The Lobster Shell

There's a thing that happens when you're shedding a version of yourself you've outgrown. It’s different from life’s normal hiccups and regular challenges. 

It doesn't feel like growth. It feels like falling apart.

Thanks to this 1 minute video, I call these lobster moments.

How a Lobster Grows | Famous story by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski

A lobster has an exoskeleton meaning its shell is as rigid and immoveable as our bone structure. That doesn’t mean a lobster doesn’t grow.

Here’s what happens: a lobster’s shell is formed around its muscles and organs — internal soft tissue that grows and expands. But since the shell doesn’t expand, a lobster must cast off that shell and grow a new one. 

The catalyst is discomfort. 

Let me say that again. The catalyst to growth is discomfort.

The shell gets too small. So the lobster makes its way to some rocks or coral and knocks the old shell off — breaks it, casts it aside. And then it's just this raw, vulnerable, exposed thing. No protection. All soft tissue and muscle. A new shell grows in, but it comes in a little big — because it has to have room to grow. It's clumsy at first. But then it starts to fit. And eventually, that shell gets too small too. And the whole thing starts again.

That's the cycle. Discomfort → cast off → exposed → new shell → grow into it → discomfort again.

So when you're feeling uncomfortable — in your job, your relationship, your friendships, your habits, your health, your creative life, whatever it is — you have a choice. You can stay in the small shell. It's tight and it's not working, but it's known. Or you can do the harder thing: start removing that old encasing, take the risk of being the raw, meaty, vulnerable version of yourself for a while, and grow something bigger.

The new shell won't feel great right away. It'll be a little clumsy. A little too big. 

Unlike the lobster, you can crawl back into the old one — and sometimes we do. But if you stay with the discomfort long enough, you grow into it. And then eventually, that shell gets too small too.

This is how we expand. The people doing the things you want to be doing — leading the way you want to lead, practicing what you want to practice, living how you want to live — they're not in a shell that fits perfectly. They're working through the next uncomfortable moment. Same as you.

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That stage where the old shell is gone and the new one hasn't hardened yet and you're just soft and exposed and not quite yourself. It's uncomfortable in a way that's hard to explain to people who aren't in it.

I know what it feels like. I have cast aside shells so many times. 

A few years ago I doubted everything — my coaching, whether I wanted to be doing it, whether coaching itself was even a legitimate profession. I wanted to let all my clients go and pretend I was never certified. 

Then I went and did something else for a few years. I still coached on the side, but I mostly did fundraising and comms for this amazing non-profit. This was a role that remade me as a person in ways I didn't expect and couldn't have planned. And then I had the foresight — and I'm grateful to myself for this — to say: OK, it's time to go. And I left in a really beautiful way.

Recently I had a call with someone who took over part of my old role. She had questions, I had answers. We spoke for an hour and not for one moment did I think: God, I wish I still had that job. Not once. That's how I know leaving that shell was the right thing to do.

What I know about the lobster moment is that it tends to hold two things at once that feel like they should cancel each other out. Like wanting to burn something down and also wanting to build it. Like feeling free and also grieving. Both of those things can be true at the same time. They usually are.

The mistake is trying to resolve it too quickly — to pick one feeling as the real one and dismiss the other. The lobster moment doesn't work that way. Like most of life, you have to let it be messy. You have to let it be both.

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Here's what it can look like in practice. Say you've been at a company for a long time. It's not serving you — maybe it hasn't for years — but leaving feels impossible. Your sense of self is tangled up in it. You don't know what comes next. So you stay, and the shell gets tighter, and the discomfort gets louder.

Then you go. You shed the shell. And suddenly you're out there — networking, interviewing, trying to figure out what's actually right for you — and it's exposed and awkward and nothing is certain. That's the raw phase. That's the part that feels like falling apart but is actually the necessary middle.

Then the new job comes. And it's bigger than your last role, and you don't know the culture yet, and you don't know the people, and the impostor syndrome is loud. But you stay with it. You work through the clumsy early weeks. And then one day it starts to fit.

What I tell clients — and what I try to remember myself — is that the discomfort isn't a signal that something went wrong. It's a signal that something is growing. The question isn't how to make it stop. The question is: can you stay soft long enough to let the new shell form?

You don't have to be fearless. You can be scared and still look at it. Still move toward it. Still choose not to numb it or avoid it or explain it away.

The lobster doesn't get to choose whether to outgrow its shell. We do. That's the harder part — and also the more interesting one.