Becoming the Woman You Keep Imagining

I think most women have a picture of themselves somewhere in their head, a woman they keep imagining when they think about the life they would really like to live. She wakes up feeling more grounded, takes better care of herself, has boundaries, wears the clothes she actually loves, reads the books she keeps buying, takes herself seriously, has a home that feels like her, spends her time more intentionally and no longer feels the need to explain every decision she makes. Maybe she is more confident, maybe she is softer, maybe she is more independent, maybe she has finally stopped chasing people who make her question her worth. Whatever she looks like, I think we all know her.

For a long time, I thought becoming that woman was something that would happen later.

I imagined that one day I would simply wake up and feel different, as if confidence, discipline, self-respect and certainty were things that arrived with age or with the right circumstances. I thought I needed to get my life together first, whatever that was supposed to mean, and then I would naturally become the version of myself I had been imagining for years. Looking back, I realise how easy it is to keep a woman like that permanently in the future because imagining her is much easier than becoming her.

Becoming her requires decisions.

It requires looking at your life and admitting that some of the things you keep complaining about are things you are also participating in, even if you are not entirely responsible for how you got there. It requires asking yourself what the woman you admire about yourself would actually do today, not in some perfect future where you have more money, more confidence, more energy, more time and fewer problems. She would probably start with what is available to her now.

I have realised that becoming the woman I keep imagining is much less glamorous than I thought it would be. It is not a dramatic reinvention where you cut your hair, buy a new wardrobe, move somewhere beautiful and suddenly become the most confident woman in the room. It is much quieter than that. It is deciding to stop doing things that make you dislike yourself. It is keeping promises to yourself even when nobody else knows whether you kept them. It is learning to leave a conversation instead of desperately trying to make someone understand you. It is putting your phone down when you know you have been scrolling for too long and going to bed because tomorrow matters too.

It is also allowing yourself to want things without immediately talking yourself out of them.

I think women are particularly good at shrinking their desires before anyone else has the opportunity to question them. We tell ourselves that something is unrealistic, unnecessary, too expensive, too ambitious, too feminine, too selfish or simply not meant for someone like us, and eventually we become so accustomed to wanting less that we forget what we wanted in the first place.

The woman I keep imagining does not apologise for having a life she enjoys.

She does not need everyone to understand why something matters to her. She knows that wanting a beautiful home does not make her shallow, wanting nice clothes does not make her superficial, wanting financial independence does not make her cold, wanting a quiet life does not make her boring and wanting love does not make her weak. She has stopped treating femininity as something she needs to defend and stopped treating her desires as evidence that she is asking for too much.

She also understands that becoming who you want to be means becoming honest about who you are now.

That part can be uncomfortable because it is much easier to fantasise about your future self than to examine your present self. You can spend hours creating Pinterest boards, saving outfits, reading about routines and imagining your dream home, while completely avoiding the habits and decisions that would actually move you closer to that life. I know because I have done it too.

At some point, you have to stop collecting inspiration and start changing your behaviour.

If I want to become a woman who reads, I have to read instead of endlessly scrolling. If I want to become a woman who takes care of herself, I have to care for myself on ordinary days, not only when I feel motivated. If I want to become a woman who respects her own time, I have to stop giving hours of it to people and things that leave me feeling empty. If I want to become a woman who trusts herself, I have to make decisions and allow myself to live with them instead of constantly looking for someone else to tell me that I am doing the right thing.

The difficult part is that nobody can really see these changes happening.

You might still look exactly the same to everyone around you while becoming a completely different woman internally. You might still live in the same apartment, have the same job, wear the same clothes and have the same problems, but suddenly you respond differently. You no longer chase. You no longer explain yourself endlessly. You no longer say yes when every part of you means no. You no longer abandon yourself simply because someone else is disappointed.

That is transformation too.

I also think we need to stop waiting until we feel confident before we start acting like the woman we want to become. Confidence is not always the starting point. Quite often, confidence is the evidence you collect after repeatedly showing yourself that you can rely on yourself.

You make the appointment you have been avoiding. You finally apply for something you think you might not get. You tell someone what you actually think. You wear the outfit you have been saving for a better occasion. You take yourself somewhere alone. You start the project even though you are afraid nobody will care. You make a difficult decision and survive the discomfort that follows.

Little by little, you begin to believe yourself.

Maybe that is what becoming her really means. Not becoming a completely different woman, but becoming more loyal to the woman you already know you could be.

I do not want to spend the rest of my life admiring a version of myself that only exists in my imagination. I want to meet her in real life, in the ordinary details of my days, in the choices nobody applauds and the boundaries nobody sees. I want to become a woman who feels like herself instead of constantly performing a version of herself that other people might find acceptable.

I know I will not get everything right. I will have periods where I lose my routine, doubt myself, make the wrong decision or fall back into an old habit I thought I had outgrown. Becoming the woman you imagine does not mean becoming perfect, it means refusing to use imperfection as an excuse to stop becoming.

So I am trying to think about her less as someone I need to eventually become and more as someone I can practice being today.

Maybe she is already there, underneath all the fear, hesitation, people pleasing, old stories and habits that have accumulated over the years.

Maybe I do not need to find her.

Maybe I just need to start choosing her.

Thankful for your presence, Neja