Train Your Muscle Memory
Becoming Future You
Have you ever looked at your life — seen where you are now, and the gap between here and where you want to be — and wondered in dismay how on earth you’re going to make that leap?
If you’re a seeker and a constant grower like I am, you’ve likely been there.
For me, there’s always a heaviness in my body when a part of me is ready to shed. And the disappointments that come with that? They’ve been arriving in waves for the last year. Okay, if I’m being honest — six-plus years.
It’s almost like the universe is asking: You keep saying you want this. But are you brave enough to become the person who lives it every day?
Gulp. I genuinely don’t know.
But what if what you’re longing for just needs to become a new muscle memory?
When I picked up my weights for the first time since moving to Ohio seven months ago, I moved through my old routine without thinking. My body just knew.
When I was little, I was an avid piano player. My fingers still remember the song I practiced most for my last recital.
Muscle memory is what allows athletes like Rory McIlroy to perform under enormous pressure. They also do a lot of inner work to uproot any shadows.
And muscle memory is also what triggers me to go backwards — to stiffen when I’m practicing softening, to stay in patterns I’m desperate to leave behind (a remnant of growing up in a conditional and emotionally unpredictable household).
There’s a beautiful concept in the coaching method I’m certified in called Denied Traits and Personas. These are traits we’ve labeled as bad since childhood, and as a result, they come out sideways — we can’t access them in ways that are truly aligned with who we are.
I know that’s a lot of coaching language, so here’s an example from my own life.
I’m at a point in my business where I need to step into the role of confident boss — to be a little more competitive, to go boldly after what I want, and to actually show myself that I believe in myself. But growing up, the messaging I absorbed was clear: bossy is bad, overconfident is dangerous, and it’s better to let others win. Not to mention that my corporate fashion days gave me exactly zero role models I wanted to emulate (think The Devil Wears Prada — and not the chic parts).
My subconscious is still running those old programs, formed in childhood to keep me safe. And they are no longer serving the direction I’m working toward.
So instead of showing up as a confident boss, those denied traits come out sideways: I’m indecisive, I often don’t know what I want, and going boldly after anything feels almost foreign.
The work is to integrate and own bossy, confident, and competitive — in a way that actually aligns with my values.
There’s deeper work involved in shifting this at the root, which I won’t go into here. But once that foundation is laid, the goal is embodiment.
If you're curious about the deeper work, I have two ways to support you:
Start with your intuition. You can't embody future you if you're making decisions from fear or old programming — and tuning into your intuition is the best short circuit (p.s. I loved this movie as a kid — if you know, you know). I put together a simple guide and meditation on exactly how I do this. Grab it here.
Invest in yourself through coaching. I offer hourly sessions as well as packages that work like a step ladder toward greater self-awareness, lightness, and real pattern shifts. Set up a free discovery call here to learn more.
And how do we embody? Muscle memory.
Think about who you need to become to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
What does that version of you do every day? How do they show up? What words do they use? What are their habits — in work, in life, in how they move through the world?
Now do that — consistently, imperfectly, persistently — until it becomes the new energy and frequency of you.
This is also why meditation and other nervous system practices are so powerful. They’re energy restarts, pattern resets, a pause so you can align with future you rather than knee-jerk react from the past.
Your ego and nervous system will fight this. Not because they’re against you, but because their job is to protect you from lions. There will be false starts, two steps forward and one step back. But the goal is the habit, not the perfection.
Give yourself six weeks.
I’d love to know: what’s one habit you’re ready to make the muscle memory of your future life?
I promise it will be your path to lightness.
*written by me, copy-edited by Claude AI
Wow I feel this:
It’s almost like the universe is asking: You keep saying you want this. But are you brave enough to become the person who lives it every day?
Gulp. I genuinely don’t know.