How to Get A Life When You’ve Forgotten You Had One

Image created with AI by Renetta Smith.

Have you ever looked up one day and realized that the life you’re living feels smaller than the life you once imagined?

Not because you failed.

Not because you were irresponsible.

But because somewhere along the way, survival replaced joy.

I didn’t lose myself intentionally. It was gradual. So gradual that I didn’t realize it was happening. I made intentional choices. I built a career. I built a family. I pursued advanced degrees. I prioritized what mattered most in each season of my life.

When survival required focus, I focused.

When responsibility required narrowing, I narrowed.

But survival has a way of becoming permanent if you don’t consciously step out of it.

At some point, without realizing it, life becomes smaller than it once was.

Not because we stopped caring…

but because responsibilities, disappointments, weight gain, aging, stress, caregiving, and the juggling act of balancing work and family quietly pushed our joy to the background. We convince ourselves to defer joy.

And one day we look up and realize: “I’m still alive… but I’m not fully living.”

This isn’t a reflection about “finding” yourself as if you were careless with your life. It’s about recognizing when adaptation quietly turned into hiding, and learning how to step back into the parts of you that are still alive.

Maybe your life was repurposed once on purpose… for others. You dug your heels in deep to remain steady for your family.

Now challenge yourself to repurpose again on purpose. This time… for you.

In my blog no more hiding: More Than a Mantra, I briefly talk about how I found my way out of hiding after a long bout with depression when my daughter moved abroad for college. At one point I looked in the mirror and saw someone I didn’t recognize:

In this blog, I want to share the No More Hiding™ Self-Work Breakdown Structure for rediscovering yourself and returning to joyful living. But before we get into the framework, we need to define something important:

Self-work. This is a big one. No need to go find your highlighter, I’ve highlighted for you.

Self-work is the discipline of looking at your life with honesty and taking responsibility for the patterns, choices, and boundaries that shape it. It is the ongoing practice of choosing growth, choosing yourself, and building a life that reflects who you truly are.

Self-work is rediscovering yourself every day towards building a life that authentically reflects YOU. Living authentically requires effort because you must constantly check in with yourself to ensure you are aligned with who you want to be. This is real effort. You have to put your back into it. No one can do it for you. There’s no surrogate to bear the load. Self-work is the discipline of looking at your life with honesty and asking what role you played in the patterns you want to change. It means taking responsibility for your healing, your boundaries, and your growth instead of waiting for someone else to rescue you from a life that no longer fits.

Self-work isn’t punishment.

It’s permission.

Permission to grow into the woman you were meant to become.

As a professional project manager, I’ve spent years using structured methodologies to bring complex technical and civil engineering ideas to life. Every successful project starts the same way: understanding the problem, defining what success looks like, creating a plan, and executing it step by step. One day it occurred to me: if we can manage multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects this way, why can’t we apply the same intentional thinking to our own lives?

But somehow, when it comes to our own lives, we expect transformation to happen by accident. Self-work should be in the way of your life — something you trip over every day until you start living differently.

That’s when I began developing what I call the NMH Self-Work Breakdown Structure™ — a way of approaching personal growth with the same clarity, discipline, and accountability we use in our professional lives. Self-work isn’t a task you complete once and move on from. It’s a practice that renews itself every day — every time you choose honesty, courage, and the life you truly want to live.

Personal transformation doesn’t happen by accident. Every meaningful change begins with an honest commitment. I didn’t rediscover myself in one dramatic moment. I did the work, step by step. And even today, joyful living isn’t automatic. I wake up every day and choose myself again.

The goal is not to chase happiness or joy.

The goal is to live fully and authentically.

Joy emerges naturally when you do.

Let me explain quickly: In 2024, what made me feel like my true authentic self was being brave enough to go to the driving range alone practicing my swing for an hour hitting balls with different clubs. That activity gave me joy -- extreme joy because I was brave enough to do it alone in front of strangers. In 2026, what makes me feel like my true self is playing in an 18-hole golf tournament on a difficult course I've never played before with 100's of other golfing strangers. I've grown alot in two years. I'm more confident...a braver version of my authentic self -- AND WOW DOES THAT BRING ME JOY! Heck yeah it does!

The NMH Self-Work Breakdown Structure™ breaks personal transformation into a series of commitments designed to help you stop hiding and begin living fully again. The first of those commitments is courage.

Before you can redesign your life, you have to be brave enough to acknowledge that something needs to change. Courage is the moment you stop pretending everything is fine and give yourself permission to imagine a life that feels larger, fuller, and more authentic again.

Joy is a by-product of living fully and authentically. There’s no need to chase joy. When you live fully and authentically, joy meets you where you are.

Self-work auto-renews daily.

In future posts, I’ll walk through the remaining commitments of the NMH Self-Work Breakdown Structure™ and how they work together to help you stop hiding, choose yourself, and build a life that feels fully lived.

Live Whole. Live Seen. Live Free.

Renetta