Unquiet
Things

I heard a YouTuber quote Mel Robbins a few years ago: “If you want to change your life, just start acting like the person you want to become. I’m not kidding…it’s called ‘Behavioral Activation Therapy.’ The more you ACT like the person you want to become (even when you don’t feel like that person yet), the quicker you become them.” I still don’t know who Mel Robbins is, but I don’t know that I need to or that I care!

I was thinking about this in January when I had my annual reading with Sister Temperance Tarot, and I remember saying something like “I’d love to be the kind of person who…” and then following up with “I mean, all I have to do is just…be that person, right??” I continue thinking about it on a daily basis, and it feels like some kind of mental alchemy—the notion that embodying behaviors might transform us from the outside in, rather than requiring inner transformation first. Like a strange ritual where donning the mask eventually reshapes the face beneath it. That we become what we repeatedly do, not what we dream of becoming while scrolling through Instagram at 2am, bathed in the pale blue light of infinite possibilities.

The phrase “I’d like to be the kind of person who…” floats through my mind with alarming frequency. Sometimes while brushing my teeth, those little pre-threaded floss picks tucked under the sink muttering about me judgmentally. Sometimes, while pouring a Diet Coke over copious amounts of cracked ice, even as I imagine, instead a delicate cup of Earl Grey loose-leaf tea, hot. Sometimes, while canceling plans with a friend I genuinely want to see, not because I want to stay on the couch, but because I get caught up in all the anxiety that goes into seeing them. Is there parking where I’m going? What if I can’t hold up my end of the conversation? The effort suddenly seems insurmountable.

So here’s my running list of people I’d like to be…

The Everyday Aspirations. The kind of person who…

• “…flosses every day.” I have started doing this after a lifetime of not. I am 8 days in, and my gums no longer look like they’re auditioning for a horror film when I do it.
• “…wakes up at 5am to walk 4-5 times a week.” I do this 1-2 times, if at all. I love waking up early and I love walking, but somehow detest the act of putting on exercise clothes and actually leaving the house for this specific purpose.
• “…starts incorporating yoga into their routine for flexibility.” I don’t need to do a headstand or twist myself into a pretzel. I just want to be able to squat at all with my bad knees.
• “…cares enough about something to learn about it before diving in.” I write about perfumes and fashion based on feeling rather than facts. There’s something both liberating and terrifying about this approach—knowing I’m sharing pure impressions rather than expert analysis. But perhaps there’s a world between these extremes I haven’t explored yet.
• “…keeps better touch with friends and family.” I can spend three hours looking at strangers’ vacation photos, but I can’t manage a ten-minute phone call to someone I actually love.
• “…would prefer a cup of tea over a diet coke, a scone or some shit rather than Cheetos; something nice instead of something garbagey.” There’s a certain elegance in choosing the thing that asks more of you—the steeping, the waiting, the ritual of it. The Diet Coke is immediate, thoughtless. (But so delicious and caustic and crispy!) The tea suggests a life more deliberately lived, even if that deliberateness and mindfulness and what have you makes me roll my eyes at myself sometimes.

The Self-Growth Aspirations. The kind of person who…

• “…paints watercolor flowers and creates detailed still lifes of jewelry boxes.” I want to make visual art, but I’m terrified of being bad at it. I knit, but always from someone else’s pattern. I write constantly—for this blog and lots of other places—but writing doesn’t feel like art to me. It’s just something I can’t not do.
• “…can confidently belt out a karaoke tune.” Or be brave enough to do it at all. I don’t even set foot in karaoke places to begin with.
• “…speaks up in difficult conversations.” When moral toughness is required. When someone needs to be stood up to. When grief and condolences need to be expressed. I fear these moments of necessary confrontation and emotional honesty.
• “…watches Ingmar Bergman films.” And other directors that celebrities wax poetic about when visiting the Criterion Closet—Tarkovsky, Kurosawa, Ozu. What kind of person watches these films? Someone more patient than me, certainly. Someone who doesn’t check their phone every seven minutes. Someone who appreciates the profound beauty of a static shot lasting longer than the time it takes to scroll past ten Instagram posts.
• “…enjoys the things they already own.” It’s not that I need to stop wanting more—I probably never will. But I have finite time and tons of stuff already. Books unread, perfumes unsprayed, clothes unworn. I need to savor what I already possess instead of constantly accumulating more.

The Wishful Aspirations. The kind of person who…

• “…who travels.” Without the anxiety about getting to the airport, through the airport, and all the logistics that seem to overwhelm me. The actual packing part is fine—carelessly done at the last minute.
• “…who is more clever and interesting in social situations.” Rather than barely opening my mouth, paralyzed by that fear that reminds me of the quote: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”
• “…who finally lives in Portland, in their own arts and crafts house.” With built-in bookshelves and those charming little reading nooks in the Pacific Northwest. This despite familial obligations tying us to this area—aging parents and siblings who would deliver guilt trips if we moved across the country.

What if, as Robbins suggests, we’ve been approaching transformation backward all this time? We treat motivation like some rare orchid that must bloom naturally before we can take action. We wait for that perfect crystalline moment of readiness, of feeling aligned with our aspirations, before we make a move.

Perhaps becoming the person we want to be isn’t about waiting for inner transformation. Maybe it’s about small, even mechanical actions, repeated until they form grooves in our lives, paths of least resistance that eventually feel natural. I read somewhere that you should remove the obstacles that make the thing you want to do harder. Perhaps I should literally sleep in my exercise clothes if I want to be the kind of person who walks at 5am.

These selves we aspire to—the daily flosser, the early riser, the brave conversationalist—they aren’t separate entities waiting to replace us. They’re already here, fragments and possibilities tucked within our contradictions. We contain multitudes—practical selves, aspirational selves, wishful selves—all shifting and reshaping as we reach toward what we might become.

All these aspirational selves feel like mirages on a horizon of possibility. When I reach for them and come up short, I wonder if it’s the reaching itself that matters. The tension between who I am and who I’d like to be creates a strange, electric space—a liminal territory where what might be and what cannot be somehow coexist. It’s a realm tingling with impossible probabilities, opportunities, eventualities, but also shimmering with its own wildly improbable magic. Maybe we are all just collections of attempted gestures toward some imagined ideal, forever falling short but beautiful in the attempt. Or maybe we’re just hopeful losers? But we keep trying? I hope?

What versions of yourself linger just beyond your reach? And what small, seemingly insignificant action might begin to call them into being?

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