712. You Are Worthy to Change What No Longer Feels Aligned

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16:35

Lesley Logan comes back for part three of the Permission to Change series with a look at niches, alignment, and knowing when something you built has stopped fitting. She shares how a job she carefully curated turned into her own set of velvet handcuffs, and why a life that looks good on paper can quietly start to suffocate. Using stories from her own career pivots, she explains why realigning is not the same as failing. What looks like quitting is often just proof you are ready to grow.

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In this episode you will learn about:

  • The importance of giving yourself the same permission slip you give others.
  • How to extract yourself from a trap without burning your whole life down.
  • Your past niches give you real data, not vibes, to move forward.
  • Stepping into alignment creates permission for the people around you.
  • Why the people who truly get you will support your evolution, not question it.


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Episode Transcript:

Lesley Logan 0:01  

In your life, a lot of things that worked will stop working, and that is not a sign to force it to work. It is a sign to get curious about what will work, so you can get back into alignment.


Lesley Logan 0:13  

Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast, where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousans of people around the world, and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity, and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guests will bring bold, executable, intrinsic, and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and be it till you see it. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started.


Lesley Logan 0:56  

Hey, Be It babe, we are back with more episodes for that Permission to Change series because you requested it. You asked. We've had two already. You can go back and listen to them, or you can listen to this one. They all stand alone a little bit on their own. This one is actually because this one's a little more nuanced in that it's about niches. Niches is typically thought about as in the niche, the riches are in the niches, like what your business is, but it doesn't have to be that you're an entrepreneur and a niche could actually be a habit or a daily routine or a role in your family. So I think that there's a way too. Whenever you hear niche, you can think of alignment versus alignment, right? And so I want to talk about that. But thanks for being here, this is a solo episode week, so we'll have two episodes in our Permission to Change series. This one, and we'll have another one. They'll kind of go together, and I like doing these. I hope you like listening to them. If you hate them, let us know. If you love them, I would love to hear that too. If there's anything you want us to talk about more, we can do that as well. So I wanted to say, I think a lot of us, at the time that you're actually listening to this podcast, the age that I imagine you are, you have built stuff in your life or in your career or a daily routine, something you have created a role in your family or in your friendship group, and on paper it looks really good, and maybe even for a while, it felt really good. At some point, good things we can outgrow them, right? Can feel a little suffocated, frustrated. You want to change it. What I will say is, some of us will end up burning our whole life down, but that's not actually a good idea. Sometimes it is, but most of the time we just need to extract ourselves from the situation, like surgically remove that and evolve it. Right?


Lesley Logan 2:53  

 I'll have a couple stories for you. So one I've told before, one I've told in different ways, different topics, but it's really applicable. So I had really created a good job for myself. The company I worked for, I was known in it. I was successful. People in power knew who I was. I'd impress them. I had a pretty locked-in schedule. I had power and control, and I could do a lot of things, right? And I was on a day off, and I saw an alert on my phone from a boss that I h a d, and it just sent me into a panic attack because while I had created, curated everything that I thought I wanted, I had been doing it for quite some time and had just gotten a little stale and suffocating and stressful, and I didn't know that you could create your own velvet handcuffs, but that's what I did. And I will say in that instance I did not blow everything up. I actually sat down with Brad and thought about, well, what do I want to do if we could snap our fingers, and then how do we carefully build that up so that I can extract myself from this thing that I've curated? Because you outgrow it. I will say that job was really great when I needed it.


Lesley Logan 4:17  

In 2010, I had left my full time salaried job, and I was like, "How am I going to make it?" And they're like, "Do you want this job?" And I was like, "Oh, that is how I'm going to make it. Yes." So it had been a lifeline when I needed it, for sure. And then I had created this niche for myself where it felt so great. And then there was parts of my life that I wanted to evolve, and I couldn't because of this trap that I had, my good- on- paper trap that I created. And I think it can be really difficult because we want to move faster. Ladies, w e don't want to ever be seen as a quitter. Everything should look successful, so we often don't remove ourselves from things because how can we explain that to other people? It's so embarrassing. In fact, it took me a long time to get out of a relationship with a partner that I knew a year prior to I really wanted to get out of, and a year prior to that we even took a break. But because it looked good on paper, and leaving there wasn't a good enough excuse in my ADHD brain. How am I going to do this? What are people going to say about me? All this different stuff, right? It really put me in a position where in 2013 I did blow up my life because that's the only way I felt like I had the confidence to actually get out of it. Like I had to do all of it at one time. Looking back, I probably could have done it a little differently, but I'm so grateful. You cannot take anyone's rock bottoms away.


Lesley Logan 5:52  

I share all this with you because, my loves, too often as recovering perfectionists and overachievers, we often are like, "Well, I said I would do this. I've been successful doing this. This is the thing that I do, so I have to keep doing it. Right?" If you always host Thanksgiving dinners, and it's become a slog, this is your permission slip to no longer host them. If you are always the one setting up dinners with all the girls, and it just feels like no one ever will do it, your full permission to stop. We are allowed to change our mind, to change what works for us, because we are changing all the time. Hello, your body is changing. Your body's changes are signs that even your desires for what feels good in your work and life will change. So we got to give ourselves those permission slips. We give them to other people. Why not ourselves?


Lesley Logan 6:43  

So, the thing I think about when I think of a niche is it really is meant to teach you, right? So, like data collection, right? Whatever job or project or event you did, there is data, actual data, not just vibes to go back on, and leaving my cush job that I curated for myself was not failure. I left on a high note, and a lot of people thought I was silly to leave, right? But I had this data that I have built every single studio I've ran for them. I have turned it around, so I can do that for other people. Right? So I don't need this cush job anymore because I can do that for other people with my own business that I'm creating. And after 10 years of doing that, I felt like I had to evolve again. If you have noticed the change we made at Profitable Pilates, we started doing that in 2024. Big announcement in 2025. Here we are in 2026, and we have another evolution of it. And it's not because I don't love what I'm doing and I'm not good at it. It's because how I am as a coach has changed, and so then the products that I offer have to change. But because I was in that niche, because I did it for so long, I have the data to back up that not only can I make those changes and still help people and still have an impact on people and still make it affordable for people. But I can do it and be successful at it.


Lesley Logan 8:25  

So when you have, when you are, whatever that role is in your family or whatever that project is you've always been doing or whatever, or that business you've been doing, you have data from every single time to show you that you're really successful doing those things, and so you can apply that success and that information and that confidence to everything else you're doing, anything else you're doing, right? And I think we can be really hard on ourselves, especially my ADHD friends, because it looks like we can be flaky because we bounce from one thing to the next. But our brain isn't, we're not flaky. Our brain is literally looking for a dopamine high. So, what I highly recommend, my ADHD loves who are listening, is if you feel like you're bouncing all around all the time and you haven't actually dug into a niche to get that data, then you do need to get systems in place. You do need to get some support from an ADHD expert who can help you put systems in place so that you can get the data from a niche, and then you can find better alignment in other places. You can apply that to where you are drawn to for better alignment. Doesn't mean you have to stick with something you don't like. No, I'm not saying that at all. But you do need to have systems in place so you can get the data, so you can get the confidence, so that you can move on. So you're not seeing yourself as a flaky person, but instead someone who has information and is making better decisions, right? There's, it's a nice way to reframe it. I do think that a lot of us are afraid to change our routines, our habits, our titles, our roles, because we are afraid of what people will think. They'll think we quit, or we must have failed, or there's something wrong with us, and so that creates like a social anxiety. We often feel like we have to figure out a way to articulate it in a way that people can understand us, but my love, that's just your perfectionist talking, because I actually think that the people who truly love and care for you don't need you to be perfect. They need you to be honest, and when you evolve, when you step into alignment, you are actually giving other people permission to do the same.


Lesley Logan 10:43  

So, for example, when I became a Pilates instructor, everybody told me to charge less than these other people because they've been teaching longer than me, like $5. And I was like, "That's so okay. Yeah, I get that. Like, they have more experience than me, but like I'm gonna have to work more hours to make the money I thought I could make doing this." And then I was like, "Well, who are you basing your rates off of?" And they're like, "Oh, we're basing our rates off of this person over here." And I was like, "Well, who are you basing your rates off of?" And they're basing this person over here. And I was like, "Well, when did you raise your rates last?" And they were like, "Oh, I just lowered them because of what's going on with the economy." I was like, "Holy fuck! Everyone is basing their rates off of someone who isn't even giving room for anyone to be underneath them to grow."


Lesley Logan 11:26  

My loves, every time you step into alignment, you are creating a permission structure for those around you, r ight? The rates I charge for sessions allow people who do have less experience than me to make a livable wage, right? So, if people around you don't understand what you're doing, one, that's okay. They're allowed to not understand. You do not have to explain it to them. And two, if they're judging you for it, they're probably not your people, right? So, permission to change friend groups, and I know it's hard as an adult. It's hard to make friends, right? It's truly difficult. There's a reason why my husband and I are best friends, and I know people think that's so weird and whatever, blah blah blah. But honestly, in today's world, for how our lives are, if he wasn't, I would probably not see my friends very much. So it's really nice. But he gets me, and I get him, and we get to give each other reminders to evolve. And hey, you're out of alignment. So the people around you should actually be like, yeah, I saw this coming, and not like, why did you do that? Because if they truly get you, they will see that you are out of alignment, and then this thing you're doing is stepping into alignment. If they are worried about how this affects them, then they'll be a little frustrated, and that's okay. They're allowed to be frustrated. You don't have to do things for other people ever. In fact, if you go back to our slowing down series, you will discover that the more you are curious, the more you are able to see what's going on around you. The easier it's for you to see, like, oh, these are my people, and oh, those aren't my people. That doesn't mean you ditch them. It just means that you don't do things for their benefit. You do things for you, and if it doesn't benefit them, it's okay. It is okay, my people pleasers. It's okay.


Lesley Logan 13:27  

All right, so this is a quick episode, but I just wanted to say that in your life, a lot of things that worked will stop working, and that is not a sign to force it to work. It is a sign to get curious about what will work, so you can get back into alignment. This podcast has evolved; the niche of this podcast has evolved because you have, you, the listener; me, the host. We have evolved. So, in order for this to keep working, it has to be in alignment for what we need, right? So, if you allow me to step into my alignment, you have to allow you to step into your alignment. Can't have standards for other people that we won't give to ourselves. We can't give freedoms to other people we don't give to ourselves. You are so worthy to change things that no longer feel aligned. You're allowed to extract the data from the experience you've had to build up your self-trust and your confidence, so that you know that going into this new thing, you're going to be successful over there too. Because you were successful here, you can learn new things. Look, you did it over there. Goes back to that episode with the guest we had, I believe Megan Applegate, who is like a resume builder, right? She's like, you need to take stock of all of your accomplishments, every single thing you did, even if you're a part of a team, because it's all part of helping you have self-trust and confidence that you can do new things. You can apply that to a new job, apply it to a new niche or a new role, or a new event.


Lesley Logan 15:00  

All right, take some stock, take some data collection time this week. We'll come back with another episode helping you find your superpower. So if you're someone who realizes you're out of alignment and you're not sure what alignment is, we're going to talk about that, so you don't have to start all the way over because that's not always ideal either. So send this to a friend who needs to hear it. And until next time, Be It Till You See It .


Lesley Logan 15:20  

That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day. Be It Till You See It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. If you want to leave us a message or a question that we might read on another episode, you can text us at +1-310-905-5534 or send a DM on Instagram @BeItPod.


Brad Crowell 16:02  

It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan, and me, Brad Crowell.


Lesley Logan 16:07  

It is transcribed, produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.co.


Brad Crowell 16:12  

Our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music and our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi.



Lesley Logan 16:19  

Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals.


Brad Crowell 16:22  

Also to Angelina Herico for adding all of our content to our website. And finally to Meridith Root for keeping us all on point and on time.



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