The “Becoming”

You are not the same person you were three years ago.

Think about it for a second.

The things you know now that you didn't know then. The problems you solve easily that used to keep you up at night. The version of yourself that existed before a particular hard season, a particular conversation, a particular moment that changed something quietly and permanently.

You became this person. Not all at once. Not through some dramatic transformation.

Just gradually, through the living of your life, you grew into someone you weren't before.

That's “The Becoming”. And it's been happening to you your whole life whether you were paying attention or not.

What it actually is.

The Becoming is the process of growing into the person you need to be - for your farm, your life, your relationships, yourself.

It's not a destination.

It's not a finish line you cross and then you're done.

It's not a self-improvement project with a completion date or a checklist you work through until you've fixed everything that needs fixing.

It's just growth. Ongoing, inevitable, available to you in every season.

But the difference between The Becoming happening to you and The Becoming happening for you is direction.

We're all changing all the time. That's not optional, we're not static creatures. But we can choose the direction.

We can grow toward the person we want to be or we can grow inward, reinforcing the patterns and the stories and the ways of being that feel familiar even when they no longer serve us.

The Becoming is what happens when you choose the direction.

Why it matters for your farm.

When I first started working with fellow farmers and ranchers, I taught business strategy: planning, systems, marketing, the practical mechanics of building a direct-to-consumer operation that actually works.

And the strategy was good. I know it was good because some of the farmers I worked with took it and ran. They implemented it, iterated on it, grew into it, and built something real. They figured it out.

But most didn't.

Not because the strategy was wrong. Not because they weren't capable or hardworking or committed.

They were all of those things.

The strategy was the same. The information was identical. The opportunity was equally available to everyone in the room.

What was different was the person in charge of implementing it.

Some farmers were ready to become who the strategy required them to be — to step into the identity of someone who charges what their product is worth, who asks for help, who makes decisions from clarity instead of fear, who believes the farm can be different than it has always been.

And some weren't. Not yet. Not without doing a different kind of work first.

That's when I understood something that changed everything about how I coach: the strategy wasn't the ceiling. Their beliefs about themselves were.

And no business plan in the world can take you higher than what you believe you're capable of.

Which means the most important work you can do for your farm isn't in the field or the spreadsheet or the marketing plan.

It's here.

In this quieter, less visible, more personal territory of becoming the person your farm needs you to be.

That's not a detour from the business work. It's the foundation of it. Everything else is built on top of this.

What it looks like in practice.

The Becoming doesn't announce itself. It rarely arrives as a dramatic revelation.

It looks like a belief you used to hold that you no longer hold.

A fear that used to stop you that you now walk through, not because it's gone but because you've grown bigger than it.

A decision you make easily now that would have paralyzed you two years ago.

It looks like raising your prices and surviving the discomfort of it and discovering that the customers who matter stayed.

It looks like hiring someone and learning to let go of the doing.

It looks like having the hard conversation you'd been avoiding for months and finding out it wasn't as catastrophic as the version in your head.

It looks like looking back and not quite recognizing the person you used to be.

Not with judgment. With something more like tenderness: “She was doing her best with what she knew”.

You know more now. You'll know more still.

That's The Becoming.

Small shifts compounding over time into a person who is genuinely, measurably different from who they were before.

It doesn't have to be hard.

This is the part that surprises people most.

Farming culture has a deep belief that growth has to be earned through suffering.

That if it came easily it doesn't count.

That the harder the road the more meaningful the destination.

I don't believe that. Or more precisely, I believe the hard things will find you regardless. You don't have to go looking for them. Life is 50/50.

What you get to choose is whether you grow through them or just endure them.

The Becoming isn't about manufacturing struggle.

It's about staying curious. Staying open. Asking who do I want to be in this moment, not just who have I always been.

Making small intentional choices in the direction of the person you're trying to become and trusting that those choices compound.

As I always say — done scared is better than perfect never.

It's not a sprint.

It's not a hustle.

It's a direction you choose and then keep choosing, quietly, persistently, in the ordinary moments of an ordinary farming life.

And here's what I know to be true after years of doing this work: the becoming is always available.

There is no wrong time to start.

There is no version of yourself too stuck or too tired or too far behind to begin growing in a new direction.

You are capable of more than you currently know. Much more. And the only way to discover how much more is to start moving toward the edges of it.

One last thing.

The Becoming is never finished. You will not arrive at a final version of yourself and then be done.

For some people that sounds exhausting. Like an endless treadmill of self-improvement with no rest stop in sight.

But I've come to see it differently.

It means you don't get to live just one life. You get to keep growing into new versions of yourself, each one shaped by everything that came before, each one more fully you than the last.

• Every season teaches you something.

• Every hard thing grows you.

• Every door you open reveals another one worth opening.

That's not a burden. That's the whole point of being alive.

The Becoming is not something you finish.

It's something you inhabit.

A way of moving through your life that stays curious, stays open, keeps reaching, not from fear or desperation or the feeling that you're not enough yet, but from the quiet confidence that you are capable of more than you currently know.

And you are. I promise you that.

This is the work I do with farmers.

Not just business strategy. The work underneath, helping you become the person your farm and your life need you to be.

If you're curious what that looks like, I'd love to talk.

Book a free chat with me here →

If this resonated, you might also want to read:

¿A qué te dedicas? You are not a farmer. You are a person who farms. — The identity work that lives directly underneath The Becoming

You can't outperform your self-image. Here's what that means for your farm. — The invisible ceiling that's keeping your farm stuck and how to raise it

Nobody warned you that hitting your goals would feel like this — What happens when you've been becoming someone and arrive somewhere that doesn't feel like you expected