The Addiction to Becoming
Written by Alena Elchaninova, Life Coach
Alena Elchaninova is a London-based International Coaching Federation (ICF) certified life coach, artist, and Pricing Director. Guided by the belief that nothing is broken but much can be seen and integrated, she supports human beings in moving from inner friction and self-abandonment toward greater awareness, personal agency, aligned action, and consciously integrated living.
What if the endless search to become better is actually keeping you from fully accepting who you are today? This article explores how self-improvement, perfectionism, and constant striving can become a way of escaping ourselves, and how true change begins with acceptance rather than rejection.
We are taught to value becoming.
Become healthier. More successful. More confident. More healed. More secure. More evolved.
There is always another version of us waiting somewhere ahead. Somewhere other than here. Somewhere in the future.
There is nothing wrong with growth.
But sometimes, underneath all that growth, is a simple belief:
Who I am now is not okay.
That changes everything.
Because once that belief is in place, self-improvement stops being expansion.
It becomes escape. Every attempt to become better reinforces the idea that who I am in this very moment still needs to be fixed.
The self as a renovation project
You start working on yourself.
Your body needs improving. Your career needs progressing. Your relationships need fixing. Your nervous system needs regulating. Your confidence needs building. Your patterns need healing.
Even healing can become another performance review.
Am I better yet? Why am I still triggered? Why am I not further ahead?
The self becomes a permanent renovation project.
There is always another room.
Another crack.
Another thing to fix before you can finally relax. Before you can finally start living.
“I will live when all of this is sorted. When I am finally okay.”
The problem is not wanting to change.
The problem is the verdict underneath the change:
There is something wrong with me.
Every attempt to fix yourself can keep that verdict alive.
When you spend your life trying to prove that you are worthy, enough, or okay, you may be reinforcing the very belief you are trying to escape: that somehow, you are not.
The best version of the same story
This is where self-development becomes clever.
You can become stronger, thinner, richer, calmer, more accomplished, and more self-aware while keeping the exact same identity underneath.
I am not enough.
You simply become a more developed version of it:
A successful person who still feels unsuccessful. A beautiful person who still feels unacceptable. A loved person who is still waiting to feel lovable. A financially secure person who still experiences scarcity.
You can spend years becoming the best possible version of a limited identity.
If the belief underneath is still “I am not enough,” every achievement becomes temporary reassurance.
The finish line keeps moving.
It has to.
The project depends on you never arriving.
Not everything you want is desire
We rarely question wanting.
I want more money. I want a relationship. I want a different body. I want more success.
But sometimes what looks like desire is actually resistance.
Resistance to what is here now.
Sometimes “I want this” really means “I desperately do not want that.”
I want money because I do not want to feel financially unsafe. I want a relationship because I do not want to be alone. I want success because failure would confirm something I already fear about myself.
In those moments, we are not necessarily moving towards what we want.
We are running away from what we do not want to feel.
Maybe the better question is:
What am I trying not to experience?
Perfection was supposed to make you free
A lot of becoming is really an attempt to reach a place where nothing can go wrong.
If I am attractive enough, I will not be rejected. If I have enough money, I will be safe. If I make the right decisions, I will not regret anything. If I understand myself deeply enough, I will stop suffering. If I do everything correctly, perhaps life will finally go according to plan.
But all of this can take our freedom away.
We begin watching ourselves constantly.
Did I say the right thing? Did I eat too much? Did I waste the day? Am I progressing? Am I falling behind? Did I make a mistake?
You wanted to become perfect so you could finally be free.
Instead, perfection became the prison.
Somewhere in all this, "you" disappear
There is another cost to endlessly managing yourself.
You stop participating in your own life.
You are here. But are you really?
You become so focused on preventing the next mistake and optimising the next outcome that you stop living your life. You keep trying to become someone who will finally deserve to relax.
Maybe the thing missing from your life is not the better body, the relationship, the money, or the next achievement.
Maybe the thing missing is "you."
Not the improved you.
Not the healed you.
Not the future you.
You.
Change without rejection
None of this means we should stop changing.
We can still want more. Grow. Heal. Choose differently.
The question is simply where that change comes from.
There is a difference between:
“I need to change because something is wrong with me.”
and:
“Nothing is wrong with me. I can still choose something different.”
One comes from rejection.
The other comes from curiosity.
From being present in your own life and actually living it.
You still change. You still become.
You get to be here while it is happening.
You get to be you. Here and now.
If you recognise yourself in this constant cycle of fixing, improving, and trying to become someone who will finally feel okay, this is exactly the kind of work I explore in coaching.
Book a free conversation with me to see what living differently might look like for you.
Read more from Alena Elchaninova
Alena Elchaninova, Life Coach
Alena Elchaninova is a London-based ICF-certified life coach, artist, and Pricing Director working at the intersection of self-awareness and practical life change. She supports individuals who feel internally conflicted despite functioning well on the outside, helping them move from self-abandonment to self-trust, personal agency, and clear, conscious action. Her work explores inner narratives, emotional and somatic awareness, and the integration of different parts of the self, translating insight into grounded, aligned change. She brings both structure and depth to the process of meaningful realignment.
