Mindfully Rebuilding and Remolding Your Life

Life has a way of molding us into forms that don’t always fit. Expectations. Labels. Roles we never chose. But you can always rework the clay. You can soften what’s hardened. You can begin again. 

Becoming who you are isn’t always about adding more, maybe it’s about remembering what’s real, what’s inside, and letting the rest fall away, it’s remolding the clay of your life and knowing you are the artist with the power to reshape your life.You are both a masterpiece and a work in progress at the same time and that’s amazing and beautiful. 

Transcript

Hey friends, welcome back or welcome for the first time. However you got here, I’m so glad you pressed play today, wherever you are, however you’re showing up, thank you for giving yourself this time to slow down and listen in. And if someone sent this to you, thank them for knowing what you needed to hear today, what you may need to be reminded of.

Today, I want to explore a quote that I heard but one by the ancient Greek poet Pindar. He said: “Become who you are by learning who you are.” Simple words, but not a simple process. Because learning who we are, truly are deep down to our core, means peeling back years of conditioning, expectations, and old stories that might not even belong to us. It’s about unlearning as much as it’s about learning. And it’s about choosing, again and again, to come back to what’s real.

So today, let’s talk about the journey of becoming. How we can find our true selves beneath everything we were told to be. Everything that was placed on us, that was affixed to us, that became our identity even when it didn’t feel right. How we were molded like clay, and how, like clay, we can reshape ourselves, again and again, into something beautiful, useful, and true.

Carl Jung, who was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology, once said, ‘The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.’ I love that, because it reminds us that this journey isn’t about becoming someone new, it’s about uncovering the self that’s been buried under all the noise, expectations, and shoulds, the supposed tos, the have tos.

And finally we have Aristotle who said, ‘Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.’ But let’s be honest, knowing yourself isn’t easy when so much of who we are was shaped long before we even had a say in it, before we even knew what was happening. 

You know, it’s funny how early we start trying to fit into molds. As children, we’re handed little invisible scripts. Be polite. Be quiet. Be helpful. Be smart. And sometimes, if you were raised around adults who had strong opinions about what your life should look like, you might’ve learned to shape yourself around their dreams, not your own. Maybe you were the “responsible one,” the “funny one,” the “peacemaker,” or the “achiever.” You learned how to play a role to keep the peace, to feel loved, or to belong. And then, somewhere along the way, you just begin to play that part and you completely forget who you were before all that.

But those words “Become who you are by learning who you are”, those words are a gentle invitation to pause. To ask, Who am I, really? Not who was I told to be, not who am I expected to be, but who am I when I stop performing, stop pleasing, stop proving? That question can feel unsettling. Because for many of us, our identity was built from the outside in, not the inside out. But what if true becoming, real becoming of your true self, isn’t about adding more, doing more, achieving more…but about slowly removing what was never ours to begin with? Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.

So much of our adult life is unlearning the patterns and beliefs we picked up as kids, things we were told about what success looks like, what we should want, how we should act, who we should love even. But that’s not really becoming, that’s performing, that’s faking, that’s sometimes pleasing for the sake of their peace but at the expense of your own.

Let’s talk about clay in this context so you can begin to put a physical visual to this. If you’ve ever worked with clay, you know it starts out humble, just earth and water. Two simple elements, the same ingredients that make up so much of the natural world… and us, too. But here’s what’s beautiful, just like us, no two clays are exactly alike. Each has its own unique blend of minerals, its own balance of water and soil, some with more soil, some with more water, each blend creating in its own process. Some are smoother, some are gritty. Some dry fast, others slow. That’s us.

We’re all made of the same essential elements, love, pain, hope, fear, creativity, compassion, but in different amounts, different combinations. We’re all clay, shaped by our surroundings, our experiences, our families, and the hands that first held us. But what’s beautiful about clay is that no two batches are ever the same. Each one has its own blend, its own composition, its own story. And like clay, we are malleable. We’re shaped by the hands that first touched us, parents, teachers, friends, culture, society.
 Sometimes those hands were gentle and smoothed use, sometimes they weren’t and created ragged edges.

But the truth is that no matter how we were first shaped, we are never finished. We are always capable of reshaping, reimagining, re-creating. And in reality, most of us didn’t choose the first mold we were placed into. Maybe your family had certain expectations, go to this school, pick this career, live this way, love that way. Maybe society told you what “success” should look like, the car, the house, the perfect timeline to meet. Maybe your community told you what it means to be a “good” person (and I’ve got my air bunny quotes around that), so maybe good meant being selfless, quiet, never needing too much, never pushing back, doing what you’re told.

And maybe, somewhere along the way, you realized, the life you were living wasn’t really yours.  It fit, but it didn’t feel right. It looked fine on the outside, but something inside felt off, like a pot that had hardened before it was finished being shaped. That’s the moment many of us begin the real work, the work of learning and reshaping who we are. Because the process of becoming often starts with the ache of misalignment, the knowledge that things are just not right in your life. That quiet, uncomfortable knowing that something isn’t quite right. And it takes courage to say: Maybe it’s not me that’s wrong. Maybe it’s the mold I was poured into. Most of us do this later in life, but if you’re lucky enough to figure this out early, I hope you have the courage to reschape and rebuild.

So how do we actually learn who we are? How do we chip away at what’s false and rediscover what’s true? Let’s start with this first, that learning who you are isn’t a lightning-bolt moment. It’s a slow unfolding. It’s curiosity, not certainty. It’s asking gentle but tough questions, and being okay when the answers take their time to arrive. So how do you begin this, what small steps can you take to start that unfolding, the unmolding? 

Here are a few places to begin:

1. Notice what drains you vs. what energizes you. Pay attention to what makes you feel alive and what leaves you feeling small or empty. The body often knows the truth long before the mind ever admits it.
2. Listen to your inner dialogue. Whose voice is speaking when you feel guilt, fear, or pressure?
    Is it yours, or is it someone else’s repetitive echo?
3. Reflect on childhood moments when you felt free. Before you learned to edit yourself. Before you were told who to be. What did you love? What made you curious? That’s often where your truest self still lives.

And allow yourself to change your mind as you’re going thru this process. You’re not inconsistent, you’re evolving. Every season reveals new truths. Let that be okay. Becoming who you are means letting go of the need to arrive. It’s realizing that you can be both unfinished and worthy. Both a work in progress and a masterpiece at the same time.

Sometimes we think we’ve set, the clay is hardened and done, that life has fired us in the kiln and this is who we’ll always be. We get older, we fall into routines, and it feels like our shape is permanent. But even fired clay can be reworked. Potters know that if you soak the hardened pieces in water long enough, they can soften again, ready to be reshaped, reformed, reused. And we can, too.

Maybe that means letting the water of truth and honesty soak into your life, loosening what’s been rigid. Maybe it means breaking a part of yourself open, not to destroy it, but to rebuild it stronger, freer, truer. Yes, it can feel painful, that breaking down, removing some of the bits and adding in what’s needed. But remember, clay doesn’t resist the artist. It yields to the artist. It trusts that something more beautiful is coming. What if we trusted that, too?

In your life, you are both the clay and the artist. You are the raw material, shaped by experience, full of potential. And you are also the sculptor. the one with the vision, the one with the hands that can mold and reimagine. Sometimes we forget that. We think we’re just the clay, helpless, passive, waiting for life to shape us. But we have more say than we think. Every choice, every boundary, every small act of courage, those are the hands that reshape your form. You are not just what’s happened to you.You are what you do with what’s happened to you.

So maybe you were shaped into a bowl once, something that held others, that carried their needs, their stories, their burdens. But now, you’re ready to be something else. Maybe now, your life has changed, your kids are grown, and you’re becoming a vase something that holds beauty, something that stands tall on its own. And that’s okay. That’s growth. It’s not saying you love your kids less, it’s saying it’s time for something different in your life. There’s something sacred about breaking your own mold.

In pottery, artists sometimes intentionally smash a piece that didn’t turn out right, not out of anger, but out of reverence, out of respsect for the process. Because they know the clay can still become something else, it’s worthy of rebuilding, the artist see the purpose and the usefulness as well as the beauty. In life, re-creating yourself often begins when something cracks, a job ends, a relationship shifts, a version of you no longer fits. It’s tempting to see those moments as endings. But maybe they are not, maybe they are invitations, new molds, new pathways.

Invitations to soften again. To begin again. To mold a truer version of yourself. And this re-creation doesn’t erase your past shape. It honors it. It carries those fragments forward. Every version of you leaves an imprint in the next one. That’s how wisdom is built.

So if you’re in a season where you feel like you’re cracking or breaking apart, maybe this isn’t your undoing. Maybe it’s your reshaping. You might feel like you’ve already been hardened by time, by life, by the choices you’ve made. But clay can always be broken down, rehydrated, reworked. You can begin again. Because like Sophia Bush said, you’re allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress at the same time.” If you’re in a season of becoming, of learning who you are, again, here are some gentle tools that can help guide your hands as you shape the next version of yourself:

1. Reflection. Spend time journaling or walking in silence. Ask, “What feels most like me right now?” Let the answers guide you.
2. Release perfection. Pottery isn’t flawless, it’s alive. Your life doesn’t need to be perfectly symmetrical. It just needs to be true.
3. Find Community. Every artist needs inspiration. Surround yourself with people who see your potential, who don’t try to mold you into someone else, but who hold space for your becoming.
4. And Keep Curiosity. Stay open. Play. Experiment. You don’t need to know what you’re creating yet, you just need to start. Sometimes the beauty reveals itself only after you’ve begun.
5. Rest. Clay that’s overworked cracks. So does a life that’s overfilled. Give yourself permission to pause. To breathe. To let things settle.

There’s a Japanese art form called Kintsugi, where broken pottery is repaired with gold. Instead of hiding the cracks, they’re highlighted, made beautiful. And maybe that’s what happens when we learn who we truly are. We can stop hiding the places we feel broken, and instead let them shine as proof of where we’ve healed, of how we have patched ourselves. Your cracks aren’t flaws, like Kintsugi, they’re the golden seams that make you unique. They tell your story. They remind you that you can bend, you can even break, but you can be still whole, still beautiful.

I believe becoming who you are isn’t a final destination. I think it’s a lifelong conversation, between who you were, who you are, and who you’re still becoming. If we keep evolving, keep growing, keep adding that gold to our stories, then we are never done shaping. Never done softening, breaking, reforming, glowing. And the more we learn who we are, the more we listen to what’s going on inside instead of what others are telling us or showing us outside, the more our outer life starts to align with that inner truth. That’s what it means to “become who you are by learning who you are.” It’s not about fixing yourself. It’s about remembering yourself. About coming home to yourself.

So, if you’re in that in-between place, feeling like you’ve outgrown the old shape of your life, but you’re not sure yet what the new one will be, that messy middle as we like to call it, take heart. You’re not lost. You’re just being remade. The artist in you is at work, even if you can’t see the final form yet.

Keep learning who you are. Keep shaping your life with gentleness and curiosity. And remember, you’re both the clay and you’re the powerful yet gentle hands that mold it. And here’s one last quote for you to think about by Eckhart Tolle “You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you.”

Thank you for taking the time to listen today, for taking the time for you today. This can be part of your rebuilding, your re-molding. Remember that you have so much goodness and light in you and that maybe you just need to do a little Kintsugi, to find those gold places in you that you have patched, that you have healed and be proud of those areas. Be proud of hard work you have done, that you are still doing and of who you are becoming and keep shining your light for all to see, little by little and peace by peace.