And What Else?
Welcome to 'And What Else?', your source for thoughtful and meaningful conversations about personal and professional growth. Host Wendy O'Beirne is an internationally recognised coach and consultant with a passion for exploring the layers of topics surrounding self-development. Together, we'll dig beneath the surface of subjects, stories, and possible solutions to uncover new perspectives we may not have seen before. With curiosity and open minds, let's embark on an adventure of self-discovery and uncover the possibilities of 'and what else'. Stay Curious!
And What Else?
Purpose, Meaning, Love, and Experiencing Life
Is it possible that we've been misleading ourselves about life's single, straightforward purpose? Join me as I challenge this notion and open a conversation about embracing life's unpredictability and complexity. Reflecting on the film "Wicked," we weave through themes of legacy, love, and personal meaning, asking what truly defines our contributions to the human narrative. Together, we ponder why struggles are often more comfortable to share than triumphs and how that shapes our connections with others.
Curiosity stands as a guiding force in this exploration, prompting us to question traditional perceptions of love and suffering. As we navigate this complex landscape, I suggest that love, far from a source of pain, has the power to dissolve suffering and bring profound joy. Each chapter of this episode encourages embracing curiosity as a core value, one that fuels creativity and shapes our understanding of purpose. As we wrap up the year, I express heartfelt gratitude for your engagement and hint at more thought-provoking journeys ahead. Let's continue learning, unlearning, and finding joy in the unique experiences that define our lives.
If you've enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and subscribe! And if you want to learn more from me, come and say hello on Instagram @thecompletioncoach or via email at wendy@thecompletioncoach.co.uk or find out more about working with me on my website, thecompletioncoach.co.uk.
Welcome to, and what Else, the podcast with me, wendy O'Byrne, also known as the Completion Coach, and this is my final podcast in 2024. And I was going to do a kind of reflection podcast, perhaps on the year, the learnings, the things that had come up, and instead I ended up reflecting on life. I was asking myself, whilst making a cup of tea, what is the point of life? Not from a depressed angle, but from a real curious angle. I was like what is the point? Do I think? What is the point when so many people want to tell us what the point is?
Speaker 1:So many people push the word purpose and if you've been here for any amount of time, you'll know that I'm really, really, really anti-purpose being sold to you as something that you do, and I don't believe your purpose. Here is one thing I just don't. I think life is so complex and humans are so incredible. The way that we change, the way that we interact, the way that we communicate, all of it, the way that we live, the way that we can see each other online, the way that we actually don't communicate, the way we can see some people won't see things, won't look at themselves, the way that some people do, sometimes too much. We are all so complex, so different, so individual, and we are all, it would appear, in one way or another. Complex, so different, so individual, and we are all, it would appear, in one way or another, living just underneath a filter of self-censorship that, in one way or another, looks like we're not. Nobody openly walks around saying I am completely censored, I am hiding, I am pretending. It's this thin disguise, and quite frequently that thin disguise looks like an outward expressed person, looks like the best communicator in the room, looks like the most successful person there is. And I am going a little bit off track, but the point is that we have this wild, confusing, beautiful human experience that we are trying to narrow down to one purpose. We are trying to narrow down, I see, like the blueprint of purpose or the 10 steps to your purpose, all of these things, us, all of these things, and I'm like wow, surely the biggest point of life itself is our curiosity to the things that are going to shift within us.
Speaker 1:At its core, I believe life is about experience, to feel, feel deeply, to connect, to explore the full spectrum of emotions, especially curiosity and confusion, especially curiosity and confusion, because I think they're two of the best places we can go go. Life is messy, it's unpredictable and, quite frankly, doesn't seem to make too much logical sense. And I think the purpose isn't in understanding, it isn't adding logic to it, but it's in living it, bully, fully living it. Think of it as the ultimate immersion program you're ever going to sign up for. And it's not a problem to be solved, it's something to be lived, because if we think about life and we think about growth and I talk about growth a lot, so let me stick with that word a little bit with you here.
Speaker 1:But I don't mean constant striving for improvement, but I mean growth, as in the organic way trees grow. We're here to evolve, to learn, to unlearn, to change, to adapt, and for a lot of us that's healing these generational wounds that we appear to have come back in to handle. It's discovering gifts. You know that might be the gift of poetry, the gift of art, the gift of holding someone's hand. There's so many gifts in the human experience. There are so many gifted people who can do incredible things.
Speaker 1:There are people that are obsessed with different parts of life that I don't want to explore, and yet there are parts of life that I want to explore that wouldn't interest anybody else. And isn't that a gift? That we're not identical? We can't possibly want the same things, even if they look and sound the same. They're so different because of the ways and the wants and the desires underneath everything that makes us want to explore them. But I think one of the greatest, if not the greatest, purpose is learning about love, and I don't mean that in just the stereotypical relationship, but learning about love, how you can really open yourself up to love, how you can really explore when love is present in any situation. It is so different than when you remove it. Let's talk about that a little bit, because we seem to have developed as humans, as people, that form our biggest connections through the removal of love.
Speaker 1:So what I mean by that is if you want to sit there and moan about your partner with friends, then it's really easy to throw loads of things on the pile, isn't it To complain, to moan and for everybody to join in, and it's this bonding experience. But if we were sat there saying all of the wonderful things about them, it tends to be less bonding. It tends to be less bonding. It tends to be less bonding. Sit with that. You know, I was talking to a friend recently who was talking about the relationship she was in and how some friends were waiting for it to end, and I was like, wow, imagine if you turned up tomorrow, though, and, as opposed to telling them all of the things he does wrong, and you just sat and spoke about all of the things he does right and really sold and sung his praises, how would they react? And she was like I would be too uncomfortable to do that. That's not our bond. And it's really interesting, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Because I think I saw something on Instagram I'm gonna put it down to Simon Sinek, because it sounds like him talking about true friendship being the people you can call to share your wins and successes with, rather than the people that you could call in your worst case scenario, because I think, in general, a lot of us could be here for people's worst moments and step in. But what about people's best moments? What about if people were coming to you to say that things were really good and just talking about things that were positive in areas of their life? How much more of a bond does that create? And I'm asking these as questions, not as facts, because we are wired for connection, but at some point I think we have distorted our connections.
Speaker 1:And again, maybe the point is to recognize how interconnected we are with people, with nature, with something greater than us, with our relationships with ourselves, with others, with this something greater, with our beliefs, because relationships to anything hold a mirror up to us and that mirror can either highlight your pain points or it can really help you see what you're capable of. So if you think about that great old quote of the five people you spend the most time with, they're either holding a mirror from prickling you to want to change and grow in areas, or they're holding up a mirror showing you what you could be and how you could expand. And I don't mean what you could be in the sense of what you could achieve. I'm talking about this as what you could be as a whole human, A whole human.
Speaker 1:And even when we hear people wanging on about nature you know I love nature. I'm staring at the most delicious tree right now, but we hear about the leaves drop and we hear about. Then they come back and this is nature and we like nature. But I also want you to think about nature as the feminine, as this force of nature and I want you to think about the destruction of nature. The more we attempt to destruct it by taking too much from it, by overloading it, by not giving a shit about it, the more nature hits us back. Right, nature is creating these huge storms, it can create earthquakes, it can.
Speaker 1:I've just walked past a storm area that got hit last week and just seen the destruction of nature and I just thought, wow, don't mess with you, right? If we push you too far, you will fight back If we don't look after you, look at what might happen, look at this, this big wild destruction. And we are like nature Sometimes we're on self-destruct, sometimes we are not giving ourselves enough and we start to really self-sabotage, really hide ourselves, really cause a lot of chaos in our own lives or in other people's lives. So our relationship and connection with nature is that too, not just the lovely idea of the leaves changing, going inwards, coming back out, blooming and closing, which I also believe in. But there's this other part too, right, nature's quite a force and we really should respect it and we should respect our connection to it. We really should respect it a little more and really look at our relationship of honoring it, because there is something really, really magical about the human ability to create. We can create. Look at everything around you that exists, that we created. Some of it great, some of it you might find horrendous. Much like art. Somebody might love a piece, you might hate a piece.
Speaker 1:There was a whole discussion in a WhatsApp group recently about Wicked, the film that's currently causing a lot of a stir. Some people loved it, some people hated it. Some people loved the character, some people couldn't see it. Some people didn't think anything of it at all. Others were taking meaning, especially me. We can create, and it's art and ideas and relationships, laughter, tears, friendships, space. We can create, and this life could be about leaving the world a little bit different from how you found it. You might call that legacy. What's your unique flavor to add to the collected story?
Speaker 1:Because all of this is about connection. If we're wired for connection and if we can find more connection, then we are more of a collective, and it doesn't always have to be about striving and growing or your contribution. Often it's about who you are. What kind of human were you? How many sunsets did you catch? How many times did you laugh until you cried? How did you feel when the wind caught your face? How did people feel when you were around them? What did you do collectively? Maybe that's the closest we come to touching purpose, rounding out what kind of human we are, history of life itself.
Speaker 1:The fact that we don't know what the point is, maybe that's the point not knowing. What if the human experience is just about the journey of discovery itself, with no final answer, just more questions, embracing the unknown. And stop attaching so much meaning to things that don't require meaning, because maybe life doesn't have one single meaning, one single universal point, one single purpose for you. Maybe you get to decide the meaning of your life, what holds meaning in your life, what story you want within your life about who you are as a human, roundedly, rather than one single pursuit of one objective? What if something you begin evolves into something else, if you allowed it? What if the more love there was in your life for what you have, for who you are, for what you can bring, for what you're willing to try? What if, when the presence of love is there, there is a feeling of far more purpose? What if, when the presence of love is there, there is a feeling of far more purpose.
Speaker 1:And when you remove love, when we remove love from anything, there is suffering in one way or another. And I had another brilliant conversation with somebody and she said but Wendy, love is suffering. Wendy, love is suffering. And I said I think it's interesting because love only becomes suffering when you apply it to a relationship and you remove the love. Because when the love is present, the suffering dissolves. When we remove love, the suffering dissolves. When we remove love, the suffering comes up. So maybe we have distorted at some point that whatever we believe is love, whether that's in friendships, families, relationships, money, work um, what's the word? Hobbies Maybe when there is love present in all of those things that feels like there's purpose to them, that feels like joy and love. And maybe when we remove love for one reason or another, there is suffering. But we have somehow associated the relationship to the word loves and we think love is the suffering. She really has gone on a ramble here and my point is this If you got to give your life meaning, if you got to decide the meaning of your life and it didn't have to be some grand, I did this thing, one singular thing, but this whole collection of moments of meaning, that feel important to you, that light you up, that keep you curious, because when we're curious, we are open and when we know the answer, when we're fixed, when we're closed, we don't have any curiosity.
Speaker 1:Maybe, within the curiosity, life reveals itself to you. Within the curiosity, life reveals itself to you and maybe it reveals it in a way that isn't to figure it out but just keeps you curious, living it With all of its contradictions, all of its complexities, all of its duality. What if it doesn't have to make sense, but it holds meaning to you and that might not make sense to the rest of the world. I mean, the podcast is called what else? Because curiosity.
Speaker 1:I didn't realize until recording this, but curiosity is probably my core value.
Speaker 1:I always thought it was freedom, but I think curiosity gives me freedom and I think curiosity keeps me asking questions and I think curiosity keeps me so creative that I can ramble on.
Speaker 1:For what? 19, 19, 20 minutes? About purpose not being a single thing, but so many things. And meaning and connection and creativity and joy are all different ways of purpose showing itself to you, and I'll just bring back that the more that we have love in anything, the more we tend to feel about the meaning, and when we remove love, we tend to be left with suffering, and so wherever there is suffering right now, that's not working for you. Think about how you could bring more love to the situation. As always, I am cheering you on very loudly. I'm probably also confronting you in equal measure. Thank you for listening, thank you for sticking with me for year two of this podcast who knew, eh? And maybe we'll be back next year with some curiosity. As always, please feel free to message me, wendy at thecompletioncoachcouk, or drop me a DM on Instagram, sending you lots of love and urging you to take a pause before you rush into anything.