We’re allowed to outgrow our heroes

I used to think that once someone earned my respect, they held that real estate forever. That if I had learned from them, quoted them, or recommended them, I owed them my continued admiration.

But here's what I've learned: the people who shaped your thinking over the years do not have to be the people guiding you today.

Maybe their work hasn't evolved while ours has. Maybe we have developed more critical thinking and found gaps in their perspective. Maybe they said something that made us realize the pedestal was doing more work than the person standing on it.

Growth means standards get sharper. The shenanigans detector gets better. The full picture is in view over the highlight reel. We don't owe anyone permanent relevance in our life just because they were important once.

Taking Inventory of Our Influences

When's the last time we reflected on who's taking up space in our heads?

I'm talking about the people whose content we consume, whose opinions we consider, whose frameworks we default to when we're problem-solving. The thought leaders in our feeds, the authors on our shelves, the voices that shape how we think about our work.

Here's a prompt: Pull up the podcast app, bookmarks, or "following" list, look at the last five articles saved or the last three newsletters actually opened and ask: 

• Are these people still saying things that challenge me or am I just consuming out of habit?

• Do their perspectives reflect the complexity I now understand about this work?

• Would I recommend them to someone I respect today, or would I need to add a disclaimer?

• When I read or hear their work, do I feel energized or obligated or did I just roll my eyes?

Wincing at any of these answers is data :)

How to Know It's Time for a Breakup

Every relationship doesn’t need a dramatic exit. But some need clean breaks. Here are the signs it might be time to sunset someone from our rotation:

Their advice doesn't scale to our reality anymore. Maybe their frameworks worked when we were earlier in our careers, smaller in scope, or facing different problems. Now their guidance doesn’t fit and might even be slowing us down. 

They've become a brand more than a thinker. When someone's entire presence is about promoting their book, their course, their framework, or their keynote, and there's no actual substance left underneath, they've stopped being a resource and started being a product.

Their certainty hasn't aged well. The people who were so sure about “The One Right Way” five years ago and haven't shown any evolution, nuance, or willingness to say "I was wrong about that" - they're not growing. If they're not growing, they're not helping us grow either.

We're performing agreement. We see their post, and our first instinct is to nod along because we used to respect them, not because what they said actually landed. That's muscle memory, not alignment.

We've crossed over into hate-following. We keep them in our feed specifically to get annoyed. We read their posts and mentally draft rebuttals we'll never send. If our primary interaction with someone's content is irritation, that's not professional development. That’s just another source of a cortisol spike. We're still giving them our attention, our energy, and our headspace. To what end? 

The pedestal is doing more work than the person. We keep giving them the benefit of the doubt, explaining away their takes, or justifying why we still follow them. If we have to work that hard to maintain respect, the respect is already gone.

The Quiet Fade

Goodbyes can serve like a sunset; beautiful, comfortable, and marks a natural ending to a period in time. So let’s sunset some folks; a quiet, intentional, and undramatic closure: 

• Mute instead of unfollow

• Skip the episode without deleting the subscription

• Move that book to the bottom of the stack

• Redirect our attention to people who are doing more interesting things

This isn't about canceling anyone or deciding they're a bad person. It's about recognizing that their season in our lives has passed. They were helpful then but they’re not helpful now. Both things can be true.

Finding New Heroes (Or Not)

The goal isn't necessarily to replace every person we sunset with someone new. Sometimes the goal is just to create more space - for our own thinking, for voices that aren't trying to be thought leaders, for ideas that haven't been packaged into a “seven-step framework” yet.

If we are looking for new influences, we can be more selective:

• Look for people who show their struggles as well as their wins

• Find thinkers who cite their sources and admit their own limitations

• Diversify resources - if our circles only look and sound like us, we are missing out 

• Follow people who are still actively doing the work, not just talking about having done it

• Pay attention to who's asking interesting questions, not just giving confident answers

Our heroes should evolve with us - or we should feel zero guilt about showing them a sunset.