The Art of Unbecoming: A Guide to Conscious Uncoupling…From Yourself

We need to talk…

While the wellness world has been busy teaching us how to consciously uncouple from our romantic partners, complete with jade eggs and extortionately priced smoothies, we have been missing the most important breakup of all: the one with the version of ourselves we were never meant to be.

Welcome to the art of unbecoming. It’s like conscious uncoupling, but instead of splitting up your shared Netflix account, you’re dividing custody of all the identities that were never actually yours to begin with.

The Great Identity Theft

Here is the thing about becoming: most of us have been doing it backwards. We have been collecting identities like limited-edition handbags, the more exclusive, the better. The High Achiever. The People Pleaser. The Perfectionist. The one who has it all figured out.

But somewhere along the way, in our quest to become someone worthy of love, success, and approval, we committed the ultimate identity theft: we stole ourselves from ourselves.

I once worked with a woman who had built an entire empire on being “the woman who could do it all.” She was the CEO who never missed a school play, the wife who threw incredible dinner parties, the friend who remembered everyone’s birthday. She was performing magnificence with the dedication of a Broadway star.

Until one day, sitting in her perfectly curated kitchen, surrounded by her perfectly curated life, she turned to me and said, “I don’t know who I am when I’m not achieving something.”

That, my friends, is when the real work begins.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Comfortable Lies

We live in a culture that celebrates becoming. Become the best version of yourself! Become unstoppable! Become abundant! The self-help shelves groan under the weight of all this becoming, as if we’re unfinished projects rather than complete human beings temporarily wearing ill-fitting costumes.

But what if the most radical act isn’t becoming more, but finally becoming less?

What if instead of adding another certification, another title, another achievement to prove our worth, we started subtracting? What if we began the gentle, revolutionary act of unbecoming everything we’re not?

This isn’t about giving up or settling. This is about discovering who you actually are beneath the performance.

The Unbecoming Process

Unlike its glamorous cousin, conscious uncoupling, the art of unbecoming doesn’t come with a manual written by lifestyle gurus. There’s no retreats in Tulum, no morning rituals involving adaptogenic herbs, and definitely no one charging you thousands to tell you what you already know deep down.

The process is beautifully simple and devastatingly difficult:

Step 1: Notice What Feels Heavy

Start paying attention to the parts of your life that require tremendous energy to maintain. The relationships where you perform rather than simply be. The career achievements that should feel satisfying but somehow leave you empty. The versions of success that look perfect in the highlight reel but feel hollow in real life.

Your body knows. It’s been keeping score with tight shoulders, shallow breathing, and that persistent feeling that something is just… off. Listen to it.

Step 2: Ask the Dangerous Question

“Whose version am I living?”

This is where it gets uncomfortable. Because often, the answer isn’t pretty. Maybe you’re living your parents’ definition of security. Maybe you’re performing your industry’s version of success. Maybe you’re trying to become the person you think will finally be worthy of love.

But here’s the plot twist: you were already worthy. The you underneath all the becoming? That person was enough all along.

Step 3: Begin the Gentle Demolition

This isn’t about burning everything down in a blaze of dramatic transformation. This is about the slow, conscious dismantling of what doesn’t serve you. It’s about saying no to opportunities that excite everyone else but exhaust you. It’s about letting people be disappointed when you stop playing the role they’ve assigned you.

It’s about choosing authenticity over approval, even when authenticity is messier and less Instagram-worthy.

What Unbecoming Actually Looks Like

Let me paint you a picture of what this process looks like in real life, because it’s not what you would expect.

It’s the successful entrepreneur who realizes she’s been building someone else’s dream and quietly pivots to work that actually lights her up, even though it pays less and impresses fewer people.

It’s the mother who stops trying to be the perfect parent and starts being the real one who is flawed, tired, but genuinely present.

It’s the leader who admits they don’t have all the answers, who leads from curiosity rather than certainty.

It’s the person who stops trying to be everything to everyone and starts being something real to themselves.

The beautiful irony? The more you un-become who you’re not, the more you become who you are. But this isn’t the manufactured becoming of self-help culture. This is the organic unfolding of your true nature.

The Revolutionary Act of Ordinary

In a world obsessed with optimisation and elevation, there is something radically subversive about choosing to be ordinary. Not mediocre, ordinary. Real. Human. Enough as you are, right now, without the performance.

This is where the real conscious uncoupling happens. Not from a person, but from the tyranny of who you think you should be.

It’s uncoupling from the need to have it all figured out.

From the pressure to be constantly growing, evolving, becoming.

From the exhausting performance of perfection.

From the borrowed definitions of success that never quite fit.

The Freedom on the Other Side

Here is what they don’t tell you about the art of unbecoming: it’s terrifying. When you stop performing, when you quit the exhausting job of being who everyone expects you to be, there’s a moment of profound uncertainty.

Who are you without the achievements? Without the approval? Without the carefully constructed identity you’ve been maintaining?

But in that space something magical happens. You remember. Not who you’ve become, but who you’ve always been. The person you were before the world told you that wasn’t enough.

And that person? That person is revolutionary simply by existing authentically in a world that profits from your dissatisfaction with yourself.

Your Invitation to Unbecome

So here’s my invitation to you: What would happen if you stopped trying so hard to become and started gently unbecoming instead?

What would fall away if you let it?

What would you stop performing?

What would remain if you shed everything that was never yours to carry?

The art of unbecoming isn’t about giving up on yourself. It’s about giving up on the versions of yourself that were never real to begin with. It’s about coming home to who you actually are, not who you think you should be.

And unlike conscious uncoupling, this breakup comes with a reunion with yourself. No jade eggs required.

Because sometimes, the most profound transformation isn’t about becoming more. Sometimes, it’s about becoming exactly who you already are.

Nicole Brûlé-Walker is a Health & Wellbeing Strategist and founder of the Core Truths System. She believes that success without authenticity isn’t really success at all, and that the most radical act in our performance-driven world is simply being yourself.