About 10 years ago I was in my closet reorganizing and purging. This wasn’t a special occasion, I try to keep my closet as organized as possible for someone who shops for a living. I opened my favorite drawer first.
This was a drawer dedicated to my most loved leggings. They also happened to be a treasure of special editions: the sell-out Lululemon cobalt blue leggings, the Beyond Yoga soft leggings, the Alo coated leather leggings, the Gymshark collaboration seamless leggings. As I pulled them all out with the intention of refolding and putting them all back in, I had a moment.
“My goodness…how many pairs of FREAKING leggings do I own?!” I said to myself half laughing.
It was supposed to be a rhetorical question but something in my gut told me to count. And so I pulled them out one by one and began the work.
3… 7… 15… 22… 30… yeah stay with me we aren’t done yet. By the time we finished, I landed on precisely 47 pairs of leggings. This certainly wasn’t the amount of times I was going to the gym in a month. But there was a bigger problem.
I was wearing exactly none of them.
When I finished counting, I asked myself what leggings I was actually wearing? There I was, staring at the legging graveyard I’d by now made on my bed looking at the pairs I wore on repeat. They were the TWO (of 47) most boring black ones.
Shortly after, I was telling a friend about this little closet cleanout over coffee.
“Why do you think you don’t wear all those leggings?!” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I don’t feel worthy of them.” I blurted.
I saw those words come out of my mouth and the moment I said them I couldn’t put them back in. I knew we weren’t talking about fabric anymore.
She’s like: “Worthy?! What do you mean you’re not worthy?! Your leggings don’t care how you feel about them, no one at your gym cares!”
Then my friend said something that changed everything for me: “I DARE you to wear those leggings!”
I sat there and my eyes sort of widened. I owned a $3000 drawer full of leggings that I had no idea why I wasn’t wearing. Gulp. That afternoon I accepted her dare.
I went home that day and opened my closet. I pulled out the bag of 47 fancy leggings.
“Alright you guys,” I said to them. “It’s time to put you on.”
And so I began wearing those leggings day after day. I wore them to coffee. To exercise. I wore them on weekends.
The first mornings were strange. Reaching beyond the easy “safe” black pair felt like eating sugar for breakfast. An indulgence. By the second week, I got a little better at reaching for something that made my heart skip a beat. And by the end of the thirty days, I had in a sense come online to something more visceral: noticing that the morning version of me (the one who gets dressed), acts like an imposter to the things I love the most.
I realized I’d been hoarding the better version of my leggings for a future me who I imagined was somehow more worthy.
(Spoiler: this pattern wasn’t just in my legging drawer.)
Day by day, I kept giving myself liberty to wear the leggings I loved. My workouts changed, because I loved how I felt in my workout clothes. My marriage felt different, because I felt different in my own skin. My career changed, because I stopped agreeing to the old pattern of being a person who saves the good things.
This isn’t a story today about leggings. It’s actually about the two versions of yourself. It’s about noticing the version of you who purchased the thing you know matches your most authentic expression - and the version who denies her the chance to wear it.
Those two versions of me had to meet one another on the bed that one afternoon. Yes, these versions represented themselves as big piles of unworn expensive leggings vs. the boring simple black ones. But underneath, I noticed a voice running in the background, running my life without me even knowing I was giving it permission to.
The voice represented by 45 leggings folded carefully in their drawer whispering: don’t wear us yet. Save these for the woman you’ll be another day.
If you’ve got a version of yourself living in a drawer like mine, whispering its own tricky “not yet” to you every morning, today’s an invitation to listen.
It doesn’t have to be leggings. Sometimes it’s the laptop that wants to be opened or the camera that wants to come out and see the world.
A new version of you has to be chosen. And she normally doesn’t need a rebirth, she’s already there (and most likely bought the thing in the first place). It’s the you, in front of the old drawer, deciding you’re all done saving yourself for a future that you know is yours.
There’s three words I leave you with, like my best friend did over coffee.
I dare you.
TRY ON
Go to the drawer or the shelf where you keep the saved thing - your version of my legging drawer. I dare you today to put it on, try it out, taste it, experience it - just for 5 minutes today. What would happen if you gave yourself this opportunity every day?
Yes, I have a closet full of clothes never worn. Why? I’m going to find something special today.
Love this. Very true. And my poor jewelry. All messed up and never worn!