How to know when it's time to stop learning and start doing

Ever notice how sometimes the answer isn't more information — it's actually doing something with what you already know?

Like when your car is broken, you don't actually need more information from the mechanic after a certain point. You need someone to get under the hood and DO the work. 

I recorded this episode because I kept seeing the same pattern: people who've been reading books, listening to podcasts, and taking courses about their desire gap for years — but nothing in their relationship has actually changed.

If that's you (or someone you love), this episode might be the permission slip you need.

I walk through how to tell the difference between productive learning and learning as avoidance — when gathering more information becomes a way to delay the discomfort of actually trying something new. And I help you figure out which one you're in right now.

You'll learn:

• The one question that reveals whether you need more information or you need to take action
• How to know when "I just need to understand it better first" is actually fear talking
• Practical guidance to make the switch from default-thinking (aka fear and avoidance brain) to "I can take action" 

Here's the truth I wish someone had told me earlier in my own journey: You don't need to wait until "the right time." There is never a perfect time. You don't need to "feel ready." (We never feel ready). But there's a point at which we all need to decide we are worth it and take action, not just keep learning. 

If this resonates, send it to someone who's been stuck in the same loop. Sometimes we all need someone to lovingly say: you're ready, even if it doesn't feel like it.

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Enroll by March 4th and receive 4 curated lesser-known books for desire discrepancy situations— the ones that actually move the needle.

Book a free consultation: https://laurajurgens.com/bridge

Get my free guide: 5 Steps to Start Solving Desire Differences
(Without Blame or Shame), A Practical Starting Point for Individuals and Couples, at https://laurajurgens.com/libido

Find out more about my offerings and read the blog: https://laurajurgens.com/

Transcript

0:01  
Welcome to the desire gap podcast. I'm your host, Dr Laura Jurgens, and whether you want more sex than your partner or less, you are not wrong, and your relationship isn't doomed. You just need better tools to solve the struggles of mismatched libidos. That's what we do here. So welcome and let's dive in. Hello everyone. Welcome to Episode 110 what we're talking about today is how to know when it's time to stop learning and start doing. And I want to talk about this because I see it all the time, and it's something I've absolutely done myself. You read another book, you listen to another podcast episode, you take another online course, maybe from someone famous, you go to another therapy session, and it feels productive, because you are learning, you are gaining insight, and you understand your desire challenges in your relationship or in yourself better than ever, and maybe you even understand your own attachment style, awesome, great. But has anything actually changed? And it's really important that we ask this question and look at it head on, because otherwise we can stay in this place, this like perpetual learning place, for so long that we start imagining that everything we're doing should be creating Change, and because we don't see that change. We think that nothing, quote, unquote works, and that's incredibly disempowering and demoralizing, and I do not want that for you. So I want to check in on some of the Mindset Mistakes and the sort of default brain thinking that can really get us stuck in this situation so that you don't wind up disempowered. Because if you've been learning about your desire gap for months or years and you unders, you can understand it really well, but the gap is still there, and it's still painful and it's still causing strife, and your relationship does not feel nourishing and like a refuge amid the stress of the world and your life, it feels like another stressor. And when that hasn't changed, that is a real important problem to solve. You need change, not just understanding. So I want to help you figure out today if you might be stuck in this perpetual learning mode and what to do about it. So why do we get stuck in that? Let's talk about that because it's not laziness or procrastination or not caring enough. Learning actually feels like progress, and our brain thinks that it is progress in one way, and it is progress in one way, progress towards understanding and you're understanding the problem better. That's what learning does. It helps us understand, but understanding the problem and solving the problem are two totally different things, right? So when your car isn't running, talking to the mechanic about why it isn't running and learning why it isn't running is very different from actually getting the work done that is required to get the car running. We know this instinctively when it comes to other things, but sometimes, when it comes to relationship dynamics or capacity, skills, things you know, we think that knowing somehow is going to translate into doing. And it's funny, because this is really universal with humans, we tend to default think that learning about something will translate into doing. But there's so many ways that we know this isn't the case, right? You know that you can't learn how to swim from a book on swimming. You know that you can't build a bridge from reading a book on building a bridge or listening to a podcast. And look, I love doing this podcast for you, but I really want to help you understand the difference between what this is, which is limited to the learning mode, and what doing is. So why do we stay stuck in learning? Learning feels safer than doing so that's number one. When you're learning, we don't have to risk failure, we don't have to feel vulnerable. We don't have to try something new that feels out of our comfort zone or that we're not sure might maybe it might be out of our comfort zone. We don't have to confront trying something new and then discovering that it might not. Work. Now, if we just stay in that place, then we will never try the new thing that actually does work. So it's really important to be onto your brain about this, because your brain will try to keep you safe by saying, Don't be vulnerable. That's a brain job. That's brains. That's how brains are wired. That doesn't mean it's true or useful, right? That's default evolutionary thinking is, hey, I'm just going to stay in the cave until I actually am starving enough to try to go out and do something vulnerable. And maybe I won't, maybe I won't catch anything today, but you got to go out and try, right, if you want to eat. And so while learning feels safer than doing, it's not safer than doing in actuality. Okay, number two, learning feels productive. You're doing something, you're taking, quote, unquote action, except you're not actually taking the kind of action that creates change, and I have been there. This is universal. It is really, really common, and it is one of the common threads of all coaching. So back when I was a general life coach and a burnout coach for women in science and a leadership coach, I've been all kinds of coaches before, I wound up doing this intimacy and sexuality certifications and really taking a deep dive into learning all of that. I see this in all kinds of this is common to every sort of goal that we can get really stuck in the idea that learning about it, learning about how to start a business, right, rather than actually starting the business, all of this learning feels productive. It feels necessary, but at some point, we need to actually start taking action that creates change and not stay stuck in learning, because it's kind of a trap after a while.

6:59  
All right. Number three, learning gives you hope without requiring commitment. So another way of thinking about how learning goes into our default brain and wants us to stay safe, we kind of convince ourselves that maybe this next book will be the one thing, maybe this podcast episode will finally make it click and I will magically change, right? Or if my partner would just listen to this podcast episode or read this book, or, you know, take this class with me, I will magically, we will magically, it will click and it will change. And when you are doing learning type activities, you get these little hints, hits of hope, because you get those insights, and the insights are like, Aha, there's a little dopamine hit, yay. But I haven't actually committed to real transformation. So you acquire these little bits of hope and then string yourself along with it, convincing yourself that it's going to make change. And I want to remind you that even though this is really common with a lot of aspects of how our brain approaches real change and transformation about us, it's really different than how we look at practical realities, right? Just like that car analogy, we know that the car isn't going to start running unless we actually invest in the mechanic doing the work, right? We do know that when it comes to nitty gritty realities, and I just want to say, hey, humans are the same. We are at some point going to have to get in there under the hood and really help instead of just trying to think your way through it, you cannot understand desire intellectually and have it actually change anything. We have to embody our transformation. We have to work directly with your nervous system and your attachment history and your specific relational dynamics, and actually do practices that loosen all that stuff up and make it feel easier and lighter, and work at the growing edge of where you're learning not put you way past your comfort zone, but you will be right at the edge of it, including even that step of talking to somebody else about it right, reaching out and booking a consultation with me is often the hardest step for most people in The whole process of actually addressing their desire gap. Once they actually get on the call and meet me in person, they start feeling relief. Once they actually start having sessions, it's just like a whole weight has lifted, because the decision has lifted, right that commitment so when learning is giving you hope, but not requiring. During a commitment, we can often take that as if it's a good thing, as if it's comforting. Oh, I don't have to make a commitment, but what you're doing is you're not making the commitment to the thing that you want. So you won't get the thing that you want right. Just like if you don't make the commitment to get that car fixed, you're not going to have a running car, so the lack of requiring a commitment can feel like it is a bonus, but it's actually undermining our success. All right. Number four, learning lets you avoid the scary truth, which is that solving a desire gap is going to require you to actually do different things. What you are doing right now is not working, so that's the hard truth, right? We actually have to do different things. We have to practice different ways of being. We have to give ourselves permission to be and do different, and we need to practice in ways that might feel outside, slightly outside of our comfort zone right, to be just a little bit manageably Uncomfortable. That does not mean having obligation sex. I will just put that out there for all of you who tend to want to do that. That does not mean that, but manageable practices that actually support your nervous system, safety, that support healing attachment wounds, that support you feeling full permission to be who you are and to actually discover what pleasure potential your body actually has to nourish you in this life and to help you feel alive and wonderful. And you need help for that, because when you are in it, when you are in the thick of the pain of a desire gap, you can't see what you need. It's just like trying to see outside the fishbowl. When you're in the fish bowl, everything is distorted, and all you can see is what you're swimming in.

12:08  
And I know this pattern intimately because I lived it, and I've lived it in a lot of different ways, because I've actually been coached on a lot of different things in my life. And I want to tell you about my own personal experience with perpetual learning mode, because I want you to see that there is a way out of it and how it will benefit you, and that you're not alone or wrong for being in it, but it is time to get on top of your default thinking and really challenge yourself to shift your mindset if you want to make real change. So I'm going to tell you about my experience, because so I experienced a lot of child abuse and sexual trauma in early in my life. I spent years, literally years, learning about trauma and abuse and how that impacts people. Right? I read every book, I listened to podcasts, many, many hours of podcasts, probably 1000s of hours of podcasts, our podcast, great. I also took courses. I understood attachment theory. I understood how trauma affects the nervous system. I understood that it was held in the body, and I understood which was such a revelation that was one of those learning moments that was moments that was like, Oh my gosh, this is going to change everything. Did it? It didn't change everything. It was helpful, and it was necessary step along the way. And all this learning did give me something really important, which is validation. It helped me understand that my responses made sense, that I wasn't broken and that what had happened to me had real impacts on me that were understandable and didn't make weren't my fault, right? And that's part of what I really want to do here in this podcast. For you, I really do want to validate you, whether you're the higher libido partner who is feeling rejected and like at a loss, and like you don't know what to do, and like you don't have any power to change the situation, because you think it's all your partner, and I promise you, it's not, and you do have power to change the situation, but I see you, and I see that struggle. And if you're the lower libido partner, and you're feeling pressured and broken and avoidant and just like, you don't know how to feel like comfortable in your relationship and how to feel really, truly supported and you're exhausted, I also see you and your responses, both of you, your responses make sense. There is nothing broken about you, and I do want to offer you that, but here's what I want to tell you as well. All the learning I did, it helped validate me, understanding that I wasn't at fault, and my responses made sense. I understood that intellectually, but it didn't solve the problems of the trauma that I held in the body, and it didn't help my body. Feel safe. Intellectual understanding does not automatically translate into embodied change. It doesn't there is not a automatic path from your brain you can know something for your entire life and never be able to actually do it. And so while I learned that, and it was a big shift for me, and it was really important for me to learn it, what actually was more important, right than all of that, was that my body was still holding that trauma. I was still braced and shut down and reacting reflexively. I was still jumping five feet in the air at a at like a sound, you know, I was waking up at 3am with flashbacks. I was having entire days where I felt catatonic. I was drinking a lot of wine to try to manage my fears and anxieties. All the understanding in the world about trauma being held in the body didn't change that it was held in my body. And this is why somatic work exists. This is why body based practices matter. Because some things, in fact, a lot of things, cannot be solved through thinking or understanding, they have to be solved through the body, through doing. And I kept thinking the next, next piece of information would be the thing that, like finally helped crack it open for me, right? But what I was doing was I was avoiding the hard truth that I needed help. I needed personalized, expert, body based somatic support. And part of why I avoided that was because I didn't believe and I didn't know this. I didn't totally know I didn't believe that I was worth investing in, but I didn't believe I was worth investing in. I did not the end of the day, that's what it boiled down to. I didn't want to spend the money, and when I finally asked myself, Why do I not want to spend the money when this is literally, like the heaviest burden in my life, why do I not want to spend the money to help me get the help I need to get rid of this burden, when I finally asked myself that question, because, to be honest, I had avoided it. I was just like, I was just like, I just don't want to spend the money, or I don't have the money, or I was telling myself that kind of stuff. Meanwhile, I was spending on wine, right? And if I added up everything I spent on wine over a couple years, I would certainly have had enough money for coaching, let alone all the other distractions and the like, stupid shit I didn't need, right? But at the end of the day, when I finally asked myself, when I had a I was listening to a podcast with a coach who said, Why do you not invest in yourself? And I had to actually ask myself, and what I realized was I didn't believe that I was worth it. I didn't believe that my own healing mattered enough to invest real money in it, and that belief that I wasn't worth my own money, whereas all the crap that I'm advertised about was somehow worth it, I was being sold this idea that if I just bought enough of those distractions out there, I would feel better, and I didn't, over and over, and I had tons of evidence that it didn't make me feel better, but I and I was telling myself I didn't know what to do, and then I didn't have the money. But it wasn't actually that I couldn't figure it out. I could figure it out financially, and it was a challenge, but I I did it, you know, I put it on a credit card and paid it off my first coaching because the act of actually noticing that I had that belief that I wasn't worth it, and changing that intentionally and saying, fuck that noise. I am worth it, and my happiness and my joy is worth it. That was part of the solution. That was that belief that I wasn't worth it was a big part of the problem. And the act of investing in myself, of saying I deserve real help, my healing matters, I am worth this was actually a really fundamental step and part of the solution, because when I finally made the investment, when I said yes to myself, I committed to getting real, personalized somatic support, everything shifted. And I, you know, I flew across the country and worked with a somatic practitioner on an intensive for a week that cost me, I don't know, six, $6,000 straight to that person, plus Airbnb, plus flight, all that stuff, right? So probably you're talking eight, 9k,

19:53  
it changed my entire life. I actually have a new birthday that I have that I gave myself. Myself because of how deep and profound the impact was, and that was a week long intensive, right? That was what I needed in my body. But it was the big shift happened the moment I decided that I was worth it, immediately, and it was amazing. I really didn't expect it. And I see it all the time in my clients, when they finally decide, hey, I'm in, I'm in, we're doing this, they get this profound joy, this, like relaxed, their whole body kind of melts a little bit. And they get this sense of, oh my god, I'm finally taking action on my own behalf, and I'm taking my own needs seriously. So that was the moment that guarantee that's the moment that guarantees success is when you decide that you are ready to move from thinking about healing to actually doing something about it, and that you are ready to make it happen for you. And I see this with people all the time, the ones who keep dithering, who keep putting it off, who keep saying I just can't right now, maybe later, I need to think about it more, right? And there's a part, there's a time when that is appropriate, and you need to be there, and that's okay. I needed all that time to get ready, and you may too. That's 100% valid, and I would never want to rush anybody. But there is a point when you've got to stop learning and start doing, and the second that they shift to actually doing the program, to actually getting in there with real help, somebody who can see what you need, somebody can give you the practices that you need, the exercises that you need to actually embody the change we got to get under the hood of that car. There is this huge shift when they just say, Yes, I'm open to that, let's do this. And they just become open to actual transformation, to real change. And that is empowerment. They have stepped into doing by choosing to do. They haven't solved the whole problem yet, but by deciding that they are worth solving it for that decision actually starts the whole transformation right there. It enables all of it to work. And so I want to offer you, let's think about the mindset shift that has to happen to move from learning mode to transformation. Because when you are actually wanting change, at some point, you will need to make this mindset shift. So some of the beliefs that keep us stuck are like, if I just learn about this more, it will change. And I need to be really honest with you that that belief is absolutely not true. It's just bullshit. Learning about something more does not change it. Learning more will not change your nervous system patterns. And look, I still want to be here every week with this podcast helping people learn. I do think learning is valuable, but it is not going to shift your somatic responses in your body. It is not going to help you find your libido. It is not going to help you shift your attachment pattern so that you are not putting pressure on your partner in a way that is shooting you in the foot. Information does not equal transformation. So let's look at beliefs that actually do move you forward. How do we want to shift that? So here's some thoughts that my clients used and that I used myself to help me make this shift. And these are beliefs that are of people who are actually solving their problems, not just thinking about them, okay? And I want to offer them to you to borrow. Please borrow them until you have them for yourself. You can put this on like a coat and wear it around in your life until it becomes yours. So here's one, it's okay to need help. And this seems really simple and almost like pedantic, but it's really profound, because most of us have been taught that needing help is something like some kind of weakness, that we should be able to, quote, unquote, figure it out ourselves. But I just want to, you know, let's think about this. You don't do your own dental work. You don't represent yourself in court if you want to win, you don't perform surgery on yourself. Needing expert help for complex problems is normal. It is not a personal failure. It is smart, so it's okay and smart to need help, right? Try that on, put it on like a coat. Even say it to yourself right now, it is smart to need help. It is okay to need help. Practice that one, try it, keep it, keep it on, keep the coat on, all right. Number two, I deserve to invest in the right support, not and look, this doesn't have to mean me. I. It doesn't have to mean right now, but I want you not be thinking that the old thought that's not helping is I might deserve it if I'm good enough, or maybe someday when I win the lottery. Right fuck that noise right now, as you are, you deserve to invest in real support. You deserve to invest in an expert who can actually help you if you are brought up, you know, heaven forbid, you are brought up on some sort of spurious charge, or somebody like puts a lawsuit against you. You deserve to invest in good legal aid. If you have a gallstone, you deserve to invest in a good surgeon who can get that out right as you are right now, you deserve real support on this issue that is really eroding your happiness. You deserve to be a financial priority in your own life, and it is a worthy investment to invest in yourself and your own capacity, nothing else will ever have the same return on investment. It is literally exponential when you invest in your own capacity, it doesn't expire. It doesn't degrade. When you learn what you really, truly need in order to feel alive, safe and connected in your relationship, it will ripple out to everything. You will feel confident. You will feel like your relationship is a refuge. That is what happens with my clients and why, what keeps me going in this work, when the world is going crazy, is that I see people blossom with themselves and with each other, and that enriches everyone who encounters you. Okay, so that thought is, I deserve to invest in the right support. Okay, try it on. See how it feels. It might feel a little uncomfortable at first. You're not used to this. It's different, right? Walk around in it until it's yours. This is what keeps this is the difference between what people who stay stuck and people who don't stay stuck. Okay, next one, the past, doesn't determine my future unless I keep thinking the same thoughts. And here's something really powerful I learned from the first coach I ever hired. She likes to say, what happened yesterday is equally as over as ancient Rome.

27:31  
Your past only impacts you insofar as you think thoughts about it now and believe those thoughts, if you keep thinking, I've always been this way. Nothing will change. Then, yes, nothing will change. Can you imagine if babies like you weren't born like that, you've practiced this, the self defeating thoughts, the thoughts that, oh, my past was like this, so it predicts my future. Can you imagine if babies did that, they would never learn to walk. Every time they fall down when they're trying to learn how to walk, they'd be like up. Okay, well, I've never walked before, so I'm not gonna start walking now. Nothing's gonna change. Never gonna happen. Never walked. Never gonna walk. Yep, we'd all be crawling around, crawling around. I can tell you it'd be really hard to use a wheelbarrow in my garden, but you can choose different thoughts. You can choose thoughts when you practice them enough times, that is when they become beliefs. That's all a belief is. It's just a thought you've practiced a lot of time. So you need to stop practicing self undermining, disempowering thoughts, and start really seriously doubling down on challenging those default brain things that are undermining you, and you get to create a different future. So this thought to try on, the past doesn't determine my future unless I keep thinking the same thoughts, but I could think new thoughts and I can create a new future. Okay, try that one on, see how it feels. My guess is it feels just a little more empowering than your default. It certainly did for me. And I had to learn this stuff from the ground up, too, exactly the way you're learning it right now. But then what I did was I practiced it like it was my job, like religiously, like a mantra. I practice these things until I truly and utterly believed them, and then I was able to really make change. And people constantly ask me, How have you done all this stuff? You were a homeless kid who lived on the street, who didn't, you know, who hopped freight trains and who had all kinds like survived sexual trauma, child abuse, all kinds of things. Wound up putting yourself through college, got a PhD, wound up leaving academia because it didn't feel like a good fit for you, and creating a business that helps people like people ask me, how did you do this? And I mean, yeah, I am proud of it. It's okay. I'm allowed to be proud of it, and I'm glad to be proud of it now, because I spent. Many years not being proud of anything about myself, and it's this, I literally practiced new ways of thinking. Instead of thinking I was worthless and stupid and would never get anything and nobody would ever love me, I decided that those thoughts were not helping me, and that they were just undermining me and sapping the joy out of my life, and I was not going to believe them anymore. So this is literally what I did, what I'm teaching you right now. Try on new thoughts from people who are a step ahead of you. That doesn't mean we're better, right? We've just figured something out that you haven't tried yet, and it works so, and I'm not saying bullshit affirmations. Don't do that. If you can't believe it at all, then you're going to need a bridge thought. And if we're coaching and this is happening, I will always help you find it. But basically, you need something that's like a little bit less hard for you to believe. You need something you can actually believe. But all these should be somewhat believable, right? Because, really, the past doesn't determine your future, unless you keep thinking it does. Okay, so next one, I only have two more, my brain will always object to change, and that doesn't mean that change is wrong. This is really huge. This is really important. You have to start getting onto your brain and stop believing everything that you think, because most of it you didn't even choose on purpose. Most of those thoughts are like default thoughts from society, from advertisers, from your, you know, fifth grade teacher, from the bully at school, from your, you know, I don't know, like the your pastor when you were seven, or whatever, your mom, your dad, you don't have to believe everything that they believe, and you don't have to if, because if you do, you will wind up letting those people run your life. So just get on to yourself about noticing that everything, like your thoughts are going to create a lot of feelings for you. Whatever you're thinking is going to create how you feel, and that's going to affect how you act. So just know, brains default to objecting to change. That doesn't mean change is wrong, right? Let's laugh at our brain a little bit together, because, oh my gosh, silly brain. If we never opened ourselves up to change, how sad would that be? But our brains almost always gonna object to it. Our brains are designed to keep us safe, not to help us grow, so that's just like default mammalian evolution, okay, which is not so helpful in modern life in some ways. You know, there are some aspects of it that are still helpful. But we, when we want a change, it's useful to know that your brain will object to it, even though you really, really want it. Of course, it's going to inject to something new and to it scary just because it's different. But objections don't by your brain. Don't mean you're making the wrong choice. They just mean that you are considering a real change. So of course, your brain is going to have those objections. You can just kind of like, pat it, give it a little kiss and tell it to go sit quietly, and thank you for your input, but we're doing this anyway. All right, investing, this is the last one. Investing in myself is part of the solution, not just something I do to get to the solution. And I don't think this one require like I just want to offer this one. I wouldn't say if you're going to double down on practicing some of these thoughts you need to really focus on, that it's okay and even smart to need help, and that you deserve to invest in the right support, and that it's okay to be a little scared of change and that the past doesn't determine your future, right? But this one I just want to offer in closing here this idea for you to just noodle on, that when you decide you're worth investing in, when you decide your healing or your happiness or your relationship matters enough to commit real resources to it, that decision itself is transformative. It's not just a transaction, it's an identity. Shift. You become someone who takes herself seriously, or himself or themselves. When you become someone who takes themselves seriously, someone who believes they're worth it, someone who takes action on their own behalf, that is the moment that your transformation becomes inevitable, and it's because you've stopped waiting for, like, some sort of, you know, certified letter from the universe or something, or certainty, that it's like the perfect moment. You've decided this is my moment. I'm going to do it, and I'm tired of waiting. And, you know, spoiler alert, you're. Ever going to get that letter. There is no sign from the universe that comes down and like, you know, hits you with a lightning bolt. Angels from above come start like blowing their horns and telling you now's the time right. Like you have to decide. And in fact, you deciding creates that. You deciding to stop waiting for permission or certainty or the perfect moment, creates that kind of inner sense of knowing that you've made the right decision, and it is really empowering and beautiful. So I want that for you. So just consider that investing in yourself is actually the first step of the solution, and part of the solution not just something you do to get a solution later. Okay, all right, what to do if you are just stuck. You've identified that you are stuck in learning mode, and I want you to consider how to get out of it. When you are like, are you ready to get out of it? Are you ready to get out of the stuck? Right? You might not feel ready. That's okay. That's your brain telling you, oh no, change. That's fine. Not feeling ready is not a reason to not do it. So number one, get honest about the beliefs that's keeping you stuck. Is it I should be able to figure this out for myself? Are you thinking, I can't afford help, while you're like, buying books and courses and other things that don't work and a bunch of distractions like or like, you know, fancy vacation to try to reconnect or close to numb you out to reality or whatever, is it? What if I invest and it doesn't work? Is it, I'm not worth it? Name, the belief that you are carrying around because you can't change what you can't see. And I really invite you to write it down so that it's outside of you, so that you're actually seeing the belief as like an object you're carrying around, instead of over identifying with it as if it's like God's own truth. Okay? So second, borrow a new belief. You don't have to fully believe it yet. Don't make it like a total bullshit affirmation that you can't. You know, if you're trying to go from like, I'm horribly ugly and disgusting to like, I'm the world's most beautiful unicorn, that shit never works,

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you will run up against your internal resistance and it will double down on your prior belief. That's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about are gentle shifts that you can try on, and then what you need to do is you need to practice the shit out of it. So borrowing the new belief something like when you've written down what yours is, right, look for something that is going to be more helpful for you. It's okay to need help. I deserve to invest in the right support. My healing matters. I'm worth it. When you find that, keep practicing it. That's how we change old beliefs. We practice new ones 50 times a day, minimum, because your brain has practiced the old one millions of times. You're going to need to build a new neural pathway, and you're going to need to strengthen it, because first, it's going to be like a little deer trail in the woods, compared to a super highway of your old belief. So you got to go down that path a lot more, and then those neurons start firing together, and you start having a new belief. So you might need to say, I am worth it 100 times a day till you actually believe it. Put reminders in your phone, put sticky notes all over all over. This is what I did, literally. I'm not kidding. This is what you do. I'm not exaggerating. Just do it and then get back to me if you feel like it's, you know, always open so checking in. Send me an email if you're struggling. But chances are either the belief is not the right fit or you're not practicing it enough. Okay. Third, understand that your brain will object, and that is normal. Your brain is going to tell you all the reasons you can't, shouldn't, don't, need to invest in real help, don't, shouldn't do something new, that it's going to be uncomfortable, that you're not ready, blah de, blah de, blah de blah. That is not truth. That is just your brain doing its job of keeping you safe and comfortable and in the cave. You don't have to listen to it. It is not objectively correct. If we all listen to that, none of us would ever do anything, but it's just doing what brains do. Don't fall for it. Okay. Fourth, recognize that the decision to invest is part of the solution. It is not the whole solution. You still have to do the work, but deciding you're worth it and saying yes to yourself and taking action on your own behalf that is really immediately transformative, and it feels good. And if what you need is body based somatic support, if because you actually have a desired discrepancy in your relationship, chances are you can't do that alone. I couldn't release my trauma alone. I tried for years from learning my clients can't shift their. Nervous System, patterns, their attachment history and how it plays out in their modern relationship, they can't necessarily find their way to embody desire themselves. They've been trying, and it's not because people aren't smart enough or not trying hard enough. It's because some things require expert guidance, especially things stored in the body, and especially patterns that you've been in for a while that you can't see your own way out of, because you just can't see your own blind spots, and you can't guide yourself through practices you've never experienced. You don't even know how you could read a practice in a book and still not be able to implement it, you need someone who can practice it with you, and who can see what you can't see, and who can help you through the rough spots and see where you're getting stuck and make it easy for you to keep going, so that it feels fun and it builds confidence, and that's okay to need that kind of support that's normal, and needing support for complex nervous system based problems isn't just normal, actually, it's both smart and necessary. Okay, so here's what I want you to take away from all this. If you've been stuck in learning mode, consuming information and hoping the next piece of information will be the one that finally changes everything, I get it. I live that pattern for years, but at some point you have to make the shift if you want anything to change for real. From, if I just learn more, it will change to, I deserve real support, right? From, I should be able to do this alone, to, it's okay to need help. From I'm not worth it to, I'm absolutely worth it. And the moment you make that decision, your transformation will begin, not six months from now, when the work is actually done, when you are graduating right from the program and feeling great if you choose to work with me and want to do that desire gap work, but whatever it is that you're facing right, and maybe that's not your top priority. Maybe this is a lower priority for you in your life, and there's something else that you're really trying to accomplish. Maybe this isn't the biggest pain point for you, right? It doesn't matter. It's the same thing regardless, when you decide to take action on your own behalf, invest in yourself and get the expert support you need for whatever your biggest pain point is, that is the moment that the transformation starts, the podcast will be here to help you keep teaching you concepts. And that is valuable. Understanding matters. The validation matters the release of, you know, feeling like you're the only one, or you don't know what's going on, or you know that you might something's wrong with you or your partner, right? Nothing is wrong with either of you, and I will keep being here to tell you that and why what's going on is going on. But if you actually want to release the pattern, if you want to change it, then you need body based, personalized work, which is what I do with my clients, right who hire me as a coach to get in there with them, get in the weeds, get under that hood and work with their learning needs to transform them into doing right with practices based on what their specific needs are. So whether you work with me or someone else, what matters is to start doing, to stop waiting, to start deciding and you are absolutely worth investing in. All right, I'll talk to you next week. Hey. So before you go, I have some more free help for you. If you are okay with sharing your email, I will send you my free guide, five steps to start solving desire differences without blame or shame. This is a practical starting point for individuals and couples. You can opt out of my emails at any time, but I think you'll want to stick around. I am not a spammer. Go get it at www.Laurajurgens.com/libido. Make sure to spell my last name right and the link is in the show notes.