688. Have You Outgrown a Version of Yourself

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23:34

Have you outgrown a version of yourself but haven't fully let her go? In this first installment of a two-part series, Lesley Logan opens up about the quiet, often uncomfortable process of recognizing you've changed, and the signs that gradually show up. Pulling from her own career pivots from retail manager to Pilates instructor to business owner, she shares how resentment, shame, and nostalgia signal it's time to let her go.

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In this episode you will learn about:

  • Why outgrowing happens slowly before it happens all at once.
  • How resentment can be a signal that something needs to change.
  • The trap of trying to be "both people" mid-transition.
  • Replacing vibes with data when you're ready for the next move.
  • The real reason letting an old version go feels like grief.


Episode References/Links:

  • Ep. 163 with Claire Sparrow - http://beitpod.com/ep163
  • Betsey Johnson – https://www.betseyjohnson.com
  • Profitable Pilates: Everything But the Exercises by Lesley Logan - https://a.co/d/0hTekOJl
  • Submit your wins or questions - https://beitpod.com/questions

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Episode Transcript:

Lesley Logan 0:00  

It is one thing to realize you've outgrown a version of yourself, and it's another entirely different thing to let her go, because it's emotional. You can be forced to outgrow different things, because situations changed, and you can make those decisions yourself. But either way, like, we're all gonna go through it. 


Lesley Logan 0:20  

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 thousands 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 guest 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 1:02  

Well, hey Be It babe. Hello, welcome to a series with me. No guest today, it's me. We're talking about outgrowing who you used to be without having shame and guilt, and this weird thing that we tend to do to ourselves when we're overachievers and recovering perfectionists, which is, "Oh my god, I should have known better." But that's not it at all; we're always here to learn and grow. Hopefully, if you do this life right, you are always learning and growing, right? So it's interesting because I think this could be a really subtle thing, because I think outgrowing who you are does happen in subtle ways. I guess it could happen in fast, big ways, but I do think it's actually kind of a volcano. There's things brewing underneath for a long time, and then it's, "I'm ready to come out, I'm ready to be here." So it's also really big, outgrowing who you used to be. 


Lesley Logan 1:52  

The other day, when I recorded this, I posted on my Instagram account a series of photos of me from, I said they are from 2010, I'm pretty convinced the first photo is from 2008, right after I became a Pilates instructor, and I'd been inspired by Claire Sparrow, who's a guest on our podcast. She's like, "Hey, look, I posted a picture of me as a baby instructor, you should post a picture of you." And it was so cute, and she kind of, I was like, "I think I should do that, especially because I've just not been loving social media lately." I'm like, "Why not? Why not do this thing, right?" So, anyways, I was like, "Do I even have those photos?" Of course, I don't. My phone, the photos kind of really start from 2013 because the cloud didn't really exist, and so you would have, I guess, keep things. I'm not really sure. In fact, to be honest, I have pictures of myself as a child, and I have pictures of myself since my iPhone started. How did I have as many pictures of myself, now that I think about it, from between high school through college and my retail work, which is such a bummer, because what great outfits I would have had. 


Lesley Logan 2:56  

Anyways, I went on Facebook, and I went to my old profile and cover photos, and I actually did find these photos. And you guys, just so you remember, if you all go back in time 16 and 18 years ago, you'd hire photographers to take pictures of you doing something. Now you just set up a thing, click your watch, your phone takes great pictures. Now, I have to hire photographers, and now looking at these photos, I'm like, "Wow, I thought those were great photos. Look at the quality of those photos." No offense to the photographers who took them, but, man, I mean, my goodness, if cameras can outgrow themselves, we certainly can. So I was going through the photos, and one of the things I saw was, "Wow, I was young." And not that I look old now, not by any stretch of the imagination—I'm not saying that, I don't even think I am old—but I am looking at those photos. I have to just be honest, when people say that they think I look like I'm in my 30s, I look like I am a child in some of these photos. Holy cow, people let me go into bars looking like that? Oh my god. So I definitely... okay, this is a side tangent, but welcome to ADHD. You know how when you watch Pretty in Pink and 16 Candles, they all look like such adults, and we're like, "We didn't look like that. Why do we...?" I don't know, because I look back and I'm like, "Oh my god, I look like a high schooler," and I was a graduate from college by several years. But anyways, so the first thing I thought was how young I was, and, whoa, when was my hair brown? I forgot I had brown hair. It's not the hair color that I have now, but the first photo, if you look at it, my hair is brown, and then it slowly gets to red, and then even more blonde-red, which is closer to what it is today, and it was super short, and that was in 2010. 


Lesley Logan 4:42  

The third thing that I thought was that I am so different from this girl. I'm so different—not in a bad or a sad way, just 16 to 18 years of having outgrown her. The clothes she wore, I'm even like, "What am I wearing?" Styles do change, but, what? I mean, they're cute, they're all Lululemon. Hey, from a baby instructor, I was buying the brand designer. But the way I dated, I'm obviously not with that person, but I remember looking at this picture going, "Oh, I know who I was with at that time. Oh my god, oh my god, what was I into?" And I also, going back, I was thinking about the expectations I had, the fears I had, the dreams I had, the goals that version of me set. I'm so different from that person—the risks that I would take, all of that. Anyways, it was kind of funny to look at those photos and go through that, and then go, oh, I'm recording an 'Outgrowing Your Old Version of Yourself' podcast. How hilarious is that? On this pod, we actually have a lot of guests who talk about, "I used to be here, this happened to me, and now I'm here," right? And it's all great, it's all inspiring, it's all super helpful. Sometimes we get some really detailed nuggets, but I don't think we acknowledge or take the time to talk about the shedding process. What does it feel like to let go of that, right? 


Lesley Logan 6:13  

So, this week will be two parts about growing your old self. So, we're going to talk awareness in comparison today, and then Thursday we'll get into the release and action, just so, because I know you guys like a roadmap. You guys like a roadmap. And by the way, if you do love our podcast, one of the best ways you can do to support our podcast is being an OPC member, so I do hope you check us out, what we're doing there, because there we do a lot about connecting to who we are and what we want, and if you are feeling like you want to outgrow the version that you're in, OPC is a great place to be. 


Lesley Logan 6:43  

Okay, so let's get into kind of just like I think, I think to outgrow yourself, I think would just be fun. I feel I have a lot of stories. So let's just talk about when I became a Pilates instructor, I was still managing a retail store and high-end accessories, and I really thought I could do both. In fact, I wanted to do both, and I don't know that I am trying to think back, like, did I not think I could? Did I not think I could make a living teaching? It's possible, especially because my first year of teaching, I was just teaching the mat while I was going through a comprehensive training, and also, you know, I became a teacher at the recession, so, like, a lot of people were always talking about how they didn't have enough clients and not enough money, and I had this like safe job, right? Like, just a laugh, it's retail, but I had this like safe job, and my commissions were going down, like I could see the writing was on the wall, even when I moved to LA the year before, Orange County was hitting, getting hit sooner, but I did live in LA, and I did have student loans, and so I definitely thought, well, I love my job, I'll do this, and I'll teach Pilates, and so I kind of just was like, I could do this, so I'm just adding to who I am, like such the overachiever. 


Lesley Logan 7:52  

Somewhere, though, in 2009, here, there were definitely some shifts. If I think back about who she was and what she was going through, there were shifts. And, you know, I don't think, I think it's okay to not really notice the shifts. In fact, it depends on how old you are listening to this, if you're on the younger side, you're not going to have that intuition we talked about in previous podcasts, because you haven't had experiences yet. So, for sure, I mean, in 2009, how old was I? '83, 2009, right? Someone can do the math. So just the life experience, I hadn't really outgrown a lot, because I maybe outgrew high school and outgrew college, but I hadn't really outgrown, here I was, doing this big girl, feeling like a badass boss babe, running things, and I didn't even know what a recession could do. So I definitely couldn't see the signs that things were shifting, that I was wanting more, that I was wanting something different. Now I can, because I've done reflections on all these different things, I can see the signs. 


Lesley Logan 8:57  

But at any rate, I don't even know, also, that I was too aware. I think sometimes when you're younger, you're thinking you'll live forever, and so you're not necessarily aware that I'm not liking this anymore. Because you just keep going and you keep doing, and also, when you have the job that I had, people were envious of that job, and so it's really hard to go, "Oh, I don't want this," because also I had people telling me how crazy and amazing it was that I had it. So I can see the signs now that it was time to make a change, and that there was a desire, and I was no longer fitting into the life I was wearing or living. I now really understand that when I have resentment, there's something that needs to be changed. And so I do remember, at that '09 time, that I was resentful of the job that I would go to full-time in retail when a client wanted an extra session that week but I was working. And I remember getting frustrated that I could only teach for three hours and I had to go to my other job, or I had to drive in traffic to go teach, and wouldn't it have been nice if I could have just not had to deal with this traffic? I was already there teaching, so I just remember being a little frustrated about that, and I just started to feel like the store was holding me back from making more money, which is funny, because I was keeping the store job to have more money. But I remember going, "Okay, I think what I really need to do is do less hours at the store and more hours teaching." So this is how I was outgrowing this retail girl, but I wasn't brave enough to cut the ties. 


Lesley Logan 10:31  

So after having that resentful stuff and getting frustrated and thinking about it, I came to this new conclusion that I should just shift the hours from one to the other. So I told the owners of the store that I was managing that I wanted to step down to basically a part-time manager, which is a key holder, and then I would be able to have extra days teaching and still have some days off. And they agreed, and ta-da, and I was training up the next manager, and then, two weeks-ish before everything was set to switch over, the owner said, "I have to let go of the other part-time girl." And I was like, "What?" And they're like, "Yeah, we don't need two part-time girls, because we'll have a manager and we'll have this person, and then you, so we don't need this as an extra person." And I remember thinking, "Oh, I didn't think about that." Here I thought, the store is going to benefit because I'll be working these three days a week, so my clients can come on these three days. When you worked in retail back then, people had a salesperson, so they'll still make their money, I'll make my commission, and so that's a win for them, because they felt like family at the time. So I definitely didn't want to screw them over in the outgrowing of myself that I was doing. And, by the way, that's a habit, a bad habit, I would say, there's no bad habits, I mean, but a habit, an unbecoming habit that I have is making sure that the changes I'm making, because I need to, and my life is going a different direction, don't always negatively affect them, and I'm trying to solve that for them, versus they should solve it for themselves. In that conversation, I realized they weren't letting me do what I was doing, but it wasn't going to be because they're going to keep everybody in their business, and it was during the recession, so they weren't gonna let her go. And I was like, "Oh, because I've known her, I hired her, I trained her, she was really great, I know she needed the money." I went home and thought about it, and I was just not okay with keeping this job and her getting fired, because as I thought about it, I was like, well, what happens when I do have enough clients that I could leave, right? Then they're going to be short someone, and then I'm really screwing them over, because they fired this great girl, and on top of that, she got screwed over because she doesn't have a job in retail during this time. So I kind of feel mad, but it was the kind of the slap-in-the-face wake-up call that I needed to just quit so she could keep her job. 


Lesley Logan 12:53  

And it was somewhere in the middle of figuring that out that I realized that I could make a living teaching, and I didn't want to be in between. I wanted to go all in, and I think that's an important part. When you are outgrowing a version of yourself, there is this tendency to try to do both, be both people, keep the friends of the old life while you're in the new life, keep the clothes of the old life when you're in the new life, keep the schedule of the old life when you're going to the new life, because we don't want to let things go. We don't want to lose things; there's nostalgia for that. It feels safe, it feels comfortable, even though it's uncomfortable, right? It feels careful and doesn't have as much fear. So anyways, time goes on, right? I end up managing a store, a studio, excuse me, for the high-end fitness company that I switched my life over to. They heard about my management experience, they saw the great teacher that I was as a baby instructor, but the potential that I had, and I kept climbing the ranks, much like I did in retail, kept getting promoted, kept getting promoted. And I just felt like a big fish in a small pond. I got lots of accolades, and people at the top of the company knew who I was, similar to my last job. So I had grown to this new identity, but in doing all of that, I'd written a book called Profitable Pilates: Everything But the Exercises, and people were reading it, and they're wanting coaching calls, and I had a studio where I was renting space where I could make a little bit extra cash, and then I had retreats. So here we are, you know, this is now around the 2015 time. My book had been out for a while, started business coaching, and I had really grown as high up as I could at the time with the skill sets that I had for this company, and I was feeling the same resentment; it came back. So here I come to this new version of myself, Pilates teacher, and then Pilates teacher trainer, and then Pilates studio manager, and then Pilates regional manager, and Pilates business coach, and Pilates studio renter. And I could tell that I was outgrowing this again. I was outgrowing myself again. I could feel the repetitive resentments, the frustrations, the overwhelm, and I was getting exhausted because I wanted to be coaching more people in their business, but I had to run nine other businesses and this teacher training program. 


Lesley Logan 15:17  

And so I think what's interesting is that even though the signs were the same, that I was outgrowing a version of myself, it doesn't mean that I fell into the last version of myself. I definitely became the Pilates instructor and the studio owner, all those things. But as she grew and she got more information, she was figuring out who she was, and I hate talking in the third person like that, so sorry I'm doing that, but as she was doing those things, she got more clear on what she wanted and what she no longer needed. And I think that's really important when you start outgrowing yourself; there's some things that you're doing because you always have done them, but you don't need them anymore, you know? And so I, while I took all these promotions, part of it was because I wanted the salary, because I wanted certainty still, and I wanted the health insurance, but I'd gotten to a place where I was understanding the business enough to truly understand that I didn't need those safety nets anymore, that I could make them myself, and so I just outgrown that person in me, too. What's interesting is in 2015, I did things a little bit different. I didn't do the, "Hey, I'm going to do this and I'll be here for that." No, I sat down and did some math with my husband, then he was my fiancé, we figured out what steps I needed to take in my own personal business so that I could let go of something, and we made it data over vibes. I think that's really important, because as we outgrow versions of ourselves, sometimes we are going off of vibes and trying to make reasons about how things we feel, and you know what, we got to get out of our head and get into the stats and just write down the evidence. What is real? What is really happening? Where am I going with this? How is this going to happen? And so I went from being this person who wanted to help everybody and support the mentor that I had, and be on this big team, and be a team player, and truly watch this company continue to grow and make a big impact in their space, to going, "I want to make my own impact. I want to be a bigger deal." And so it was scary to want to be a fish in a bigger pond, and I definitely worried, "Oh my gosh, does anyone know who I am when I do this?" But I did it. I got rid of the management gig in 2015, and I did stay on for a little bit for the teacher training because I actually really enjoyed it, but I will say in 2016, that resentment was starting to grow again, and I was like, "Oh, here it is." And I started just quitting things, just quitting this and quitting that. I quit my retail, quit my, as a head of commercial agent, I had a modeling agent, I was like, "I'm quitting that, I'm quitting this." I was shedding, because I was like, "To go into the next thing that I'm doing, I can't have any distractions." And so that was really different. 


Lesley Logan 18:04  

So, instead of going from being an employee in retail to being an employee in Pilates, I'm now going into being my actual own business owner. And to be that version of myself, I have to really lean into the things that I want to do and let go of all the other things. And here's the thing, it is one thing to realize you've outgrown a version of yourself, and it's another entirely different thing to let her go, because it's emotional, right? Like, who knows? Mine were only like five and seven-year stints, but sometimes these are 20-year stints. Sometimes you were married for a long time, and now you're divorced, and so now you're in a new version of yourself there. I'm sharing work, outgrowing versions of myself, but you can outgrow all you can. You can be forced to outgrow different things because situations changed, and you can make those decisions yourself, but either way, we're all gonna go through it. And the hardest part is letting that go without making a version of yourself wrong, or having shame, or thinking, "I should have done it sooner." I definitely played that game. I'm like, "Oh my god, I should have just quit sooner. I should not have taken that promotion." When you reflect back, you can start to see how the signs were there that you've outgrown what you're doing, and honestly, you're just grieving, and grief has all those stages, right? You have the anger and the sadness and all the things, right? So I think it's really important to feel those emotions and to feel the discomfort and to go through the grief, because if you don't let those things go, then you're just going to try to take them into the next version of yourself, and that's not going to work. And we'll talk more about that on Thursday, and then also it leads to being stuck, which is a series we're going to do in a couple of weeks. So anyways, I hope that just sharing some of my stories of different versions of myself help you think about that, because I think what could be really important is you reflect back on your life and the different versions you've had, right? You've had. I used to really feel like I needed affirmations from other people that I was on the right path, and I think it was around 2020, when we were all forced to be in different places, that I was like, "I do not need affirmations from other people. I'm on the right path," because everyone thought I was so crazy that Brad and I were moving to Vegas, buying houses, they thought we were nuts, out of our mind. Best decision we ever made. Everyone's so like, "Oh my god, thank God you did that. Can you believe you did that? What a great timing that was." Yeah, I can believe it, because I didn't listen to other people.


Lesley Logan 20:43  

So, there's these different versions of ourselves. These versions of ourselves require certainty over our uncertainty, or other people's opinions versus listening to our own gut. And I think the beautiful thing is, the older that we get, and this is why I do think it's fun and beautiful to get older, is that you know yourself so well, it's actually easier for you to go, oh, that's not me anymore, I'm not doing that anymore, right? I don't wear that anymore. Those are not the right clothes. You know, I was looking at my closet, there was a dress I haven't let go of because it's a Betsey Johnson. It was one of the first designer clothes I bought, and I actually do think this dress is so beautiful, and Betsey Johnson is popular again. This dress should just actually be in a museum, it's so beautiful, because when I go to put it on, I'm like, this doesn't look like anything I would wear. And so, sometimes we don't realize that we've changed until we put on an outfit that we've worn, and we're like, this isn't me at all, right? So, anyways, take some time to think about and reflect on how you've outgrown different things, and then I would also say, take some time to reflect: do you like how you did it, knowing what you know now? What would you do differently? Have you outgrown a version of yourself, but you didn't fully let her go, like you're trying to hold on? All these things are really good questions to ask yourself, because it will help us in our next episode. 


Lesley Logan 22:02  

So, until then, my loves, please share this with a friend who needs to hear it. I really want to grow this podcast. I want to help more and more people. If you like these series topics, send in the topic you'd like us to discuss for two, four, even six episodes. And until next time, Be It Till You See It. 


Lesley Logan 22:18  

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 23:01  

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


Lesley Logan 23:06  

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


Brad Crowell 23:10  

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


Lesley Logan 23:17  

Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals.


Brad Crowell 23:21  

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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