I used to study people I admired. Obsessively.

Their routines. Their decisions. Their tone. I thought if I could copy them well enough, I would become them — and then I would be successful, happy, or at least less lost.

And it worked — for a while. I made progress. I learned things. I built skills I didn't have before. But I also felt a growing distance between the person I was becoming and the person I actually was. I had built a house on borrowed land.

The turning point wasn't a failure. It was a small crack that kept widening.

I copied someone whose directness worked — and it made me harsh. I copied someone whose optimism worked — and it made me ignore real problems. I copied someone whose discipline worked — and it made me rigid.

Their methods worked for them because they were built on their own evidence — their own personality, their own history, their own blind spots. When I copied the method without the context, I ended up with something that looked right but didn't fit.

So I stopped. Not cold turkey — gradually. I started asking different questions. Not "how did they do it?" but "what would it look like if I did it my way?" Not "what's their system?" but "what's mine?"

I didn't find my way by copying one person perfectly. I found it by copying many people poorly, feeling the mismatch, and slowly sanding down the edges until something that felt like me emerged. Not because I've memorized a framework. Because I've lived it.