Imagine that you have this big, cozy, expensive sweater you’ve saved up to buy for years and years.

• You make mood boards of what you’ll wear the sweater with

• What events you’ll wear the sweater to

• Even who you will become once you own that sweater

One day, you finally purchase the sweater. As soon as it arrives on your doorstep, you unbox it. But before you even look in the mirror, you know something is wrong. The sweater feels itchy and suffocating. The color makes you look gray and lifeless. Instead of making you feel chic and understated, you look frumpy and uncomfortable.

Sometimes, who we have become in our own lives can feel like that sweater. We work and plan and strive for years to attain and achieve, but at the end of the day, when we’re alone, we wonder how we could feel so lost and unfamiliar in our own skin.