t the ones that will get you forward.

The beliefs that kept you safe once are the beliefs that keep you small now. The identity that felt familiar is the cage that stops you from being free.

Until you’re willing to let that version of yourself go — to thank them for their service, to grieve, and to release them — you’ll stay stuck.

Why this resonates

Every real transformation begins with this simple, unsettling realisation: the self you’re attached to is a version built from past patterns, not present purpose. Once you see that distinction, you create space for genuine change. And personal growth begins there — not in perfection, but in release.

If you are wondering how does counselling work and how to be happy, get in touch today and book a free initial call