Being born into a family is like being a passenger on a train that’s already in motion. At first this train is your whole world. The only people who matter are those on it with you. Your parents and siblings, aunts and uncles and grandparents. They all seem to be happy enough about the direction they’re going. Like most people, you learn to do like those around you, and they accept you. Before a certain age, we’re going along for the ride. But we can’t let go of auto pilot until we become self-aware.

Until you examine your life and your environment, how do you know if you’re on the right train? It may not occur to you for some time that there are other trains. That there are other destinations. That there are other tracks. But a eventually, a realization sinks in about the people around you: “If I do what they did, I’ll get what they got.”

Autopilot is a predetermined, unchallenged course, often the destructive path of least resistance. A fortunate few are born traveling on a train leading to great destinations. However, many are on trains leading to hardship, heartache, and catastrophe. Maybe your traveling companions are compassionate people, model citizens, and ideal parents. Maybe they’re highly successful in ways that you want to emulate.

But possibly you’re on a train where the norm is violence, addictions, or a myriad of destructive patterns. Without examination, you’ll likely follow in those footsteps. What is the best track for you? Are you on your chosen path or one that’s been determined for you?

How do I figure out who I am?

In my youth I stayed on a certain track, curious to see what would happen or where it would lead. After a few disasters, I’d look back over the events and learned to interpret warning signs I’d missed. There were always opportunities where I could have averted a calamity—if only I’d recognized the signs. When I deceived myself with half-truths, irresponsibly evaded problems, and shifted blame, those were the traveling companions I attracted to my train. From them, I learned even more destructive habits and lifestyles.

There were things about me that I didn’t like. Rather than change them, up to then I pretended to be something I wasn’t. It didn’t solve the root problem—I still didn’t like aspects of myself. Until I faced my shameful shortcomings, I would suffer the consequences of my bad behaviors.

Introspection helped me learn from my errors. When I backtracked a disaster back to the point where it first jumped off track, I recognized red flags I’d ignored: uneasy gut feelings, doubts, ideas that rang false, crazy narratives that sounded too simple or too good to be true. Oftentimes, people wiser than myself tried to warn me. Despite making serious mistakes, I’m a quick learner.

If I don’t know where I came from, I may not know where I’m going or why I’m going there. If I can trace my behaviors back to the source—who I learned it from—I can see how that behavior is working out for that person. What I realized was that it wasn’t working at all. It was this reality that arrested my attention.

First, I decided to be brutally honest with myself in all my interactions. After all, If I can’t be honest with myself, why would I be honest with you? I paid attention to my thoughts, especially the “little” ways I justified bad behavior—just a form of self-deception. I even looked at my weight on my driver’s license. I can either get down to the stated weight, or list my true weight. Yes, weight is a small thing, but how often do I say, “it’s not a big deal”? Little “white” lies add up. If I’m heavy, I must own it. If I don’t like it I can change it. If I’m deceitful, I have to admit that to myself, or accept that certain aspects of my life won’t change.

My self-deception was based in thinking the real me wasn’t good enough, and wanting people to believe in a better version of me than what was true at the time. I use that as motivation to become a better person. Wherever I lack, I can search for role models demonstrating behaviors I want, and work to emulate them. By facing my limitations, I can choose how to make improvements; I can create a new truth for myself.

I let go of self-deception and decided to be a work in progress. As I operated in honesty and transparency, new individuals who valued integrity replaced the old circle of friends. My trajectory changed, better options came my way and I was happier and more content. I found myself functioning at a more peaceful level. Until I changed myself, I wouldn’t attract the people I truly admired.

Make peace with your past self

While working on my personal non-fiction book , I had an epiphany. As I sifted through my past, I kept running into memories that left me feeling ashamed of the girl I used to be. Part of me wanted to excise her and sanitize her. For the sake of the book, I couldn’t do that. Instead, I owned that broken, selfish, dishonest, and manipulative young woman. I told her story as honestly as I could, the way it happened. It was because of who she was and what she went through, that I became who I am today. Each trial was formative. Each misstep revealed a character flaw needing repaired. Each hard-won lesson was a painful struggle toward personal victory.

Beating myself up about who I used to be doesn’t serve anyone. I can be grateful that I didn’t repeat many of my missteps. I can be grateful for the strength that facing those failures brought me. That girl from the past is a benchmark of how much I’ve learned and how much I’ve changed. I left her off many stops ago. The kind of person you are determines the people who will be along for your train ride. This is changeable. Our destination is not the condition of the road we travel to get there. Who we become along the way determines our final destination.