The Versions of You That Got You Here

I got a missionary email from one of my son’s friends the other day.

And as I read it, my heart broke a little.

He was explaining how he’s learning and growing. How he can see now that who he was before was hard to live with.

He named it—bullheaded, stubborn. He talked about change. About becoming different. And then he asked for something really vulnerable:

Another chance.

Another chance from people who may feel like bridges have already been burned.

And as I sat there reading his words, I had this quiet realization:

I think I would write something very similar.

There are versions of me that I don’t always feel proud of.

Long story short, I was undiagnosed with ADHD. And for a long time, I thought I didn’t really have the “typical” ADHD traits—like hyperfixation. But as I’ve learned more (especially through How to ADHD), I started to see it more clearly.

My hyperfixation in highschool and college… was boys.

And when I say that out loud, I don’t say it lightly.

It shaped how I showed up in relationships. It meant I wasn’t a very good friend to girls. I didn’t really understand what it meant to build those relationships well. If I’m being honest, I often saw other girls through the lens of competition.

And when it came to boys… I acted in ways I wish I could go back and redo.

You probably have your own version of that sentence.

“Oh, the things I would do differently…”

But here’s what I’ve come to understand:

It’s not possible to go back.

And it’s also not necessary.

There’s a thought experiment called the Ship of Theseus.

Over time, every single part of a ship is replaced. Every board. Every piece.

And the question becomes: Is it still the same ship?

Because if nothing is original anymore… what makes it the same?

In some ways, we are that ship.

Not only does your body literally replace its cells over time, but your experiences reshape you. Your understanding evolves. Your awareness deepens. The way you respond to life changes.

You are not the same person you were.

And yet… you are.

I was talking about this with my 8th graders recently.

We were discussing change and responsibility, and I said:

“We don’t have a time machine. We can’t go back and fix the past. We can only decide who we become moving forward.”

And one of my students raised their hand and said:

“Well… what if you just acted like you did have a time machine? Like you decided from the version of you 10 years from now what you wanted to become?”

And I smiled.

Because that’s it, isn’t it?

So we did a journal exercise, writing from our future selves.

And what I’ve found, over and over again, is this:

When you step outside of your current identity—your current fears, your current stories—you access a kind of wisdom that’s already in you.

Your future self doesn’t hate you for who you were.

Your future self understands you.

This is where the work of Kristin Neff comes in.

She talks about self-compassion not as letting yourself off the hook—but as meeting yourself with the same understanding you would offer someone else.

Because when you look back at past versions of yourself, you weren’t trying to ruin your life.

You were doing the best you could with the awareness you had. With the tools you had. With the nervous system you had.

Self-compassion sounds like:

“Of course I did that… given what I knew then.”“Of course that made sense to me at the time.”

And from that place, something powerful happens.

You don’t stay stuck in shame. You move into responsibility.

There’s also something called the Butterfly Effect.

The idea that one small change can ripple forward and create a completely different outcome.

We often think about that in terms of the past—If I had just done one thing differently…

But what if we flipped it?

What if one small shift today—one new way of responding, one moment of awareness, one act of self-trust—could change the trajectory of your future?

You don’t need to go back and fix who you were.

You need to understand her.

You need to have enough compassion to say:

She got me here.

And then enough ownership to say:

And now I get to decide what happens next.

Because you are still becoming.

And the version of you 10 years from now?

She’s already rooting for you.

Message me if you'd like the "Letter from Future Self" exercise from my workbook.