Revisiting Old Versions of Myself
I'm back in my 'gym girly' era and it quite literally changed my life
If you’ve been around for a while, you’ll remember my monthly vision emails – a once a month email with a recap, resources, and transmission for the month ahead. I stopped writing them in August to focus more on finding my voice on Substack (which I feel like I’m starting to find my groove) but miss the process of showing up each month with a round up of resources for you and space to reflect for me. So we’re getting back into it, in a new way, which feels good for now. If you know me, you know I’m always switching things up. Thanks for trusting me, and thanks for showing up. Love you.
PS: The essay is too long for email, so if you’re reading it in your inbox, you will eventually come to a “View entire message” link - click on that and the rest of the email should show up normally. You can also click here and read the entire thing online.
I have been known to run away from who I am. I book a flight, save images on Pinterest to discover an entire new archetype to try on, and dream about all of the things I could be. I leave an old way of being to make room for the new; and usually, don’t look back. I meet people who have never known me before. In this space of potential, I am able to discover a version of me that has yet to exist – a place of pure possibility for me to become anything and anyone I dream of.
But what happens to that old version of myself?
To make room, does it need to leave me completely or is there a reality in which I am able to let all of me exist in this version moment? What is the most authentic version of me when I see bits of myself in every person I met, every country I’ve called home, and every archetype I have embodied? Am I any less of myself when I show up as just one version or when I am around people who see me in just one way?
These are the questions I have been asking myself lately.
Recently, I have been naturally drawn to revisit old versions of myself — which, in fact, has nothing to do with who I once was but rather circling back to past past times, friends, and ways of being. I don’t think we can ever “return” to a past version of life or of ourselves because life is always moving forward. Even though sometimes it feels like a return to what once was, life will never be the same. The circumstances change, you gain deeper understanding of the life, you experience new things, the world around you changes. It may feel as if you are revisiting the past but what is likely more accurate is the fact that you are simply revisiting a memory or a familiarity of something that once was in your life.
I am everything and nothing of what once was.
The experiences of the past dictate everything that is in the present but simultaneously exist as their own separate experience.
Every version of myself lives within me — it informs the version of myself writing to you today as well as the one walking through the park tomorrow. There is nothing that I have experienced that does not live on within me. But I will never be the version of myself who experienced that thing.
I am here, right now, writing to you.
I enjoy those moments of catching glimpses of the version of myself I used to be. I started going to the gym earlier this month. If you knew me in 2016, you would know me as the girl who woke up at 5:45 every morning to hit the gym and work through whatever series of Instagram HIIT workouts I saved the day prior. I started working out at the gym a year before when I decided to quit my dance career. I was scared to gain the ‘freshman 15’ didn’t know a life that didn’t involve movement.
This version of myself lasted for years – I trained for a half marathon, I worked at a boutique HIIT fitness gym, I found myself working out to the point of exhaustion almost everyday. Until I stopped. I found yoga, I started traveling, I stopped being so obsessed with having six-pack abs or the most toned arms. I slowed my movement down and focused more on walking and the connection to my breath. I chilled the fuck out and I felt the results in my body.
It was working for me, until it wasn’t. Just like with dance. Or running. Or that first time I started going to the gym. I felt tired, sluggish, lethargic. I would drag myself to my mat every morning for an online yoga class but missed the feeling of practicing around others. I stretched before bed but found myself restless as I counted my breath to sleep. So I decided to try something different.
A little voice in my head whispered to get a gym membership weeks before I actually did. I was scared of the commitment. I was scared of getting back into something I once made my life. I was scared of experiencing orthorexia like I did the last time I went to the gym consistently. I was scared of looking silly or wasting money or any other excuse my brain could think of so that I wouldn’t do the thing that I really needed to do. Until I did it. And I started working out. And it felt like a fog lifted from my entire being. I started to feel like me again.
October was a month that revisited old versions of myself. From the version of myself in college who did sprints everyday and kept track of her protein intake to the version of myself in Belgium staying out on the dance floor until 2am. This year has simultaneously been a year of shedding outgrown versions of myself while revisiting past ways of being AND making space for the new. It has been disorienting and it has been expansive. It is empowering to know that I can always return to something that I once left behind – and that thing left behind will never leave me but it will also never stay the same.
I am working out again, I am making room for play, I am prioritizing the things that really make me feel good. I wrote yesterday in a note, that I am “In a season of not feeling inspired by much more than the simplicity of living life.”
“I am reminding myself that showing up to life is just as important as birthing things into this reality.” I don’t know about you but honoring the current season of life may be one of the most difficult things I remember to do. I am constantly slipping away from the knowing that I am right on track, that nothing has to change, that I have everything I need.
It’s all good.
I’m here.
And so are you.
Let’s just be where we are without the fear that we could (or should) be somewhere better. Think you can do that with me?
Endless love to you, my friend.
xo, Nikki