Outgrowing People, Places, Environments & Becoming a New Person

In todays episode I talk about how outgrowing people, places and your old way of life may be terrifying, but how it's all a sign that you are evolving into a brand new version of yourself. Without shedding and letting go of what no longer serves us we can never tap into who we are truly meant to be. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You are in the middle of a metamorphosis, a profound change, losing old identities and stories and people and everything that you once knew as home. And it might be terrifying, it might be horrifying. You might be like, why is this all happening to me right now? But it's all a part of your evolution. Hey guys, I'm Laura and welcome back to Learn to Love You, a show all about self-love and personal wellness and learning how to heal the most important relationship that you have in your life, which is the one between you and yourself. Together we'll unlearn all the conditioning that has kept us down over the years as we learn how to have happier, healthier, more secure, and loving relationships with ourselves. Whether you're a new listener or a returning listener, welcome. I'm so glad to have you here today. This episode today is gonna be real juicy. Ooh, yes. Just get ready for it. Get ready for the juice of this episode. Because this episode really resonates with where I'm at in life right now. So therefore, I'm bringing the passion from a place of experience. And you might resonate with this topic right now, too, because it seems like a lot of people at this phase of their lives are going through the exact same thing. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about how losing things might feel like a terrible and horrible thing. But in reality, it could just be a sign that you're outgrowing things, people, and places that no longer resonate with you. And this is just because you're going through a transformation. You're becoming someone new. And not everyone and everything can follow you to that next version of yourself. Now, for the past year, my life has been a series of endings, heartbreaks, failures, life-altering situations. And if you've been following the podcast for a while and you know my journey about moving to the Bay Area and you know how that had happened, then you'll know exactly why I'm in this predicament. But if this is your first episode and you're brand new here, let me explain. It's a long story, but in short, I lost my job, lost all the friendships that I made over the past two years, broke up with someone, moved to a different city that didn't end up working out and had to move back three months later. And currently I'm in the middle of having a quarter life crisis in which I don't know who I am, what I'm doing with my life, or where to go from this point. And over the past year I've been asking myself the same question. Am I doing something terribly wrong? Have I done something terribly wrong? Did I cause all of this to happen somehow? Like why have there been so many breakdowns and losses and heartbreaks and failures? And a few weeks ago I had a tremendous breakdown. And when I tell you tremendous, I mean tremendous. But that breakdown forced me into a space of stillness and silence, one in which I had no other option but to just sit with myself. Because during this breakdown, I kind of lost all sense of direction. And this breakdown forced me into a place of not knowing where to go next. And so I kind of just froze. I froze in the silence. I froze in the stillness because I didn't know where else to go next. And what do I do when I face such breakdowns as these, you ask? I climb a mountain. And yes, when I'm stressed, I love to take extremely long walks, and sometimes those walks lead me into uncharted territories. But while I was up on this mountain, I had an epiphany. I realized that the reason why I've been losing so many things that meant so much to me, so many friendships, so many relationships, a whole way of life that I built up into this point had just been wiped out overnight. The reason why I've been losing all these things was because I'm going through some form of metamorphosis. I'm going through this profound change and I'm becoming a brand new version of myself. And in order to become her, old parts of me and old ways that I've been living in have to die. And if these old ways of life don't crumble, I can never tap into the new version of myself that I'm becoming. And in order to become who I'm becoming, certain things, certain people, certain places that don't resonate with where I'm going have to fall off. They can't follow me into where I'm going. And maybe we don't know who we're becoming yet, but for some reason, these things and these people and these circumstances and these behaviors aren't a match for where you're going and who you're becoming. And it's really, really tempting to start believing that there's something wrong with you, or you're being punished, or you've done something terribly wrong, and that's why you're experiencing all of these losses. And trust me, I've been having all sorts of thoughts like these too. But good news, there is nothing wrong with you, and you're not being punished. You're just in the middle of a metamorphosis. You're just changing shape and evolving into a brand new person. And yeah, it's hard. There's a lot of grief in this process. There's a lot of mourning and sadness in this process. There's a whole lot of losing your identity in this process and having an ego death in the middle of this process. And it can make life feel like one big blur. Like, what is going on right now? What even is life anymore? And these are all valid ways to feel, and it's totally understandable why you feel this way. Now, this little metaphor that I'm about to use might be a little bit overrated, but I'm still gonna use it anyway. It's kind of like you're going from a caterpillar into a butterfly. When a caterpillar goes into the cocoon, it basically dissolves into this goo, into this liquid. It loses all of its shape, all of its form, and it basically just dissolves into a bunch of nothing. It no longer feels the same. It no longer looks like a caterpillar, it no longer looks the same. And it basically doesn't even resemble a caterpillar in any form of way anymore. And in that cocoon, the caterpillar probably doesn't even know who it is or what it is anymore because it's transformed into this substance. It basically becomes unrecognizable as the caterpillar that it once was. But from that dissolving and from that breaking down, it emerges into its true nature. It emerges into the butterfly that it was always meant to be. But it could not do that unless it first dissolved out of its caterpillar form. And when we go through these immense changes and these huge losses in life, parts of us dissolve. Breakup, we dissolve. Losing friendships, we dissolve, losing a job, we dissolve. Little parts of us, and sometimes big parts of us, end up dissolving with everything that we lose because all of these things are a part of our identity. We kind of lose our identity as we lose certain things. And so it's normal to feel like you don't know who you are anymore without all these things in your life. We kind of go through this ego death of losing everything that once felt familiar to us. And it's really easy for us to ask the question, who am I? Who am I now that all of these things that I once knew and everything that felt so familiar to me is now gone? And over the past few months I've been asking myself, who am I? Who is lore? What is lore? What is lore doing? What is lore supposed to do? But if we never experience dissolving, then we can never become who we are meant to be. And how does this work, you might ask? Great, I'm glad you asked. If everything in our lives was always predictable, we had the same friends forever, we were happily ever after in love with the same person since we were young and we never broke up with them. We had our shit together a hundred percent of the time, we were always on top of our game. And if everything was sunshine and rainbows 24-7 and we never faced an ounce of adversity or an ounce of pain, do you know what would happen to us? We would stay a caterpillar forever. We might be comfortable, sure. But living in our true potential, really living a fulfilling life? Not at all. But when we dissolve in life and when we face these painful situations, that's where the true metamorphosis lies. Because without dissolving and losing things that no longer serve us, we can never receive what actually does serve us and what does benefit us. And if we don't receive what benefits us, then we can never become who we are truly meant to be. But this is a mystical and magical even place to be. Because in this cocoon, that's where the real growth happens. And you won't be in this cocoon forever, but while you're in it, this is a sacred place to be. You are undergoing a beautiful transformation, baby. And it might not feel beautiful, it might feel like it's absolutely horrific and terrifying, but you are becoming something magnificent through all of this. When you emerge from this experience, you are going to transform into a big, beautiful, radiant butterfly, and you could have never gotten here had you not dissolved in the first place. But now I'm going to take the episode into talking about some signs that you might be outgrowing certain people, places, and things. Maybe you feel drained in the job that you have right now. You're just watching the hours tick by, you're counting down the hours until you can just go home and be yourself because this job is just sucking the life out of you. Or maybe the relationship that you're in right now is just not fulfilling you. Your needs aren't being met. You're always getting into arguments. You feel like you're not being seen or heard or valued as the person that you are. Or maybe you feel like you don't have the same interests as your friend group anymore. Maybe they all want to do something that you feel like you've outgrown by now. Maybe they're all on this page, but you feel like you're entering into a new page. And I just want to backtrack and say that there's nothing wrong with you for feeling like you don't resonate in these spaces and with these people. And whenever we go through an evolution, there are going to be things, people, and places that are not going to be able to follow us to where we are going. And not everything that we know right now is going to be able to match the rate of our evolution either. We might be way up here, but this thing or this person might be all the way down here still. And maybe at one point these things were truly a match for you. This relationship was absolutely everything that you wanted. This job felt good enough for you. These friends felt like they were filling your cup. But as you become a new person and your desires and your perspectives and your values change, not everything is going to change with the rate of change that you're going through. And you might have the same name as you once did, but everything else about you is changing, and everything else about you is different because you're becoming a new person. And I'm gonna go back to the butterfly metaphor again here. Imagine your entire network of people, your friends, your partner, your coworkers, everyone that you associate with, even your family. Imagine them all as a bunch of caterpillars. But as much as being a caterpillar is cool, you recognize that something about it just doesn't feel right to you anymore. You feel like you don't resonate with being a caterpillar, and there's something within you that feels the need to expand, the need to change, the need to pursue some form of growth. And as you choose transformation and growth and you start to bloom into a butterfly, it's gonna feel really hard to connect with the caterpillars because you are no longer a caterpillar. Do you feel like the butterfly feels like a better match with a bunch of caterpillars or with other butterflies? And it's easy to connect with things when you are a match to those things. When you are literally resonating at the same frequency as these things, it's easy to connect with these things. But as you evolve and you literally transform into a different being, which is happening right now, by the way, not everything is going to match the person and the being that you are becoming. But there's nothing wrong with the caterpillars for being caterpillars. That's just where they are. But there's also nothing wrong with the butterfly for transforming into one and no longer feeling like it fits with the caterpillars. This is just what's meant to happen as the butterfly enters into a new stage of its life. Okay, Laura, well, this has been a great perspective and all. However, I don't feel happy about it. You're not supposed to feel happy about it. That's the thing. You're not supposed to be happy about this. It's okay not to be happy about this. I mean, props to you if you feel happy about this, but 99% of us feel like this is absolutely awful and terrible, and it hurts, and it's sad, and it's hard, and it feels terrible losing things. I've honestly been kicking and screaming my way through this entire experience. There is so much grief involved in losing things that you once felt like you connected with. There's a lot of pain when it comes to outgrowing people. There's a lot of pain with feeling like you no longer resonate in these spaces with these connections and these people and these places that you've built a connection with. And there's no way to bypass the heartbreak or to go around it. The thing is, it is just a part of outgrowing things. It's a part of outgrowing things. The heartbreak is just a part of the entire process. And if you're in the thick of it right now, if you're going through the depths of the heartbreak around it, it's really not time to look at the higher perspectives and focus on how could this be a good thing? How can I see it in a higher perspective way? No. Meet yourself where you're at. If you're in the thick of mourning right now, take all the time that you need to mourn the losses that you're experiencing and facing right now. It's really unrealistic to feel happy about your entire life changing and crumbling and you losing all these things and people. You just have to let yourself mourn the losses. No matter how long it takes, you first have to allow yourself to mourn all these losses. And if anyone just tells you to just get over it, well, they can go kick rocks because it's really not that simple. Grief is a part of the process of outgrowing things. And it's really not supposed to feel fun. This is not a fun process. But just because you're grieving the losses doesn't mean that you're weak or that you're hung up on these things or you can't let them go. You're just in the process of shedding these things. And shedding can be hard and painful and sad. The grief is a part of the dissolving, it's a part of the metamorphosis. And you can't transform, truly transform, without the grief being here. Because remember that if we don't dissolve, if we don't dissolve into the pain, we can never transform into who we're meant to be. And it might take you a while to feel okay about everything, and that is totally normal. Don't force yourself to try to get through the heartbreak and the grief. Just let it take its time. Let it take its time. Allow yourself to sit with it. Allow yourself to miss these things, to miss these people, to miss your job that you lost, or whatever it might be that you feel like you've lost right now. But just like everything in life, this too shall pass. And you won't always be in this position. You will get to the other side of this and you will look back and realize that all these things that I shed, I was meant to shed. I was meant to release these things because it's part of my highest good. It's part of my evolution. Also, please don't force yourself to resonate where you don't resonate. Now I've done this so many times before, feeling like I have to force myself to hang out with people, force myself to work jobs that I don't actually want to work, force myself into situations and into environments that really don't feel aligned with who I am and my values or my path. And honestly, I've done this for a plethora of reasons. Sometimes I don't want to seem rude, sometimes I don't want to seem stuck up or that I'm better than other people. And so I just say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes to everything, everyone that comes my way. But does that really bring me true fulfillment? Does that really make my heart sing? Is that really a full body yes? Or is that just me feeling like I'm obligated to give this thing my time and attention and energy, even if I really don't feel like I align here? But this is just my own people-pleasing energy that I obviously need to work on still. And something that I'm trying to push myself to do more is to only say yes to things and yes to experiences and yes to people if it feels like it makes my heart sing. If I don't feel absolutely thrilled to do this thing or to hang out with this person or to pursue this path or whatever it might be, then there's just a good chance that my body and my soul and my higher self is just trying to tell me that I just don't resonate here. And your soul is going to let you know if you resonate somewhere based on how you feel. I'm recently realizing that feelings are the greatest indicator of where you're aligned or you're misaligned. If you feel like the life is being sucked out of you being somewhere, there's a good chance that you're just not in alignment there. If you feel like you can't truly be yourself around certain people, then there's just a chance that these people aren't resonating with you. And I realize that making this podcast, speaking to the camera, making these videos, writing, editing, scripting, whatever I do for this podcast, this makes my heart sing. That's because this is in alignment with my path. Now let's say that I had a job in tech where I was sitting at a computer for 12 hours a day coding. Now my heart would definitely be saying something to me, but it wouldn't be singing. It would be screaming for me to get out of there. And that's just because coding is something that I just know that I don't resonate with. And if I were to force myself into a job that involved coding, I would be committing an atrocity against myself. And this can apply to people in relationships too. There have been times in which I've forced myself to hang out with certain groups of people or to be in certain relationships or to be in different settings with different people in different environments. And I would try so hard to make it work with people just so I would have a friend group, just so I wouldn't feel lonely, just so I could fit in. But I ended up feeling lonely anyway and unfulfilled anyway because I just didn't resonate with these people. My soul did not sing to be with these types of people, and so I just ended up feeling drained and disconnected anyway afterwards. And if you don't feel like a better version of yourself after hanging out with these people, if you feel like you're absolutely drained around these people and they suck the life out of you, or you don't feel like you can be your true self and your authentic nature around them, then that just means that these people might not be a match for you. And there's nothing wrong with you for feeling like you don't resonate. And it doesn't make you rude, it doesn't make you stuck up, it doesn't mean that you are better than other people or that you'll never make any other friends again. These just aren't your people, and that's okay. You will fit better with those who you actually feel like you resonate with. And so it's really important to go off of how you feel around other people. Not just if you think like, oh, maybe this can work, maybe we can have a chance, maybe this can bloom into something. Yeah, maybe it can. And it's always important to put yourself out there and to give things a shot. But if there's something inside of you that's like, oh, I don't know if I feel right being around these people, I don't know if I can really feel like I can be myself, I don't really feel like they have the same values as me, then that's just your soul talking, baby, and it's up for you to listen. But Lore, what if I never find those people that I fit with? What if I never find those friends that I feel like I belong with? What if I never find that relationship that truly makes my heart sing? What if I change too much and I evolve too much to the point where nobody ever resonates with me? What if I die alone? Great questions. I constantly ask myself the same things. Transformation is a lonely process. Let's just get that straight. It is a lonely process. But I feel like we can't truly undergo transformation in who we are unless we spend some time alone. And if we can't let go of what serves us because we're afraid of being alone, then we can't actually invite in what truly resonates for us. And if we really want what resonates with us, if we really want to discover those things that truly resonate with our heart and soul, then that means that we have to get to know ourselves on a deeper level. And that often involves spending a significant time alone. We might just have to face periods of loneliness and isolation. And I know this can be a terrifying thing for so many people, but from someone who spends the majority of their time all by themselves, I can vouch for you and say that it's not as bad as you might think it might be. I'll be honest, I do feel lonely from time to time. Don't get me wrong, I definitely do. And I might feel FOMO a lot of the time because I don't have a friend group to do things with. I don't have friends that are always around me 24-7. A lot of people that I associate with live in different places of the world. And I feel like at my age, this is the time for me to be going out and doing things with a friend group and you know, putting myself out there and like doing things with my friends. And it's so easy for me at this age to feel like I'm falling behind because I don't have a friend group, because I don't have friends to go out and do everything with. And it seems like everyone in their 20s are doing things with their friends. So yeah, I feel a lot of FOMO around that. But from my moments of solitude and actually really getting to know myself, I've also found a really great sense of peace. And honestly, it can even be a little bit fun to just be in my own company. And it's so much better than forcing myself to be around people that I know I don't resonate with just to say that I have a friend group. If anything, my life is a lot more drama-free than the majority of people that I know. But also being in the solitude with myself, I've learned how to define my values. I've learned how to really get to know myself, I've learned how to take care of myself. And these are all things that I wouldn't be able to do if I was just surrounded by people 24 7 and never spent any time by myself. And when we don't have these intense attachments to the things that don't resonate anymore, and we're now open to receiving what resonates for us, that's when we're able to magnetize these things a lot faster. Because you're energetically communicating that I am open to receiving what's actually. Meant for me because I'm willing to put down what's not. And I also want you to know that you're not alone in this process. So many people throughout the world right now are going through this exact same process of outgrowing things, of shedding, of losing a whole bunch of things in their life. And just a little fun fact 2026 is actually the year of the fire horse in Chinese astrology. But last year, 2025, was the year of the snake. And do you know what snakes do? Do you know what snakes do symbolically and literally actually? They shed. They shed skin. They shed what's no longer serving them. They basically lose a whole chapter and identity of who they once were as they emerge into a brand new version of themselves. And so we literally just came out of a year that involved a lot of shedding and endings and ends of cycles. But this year, the year of the fire horse, is meant to represent forward momentum. It's almost like we're meant to get on that horse and ride it to what's actually meant for us. Maybe you're still in the process of shedding, and that's okay. Let the shedding take its time. And so I just want you to know that a lot of people right now are going through this because it's literally in alignment with the Chinese astrology and everything that's happening in the cosmos right now. And lastly, to wrap up the episode, I want to talk about the journey of becoming. Us human beings are not meant to be fixed. We're not meant to stay the same. We're not rocks, okay? We're not rocks. We're not meant to just stay the same for the entirety of our lifetime. We are meant to grow and change and evolve and take different shapes, take different forms, become different versions of ourselves. We are meant to have different phases and eras of our lifetime. And in those phases and eras, there's going to be different people and places and jobs and circumstances that you're meant to go through. And sometimes that means that these people that were once in one era of your life aren't meant to be in the next era of your life. But they were there in that one era of your life that they were in because they were meant to be there. They were meant to shape you and help you and pass the torch on to you so you can walk the rest of your path. It's like everything that was once meant for you was meant to get you to this point. And everything that's happening right now is meant to propel you forward from here. From all of these things and people and the lessons that we've learned and the places that we've been, we now have tools that we can use for the remainder of our journey. And some things are just meant to be in our lives for a temporary frame of time, but they're not meant to stay forever. They're not meant to walk the remainder of our path with us. If anything, these things are just here to propel you forward on your own path. We often get so caught up in the idea that if something doesn't last forever, then that means that it was a waste of time, it was meaningless, that means that it's just a waste of my life. I don't know why I spent my time with that person. It was supposed to last forever. And since it didn't last forever, then just screw that, screw that entire experience. And this is because I feel like a lot of us base the success of a relationship or the success of anything at all on its longevity, on how long it lasts. But sometimes the most successful things in your life and the best experiences are only meant to last for a certain period of time and then they go. There have been some people in my life that have shown me some truly profound things, but they've only been in my life for a few weeks or even a few months. And this could even apply to traveling and going places. You might spend a month out of the country traveling in a different part of the world, but just because you had to come back home and it didn't last forever doesn't mean that the experience was meaningless. And sometimes longevity does not equal success. You see people who have been married for 60 plus years, but all they can do is just argue and bicker with each other, and it's just you just know it's not a healthy relationship. Or some people might be in the same job that's sucking the life out of their soul for 40 plus years, and we might think, oh, that's success, 40 years in one profession? Wonderful. But is that truly success if it's been sucking the life out of your soul for 40 years? Some things are meant to just be short and sweet, and you know what makes them sweet is the fact that they're short. I feel like the biggest measure of success when it comes to anything, an experience, relationship, job, whatever it might be, is how much you were able to take away from it. How much did you learn from that experience? How much did you integrate from that experience? What are you going to carry from that experience for the rest of your life? I feel like that is true success. Not how long the thing lasts, but who you become from that thing. Because you could be in something for multiple years and not have gained any value from it. Or it might have been like the shortest and sweetest thing, and it changed your entire world. So I feel like all the things that we experience in life are just meant to shape us on our journeys. But just because they can't follow us for the rest of our journeys doesn't mean that it was a waste of time or that it was meaningless. If anything, this is your journey at the end of the day, and everything outside of you is just here to help you along your own path. And change is scary and it's hard and it's difficult, and losing things is absolutely terrifying. But at the same time, it is all helping you to become who it is that you're meant to be. And if we give ourselves the permission to outgrow things and outgrow people and places and things that no longer serve us, and we don't put ourselves under these ceilings, then we can truly bloom into these butterflies, into who we're meant to be. Then we can really appreciate and walk this journey that we're meant to walk. You give yourself the ability to transform into who you are meant to be. And the greatest thing in this life is to become the person that you were always meant to be. If you enjoyed today's podcast episode, please rate the podcast five stars on whatever platform you might be streaming it on. And drop a comment down below if you're currently in this phase of your life where you feel like you're outgrowing something. Let me know what you feel like you're outgrowing right now. But you deserve to bloom and become who it is that you were meant to become in this lifetime. And nothing can shut down that process if you give yourself the permission to receive what you actually desire and what actually makes your heart sing. But just remember, guys, that I believe in you, but I just want you to believe in yourself. I'll see you guys next time.