How to Become Yourself

A line I keep muttering to myself lately is: being myself requires the right conditions. It’s a Frankenstein remix of something Stephen Cope writes in The Great Work of Your Life. His version goes: “Bringing forth what is within you is mostly about creating the right conditions.”

The right conditions are the environments—external and internal—that support our sense of self. They are the people, places, relationships, routines, and choices that help us feel alive, rooted, expansive. They’re the friend group that actually sees you. The relationship that builds you up instead of breaking you down. The job that stimulates something real inside you—not just your ego. It might be living on a street that brings you joy, or even just reminds you who you are. It might be creating daily rhythms that help your nervous system settle. It might be moving away from home. Saying no to the people you once thought you needed. Choosing things that don’t look impressive, but feel like you.

But here’s the hard part: for most of us, choosing the right conditions isn’t straightforward. It’s not always obvious. It’s often not even accessible right away. And sometimes (most times) it takes building the wrong conditions—relationships that harm us, jobs that deaden us, friend groups that distort us—to realize what we actually need. We don’t usually get to skip that part.

In fact, I think we have to make those mistakes. We have to get it wrong to understand what right even feels like. We have to live the contradiction in order to taste the clarity. That’s the real education. Not some overnight epiphany. But trial, error, heartbreak, revision. Choosing and un-choosing. Trying again. Again. And again.