Old Photos Don’t Speak for You: Identity, Growth & Resistance

Your old photos don’t speak for you anymore. Resistance does.

There’s a quiet kind of resistance that shows up when we’re on the edge of becoming.

I was listening to Beyond the Lens — Richard Bernabe’s episode Books That Matter, reflecting on Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art — and something clicked.

Resistance isn’t always dramatic.
Often, it’s subtle.
Comfortable.
Convincing.

It asks quiet questions like:

Who do you want to show up as this year?
Are you hesitating because you don’t know what that looks like or because you do?

Sometimes resistance appears when growth asks something of us we’re not sure we’re ready to give.

What happens if I become more successful?
Will I like who I am?
Will I have to sacrifice my values?
Will I still recognize myself?

We can find ourselves holding tightly to an old identity not because it’s right, but because it’s familiar. It’s safe. And resisting that change, we hope to be seen without having to change.

But growth doesn’t work that way.

If we are evolving creatively, professionally, personally we are asked to step into another version of ourselves. And that requires shedding parts of the old one, even when it’s comfortable. Especially when it’s comfortable.

That’s the risk.

Does it have to be an all-or-nothing leap. I think it can be a gradual release.

A version shift.

Not 2.0.
More like 2026.1.

It takes many versions to become who we are. We wouldn’t be this version without the ones that came before. Every iteration matters. Every season taught us something.

So wherever you are … perhaps on the precipice of becoming.

Know this:

The version you’re moving toward already exists. It’s lying in wake.
It’s been quietly forming. Waiting for acknowledgement.

Change is born incrementally. Through attention. Through intention.
Through the courage to loosen our grip on what no longer speaks for us.

Here’s to 2026.12 !
Gently, relentlessly become.

Happy New Year.