47. Identifying What You Actually Want (Jules Solo Mini-Series Ep 5)

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

After years of raising families, building careers, and holding the whole circus together, it’s completely normal to feel like you’ve lost touch with your own desires. Today, we are turning the lights back on.

Julee shares her personal story of realizing she was completely drained by her corporate job and an hour-and-a-half commute, and how she found the courage to pivot into real estate. We discuss why growth only happens at the end of your comfort zone, how ignoring your desires breeds resentment, and the inevitable pushback you get when you start setting new boundaries.

The Weekly Challenge: Write down 3 things you want more of in your life. Don't worry about practicality or what other people will think. This list is just for you!

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Transcript

Welcome And Episode Goal<br>

Why Midlife Desires Get Quiet<br>

Turn The Lights Back On<br>

Travel Work And Bold Change<br>

Intimacy Creativity And Joy Signals<br>

Resentment Grows When You Ignore Wants<br>

Boundaries Can Trigger Pushback<br>

Get Curious And Start Small<br>

Weekly Challenge Three Wants<br>

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey all you spicy ladies out there. Jules here from the Jules and Michelle Spicy Midlife Women podcast. And I am bringing you episode 47, identifying what you actually want. This is part of the sixth little mini-series that I've been doing while Michelle is on hiatus. And I'm excited to bring this one to you. It's pretty simple, actually. Just a few talking points and things to consider as we are moving through the episode. So I'm gonna take it from here. Okay, if you guys are identifying what you actually want, you can't really build the next chapter if you don't know what that is, right? And it's okay not to know exactly. You just know that you might want something different. So if we're looking at this as an episode as part of this little mini-series, we're kind of taking it in steps where we talked about the wake-up call. We talked about seeing your life a little bit more clearly, prioritizing yourself without guilt. We've talked about communication that is a one of the episodes as well. You know, because you probably haven't asked yourself that question, or you've been asking yourself that question a lot without a lot of answers. So this can be really challenging for a lot of us because when was the last time somebody really asked you what you wanted and you felt comfortable really, really saying what you wanted? Because here's the thing when you spend years and years and a lot of your effort and energy focusing on other people, other wants, other desires, things that are outside of your being, if you will, yourself, your inner voice or the things that are important to you kind of get back burnered. They get a little quiet, you know, because you're figuring I'll deal with that later. So sometimes that is what happens, you know, with raising families, building careers, you know, taking care of significant others, whatever you're doing, we accidentally kind of stop asking ourselves these questions. And midlife is often the time when these questions start to resurface because we're asking, what the hell is out there? What is my next step? What, who do I want to be? You know, because you get you do get kind of lost sometimes. And it's not to say that strong women don't get lost, because we uh we have a lot of strong women out there in our audience and we're strong in that we're taking care of other people and stuff. So we do get lost. And it's okay to say we get lost. That's a vulnerable thing to say, but that's the truth. That's the frickin' truth. It's the facts. For years of this, you get trained to ask things like, okay, what needs to be done next? Not what do I want. So that's what we're gonna get into. So as you've entered this chapter, whatever age you are, we're all at different places in our midlife, but you may be in your late 30s, you might be in your 40s, your 50s, your sixties, we're all entering it at a different time. A small voice inside your inner voice, I guess you could say your inner child, your inner voice starts whispering to you, okay, what do I want? I want more, maybe, I want more fun, I want more intimacy, I want more casual time. I mean, I want more passion. There's a lot of things that our heart wants. We're just not necessarily sure how to get there. So we're not talking about burning down your life in midlife. It's about just kind of turning the lights back on, right? Giving yourself permission to flip the switch and turn the damn lights back on and say, what the hell do I want? So these desires show up in weird ways. Well, not weird, but different ways. Like I'm, for example, experiencing just this major travel bug. I want to travel, travel, travel. And I've been doing that. I've been kind of fulfilling that, and it's been awesome. I've been and doing things that are so out of my comfort zone because I just haven't done them before and now I am. And it's actually very, very liberating. So travel, making career changes. If you have a job that's a J O B, you have to have a job. You have to survive, you have to live, you need to pay your bills, all that kind of stuff. But is it a J-O-B? Because there's a difference, you guys, when you are in a job that you really love and you really enjoy. It's not like work. And we don't all have the benefit of if you're in the corporate grind or you're in the type of lifestyle where you're commuting an hour and a half each way to work or whatever, it's exhausting. And it might be a time to start looking at things a little bit differently. When I went through a divorce, I was doing exactly what I'm talking about. I was doing the hour and a half commute each way to work. I was traveling, I was coming home and I was freaking exhausted. And there was just nothing left. I just felt like there was nothing left. Like I was giving all of my good stuff to the people at work. And I wasn't even doing that that well sometimes because I feel like I had my hands so full. So something had to give. And it really took a lot of courage, I think, to make those changes. And I made a lot of them at once. But I realized, you know what? It's like I am vibrant, I am smart, I am a go-getter, I can do whatever the hell I want. And I quit a major big corporate job and took some time for my daughter, who really needed me at home, and went into real estate, which has been the biggest change and the best change for me. I love it. It totally meets my personality, it meets the lifestyle I want, it gives me the flexibility that I want, and I get to meet cool people and I enjoy it. I love it. It's not like work. And so that's kind of what I'm talking about. Wanting more intimacy. You know, if you were in a relationship where, you know, you weren't having a lot of intimacy, and we're not talking physical necessarily, but even emotional intimacy where those things are void or they just have gone by the wayside. You crave that, you know, you crave that touch, you crave those kinds of conversations, you crave being understood. Those things might be out the door, and those are things you're craving because you haven't had them in the relationships that you have put your time and energy into. The other one might be that you want more creativity. Maybe you want to start painting again. Maybe you were painting before, or you know, you want more creativity with online stuff, learning things, learning a new language. There's just a ton of different places that you could really put your time and energy for yourself that you would really enjoy. And you know what? That's not a bad thing. It's actually a good thing. It's a good thing because it means that your heart is ready to take on more. You're ready to start putting your energy into something that is for you and you only. But I think we also say, oh my gosh, that is unrealistic. My expectations are too high. It's not practical for me to do that. Like if you have a family and you have the travel bug, it's gonna be a little tough for you to manage or maneuver that travel bug without, you know, having to create a lot of plans, right? But that's not to say that you can't do it. And maybe your traveling is more limited and you're very strategic with what you're doing, you know, because of finances or kids to take care of or a spouse that, you know, needs your support or whatever. But the point is that you can do it and you just need to figure out a way to make it happen and not feel like that's a selfish thing to do. Ignoring what you want does not make what you want disappear. But it what it does do is create slowly resentment that you have trickling into your life in different places. And so it's really important to understand that you may be making those sacrifices, you think, for yourself. But in reality, if you're not careful with how you do those things and you don't have the understanding of the people that are around you, you will start to create that little bit of resentment that rolls into your life because you're feeling trapped, you're stuck. And nobody loves that. Nobody likes that, nobody wants to have that happen. So when you start seeing desire, you start feeling that desire, that is your body, your mind's way of telling you that you want something, that you need something, that you are needing to give attention to whatever that is to fulfill yourself. So we talked about this a little bit before, but when you start to shift your desires to things that are more central focused towards you, you'll notice that relationships often start to shift. And some people really have a hard time with this. We talked about this a little bit in one of the other episodes. They don't like it. They don't like it because they're comfortable with the you that you have created, that they have kind of worked their world around. And uh they don't like seeing the change because it affects their world. If you're now showing up with opinions and boundaries and preferences that you haven't shown up with before, it kind of makes people go, huh? You know, they're looking at you going, wow, that's not what I expect, you know, from her. And obviously your delivery is really important with this too. If you're delivering it with emotion and frustration, it's not going to be as well received as you're delivering it in another way where people are more open to hearing what you have to say. Um, but when you start expressing what you really want, um, it does create potentially an inconvenience for other people that are in your life. So just understand that there will be maybe some pushback and that's okay. So if you're not really sure what you want, that's okay. You know, it's something where you might have to put some thought into it. You just know something's different. You know you're ready to make a change. And I think the most important thing is that you just get curious about it. Don't ignore it. You know, it's like we tend to ignore things because it's difficult or because it pushes us into a position where we feel uncomfortable. And you guys have probably heard that saying about how your growth happens when you are the most uncomfortable. Most of your time should be spent in an uncomfortable place because you're learning and you're growing. And nothing changes about that when you are in midlife. As a matter of fact, it's probably when you start introducing yourself or reintroducing yourself to some of those things. It's actually pretty exciting. Sometimes rediscovering yourself could be something super small, you know, like remembering what you liked to do before you had all the responsibilities on a Saturday morning. You know, we were talking the other day, Michelle and I were talking the other day about how we have these little rituals and her Saturday morning ritual. Now that she has, you know, her kids grown, she doesn't have those responsibilities in the morning. She doesn't have sports, she doesn't have all those kinds of things that, you know, her boys were doing before. She likes to sit in bed and have a cup of coffee and scroll on her phone or talk on the phone or whatever. She just likes to sit in bed and have her little cup of coffee. And that is kind of the way she starts her day. So those are things that brought her joy, you know, before she had kids, before she had all those responsibilities, and now she's back to doing it again because she's able to. She's giving herself permission to really enjoy those things. So we have a challenge for you this week. Okay. I want you to try it. I'm gonna do it too. Write down three things you want more of in your life. And these can be really general, obviously high high, high level things, but not what's practical, what you want, you know? If you didn't have to worry about boundaries or about limitations or things like that, what the hell would you want to add to your life? What would give you more joy? What would give you a better sense of balance if you were to add something into your life? The thing too, you want to be careful of is when you're thinking about these things, don't worry about what everybody else wants. Don't worry about what everybody else would think. This is only for you, okay? Just for you, what you would want to add to your life. Would that be more freedom? Would it be more adventure, like we talked about before? Would it be more intimacy? All of these kinds of things don't go by the wayside just because you're in midlife, right? The point here, you guys, is there is really no wrong answer. The only answer is your honest answer for yourself. And this may be something that you think of privately that you don't share with other people, whatever, whatever floats your boat, right? But the point is that you try and that you think about it. And that you hopefully are in a position where you feel strong enough to start making some of these little subtle changes that are gonna bring huge rewards to you. So, with all that in mind, I really appreciate you guys spending time with me today and Harlow, right here. She had to come sit in my lap. These are all just topics that I feel so passionate about, and that I think we are in a place in our lives where we, you know what, you guys, it's like we can do whatever the hell we want. That's the cool part about it. And some of you are just figuring that out. Others have mastered this, and you know what? It's like we're trying to share, share the love a little bit. So we are on all the socials, we are on YouTube. Please like, comment, you subscribe, follow, whatever. You know what I'm saying. And really, I hope you enjoy the time that we've spent together, and we will see you again next week. So stay spicy. Thanks. Bye, guys.