Jeff 00:00
Hello, everybody out there. “What do you want?” That’s we’re going to be diving in today in episode 165. So if you’re ready, let’s get started.
Doreen 00:21
Are you ready to create a life that’s better than ever before? We are Doreen Yaffa and Jeff Wilson, and we are here to give you the strategies you need to create the life after divorce that you deserve and desire. As partners, both in marriage and coaching, we use our expertise as well as our own personal experiences, to help you make the next chapter of your life, the best chapter.
Doreen 00:54
Hey, Jeff.
Jeff 00:55
Doreen, how are you?
Doreen 00:57
I’m good. I’m good. It is pouring rain, so if you hear that we have one of those, what do they call them?
Jeff 01:05
Skylights, skylights.
Doreen 01:06
Skylights and it’s rather noisy. There’s also a lot of thunder and lightning. We live in Boca Raton, Florida, on the water, and it is a typical late, late afternoon summer day. So in about, I would say, half an hour or so, it’ll be fine.
Jeff 01:23
Soon as we’re done with the podcast.
Doreen 01:26
It’ll be sunny again, because this is how it goes. We say in Florida, if you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes, right? So let’s talk about what you want. Isn’t there a song on that?
Jeff 01:36
Tell me what you want.
Doreen & Jeff 01:37
What you really, really want.
Doreen 01:38
Yeah. Spice Girls, right?
Jeff 01:39
Yeah. And the answer to that question is, I want my baby back? Baby back.
Doreen 01:42
No, that’s a different- I think you’re aging yourself.
Jeff 01:45
Okay, well, baby back ribs are pretty good.
Doreen 01:48
Okay, so listen, um, what you want? What do you want? Jeff, what do you want?
Jeff 01:58
Well, you know, that’s the first when I when I get a new client, I think that’s the one thing that I try to develop with them, is clarity on what they want their future to look like. And I mean for themselves, by themselves, thinking for themselves, not for anybody else, what they want, or what your spouse wants.
Doreen 02:22
Well, your ex.
Jeff 02:24
Or your ex spouse.
Doreen 02:25
Or no, somepeople, even after the divorce, their exes still control them. They really do. Their friends, could be their friends or family. Their family just say family, you know. But yeah, that happens.
Doreen 02:38
Children.
Jeff 02:39
So we determine what it is that they really want for themselves, and that opens up the clarity and opens up the skies, and now they have direct focus on what they need to go for.
Doreen 02:50
That’s a hard answer, hard question for a lot of people, but I think that the beauty of divorce, because there are a lot of good things about divorce, divorce gets a bad rep, right?
Doreen 03:01
I mean, it really gets a bad rep. You know, why is it that you say that your marriage failed? You know, you could equally say your marriage was a success as an example. It means maybe it’s it failed at that time. Was it really a failure? Maybe years of a lot of great memories and happiness and children together.
Jeff 03:01
I agree.
Jeff 03:21
Well, it’s all about your thoughts. I mean, if you’re thinking that the divorce served its purpose-
Doreen 03:27
Divorce or the marriage?
Jeff 03:28
The marriage, yeah, the marriage, well, the divorce served purpose, too. We have some great kids, and you had some great times. And now it’s time to move on and start a new chapter in my life, and maybe meet somebody new and see what happens. That is a time of reinvention. It’s gonna be a very, very good time.
Doreen 03:48
You seem very excited. Are you very excited?
Jeff 03:50
I’m excited.
Doreen 03:51
Okay, but what I was saying, calm down.
Jeff 03:55
Okay.
Doreen 03:56
Calm down. Calm down. I know you’re all excited about this topic. Is divorce pushes you into a place where you have to make choices that are different than what your life looked like the day before? You are forced into new situations, you haven’t no longer have your spouse there. That changes everything. Maybe you move into a new place. Maybe you’re getting into a new career as a result of having to be you know, look for ways to make dollars yourself. All kinds of stuff. The kids, new things going on with the kids. So the beauty of divorce, one of the benefits, is it gives you the opportunity to really rethink the rest of your life, right, right? Or at least the next number of years. And we talk about wants, we talk about the small ones, the daily wants, the monthly wants, the yearly wants, and the future wants. Like you look at all of the various aspects of life and what’s important to you. So I like that. We have a family member recently who was made a decision to end their relationship. And I think that’s super courageous and bold, because sometimes decisions about your future and your relationship should, should really be had, not sometimes, all the time. Especially when you’re getting divorced, and if you are at a place in your life where you understand what you want on some level, and the person that you’re with has very different ideas of their wants, and they don’t align, that’s an issue.
Jeff 05:45
Sure.
Doreen 05:45
Right? I’m talking the bigger picture in relationships, like maybe where you’re going to live, or maybe even the life style that you want to live, kids, responsibilities in the in the relationship, who does what? Right? Like those types of things. Those are things. I wish they had some kind of a test. Compatibility test, that they required before you got married. I’m saying that tongue in cheek, but I think it’s really important before you get get in deep into a relationship again, that you think about your compatibility with someone and make sure you have similar you call them what?
Jeff 06:29
Well, they’re called one match matches.
Doreen 06:34
Right.
Jeff 06:34
And it kind of reminds me of the old fashioned matchmaker, you know. Oh, they want kids, you want kids, oh, it’s a perfect match. But I think that when you talk about it as a couple, maybe early in the relationship, or when you know you’re starting to get serious, there probably is some serious wants that you have to discuss with each other.
Doreen 06:57
Well, that’s part of your wants.
Doreen 06:57
I think it’s so important. And it doesn’t matter what age you are, whether you’re younger, like our family member, who’s thinking about their future and what that’s going to look like, and what they expect as similar matches in a relationship, or your you know, in your later years In life, and you’re looking for compatibility, right? So let’s talk about it. Okay, so what do you do? How do you get there? I think the first thing you do is figure out what you want, you know, do some deep diving on that, as in a personal level, or if you if that’s challenging for you, maybe you start with what you don’t want, right?
Doreen 07:02
Well, maybe it’s challenging for some of the listeners to understand what they really want.
Jeff 07:48
They’re just like your actions, inaction is an action, don’t want is still a want.
Doreen 07:54
What?
Jeff 07:55
And when you don’t want something, that’s just a negative perspective on something. But when you want-
Doreen 08:01
I don’t know that it’s negative, I disagree with that.
Jeff 08:03
If you say I don’t want-
Doreen 08:05
I don’t want someone that doesn’t have any savings, okay, doesn’t have enough to be able to take care of themselves in the future.
Jeff 08:13
Right, so you can easily say I want somebody with savings.
Doreen 08:16
Right. But what I’m suggesting, Jeff, was that if you’re having challenges getting down to what you want, start with what you don’t want to start to get to what you do want. That’s all I’m saying. Okay, okay, all right, I’ll
Jeff 08:30
Okay, okay, all right, I’ll agree with you.
Doreen 08:31
You don’t agree?
Jeff 08:32
I agree. Okay, I just don’t want to argue.
Doreen 08:36
I’m not arguing with you.
Jeff 08:38
I want to agree with you.
Doreen 08:39
I just don’t know where sometimes you’re going with things.
Jeff 08:41
No, it’s saying the same thing, don’t want kids. And I, you know, saying is the same thing of saying I don’t want to have kids.
Doreen 08:50
Let’s not belabor the point. But I’m saying a lot of people have a hard time figuring out what they do want.
Jeff 08:56
It’s a very tough thing.
Doreen 08:57
Then start with what you don’t want. There’s probably some things that are like, on your no hit list, it’s like, “No, that’s unacceptable.” and I’m suggesting go there if you have challenges, that’s it.
Jeff 09:07
That’s a good thing.
Doreen 09:07
So let’s talk about how other parts about the wanting. Because we went, I did this episode, episode numbers I think it was 51 when I was doing the podcast myself, and it was under a different name, your amazing divorce, and so then we thought we would do it again, right?
Jeff 09:26
And also, the other thing that I want to bring up when we talk about your wants and your don’t wants is you have to really have true conviction.
Doreen 09:35
Maybe you don’t have to do anything.
Jeff 09:37
Well, I mean, you want to have true conviction, and that these wants are so strong to you or your don’t wants are so strong, that you can give up a relationship because they’re so important to you. You know and you stick to them, just like any goals that you want, you’re going to have obstacles, but you don’t want to give up your wants for somebody else.
Doreen 10:02
Right and that’s a great statement, and I think everybody agrees with you, probably most people. So tell us an example of something that you-
Jeff 10:14
Well, this example, you just-
Doreen 10:16
Wait, wait, I didn’t finish the question.
Jeff 10:18
Okay, go ahead.
Doreen 10:20
What’s the question?
Jeff 10:22
No, you were asking the question.
Doreen 10:23
Yeah I was saying, give us an example of something that maybe you gave up, that you wanted, that maybe you now, I don’t want to say regret, because we talked about regret last week, but at the time, when you look back at it, you wish you would have explored that option.
Jeff 10:44
It probably, well, I have two examples, probably one when I wanted to be a marine biologist, when I was very, very small, and I had-
Doreen 10:53
Small or young?
Jeff 10:54
I was both, well, maybe I wasn’t as small as I, you know, some people think I was, but I had a passion for the ocean, passion for you know, diving, and I wanted to be a marine biologist, and for some reason, I just went in a different direction. Then-
Doreen 11:15
Well, wait a second, let’s not leave that.
Jeff 11:17
I was getting out of there, but go ahead.
Doreen 11:19
Yeah, why? Looking back, why? Well, first of all, how old were you?
Jeff 11:24
I don’t think my conviction I was, you know, in high school.
Doreen 11:28
Okay, all right, so I mean, in the point of your life where it really starts to matter as to where you’re going to place your educational study.
Jeff 11:36
I think I let other people influence my wants, which I’m not saying that it should, because you listen to your parents, you listen to your friends, you listen to your teachers, and you try to learn as much as you can. But who’s saying they know more about you than you do.
Doreen 11:58
Right. So, let me summarize. So when you were in high school, there was a point that you had a strong desire to get into marine biology, and for some reason, either because of your parents or other people that you looked up to, probably your teachers, etc, they swayed you in a different direction. And you as a young man, a young person decided to heed that advice, as we would say, and go with it. I was we- were watching something the other day. You think it was American Got- America’s Got Talent or something. But I’m not sure if that’s what it was, or it was something on television while we were making dinner or whatever, and the parent was talking about their child and basically saying that they are so proud of permitting their children the opportunity, not not pushing them in direction. Not saying you need to go to college, and you need to do this, and you’ve got to be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever it is. And because of that, this, I think it was a young lady, pursued her career, her passion, and became a superstar. And I just can’t remember who it was.
Jeff 13:15
It was the young guy, the young kid that was really handsome and he sang amazing. He was going to be the next next Justin Bieber.
Doreen 13:22
Well, that’s what we said. He’s going to be the next Justin Bieber.
Jeff 13:25
That’s what his parents said that let him pursue whatever you want.
Doreen 13:28
Yeah, but I think that’s something also not to get too much down the weeds, but for the parents out there. You know, we all want our children to go in a certain direction, and we have these ideas, these ideology of who they should be. And, you know, maybe some of these thought process come from what our parents expected of us in society. But it’s, I don’t know. I just think it’s so important for us as humans, and especially when you’re young and you’re learning and you’re educating yourself and getting through on to your next you know your life and your career, explore something that you really want, that’s passionate for you. Because we all know all of you out there that are working in a career that you do not enjoy, that you do not like, that you do not feel passion for, it’s challenging to get up in the morning and go to work. There’s a lack of energy, there’s a lack of happiness. You just don’t feel it comes natural to you. I’m in this coaching practice called Strategic Coach, which is business coaching, because, yes, I do believe in coaching, and one of the things that we study is our unique abilities, you know, and finding what that looks like, so that you can really have that passion in what you’re doing in life, right?
Jeff 14:47
Yes. I have a quote from you.
Doreen 14:49
Wait, did we finish that? Because you like to move on to another subject.
Jeff 14:52
It’s the same subject.
Doreen 14:53
No, it’s not. Because not only are we trying to find the unique abilities and the passion and the wants for ourselves, in my business, we’re trying to find the passions and unique abilities of my employees as part of the coaching so that we can place people into seats, into positions that they feel energized and happy about. And I think it’s a beautiful thing. As a matter of fact, we have a book club we’ll be meeting next Wednesday at my house for my team, where we’re exploring and reading unique abilities book and doing the work on it, because I think it’s important to place people in their happy zone.
Jeff 15:31
It’s not only that. As a business owner, it’s more productive and better for the business to have people in their right position.
Doreen 15:40
Well, that’s the whole point. The point is, if you have look, having unhappy employees that leave and move on because they’re not in the right place is not great. So if you can work in- so what the whole thing starting from our children, having our children pursue their passion, you know, come on, it’s within reason, right? You don’t want to be silly about it, and we certainly want to be cognitive of their ability to earn dollars and all that, but they have to have something passionate. I wish that they had in college or even high school level, these types of classes where they talked more about what we teach in coaching, about thoughts, thought work, how thoughts create, feelings, actions, results, and how your thoughts, we have 60,000 of them, and if you understand them, and you use them to get the results you want in your life, how it’s magic. Or how about a class I’m really- not some career development guidance counselor and credence to them, they do a great job, but I’m talking about a class on it, really understanding it, you know. Anyhow, that’s my side note.
Jeff 16:51
Well, I’m gonna give you that quote.
Doreen 16:53
Okay, go.
Jeff 16:54
You said.
Doreen 16:56
I said?
Jeff 16:56
You said, not living your life based on your wants is like living a life of a lie.
Doreen 17:06
It is.
Jeff 17:07
I think it’s great.
Doreen 17:08
It is, it is.
Jeff 17:09
Or if you’re living your life based on somebody else’s wants.
Doreen 17:13
It is. I mean, we all have to do things that we don’t want to do. There’s no question about it, right? That’s- if not, we would all, like, I don’t know, it would be probably a happier world on a lot of levels, but it wouldn’t be necessarily always productive. So there are things we have to do, right? We get that. We’re not talking about that your responsibilities and, you know, whatever you have to do, but we’re really talking about the bigger things, right?
Jeff 17:42
And that’s the beauty, one of the beauty, beauties of divorce. Is you now get to live your life with the way you want to. You’re free.
Doreen 17:49
Well, I don’t know that you’re necessarily free, because I don’t know what you mean by that.
Jeff 17:55
Free to do what you want. Really have a passion for something you want. There should be nothing holding you back now.
Doreen 18:02
Right. Well, I’ll tell you what holds you back. Once you figure out what you want, what you really, really want.
Jeff 18:09
Tell me what you want.
Doreen 18:10
What holds you back is your your crazy brain, your monkey brain, your primitive brain, because if you know what you want, then I called- I’ll call it just reverse engineer it, right? If you want to do whatever, now you know what you have to do. And if you don’t know what you have to do to get there, you can research it. You can hire a consultant. You can figure it out. There’s no question in today’s world. You can definitely figure out what you need to do to get there. But what happens is we don’t want to do it lot of times. We don’t want to get up and do the hard things. We don’t want to take the hard role, which there is no easy way to get what you want. It doesn’t work that way in life. You have to put the time in. You got to put the muscle in. You got to put the energy in. So when your primitive brain says, “No, I’d rather stay on the cut under the covers, because it’s raining right now and I really don’t feel like doing a podcast. I’d rather just like hang out”, (which by the way, is not what I feel because I really, really, really want to do this). You know, you don’t do that because you’re focused on your goal.
Jeff 19:18
Unless you have small goals, you have to have big goals, goals that push you. I know you don’t have to have anything. What I’m saying is some people, that’s the way they want to live their lives, and that’s fine with them. If you want to have big goals and you want to have goals that push you, you can’t live in your primitive brain, because you’re right. You’re not going to want to do things that are uncomfortable, things that are difficult to push you. So you have to use your prefrontal cortex, the planning brain, the goal setting brain, the brain that invented the iPhone. I mean, this is the brain that makes you do things. That some people think at one time were impossible.
Doreen 20:02
Right. All right, so?
Jeff 20:06
What do you want?
Doreen 20:09
No, I think that there’s, you know, it’s more about you said something that I wanted to touch on about the small things versus the big things. There are different levels of wants your wants, right? And so obviously it’s going to be harder to get the bigger things most likely.
Jeff 20:41
Well, in the beginning of the podcast, you said there’s a little the you know, the little things, the big things, the things that you want now in this hour and the things that you want in the next year.
Doreen 20:53
Well, here’s another thing I want to suggest, is that the problem with not doing what you want, and especially if you’re sacrificing for somebody else’s wants is that you deny yourself of who you are, and the world misses out. I think this is what you were saying about Apple. The world misses out on what you could have been.
Jeff 21:14
Or what you could have contributed.
Doreen 21:15
That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. The World misses out on that. If you don’t try to do what you want, and you could have done something amazing to help the world, to bring something new to the world, to save the world, to whatever it is, you’re really depriving the world of all of your amazingness, all your beauty, all of the things that you’re so special, that are so special to honoring yourself and respecting your desires and respecting everyone else by giving them that opportunity.
Jeff 21:47
That’s probably one of the strongest points of the podcast. I really like that.
Doreen 21:51
But also, Jeff, there’s a lot of resentment, I think that goes around or goes along with not wanting, not doing what you want. And I think that is a big thing as well. I think that a lot of there’s this ongoing resentment of, well, I have to do this, and I got to, you know, do all these things that I don’t want to do. And the truth is, if you really want to strip it down, you don’t have to do anything. Right? You may think you have to do it, but you don’t have to get out of bed, you don’t have to take your kids to school, you don’t have to make dinner, you don’t have to do the laundry, you don’t have to go to work, you don’t have to pay your bills, you don’t have to do anything. There’s no one that says you have to do these things. You have choices, right? What I’m saying, and it sounds kind of extreme, is everything we do is a decision, right? And it may be for somebody else. And if you’re doing something for someone else, do it for the right reasons. Do it because, even though it may not be the thing you want to do, for example, making dinner because you’re tired and you just got home and you’re just not one of those people that enjoys to cook, but you want to provide a nice meal for your family, then your want is providing the nice meal even though you don’t like cooking. You see what I’m saying? So, yeah, there’s also the people pleasing aspect of it.
Jeff 23:24
Yeah, that’s a whole another podcast, isn’t it?
Doreen 23:26
Well, we’ve talked about that before.
Jeff 23:28
We did a podcast on people pleasing before, but I think that sometimes when you do something for somebody else, or you do something for yourself based on what somebody else wants or wants for you, you’re trying to be a people pleaser, or you become a people pleaser.
Doreen 23:44
And people pleasing includes what society thinks as well, right? I think there’s some people that they stay within these norms of what society what the expectations are in whatever group they’re involved in, even social media now is kind of dictating what is and is not acceptable. And like I really worry a lot about the influence that these venues, these platforms have over what people really want in life versus what they’re doing just to kind of fit in. Who wants to fit in? I mean, don’t you want to be someone that has your own identity? Maybe be a trend setter and not a trend follower, right? Make your own trend come from the heart of what that looks like and I think when you do something from a place of being authentic, it shows.
Jeff 24:47
I think it all boils down to what it is you truly want. I mean it, you know, there’s plenty of reasons why we don’t go for it, and we kind of almost lie to ourselves or give ourselves excuses, give ourselves reason why we’re not going to do something based on this, that, and the other thing. There’s so many examples we could probably come up with but going against the grain is basically going for what you want based on what you want. That’s a little redundant, but it’s true. You know, if you really really are going- you really really are going for what you truly want, whether it’s something against what your parents think, your friends think, you’re going to be you know, rubbing some elbows the wrong way, and that’s okay.
Doreen 25:39
It is, but for many people that it’s challenging to do that, and so you can’t just, I think it’s important to you know, we can dictate. We could say the words like, “do what you really want”. Okay, well, that kind of makes sense to anybody, right? Do what you really want. Don’t do something for someone else. Like, these are all kind of cliches, right? That’s easy to understand. The question is, why are you not doing it?
Jeff 26:04
I remember there was one-
Doreen 26:06
The question is, “why”? For those out there that are not doing what they really want, the question is, “why”? Okay, that’s important. Go ahead. You saw something.
Jeff 26:20
No I saw something on TV the other day that may have been what you were talking about early. Maybe it wasn’t, but there was a singer. She wanted to go to Europe to pursue her singing career, and her dad allowed her to go at 15 years old.
Doreen 26:40
You don’t know the name? Oh, no, you have to find the name. It begins with a D Samant-
Jeff 26:45
Dua.
Doreen 26:45
No, it’s not.
Jeff 26:46
Yeah, it was Dua.
Doreen 26:47
No, it’s not Jeff, I know it’s not. Get- where’s your phone? It’s being used to record. Okay, well, we are old, which means we don’t know, but everybody knows, and it’s anyhow. So when we’re going to talk about somebody, we probably need to try to know the name, but she’s very famous.
Jeff 27:07
She’s very famous now and-
Doreen 27:09
She’s a young singer, yeah.
Jeff 27:11
And her dad just put her on a plane, 15 years old, and said, “Do what you want to do”.
Doreen 27:16
Well, it was a little more. It was a little more than that. So let’s just not say it was that her dad put her on a plane. It was a little more structured than that and let’s move on from that, okay?
Doreen 27:27
All right, everybody. So what do you want? What do you really really want?
Jeff 27:31
Okay.
Doreen 27:32
All right.
Jeff 27:32
We’ll talk to you next week.
Doreen 27:33
Bye, everyone. Have a good one.
Jeff 27:43
You have the vision of what you want your life to look like after divorce, but maybe you just don’t know how to get there. So if you’re ready to take control of your life and want to find out more about our coaching, visit us at LAD-coaching.com that’s LAD as in LAD-coaching.com.
Doreen 28:06
Until next time, have an amazing rest of your day and remember, yes, you can-
Doreen & Jeff 28:12
Have an amazing life after divorce.
