#100 - How to Desire What You Don't Desire

Is there something you don't currently desire but want to desire? Maybe it's regular exercise, or a mediation practice, or more sex. In this episode I dive into things we want to desire but currently don't desire and I provide tips on how to cultivate that desire.

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Transcript

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I'm jamielynn Stephan. And this is what I wanted. Episode number 100. How to desire what you don't desire. Welcome to want to want it a podcast for women of the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints who are ready to ignite not only their sexual desire, but all of their desires to create a more fulfilling life and marriage. I'm jamielynn Stephan. I'm a certified life coach, a wife, and a mother of seven children. I'm excited to share my personal journey to desire with you and teach you how to desire more as well Hello, everyone. Welcome to want to want it today. I figured that for my hundredth episode, I maybe should talk about wanting about desire again. But I want to focus today on what to do when you want to desire something that you just don't desire. I hope this makes sense. We'll see how it goes. Here's an example of what I mean. I feel like I've been hearing a lot about yoga and the benefits of yoga for many, many, many years, but I have to admit that I really wasn't interested in it. I tried it a few times. Um, I found that I felt a little bored and a little bothered at the pace. It was certainly challenging and I saw how it was more than just stretching. But exercise is one thing that I just kind of like to pound through. Even though I want to die and I want to take breaks. I like something that requires constant movement and that's why I can't stand like weightlifting. That's another one that I'm like, oh my goodness. I watched the people lift weights and then walk around for a minute. Like they lift a few, then they dropped the way to walk around, take a break, and then they lift again and in my head and just like, this is such a waste of time. This is so slow. How do they stand it? So I'm kind of like get in pounded out and get it done. Now I know this totally exposes that I have a ton of impatience, but if you've been with me long enough, you know, I've been on quite an exercise journey in my life. So. So, these are kind of my thoughts about yoga. Like everyone says, it's good for you, but it looks like. That's a little too slow paced for me. But I kept getting this niggling in the back of my brain that I needed to add yoga to my exercise routine. But I didn't want to. I didn't have the desire. But I wanted to want to do yoga because if I wanted to do it, then it was going to make it a lot easier to add yoga to my exercise routine. Is that making sense? Like. In my heart. I had no desire to do yoga, but I felt like it was something that I should start. And that would be good for me. So what was I going to do? How could I get myself to desire? What I just didn't desire. Logically. I knew I should do yoga, but my brain was kind of rebelling against it and just didn't want to do it. So, this is kind of what I want to explore today. And I don't actually think I have all the answers. And maybe the answers that I give today are going to be kind of lame, or maybe not effective for some of you. But the main thing I want to point out is that it is possible to create desire for things you currently don't desire, but for things that you maybe want to want, but just don't want yet. So here's something that I see in my clients I've seen in myself. And when I listened to Jennifer Finlayson five coach, I see it in her clients as well. So if, what I'm about to describe to you is you, you are in good company because. Humans. Long for intimacy. We really want that feeling of being known and seen as we really are. And we want to know and see others as they really are. We want that. But at the same time, we don't really want that Because to be known, really known means that you have to be vulnerable and you actually have to let someone see you as you really are. It's not hiding things about yourself. It's actually exposing the tender parts of yourself. The parts that you aren't particularly proud of, the parts that feel embarrassing or an adequate. And it's also about showing your amazingness, knowing that other people might feel inadequate. So intimacy requires vulnerability. And it also requires acceptance. To be able to see someone as they really are not as you hope they're going to be or want them to be, but as they are, that requires you to accept who they are, what they are now. That doesn't mean that you're going to stick around in a really abusive relationship because they are who they are. And I just have to accept that and stay with them. But it does mean allowing them to show you who they are, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and being able to hold onto your own emotions and thoughts in the face of it. It's about allowing that person's awesome. Ness to shine and to not allow yourself to feel threatened by that. And that's hard work. Acceptance and vulnerability are super hard. And so we often say that we desire more intimacy in our relationships, especially in our marriages. But we don't desire to be more vulnerable or more accepting and more open. Maybe you feel like there are spiritual practices that you logically think would benefit you, but you just don't want to do them. You don't want to meditate. You don't want to pray. You don't want to read scriptures. You hear from others that they have these powerful practices in their lives. And you think that it may be, could be really powerful in your life too. But you simply don't have the desire to do them. I've already talked about exercise, but this is a big one for people. The world tells us we should want to exercise yet. Many of us find ourselves wanting the benefits of exercise, but really not wanting to exercise at all. I meet women all the time, who here that they could have a great sex life and they could want to have more sex, but honestly, They don't want it. They do believe that maybe perhaps more sex would fix their marriage. They think, you know, I think I am supposed to like sex and want more of it, but they honestly just don't. They certainly feel a lot of pressure to want more sex, but this seems to have the opposite effect on them. And it doesn't create more desire. I have found for myself that there are things in my business that I feel like I should desire to do, but I just don't. Or as a mother I'll, I will see this as well. Like I'll see other mothers doing something a certain way. And I think that is great. That would be really awesome for me to bring into my parenting or into my home. But I actually really don't want to do it. So what can we do? What are some tools that we can employ to help us learn, to want to want it, to help us desire what we currently don't desire, but would like to desire. The first thing I would encourage you to do is to ask yourself. Is this really something worth wanting or actually maybe a better question would be, why do I think I should want this? Is it because other people say, I should want this. Is it because if I did that thing or one of that thing, I would be able to give myself permission to love myself. Is it because I think I'll actually be a more worthy human. If I do that. Is it so that other people are going to feel happy? It's super important to ask yourself these type of questions, and then you must require yourself to answer them. Honestly. Sometimes we're trying to want something. We don't really desire for a really crummy reason. And I know maybe that isn't completely fair to say, but if there's one thing I know about desire, if you want to increase it, it can't be about trying to make people like you more or trying to control how other people feel. It just doesn't work. You can't increase your desire for someone else. I mean, as a parents, we try and do this to our kids. Like we can see what we think they should want and push them to want it. And maybe they logically can see that having that thing or doing that thing would be good for them, but they just don't desire it at all. But we can put a lot of pressure on them to want what we want for them thinking that it's going to increase their desire for it to right. If I keep telling you, you should desire, you're going to start desiring, but it just doesn't work that way. If anything else, it creates a less desire in them. And it's the same with us. Other people can't want something for us and push us to one. It. And when we're considering things we think we should want, if it's all about what other people will think of us or what other people want for us, it will decrease our desire for that thing. It's just too much pressure. And it's also too much pressure when we place our worth on desiring something and doing it. If, if I had more sexual desire, I could believe I was a good wife. If I liked exercising, then I could really love my body. No, no, no. This isn't helpful. So be on to yourself. Are you trying to get yourself to desire something you currently don't desire so that you can finally feel worthy of being loved and accepted? By you or by other people, are you trying to want to want it because everyone says you should, maybe it's time to really be honest about that and drop the whole thing, or at least decide on a different reason to want it. Another thing to consider when you want to desire something you don't currently desire. Is how much pressure you're putting on yourself to want it. Now, this relates to this first point that I brought up, but pressure kills desire. Always. So for a long time, I felt a lot of pressure to like exercise and to want to exercise. And I felt like I had to, that's how I had to feel about it. I felt like I couldn't admit that I hated it. I liked to be active, but organized deliberate exercise was the thing I knew logically I should want, but I did not want it at all. I did it. Sometimes, but I didn't like it. But do you know what? My breakthrough was finally admitting out loud that I didn't like it and I didn't want to do it. And I think the reason this was so life-changing for me was because then I dropped all the outside pressure of what I thought was the socially acceptable way to think about exercise and just embraced my true feelings about it. But it also made it so I could no longer hide behind what I thought others were telling me what was important about exercise. And I had to face within myself. What I thought was important about it. And that brings me to my next thought on learning how to desire, what you don't desire. And that is to become converted to the benefits of that thing. So with exercise, once I kind of threw off the tethers of others' opinions, I was left to decide for myself if exercise had benefits for me. I had to figure out what those benefits were and decided if I wanted them really one of them. And as I let myself really look at those benefits and become converted to them, suddenly my desire to exercise started to increase. I honestly thought when I said I hate exercising, that I was dooming myself to a life of, out of shapeness and that I would stop exercising forever. But instead I discovered the real reasons that I wanted to want to exercise and suddenly my desire to exercise was there. Now I still have days that I dread my run. But I want to do it because I really desire the results of exercising. I want to feel strong. I want to feel fit. I want to feel capable and exercise gives me that. So think of the benefits and become converted to them. Another thing to consider. And I think this. Especially useful in your sexual relationship, but can be even used for your spiritual or other relationships. Is it, maybe you can't desire more of what you currently have, but you could desire it in a different way. And what I mean by that is that often let's take a woman. I'm just going to use a woman for this example. I know it could be a man as well, but often a woman has been trying so hard to want to want sex so that her husband's going to be happy. And so that she doesn't have to believe she's broken. And so she's agreeing to sex that she doesn't want. And she's always feeling terrible when her husband's pouty. So she's always trying to manage how he feels, and this is what their sexual relationships. Looks like it's really hard to want more of that kind of sex, that kind of a sexual relationship. Maybe your spiritual relationship with God, it feels like you just have to follow a bunch of rules, so you don't get punished. It's hard to want to nurture that type of relationship. No matter how much you tell yourself you're supposed to. So maybe you actually need to shift that desire. Instead of saying, I want to want more sex. Maybe you're going to say, I want to create a healthy, happy, fulfilling sexual relationship. Now your brain might tell you that's impossible, but I promise it will be easier to desire that than it will to desire more sex. You don't want. Plus it gives you license to be creative because really you don't know exactly what that healthy, happy sexual relationship looks like. And you get to go now, figure out what that is and make it what you want. When it comes to your relationship with God, instead of trying to make yourself want to be closer to a God you think is punishing. Maybe you need to shift to something like. I want to learn more about a God who loves. And then you can actually get behind that kind of desire. So it's possible that you actually need to reevaluate what you are trying to make yourself desire and tweak it a little bit, so that it feels more compelling. Another thing to do is to act yourself into desire. So I've had this little mental battle about yoga. Going back to my first story here. But when my friends all decided that they were going to do something for 30 days, I decided to do yoga. Now I had done some work on the benefits of yoga in my mind. Right. I was starting to believe that it possibly could make it easier for me to exercise that it was going to make my body stronger, that it was going to help my balance as I age and all of these kinds of things. But I was still a little resistant to actually doing it. So I gave myself the challenge to do yoga for 30 days. And I did it now some days I literally did like five cat cows, but I did it every day. And now I desire to do yoga so much more than ever before, because I required myself to just try it out consistently. And then I was actually able to see the benefits and I got to test it out. And when I started the challenge, I was totally open to hating it in the end and never doing it again. I wasn't requiring myself to love it. But now I find myself stopping in my day, stepping away from my desk and doing a little yoga. So committing yourself to just try something as a way that you can actually act yourself into desire. It's changing your brain so that it wants that thing because you're giving it a taste of it. And the last thing I'll say is that we often want desire because we feel like a strong enough desire will eliminate the discomfort. That's going to come along with whatever it is we think we need to do. So, for example, if you want more intimacy in your marriage and you're like the rest of us, you want that desire to be so strong, that vulnerability isn't uncomfortable. Right? So it's like, I'm willing to be vulnerable because it's not uncomfortable. Sorry. It just does not work that way. And I believe desire can help outweigh the discomfort, but it can't eliminate it. So, if you want more intimacy, you have to keep your desire focused there, and you have to allow the discomfort. That's going to come along for the ride, if you want a stronger body. Right. And exercise is part of that. You have to just allow the discomfort to come along. Just allow the discomfort to come and to be there. It's part of what you were doing. Most things, we have trouble desiring, but we want to desire. Come with built-in discomfort. That's why they are TZ to desire. So you just have to open yourself up to feeling all the feelings. And you will find that your desire will increase and that you will be better at allowing the discomfort and doing the thing you desire. I hope you all have a great week. Thank you so much for coming along for the ride of 100 episodes. It has been great to be with you. I will see you next week for sure. Bye. Thanks for listening today. If you like what you hear on the podcast, and you'd like to learn more, feel free to head over to my website. Jamilin Stephan coaching.com or find me on Instagram or Facebook at Jamileh. step in coaching.