I Thought I Had Outgrown That

One of the strangest feelings in life is realizing someone has mistaken you for smaller than you are.

In this episode of THEE BIG SWING, I share a recent experience that caught me completely off guard. What started as a friendly conversation over lunch turned into a moment where I felt questioned, underestimated, and profiled. My first instinct was to defend myself by listing my accomplishments, credentials, and success.

But afterward, I realized the conversation wasn't really about the other person.

It was about me.

Why did I feel the need to prove my worth to someone I had just met? Why did their opinion carry so much weight? And why, after doing so much work on myself, did I slip back into old patterns of defensiveness?

This episode isn't about winning an argument. It's about recognizing the subtle ways our ego can pull us away from the peace we've worked so hard to build. I reflect on profiling, identity, self-worth, and the challenge of staying grounded when someone doesn't see us for who we are.

Sometimes the greatest victory isn't convincing someone else of your value. It's knowing your value well enough that you don't have to.

Because sometimes the biggest swing isn't changing someone else's perception of you. It's resisting the urge to abandon yourself while trying to do it.

After you listen:

You can also hear the original companion song, “I Thought I Had Outgrown That,” from Thee Big Swing Sessions, performed by Marcus Reede. It is available on YouTube, Apple Music, Spotify, and most major streaming platforms.

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THEE BIG SWING with Lloyd Hassell

There's a version of you that existed before something shifted - before a conversation, a decision, a thing you almost didn't say. You don't always recognize the moment it happened. You just notice, later, that you're not who you were.

This is a reflective podcast about those moments: the emotional reckonings and subtle internal recalibrations that change our trajectory over time - and the possibilities still available in life.

Each episode explores what happens when curiosity, courage, accountability, or reflection opens a new way of seeing ourselves and the world.

Through personal reflections and conversations, Lloyd explores changing identities, relationships, self-trust, and the quiet decisions that alter how we see ourselves over time.

This is for people who are quietly realizing they are not the same person anymore - and that there are still choices left.

The biggest swing isn't always dramatic.

Often, it's the shift inside that changes everything.

If something here stayed with you, you can reach me at lloyd@theebigswing.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Big Twing where everyone has an opportunity to learn. One of the strangest feelings in life is realizing someone has mistaken you for smaller than you are. Recently, I had that experience. And I was surprised by several things in it. Mostly when I thought about it, I was surprised by my behavior.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Last week I was having lunch with a friend.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

We were in a good mood in a restaurant, and in walked a gentleman who was also in a good mood, and we started vibing. And while the music was playing and we were talking, and he began to tell us about this new mission he has in his life to create a financial literacy and financial planning credential program at Seton Hall University. So it was intriguing. And um I gave him full audience, his background, experience, why he was doing this, and everything was going great. And he explained that he was putting together a team of people, for in fact, and that he was waiting for them to show up.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Well, things were going fine.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

And then one of the other people in his team showed up. Maybe I should join a team. That's kind of when things went off the rail in the conversation. The young man on his team questioned what I did for a living, and I explained. And then he went further to doubt that I had an MBA. And he even went as far as saying, Well, you know, you say you have an MBA, but sometimes when people say that, what they really have is uh masters and business, and I don't remember what the last letter and the acronym was that he created. And that's when things changed for me. Frankly, I felt, I don't know, I felt uh slighted, disrespected, um undervalued, and I began to defend myself with, well, to be frank, I sort of lit into him and then gave him a litany of credentials, um, net worth, where I live, the value of homes in the area. And that was old behavior for me.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

And I thought I had gotten past that.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

You know, the whole thing of when people quietly profile one another, which I've never really liked, but if I were honest, I've done it as well. How quickly we want to pinpoint someone's status.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

And I thought, wow, I just shared with you guys, I have a certain credential, and you guys are, I thought, building this program for people of color, and nothing's coming back from you in that way.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

And this guy starts with the profiler.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

And I thought it was really interesting because well, later on I thought, here's a group of people with a mission to um help another group out, and I wondered how clearly they see the group.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

But let me take it back to me.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

Later on, I was disappointed in my behavior after I got through the euphoria of having defended myself so well, because again, I thought I had outgrown that, and clearly I hadn't. Why did I think it was important to represent myself to a young man I didn't even know? What did I care if he doubted me? Why did I have to prove something to him? And why did I go that far in doing it? Emotions are a funny thing.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

I had put in a lot of work to try not to become combative with people.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

And I had to admit that although I had been careful with the words I used.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

I mean, there was no profanity or anything like that, and no yelling, but I still was combative.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

I just didn't like being profiled. But that happens, and I thought I had gotten over that.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Previously I had done an episode about taking a DNA test and seeing strangers differently, strangers that didn't look like me and I didn't look like them, and thinking, well, we could be relatives. And then I realized I had slipped away from that newfound thinking.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

I felt better when I maintained that thinking.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Not that it was Pollyanish, it was reality that I could be related to someone I looked at I didn't know and didn't look like me.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

But on that day at lunch, I reverted That's the biggest takeaway. How do we maintain feeling secure enough, at peace enough, happy enough, confident enough that when someone doesn't see who we are, not to try to change their perspective. This was a great reminder for me to stay focused on my progress as a human being, as a person, as a man and not to get hung up in what anyone chooses not to see in me. There's great value in maintaining that mental standard.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Sometimes the biggest swing isn't changing someone else's perception of us, it's resisting the urge to abandon ourselves in the process of trying to do it.