Claim Your Agency or Create Helplessness: You Choose

If you're feeling like change is impossible, you may be falling into a sneaky self-undermining habit. Instead of imagining your worst beliefs are true, take a listen to this empowering episode. 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to Sex Help for Smart People. I'm Dr. Laura Jurgens. I'm here to help you have better sex, intimacy and relationships. So let's get at it. Hey everyone. Welcome to episode 68. I am really glad you're here with me today. It is spring. It is chirpy outside. I hope you are enjoying it if you're in the Northern Hemisphere anyway.

[00:00:25] If you're in the Southern hemisphere, it's probably autumn, and I hope you're enjoying that too. So today we are going to talk about claiming your agency, your power in your life, versus assuming or pretending that you are helpless and. I really wanna emphasize how important it is to make this choice intentionally about pretty much everything.

[00:00:54] So a lot of us spend huge amounts of time and energy trying to control things we just can't control, especially other people, for example. While meanwhile, we are actually avoiding taking control of things that we can control. Things like our own experience, how we show up for ourselves and others, and the decisions we can make in this life.

[00:01:25] When we do that, when we avoid taking our own power around things we can control failing. To recognize or even claiming our own agency in our lives, when we fail to claim it, we needlessly feel helpless, stuck, and overwhelmed. And the thing is, we do actually have the power to determine a lot of our own experience.

[00:01:48] Not necessarily circumstances in all cases, but we can really change how we treat ourselves, how we treat others. And we can often change a lot of the results in our life, but it happens so much. With our relationship with ourself, our self image, our relationship with others, relating to our partners or dating or sex that we just fail to recognize or claim our own agency.

[00:02:18] And I think actually, well, more than half of my work is helping people see the power they have in their own lives to actually create the life that they want and to feel about themselves how they want to feel. And to live in integrity with their own values and their own desires, their true desires. And here's the truth that I learned myself when I discovered getting coached, making massive changes in my own life.

[00:02:46] I made so many changes through getting coached. I cannot, I mean, let's see which ones. I'll list just a few of them for you. So. I stopped taking antidepressants and decided I was never gonna be depressed again. I know that sounds impossible, but the way that I treat myself now, I don't have the internalized anger.

[00:03:09] I'm not internalizing all those anger on myself in a way that leads to depression. So I also stopped drinking. I have made. Giant strides in my fitness and overall health. I have gotten a really prestigious job and then actually left it because I didn't like it and decided it wasn't in alignment with my own values, and I created a business that helps people.

[00:03:41] Instead, I moved to a place I really wanted to live instead of living in a place that I didn't wanna live for. Former prestigious job. I have created friendships intentionally. I have done so many things. I've created a lot more financial security for myself than I had before. All these massive changes in my own life are because I believed that they were possible and I had to learn how to believe that they were possible.

[00:04:12] It wasn't like just innate, and that is really the foundation of having a great life. In my learned experience, knowing that the past is actually not a good predictor of the future unless you let it be. And knowing that we are not helpless to change our lives, and in fact, accepting that we are responsible for our own outcomes is incredibly powerful.

[00:04:41] This is very different from blame. I do not encourage self blame. It is not helpful. What I do encourage is taking responsibility and agency, so if you decide that you'll never get what you want, then you won't case closed. It's like you've only ever worked at Wendy's since you were 15, and you have decided it's all you can ever do because look, here's all this proof that it's all you've ever done.

[00:05:08] As they say in the Midwest. Well, that's it then. Wendy's for life. The same process applies to finding a great lover or a great relationship or creating the marriage that you want or creating the sex life that you want just because it hasn't unquote happened yet, as if it happens to you and you have nothing to do with it.

[00:05:33] You like a lot of us imagine, then therefore, it's not possible. Yeah, and that is just sad. It is a bunch of self-limiting beliefs, right? Another version of self-limiting belief besides just imagining it's completely impossible because it hasn't happened yet. I mean, if that was the case, nothing new would ever happen, ever.

[00:06:02] If that was the case, you know, you would never get a job because you'd never gotten a job before. Right. You would never like learn to walk because you've never walked before. So those are actually lies that your brain is telling you. It's the eyes of, it's not possible because it's never happened before.

[00:06:23] That is a lie. It's much more true to realize that new things are absolutely possible if you reach for them and you commit to doing them. But another version of self-limiting beliefs, I see a lot. Is to believe that the power is outside you because Wendy's hasn't promoted you to a manager yet. You'll never be anything but a line cook because your lover hasn't ever made you feel truly turned on.

[00:06:49] You'll never feel really truly turned on with them because your partner doesn't listen well. When you're mad at them, you can't ever really feel truly connected. None of those things are true and they all externalize all the power. It's the partner, it's the lover. It's like the, you know, boss at Wendy's.

[00:07:11] These are all different types of self-limiting beliefs, and it's basically, you know, you're batting on the team of your limitations. You're working for your limitations when you're believing that shit, and it's really easy to use this stuff against ourselves in relationships, in dating, in self-image, in sex.

[00:07:31] I see it all the time. People just believing what they've always thought about themselves, what they've always thought about their situation, that that's all there is for them. And it makes me so sad, and I also just call bullshit. It is not at all true unless you make it true by believing it so. Look, it can be really hard to do anything different but double down on our own self-limiting beliefs.

[00:07:58] I know for sure I've done this in the past myself, especially when we can't discern what is or isn't in our control, and that often happens when we're just too close to the issue. We just can't see it. This is why the best coaches in the world all get coached ourselves. We need help just like everybody else seeing stuff that we are just too close to.

[00:08:21] Sometimes we all need help as humans to determine what we do and do not have control over sometimes because we are just too close to it. We can't see our agency now. I've learned a lot through getting coached, coaching myself constantly and coaching others about how to do this for myself in about 85% of I'm gonna give myself, yeah, like 85% of life.

[00:08:49] So. That's great. I can also recognize when I need help with the other 15%, sometimes not right away. Sometimes it takes me some angst and some like really hard negative feelings and feeling kind of stuck in them before I'm like, ah, I'm stuck in this for too long. Let's get some help. But I need help sometimes because I just can't see my way out.

[00:09:10] But getting to that 85% of being able to tell what I have control over and what I don't, took me quite a lot of practice. And I still practice it literally every day in my own life. And now I'm super good at it, and I'm really good at helping others at it, especially because I have that different outside perspective on their challenges.

[00:09:31] It also really helps that I, of course, a hundred percent believe in my client's capacity. I just believe in them. Absolutely. And I also believe. A hundred percent on being on the side of their highest self with like deep compassion for the struggle. And that is what I look for in my own coaches too, by the way, because we sometimes need to borrow belief from somebody else when we can't believe it ourselves.

[00:09:59] If you are having a hard time believing you are attractive or worthy, or. Capable of doing something new in relationships, dating your sex life. It can be really helpful to borrow belief from someone else until you have it yourself, but you still have to have at least a little bit of belief yourself that it's possible for you.

[00:10:21] Because otherwise you won't ever take action, and that's what happens. So one thing that I have found helps is examples. Examples always help. So here are some things that you do not have control over and some things that you do have control over, where taking more agency for yourself is going to radically change your experience.

[00:10:40] So for example, number one, you have no control over someone saying that they don't wanna have sex with you. Okay? You do have control over whether you make it mean something bad about you or not. So for example, if you tell yourself, well, I'm awesome and desirable, whether this particular person wants to have sex with me now or not, and besides, you know, their desires are based on whatever floats their particular boat and don't have anything to do with me.

[00:11:09] Well, if you tell yourself that, you'll probably feel pretty fine about it and you'll move on. But if you tell yourself instead that you are ugly and no one wants you, you will feel fucking awful. Right? So no control over someone saying they don't wanna have sex with you. Total control over whether you feel personally rejected or not.

[00:11:30] Ano another example. You have no control over what your face looks like. I promise you. I, well, I mean, I guess if you've got massive plastic surgery, some people will try to do that, and it does seem like a slippery slope, but you don't have very much control. You have no control over what face you were born with.

[00:11:50] Let's agree with that. You do have control over whether you choose to love it and feel good about it. Even if you have to learn that or whether you talk shit to yourself about your face and make yourself feel awful about it. And this goes for every single body part. No control over some of it. A lot of control over how you talk to yourself about it and therefore how you feel about it.

[00:12:15] Another example, you have no control over how much work your boss gives you. They're just gonna do what they do, right? Lots you could, there's a couple things you could try, but most of the time we don't have control over that. What you do have control over is whether to absolutely kill yourself, trying to do the job of 12 people and have no energy to care for yourself and connect with other people who love you.

[00:12:38] You do have control over how much you say yes to and how much you say no to. How you prioritize whether you decide to go get a different job, which you don't necessarily have to do. Yeah, you could also severely prioritize, right? And have more energy to care for yourself, more energy for your sex life and your partner, whatever.

[00:12:57] That's just an example. I have a lot of folks who I work with a lot on burnout and work-life balance because it really affects our relationships. Number four, example. You have no control over the messages that got put in your head about your sexuality and sex in general. You do have control for whether you keep believing them or whether you get help to unlearn that stuff.

[00:13:26] If you have gotten shaming messages, you have no control over that. Those are in your head, but you do have control over whether you choose to believe them or you choose to work on stopping believing them. So what I, the invitation I wanna give you is the. That you know, the more agency you claim in your life, the more you actually decide to be responsible for your own experience.

[00:13:54] I promise that you will feel better because it's so much better when your own experience is in your control. So I wanna invite you to take a look, a really deep, hard look at where you might be believing that the changes you really want in your life are not possible. I. Really consider for your sex life, for your dating life, if you're dating or your relationship, if you're in relationships, and also your own self image, how you treat yourself considering each of those areas where you are telling yourself that change isn't possible, even though you really, really want it.

[00:14:34] And I want you to write them out. And then for each thing on the list, just challenge yourself to imagine. Just imagine. What if you're wrong? What if change were absolutely possible here? Just see if you're willing to even imagine that it could be different. Alright, my friends, that is it. I totally invite you to do this exercise.

[00:14:59] Not kidding. Around here. It will actually be. Likely quite eye-opening for you. It always is for me when I do it and I do this not irregularly like pretty regularly because it can be hard to notice our self-limiting beliefs. We kind of think they're just like the weather. We kind of just think they're facts, but they're not.

[00:15:21] So question yourself, take some more power in your life, take some more agency and. I hope you have a great week. I'll see you here next time. Hey, if you're curious about how you could have better sex and connections, go grab my free guide. Find Your Secret Turnons. It's right on my website, www.laurajurgens.com, and the link is in the show notes.

[00:15:43] I'll see you here next time.