I Realised I Was Dressing Like an Old Version of Me

You’ve changed.

But has your life caught up?

In this episode, Melissa shares a powerful and unexpected realisation that came from something simple - clearing out her wardrobe.

What started as decluttering quickly revealed something much deeper…

Hidden identities.
Old protection patterns.
And a quiet mistrust of who she’s becoming.

Because what we hold onto isn’t just “stuff” - it’s evidence of who we think we still need to be.

Inside this episode, you’ll explore:

• Why the “maybe pile” is where emotional attachment lives
• How your environment reflects your subconscious identity
• The hidden agreement that keeps you tied to old versions of yourself
• Why you might be protecting a version of you that no longer exists
• How creating physical space creates clarity, confidence, and self-trust

This is about more than letting go of clothes.

It’s about letting go of who you used to be - so you can fully step into who you’re becoming.

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. If you listened to my episode last week, you will know that I have spent the weekend deep in the depths of my wardrobe. What I thought was going to be decluttering exercise, which I didn't know there would be an energetic quality to. Somewhere in between me pulling clothes off hangers and making piles across my bedroom floor and my bed, I did realize that this actually was not about clothes. Because I was sitting there and I was looking at these different versions of me. Versions of me that hid behind her clothes, versions of me that wanted to be accepted, that wanted to belong. Versions of me that wanted to feel powerful. Definitely versions of me that wanted to just be comfortable. Versions of me that wanted to disappear. Versions of me that bought clothes for a life that I thought I might live one day. I sat there on my floor looking at it all, and I realized something quite, well, I suppose uncomfortable. That I had spent a lot of my life trying to protect myself. Even though you might look at my the clothes that I had, and some of them were really bright and they were really bold, and um, there were definitely a lot of gorgeous things in there. And sure, they represented the version of who I was then, but they were there was a lot in there that just seemed to represent some form of protection rather than true expression. So this episode is for you if you've looked around your life and you realize you've changed. But somehow everything that's around you is keeping you the same or seems like it belongs to somebody else. So picture the scene. I am there. Actually, this was towards the end, but I think this was one of my biggest realizations. I was there at the end and I had this pile that I put in the maybe pile. And the maybe pile consisted of things that were either really good quality or they had some good memory, or you know, they were they weren't a hell yes, but they weren't a no. And I was sitting with them, just picking the pieces to go back in. And I just suddenly realized that I'm not a maybe pile. Why would I be picking from a maybe pile when I literally have hundreds of items of clothes that are a yes? The yes pile was pretty easy. The no pile was sometimes easy, but the maybe pile, like that was the place where the emotion lived. That was the place where the attachment lived. And as I looked at the maybe pile, I realized that what I was kind of keeping on to was this belief of what if I need this version of me again? What if I gain weight or lose weight and then I need this again? What if there's times in my life that I just want to hide or that I don't feel confident again? What if nothing works out for me and my safety lies in these clothes that no longer represent who I am? And in that moment, I took that pile and I went, no, that's not coming, that's not staying, that's not me anymore. And I realize that there I had a hidden agreement. I had this hidden agreement that I didn't fully trust the version that I'm becoming. And you know what? That's okay. You know what? Like, of course there's a transition moment. Of course, there needs to be an integration. This isn't about just throwing everything that used to represent you and letting go of everything, but it was this maybe. It was really sitting with the maybe and going, okay, I'm not a maybe pile anymore. And it was that that seemed the hardest and the heaviest to let go of. But I put every single one of those items in a pile and they've gone. Now, the clothes that were that were there as I began to, you know, you do, right? You you pick them up and you remember where you wore them, you remember who you were when you bought them, you remember kind of, you know, maybe they came from a holiday or they came from a special shop, or you wore them and somebody said to you that they feel really nice. And, you know, I had, if you looked at the clothes, there was this real range of what was there for me. There was the version of me that was the mainly the stay-at-home mum who really was trying to hide. Um, and I had got rid of a lot of those, but some of them were still there. But what was even more interesting, I think, was there was a lot of like you'd call statement pieces. There was clothes that I bought to create an identity from hippie trousers, bright harem trousers, you know, like with all the patterns, from this bright orange top, which I actually spoke about in an episode once before, from like funky coats and jackets and every single different colour of tights that I could possibly have available, things that made me feel interesting, things that might spark a conversation, but really things that were distracting from my body, things that didn't quite fit me, things that weren't quite in my colour, things that made me feel safer because the conversation could be about the clothes rather than about me inside. And as I was looking at what I was keeping versus what I was releasing, I realized that actually I don't need those clothes to make me present anymore. That actually the version of me that I'm becoming is more embodied, is more present. That I trust this body that I have and the presence that becomes alive inside me to be the statement in the room. That I am softer and stronger. No, I'm not toilet roll, but I am softer and stronger, and I am I can rely more on people feeling that and feeling me and that visibility that I have ingrained in myself and that pours out of me when I step into a room rather than relying on the statement piece, the colour, the pattern. It's like I don't need those clothes anymore to make me feel present. I'm the presence now. And whilst yes, I kept some of the more funky pieces, I can't let go of all of my very raisin yoga trousers. It's struck me that most of what I was keeping was more muted and soft and present and earthy. And in my colour scheme, in my colour palette, which brings me on to this, that there was also some items in my wardrobe, right? Some really gorgeous pieces that were in the colours that don't suit me. And as I took them to my face and I looked at it, I was just asking the question: does this bring me out of myself or does it pull me back in? And I realized I had these collection of clothes, which very interestingly, I bought at a certain period of my life. I can see the times when I invested in these pieces. And actually, when I brought them to my face, I realized that they were colours that washed me out. They were colours that like muted me down. They were colours that made me disappear slightly or brought out my shadows. And I thought, yeah, they're nice. They might even have a really good shape on me. But why would I wear something that makes me look less alive? When everything that is within me, everything that I am, is about life force. One of my philosophies now really is to follow the life force. Where do I feel most alive? Where am I coming into? And so why would I choose the clothes out of the plethora of what is available to me, out of the hundreds and thousands of pieces that I could go and purchase if I really wanted to? Why would I be picking something to put on my body to represent me, to step into a room, to step into a space, to maybe make a first, a fifth, a twelfth, or a hundredth impression on somebody if it's pulling me back, if it's drawing me back. And it made me realize that yes, there was a time in my life. And it was a time actually in my business where I was becoming more present, where I had made a pretty big leap in my business at the time that I bought many of these clothes. It's so interesting. And I was really showing up more visibly online at that time. Yet my clothes were keeping me back, they were just pulling me back, they were just softening me, not even softening me. There was actually a harshness there that you were drawing more into what I was wearing, and you know, my eyes weren't popping, or my skin looked more drawn, or you know, it just kind of made me blend into the background a little bit more. And so I could see once again this hidden agreement that I had around protection, that I had around I'm not safe to be seen fully in my light and in my presence. And honestly, that is not true for me anymore. Honestly, right now and where I am, I am here to be seen in my fullness. I am here to be seen in my life force. My life force that is sitting inside me has never been so ready and so open and so present and so expressive. So even if that top was amazing and it looked great on my body, it had to be a no, it had to be a go. Actually, it was a really easy no for me. It was a really easy, I'm no longer available for things that don't make me feel alive. And how often do we do that? How often do we say, like I did at the time, I'm here for this, and yet these things pull us back, these things just gently or forcefully just go, whoop. No, you're not so safe. So I'm just gonna pick this, I'm just gonna soften down, I'm just gonna hide behind this. I'm not hiding anymore. And my clothes needed to represent that, and so they have gone for somebody who is more of a winter palette than I am, right? And then there was something else. The amount of clothes that I found in my like t-shirt wardrobe that I forgot I had. Things that I had bought probably more recently than those that were pretty perfect that I'd put in my cupboard and forgotten about, or worn a few times, and then they got pushed in to the bottom of the pile. And I pulled them out. There was this one sweater, it's gorgeous, which actually is quite new. I I only bought it really recently, and I pulled it out, and I'm like, it's all crumpled, it's all creased. This gorgeous sweaters crease. Why? Because it was shoved in a drawer with all of my old stuff, and it wasn't a choice I was making from. This gift that I had, this thing that I had that looked good, that felt good, that was my colours, that represents who I am now, was stuffed inside a drawer full of things that no longer serve me. And I wasn't picking that. I wasn't picking the thing that was going to represent me. I was still picking from the old version and I wasn't even seeing it. I didn't even know it was there. And how many times do we do that to ourselves? How many times do we know that we have the skill, we have the talent, we have the expression, we have the idea, but oh, I'm just gonna pick this thing because this thing's works, I'm just gonna pick this thing because this thing was comfortable. I'm just gonna pick this thing because this thing is what people expect from me when the thing that we have was there all along, but it was so different or so hidden that we forget about it. And now there's space for it. Now I open my drawer and I go, oh, I could wear this. Oh, look at this color palette. Oh, look at how this makes me feel. What am I wanting to feel today? What am I representing today? Which version of me am I today? Because this is also really interesting. I'm looking at my cupboard, I'm looking at the clothes that I had over the last however many years that this has accumulated, and I could see very clearly who I was. I could see very clearly the versions of me that I was trying to portray and trying to protect. As I have come more into myself, particularly in the last five years, particularly in the last two years, and particularly in the last 12 months, right? I realized that they I have many identities. And this is great. I have these different versions of myself. It's not all like boss mum, right? It's not all yogi, it's not all football mum and school runs. It's not all I'm snuggly at home. It's all of those. I am a combination of all of those things. They are all aspects of different parts of who I am, different parts of my identities, different parts of my expression. From wanting to sit at home and be in the snuggy jumper like this that I'm wearing now, and just and just be soft and comfortable and still. This is an important part of me from the school runs and the football runs that I do every week and who I am there and how I represent myself. So the yogi in me. That's probably the most clothes that I kept was my yoga gear. I do yoga pretty much every day. It is a huge part of who I am. I am really connected now to my body, and so it makes sense that when I'm in there and there is comfort, but it represents more of my style and my strength and my comfort and how I move in my body. But what about the person in me that goes on retreats that runs retreats? The speaker when I'm standing on stage can't be going in the comfy comfies, right? That first of all, as I got most of what I got rid of was like the cocktail special occasion wear and the like comfies like half in, half out. These were the things I mainly got rid of. And now I have these clear boundaries of who I am, right? So I work from home. I do my my work life and my social life are very um embedded in each other. I'm friends with a lot of my mentors and my clients, right? My colleagues are often the people that I have the best conversations with. I have my family and my kids, and my many of my friends are also when I hang out with my kids, right? So there's all these blurred lines in my identities, and that's how it should be. I'm not one person here and one person here, but when I'm standing on stage, I express as a very different version of me. Not very different. I express as a as a teacher. I express as this authority, I express in a certain way that will be very different to when I'm cheering my kid on when he's playing his football match. It doesn't change who I am in the core. And you'll see that in my wardrobe, my color palette, my style, my shapes. There's a synergy that I can pick from here and here, and they'll probably go. But now I have space for this is what I wear when I'm holding that presence of I am the leader here. And this is what I wear when I am in that softness on a retreat, and I'm doing those deep dives into who I am and into myself. And this is what I wear when I'm just chilling and having fun. And yes, there'll be some blurs and there'll be some matches, but when we're doing something like this, it's not just, oh, well, this is who I am now, and now I'm gonna get rid of all of those. All of those versions come with me, but they come through in a different expression. I think what it is is when you look at my wardrobe now, there's a congruency that lands within it, that you can see that art, you can feel that movement that sits within it. And now I can make a choice. Now I'm no longer when I do have a special occasion and I do get invited to a wedding or a cocktail party, rather than picking the dress that I almost kept from 15 years ago because it was so gorgeous. And I'm looking at it going, oh well, maybe I'll keep it. I think I'll still fit in that. I think that would look good. And then I'm like, what am I doing? I've got all of these things that just represent more of me now. And if I if I let it go, sure, in five years' time that might be the perfect dress again. But am I gonna hold on to it for five years just in case? No, because this represents me now, this feels better in my body, this feels like my expression. And maybe something new wants to come along. But I realize something else. I don't need anything new. Not really. By just creating the space and collapsing what was in there and unraveling all of this stuff, what emerged was I already have everything that I need in this space. I already have this version of me that's been trying to come through and to and to break through the hard soil. It was already there. I already found her, but she was hidden behind these old identities, she was hidden behind these hidden agreements. And something happened which has really just opened my heart and opened my expression. And it's like I it can't be in this constraint anymore. And I've created that space. I've created the physical space, which has also created the energetic space, which is making me make easier decisions every single morning when I open my wardrobe and I'm like, I can pick this and this. It's all in synergy, it's all in coherence, which changes my nervous system, which changes my, oh my God, what am I doing? It gives me this sense of calm and organization every morning. These micro moments that we have make such a massive impact on the rest of the day. The less noise and clutter I had in my wardrobe, the more space I had in myself. And I feel such a massive shift, expression, who I represent, what I represent, what I'm choosing all of the time. All the while I've been searching for the perfect peace and it was sitting right there. So maybe growth doesn't come with more, with getting more, finding more. Maybe actually growth comes with finally letting go of the things that no longer represent you, the things that no longer serve you, the things that no longer fit, the things that you were hiding behind. And this is the change. Rather than what do I need to add in my life, what's going on underneath the surface that is keeping me back, that is holding me there, that is trying to keep me safe? And for me, what version of me was I protecting that I'm finally ready to say to that protector, you know what? Go sit down. We've got this. Becoming more isn't necessarily more. Becoming more is letting go of those overlays and those identities that no longer serve you. And for me, that came in with my clothes. And that, dear listener, is how a mystic in training turns her wardrobe declutter into a life moment. So come back. Let me know. What are you ready to let go of? I'll see you next time.