You Don't Need to Become a Better Version of Yourself

What if the stars were never meant to predict your future? What if they've always been inviting you to understand yourself? This is Remember Who You Are with Lexie Forbes. Let's begin. So I'm about to really let you in. I actually wrote this in my diary, and I thought, this is actually a really damn good episode. So I figured I'm going to go ahead and read it to you. Okay, so if it sounds like I'm reading, it's because I am. All right, anyway. So I wrote that I don't know if I want to become the best version of myself anymore. And I know that that's a really strange thing to say as someone who has spent most of my life interested in spirituality and personal development and psychology and astrology and healing and manifesting and all the things. All of the things that are supposed to help me become better. But lately, I've been questioning the idea that I need to become anything at all. Because there's always another version of myself that I'm told I'm supposed to become. I'm supposed to become more disciplined, be more successful, more confident, more feminine, more magnetic, more healed, more emotionally regulated, be more productive, be more spiritual, be my highest self. And in reality, like nothing of that is bad, because I do believe in growth. I do believe in healing. I believe in looking at yourself and realizing that there are things that you want to change. I, you know, absolutely see versions of myself that I've outgrown, that there are patterns and lessons and beliefs that I've had to unlearn, wounds that I've had to heal on my own and work on. But I'm also starting to wonder, at what point does self-development just become me rejecting myself? At what point does constantly trying to become a better version of me send the message to myself that who I am right now isn't already worthy? Because there's something really exhausting about always having another version of yourself waiting, you know, in the distance. There's the healed version, there's the successful version, the healthy version, the rich version, the confident version, the version of myself who wakes up at 5 a.m. and journals and meditates and drinks water and never gets triggered and has perfect boundaries and always knows exactly what she wants and exactly what to say. You know, she's always out there, you know, she's always out there and I'm always running to catch her. And maybe one day I will get to that person. But then when I do, there's going to be another version. There's going to be another level, another goal, another wound that I have to tend to, another belief that I have to reprogram. And there's always going to be this, like, part of myself that needs to be better. And then suddenly you look back at your life and you realize that you didn't spend it being anything because you spent it just trying to become. And that's what I've been thinking about. So anyway, all right. So if you listen to the first episode of this show, I actually talked about how this season forced me into this really uncomfortable period of nothingness. I wasn't creating, I didn't feel inspired, I wasn't working, so I closed my calendar, I spent a lot of my time alone. And for once, I wasn't really asking myself, what am I learning from this? You know, so many times when I'm going through things, I immediately try to turn whatever my experience is into some lesson that I can learn from or something I can teach. And I wasn't trying to now figure. You're out, like, how could I use this in my business, or how do I make content from this, or how do I alchemize it into something beautiful? You know, I just let myself be. And I think that when I started realizing how much of my life had become a project, that even my healing and my spirituality and even my identity was now something that I was constantly working on, I realized that I was making myself tired because I was working on myself all the time. And so I'm starting to rethink some of that and go, like, well, what if some parts of myself don't need to become anything? What if they just need permission to just be? And honestly, that's one of the reasons that astrology, when I first found it, meant so much to me, because it didn't feel like something telling me who I needed to become. Instead, it actually gave me the language for things that I already knew about myself. And that's really important, you know, because I don't believe your birth chart creates you. I don't believe that you're emotional because your moon is in one sign, or that you're ambitious because your Mars is somewhere else, or that you're here to blindly obey a collection of symbols on a wheel. I think that astrology gives us language for ourselves, and it can give you language to desires that you can't explain, or it can help you to understand your contradictions. It helps you to understand your needs and the parts of your personality that other people don't understand. You know, the things that you've always intuitively known about yourself, but you just didn't know how to articulate, and sometimes when someone reads your birth chart back to you, there's this moment of, like, oh, yeah, that's me, you know? Not, oh, okay, that's who I'm supposed to be, right? It's just, oh, there I am. And I think that's why people sometimes cry during my birth chart readings, because they're not crying because I revealed some secret piece of information that magically changes everything about them and everything about their life. A lot of the time, I'm simply giving them language to something that they've already felt their entire lives. You know, suddenly there's, like, recognition and permission and validation and remembrance. And so, for example, maybe you've spent your whole life being told that you're too sensitive, but when you look at your chart, you realize that emotional sensitivity is woven everywhere, you know, through it. And maybe you've spent your entire life trying to force yourself into one career and one identity and one interest and one way of being, but then your chart is filled with experimenting and curiosity and movement and flow and change. Or maybe you've spent your whole life wondering, why do you need so much time alone? Or why do you crave attention? Or why does security matter so much to you? Why are you ambitious? Why are you restless? Why do relationships affect you so differently and deeply than others? You know, and instead of asking yourself, well, how do I fix this? Astrology can give you the opportunity to ask yourself, well, what is this trying to help me understand about myself? And that's a very different question because I think sometimes we use healing in the same way that we use religion or productivity or capitalism or beauty standards. We create another idealized version of this, like, ultimate human being, and then we measure ourselves against that. You know, this human being is more spiritual and more healed, and she has boundaries, and she's regulated, and she manifests everything she wants, and she doesn't trace because she attracts, attracts. You know, she doesn't get jealous. She doesn't react. She doesn't need validation. She doesn't hold grudges. She never has negative thoughts because apparently the universe is listening, and, you know, what if you accidentally manifest something because you've had a shitty Tuesday? You know what I mean? It's like I'm not interested anymore in becoming that person. Because that doesn't even sound human. Sometimes I do get jealous, and I do feel insecure. And sometimes I do want attention, and sometimes I care too much. And sometimes I care too much about what people think about me. And I repeat those thoughts over and over and over again. You know, sometimes I do know better, and I don't do it. But sometimes I'm deeply spiritual, and I'm, like, connected to spirit and feeling all that. And sometimes I don't want to pull a card or meditate or journal or light a candle or figure out whatever the universe is trying to teach me. Sometimes I just want to be pissed off. I want to feel, you know, disappointed, and I want to be able to change my mind. And sometimes I don't know who I am, and I don't want to have to figure that out. And maybe none of that means that I'm failing at becoming my higher self. Maybe it actually means that I'm experiencing what it means to be fully me. I don't want a spirituality that requires me to stop being human. And I think sometimes we get so caught up in that that we almost, like, villainize humanity. You know, I want a spiritual-like practice and a spirituality that helps me to be my best self, to be my best me. And so I don't want astrology to just become yet another authority that replaces the Bible, replaces religion, replaces societal standards, telling me who I'm supposed to be or who I'm allowed to be, because I don't even think that that's what astrology is here for. And I don't want you to give that kind of power to your own birth chart. I don't want you to say, well, you know, I'm a Taurus, so I have to be this way, or I'm a Pisces, so obviously I'm not allowed to do that. Or my chart says this is my purpose, so I guess that's what I'm supposed to do. You know, like, your chart is not actually your permission slip. You are. Your chart can be a mirror. It can be a language. It can be a place for you to be curious. It can help you to see something that you've forgotten. But ultimately, you are still the person having the experience. This is free will. And I think that's where I'm landing with this idea of, like, remembering who you are. I'm not interested in helping you to manufacture some shiny new identity or, you know, developing this woman that's underneath all of this, you know, crap. You know, I don't want you to just be whoever your parents needed you to be or your partner or your children or your clients or your followers, whoever your religion told you you're supposed to be, whoever society told you you're supposed to be. You know, that self-help book that you love told you to become. You know, the manifestation coach that you paid for told you that this is how you're supposed to be. You know, whatever the algorithm of the day is telling you who you're supposed to be, you know, based off of, you know, this is what you're supposed to do for your morning routine. You know, like, what if we just forget all of that and we just go, I don't know. You know, what if that's okay? Because I don't know. I don't know. And maybe knowing it isn't even the point. Maybe the point is just being curious enough to find out, who am I? Because I do think that there is a difference between saying, like, I need to become someone better and saying, I wonder what else is already here, like what's already within me. You know, on one hand, one question is looking at yourself as if something is wrong with you, whereas the other is just inviting you into knowing yourself deeper. And for me right now, that's the kind of growth that I'm interested in. You know, I don't want to be growing because I hate where I am or I hate who I am or because I feel like, you know, my current life isn't good enough. I just want to have curiosity about myself, but I want to unfold and, like, discover who am I. You know, I just, I don't know. I don't know if I want to become, like, the best version of myself anymore. I think I just want to know who is Lexi. I don't know who is. I don't know who is. I don't know who is. Thank you. and I want to know the woman who's here when she's not trying to prove anything to anyone else, when I don't feel like I have to perform or put on a face or fix someone else's problems or fix myself or achieve something. I just want to know who I am, just me. And so I ask you, you know, maybe the greatest version of you isn't somewhere that's in the future waiting for you to finally get your shit together. What if she's already here? And what if she's already been here the whole time and you just forgot? And now it's time for you to remember. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening today. If today's conversation sparked something in you, I would love to invite you into the sanctuary. This is more than an astrology community. It's a place where your curiosity becomes your practice, a space to explore your birth chart, deepen your spiritual journey and continue remembering who you are and why you're here. Inside, you'll find interactive astrology tools, monthly guidance, live conversations, and a community of women walking this path alongside you. You can learn more through the link in the show notes. But until next time, remember who you are.