Episode 53 - The Power of Wanting

SPOTIFY | APPLE |YOUTUBE

Episode 53 - The Power of Wanting

Hello Friends!

Welcome to the Seasons of Joy Podcast.

This is episode 53 - The Power of Wanting

Episode 53 - The Power of Wanting 

When was the last time you asked yourself what you really want?

Do you have a dream that you haven’t told anyone else about?

But you tell yourself that your wants aren’t needs, so you shouldn’t want them.

Or that is selfish to want.

Or wanting is indulgent and unnecessary.

Or that you are ungrateful for wanting something because you already have so much.

These are beliefs that I have had.

Those very beliefs sometimes squashed my dreams and blocked my creativity.

I lost sight of the power of wanting and I want to talk about that today.

I have come to believe that wanting and dreaming are actually born within us.

As children dreaming, wishing, and wanting come naturally.  

I remember, when I was little, looking at the Sears or JC Penney catalogs and I would fold down the corners of the pages of the things on my wish list.

I knew I wouldn’t get them all but it was fun to imagine the possibilities.

I remember playing games with my friends where we would imagine we were someone famous or that we had special abilities.

Not because we thought we would necessarily become those people but because it was fun.

We loved using our imagination.

However, as we become adults, we begin to limit our wants because of beliefs like I just shared or because of our fears, our culture, or even our past experiences.

If we aren’t careful, we can find ourselves as spectators instead of participants in our own life’s story.

We can begin to believe that life just happens to us and is out of our control.

We no longer are the creators we were divinely designed to be.

We go through the motions of life and we are not really living. 

But I want to share a little secret…..

Learning how to want again is the secret sauce to life.  

It is where the magic happens.

Wanting and dreaming are what helps us learn, grow, progress and become who we want to be.

Who we were meant to be. 

Opening yourself up to dreaming and wanting expands you and this invites opportunities to become an intentional creator.

It begins with a desire, a want, a dream.

Do you put limits on what you want?

I did and sometimes I still do.

Our brains offer thoughts that become deeply held beliefs that keep us stuck.

A thought that we think over and over becomes a belief.

I was……..

Believing I had to justify my dreams and wants.

Believing that wanting made me selfish.

Believing that wanting was indulgent and not necessary.

Believing that wanting is being ungrateful.

Again, these beliefs are dream squashers and I want to shine the light on each one of them.

First, there is a tendency to want to justify our wants because we don’t want to feel guilty about what we want.  

If we can justify what we want as a need then somehow that makes it ok. Right? 

Because it is ok to want things that we need. 

We also worry about what other people think about us and what we want.  

So if we can justify what we want by describing it as a need, we can appease others and avoid feeling uncomfortable. 

When we do this, we are trying to avoid feeling guilt and we want to please others. 

But viewing only our needs limits us and our wants turn into problems. 

Our problems become bigger and our wants become smaller.

This makes me think of someone who wants to build a new house. 

I know people who have really wanted to build a new house but it seems selfish to them because the house they have is perfectly fine.  

They also were worried about what other people would think, so they came up with reasons to justify wanting a new house.  

Excuses like, we need to upsize because we are growing out of our current home.  

Or, we need to downsize because our home is too big for us now. 

Those reasons may be true but isn’t it interesting that we believe we have to justify our wanting to ourselves and others.  

What if it could be that we just really want to build a new house?  

Or, we really want to move.  

We don’t have to justify it at all.  

We can simply say that we want what we want because it is fun and is not a moral issue.

I invite you to write down something you want just because you want it.  

Then allow yourself to say it out loud without the justification at the end.  

I know it feels super uncomfortable but try it with something small today. 

Practice feeling a little uncomfortable and begin training yourself to no longer need to justify what you want. 

Second, thinking that wanting is selfish comes from the belief that there isn’t enough.  

This belief comes from scarcity and keeps us stuck and is also a dream squasher. 

It is crazy to believe that if we don’t want, then that in some way, we will create more for others. 

This doesn’t make any sense at all.

And as Stephen Covey teaches, the world isn’t a pie where we all get a certain sized piece and if someone gets a bigger piece than me then that takes away a portion of my piece of pie. 

This mindset keeps us focused on what we don’t have.

Focused on what we lack.  

This is a scarcity mindset and a dream squasher.

This way of thinking keeps our focus from what is possible and on what is unlikely.  

We compare and despair.  

What we do have really becomes not enough.

However, in the Doctrine & Covenants it says in section 104 verse 17 “For the aearth is full, and there is enough and to spare; yea, I prepared all things, and have given unto the children of men to be bagents unto themselves.”

Our Heavenly Parents created and prepared an earth that is full for all of us. 

“There is enough and to spare.” 

There is more than enough for everyone because there is no pie.  

Dreaming, creating, and wanting does not take away from anyone. 

This verse also teaches us that we are agents unto ourselves.  

As humans, we all have been given the gift of agency–the power to choose how we think, feel and what we do with what we have been given.  

We are also agents of creation because we are creators.  

It is in our divine DNA. 

What if wanting actually helps us create more and allows us to bless others? 

I remember when I first became interested in life coaching. 

I was worried about what other people would think about me paying money, a lot of money, to become certified.  

I was worried about using some of my family’s resources to pay for it.  

So, I pushed the want away and I didn’t consider the options I had.  

I was viewing it from a place of scarcity. 

I believed that I would be taking away something from my family which would affect the amount of money we had.  

Scarcity.  

I believe that I was taking something away from our family’s pie. 

As time went on, however, I allowed myself to dream about what it would be like if I did reach for this dream of getting certified as a life coach.  

I started to consider the options I had.  

By doing this, by allowing myself to dream, I found a solution that worked for me.  

I found a way to earn the money to pay for it and I proved to myself that I could accomplish something that I truly desired to do.  

This dream has changed my life and has helped me help my clients to create change in their lives.  

I didn’t take away from my family.  

I actually added to it. 

I have met amazing people.  

I have been able to step out of my comfort zone and grow in so many ways.

Third, believing that wanting is indulgent is also a dream squasher.  

We have this idea as adults that we have to be responsible and realistic.  

What if we can be responsible AND unrealistic.?

I give you full permission to be unrealistic.  

You can dream for the fun of it.  

We can dream and not even do anything with it.  

Being unrealistic opens up space for dreaming, wanting, and creating amazing things in our lives. 

Last summer, my husband and a few of our children decided to climb the Grand Teton.

This was my husband’s dream.

He has wanted to do it for a long time and he invited us to join in his dream.

(I will say here that my husband is a dreamer and has really shown me how to dream.)

It would have been easy for me to be realistic when it came to doing this climb.

Realistically, I had never done anything like this before.

Realistically, I wasn’t sure my bad knee would perform like I hoped.

Realistically, it was a lot of money to pay to have a guide take us on this adventure.

Realistically, I am getting older and I would probably be slower than everyone else.

But, I decided to be unrealistic and consider the other possibilities.

Like….

If not now, when?

Maybe my knee would do great. 

I will just put in the work ahead of time to help make that happen.

What better way to climb than to go with someone that knows the best routes and can help us stay safe.

What an amazing adventure and experience to share with loved ones.

Actually being unrealistic helped me step out of my comfort zone into an experience of a lifetime.

I remember when we submitted the Grand Teton.  

We were all together taking in the breathtaking beauty.

This most amazing feeling washed over me and I remember saying, “I didn’t die!”

I had accomplished something that wasn’t very realistic and I am so glad I did. 

The final dream squasher is believing that if we want something more than we have then we are ungrateful.

There is a difference between wanting from lack and wanting from abundance.

When we want from lack, we are chasing something.

We may believe that we will be more worthy or valuable if we get what we want. 

We are chasing our value instead of understanding we already have it. 

We may believe that we will feel a certain way if we get what we want without understanding that we can create any emotion we want to and have the ability to feel it now.

Happiness, peace, satisfaction, and joy are all created by our beliefs not by what we attain or achieve. 

You are the creator of your joy right where you are.

Right now. 

No matter your season or circumstances.

We can actually be grateful for what we have and still make space for wanting more.

We can also be grateful for the opportunities that come our way for creating more.

I like to think of wanting and dreaming as a muscle that needs to be strengthened.  

We have to work at it.  

Especially as women, it is easy to let the dreaming muscle atrophy. 

We have set dreams and desires aside to help nurture others. 

Now, I am not saying that is wrong or we shouldn’t do that. 

There are seasons where we may want to focus on other things.  

However, I don’t think that means we need to stop dreaming.  

Sooner or later our seasons change and if we haven’t practiced wanting and dreaming, we will have forgotten how.  

Then we find ourselves in a new season feeling lost and confused, unsure of what we really want in life. 

What are some of your current beliefs about wanting and dreaming?

Do you have one of the dream squasher beliefs that I have talked about today?

I want you to know that when you allow yourself to dream and want in all of your seasons, you have set yourself up to be the creator of your life experience.

Here are 10 questions that I want to invite you to consider as you start strengthening your creation muscle today. 

1. What can you start wanting just for the fun of it?

2. How can you be more unrealistic?

3. How can you start focusing on what you want instead of what you don’t want? Pay attention to how you feel when you do this.

4. How can you start creating the emotions you want more in your life?  What do you need to start thinking in order to create that now?

5. How can you stop judging yourself and your dreams so you can be a creator?

6. How can you embrace the discomfort of not justifying your wants or not people-pleasing?

7. How can you start believing that you are worthy and valuable right now and that wanting is a gift from God?

8. How can you create more space in your life for dreaming, wanting, and creating?

9. What is the next best step to reaching for your secret dream?

10. What if creating more in and with our life is a sign of gratitude and this can help you to bless others? 

I would love to help you strengthen your creation muscle.

There are a couple of ways to do that.

One is by joining my free Seasons of Joy Community Facebook Group.  I go live twice a month with a monthly workshop and an open coaching call.  The monthly workshop has a theme that is different each month.  The open coaching call is an opportunity to bring questions around the monthly workshop or any other questions you may have.  It is an opportunity to get a little glimpse of what coaching is all about.  The next open coaching call will be on Tuesday, March 21 at 7 pm MDST.  The link to join that call is found at the top of the Seasons of Joy Community Facebook group page. 

The other way is by working with me one on one.  We take the same things that I am teaching here on the podcast and in the community to a more personal level and we apply them to your specific problems. I help show you how to gain awareness of where you are so you can begin to create a path to where you want to go and who you want to be.  You are the creator of your life and I want to show you how to do it intentionally.

Click on the link below to learn more about Seasons Coaching and my Seasons of Joy Community Facebook Group.

Seasons Coaching

To contact me about speaking to your group or business, email me at jill@seasons-coaching.com.

Have a joyful week!