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EP. 51 – Digging Deep On What You Want

One good thing about divorce is it provides us an opportunity to rethink what we want for our lives moving forward. In this episode, I dive a little deeper into determining our purpose and wants for the life ahead.

Transcript

Hey, my beautiful friend. How are you doing? Today we’re gonna talk about what we want. Really more importantly, what you want, what do you want your life to be for your future after divorce? We’re gonna dive into it. So if you are ready, let’s get started.

Are you ready to create a life that’s better than ever before? Doreen Yaa 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.

So we’re gonna talk about what you want for your life, what you want it to look like after divorce. You know, I always say that divorce is an opportunity, which it is to reinvent yourself, to create the life that you want. , it provides you with that. So when we look at divorce, when we think about all the bad things that come along with divorce, right?

And it’s very easy to go there, what I want you to do is to give equal airtime to what can be the positive things and pa part of the positive thing after divorce. Is to create the life you want right now. If you’re in the middle of divorce and you are listening to this episode, you may not be ready to really dive in to what I’m gonna talk about today because I understand, and I totally get that you’re in the middle of it.

You’re in the thick of it. But if you wanna listen, I encourage you to listen. And you can always circle back to it when you’re ready to put the time in, because today’s episode is gonna require you to dig deep, to be honest with yourself. Right? We’re gonna talk about five things today. We’re gonna talk about self-awareness, we’re gonna talk about truth, we’re gonna talk about.

We’re gonna talk about choice and or decision, however you’d like to phrase that. And then we’re gonna talk about, the fifth thing is gonna be the willingness that you have to work through the challenges to get the life you want. Now, there’s some episodes that I’ve done previously that really build into today’s.

Episode, today’s subject of digging deep on what you want. Those episodes, if you wanna get a piece of paper and a pencil or note ’em down somehow is setting goals, which is episode five Fear, which is. Episode 12 buffering, which is episode 15. What Do You Want? Which is episode 21, people pleasers, which is episode 32, and Reinventing Yourself, which is.

episode 45. Now, why do I talk about so many things that have to do with your future? Because I am an honest believer, and I hope you are as well, or that you consider this, that you can have the life you really want. The question is, do you really understand what you really want? Right? So today’s e episode about what you want.

And the fear that comes along with it and getting past that fear and really digging deep is what we’re gonna dive into, right? So now that you are past the divorce, or if you’re almost past the divorce and you are, you know, ready to emotionally start sitting down and thinking about your future, I wanna ask you the big question.

The big question is, And some of you may have some challenges with this. What do you want your life to look like? And you really need to take time and contemplate what that means for you, for you as the beautiful individual, person, human that you are for you. Yourself and what makes you happy for your future, for what you can give to the world, for what makes you feel empowered and alive and living a life on purpose.

What happens with a lot of us is that we tend to put our needs, our wants, our desires in the on the back burner. Okay? Many of us will do that, and we do that for a lot of reasons. And the sound amazing. They sound so. justified. We do it because it’s not the right time, meaning putting it on the back burner.

We do it because we’re fr living in a place of scarcity. We don’t have enough money to do what it is we want to do. We do it because our kids come first. We do it because we’re dealing with an illness. And so we’re not gonna put our effort in. We do it because we’re in the middle of a divorce or we’re just fresh out of divorce, and so our focus is somewhere else.

I want you to consider that those thoughts are simply thoughts, and they may be okay when you dig deeper. They may be excuses. Justifications so that you don’t put yourself out there to get the things you want. So one of the first thoughts for you today that I wanna discuss is the idea of wanting. When you think about what it is that you want, I want you to.

There are two different thoughts about what you want, what I’m gonna define as one, which is a false pleasure want, and two, which is called in my, in my terminology, a genuine. Want. Okay. What I mean by false pleasure wants, are those things that you want that make you feel good for the moment, right? Things like a new car, a new outfit.

A beautiful purse. Um, you know, material things generally that give you that dopamine hit so that when you put on that amazing outfit, you just feel like a million bucks. Right? And it’s a valid want. It’s something you certainly strive for. We all strive to have these nice things in our life that bring this dopamine hit that make us feel.

And when we feel good about ourselves, when we feel good, that’s a place that our brain likes to be. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You should have those false pleasure wants. But why do I call it false? I call it false. And maybe it’s too strong of a word. And if it is, I’m sorry. But what I mean by that is they are wants that don’t, that don’t create a better life for you.

Okay. They’re wants that give you a pleasure hit at the moment, but they’re not really something that’s genuine in the sense of creating the life on a much bigger scale that you want. So genuine wants. What do I mean by that? To me, a genuine want is a want. Is going to recreate who you are that’s gonna define you in a whole new way.

That’s going to take a lot more effort than going to the store and trying on a few outfits and finding the one that makes you feel fantastic. It’s the one, it’s a genuine wants that are gonna build you. So these are things like a new career, maybe moving to a new city, maybe taking up a new. Hobby, you know, that’s gonna require you to put a lot of time and effort in, could be a lot of things, but it’s those genuine wants that are gonna take time and effort and eventually, if you decide to go there, to do whatever it is that you generally want, right?

Is going to require to be strong and to face fear, to encounter challenges to encounter. things that are gonna happen that are not gonna produce what you want. In other words, failure and getting past it. The next question then is how do you determine what it is that you genuinely want? How do you get there?

Because so many times when I ask that of a client, they’ll just simply say, without even missing a beat, I don’t know what I want. Right. Does that sound familiar to you? And the only reason I wanna suggest that we don’t know what we want is that we haven’t taken the time, the real in-depth time to figure it out.

It’s kind of like, Living in confusion, which we also, I call indulging. Indulging in confusion, like staying in that place of, well, should I do this? Should I not do this? I don’t, you know? But when you live in the state of confusion, what you’re generally doing is you’re giving yourself an excuse not to move forward.

And again, you can have. Very good reasons that if you were to tell anybody or most people, they would say, well, that makes sense. Like for example, that you don’t wanna go out and go back to school to recreate your career, to have the career you always wanted because you just got divorced and you’ve got two minor children at home and you’re dealing with a lot going on with them and restructuring their life now into being a single parent and all of this.

Sounds justified, but what I wanna suggest to you is just to consider that it could be an excuse that makes sense, that really simply is just an excuse. So think about that. So what I do when someone says to me, I don’t know what I want, I said, okay, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to assume. For a moment that it’s a perfect world for you.

Whatever your perfect world looks like, right? You have absolutely no obstacles. No nothing is stopping you from getting and doing whatever it is that you want to do for yourself. Okay? What would it look like? What would you want? And it’s so interesting to me how the floodgate just opens up with all kinds of these beautiful thoughts and ideas and, you know, scenarios of what they want.

All right? So do that for yourself. If it was a perfect world for you, what would you truly want? Right. Now the next part of that is what you really want, right? In this perfect world, you need to be honest with yourself. Now, you know, for example, if you wanna be a singer, a very well known singer, I’m just gonna take a hypothetical here, and you, you don’t have a singing voice like you sing and your dogs run, run away, right?

they hide. You just don’t have a good pitch. Now the question you have to ask your. South is, do you have what it takes to get there physically, right? Were you born with some kind of ability to maybe learn how to sing and so that you could be this, go for this dream of being this well-known singer?

Another example, you know, I always use athletics because my, as you know, my girls are very athletic, my children. So let’s say you wanna be, um, a D one volleyball player like Megan, right? Now if you are five feet tall and you wanna be a volleyball player in a on a, in a D one college and get a scholarship, you’re highly more unlikely.

To do, to be able to do that than someone like my daughter who’s almost six feet tall, right? She was given the gift of height. Now, there are, there are places for, for , uh, players that don’t have height. But they’re, they’re rare, right? In other words, most of the players on a volleyball team are tall on that, in that level, right?

So you gotta be honest with yourself, honest with what’s really possible for you. Okay. And there’s a distinction there. Remember, you can very easily go back to, it’s not possible now cause I don’t have the money. It’s not possible now cause I’m dealing with the divorce. It’s not possible now because my children need me or I need to put money on the table and I can’t risk going into a new job.

Those are excuses. Okay, those are, and those may be valid, and you get to make a decision, but remember, that’s different than a real excuse. Like maybe I’m just not tall enough to go after that dream. So going back to, in a perfect world, think about what’s possible for you, what you want, and. Have fun with it, you know, giggle about it, like be like really creative about it.

And when you do that exercise, I want you to also know, and you should know this because this will help you, I think with the, some of the fear is that whatever you comes up for you, that you want for your future, you don’t have to act. . Okay. This is just an exercise in figuring out what you want, but you have all the right in the world, and we’re gonna talk about that, not to go after that genuine.

Want that genuine dream, all the right, and that’s okay. The next thing I want you to consider, that if you are dealing with a lot of emotion, a lot of negative thoughts or excuses, that sound good that we talked about, where is that coming from? , is it coming from a place of maybe your parents were hard on you and told you you weren’t good enough, so you’ve got some work to do from your, you know, stemming from your childhood.

Does it come from a marriage and a husband or a wife that treated you emotionally, um, abusive, was emotionally abusive and told you that you weren’t good enough? Pretty. Smart enough. Was it a teacher in high school that was really hard on you and just treated you poorly and told you negative things about what you could and couldn’t do?

If you have work to do in those areas going backwards that have you somehow stuck in some false belief that you cannot do something that may require some harder work here and something to consider on another level? You know, dealing with a therapist or dealing with a life coach, you know, to work through a lot of those false thoughts, those negative thoughts that are keeping you stuck in the results that you have, which is, because remember, results can be not achieving things in your life because my friend, what you want is worth.

Of you, meaning you are worthy and you are entitled in this one life that you have to go after your dreams to get to a place of, I can do this. I want to do this, and I’m going to do this, and then doing it. Now, I want you to remember that once you achieve that goal, that you have that genuine want. Do. Do not believe, please, that your life is gonna be so much better there.

Life there is still going to be a 50 50 life. You know, so many people that I’ve worked with as a coach think I always, I like to use weight as an example because I think a lot of us can identify with body image and weight, right? And they, and people will say, gosh, if I could just lose, you know, 20 pounds, I would be so.

And then they lose a 20 pounds and they’re like, wait a second, I lost a 20 pounds. And I was happy, you know, that I could fit into all these cool clothes and stuff, but I’m still not feeling that great. And that’s just because life is always gonna be a balance of 50 50, right? There’s always gonna be good and bad.

It may make things better for you. You may be feeling like more fit and more healthy, and you know better when you put on clothes. So that gives you this, you know, appearance and this, uh, self-confidence when you wear something and you’ve lost this weight. But remember, it’s a balanced life always. Okay.

Finding your genuine wants is the first step to the roadmap, to the future goals and the life you want to have now that the divorce is over. I believe our true desires, what we truly want are our calling. It’s what’s calling us forward it, and it’s important to understand why we want what we want, to make sure that it’s not a false want, a false desire to make sure it’s not just something for a dopamine.

That it’s something that when we dig deep, really puts a smile on your face on a deeper level, and I want you to acknowledge that knowing what you truly want is scary. It’s scary to bring up that truth for yourself, you know, and to have it in the forefront of your mind, because most of us, what we want is beyond what we currently have, right?

We strive for something more. It’s just part of how we’re built as humans to continuously grow and develop and expand to not be stagnant. We want more, we want bigger, we want different, and I want you to understand that you my friend, are worthy of having these things. I’ve seen so many people throughout my life, you know, both as a lawyer, as a coach, and just in general, you know, friends and acquaintances, just live from a place of, well, I’m okay, you know, like, It’s okay.

Um, it’ll do, my career is good, you know, I’m making a decent living. Um, you know, I’m a caretaker and so I’m not able to do these things and they’re okay with that. And what I want to suggest to you is maybe you need to reconsider that, that you, my friend, are worthy of having what you want in. And that being a people pleaser is really a lie.

And so you can listen to that episode on people pleasers. Again, that’s episode 32, and I give you more insight about that, right? You see all of your wants are really super important. And I want you to understand that you’re going to have fear when you think about your wants, right? Because you’re gonna get to a place of, oh my gosh, you mean I can really have this?

And it’s gonna be kind of scary, right? It’s gonna be like, but what does that look like? And like, things are okay right now, and why would I wanna put myself out there? Because your human brain, your prefrontal cortex is gonna tell you not to do it. It. It’s built to keep you safe and what it knows is safe to it.

So let’s get into the five parts of this and what I would consider that you work on, like exercises that I want you to do. Right. So the first thing is self-awareness. And we talked about that already. We talked about really taking the time to focus in on the. Of self-awareness, understanding what you want, understanding what you’re capable of, understanding what that means to you.

Like Wrigley being self-aware of that, and that’s where. That question. You know, in a perfect world, what would you want comes up beyond the constraints that will come to mind? And I suggest that you not be vague about what you want, that you really dig deep. For example, you know, world peace, something we want.

Most of us want at least, but it’s, it’s vague, right? Try to be specific about if that’s what you want, what that means to you, and how you can do, and what you can do to get there. So you wanna be specific, and I suggest that you be selfish here, right? Be selfish with your wants. Start to work on the relationship that you have with yourself as to your own desire.

And that’s the second part of this, right? So the first part is self-awareness. The second part of this is be honest with yourself. It’s truth. Be honest with yourself as to what you want. Okay, and be okay with that. The third part of this is going to be fear, because once you get real and you’ve done the self-awareness and you’ve been honest, you have a, you have the truth as to why you want it, and, and it’s there and you recognize it.

You’re gonna have fear. The fear of what people are gonna say, the fear of how it’s gonna affect your family, the fear of how it’s going to change, things that you know, you know, the fear of failure. The next part, right? And the fourth part is to make a choice to decide, am I going to do this or am I not going to do this?

Because as I told you in the beginning, and why I want you to get to that truth place, which is the second one, is because you don’t have to act on it. , you can just tell yourself that you want this, but it’s not the right time, or I’ve decided I’m just not going to do this because I can anticipate there’s gonna be a lot of failure involved, and even though I really want this thing that I want, I’m not willing at this stage of my life at this time.

To put that level of challenge in to, to understand and get past those failures. It’s not the good ti, it’s not a good time for me, and that’s okay. Now, I wanna take a minute and focus back again on truth. What happens if you’re not honest with yourself? You’re not truthful about what you really want. Okay, I’m gonna take an example from my own personal life, right?

There was a point in my life as a lawyer that I really, really disliked litigation. Right? And I’m a litigation lawyer. I don’t only litigate, I settle most of my cases, but I just disliked being in a courtroom and battling in a courtroom, right? But I. Placed the truth of that, that I really did not enjoy that part of my, my lawyering.

I had placed it, like pushed it behind. I wasn’t being honest about it. So when I went into a courtroom at that point and I was litigating a case and dealing with the judge and dealing with the opposing side and all the challenges that go around, Trying a case. I was in such a bad state. Okay. I was putting on a show and I did a very good job at at it.

I mean, I’m board certified in litigation for family law. Right. But, I wasn’t being honest that I disliked it, and so I really had to be honest with myself and the truth of that because, because when you are not honest with what you want and you are suppressing what you really want, You will end up my friend buffering, right?

Buffering is episode 15. Buffering means doing something to get that dopamine hit now to avoid what you are doing. So for example, If you don’t wanna prepare for trial because you don’t like going to trial, you might buffer by instead watching Netflix, right? or, or getting involved in your emails instead of preparing for trial.

Now, when you’re honest with yourself, the buffering goes down because you don’t have to get to that place of trying to enjoy yourself, right to. To alleviate the anxiousness and all that comes along with not being honest with yourself. And I hope that makes sense for you. And if you want some more tips or coaching on that, just like always just send me an email and I’m happily.

Reach out to you on it. So just to recap, again, we have the first step self-awareness. The second step is the truth. The third step is the fear. And the fourth cha uh, , my tongue got tied. The fourth one is the choice, the decision. And from that place of choice, from that place of decision, you will be empowered by it.

You will release power into your life by making a decision, even if you make a decision not to pursue the want. Even if you make the decision to let the fear overcome you and not pursue it, and then you say and make a conscious choice that you’re just too afraid to. You know, I’m too afraid to try that new co new career to, um, take up golf.

I don’t know, to write a book, whatever it is that you are wanting to do, and maybe you have too much fear, you’re, you make that choice of the fear is just taking over and that’s okay. And be okay with that decision, right? Just understand that it is something you really want. , you’re very self-aware of it.

The fear has come up and the choice or decision is at that point not to pursue it, but if you do pursue it, and that’s the fifth part, right? The willingness to work through the failures, the challenges that will come up that will happen, my friend, every time you set out for a big goal for a big. Real want in your life.

You have to understand that things that make changes for you, for anyone in their life don’t just happen. by chance don’t just happen by luck. We’ll talk. I’ll do an episode on Luck sometime soon. Right? I’ll, I’ll put that in my bank of things to talk about. Cause I love talking about luck, right? But it is hard work.

Anything worthwhile is hard work. You will have failure and then you’re gonna pick yourself up and say, you know, Um, that didn’t work so well, right? Didn’t do so well. Let, maybe it’s, let’s just say playing golf. Taking up golf, if that’s something you wanna do. Didn’t do so well on the golf course today. I really kind of stunk, but I, but I’m okay and I’m gonna keep trying and I’m gonna take extra lessons and I’m gonna go out again and do it tomorrow.

Right. To honor your desire, are you willing to fight through the fair to get to that place of. and what determines that Is your belief in what you want? Do you believe that your want is possible? Do you really truly believe that your desire matters? Can you allow yourself to reconsider exact exactly what you want for your life to look?

That you can pursue your desires, especially after divorce in an evolution of yourself to create an amazing life, a better life. And what that means in terms of choice and in terms of change is that you will fail. You will pick yourself up and you will keep going because your want is so strong and you know what?

You will disappoint people. I promise you that there will be people in your life that will just think this is such a bad idea, right? They will look at you like you have three heads. They may even voice their, their dissatisfaction in your choices. But because you are so self-aware, you’ve had that truth conversation, you understand the fear, and now you’ve made that choice to go forward, you’ll be okay with that.

That’s when the courage comes into play to honor your desire, to honor the truth, to become. The person you want to become, even though it’s scary, because remember my friend I, I say this often, this life is not a dress rehearsal, right? As you know, as I get older, as I’ve done so many things in my life, I realize.

That time is really so very precious. It is so very, very precious, and it goes by quickly. The reason I became a life coach. The reason that I do this podcast, the reason that I’m creating a program for you that will be affordable, okay, online and not only offer one-on-one coaching is because it’s what I want.

It is my. Real want. It is what sparks me. It is my purpose in life. It fuels me. It makes me so happy on such a level that I’m willing to do whatever it takes to deliver that. To be that life coach, to give you the program, to be able to help you, brings me my purpose in life is being fulfilled. And for that, my friend, I thank.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart for providing me the opportunity to live my real want, my real dream. So I’m gonna offer to you just like myself, that when you take action on your true want, your true desire, you are living your life on purpose. If you are a person who’s trying to find purpose, you’re trying to find this magical thing for you.

It’s important that you do the exercises today, that self-awareness, that truth, that fear, that choice and decision, that willingness to fight for what you want no matter what. Right and not buffer your pain away, your lack of living, your life on purpose. I generally want every single one of you, and especially you, my friend that’s listening to achieve your real.

Purpose in life. It doesn’t make you more valuable. It doesn’t make you more worthy. It doesn’t even make you happier. It just makes you feel like you have zoned in to who you are and why you are here. and know that that changes throughout life. Many times it changes my purpose. And what I found fulfillment in 10 years ago is different than today.

Being here with you as an example. We are not here in this life, in my mind, in my mind, to be safe, right? We’re not here just to get by this life to survive. We’re not put on this earth. To purely take care of people and people please. Right? We’re not put here to impress people. We’re put here. To have that ability to live the life that we have to the fullest, right?

And with that, when you do that, so many people can benefit from that. I wish this for you, my friend. . You know, I wish this for you on such a high level, especially now that you have this opportunity to grow after your divorce, to learn from it, right? To not recycle the sa, maybe some of the same bad decisions you’ve made, and to live a life on purpose and to make that choice to change your life and to go after it again, no matter what anybody else thinks, and to just.

Push into it no matter what comes up, no matter what obstacles that you encounter, ask yourself, my friend. In a perfect world, what would you want? Go deeply. Be truthful with yourself. Recognize the fear. And then make a decision. And if you go for it, good for you. And if you don’t, it’s not good time right now.

That’s okay too. No judgment here. This episode is just about self-awareness and being honest with yourself. So listen, have a beautiful week, my friend. I know it’s been a deep subject today. One you’re probably gonna think about, or I hope you think about for the rest of the day. Into, you know, the rest of the week and as always, listen, you too can have an amazing life.

After divorce. Can’t wait to speak to you next week. I’d love to hear from all of you. All right, my friend. Speak to you later.

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 [email protected]. That’s l a d as in life after divorce-coaching.com. Until next time, have an amazing rest of your day.

And remember, yes, you can have an amazing life, life after divorce after.

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