What You’re Tolerating Is Keeping You Stuck

You’ve grown.

You’ve evolved.

But has your life caught up?

In this episode, Melissa explores the hidden cost of holding onto things that no longer reflect who you are - from old identities and outdated choices to the physical environment that quietly anchors you in the past.

Through a powerful (and surprisingly relatable) reflection on her own wardrobe, she reveals how what we tolerate isn’t just about clutter…

It’s about identity.

Because every item you hold onto, every standard you lower, every “one day” you cling to…

is a reflection of what you still believe is true for you.

And the real question becomes:

Do you trust who you’re becoming…

or are you still loyal to who you were?

This episode will help you see where you’re holding on - and what might shift when you finally let go.

P.S. If you’ve been hearing me talk about Hidden Agreements and you missed the live class, the replay is still available.

It will help you see exactly what’s been driving your decisions behind the scenes - not just in your mindset, but in your patterns, your identity, and your results.

You can watch it here: https://melissa-amos.com/the-hidden-agreements/

Memoirs of a Mystic In Training, by Melissa Amos is available on Amazon

Learn more about Melissa by visiting her website melissa-amos.com and download a free hypnotherapeutic series, Intuition Rewired. 

Follow her @themelissaamos across the platforms 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Mystic in Training podcast with me, your host, Melissa Amos. What are you no longer available to tolerate? That was a question that was asked of me this week. It brought some things up. It made me realize that there were parts of my life that I was still making choices from, making decisions from, from a version of me that no longer exists. And it came in one in a very surprising way. It came from a vision of my wardrobe. Picture the scene. Over the last 12 months, I have done a lot of self-discovery and a lot of self-reflection. And I have changed in so many ways. And one of those ways that I have evolved is through how I look and how I present myself and the clothes that I feel good in, and the idea, I suppose, the outer identity that I have of how I am viewed and seen in the world. And over the last few months, I have been purchasing new clothes to go with my new body and really leaning into what does this version of me look like and present at and feel good in. But what I realized in this question was my wardrobe is full of clothes that I have bought from a version of me that just isn't who I am today. And I think it even goes beyond my clothes. I began to think about the spiritual paraphernalia, for example, that I have, all of the crystals that I bought that had a reason for a problem, perhaps that I wanted to solve, all of the card decks that I had accumulated to increase my perception of different spiritual concepts. There are hundreds and thousands of books that I have read and sometimes reread and sometimes bought and never read. And I realized in that moment that all of these things are taking up space, physical space in my house. And it got me thinking, this episode is for you. If you feel like you've grown, you've evolved, you've changed, but your life doesn't fully reflect it yet. If there's parts of your world that feel a little bit out of sync or heavy and aren't quite reflecting who you are now, but maybe you've not put your finger on it. Because here's the thing if I if I open up my wardrobe and it has all of these clothes, of which I probably don't wear half of them. And if I'm honest, I probably haven't worn half of them for a long time. Maybe even more than half of them. Like it seems like it's not a problem in itself. Like I have the capacity, I have the space, I have the availability to hold it, but then something begins to happen. A couple of years ago, I actually had a like a wardrobe edit with a stylist, and it was life-changing. I'll pop his details in the show notes. And I remember one of the things that we spoke about there was, well, let's add, let's see what's missing in your wardrobe so that you can buy a few pieces and it will pull what you already have together. And at the time that was great, and it, you know, it really changed everything of how I showed up and how I styled myself, and and it brought use to a lot of things that I maybe hadn't worn before because I didn't know what to do with them. But since that time, I have physically, mentally, and spiritually evolved and changed so much that those things no longer work. That actually I was making decisions on. Well, this version of me from two years ago, five years ago, ten years ago, gosh, maybe even 20 years ago, is still influencing the choices that I can make. Because let's say I had a pair of jeans that I loved at the time that felt good at the time, and now I'm even subconsciously making purchases to then enhance those pairs of jeans. What am I actually doing? And it's not that that past version of me was wrong or different, but what I represented in the world, what I the way I felt about my body, the the solution that I was trying to solve was all very different. Not to mention the lack of capacity. Because if you think about the clothes, they all do take up space. And and in my house, I do not have an infinite amount of space. Like who does, right? And so those things, which are good clothes, which probably look good on me, which I probably spent a lot of money on, which you can say into time, investment, all of this stuff, that represents something or a version of my life that I was or a memory that I had, are all sitting there and they are taking up space, they're taking up weight. Which means that when I go out, as I have been doing, and I'm buying new clothes and I'm finding my new style and I'm trying to make choices, there will always be this reminder of, well, what space do you have for this? Will it go with the old clothes that you have? Have you got room in your life, in your wardrobe, for this to come and house? Or is it going to come in and end up crumpled and shoved in a corner that you'll end up forgetting about because there's so much already in there? And I think that you can hear from how I'm talking how metaphorical this is. Because how many times do we do that? That yes, we need to honour the old versions of me. And it's not about throwing everything out, but it's about really getting clear about if I were to make this choice today, if I was in the store and I saw that t-shirt, shorts, jeans, hippie trousers, would I buy them? Would I now invest my time and money in that piece, or would I not? And I realized that there's probably 75% of the things that are in my physical space at home that I would not make that same choice. From card decks, from crystals, I don't know, I might still buy them, from artwork, from the journals, from the paraphernalia that I have accumulated over the 20 odd years that I have been interested in spirituality, the books, the amount of books um that I have read and reread and maybe never read that are sitting in there. If I was in a shop right now, would I still go and buy them? And the answer is no. And up until that point, it's been okay. It's been tolerable. It's been, well, okay, well, they remind me of something. Or maybe this is the thing, maybe one day I'm going to really want this. Maybe one day if I keep them long enough. Remember my mum saying this to me once. You keep something long enough, they'll come back into fashion. And I've seen it. And I probably have pieces that have been in and out of fashion for a long time. But the cost of it is I don't have enough freedom, I don't have enough space to be able to really make a clean choice. I mean, you can even look at Feng Shui and these concepts of how our physical environment represents our energetic environment. And in that moment, when I asked that question, I realized quite how much mental clutter it was taking place, how much physical clutter was being taken place here, and how actually it was insidiously influencing my identity, my choices. And here was the clincher. As I journaled down into it, it was oh, there's a part of me that trusts the older version of me, the one that made those choices to buy those things, the one that earned the money to buy those things, the one that brought the time and investment to have those things in my life, more than a future version of me. And that was really surprising. But once you know something, you can't unknow it. It shows up in things that you have outgrown. It shows up in not just, oh, okay, well, I read that book and now I know it and what and I don't need it anymore. It represented a version of me that didn't know and now does. And whilst yes, there there can be benefit in going back and revisiting, what if I just let go of the book? And if one day I decided that I needed to reread it, I could go and buy it. I could go and make that choice again. Because the truth is, while it's sitting there on my bookshelf, it's not doing anything, apart from maybe reminding me of what I've outgrown. And I think for me, where it really seems prominent is that over the last well, long while, my standards have been evolving. The things that I'm available for have been evolving. The way that I want to show up and be for myself, for my inner world and for my outer world have have evolved and changed. But every time this object is taking up space, it is essentially lowering my standards. It's reminding me, it's anchoring me, maybe is a better word. It's anchoring me back down into this is who I was and this is what I'm available for. And from an energetic space, that is not very helpful. Yes, have some things to remind you of who you were, but it doesn't have to be 75% of your wardrobe. I've been tolerating it far too long. I've been tolerating opening up this cupboard and having to move through and pick the thing in the sea of all the other stuff that I'm never gonna wear, that don't represent me anymore, that if I was given that choice right now, I would not invest my time and energy and money into. So why am I still investing my time and my energy and my money into all of these clothes? And when I can just release them, when I can just take each one and go, hey, what do you represent for me? And realize whether it is this past version of me that I'm escaping from, perhaps, that's pushing me forward, or a past version of me that had a future projection and is like, maybe one day I'll look good in this and now I do, and so I keep it, right? Or does this represent who I am right now and who I'm becoming? And if the answer's no, what good is it when actually I could release it and it could go to somebody who is in exactly the position that needs it right now? And then it got me wondering, well, what agreements do I have in place that are making me, that have that have tolerated this for so long, that has just kept it like, yeah, one day, one day, one day. And it's quite a few things, I think. It's um this whole thing about not being wasteful, that feels like the there's like they're perfectly good clothes. Like some of them were really expensive. But again, do I trust the future version of me enough that will earn the money? Yeah, that will be able to have the resources to be able to make new choices, that could buy it again if I needed to. But the deeper version of that, because that I think that's quite an easy thing to think about. We can excuse that with environmentalism and you know all this stuff, but actually, two things. What if I need that version of me again? Oof. What if I need that version of me again? What if I can't rely on this new version of me, this current and this future version of me to make good choices? What if that t-shirt represents the best that I could have that's available for me? Oof. And do I trust myself enough to fully step into this new me, this future me, this evolution of me. But do I fully trust it? And we all know that making change is scary, that we don't know. We we we can't predict the future really, but we can bet on ourselves and we can trust ourselves, and we can actually use this metaphor, use this experience of letting go of all of this stuff to really know ourselves better. We can use this to not just shift our identity on an inner level, but we can use this to help align it externally so that it becomes the choices that I make every morning. Because it is a choice I make every morning. It's there as a physical representation every single time I open my cupboard, every single time. And even if I'm not taking it consciously, subconsciously, energetically, the flow of life is reminding me all of the time I've got no space for nothing new. I've got no space to bring in this new version. And the old version of me, she's got you. You don't need anything more, you've got enough. You've got hundreds of thousands of pounds in there, and that is your lot. Is that what I want? No. Is that going to bring me into my highest evolution? No. Does it mean I need to burn everything down and start again? No. Because past me made some really great choices. Past me has had some really great experiences. Past me got me to current me. But past me isn't gonna get me to whatever it is that I'm coming into. When I switch my agreement into you know what, the universe is always working in my favor. I trust who I am, I trust who I'm becoming. I live in an abundant universe. I'm becoming more than I've ever been, but I need to make space for that. And for me, right now, it starts with the physical space. It starts with decluttering, letting go, and giving it all away. Not trying to claw it back, not trying to make myself feel better by getting five pounds for the£100 dress that I'm getting rid of. And it's sitting here waiting for somebody to buy it and choose it. There's a that's a whole nother thing going on. Do I trust myself enough to take all of this and go thank you very much for all of the experiences that we've had together? Now you go off to a new home which has got nothing to do with me. Do I trust myself enough for that? Truthfully, yes, I do. And also, truthfully, clearly, there was a part of me that didn't. And this is why it's so important to keep on understanding what is it? What are these hidden agreements? What are the things? What am I coded for? And it turns out that I had some makeup that was telling me I can't waste things, that this older version of me is a safer place to be. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. And if you're feeling, if this episode is resonating with you and you're like, I feel so seen, it's really because you have outgrown a version of you that you were. And this is your opportunity or reminder, your realization point like I had last week of well, what is it that I'm available for right now? And maybe for you it takes just letting go of one thing, an old handbag that you've not used for forever, a crystal that represented a time in your life that now that that issue is solved. Or maybe for you, like me, it's half your wardrobe that wants to go. It's a reminder that you've already become something more than you were, and now it's time that the rest of you caught up with you. And for me, it gives me that scary excitement that I find myself moving towards more and more. So if you need me, I will be deep in my cupboard reminiscing on my old t-shirts, and as a charity shop near you, you may find one of the old pieces. But for now, just ask yourself where in my life am I holding on to things that no longer would be the choices I would make today? Ask yourself that. And if something comes up, spend some time, honour who you were, and see what happens when you let go. This is what it means to be a mystic in training. And I will see you next time. Bye for now.