The Grief of Outgrowing a Version of You That Actually Worked

One of the hardest transitions we experience isn't letting go of what hurt us. It's letting go of a version of ourselves that actually worked.

In this episode, I'm exploring a kind of grief we rarely talk about: the grief of outgrowing an identity that helped you build your life, your career, or your business. It wasn't unhealthy. It wasn't a mistake. In many ways, it was exactly who you needed to be. But there comes a point when the version of you that got you here isn't the version that's meant to lead you forward.

We also explore why high-achieving women often mistake this transition for burnout, boredom, or a lack of gratitude, when it may actually be grief. If you've been feeling disconnected from a role, identity, or way of operating that still looks successful on the outside, this episode offers a compassionate framework for understanding why and what might be asking to emerge next.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why outgrowing a successful identity can feel like grief instead of growth
• The difference between burnout and the natural ending of a life season
• How old identities can continue serving you long after you've outgrown them
• Why letting go of who you've been isn't a rejection of your past, but an honouring of it
• Questions to help you recognize the version of yourself that's ready to be released

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Welcome back to the Limitless Life Podcast, or welcome if you're new here. I am your host, Brenda Johnston. I want to start today with a feeling instead of a topic. Because I think most of you are going to recognize this before I even tell you what it is. It is the feeling of doing something that used to feel like you, and maybe it used to feel good, and you were like, yes. And now it just doesn't anymore. And the weird part is it's not that it doesn't feel good anymore because something is going badly or something went wrong, or because if you were to look at it from the outside in, you'd be like, oh, that is messed up. Because seriously, anybody looking in from the outside would think it still works. And people probably still compliment you on it. And it might even still be the thing that you are known for. But something in you has stopped raising its hand for it, stopped getting excited about it. And it has been my experience, and I feel strongly, that that feeling gets misdiagnosed constantly. We call it burnout, we call it being ungrateful, we call it a phase or boredom, or I just need a vacation. Here's what I've learned from experience. Sometimes it's actually none of those things. Sometimes it's grief. And I'm talking about a very specific kind of grief that I don't really hear people talk about. And it's the grief of outgrowing a version of yourself that actually worked and still might be working. I have seen this type of grief with the clients I work with. It's also been my experience, my own process of watching myself outgrow things that really did serve me. And maybe in a lot of the cases they still were serving me. But what I've come to understand about why this kind of letting go is so much harder than the letting go we're used to hearing about, this is why I want to talk about this. So here's what I mean by all of this. We have a lot of language for releasing the things that hurt us. Bad relationships, toxic jobs, beliefs that were clearly holding us back. That kind of letting go, we know how to talk about it. There's whole freaking industries built around it. But almost nobody prepares you for grieving something that didn't actually hurt you. Something that worked. Something you built with your hands that got you here that you were genuinely proud of. Nobody warns you that at some point in your life you're going to have to say goodbye to that too. And it is going to feel like a loss, not a win. I'm going to give you my own version of this because I think it's going to resonate with a lot of you. There was a season, a few years into building my business, where I basically had become the woman who could handle absolutely anything. And I mean that literally. Like if something broke, I fixed it. If a client had a crisis, I was the one texting or emailing at 10 at night. If a launch was falling apart, I was the one rebuilding it from scratch by myself because it was just me. I wore that identity like a fucking gold star badge. I built my entire sense of worth around being the one who didn't need help, who could do it all, who never dropped the ball. And for a really long time, that identity is exactly what the business needed. It's probably part of why it all worked so well in the beginning. And then one day, I noticed I was tired, like tired, in a way that sleep did not really help with. And it wasn't tired from doing too much. It was tired of being her. Tired of being the one who could handle anything. Because I hadn't just been her in my own business. I had been her for over 20 years in my advertising and corporate marketing life. And I remember feeling almost ashamed of that thought. Because in our society, especially at that time, the women who could handle anything, that sounds like a compliment. It sounds like something you'd want engraved somewhere on a little frickin' plaque you put on your desk. So who was I to be tired of it? But here's the thing that I really had to sit with and I had to get honest with. An identity can be true and useful and something you build with real integrity and still not be who you are meant to be anymore. Two things can be true at once, and those two things don't always have to be in conflict. It's not that the identity was wrong. It's that it was built for a season of my life or a cycle of my life, and that season had ended. And I was just like the last one to get the memo that that season had ended. I truly do believe this is where a lot of women get stuck. Actually, I'm not going to say stuck, I hate that word. I will say this is where a lot of women hold themselves back, because I don't actually believe we get stuck as high functioning women. We are always in motion, so stuck never feels like the right word to me. We've been taught that if something is working, you don't touch it. If it's not broken, don't fix it. But I want to offer you a different perspective. And I'm going to bring in something that helped me understand this, and I'm going to keep this light. So in human design, there's this concept of life cycles, seasons that we actually move through whether we're paying attention to them or not. And the idea is that you are not the same person operating the same way for your entire life. You move through distinct chapters and each one is asking something different of you, which means the version of you that built the first half of your success is not automatically going to be the version of you that is meant to lead the next chapter. And no, it's not because she sucks or she failed, it's because she finished what she came to do. This is one of my favorite things to look at when I'm working with clients too, because it gives us real insight into a lot of things, including the beliefs that are running underneath everything else. It's very, very cool. So back to this grieving thing. Because when we talk about this kind of ending, it really is a very different kind of ending than the ones we're used to grieving. When something hurts you and you finally leave it, there's like a relief attached to that grief. But when something worked and you outgrow it anyways, there is no relief waiting on the other side of that goodbye. There's just this loss. And there's nothing to be angry at. It's a very weird feeling. And I actually think this is part of why so many successful women describe this season of their life as confusing instead of sad. Because we don't have language for grieving something that isn't a failure. So instead of grieving it, what we do is we just stuff it down and we override it and we keep showing up as her. We keep being the one who can handle anything. We keep being the one who handles all the things long after it's costing us more than it's giving us. Because we don't know what else to call ourselves. And because stopping kind of feels like this weird betrayal of the very thing that got us here. And I want to be very clear about something too, because I don't want this to sound like I'm saying the identity is a problem, or the identity of her was a problem. I'm not against that version of me. I'm not against her. I'm not embarrassed by her. The woman who could handle anything got me through some genuinely brutal fucking years. She built something real. So my argument isn't that she was wrong. My argument is that she was never supposed to be permanent. And nobody tells you that a role can be finished with honor and still need to end. And so when that happens, it can be really confusing and really scary and really weird. So if you're sitting here listening to this and you have that little tingle in your body or that little aha moment that you're feeling, I want you to ask yourself a few questions and I want you to actually sit with them instead of rushing past them, which I know can be very on brand for a lot of us. We just like to rush past the questions that might be hard to answer or hard to sit with. So here they are. Where in your life or business are you still performing a version of yourself that used to be necessary but isn't anymore? And what would it feel like to let that version take a bow to retire before you start to slowly resent her for not being able to keep up? And here's the one that typically gets people so prepare yourself. What are you afraid it would mean about you or about the last however many years if you admitted that the identity has run its course? Because I think that last question is actually the real question underneath all of these things. It's not really about the identity. It's about what we think that it says about us if we outgrow something that we work so hard to build. We're afraid it means we wasted time, or we're afraid it means we were wrong, or we're afraid it means the thing wasn't as good as we said it was. But none of that is true. Like a season ending doesn't erase what it gave you. It just means it's over. That chapter's over. And I'll say this too because I don't want to just pretend that this is only theoretical for me. If you listened to episode two hundred forty five I recently did with Jen Pike, you heard her talk about this exactly. And if you haven't listened to that episode, go back and listen to it. She closed a studio she'd built with her own hands. She retired programs she'd taught for years because she'd taught what she came to teach, and it was time for a new season. Seriously, if you haven't heard that conversation, go back and listen to it. Because she really does live this out loud in a way that I think will make everything I've just said land very differently. So here's what I want to leave you with today. If you're in a season where something that used to feel like you doesn't anymore, and it's not falling apart and nothing dramatic has happened, and you keep waiting for a real reason to justify how you feel, I want you to consider that the reason is already here. You finished what that version of you came here to do. That's allowed to be the whole reason. You don't need a bigger one. The identity that built the first half of your success wasn't ever meant to be the one carrying you through the second half. And that's not a failure on her part. That's just what it means to keep growing. And if this episode has you in the feels about this stuff, I'd love for you to come join me over on Substack, The Limitless Life Uncensored, is where I go even deeper on these ideas that I'm working through. The ones that maybe always don't fit into an episode of a podcast. It's more like me working through things as they're coming out of my head. I'm gonna link that in the show notes. And if you're listening to this and thinking, okay, this is more than just a feeling that I need to sit with. This is a season. I feel like I might actually need support moving through this, then the best place to start is to apply to work with me. You'll find that link in the show notes as well. We'll just get on a call, we'll look at where you actually are, and we'll figure out what kind of support makes sense for you. If this episode resonated with you, I would love for you to take a screenshot, share it, tag me on Instagram so I know that it found you. Also DM me on Instagram. It's always me responding to you. As usual, thank you for spending time with me today, and I will see you next week.