This is my eucalyptus tree – I walk by it nearly every day and do my Chi Gung exercises beneath it.  It’s a grand tree – it’s about 80 feet tall.  You can see the smooth branches (which are about 1.5 feet in diameter) and whitish colored bark. Do you see the shreds of bark hanging over the forks between branch and trunk?  This tree sheds its bark generally every year. The smooth branches have lost their outer layer of bark.  I googled eucalyptus and only found one statement as to why -that the tree grows fast and it keeps making new bark – it outgrows the old.

Anyway, my eucalyptus inspired  today’s article.  I worked with several clients today who are shedding their current identities (what we believe, what we love and fear, our values, what we’re willing to express in the world) and restoring long lost ones or creating new ones. The new brilliant identities are bright, eager, a little shy or scared – they’ve been under the bark of more familiar, weathered, and  hardened identities for years, decades, a lifetime.  Or they are just being created anew.  Nature continues to let go of what’s done, recycle it, and nurture new beginnings.  We also do that through shedding identities that are no long big enough to hold who we are becoming.   The changed identity shows up in new actions, words, choices, relationships, and beliefs.  Just like our bodies grow and change every year,  our identity changes.  Perhaps we are too slow to change it once we become adults.  We forget that growth can happen all through life.

What brilliant new identity is ready to shove the current one to the side and show up for you?  I invite you to leave a comment.