The day I caught an old identity trying to make a financial decision on my behalf.
I want to tell you about something that happened recently. It was small on the outside. But inside my head, it was loud. For the past few months, our investment company has been looking for opportunities to invest in real estate. We spent weeks scouting, comparing, asking questions, looking at different pieces of land and trying to determine which opportunities actually made sense.
Eventually, we found two pieces of land we liked. We approached the sellers. We negotiated. We agreed on a price. It felt like we had finally found something. But the transaction wasn’t complete. We were still doing our due diligence, working with an agent from the government body responsible for verifying the ownership of the land. And then another opportunity appeared.
A different piece of land.
A lower price.
New information.
More options.
And do you know what my first thought was?
It wasn’t:
Let’s compare them.
It wasn’t:
Which one is the better investment?
It wasn’t even:
Let’s see whether this changes anything.
It was:
“I already gave my word. We need to buy from him.”
I sat with that thought for a moment. And then I caught it.
That Thought Didn’t Come From My Investor Self
It came from somewhere much older. I am a woman who keeps her word. That identity has been with me for a long time. In my family, in my friendships, in business, my word has always meant something to me. If I say I am going to do something, I want to do it.
I am proud of that part of myself.
It has built trust. It has helped me build relationships. It has shaped the way I show up in the world. But in that particular moment, something I value deeply was trying to make a decision it wasn’t qualified to make. My identity as a woman who keeps her word had quietly walked into the investor’s chair. And it had no business being there.
Because we had not completed the transaction. We had agreed on a price. We had not yet completed our due diligence. We were still verifying ownership.
Considering another opportunity wasn’t betrayal. It wasn’t dishonesty. It wasn’t breaking a promise. It was simply responding to new information. And suddenly I could see the difference.
I had confused commitment with obligation.
This Is Why The Inner Work Matters
A couple of years ago, I don’t know if I would have caught this. I might have followed the first thought without questioning it. I might have called it integrity. I might even have felt proud of myself for doing so. And I could have made a financially costly decision while believing I was doing the honorable thing.
But I have spent a lot of time learning to watch my own mind.
Not just what I think, but where the thought comes from.
What belief produced it?
What identity is speaking?
What fear is underneath it?
What am I protecting?
And, perhaps most importantly:
Is this thought helping me make the decision in front of me, or is it simply repeating something I have believed about myself for years?
That habit of observation gave me a moment of space. And in that space, I saw her. The old identity.
The woman who says:
You gave your word.
You don’t go back.
You don’t disappoint people.
You said yes.
And I understood something. She wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was trying to protect something I had taught her was important. But protecting an old identity and protecting my future are not always the same thing.
Then I Remembered Something
Right after that moment of catching myself, something else arrived. There is a book I keep returning to — The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down by Haemin Sunim. In the first chapter. Four words that keep playing in my mind:
Be good to yourself first.
It came back to me in that moment. And suddenly, being good to myself didn’t sound like indulgence. It sounded like responsibility. Because if I am investing money, being good to myself means being willing to look at all available information honestly.
It means asking:
Which opportunity makes more sense?
What are the risks?
What are the potential returns?
What does the due diligence tell us?
What do we know now that we didn’t know before?
And if the answer changes, being responsible means allowing the decision to change with it.
That doesn’t mean I stop caring about integrity. Quite the opposite. It means I have to be careful about what I call integrity. Because sometimes we can use a beautiful value to justify a decision that isn’t actually serving us.
The Old Identity Is Not The Enemy
I want to be careful here. I am not saying that keeping your word is wrong. It isn’t. Integrity matters enormously to me. But integrity does not require us to ignore new information.
Imagine agreeing to buy something and then discovering, during due diligence, that there is a serious problem with the property.
Would keeping your word require you to proceed anyway?
Of course not.
You would investigate.
You would ask questions.
You would reassess.
You might renegotiate.
You might walk away.
And nobody reasonable would call that a failure of integrity.
So, why does the emotional experience sometimes feel different when the new information is simply another opportunity?
I think part of the answer is that changing our minds can feel like admitting that our original decision wasn’t perfect. And none of us particularly enjoys that feeling.
Sometimes we would rather protect the decision we already made than evaluate the decision we are making now. That’s where things become interesting. Because there is a difference between honoring a commitment and protecting a past decision.
They can look remarkably similar from the outside. But internally, they are completely different.
We Protect Our Past Decisions
Once I noticed this in myself, I started noticing versions of it everywhere.
The entrepreneur who keeps pushing a business idea that isn’t working because she already told everyone about it.
The investor who holds onto an investment because she has already put so much money and time into it.
The professional who stays in a career she has outgrown because changing direction would make the years she spent building it feel wasted.
The person who stays in a situation that no longer serves her because leaving would mean admitting that she once made the wrong choice.
We do this in money.
We do it in business.
We do it in careers.
We do it in relationships.
Sometimes we aren’t protecting the decision at all.
We’re protecting the story we told ourselves about the decision.
And that is an expensive distinction. Because the past has already happened. The money has already been spent. The years have already passed. The announcement has already been made. The decision has already been made.
The only thing we can influence is what we do now.
The Woman I Am Becoming Has Different Questions
When I let the investor in me speak, the questions became much simpler.
Not easier.
Just clearer.
What do we know?
What don’t we know?
What does the evidence tell us?
Which option is stronger?
What is the risk?
What serves the investment group’s objectives?
And if new information changes the answer?
Then we change the answer.
Not because the woman who made the original decision was foolish.
Not because she was dishonest.
Not because the commitment meant nothing.
But because she made the best decision she could with the information she had at the time.
And now I have more information.
That matters.
You Are Allowed To Think Again
There is something very freeing about realizing that changing your mind isn’t automatically a character flaw.
You are allowed to think again.
You are allowed to reconsider.
You are allowed to look at new information and let it change your mind.
You are allowed to say:
I know what I thought yesterday.
Today, I know something else.
And you are allowed to make a better decision because of it.
That isn’t weakness.
It isn’t inconsistency.
And it isn’t necessarily a betrayal of who you were.
Sometimes it is simply evidence that you are paying attention.
I still want to be a woman whose word means something.
I don’t want to lose that part of myself. But I am also becoming an investor. And the investor in me has a responsibility that the woman who simply wants to keep her word doesn’t have:
She has to look at the facts.
She has to ask uncomfortable questions.
She has to compare.
She has to reassess.
She has to be willing to walk away from something that looked right yesterday if the information available today says otherwise. And perhaps that is part of what growing into a new identity actually looks like.
Not destroying who you were.
But deciding which parts of who you were get to come with you.
The woman who keeps her word can come.
The woman who wants to be liked can sit this one out.
The woman who is afraid of changing her mind can wait outside.
And the investor can make the decision.
Because when it comes to my money, I don’t need my past identity to feel comfortable.
I need my present self to be responsible.
We protect our past decisions instead of our future interests.
I don’t want to do that anymore.
I want to build the kind of mind that can say:
That was the best decision I could make then.
This is the best decision I can make now.
And be at peace with the difference.
That, to me, is part of the inner work.
Not just building a portfolio.
Building the mind that runs it.
Journal Prompts
1. Meet Your Two Voices
Think about a financial or business decision you are currently facing. Write down your immediate reaction. Then ask yourself:
Who is speaking?
Is it the person you have always been?
Or the person you are becoming?
2. Where Is Your Old Identity Showing Up?
Think about an identity you have carried for years and are proud of. Maybe you’re the reliable one.
The generous one.
The responsible one.
The strong one.
The person who never quits.
Now ask:
Could this identity ever become a limitation in the way I handle money or business?
3. The Decision You Are Protecting
Is there a decision you are still defending—not because it makes sense today, but because changing it would make you uncomfortable?
What are you actually protecting?
The decision?
Or the identity attached to it?
4. Be Good To Yourself First
What would being genuinely responsible to your future self look like in one area of your money right now?
What would you examine more carefully?
What question have you been avoiding?
5. The Catch
Think about the last time you caught yourself having a thought before automatically acting on it.
Where did the thought come from?
What did you notice?
And what became possible because you paused?
Because sometimes the most important financial decision isn’t the one we make. It’s the one we catch ourselves about to make.
Salima
Just me thinking out loud over here