High-agency is contagious. You spend time around someone who just does things and suddenly your own list of "impossible" tasks starts looking suspici… - Kpaxs

Just keep following your genuine curiosity and stack skills until you're standing somewhere no one else is.

Real improvement often feels like loss before it feels like gain. There's a valley you have to walk through where the old pattern is gone but the new one hasn't fully taken root yet. You're not who you were, and you're not yet who you're trying to become. You're in the gap. And the gap is uncomfortable.

When you lack a strong opinion of yourself, you become overly dependent on validation.

You need others to confirm what you cannot confirm internally. Compliments become emotional oxygen. Approval becomes addictive. Disapproval becomes devastating. You may end up performing constantly, shaping your personality around what earns acceptance rather than what reflects truth.

And doing so, you abandon your distinctiveness. To avoid disapproval, you smooth out the edges that make you unique. You become more acceptable, perhaps, but less real. Many people become socially palatable at the cost of becoming inwardly disconnected from themselves.

You end up living defensively rather than purposefully.