The Butterfly Effect: On Wanting to Be Something You’re Not

I’ll blame the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad summer I had for this delusion I had of wanting to become a butterfly.

Not an actual butterfly, of course. I know I’m not an insect. But I’d been in such a dark place – from a severe infection on my leg, to losing my sweet, sweet dog Oke, and sustaining injuries in a car wreck that totaled my car- that I saw a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of getting accepted into an exclusive training program.

I had it all planned out. I would travel across the country, I’d knock the socks off the other students and instructors with my experience, my passion, and my knack for teaching. When I came back, I’d re-emerge from the dark cocoon of grief, illness, and injury, brighter, shinier, and ready to make an enormous impact by sharing my new skill set.

But that’s not what happened. Not at all.

Instead of the transformation I’d hoped for, I came back sleep-deprived and disillusioned, a rough version of myself. I even lost four pages of raw reflections I’d written, which I thought might be for the best. 

As I traveled home, inspired by one of my favorite podcasts – “The Emerald Podcast” – I wrote out a long plan for a detox, and a reset. The primary focus of this period of cleansing and renewal would be getting enough sleep, a subject matter that I teach, but know from a lifetime of experience that it’s easier said than done.

Slowly but surely, I started to feel like my normal self again, and for the second time that summer, I pulled myself up out of a deep, dark hole.

The evening I returned home from San Francisco, I met up with one of my best friends for dinner, and over our conversation, it dawned on me: I didn’t need to become someone different. I just needed to come back to myself.  I’m not a butterfly. I’m Katie Carlson. Purposeful, passionate, playful, resilient, unapologetic Katie.

It’s hard to blame myself for wanting life to be different, but I was failing to utilize one of the most powerful tools in my toolbox, me. My truest, most authentic self.

Like many people, particularly women, I struggle with “imposter syndrome”. As a civilian working in the field of law enforcement wellness, I feel pulled between knowing that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, and a sense of defensiveness, feeling I need to prove that I belong in my field.

This sense of wanting to fit in draws me toward certain modalities of healing and wellness because they are more highly “accepted” in the field of public safety. My belief in the power of these more accepted modalities is deeply real. I’ve witnessed them in action. I’ve watched them work, over and over again. But that doesn’t mean I need them to justify my existence.

One positive thing, however, stuck out from the training. Even in a room of incredibly impressive people, folks with unmistakable credentials in the field, when the topic of conversation turned to holistic wellness practices, like yoga, wellness, and breathwork – and it did on multiple occasions – suddenly my credentials were unmistakable. 

Compared to about 64 hours of training in the widely-accepted healing modality, and another 24-30 as a practitioner, my yoga teacher training was 200 hours, and my meditation teacher training was 300 hours. I’ve taught almost 450 hours of yoga, and about 100 hours of teaching meditation. I’ve spent more than 400 hours, just since 2021, in my own meditation practice, and over 18 years, it’d be impossible to guess how many hours I’ve spent in yoga practice, but at least 1,000.

I don’t need to justify my existence, nor do I need to doubt the impact of my work in the field of public safety. The proof is in the pudding.

This whole thing has given me a much higher degree of compassion for people I see trying to figure out who they are, folks who are trying to figure out the truest version of themselves. So long as they aren’t causing harm, I’ll now try to suspend my judgment of them as inauthentic.

I went through a course recently with one of my favorite teachers, Nikki Myers, called “Healing Secrets, Healing Self”, and she would often reference Michaelangelo’s meticulous work on the statue of David in which discussed the pre-existing completeness of the status, noting that he just needed to chip away at everything that wasn’t David.

Our paths to authenticity, more often than not, are a matter of subtraction, not addition.

Over the course of our lives, we pick up a lot of stories. Families tell us what we should value. Political parties tell us how we should vote. Religious doctrines tell us what we should believe. Industries tell us how we should look. Corporations tell us what our goals should be. Social media accounts tell us how we should be doing in comparison with others.

All of this conditioning, all of these added layers, sediment, if you will, cloud our vision of the truest version of ourselves. The self that has always been there, that will always be there. 

I saw an Instagram post recently that said “Two people to impress: Your 5-year-old self and your 85-year-old self.”

So there’s good news, and there’s bad news. The good news is that we can in fact metamorphosize, though the timeline is different from that of a butterfly. We can transform our bodies, our minds, and our souls. The bad news is that you aren’t going to come out on the other side a different person. Yep, sorry, you’re stuck with you.

All of the physical conditioning and plastic surgery in the world can’t change the purity of your child-like soul and it can’t erase the scars that have been acquired along the way. But you can shed all of the things that you are not.

Unlike the metamorphosis of a butterfly, which is brief and linear, human transformation is cyclical and deeply rooted in our previous life experiences. Our transformation is ongoing, and even our truest, and most authentic versions of ourselves can shift and take new forms over time. 

When you are in your purpose, living your truth, being your most authentic self, it won’t matter what anyone else thinks. You might fall. You probably will, but you’ll fall forward. You might get criticized, but it can’t hurt you.

It might take some shedding, some cleansing, some experimentation to find the real you. But you’ll know it when you find it.