In this episode of the Impostor Syndrome Files, we talk about how giving yourself permission to be a beginner empowers you to overcome perfectionism and impostor syndrome and stretch and challenge yourself in new ways. My guest, Lesley Logan, shares her journey from an unfulfilling career in the retail industry to a Pilates instructor and how this helped her to strengthen her relationship with herself, mentally and physically. We also talk about the power of discomfort in building the muscles we need to advance our careers.
About My Guest:
Lesley Logan, a certified Pilates teacher, breathwork, habits and mindset coach, is the founder of OnlinePilatesClasses.com, the first free online catalogue of Pilates exercise tutorials, where you can also find weekly Pilates classes and workshops. Teaching Pilates since 2008, she has run multiple studios, has trained hundreds of people to become teachers themselves and has taught thousands of students. When not teaching from her studio in Las Vegas, Lesley she’s hosting her podcast Be It Till You See it or traveling the world-leading Pilates retreats.
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Connect with Lesley:
https://lesleylogan.co/podcast https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/free Instagram: @be_it_pod @lesley.logan
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Transcript:
Kim Meninger Welcome, Lesley, I’m so excited to meet you. And so excited to have this conversation today. I’d love to start by inviting you to introduce yourself.
Lesley Logan Well, thank you, Kim for having me. Hi, I’m Lesley Logan, I am a certified Pilates mindset habits and breathwork coach. I also, because of the experience I had before as a Pilates instructor, ended up doing business coaching for fitness instructors. And so when I saw the topic of impostor syndrome with your podcast, I’m like, oh, this is something I see all the time. And hello. I feel it too. So my, my journey to Pilates was a little interesting, because I definitely did not think I was ever gonna be applied instructor I didn’t know what it was. But when I went my first class, I fell in love with it. And I realized over time, the reason I loved it so much is I connected more to myself than I had ever been in anything before. And that connection has allowed me to understand when my mindset is in the way of things versus like something that’s happening to me. And also just having that awareness around how I’m feeling in that day in that moment. And I think a lot of us are so busy taking care of others, taking care of things at work, that we can miss that connection to ourselves and went and so that’s going to lead me down the path of mindset breathwork and habits.
Kim Meninger Well, I am really looking forward to digging into this. And what strikes me about what you’ve said is that connection to yourself you found in Pilates. I can imagine that other people might find it in other ways. But it makes sense for us to think about, what does that mean connecting to yourself? Like what were you not doing before that Pilates kind of allowed you to do?
Lesley Logan Yeah, that’s a great question. So I was an athlete and a runner. And so it wasn’t like I never worked out before. But what, what Pilates allowed me to do and this and it and it definitely can be replicated in other things, is it allowed me to stop the whirlwind of the thoughts in your head of like, all the things about this thing I do over here and this thing over here. And what’s this person gonna think. Oh, and that person said that thing. And it still bothered me three days later. And allowed me to like kind of pause all that because all you can do is focus on what muscles you’re using right now in this moment. Because unlike other things, and I lift weights, and I do go for a run and a long walk, you can think about everything while you’re doing those things, you can squat and think about your grocery list, you can, you, you can do it well, and you can do heavy weights and, and but with Pilates, if you are focused on other things, you are not getting your mind and body connected, and therefore the exercises will seem easy. Or you’ll just or not fun. So when you have to actually focus on what you’re moving and where it’s moving from, it really does still the mind. And so that’s what I mean by connecting to myself. It kind of just pauses all that to just really understand like, what’s here, what’s, what’s like leftover when all those thoughts go away?
Kim Meninger And this might seem like a, like an obvious answer to this question. But I’m curious what you think about that? What’s the benefit of that? Because I think so many of us, like you said, are in these swirls of thoughts. And we don’t even necessarily think that there’s another way to do it. Because we just accept at face value that this is the way our brains work. And we’re too busy to even notice consciously or to try to do things a different way. So like, what’s different about your life because you have introduced something like this?
Lesley Logan It’s a great question. You know, I think the answer could be obvious. It’s not for so many because there’s fear of doing things differently or, or wrong. Like, if I do it wrong, then everyone will think that there’s like I’m dumb, or I, you know, I can’t be trusted, or I’m unreliable. Insert whatever pressure we want to put on ourselves, ladies. But the, the, the benefit of stopping all of that is one, you get really clear on what actually matters to you. I think it’s very easy for us to just go doing things the way we’ve always done them in the way that people did it around us. Because we think it’s gonna get us to where we want to go, because we think it helps someone else do that. And there’s all these things that we’ve just projected onto people truly. And, and we actually had to stop and actually understand, like, what do I really want. And as soon as I discovered, so I’ll use myself as soon as I discovered Pilates, relatively quickly, I realized I actually didn’t like my job or where I lived. And I couldn’t play. I had anxiety, and I couldn’t figure out why I was having an anxiety. Nothing had changed. Nothing dramatic had happened. But all of a sudden, I didn’t like going on this one hallway to work every day. Like I felt like the walls were closing in. And I’ve never had that before. And, and so when I started going to my Pilates classes, I started like finding like I was really happy there. And I wasn’t happy with work. So I was having these little pockets of like freedom and like understanding what I wanted. And after the class is over there was like this dopamine hit and the strength and power and a confidence that I even though I felt the confident person, I feel like I felt easy to be this confident person. And so over time I was able to get more clear. I transferred to a different location, I moved towns, and then I, you know, like so all these things happen just by getting, getting calm and doing things a little bit differently and letting all those thoughts just take a pause. It just allowed me to really see what mattered in my life. And I have seen that time and time again in the people that I’ve worked with. In fact, several of the people that I’ve worked with not even in person just online, they have quit jobs, where their boss was verbally abusive to them. They’re doing the exact same work for someone else. And it was just that they had these moments where they realize like, I’m not happy there. And we don’t, I think we think we have to put up with that because we have other responsibilities are just the way this is where we think it will, it will be the same somewhere else. And it’s, it might not it might, but it doesn’t have to be.
Kim Meninger That’s such an important point. Because I, that was my experience, I worked for the same company for most of my career before I went out on my own. And so I didn’t know that other companies did things differently, right? You just assume that this is how corporate America operates, for example, and so there’s no point in trying to change because you’re just going to end up in a different situation where you’re the new person. And so we all love the devil we know, right? So I’m curious, what were you doing before and one thing, and I’m gonna struggle to articulate this, but one thing that I find really interesting is that, and while I’m sure it’s not as simple as this, it sounds like you almost leaned into it, because I can also imagine a scenario in which that discomfort just kind of makes you say, Okay, I’m not gonna, I’m gonna go back to my comfort zone and not continue to move into space. Right. So how did you? What were you doing before? And how did you trust that continuing to go down this path was actually going to be a good thing?
Lesley Logan Yeah. So before that, I was actually working in retail, and I was one of the top managers for the company. And it wasn’t, it was still kind of, even though we were all of our shops from the top malls in the United States, like South Coast Plaza, Caesars form shops, you know, the grow like big places, it was still considered a mom and pop owned, like a privately owned business versus like, the LVHN that owns like, all the top all the stores, right, and like, you know, the Gap, like all these people, so all these other chains. So because it was small, because I was one of the six managers around I was in the middle. So I understand a lot of your listeners’ positions, there wasn’t a lot of growth opportunities, because my boss was the owner’s daughter. And I had seen the other options in retail. And there’s from other managers, and theirs did sound worse, you know, because, because it was just like one of a million employees. And so at least I was seen, but I think what allowed me to lean into it, to be curious, was just the feeling I had after those little blips, those little moments where I felt happier than I did in the job that I actually did love. And I think like, I think that’s actually something that a lot of people are good at what they do. And they actually do like parts of it. So I actually really, I mean, I didn’t want to lie, I never thought I was leaving my job, I thought I was just going to a workout class. But I because I really did love what I did, I just didn’t want to do it there anymore. It was causing some stress for me. So to lean into it, I don’t, it definitely wasn’t conscious. And it wasn’t all at once. It was a little over time. And I think that’s, that’s really important because I think it’s easy with social media and with also just talking to random people. Every once in a while when big things happen. We go oh, and they just did that. There’s like snap their fingers switch their job. But really, it’s kind of just, kind of like I was listening to an analogy of someone doing something else where they were just weighing, you put a little drop of color in the water and the first drop, you don’t really see it and the second drop, you don’t really see it. But over time, the drops add up. And all of a sudden, like water changes color. And I think that’s really what happened for me. It wasn’t that I took the class and I was like immediately like, Okay, I’m just going to change everything. It was oh, it was a little bit over time. And that building of confidence that I could make those shifts happen. I couldn’t be happier with those shifts.
Kim Meninger Hmm, I love the way you call that out. Because I do think it’s so important for people to recognize that it’s not an instant thing. And sometimes we confuse the discomfort that comes from the good change with the discomfort that comes from being in the wrong place, right? And so there’s different kinds of ways of interpreting the situation. And it sounds like you had enough trust that what you were feeling was pulling you in the right direction. And that continued to build momentum over time.
Lesley Logan Yeah, yeah. And I think that discomfort is real in everything that we do. And we can, and that you mentioned that, but like, we can think that discomfort means bad. And really, if you think about how muscles are built, it’s from stress. So not all stress is bad because we have to stress the muscles for them to grow. And when they, we put stress on them, they actually strengthen our bones. And so there is discomfort in building up… now too much can break something. But a little bit over time is actually really important for building strength, building muscle and building confidence in taking the next step.
Kim Meninger I love that I think that’s such a great way to think about it. I’m gonna file that away.
Lesley Logan And yes, file it away. And it’s an easier visual sometimes to I think, sometimes when we’re talking about competence or a little bit over time, it can be a little esoteric, but we all have like, build strength up in some way, whether it’s going for a run or a walk or lifting weights.
Kim Meninger Yeah, exactly. And I love that. We all know the pain of doing that. And, and there’s something really, I know, for me if I wake up sore, because I’ve had a good workout, that is very different from waking up sore, because I sat on the couch. [Yes, yes.] Like, the pain, right? It’s like, oh, this is good pain.
Lesley Logan Yeah, I did that. It’s like, it’s like a sign that you did something. And I will just say, if you did an amazing workout and you weren’t sore the next day, do not beat yourself up, it actually doesn’t mean and the soreness is like a combination of lactic acid and particular types of work in a muscle. That’s a good description, just in case people are judging themselves that they didn’t have a good sore, just so you know, it’s okay. You still had a good workout? I’m sure.
Kim Meninger So did you struggle with any kind of self-doubt in making this type of a transition? Because going to entrepreneurship can be very triggering to you? Like, how did? How did you get to the point where you thought I’m going to leave behind the security, even if it wasn’t necessarily as satisfying? to then go off on my own and start this whole new thing?
Lesley Logan Oh, well, I mean, that’s a great question. Because I also did it during the 2008 recession, when people were like canceling their cable. So to be honest, I harder of it. Here’s the interesting thing, that I when people make a change, if you notice how much you talk about the thing you’re excited about, because like when you have a new job, there’s an excitement around it, when you have like thinking about a new relationship or something new get a new pet, like all you want to talk about is that and so that passion that I had that excitement I had actually was kind of the snowball effect to me getting clients, and I got more than I could handle. And so I had actually to make a choice of making this leap. And it was really scary. But I always think it’s important for people to know their numbers. So you got to know, you got to know your numbers. And at the time, you know, I was, I was in my late I my mid-20s, late 20s. So it was not a complicated decision, because I didn’t have kids and I wasn’t married. However, I didn’t have health insurance either. So I had to like, I had to like, let go of vacation time health insurance and a salary of what felt safe to working for myself. And you, when you work for yourself, you will face every part of you that you’ve ever not wanted to face. And it didn’t, it didn’t have to go that way I could have gone into an employment opportunity. Like, that’s what’s really cool about pretty much any role, any career out there, there is going to be a private version where you can be in a corporate, big family or you can be working for yourself. So I just knew my numbers. And I knew if I taught this many people, then I could make the same amount of money that I was making before in less time. And so worst case scenario, I used to be a barista before I was in retail, I probably could go work at Starbucks. So I kind of just like, I just kind of bet on myself a little bit. If I had had if I had been older and I had kids, I think that would definitely have changed responsibility, I probably would have had a bigger bridge. But I, I just, I think what’s important for us as women is to just like really jot down the data and this goes back to imposter syndrome. If you ever wanting to like if you had this moment, if you write down all the times, you’ve actually come through on something you said you would do. If you actually write down all the data of the times that you like, showed up for other people, even when they didn’t show up for you like you do you felt you followed through on any commitment, you will see you can bet on yourself. And that data, even though I was scared and wondering how I’m gonna pay rent, I lived in Los Angeles. So it wasn’t like I was living in a place where it’s cheap. I could look at that data and go I, I’ve always figured out a way. So no matter what I’ll figure out because I had the history. And I don’t think that enough people are doing a little retrospection each week or each month on the wins that they’ve had. I think it’s very easy for us to focus on what didn’t get done on our tasks, like what didn’t get done at work, what we did wrong, not what we did, right. And most of the time, there’s more wins in a week than We give ourselves credit for and if you actually focus on those, you count those and even just write them down in a gratitude journal each day, you’ll have data to combat any, any mindset that would say, I can’t do this.
Kim Meninger I love that so much. And that is very similar to how I think about it too. And in a different kind of scenario. One of the things that I love that you talked about is betting on yourself, because one of the things that I often talk to people about is this natural tendency that we have to play small in certain kinds of situations. So let’s say I’m in a meeting, and people are having a conversation about something, and I have an idea, but I’m hesitant to share it, because I feel like I’m gonna look like a fool, or somebody’s gonna find out, I don’t know what I’m doing. I have the same advice to actually track how often you share it and it goes well, or how often someone else shares it and gets celebrated for it. And to actually keep like tally marks of that because it’s the data, right? Because you’re absolutely right, our brains don’t catalogue the good stuff, our brains are so primed to notice the negative. And so we will always see what we did wrong. But I love having building up a database of what you’re doing well, so that when it comes time to make a decision, you can have faith that you’ve, you’ve done all of this other stuff, and it’s gone. Well, so that shows you that you can do that.
Lesley Logan I love that. Yeah, and I had I talked to a neurologist, neuroscientists are not just and you know, he said, your brain is like predisposed to, like, only see the negative like, like, that’s it. It was designed to keep you remembering the tigers and lions and bears from when you were out there. And to look for those things out there. It wasn’t designed to like live in a world where most of us are not hunting for our food, most of us are doing some job in a very safe-ish environment. And but our brain isn’t hasn’t switched over to like, focus on like, what did I do today? That was well, what did they do that went well? Like? How about everything is going pretty darn good? And I’m so focused on like, I’m gonna be caught. And I think it’s, um, I definitely do think it happens. And it can happen to anybody, but I do see it happen more to women and I do, you are correct. You call that like a plain smile, like I don’t want to disrupt anything I don’t want to. But the truth is, is that most people are looking for someone to like, speak up and say something, because then they can say something, and they’ll feel safe to do it. And it’s like, it would be amazing. If all environments were a little bit more curated in that, like they make that a safe space. But I think as more and more people are listening to your podcast and thinking about this, they will, they’ll start to, they’ll start to figure it out.
Kim Meninger Well, and also that reminds me going back to what you were talking about to about people who had been working for a terrible boss and then went someplace else and did the same job and were so much happier is that that’s data to if you’re in an environment where you are acting in good faith and sharing your ideas. And it doesn’t go well. Chances are, it’s not about you, it’s about the environment, right. And something that we tend to distort, too is everything that goes wrong is our fault, as opposed to looking more almost zooming out and saying, Okay, what’s going on in this environment that’s causing this to happen? And maybe this isn’t the right place for me to show up as my best self?
Lesley Logan Yeah, the one that’s I mean, like, it would be really amazing if more and more people thought of things happening, not as it’s your fault. And it’s actually like, what, what actually did happen here, and what are all the different parts because it’s kind of like so I teach workouts, right? And I would have a client who I saw one hour of the week. And they came in and they told me they moved a bunch of boxes around in their garage. And they needed to take it easy. So I gave them a very safe pre-Pilates session, like mostly stretching, just trying to make sure that like, their nervous system was calm, everything is good. They come back a week later. And they say, well, a couple days after the session, my back hurt. And so I want to make sure you’re like watching how I do this. And I’m like, I’m be really honest with you. I saw you for one hour out of your entire week. There’s 100 How many hours in the week before you came, you did this thing. And then two days later, some there’s something in your normal with life that you’re living that is actually causing your back to hurt, because it isn’t just this one hour that you can remember and I think it’s very easy. I see this in teachers a lot they go oh my god what I do and it’s like, maybe you screwed up and that’s true. We, no one is perfect. But what are the chances out of the 100 and something hours that it was your hour?
Kim Meninger That’s such a good point. I think it’s so much of this comes down to perspective into what you choose to focus your attention on. And this is we’re talking about we will always go to the darkest place in our minds as opposed to thinking more analytically about well let’s look at the, the whole week and where else this might…
Lesley Logan Yeah, ah, yeah, like does your boss yell at every single person after they do anything wrong? Okay, then it, then the common noun was them. Uh, you know, I, it’s so it would be really amazing if our brains allowed us to take an opportunity to like, hit pause on the entire thing that’s happening, like a movie and like review everything. It does take practice. But you know, it’s one of those things that like, if you’re super focused on being found out about something, that’s all you’re focusing on. So your brain is actually looking for evidence to prove that whatever your negative thought is, is true. So your eyes and ears are just looking for all these things to prove this thought that you have to be a fact. Because whatever believe we is, we think is a fact, which is not true. But that’s what our brain does. And so then you’re actually not very present. And you’re not coming up with great ideas, and you’re actually not being the best version of yourself. And so then, by default, you’re actually just becoming proof of your own prophecy.
Kim Meninger You’re right. That’s yeah. Oh, I know. And I’m curious if you can speak to the breathwork part of what you do because I do talk a lot I don’t at all proclaim to be an expert in this area. But I do know that or talk about the idea that a lot of times when we are feeling impostor syndrome, what we’re all also feeling is the fight or flight response. The breathing is such an important part of taking our physiological response back to neutral and just being able to say, oh, so that we don’t misinterpret our performance as proof that we’re not capable, but more so that we were in this very stressed situation and didn’t allow us to do our best thinking. So I’m curious what your work is around that. And if there’s anything else that you would want to share with people about their breathing piece?
Lesley Logan Yeah. So, first of all, I like I fell into breath work kind of by happenstance, Joseph Pilates talks about how you need to, above all else learn how to breathe, that the lungs are a place of similar cemetery for disease and illness. And but he doesn’t actually have a ton of breath in his work. So I went and found a book, and then I went down that rabbit hole to become a breathwork instructor, because I just was really like, I got really excited about this, because here’s what’s really cool. So if you’ve ever been stressed out, and someone just says you need to calm down, nothing is going to piss you off more than someone telling you the obvious thing you need to do. But as you mentioned, you are in a fight or flight, it’s very hard to just turn the light switch off on that. So what is super cool about breathwork, that it’s really hard to do with any other modality is you can actually meet the anxiety, the fear where it is, you can actually do a breath work pattern that meets that anxiety, and then you can switch the breath work pattern to bring you down. So some people would just do a breathwork pattern that just brings you down, but that, that may work for some people, especially if they have a practice of doing that, like you can get really good at bringing yourself down pretty quickly. For some people, what I have seen is like, so calming breath work pattern, or very grounding breath work pattern is into the nose and out of the mouth. And you fill that belly up, pick a deep breath in. But when you’re in fight-or-flight, you can’t do that, literally, the breath work pattern is shallow, it’s very fast. So by actually doing a breath work pattern, either like you can do it through the nose as like a, you push the air out really fast. You can actually meet that and your brain starts focusing on the pattern, not on the fear. And then you can go into if you’re guided into a grounding breathwork pattern that really puts you back into your present moment. So you can actually play with patterns to like meet it and then bring it back down. And so it’s really this cool thing that happens in the brain that then allows the body to meet the meet the level of presence you want to be in? Do you want to be grounded? Do you want to be like What do you want to be and you can actually, and then between different coaches like I like to do a lot of visual work visualization work, because that’s just the type of person I am some people some work but you can actually use it for a lot of other things, including trying to visualize yourself doing the thing that scares you the thing that brings you impostor syndrome, the end like you can visualize it going well. And you can have this breathwork pattern or so it’s just it’s really cool. But especially for those people who are in that fight or fight, instead of going I just need to calm down. That’s when has it ever like it’s never worked? We have to take so. So I really like to kind of meet the energy level where it is and then bring it to where I want it to be. And speaking of breathwork so there’s a couple interesting things. One, a lot of people breathe through their mouths. And because people were like well we have a mouth we can breathe through the nose we can breathe through and like yeah, the nose is like healthier but like you can breathe through both. Well they’ve actually discovered is not breathing can cause anxiety, it also causes a lot of other illnesses. And it’s really crazy. But nose breathing is actually the best way to breathe, it’s actually it actually keeps infections outside of your sinuses, if you’re doing it that way it, it lowers your levels of having hypertension and other anxiety-type illnesses. And it’s just really cool. So the book, if you want to know the science behind it, it’s called Breathe by James Nester, he’s amazing. But that’s why I kind of got into breathwork. Because sometimes with my clients that I work with, or myself, I don’t have time for a whole play session to feel good. Sometimes I have to just breathe. And I don’t always have a lot of minutes. And with a pattern, you can do it in like a few minutes.
Kim Meninger That is so fascinating. Because I have lots of anxiety. I’ve gotten a lot better over the years. But there’s been I don’t know, a pattern over the last few months or so we’re every now and then I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with the Oh no, I’ve got to do XY and Z. And I’ve been trying to use breathing to calm myself down. But it almost feels like I’m suffocating. Because I can’t do the deep breathing while I’m freaking out. So I love what you’re saying about meeting where it is.
Lesley Logan First. Yeah, yeah, you can. And, and, and I wish I could take credit for that some feature I was studying with mentioned that, and I was like, oh, I should play with that. And it’s actually just, it’s really, it. I think first and foremost, when you’re having an anxiety when you’re having some fear. Acknowledging that it’s there almost is like the enough to d power it, you know, like just to like, bring it down, because it’s really just wants, we all just want to feel seen all parts of us. And so by telling ourselves to calm down, or by changing how we act, we’re masking. And then of course, it’s going to create imposter syndrome at work because you’re masking who you are to, like fit in. And all that does is bottle up this energy that’s just trying to get out which is going to cause itself to be seen in different ways.
Kim Meninger You’re so right. And I think about the amount of energy that goes into everything that we’re talking about that could be channeled more productively into anything work, our personal interests, just being present with our families and so much of our brains are are, you know, consumed by all of this anxiety and just made up stories that we tell it.
Lesley Logan Yeah, exactly. And that’s the stories that we tell ourselves. And so we do have to tell ourselves a different story. But to do that the author the we need to be in a different state. And you can get to that state in different ways. I mentioned plies and breathwork, maybe you have a different way of doing that maybe you can think back to a time that like when you did something could be knitting could be walking could be having a pet that put you in that state, and that and like lean into that.
Kim Meninger Do you talk about this explicitly when you’re teaching the or do you think it happens automatically that people get to this place, once they start to do this kind of work?
Lesley Logan I do talk about it specifically. Mostly because like, I like to think that my the person who is coming to my classes or to my anything that I do, they’re probably some version of me in some way. And that the old version of me kind of needed it to be a bit more obvious in the beginning. There was a there, I always am a recovering perfectionist overachiever, which, by the way just means a lot of impostor syndrome, so, so I kind of needed someone to spell it out. Now I’m also a massively creative person. So I was able to take this thing over here and this thing over there, and then bring it all into the thing that I do. And so as I’m teaching you the 100, for example, and I’m giving the reasons why we’re doing this exercise, I’ll often drop in like, and just remember, like, even if you only did five breaths, you just did something really hard for five breaths. Yeah, and if you can do this hard thing for five breaths, you can do a lot of hard things. And so I, it’s not in every exercise, but it is in every class. And it’s an all the things I just like to remind people because sometimes we just forget that like we’ve done things like this before we and we remember the things we didn’t do well and those things before but we don’t remember I think discuss already the, the times that we’ve done a hard thing and survived it. And you know, I am so many people have said this already, but you have survived all the hardest obstacles you’ve ever if you are listening to this, you are alive and you’ve survived so many things. And, and, and so it’s important, I just really like to remind that to people and on some days, they hear it and they’re like I can’t and on other days, you know, it might be a little harder. It might just be a drop in the bucket. But you know, they come back again and it’s another drop and pretty soon after. To the color. So, you know,
Kim Meninger I love that you do that. Because you’re right. I mean things sometimes different people need different reinforcement of those themes. But I think just as somebody who has struggled with anxiety, I know how important physical exercise is to the management of that. But I also want to call out what you said about perfectionism, too, because Pilates in particular can be a really intimidating thing. For some people, it feels like, Oh, I could never do that. Or I can’t compete with all these other people who’ve been doing it for years. And so do you have any advice for people who are thinking? I would love to try that, but I’m not good enough.
Lesley Logan Yeah. So Pilates was actually designed by a man, not a dancer, for men, not dancers, or skinny women that you probably have seen in all the pictures. And I hate that when you google Pilates, the images are pretty much showing people have unattainable bodies doing exercises that look really difficult. Here’s the beautiful thing, you have a body. So you can do these moves. And you just like you can’t, if you see a runner, and you think oh my god, they’re so fast, I could never do that. They all started somewhere, every single one of them did. And so the truth is, is that finding a and an instructor that helps you feel seen as your first goal. So it’s not Pilates, that is the issue. It’s finding a teacher, just like find it, find a therapist that actually sees you and understands you. And so give yourself permission to go on a journey to find someone that you resonate with, and then go with those classes. But you know, there are different levels, there’s 500, basic Pilates exercises, and some of them are freaking weird. But on day one, your teacher was saying you as a beginner should not be letting you do those weird ones. You should be doing the very foundational ones, which are like, Oh, it’s one knee and it’s one leg out. Yep, it’s just it’s very, it’s all the moves are things the body does regularly. And so eventually they get flipped upside down. But, but give yourself permission to be a beginner. Because it’s a way of practicing that you can learn new things. And it’s a, it’s a way of telling your brain that it’s safe to be a beginner. You don’t have to be the best at something, which is going to allow you, as you said, Kim, to speak up at work, and be a beginner at a new place, be a newbie at a new job. Like, you know, how we do one thing is how we do everything. So allowing yourself practice being a beginner at Pilates, it’s gonna make it easier for you to be beginner in other places.
Kim Meninger I love that so much. I’m writing that down because I just love permission to be a beginner as language because that’s exactly and that goes back to what you were saying too is everything we do today. We were beginners once and this is just beginning yet another new thing, right?
Lesley Logan Yeah, I wanted to say really quickly because I know up a time but every single person listening this probably has a kid or know someone who has one. And when that baby took their first step no one was like up but a little turned in. You know it was a little hard on the landing couldn’t really get the other one. No everyone cheers everyone’s like it’s the most amazing thing we’re so excited for this beginner step and somewhere along the way it isn’t safe to be beginner it’s not good to be beginner you should be a know-it-all you should know everything and the reality is, is if you actually think about all the people who are know it alls you don’t like them. We don’t like them. So it’s just hope that just like I hope that helps people realize like permission to be beginner and then just remember like baby’s first steps. Those are be the best beginner steps and no one is no one judges them.
Kim Menginer Oh, that is such an amazing way to wrap up and as we do so I’d love to ask you Where can people find you if they want to know more? Where are you hanging out digitally?
Lesley Logan Yeah, so I’m on pretty much all the things but if you want to be reminded you can do hard things that are onlinepilatesclasses.com and I hang out on Instagram at as my name Lesley.Logan. And my podcast is Be It Till You See It and that’s because I don’t like fake it till you make it and I don’t really but I also don’t like waiting. So it’s a it’s a podcast helping people like become the person that they’re waiting for today before they’re ready.
Kim Meninger I love it. Lesley, thank you so much. This has been such a great conversation.
Lesley Logan Thanks, Kim.