Stop Trying To Reinvent Yourself ► Explained With Dark Souls

Lock in, reinvent yourself, come back unrecognizable. Everyone wants to make big changes in their life and it sounds super motivating until you realize this mindset is actually saying who you are right now isn’t good enough to be happy. We love to imagine ourselves as a totally different person. We think that once we’re no longer the way that we are now, then everything will be okay. Then we’ll be happy. Once I get a job, once I have this amount of money, once I

Achieve this thing in my life, then I’ll be happy. And I think the reason so many people feel lost on self-improvement is because they believe they need to replace themselves to be okay. And believe it or not, we even see this happen directly to a character in Dark Souls. Patches the unbreakable. Patches is the only character in Souls games that has returned and been in almost every game. There have been characters who look similar but aren’t exactly the

Same. But Patches has been here the whole time. He’s not a hero. He’s not noble. He doesn’t have some big grand destiny. He tricks people. He pushes them off cliffs. He punishes the greed of others, even us. And somehow he survives every age of the world. While kings fall, while chosen heroes give up, entire civilizations collapse. Patches never goes hollow. But how and why? Most characters in Dark Souls tie their identity to a story. I will save the

World. I will be a great knight. I will fulfill my destiny. Solair wants to find his own son. Siem wants to be known as Brave. They wanted this big change in their life. Once Solair got his son, he would be like, “Wow.” Like everyone knows him as the guy with his own son. Super powerful guy. Once Sigmire could do something that would carve his honor and bravery into history forever, then he would be happy because he would

Finally be known as brave by everyone, a hero. Both of these characters wanted to be this grand hero. But then when the world doesn’t cooperate, when things get hard, when reality doesn’t match their story, they break. They lose hope. they lose direction and they go hollow. But Patches never tied his identity to a future version of himself. He didn’t think once I become this then I’ll be okay. He didn’t need approval. He didn’t need to be remembered. He didn’t even

Need to be important. He just kept doing what felt internally true to him. He noticed greed. He exposed it. He laughed and he moved on. And that rhythm stayed intact no matter what age the world was in. But in Dark Souls III, the world is ending. There’s barely anyone left. And something strange happens. Patches forgets his name. He forgets who he is. Not because he failed, not because he became weak, but because there’s no friction anymore. No one to interact

With, no greed to punish, no action. And without action, even patches loses his sense of self. He starts going by the name of a lap because he forgot what his name was before. So how did he manage to fix it then? Patches doesn’t sit down and reinvent himself, think to himself, and try to force himself to become someone else. force himself to become this new lap person. He doesn’t adopt a new identity. He doesn’t lock in. He

Tries to remember who he is. He goes to purging monuments and recollects his memories there. He remembers. And the moment he encounters greed again, the instinct returns. The rhythm returns. The self returns. Not through thinking, but through doing. Patches didn’t survive because he changed who he was. He survived because he never abandoned himself. And the moment he stopped acting from that place of true internal motivation, he disappeared. That’s the real danger. Not stagnation, not failure, disconnection from

Yourself. People go hollow when they attach their identity to external goals rather than an internal rhythm. And they try to fix that hollowess by becoming someone else instead of trying to return to themselves. Now, it’s not a bad thing to have goals, of course not. It’s a good thing to have goals and pursue them. But there’s a difference between pursuing goals and it never being enough. And for a lot of us, it feels like it’s never enough. And when I say

Never enough, I mean if you don’t do it, then you won’t be happy. If you don’t have something in your life, then you are less than other people. When your goal becomes your identity, you start feeling like if I don’t achieve this, I don’t deserve to feel okay. This exact thing happens over and over again in Dark Souls. Most characters in the game attach their identity to the goal they strive for. So Leair of Ator wants

To find his own son. We don’t even know what that really means. But to him, that is the thing that will make him whole. When he can’t find it, he doesn’t just fail. He loses himself. Seigmire of Katarina wants to be brave. He wants to prove it to others, to history, maybe even to himself. But every time he falls short, that identity cracks a little more. And eventually, he goes hollow, too. The crest fallen warrior watches

You succeed where he didn’t. and instead of changing, he collapses under the weight of what he failed to become. They don’t go hollow because they’re weak. They go hollow because their identity depended on an outcome. A lot of us aren’t chasing our goals for the sake of growth. We’re chasing permission. to finally accept ourselves, permission to relax, permission to exist without shame. For me right now, I’m just going to be honest. I have this feeling like if I can get a million

Views on a video, then I’ll be okay and all my problems will go away. Once I can get my physique to a certain level where like I’m not so skinny and my neck isn’t so skinny and like maybe my shoulders are broader, then I’ll be like, “Okay, that’s enough now. I’m I’m okay with how I am now. That now I can stop.” And these are not bad things to be pursuing, right? I feel like a person needs goals

And these are good goals for me to be pursuing. But will they make me happy? I mean, will they actually solve all the problems in my life? Or is it just kind of like treating the symptoms but not finding the underlying cause? Like using a band-aid on a gunshot wound? I even remember when I was in high school, I was thinking every day like once I graduate, I’ll finally be free. Then I graduated and it barely meant anything.

Then it was once I turn 18, life will really start. It didn’t. Then college, once I graduate, I’ll be happy. Everything will be figured out. You graduate and yeah, people clap for a bit, but then the only thought left is what do I do now? The old problems disappear, but the new ones are heavier and suddenly you you miss the past. You feel nostalgic. You think things were easier before, but it wasn’t easier. You just managed to see the other side of

It. So, why does this keep happening? Because changing your situation doesn’t change your relationship with yourself. Most modern self-improvement is just an escape in disguise. looks maxing, productivity systems, aesthetic living. Everyone is chasing the exact same blueprint, wondering why they still feel empty. But if you’re just copying what everyone else is doing, you’re not becoming more yourself. You’re becoming more average. And that’s why locking in actually feels so tempting. Because if I could just become someone else

Completely, then I wouldn’t have to deal with myself anymore. But wherever you go, there you are. When was the last time that you actually asked yourself, “What do I want?” And maybe you think to yourself like, “Well, actually, I think a lot. I’m a pretty deep thinker, pretty deep guy.” Then why are you still unhappy? Maybe you’re doing everything right. You got into a highpaying job. You followed the advice. You optimize the path. But what if the thing you

Chose doesn’t actually make you feel alive. Maybe you’re not failing. Maybe you’re just living someone else’s idea of a good life. like patches. We need to find what it is inside of us that actually makes us happy regardless of what other people think and follow that thing, that purpose, the best that we can. Do I really in my heart want to be doing this or am I just doing this for someone else? Am I doing this because I

Want to do it or am I doing this because I want someone else to see me doing it? What if you’re just adding better problems, but they’re still not your problems? Life will always have problems. The goal isn’t to eliminate them. It’s to choose the problems that belong to you. Problems that come from something that you actually care about, not something that you think you’re supposed to care about. You don’t fix your life by becoming someone else. You

Fix your life by returning to yourself and acting from what feels internally true. Not because it’s easier, but because it’s real and because that’s how you don’t go hollow. And I just think that it’s pretty interesting that for patches when he lost his way, he didn’t just go hollow like other characters, but he was given time to reclaim his internal purpose again. Everyone else trying to search for their external goals just never finds it and then just

Ends up going hollow. But Patches did something that we’ve never seen before in Dark Souls. He became someone else, but he didn’t go hollow because he still had this internal purpose inside of him. I think Dark Souls is trying to say that it’s not quite over yet. If you lose your way, you don’t have to go hollow right away. You can just take some time and remember who you are again. Anyway, that’s all I have to say for today. If

You like Dark Souls and self-improvement, I have a new free community that you can join. It’s just a link in the description. I also have a new course about how to genuinely fix your life, but like explain with Dark Souls. So, if you’re interested in that, then the link is also going to be in the description. No pressure. Just check it out if you think it’s interesting. Take care, guys. Don’t you dare go hollow.