The $10,000 Lesson: Why I Stopped Trying to Find My Old Self

The real breakthrough came when I stopped looking backward

At 70, I finally realized I’d spent decades trying to feel like myself again without asking a fundamental question: Who was “myself” now?

I’d been chasing a ghost. The 30-year-old me with endless energy and a body that cooperated and a future that stretched out like an open highway. The me before gravity took over my boobs, before my knees started aching, before “recovery time” became a legitimate reason for every activity.

She was gone. And no amount of money was bringing her back.

That wasn’t the problem. That was never the problem.

The problem was I’d been treating my evolution like a disease that needed curing.

The receipt doesn’t lie

Let me show you what denial looks like in dollar form.

$89 for the supplements that promised mental clarity. $129 for the online course about finding your authentic self (ironic, I know). $45 monthly for the meditation app I opened exactly three times. $200 for the planner system that would “revolutionize my productivity.” $67 for the book bundle about “aging gracefully” (whatever that means). $150 for the essential oils that were supposed to balance everything from my hormones to my energy levels.

The gym membership I never used: $50 a month for 14 months. That’s $700 of pure, undiluted optimism gathering dust.

The closet full of anti-aging creams, serums, and “miracle” treatments, most barely touched: roughly $800. The collagen supplements, the adaptogens I can’t pronounce, the vitamins promising to “turn back the clock”: another $300.

And then there were the bigger purchases.

The $2,000 beauty treatment that promised to help me “look young again.” The $500 course on mindfulness for people “in their prime years.” The $1,200 I spent on a wellness retreat mostly made me feel bad about myself.

I was tired because I was spending all my energy trying to reverse time.

Total damage: somewhere north of $10,000.

That number makes my stomach hurt. Not because I can’t afford to have spent it (though let’s be honest, I couldn’t), but because of what it represents.

Ten thousand dollars’ worth of not accepting who I’d become.

The real cost wasn’t financial

Here’s what those products couldn’t tell you on their perfectly designed landing pages: You’re not broken.

You changed. That’s literally what humans do. We adapt, we evolve, we become different versions of ourselves in response to different lives.

I had a whole new life. Of course, I was a whole new person.

The 30-year-old me didn’t have four decades of living behind her. She didn’t have a body that had weathered time and stress and gravity and joy. She didn’t have the wisdom that comes from surviving loss, disappointment, and curve balls she never saw coming. She hadn’t learned to find meaning in the quiet, the simple, the often overlooked.

She was great. I loved her. But she wasn’t equipped for this life.

And I was spending thousands of dollars trying to squeeze back into her.

Every product I bought was sending me a message: The current you isn’t good enough. The current you is the problem. The current you needs fixing.

I was literally paying money to feel worse about myself.

The tragedy isn’t that the products didn’t work (though they didn’t). The tragedy is that I was solving the wrong problem. I didn’t need to find my old self. I needed to meet my new one.

What actually changed everything (and cost nothing)

One morning, after struggling to open a jar and then laughing at myself for the five-minute wrestling match, I had a thought:

She would have been humiliated. But I found it funny.

I’d changed. I’d adapted. I’d become someone who could laugh at what used to feel like failure because I’d learned that some things just don’t matter the way I thought they did.

I started making a list, but not the kind I was used to. Not goals or affirmations or vision boards. Just observations.

Things the old me couldn’t do that the current me could:

• Sit with uncertainty without spiraling

• Say no without apologizing three times

• Find genuine joy in the smallest, quietest moments

• Let go of relationships that had expired

• Care less about what people think (this one took four decades, but I got there)

• Know what actually matters versus what I thought should matter

• Appreciate my body for what it can still do instead of mourning what it can’t

The new me wasn’t worse. She was just different. And honestly? She was kind of a badass.

She’d survived things the old me would have found impossible. She’d lived through loss, change, disappointment, and decades of life that never went according to plan. She’d developed strengths the 30-year-old version of me didn’t even know she needed.

The industry selling you your old self back

Here’s what they don’t want you to know: The wellness industry makes billions convincing people that change equals damage.

Got older? You need anti-aging everything. Had kids? Better “get your body back” (as if it went somewhere). Life got complicated? Buy this system to get your old simple life back.

It’s all the same story: You used to be better, and for $29.99, you can be her again.

It’s brilliant marketing. It’s also completely backward.

Every dollar I spent was a vote against my own evolution. Every product I bought was me agreeing that the current version of me was insufficient, temporary, something to be fixed rather than accepted.

I was literally paying companies to make me feel inadequate so they could sell me the solution to the inadequacy they created.

The self-help industry isn’t always about helping yourself. Sometimes it’s about convincing you that your self needs help in the first place.

The question I should have asked years ago

Not “How do I get back to who I was?” but “Who am I becoming?”

Not “How do I fix what’s wrong with me?” but “What’s actually right with me now?”

Not “How do I recover my old life?” but “How do I build a life that fits who I actually am?”

Those are completely different questions. And they lead to completely different answers.

Answers that don’t cost $89 a month. Answers that don’t come in a bottle or a course, or a beauty package. Answers that require looking at yourself with curiosity instead of criticism.

What I do with the money now

I still spend money on myself. But the purchases have changed.

Instead of supplements to make me feel like my old self, I buy books that help me understand my new self. Instead of programs promising to bring back my energy, I rest when my mind and body need it. Instead of workout plans to reclaim my old body, I move in ways that make my current body feel good.

The difference is subtle but massive.

I’m no longer spending money to become someone else. I’m spending money to support who I already am.

And that person? She’s pretty good. She’s tired, yes. She’s changed, absolutely. She’s not who she was at 30, thank god.

She’s someone who’s earned her evolution.

The ghost I stopped chasing

I haven’t thought about 30-year-old me in years. She’s not haunting me anymore. She’s just a previous version, like all the earlier versions before her.

She served her time. She did her thing. And then she evolved into someone new, the way every living thing is supposed to.

I’m not trying to bring her back anymore. I’m too busy being interested in who I’m becoming next.

And I’m doing it with significantly less money but with more peace. Turns out that’s the better trade.

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The version of you that you’re missing might have been wonderful. But the version of you that exists right now has survived everything that’s happened since then. Maybe that’s worth getting to know.

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