In this episode, we tackle the fear that prevents us from acknowledging our true desires. I share my personal journey from believing I had no idea what I wanted to discovering a wealth of buried dreams. We explore two major fears: the fear of disappointment and the fear of success. Admitting your desires is the first step to transformation. By confronting these fears, you can excavate your dreams and embark on a journey to create a more fulfilling life. Stop settling for “good enough” and embrace the possibilities of a fuller life.
Admitting what you want
Ep. 272
| with
Follow Along:
Show Transcript
Hey! Welcome to Lessons from a Quitter where we believe that it is never too late to start over. No matter how much time or energy you've spent getting to where you are. If ultimately you are unfulfilled, then it is time to get out. Join me each week for both inspiration and actionable tips so that we can get you on the road to your dreams.
Hello my friends and welcome to another episode. I am so excited you are here. You're in for a rant. I was just trying to write the outline for this and I got really worked up and it's something that I just taught in my class The Secret to Building a Career You Love. And I realized I hadn't spoken on this topic even though I've talked about it in a couple of the masterclasses I've done, I haven't talked about it on the podcast. And let me tell you, it riles me up. So buckle up. And if you listen to this and you realize, you know what, I don't admit what I want and I really need to do that, I want you to join us in the Quitter Club before doors close tonight. So the doors for this launch will be closed September 26th, and it is the last day to get the incredible pricing that I haven't given in a year.
So you could join the Quitter Club for $997, a thousand dollars for the entire year. It's typically $197 a month, which comes out to about $2,400 a year. And so you're getting it at a very steep discount. It's almost 60% off to commit to a year of doing this work and really admitting what you want and then going out and building it and having the resources to figure out how to do that and stick with it even if you're not consistent all the time and get back on the horse and get coaching so you don't feel like hell the whole time you're going after these goals. So if you are resonating with this work and, it's, you listen every week and you know that there's more to your life and it's starting to help, I want you to join us because it's so much more than just kind of hearing these concepts.
Applying it to your life changes everything, but it requires you to do that work.
So join us in the Quitter club before doors close tonight. I hope to see you in there.
Okay, let's talk about admitting what you want and really the power in admitting what you want.
I talk a lot about goal setting, going after big goals, not playing small, like I've had a number of episodes on this podcast about that. And I think that for a lot of us, for a lot of you listening those resonate because you want more.
There's something more that you want, you want to feel more fulfilled, you know, there's something missing, right? And so for so many of us, we're chasing this elusive thing, and this is why we might set certain New Year's resolutions. We might go after, kind of this, shiny object, like, should I start a business? Should I change my job? Should I, you know I don't know, join a cult. Hopefully don't do that. But you get what I'm saying.
Like, we're constantly in this search for this thing, but we don't know what we want. We don't know what that thing is, right? So for a lot of us, we know there's something missing. We know we want more, we just don't know what we want. And I want you to think about how backwards we approach this. Like none of us question this, but when you really think about it, I want you to think about how insane it is that we haven't spent the time to figure out what it is that we want. And to admit that to ourselves and to tell us Sarahs what it is that we're actually going after.
We just are sort of stumbling around, hoping we fall into it, right? We jump from job to job, we start that business. We, you know, set that health goal. We run that marathon hoping that maybe at the end of this thing I'll find, you know, my happiness as if it's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Like I'm just gonna kind of stumble along in the dark and hope that I fall into something and hope, my friend, is not a strategy. It isn't. It isn't a strategy to create the life you want. It isn't a strategy to find happiness. And so when you realize like, how can I go after what I want if I don't know what that is, right? You wouldn't just get in a car and just drive and just hope you end up at the grocery store or just hope you end up somewhere that's gonna have delicious food. You figure out where you wanna go and then you drive there, right? You have a GPS that takes you to where you need to go.
And yet, for so many of us, we get really frustrated in our lives because we are in search of something that is missing, but we don't even know what is missing. We don't even know what it is that we want. And I will say this until I'm blue in the face. I say this in every one of my masterclasses. I, I feel like you can never figure out how to get there if you don't know what it is you want. For so many of you, you keep searching for the how you keep like, I don't know, looking for tutorials like how to build a business or how to have more work-life balance or how to you know, I don't know, negotiate a raise and all those are great things to do, but you haven't spent the time to figure out what it is you actually want.
And so it requires us to sort of shelve the how, which is scary because so many of us are so used to being productive and just constantly doing and we're running on this hamster wheel and we keep running and we don't know where we're running to. And this is why we're all so exhausted. We're all doing everything. We don't even know where it's going.
And so for a lot of us, it is really scary to slow down. It's really scary to be like, Hey, I need to take a beat and figure out what it is I actually want before I start running, right? And I think for so many of us, we are scared that we're wasting time. We are scared that we're not on the right path. But again, we just don't even take the time to figure out what that is. We're just hoping someone else will tell us, or we're hoping if I jump from thing to thing, then somehow magically one of these will be the thing.
And you end up spending so much more time on these wrong paths going after things you don't want. We've all done that, right? Every one of you has thought that once I get that degree, once I have the job, once I have the promotion, once I make it to this level, once I buy the house with the picket fence, once I have that spouse, once I have the kids, I'll be happy. And then we get there and we're not that happy , we're happy for like a split second, a beat and then it's back to, but I need more. Right? And we don't even know what that ‘more’ is. And here's the thing that I want you all to know from coaching now hundreds of people, you do know what you want and it's a lie that you don't. I've seen this time and time again for so many people where with really the lightest of prodding, a little gentle push, all of these dreams come out, all of these things that people want for their life has come out and it's buried just beneath the surface. It's there. We just are afraid to admit it to ourselves.
That fear. And I'm gonna talk about what that fear is of saying it out loud, of staking that claim of, you know, planting our flag and saying, this is what I want for my life. We're so afraid of that, that we would rather sit in confusion and just indulge in that confusion for the rest of our lives and constantly tell ourselves, well, I don't know what I want. I don't even know. I don't even know if I can have it. So why even sit and think about it? I'm just gonna keep stumbling around in the dark hoping I land on something.
But before we get into what that fear is and what I want you to do, I just want you to really take a moment to understand that it's there. And I say this from someone who used to say the same things. I have no idea what I want. I don't have any other skills. I felt so lost when I left my career as a lawyer in 2014, 2015. I really thought there's nothing that I want.
And then when I did a lot of this self-help work and this personal development, I found that I have an infinite amount of dreams. So many, so many, I can't even keep track of them, right? I have so many things I wanna pursue. I have so many things I want in my life and it was simply scary to admit it to myself. And so I want you to know it's there. It's just buried under a lot of fear and conditioning and programming. And we have to excavate it. We have to uncover it if we're gonna go after it, if we're gonna build it right? If you're gonna listen to all of my episodes about goal setting, you have to know what you want your goals to be in order to go after them and why you want them.
And here's why you don't admit it to yourself. Here's why. For most of us, we do keep it buried, like I said, because we're afraid and we're afraid for a number of reasons. But I think there's two that 2, 3, 4, I dunno, there's a lot of 'em. We're not gonna get into all of them. But the two major ones I wanna talk about that I see a lot.
The first is just this underlying fear that it, I can't have it, that it won't work out, that that's not possible for me and for so many of us, because we're so afraid of being disappointed. Maybe we wanted something and it didn't work, work out. Maybe we all thought we were gonna be princesses or princess and superheroes. And we grew up and we realized that that's not a possibility. And so we got quote unquote realistic and we told ourselves like, that's silly. You can't have a life like that.
And we're so scared that that is true, right? And so we'd rather believe like life just doesn't turn out that way. It's not supposed to be fun. This is good enough. What I have, I should be grateful for. I have a pretty good life, right? And so we make our lives smaller. We decide I'll just be happy with what I have. Whatever this slice of pie that I've been given other people have it worse than me. I should just be grateful for this, right? And it's simply this method of self-preservation, of protecting my own heart. Because I don't wanna have to deal with the hurt that will come if I try and I go after this life and I try to build the business, or I try to get that promotion, or I try to make that money or I try to whatever, have that impact to build that nonprofit.
And what if I prove to myself I can't? And what if my deepest and darkest insecurities prove true that maybe I'm not good enough? 'cause I promise you all of our thoughts come back to that. Maybe if I don't try, then at least I can say like, well, I don't know. I didn't even want that. I don't have to face that. But if I try, if I give it my all and it doesn't work, then what? What am I left with?
We're so terrified of that feeling. We're so terrified of confirming that maybe I'm not good at this thing. Maybe I'm not good at what I said. Maybe I don't follow through. Maybe my deepest insecurities are true. Maybe it's gonna be really painful if I try and I can't get there. And people judge me and people will have opinions. And so we just keep constricting our life smaller and smaller.
It's like a circle, right? The amount of what we're willing to feel just keeps getting smaller and smaller. And we're like, you know what? I'm just gonna be happy with this. I don't even need to feel all that. And yes, we might be protecting ourselves from some negative emotion, but we also prevent ourselves from so much positive emotion, so much joy, so much curiosity, so much fulfillment. Because we're like, I would rather stay safe. I would rather keep it small into what I can handle, keep that circle small and not feel these other things. And by doing that, we cut off so much from ourselves, so much possibility, so much of this experience, of this human experience. And the irony of it is that you don't prevent yourself from feeling the negative emotion, right? Yeah, you might prevent yourself from feeling maybe failure or judgment. Maybe you prevent yourself from feeling embarrassment or something, but you end up feeling unfulfilled. You end up feeling like, like something is missing.
You end up feeling frustration. You spend your life bored. You spend your life knowing there has to be more. You have this resentment and anger and bitterness that builds up that feels terrible. You are not preventing negative emotion. It's really like when you think about it, it makes no sense. We think I am going to feel terrible in order to prevent, hopefully feeling terrible in the future. I'm gonna have a ton of negative emotion so that I don't have negative emotion in the future. You're gonna have negative emotion either way. You might as well get the life you want out of it. You might as well try some sh*t. Experiment, expand your horizons, see things in your life.
Yes, it, it's going to suck. I'm not even saying it might suck. It's going to suck. You're gonna fail. You're gonna have to grapple with those negative emotions. And guess what? You increase your capacity to feel those negative emotions and you increase your capacity to feel the positive ones. You stop hiding from a life.
Glennon Doyle, I've talked about her a number of times in her book, untamed. I absolutely love it and I recommend it. But she has this quote that is just a gut punch. And so I feel like it's apropos to read it here. Her quote says, “So we say maybe it's safer to just stay here, even if it's not true enough. Maybe it's good enough, but good enough is what makes people drink too much and snark too much and become bitter and sick and live in quiet desperation until they lie on their deathbed and wonder what kind of life, relationship, family world might I have created if I'd been braver?” There is so much in that quote and it sums it up perfectly.
This good enough is not good enough and it leads to so much of the unhappiness and the suffering and the bitterness because there is nothing actually stopping us but ourselves. There is nothing that's stopping you from going after that dream, from trying, from figuring out what you want except for you. And you know that on some level. And that's where the frustration comes. You know that it's within reach. You know it's something you can do. And yet you stop yourself 'cause you're afraid. And that's okay. We're all afraid. But when you realize like, I can be afraid and do it anyway, I can learn to live with this fear and still take that action, another part of your life opens up, another part of the world opens up to you. There's so much more available to you.
And so you have to deal with that fear, my friends. You have to figure out how do I manage it to not get rid of it, it's gonna come along for the ride. How do I manage it so that I don't let it stop me anymore? So it's not an obstacle in my way, it's just a companion that's gonna come along for this ride. So the first thing is figuring out that is this fear of disappointment, this fear of failure, this fear of having negative emotions. How do I overcome that?
The second thing that I think of stops a lot of us is actually the kind of the opposite. It's this fear of success. It's this fear of who do I think I am to want this? Right? For so many of us, we have been, well for all of us, if you look at the patriarchy, especially women. But if you look at our society and how we've been raised, the messages that we've been given over and over and over again is be grateful for what you have. Who do you think you are? Don't get too big for your britches. And we have seen that when someone does, we pull them back down to side, right? We wanna knock them a peg or two.
Who do they think they are? And we're so terrified of that. And that is natural. As humans, we have evolved to be a part of a tribe. And it is scary to think, what if I surpass the tribe? What will the tribe do to me? Right? What will my family think? What will my friends think? Will I lose them? Will I become lonely? For so many of us, especially women, when you look at how we have been socialized, we've been socialized to believe that gratitude is the only emotion we're allowed to have, right? We should be grateful for everything that we have. We should never want more. If you look at the seven deadly sins, and you just look at what we have been socialized to believe our sins gluttony, right? Greed, slothfulness, envy, all of these things that are associated with wanting more, right?
If I want to rest more, if I don't wanna do all the things, am I lazy? Am I slothful? Am I a sloth? Right? If I want more money, if I want more power, if I want more impact, am I being greedy? If I want more, am I being gluttonous? Right? If I want what other people have, if I look at other people and I think I want that, am I being envious? Right? Am I, each one of these things is so deeply rooted in our brains to be bad. And for so many of us, we grapple, so deeply with this idea of what if I'm a bad person? Then for so many women, especially, we have been raised our whole lives to simply be good, to be the good girl, to listen, to do what we're told, to not make waves, to not need more, to be grateful. And so it is a real identity shift to grapple with what if I'm bad? What if I want more? What if I want more than what I'm given? What if I'm gluttonous? What if I'm lazy? What if I'm envious? What if I'm greedy? What if those words are true? Why are they bad? What if I'm selfish?
None of us have ever been allowed to want those things. And so of course it feels terrible to admit that to yourself, that I have a part of me that wants that. There's nothing actually wrong with it. It's just simply that we've been programmed to believe it's wrong. And you have to come to terms with that. What if I am successful? What if I do put it out there? And you know, I think Marianne Williamson has that quote. I don't have it on the top of my head, but like, you know, our deepest fear is not that we lack, that we're inadequate. Our deepest fear is like how powerful we are, right? Like it scares us because we know there is something there. And we're afraid to stand out, to be visible, to be seen. We're afraid of what other people are gonna think. We're afraid of being lonely.
We're afraid of being rejected. And so we keep ourselves small. We play small to not ruffle any feathers, not to make waves, not to have anyone look at us, not to have anyone make any comments. And so we live these lives again, that are limited simply from by ourselves. With our consent. Of course, we've been given, you know, we've been programmed with these beliefs. So it's not as though we just picked this box to put ourselves in, but I liken it to like a caged bird with the door open, the door is open and we're just not walking through. We're not flying through. We're just like, well, this seems safer to be in this cage. This is all I know. I should just be grateful for this cage. It's not that bad of a life here, but you know, there's something out there.
And so it is your job to uncover it. It's your job to uncover what you want out of this life. It's your job to slow down and figure that out. 'cause what is the alternative? To stumble? Constantly searching for something that you don't even know what you're searching for, to constantly feel this, lack that there is something missing to settle for good enough. When good enough is simply going to lead to resentment and bitterness and anger. Slow down and figure out what the hell you want and admit it to yourself. And when I say admit it to yourself, you have to be specific. Okay? I talk about this on my master classes a lot, and it's fascinating when I ask people, people that have maybe never thought about this instantly, they come up with an answer. Do you want more money? Most people will say yes, and they feel bad about saying yes.
So they're hesitant at first. But of course you want more money. It's the one resource in this world that affects every aspect of your life. Why would you not want more of it? But we like to believe that we don't because we wanna be selfless and we wanna be good, and I have what I need. And what if I just admitted I did want more? How much more you have to be willing to say it? Do I wanna make a hundred thousand dollars a year, 200,000, 500,000, a million? Am I willing to say those numbers to myself? What comes up when I say that? How do I feel about myself when I say that? Those are the thoughts I wanna examine. Do I want more time? Right? Do I wanna admit that I don't wanna work 40 hours a week? The world is a change in my friends.
People are working remotely, people are working less. All of this is possible, but it's not possible if you don't admit to yourself that you want it. I want you to think about that. Like if I tell myself simply that I wanna make more money, I wanna make, let's say $200,000, okay, now I have something to work with. Can I do that in my, in this current career? Do I need more skills? Do I need to ask, learn how to negotiate, ask for a bigger raise? Do I need to move cities to go to an area where it pays more? Do I need to find a new career? Do I need to go into business for myself? Then I can figure out how, if I want more time, what does that mean? Does that, is that offered at my company? Is that offered in my field?
Is that even a possibility? Could I go part-time? Could I work remotely? Who are other people that are doing it? Once, you know, once you admit like, yeah, I wanna work 20 hours a week, 30 hours a week, what jobs provide that? It becomes a lot easier to figure out the strategy, right? Do I want more contribution? What kind? If I want that, I have to be specific, just saying I want fulfillment or I want impact is not helpful. What kind of impact do I wanna work one-on-one? One with people? Do I wanna do impact on a global scale? What areas in my life do I wanna impact? What areas in the world do I wanna impact? I have to be able to say these things out loud to myself. You don't have to say to anyone else, don't worry. Keep it with yourself. That, but that has to be the first step because otherwise it's very difficult to set my GPS. It's very difficult to know what my North star is. It's very difficult to know where I wanna go.
It has to start from me uncovering this. And in order to uncover this, you, I have to go through what we just talked about, those fears, which, you know, not shockingly is mindset work, right? I have to be able to grapple with the thoughts of like, is it okay for me to want more money? Is it okay for me to want more time? What does this say about me? What if I am quote unquote bad based off of everything I've been taught? What would that mean about me? How do I wanna define myself? What do I want to experience in this one life? You have to do that step first, and then you have to go after it. And then you have to build, and then you have to set the goals and take the steps.
But that has to come after you know what you want. And I promise you it's there. You just have to dig for it a little bit.
And if this is gonna bring up a lot for you, which it will, it'll bring up a lot of thoughts. I want you to join us in the Quitter Club because this is the work that we do, and this is the work that we're specifically gonna do over the next year. A lot of what we're gonna do is figuring out what is that bigger dream and how do I go after it? What is that north star and how long will it take me to get there? How do I set these goals once I know what I want and then I can work and build towards it? We're gonna work on this over the next year, and you get access to all of it for $997. That's $83 a month to start building the life that you want to start admitting what it is that you want to yourself to deal with these ideas of being bad and good enough and all the that we've been taught. Take the time to unpack it. Take one year to do that and watch what happens in the rest of your life. It's worth everything, I promise you. Join me, go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitterclub, today's last day to get this deal. So you are gonna want to join today. If you listen to this later, I apologize. There's, it's likely open for $197 soon as well, and you can join monthly. I love you all. I want you all to go after the biggest life possible, and I want you to know that it's available to you. So if you forget that, come find me. All right, my friends, I hope this was helpful and I will be back next week with another episode.
Hey, if you are looking for more in-depth help with your career, whether that's dealing with all of the stress, worry, and anxiety that's leading to burnout in your current career or figuring out what your dream career is and actually going after it, I want you to join me in the Quitter Club. It is where we quit what is no longer working. Like perfectionism, people pleasing imposter syndrome… and we start working on what does, and we start taking action towards the career and the life that you actually want. We will take the concepts that we talk about on the podcast and apply them to your life and you will get the coaching, tools, and support that you need to actually make some real change. So go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitter club and get on the waitlist. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.
Hello my friends and welcome to another episode. I am so excited you are here. You're in for a rant. I was just trying to write the outline for this and I got really worked up and it's something that I just taught in my class The Secret to Building a Career You Love. And I realized I hadn't spoken on this topic even though I've talked about it in a couple of the masterclasses I've done, I haven't talked about it on the podcast. And let me tell you, it riles me up. So buckle up. And if you listen to this and you realize, you know what, I don't admit what I want and I really need to do that, I want you to join us in the Quitter Club before doors close tonight. So the doors for this launch will be closed September 26th, and it is the last day to get the incredible pricing that I haven't given in a year.
So you could join the Quitter Club for $997, a thousand dollars for the entire year. It's typically $197 a month, which comes out to about $2,400 a year. And so you're getting it at a very steep discount. It's almost 60% off to commit to a year of doing this work and really admitting what you want and then going out and building it and having the resources to figure out how to do that and stick with it even if you're not consistent all the time and get back on the horse and get coaching so you don't feel like hell the whole time you're going after these goals. So if you are resonating with this work and, it's, you listen every week and you know that there's more to your life and it's starting to help, I want you to join us because it's so much more than just kind of hearing these concepts.
Applying it to your life changes everything, but it requires you to do that work.
So join us in the Quitter club before doors close tonight. I hope to see you in there.
Okay, let's talk about admitting what you want and really the power in admitting what you want.
I talk a lot about goal setting, going after big goals, not playing small, like I've had a number of episodes on this podcast about that. And I think that for a lot of us, for a lot of you listening those resonate because you want more.
There's something more that you want, you want to feel more fulfilled, you know, there's something missing, right? And so for so many of us, we're chasing this elusive thing, and this is why we might set certain New Year's resolutions. We might go after, kind of this, shiny object, like, should I start a business? Should I change my job? Should I, you know I don't know, join a cult. Hopefully don't do that. But you get what I'm saying.
Like, we're constantly in this search for this thing, but we don't know what we want. We don't know what that thing is, right? So for a lot of us, we know there's something missing. We know we want more, we just don't know what we want. And I want you to think about how backwards we approach this. Like none of us question this, but when you really think about it, I want you to think about how insane it is that we haven't spent the time to figure out what it is that we want. And to admit that to ourselves and to tell us Sarahs what it is that we're actually going after.
We just are sort of stumbling around, hoping we fall into it, right? We jump from job to job, we start that business. We, you know, set that health goal. We run that marathon hoping that maybe at the end of this thing I'll find, you know, my happiness as if it's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Like I'm just gonna kind of stumble along in the dark and hope that I fall into something and hope, my friend, is not a strategy. It isn't. It isn't a strategy to create the life you want. It isn't a strategy to find happiness. And so when you realize like, how can I go after what I want if I don't know what that is, right? You wouldn't just get in a car and just drive and just hope you end up at the grocery store or just hope you end up somewhere that's gonna have delicious food. You figure out where you wanna go and then you drive there, right? You have a GPS that takes you to where you need to go.
And yet, for so many of us, we get really frustrated in our lives because we are in search of something that is missing, but we don't even know what is missing. We don't even know what it is that we want. And I will say this until I'm blue in the face. I say this in every one of my masterclasses. I, I feel like you can never figure out how to get there if you don't know what it is you want. For so many of you, you keep searching for the how you keep like, I don't know, looking for tutorials like how to build a business or how to have more work-life balance or how to you know, I don't know, negotiate a raise and all those are great things to do, but you haven't spent the time to figure out what it is you actually want.
And so it requires us to sort of shelve the how, which is scary because so many of us are so used to being productive and just constantly doing and we're running on this hamster wheel and we keep running and we don't know where we're running to. And this is why we're all so exhausted. We're all doing everything. We don't even know where it's going.
And so for a lot of us, it is really scary to slow down. It's really scary to be like, Hey, I need to take a beat and figure out what it is I actually want before I start running, right? And I think for so many of us, we are scared that we're wasting time. We are scared that we're not on the right path. But again, we just don't even take the time to figure out what that is. We're just hoping someone else will tell us, or we're hoping if I jump from thing to thing, then somehow magically one of these will be the thing.
And you end up spending so much more time on these wrong paths going after things you don't want. We've all done that, right? Every one of you has thought that once I get that degree, once I have the job, once I have the promotion, once I make it to this level, once I buy the house with the picket fence, once I have that spouse, once I have the kids, I'll be happy. And then we get there and we're not that happy , we're happy for like a split second, a beat and then it's back to, but I need more. Right? And we don't even know what that ‘more’ is. And here's the thing that I want you all to know from coaching now hundreds of people, you do know what you want and it's a lie that you don't. I've seen this time and time again for so many people where with really the lightest of prodding, a little gentle push, all of these dreams come out, all of these things that people want for their life has come out and it's buried just beneath the surface. It's there. We just are afraid to admit it to ourselves.
That fear. And I'm gonna talk about what that fear is of saying it out loud, of staking that claim of, you know, planting our flag and saying, this is what I want for my life. We're so afraid of that, that we would rather sit in confusion and just indulge in that confusion for the rest of our lives and constantly tell ourselves, well, I don't know what I want. I don't even know. I don't even know if I can have it. So why even sit and think about it? I'm just gonna keep stumbling around in the dark hoping I land on something.
But before we get into what that fear is and what I want you to do, I just want you to really take a moment to understand that it's there. And I say this from someone who used to say the same things. I have no idea what I want. I don't have any other skills. I felt so lost when I left my career as a lawyer in 2014, 2015. I really thought there's nothing that I want.
And then when I did a lot of this self-help work and this personal development, I found that I have an infinite amount of dreams. So many, so many, I can't even keep track of them, right? I have so many things I wanna pursue. I have so many things I want in my life and it was simply scary to admit it to myself. And so I want you to know it's there. It's just buried under a lot of fear and conditioning and programming. And we have to excavate it. We have to uncover it if we're gonna go after it, if we're gonna build it right? If you're gonna listen to all of my episodes about goal setting, you have to know what you want your goals to be in order to go after them and why you want them.
And here's why you don't admit it to yourself. Here's why. For most of us, we do keep it buried, like I said, because we're afraid and we're afraid for a number of reasons. But I think there's two that 2, 3, 4, I dunno, there's a lot of 'em. We're not gonna get into all of them. But the two major ones I wanna talk about that I see a lot.
The first is just this underlying fear that it, I can't have it, that it won't work out, that that's not possible for me and for so many of us, because we're so afraid of being disappointed. Maybe we wanted something and it didn't work, work out. Maybe we all thought we were gonna be princesses or princess and superheroes. And we grew up and we realized that that's not a possibility. And so we got quote unquote realistic and we told ourselves like, that's silly. You can't have a life like that.
And we're so scared that that is true, right? And so we'd rather believe like life just doesn't turn out that way. It's not supposed to be fun. This is good enough. What I have, I should be grateful for. I have a pretty good life, right? And so we make our lives smaller. We decide I'll just be happy with what I have. Whatever this slice of pie that I've been given other people have it worse than me. I should just be grateful for this, right? And it's simply this method of self-preservation, of protecting my own heart. Because I don't wanna have to deal with the hurt that will come if I try and I go after this life and I try to build the business, or I try to get that promotion, or I try to make that money or I try to whatever, have that impact to build that nonprofit.
And what if I prove to myself I can't? And what if my deepest and darkest insecurities prove true that maybe I'm not good enough? 'cause I promise you all of our thoughts come back to that. Maybe if I don't try, then at least I can say like, well, I don't know. I didn't even want that. I don't have to face that. But if I try, if I give it my all and it doesn't work, then what? What am I left with?
We're so terrified of that feeling. We're so terrified of confirming that maybe I'm not good at this thing. Maybe I'm not good at what I said. Maybe I don't follow through. Maybe my deepest insecurities are true. Maybe it's gonna be really painful if I try and I can't get there. And people judge me and people will have opinions. And so we just keep constricting our life smaller and smaller.
It's like a circle, right? The amount of what we're willing to feel just keeps getting smaller and smaller. And we're like, you know what? I'm just gonna be happy with this. I don't even need to feel all that. And yes, we might be protecting ourselves from some negative emotion, but we also prevent ourselves from so much positive emotion, so much joy, so much curiosity, so much fulfillment. Because we're like, I would rather stay safe. I would rather keep it small into what I can handle, keep that circle small and not feel these other things. And by doing that, we cut off so much from ourselves, so much possibility, so much of this experience, of this human experience. And the irony of it is that you don't prevent yourself from feeling the negative emotion, right? Yeah, you might prevent yourself from feeling maybe failure or judgment. Maybe you prevent yourself from feeling embarrassment or something, but you end up feeling unfulfilled. You end up feeling like, like something is missing.
You end up feeling frustration. You spend your life bored. You spend your life knowing there has to be more. You have this resentment and anger and bitterness that builds up that feels terrible. You are not preventing negative emotion. It's really like when you think about it, it makes no sense. We think I am going to feel terrible in order to prevent, hopefully feeling terrible in the future. I'm gonna have a ton of negative emotion so that I don't have negative emotion in the future. You're gonna have negative emotion either way. You might as well get the life you want out of it. You might as well try some sh*t. Experiment, expand your horizons, see things in your life.
Yes, it, it's going to suck. I'm not even saying it might suck. It's going to suck. You're gonna fail. You're gonna have to grapple with those negative emotions. And guess what? You increase your capacity to feel those negative emotions and you increase your capacity to feel the positive ones. You stop hiding from a life.
Glennon Doyle, I've talked about her a number of times in her book, untamed. I absolutely love it and I recommend it. But she has this quote that is just a gut punch. And so I feel like it's apropos to read it here. Her quote says, “So we say maybe it's safer to just stay here, even if it's not true enough. Maybe it's good enough, but good enough is what makes people drink too much and snark too much and become bitter and sick and live in quiet desperation until they lie on their deathbed and wonder what kind of life, relationship, family world might I have created if I'd been braver?” There is so much in that quote and it sums it up perfectly.
This good enough is not good enough and it leads to so much of the unhappiness and the suffering and the bitterness because there is nothing actually stopping us but ourselves. There is nothing that's stopping you from going after that dream, from trying, from figuring out what you want except for you. And you know that on some level. And that's where the frustration comes. You know that it's within reach. You know it's something you can do. And yet you stop yourself 'cause you're afraid. And that's okay. We're all afraid. But when you realize like, I can be afraid and do it anyway, I can learn to live with this fear and still take that action, another part of your life opens up, another part of the world opens up to you. There's so much more available to you.
And so you have to deal with that fear, my friends. You have to figure out how do I manage it to not get rid of it, it's gonna come along for the ride. How do I manage it so that I don't let it stop me anymore? So it's not an obstacle in my way, it's just a companion that's gonna come along for this ride. So the first thing is figuring out that is this fear of disappointment, this fear of failure, this fear of having negative emotions. How do I overcome that?
The second thing that I think of stops a lot of us is actually the kind of the opposite. It's this fear of success. It's this fear of who do I think I am to want this? Right? For so many of us, we have been, well for all of us, if you look at the patriarchy, especially women. But if you look at our society and how we've been raised, the messages that we've been given over and over and over again is be grateful for what you have. Who do you think you are? Don't get too big for your britches. And we have seen that when someone does, we pull them back down to side, right? We wanna knock them a peg or two.
Who do they think they are? And we're so terrified of that. And that is natural. As humans, we have evolved to be a part of a tribe. And it is scary to think, what if I surpass the tribe? What will the tribe do to me? Right? What will my family think? What will my friends think? Will I lose them? Will I become lonely? For so many of us, especially women, when you look at how we have been socialized, we've been socialized to believe that gratitude is the only emotion we're allowed to have, right? We should be grateful for everything that we have. We should never want more. If you look at the seven deadly sins, and you just look at what we have been socialized to believe our sins gluttony, right? Greed, slothfulness, envy, all of these things that are associated with wanting more, right?
If I want to rest more, if I don't wanna do all the things, am I lazy? Am I slothful? Am I a sloth? Right? If I want more money, if I want more power, if I want more impact, am I being greedy? If I want more, am I being gluttonous? Right? If I want what other people have, if I look at other people and I think I want that, am I being envious? Right? Am I, each one of these things is so deeply rooted in our brains to be bad. And for so many of us, we grapple, so deeply with this idea of what if I'm a bad person? Then for so many women, especially, we have been raised our whole lives to simply be good, to be the good girl, to listen, to do what we're told, to not make waves, to not need more, to be grateful. And so it is a real identity shift to grapple with what if I'm bad? What if I want more? What if I want more than what I'm given? What if I'm gluttonous? What if I'm lazy? What if I'm envious? What if I'm greedy? What if those words are true? Why are they bad? What if I'm selfish?
None of us have ever been allowed to want those things. And so of course it feels terrible to admit that to yourself, that I have a part of me that wants that. There's nothing actually wrong with it. It's just simply that we've been programmed to believe it's wrong. And you have to come to terms with that. What if I am successful? What if I do put it out there? And you know, I think Marianne Williamson has that quote. I don't have it on the top of my head, but like, you know, our deepest fear is not that we lack, that we're inadequate. Our deepest fear is like how powerful we are, right? Like it scares us because we know there is something there. And we're afraid to stand out, to be visible, to be seen. We're afraid of what other people are gonna think. We're afraid of being lonely.
We're afraid of being rejected. And so we keep ourselves small. We play small to not ruffle any feathers, not to make waves, not to have anyone look at us, not to have anyone make any comments. And so we live these lives again, that are limited simply from by ourselves. With our consent. Of course, we've been given, you know, we've been programmed with these beliefs. So it's not as though we just picked this box to put ourselves in, but I liken it to like a caged bird with the door open, the door is open and we're just not walking through. We're not flying through. We're just like, well, this seems safer to be in this cage. This is all I know. I should just be grateful for this cage. It's not that bad of a life here, but you know, there's something out there.
And so it is your job to uncover it. It's your job to uncover what you want out of this life. It's your job to slow down and figure that out. 'cause what is the alternative? To stumble? Constantly searching for something that you don't even know what you're searching for, to constantly feel this, lack that there is something missing to settle for good enough. When good enough is simply going to lead to resentment and bitterness and anger. Slow down and figure out what the hell you want and admit it to yourself. And when I say admit it to yourself, you have to be specific. Okay? I talk about this on my master classes a lot, and it's fascinating when I ask people, people that have maybe never thought about this instantly, they come up with an answer. Do you want more money? Most people will say yes, and they feel bad about saying yes.
So they're hesitant at first. But of course you want more money. It's the one resource in this world that affects every aspect of your life. Why would you not want more of it? But we like to believe that we don't because we wanna be selfless and we wanna be good, and I have what I need. And what if I just admitted I did want more? How much more you have to be willing to say it? Do I wanna make a hundred thousand dollars a year, 200,000, 500,000, a million? Am I willing to say those numbers to myself? What comes up when I say that? How do I feel about myself when I say that? Those are the thoughts I wanna examine. Do I want more time? Right? Do I wanna admit that I don't wanna work 40 hours a week? The world is a change in my friends.
People are working remotely, people are working less. All of this is possible, but it's not possible if you don't admit to yourself that you want it. I want you to think about that. Like if I tell myself simply that I wanna make more money, I wanna make, let's say $200,000, okay, now I have something to work with. Can I do that in my, in this current career? Do I need more skills? Do I need to ask, learn how to negotiate, ask for a bigger raise? Do I need to move cities to go to an area where it pays more? Do I need to find a new career? Do I need to go into business for myself? Then I can figure out how, if I want more time, what does that mean? Does that, is that offered at my company? Is that offered in my field?
Is that even a possibility? Could I go part-time? Could I work remotely? Who are other people that are doing it? Once, you know, once you admit like, yeah, I wanna work 20 hours a week, 30 hours a week, what jobs provide that? It becomes a lot easier to figure out the strategy, right? Do I want more contribution? What kind? If I want that, I have to be specific, just saying I want fulfillment or I want impact is not helpful. What kind of impact do I wanna work one-on-one? One with people? Do I wanna do impact on a global scale? What areas in my life do I wanna impact? What areas in the world do I wanna impact? I have to be able to say these things out loud to myself. You don't have to say to anyone else, don't worry. Keep it with yourself. That, but that has to be the first step because otherwise it's very difficult to set my GPS. It's very difficult to know what my North star is. It's very difficult to know where I wanna go.
It has to start from me uncovering this. And in order to uncover this, you, I have to go through what we just talked about, those fears, which, you know, not shockingly is mindset work, right? I have to be able to grapple with the thoughts of like, is it okay for me to want more money? Is it okay for me to want more time? What does this say about me? What if I am quote unquote bad based off of everything I've been taught? What would that mean about me? How do I wanna define myself? What do I want to experience in this one life? You have to do that step first, and then you have to go after it. And then you have to build, and then you have to set the goals and take the steps.
But that has to come after you know what you want. And I promise you it's there. You just have to dig for it a little bit.
And if this is gonna bring up a lot for you, which it will, it'll bring up a lot of thoughts. I want you to join us in the Quitter Club because this is the work that we do, and this is the work that we're specifically gonna do over the next year. A lot of what we're gonna do is figuring out what is that bigger dream and how do I go after it? What is that north star and how long will it take me to get there? How do I set these goals once I know what I want and then I can work and build towards it? We're gonna work on this over the next year, and you get access to all of it for $997. That's $83 a month to start building the life that you want to start admitting what it is that you want to yourself to deal with these ideas of being bad and good enough and all the that we've been taught. Take the time to unpack it. Take one year to do that and watch what happens in the rest of your life. It's worth everything, I promise you. Join me, go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitterclub, today's last day to get this deal. So you are gonna want to join today. If you listen to this later, I apologize. There's, it's likely open for $197 soon as well, and you can join monthly. I love you all. I want you all to go after the biggest life possible, and I want you to know that it's available to you. So if you forget that, come find me. All right, my friends, I hope this was helpful and I will be back next week with another episode.
Hey, if you are looking for more in-depth help with your career, whether that's dealing with all of the stress, worry, and anxiety that's leading to burnout in your current career or figuring out what your dream career is and actually going after it, I want you to join me in the Quitter Club. It is where we quit what is no longer working. Like perfectionism, people pleasing imposter syndrome… and we start working on what does, and we start taking action towards the career and the life that you actually want. We will take the concepts that we talk about on the podcast and apply them to your life and you will get the coaching, tools, and support that you need to actually make some real change. So go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitter club and get on the waitlist. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.
