81: How to Know What You Want From Life

TTLU_EP81_MASTERED.mp3

Speaker1: [00:00:09] You're listening to the Time to Level Up podcast. I'm your host business life coach, Andrea Libros. I help women in business commit to their own growth personally and professionally. Each week, I'll bring you strategies to help you think clearly. Gain confidence. Make your time productive. Turn every obstacle into an opportunity. And finally overcome the overwhelm so that you can make money and manage life. Let's create a plan so you have a profitable business, successful career, and best of all, live with unapologetic ambition. Are you ready to drop the drama and figure out the how in order to reach your goals? You're in the right place. It's time to level up. Let's do this. Hello my friends and welcome back to the podcast. I am recording this on a monday where I usually record podcasts, but today happens to be Memorial Day and I debated whether or not to go ahead and record and I said, You know what, I do have a little time today. We're doing some fun things too, but I'm going to go for it. So I'm in my podcast closet in the basement of our house, which probably needs to be a little bit cluttered. It's the toy closet if you haven't seen a picture. And yeah, I think I can get rid of some of this stuff, so stay tuned on that one. But today I have an important topic for you. This is one that I need you to pay attention to.

Speaker1: [00:01:49] I need you to hear me on it. You may need to listen to this twice. I think it's one of the most important things that we all know you should know. And it's something I see in so many of my clients as a space of denial, and it's basically knowing what you want. And this is very different than knowing what you think you can have. And this is very different than not having. Or just plain having this is about knowing what you want. A lot of times what we want is what we have and a lot of times what we want is not what we have. And we spend a lot of time lying to ourselves and justifying our lives that are creations or made up of things that we don't want. And how does this show up? I hear my clients say things like, Well, it's just the way it is, or I have to live with this person. Or These are the cards that I've been dealt, or we justify why or why not. We can't have what we want right now because we're in X, Y, Z, season of life. It's just not possible because you have other responsibilities. So I really want to start talking about the idea of wanting and desire and making decisions around it. And it's really important that we differentiate between false desires and false wants and immediate fixes and genuine wants. Genuine wants that come from a deep part and a consistent part of our psyche, our soul, our heart and our brain.

Speaker1: [00:03:50] So some of my clients come to me in the stage of, I call it What's Next in Life? Some already love what they're doing and they're not debating what's next, but some are debating what's next. And one of the first things I ask them to do is to create a list of skills and wills, as well as a list of what they love, like and tolerate. And what these two lists are about is sorting out what skills you have. Compared to what skills you want to use. So that's your skills and Will's list. And just because you have a skill doesn't mean you want to use it. And then the love like tolerate list, that's you considering past situations you have been in work or personal. And examining. What did you love about it? What did you like about it and what did you tolerate? And through this exercise or these two exercises, I have seen so many women hide their truest desires from themselves. I've heard them say to me, Well, I really don't know what I want. Andrea. And then when I ask them, but if you did know or if I ask them, well, tell me what you really want. If I just rephrase the question, they're once come pouring out of them. Another way that I do this is, I might say, in a perfect world, if you could have whatever you want, as if that perfect world isn't really an option.

Speaker1: [00:05:41] And if you could have what? Or I say, if you could have whatever you wanted in the world, what would you want? Or if we could sprinkle magic fairy dust over you. What would you be doing and feeling in the future? In six months? In a year from now. So to me, all those questions, they're all really the same question. And the same question is, what do you want? It's ultimately your truest desire matching with what's possible in your life, if it if you want it, it's possible. I'm a big believer on that one. But I think a lot of times were like, well, I want to be a basketball player and I'm just not tall enough or that sort of thing. And that isn't a genuine want. When you go to those genuine wants within you, I have found that they actually do correlate with what's possible for you. So I want you all to coach with me for a minute here. Think about this question. In a perfect world, what do you really want? What do you really, really want? If you remove the doubt, if you remove the confusion, if you remove the question of possibility and you just answer, what do you really want? And you allow the answer to bubble up. You allow the courage. You have the courage to let the answer come to you.

Speaker1: [00:07:16] What comes up? Allow yourself to be surprised by it. Allow yourself to be delighted. Sometimes when I do this work with women, they giggle about it. Well, I mean, in a perfect world, this is what I would want. Ha ha ha. And they tell me the most amazing, beautiful, awesome things after that little giggle. So if you haven't done it, this exercise with yourself, one of the important things to do as you're asking yourself this question is to let yourself know that no matter what answer comes up. You don't have to act on it. You get to still decide because you have complete power in your life and you don't have to let the knowing of what you truly want hurt you. So too many times I think we don't answer this because we think then that means it would actually have to go after it. Or we don't answer this because we think it might hurt too many times. We really don't even want to go to what we truly want because we also think we can't have it and we think it will ultimately hurt. And I think that's the most important piece of all of this, because if you have a belief system that you can't have what you want, knowing what you want can end up hurting you. If that's the case, then what's really happened is that you've created a story for yourself, a belief around deprivation and not being able to have what it is you genuinely want.

Speaker1: [00:09:14] Because, again, I believe that our desires are the map of our destiny. I believe our true desires. What we truly want are our calling. It's what's calling us forward. And it's important to understand why we want what we want to make sure it's not a false desire to make sure it's not just something for a dopamine hit, not something to prove our own worthiness, but from a place of true worthiness. And go back and listen to the episode about worthiness and self-worth from that place of self-worth. What do you want from a place of abundance? What do you want? Is it everything you already have? When you look at your life, would you choose everything? Or anything? Or is there something different that you want? And do you have the courage to even just allow yourself to see it, see that different things or feelings or thoughts are possible, and to know also that you don't have to act on it. Notice I didn't say you don't have to take action. But just the knowing will change your life. So I want to offer that knowing what you want can be scary. It's scary to bring the truth of what you genuinely want into the forefront or the prefrontal cortex of your brain and your mind and your life. Because most of us, what we want is in fact beyond what we currently have. In some ways we want more.

Speaker1: [00:11:13] We want bigger. We want different. I believe there's something inside of us that nudge, that urge from the universe to push us forward, to evolve, to create, to grow. I believe in satisfaction. I believe in appreciating what we have. We really are grateful at our core. I believe in celebrating our accomplishments and even having fun along the way of accomplishing. But I also believe that the nudge to evolve into something more or better, as long as we're alive, will always be there so we can appreciate what we currently have. We can be grateful. We can celebrate what we already have. But I believe. That we all also want to evolve into something more or better. So that's why when these prospective clients actually say yes to the question of committing to their own growth in committed to growth, the ones that don't hem and haw are the ones that are a quick yes or a yes. Within 24 hours are my clients that see the most growth because they are also the ones. That are feeling the nudge. They are okay with feeling the nudge, even though it might be scary in there. In fact, asking to evolve by becoming part of the Committed to Growth coaching program, they're saying, Yes, I feel the nudge I'm in. But I've watched so many people also put that nudge away like, this is good enough. This will work. I'll compromise. I'll people. Please, I'll care.

Speaker1: [00:13:11] Take. This will be fine. I'll see what happens. Not right now. Let me think about it for a few months. Instead of no. What do I not them really want now? What's my dream? What do I want in a mate? What's the perfect relationship? What do I want in a job? What do I want in my business? What do I want in a friend? What do I want in myself? All of your wants right now are super important. They don't have to wait. And if we can't want without doubt and denial and restriction, we don't ever get to the place where we're afraid of what we want. So, yes, I am encouraging you to get to a place where what you want brings up a little fear, brings up a little excited fear like, oh my goodness, this could actually happen. I could actually create this. And it kind of scares the heck out of me and I want it. So if you know that your wants and your desires will bring up fear. Fear of failure. Fear of not having it. Fear of having it. Fear of what people will think when you do have it. Fear of what you might have to change in order to have it. I want to encourage you to have that little dance with yourself, to spend that private time telling yourself the truth about what it is that you want and why. So the first part of all of this is really just self awareness, and that's one of the skills that throughout this podcast, throughout Committed to growth, my coaching program, throughout my growth master accelerators and runway to freedom coaching that I want and I do teach all of you to be focused on.

Speaker1: [00:15:17] It's the skill of self awareness, of understanding what you are thinking and feeling. It's like eavesdropping in on yourself, understanding who you are, how you interact with the world and what it means, and most importantly, what you're capable of. Now, that's exciting. And so a huge part of self-awareness is asking yourself the question, What do I really want? In a perfect world, if I could have whatever I wanted, what do I really want? And then breathe into the answer. Live into that question. What I really want when I go beyond the surface, when I go beyond what I currently have, when I go beyond expectations or perceived expectations, when I go beyond the social constructs, what I really want is this. Now this. Don't be vague here. Don't say what I really want is peace or what I really want is love or what I really want is a cute guy. What you want to do is to be very specific on what you want, what's the quality, what's the energy, and what does it look like in the world specifically? How would you even know if you had it? That is an awesome question that I ask some of my clients and really hits home.

Speaker1: [00:16:42] How would you know if you got what you want? What would it be? What would it look like? So I did this with my own coach on our retreat at the end of April on Dusky Island. Have you ever been there? It's like planes, trains and automobiles to get there. But it is beautiful. She asked what I wanted in my life. What exactly does it look like in my life when it shows up? And how will I know? And as I became more self aware of my wants, I actually started to know myself on a deeper level. And you see. You will see. I saw my relationship with my own desire. Most of us are relationship with what we want. Brings up so much fear and doubt. So we don't want to deny ourselves of that self awareness because we're afraid of the fear in doubt, in the negative emotion. What we want is to encourage it to come up and that is all part of this process in knowing what we want, the first component of self awareness and the second component of it is truth telling yourself the absolute truth about what you want. Okay. So maybe the truth is, I don't want to be married. The truth is, I want children, but I don't want to be with them all day, every day. The truth is, I don't want to be in this job.

Speaker1: [00:18:11] The truth is, I don't want to help this charity. The truth is, I don't want to live in this house forever. Whatever your truth is, I want you to tell yourself the truth about what you want. Even if you don't like the truth about yourself, even if you wish the truth were something different. There's a difference between wanting to want something and actually wanting something. So remember, you can tell yourself the truth. You don't have to act on it. But you want to tell yourself the truth. When you say, I don't want this or I want this, but I'm not going to act on it. Okay. That is the truth. Maybe you don't want to be with your children during the day, but you are. Okay. So you know the truth, but you're not acting on it. Owning the truth and knowing that you have the agency, the ability to decide whether you're going to go after it or not is yours. And that's very different than lying to yourself and telling yourself you don't want something that you want. And this will show up in urges and buffering. I talk a lot about buffering and episode 46 and in other areas of your life. So the first step is you really taking that energy to get the self-awareness and to understand and hear your own voice about your true wants and your true desires. And the second thing is you tell yourself the truth, the honest to God, truth about it, knowing that you don't have to act on it, but that you can feel kind of the crystal ball of the truth inside the vibration of your body when you do tell it to yourself.

Speaker1: [00:20:08] The third piece of this that I do want to hit on a little more is that. You're going to let the fear come up. Knowing what you want is scary. I think thinking on purpose can be scary. And knowing what you want, it's like this is your mission should you choose to accept it. This is your want. Should you choose to go after it. This is your desire. The map to your destiny. Are you create courageous enough to consider it? Have you heard yourself tell the truth? And when fear comes up, I actually want you to expand it. I want you to breathe into it to allow it to have it fill up the entire room. Because when you avoid the fear that's associated with your desire, you start to deny your own desires. You start to deny what you really want, and that will show up in urges and suffering in your life. And I've seen this happen to too many women. This is also the time that they might tell me this isn't working. This coaching thing isn't working. And I need to coach them to state out loud again what the truth of what they want is and let it be scary and coach them to feel all of these feelings, not wanting to feel all that comes up.

Speaker1: [00:21:40] That's you as a human being, approaching the world from a brain that's programed for survival. Your brain is not programed for your desire or fear. Your brain is programed for survival. And you have to overcome your primitive brain to evolve into the state of being a current, modern day human, not a caveman. Let your want hurt a little bit. Let it be fearful. Let it scare you a little bit. I recently talked about this in episode 77, how we don't have to be in that survival mode. So once you've done the self awareness, you have told yourself you don't always have to act on it. You've given yourself the chance to tell the truth and that you felt fear. The next step is to make a decision, to make the choice. You will make a conscious choice in your life. Whether or not to pursue the. Want to delay the want. Or to deny the want. And from that place of choice, from that decision, you will be powered by it. You will release power into your life by actually making the decision. You know how after we make decisions, it always feels so good. That's us releasing the power into our lives. And 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 the want for now or forever as a conscious choice.

Speaker1: [00:23:19] If you say, I'm too afraid to go do that, I'm too afraid to leave my marriage. I'm too afraid to get married. I'm too afraid to have children. I'm too afraid to start a business. I'm too afraid to write a book. I am too afraid to go learn how to play pickleball. I'm too afraid to increase the number of hours I work because I think it will take time away from my family. I am too afraid to tell my parents that I don't really want their opinion, even though I really want to. I don't. Because I'm afraid. And even then, if you make the decision to not move forward. You were. You were giving yourself some power. So make your statement. Tell yourself the truth. Make the decision. And in that decision, your power will be released. And it doesn't mean that that has to be the decision forever. But I do want to encourage you that when you follow your true desire, when you make decisions to follow your true desires, to go after them, you will fail. That's why it's so scary. And you will be challenged. You will be set up to fail and fall on your face and to not accomplish that desire in the very beginning. And do you have the courage to continue to make the choice because your desire matters to you? Do you have the courage to commit to it, to stick with it? Do you have the courage to explore it? The people that have the courage to explore it, to commit to it.

Speaker1: [00:25:03] Those are the people that do become my clients because they feel that nudge. And here's the last piece. Are you willing to change? To actually honor your desire. Are you willing to fight through the fear to get to the place of that desire? What determines that is your belief in your own want. Do you honestly believe that your want is possible? I have an episode about a belief plan. It's a powerful episode. Go back and listen to it. Do you believe that your desire matters? Do you allow yourself to even consider that you can have exactly what you want in this lifetime? That you can enjoy everything and anything? You don't have to make compromises. You don't have to make sacrifices in what you truly desire because of any circumstance. You can pursue your desire and an evolution of yourself to create a better life. You can pursue your desire through a journey. So when I look back at my clients, those who don't become clients, who say no, most of the time, the reason it's not money, which they sometimes tell me it's not their husband, it's not the fact that it's a really busy time in life or they wouldn't have reached out. What it is, is that they really aren't willing to change and honor what they really want.

Speaker1: [00:26:50] And sometimes the reason that they are not willing. Is that they run the risk or so they think of disappointing other people. Because pursuing that desire, it may mean that you change your mind about something. It may mean that you become a different version of yourself that other people aren't used to seeing or aren't supporting because they haven't met yet. And maybe they won't like that next version of yourself. But. Maybe they will. Maybe. You'll actually improve your relationships with these other people because now you will have learned to have an opinion and voice it and to follow through on things. And that's where the courage comes into. Honor your desire to honor what you want, to tell yourself the truth about it, to become self-aware enough to even know it. What are you afraid to know? Because it's so scary. What is a want that you don't even acknowledge? Because it makes you so afraid? You tuck it away. You don't answer the question what you want until. You're prompted often by adding in. The perfect world phrase. My clients don't answer this question of what they want until I say in a perfect world, or if we sprinkled magic fairy dust. When I do that, then it is only then that you acknowledge that what you're dying for, what you're thirsting for, what you're craving is not food or not alcohol or not Netflix. And honestly, it may not really be the job or the business, but what you're really wanting is this deep desire.

Speaker1: [00:28:46] That's always been there that you've never acknowledged because you're afraid. But what if you knew that you were supposed to be afraid when you acknowledged your wants and desires? What if you knew that part of the process, part of the program was that you will be afraid? I sometimes call this the messy middle. What if you knew you were going to be there? I watched too many people give up on their desires because they're so hard to accomplish or they don't want to go through that messy, middle or other people upset them about their desire. So what are you willing to do to honor your own desire? How much fear are you willing to battle and go through and why does it matter? And here's an amazing question What's it costing you to not honor your desire? What's at stake if you don't honor your desire? So for me, my personal wants and desires sounded extraordinary in my brain when I first mentioned them to myself. And I had a lot of doubt, a lot of negative reasons why they wouldn't happen. But once I knew them. I couldn't unknow them. I have always wanted to do X. This is my secret desire. Y. And in a perfect world, I would Z. If nobody cared what I did, I would b. Once that is in your awareness and you tell yourself the truth and honor the fear that comes along with it, then you can make the choice to change.

Speaker1: [00:30:30] And I'm going to offer that when you take action on a true desire. You're living the purpose of your life. And if you're a person who is trying to find a purpose, you're trying to find your magical, important purpose in your life, and you're not taking action on your true desires. You're always going to be left sad and denied and most likely buffering in your pain. If you're not willing to go along on the journey. There's a podcast also I have called Passion Dating or Finding Your True Passion, or is there a Passion Passions in the title? And we talk about this. So the shift that you've got to make is from the pain of deceit, the pain of denial, the pain of giving up on your desire to the fear in pain of actually pursuing the life of your dreams. And I genuinely want every single person, every single client that has ever worked with me to understand what it's like to accomplish, to achieve, and to pursue a true desire. It doesn't make you more valuable or more worthy, which is oftentimes what we think we want. It doesn't even make you happier. It just makes you feel clicked into your purpose, to your life, to why you are here. You're not here to be safe. You're no longer here to just survive. You're not here to make the people around you pleased with you.

Speaker1: [00:32:02] You're not here to impress anybody else. You're here to honor that deep reckoning, that deep nudging within you, that asks you to be more, that asks you to step forward, that asks you to have the self-awareness, the courage to embrace fear. That to make the choice to actually be willing to change. So the next time we see you. That want will be accomplished and you'll be on to the next chapter. So if you're willing to become aware of your wants and to live your life in accordance to them, in truth, you'll always be growing. You'll always be changing. You will always be getting better at accomplishing your own true desires. You will always be committing to you. I wish this for each listener. I have accomplished many of my desires, many I haven't yet to accomplish. But I had to do the work. I had to create that for myself. And I've had so many more. I have so many more desires to go, so many things I don't quite yet believe honestly. And that's what's holding me back that I can have. Or when I do think about it, too much fear comes up. But I am willing to work through the fear. That's why I feel alive. That's why I'm constantly growing. That's why my awareness brings me purpose in life. I follow the direction of my heart and my soul in the deepest part of my mind that has the consciousness to understand.

Speaker1: [00:33:53] Yes, this. This is what I want. This is why I want it. And now I'm going to make the choice to change, to go after it. No matter what anybody thinks about me, no matter whether I succeed or fail, no matter if I'm afraid, no matter if I'm fearful, in fact, maybe. Especially if I'm afraid. So ask yourself, in that perfect world where we sprinkle magic fairy dust, what would you want? What do you deeply want? Tell yourself the truth. And maybe, just maybe, start taking some action towards it. Imagine what would happen if you did. And I'm here for you if you're looking to take that next step, taking action toward what you really want. Come do that with the support you need to not just take the action or the next step for a day or a week, but to take all the action necessary to make that desire a reality. Come with us. Inside the container, I call it of committed to growth, where you get the support you need to stay committed, to stay in the driver's seat, even in the times of fear. Come with us in committed to growth and apply now to start with us. In July or in the next month of what? Whenever you're listening to this. But really. Know that once you apply. You're actually already starting to grow. Because you have say said, yes, I am ready to commit.

Speaker1: [00:35:40] I notice that sometimes even before my clients get to their very first call. Between the time they've said yes and the time of our first call. They have grown tremendously. So really, no matter when the start date is, you get to start right away. There's never a better time than right now to start committing to you because it's always time to level up. So I will see you next week. If you do want to apply. Remember, you have to apply by the last Thursday of the month in order to join us that following month. And you can do that at Andrea Libra's backslash apply. I will see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Time to Level Up podcast with me, your host, Andrea Libras. If you know someone who could benefit from listening to this episode, I encourage you to take a screenshot and share it with them. Okay, now what about you? You've listen to the podcast and if you now know that you're ready to upgrade your life, upgrade your business, upgrade you, then stop being only a listener and start being a liver living that upgraded life. Head over to my website and schedule a call right there on that call. We'll start changing the way you think and act so that you can have the freedom to achieve the impossible in life and business and have the resources to do it. You deserve an upgrade. Let's do it.