Episode 44: Nobody is Coming to Save You... And Why That's a Good Thing!!

In this episode, Katie explores the freeing truth that nobody is coming to rescue you, and how embracing personal responsibility can transform your life. This is a powerful message about reclaiming your agency and stepping out of waiting rooms of reliance into active creation of your own story.

Key topics:

• The analogy of life as a waiting room and how waiting for external rescue prolongs suffering
• The difference between self-blame and self-responsibility
• How to identify "once" statements that give away your power
• The cultural conditioning around women waiting gracefully and the Good Girl Tax
• Practical steps to reclaim authority and act on your own terms
• The significance of moving from blame to empowerment in relationships and career
• The paradox that accepting nobody's coming to save you actually grants liberation
• How to start noticing your "once" language and shift toward self-led action

Timestamps:

Resources & Links:

• VoiceMails For Isabelle (Netflix) - must watch!!
• The Embodied Mastermind - the 6mth Coaching Program that will actually moving you from knowing what you need to do... and instead actually taking the action to live the life you want!
• Want a customised program just for you? Look at ways to Work with Katie and book a FREE connection call with her today.
• Access your free resources here!

Connect with Katie:

• Instagram
• Drop her an email at: info@katiemurraycoaching.com.au

Note: Reflect on the "once" statements in your life to start reclaiming your power today.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome. This is to our core with Katie Murray, and this is the place where we peel back our layers to uncover who we really are at our centre, at our core. And think of it as a chat with your bestie, the one who can make you laugh until your belly hurts, who is ridiculously unfiltered, and will lovingly call you forward to help you cut through the noise and get real with yourself. Around here, nothing is off limits. And we are mixing this up with equal parts of humour and heart, so let's dive right in. There is a sentence I want to say to you, and I need you to hear it in the way that I mean it, not the way that it might sound on first impact. Nobody is coming to save you. I know. I know how that can land, particularly if you're feeling a little vulnerable at the time that you tune your little ears into this podcast episode. It can sound harsh, maybe even a little bit cold, especially coming from someone who you know spends all of her work supporting people. And also, that's why I want you to stay with me because I promise you that this episode is not about abandonment. In fact, I would actually say that it's about the exact opposite. For years, many of us have been waiting quietly, with some, quite some exhaustion, and sometimes even without realizing we're doing it, for something or someone to arrive and fix what's hard. The right partner who'll make you feel secure. Or the boss who'll finally see our worth and promote us because we deserve it, yeah? Then we'll believe that we're worth it. You know, maybe that they'll even do it without us even having to ask for the promotion, because who are we to ask for what we deserve? The apology that'll finally make sense of the past for you, the moment that everything clicks into place because someone else decided it should. And today, I want to make the case to you that the moment that you stop waiting for that rescue is the moment that you actually get your life back. This is two our core, I'm Katie. And I want to talk to you about why nobody's coming to save you and how that can actually be the best news that you're gonna hear all year. And I want you to do this by picturing that you're in a waiting room. Immediately, my mind goes to a doctor's waiting room. Okay, you know the kind. There's like these ugly fluorescent lights, and there's either the slightly too cold air conditioning blowing, or it's like really stuffy, and they've like turned up the heat so you kinda you don't feel like when you inhale you're getting any fresh air. And there's those old magazines. Does anyone actually read them? Like, does anyone read New Idea or Woman's Day anymore? Or is it Woman's Weekly? Anyway, does anyone read them anymore? Because they certainly, I mean, they look weathered on the table, and yet I never seen anyone pick them up. You know what? We often just pick up our phones these days. And you're sitting in this room because you've been told that someone will call your name eventually. So you wait. And and you're not reading the crusty books or magazines. You've probably picked up your phone just to distract yourself, and you're not like you're just sitting in limbo. And you're half present. Like maybe you've got half your mind in your phone, and the other half is like permanently clocking the door for your name to be called. And that's what it feels like to live life waiting for rescue. And most of us, let's be honest, we're not going to describe it that bluntly. We're not going to say, I'm waiting to be saved, like a damsel in distress. No, because you probably think that, well, that might sound a little bit dramatic and even like a little bit childlike. And so we dress it up with sophisticated language. And we say things like, once things settle down at work, then I'll have the capacity to start looking after myself properly. Or once he changes, then the relationship will improve. It will feel differently. Once she finally apologizes, then I'm going to be able to move on. Or once I get that promotion, then I'm going to feel enough. Or maybe it's even like once my parents like fully recognize me now that I'm a grown adult and they see that I'm capable, maybe then I'll be free of all the times that I felt so unseen. Every single one of those sentences has the same architecture. There is a once in that sentence that starts it. And then there's a condition that depends entirely on someone else's choices, someone else's timeline, someone else's willingness to change. You know what you've done in that moment, or probably several moments in your life, you've handed the keys to your own relief to a person who may not even know that they're holding those keys. And here's what's well, I think is quietly devastating about that arrangement. And if we're honest about it, that person, that promotion, that apology, it might never come. And it might have nothing to do with the fact that you don't deserve it. It might be because simply it was never within your control to begin with. And you've been sitting in this waiting room for a door that was never actually ever wired to open. That the wound that was caused and the healing both belong in someone else's jurisdiction. That's the waiting room. And I want to talk to you about the door out of it because fuck that personally. Fuck that sitting in a waiting room for your entire life. And this is the part of the episode where I really want your full attention. Because this distinction is, in my experience, a very important yet misunderstood concept in personal growth. Self-responsibility and self-blame, they sound similar. And they are not the exact same thing. In fact, they're not even cousins. One sets you free, and the other keeps you exactly where you've been, just with maybe an extra layer of shame on top. And self-blame says to you, this happened because something's wrong with me, and if I just punish myself enough, if I just analyze this, if I just shrink myself enough, if maybe, maybe somehow I will earn my way out of the consequences. Self-blame is backward looking. It is fault-obsessed. And it is completely useless for actually changing anything. You can blame yourself with total conviction for 30 full years and still wake up on your 31st birthday in exactly the same spot, just more tired. Whereas self-responsibility says something entirely different. It says, regardless of how this situation came to exist, whether I caused it, we are the creators of our reality, remember? Whether I caused it, whether I'm gonna say that someone else caused it, whether life simply delivered this to me on a platter, and it was a platter piled with a huge, huge load of horse dung. Dung, dung, shit. A huge pile of horse shit. Self-responsibility says, I am the one who gets to decide what happens from here. Self-responsibility doesn't look backward to assign fault. It looks forward to locate power. Hear that one again. It does not look backward to assign fault. It looks forward to locate power. And this is a frame that I use with clients often because, you know, it tends to cut through the confusion quickly. If you want to sit in the state of you're not of fault for everything that has happened to you, fine. And also, I would say you are response able, response able, get it, responsible. You are able to respond to everything that happens from this point forward. Because it's doing two jobs at once. It's releasing you from the guilt that was actually probably never yours to carry, particularly if some of this shit happened to you when you're a little kid and you did not have resources to choose, behave, or have a different reality for yourself. So it's allowing you to let go of the guilt that wasn't yours to carry. And it's also handing you back authority, because I can have a guess that most of the people that listen to this podcast are adults, it's handing you back an authority as an adult that you have quietly somewhere along the way given away. I think about a woman that I worked with. I'm gonna call her Sarah, because the details of her name, etc., it's not important. The pattern is though, and that was that she spent years certain that her career stagnation was entirely her manager's fault. And you know what? In some very real sense, parts of it were hear me out, stay with me, I'm still on the topic of self-responsibility, she had been overlooked. She hadn't received the little taps on the shoulders for new opportunities like she'd seen happening for colleagues doing the same work. None of that was invented, that happened. And here's where the shift also happened. The moment she stopped waiting for her manager to notice her value and started asking herself a completely different question, which was not why won't they see me? Why won't they acknowledge me? It was, where am I not seeing myself? Where am I not valuing myself? And what do I actually want to do about this, given that they might never see me? What do I want to do about this? And guess what? Then everything moved. And guess what? It wasn't because her manager changed. Her manager actually never changed. Sarah changed the way in which she showed up for herself and she stopped sitting in that waiting room chair, and she made a move to the door. And that's the whole thing. Self-responsibility is about considering how the events that occur for you now are a reflection of how you're treating yourself, showing up and tolerating in your life. And then about deciding everything from there is your decision. Everything from there is your decision. Now, if self-responsibility is so liberating, you may say, well, then why do so many of us resist it then, Katie? Why do so many of us cling to the waiting rooms even when we can feel ourselves going stale, our ass cheeks getting numb in the chairs of the waiting room? Because waiting feels safer than acting. And it makes complete sense that it would. If you are waiting for someone else to fix things, you never have to risk being wrong. You never have to try something and have it fail. You never have to take a step and discover that that step led to somewhere disappointing. Waiting protects you from a particular grief of having a go at something and not getting the outcome you hoped for. As long as you haven't acted, you can still believe that the perfect solution exists out there, untested, fully intact. And you'll just you'll just wait for it to arrive for you. The moment you act, though, will you trade that comforting fantasy for actual, for occasionally quite messy reality. And reality, unlike fantasy, it can disappoint you. Because there's also something quieter going on here, and something of us that many of us probably wouldn't even say out loud, and some of us haven't even internally admitted. If something is someone else's job to fix, then it's also someone else's fault if it doesn't get fixed. Waiting for rescue comes with a hidden exemption, an unspoken agreement that you can't really be blamed for a problem you you didn't create, if you're looking at it from that lens. I didn't create this problem. And also you can't be blamed if you didn't create the problem and you're not the one solving it, can you? And you know, taking responsibility removes that exemption. And for a nervous system that may have spent years protecting yourself from blame, removing the exemption can feel like removing the floor from underneath your feet. For a lot of women, specifically women, I'm gonna name it up, waiting has been actively rewarded. We have been taught in countless quiet ways that a patient woman an understanding, tolerant woman, the woman who waits gracefully for things to improve. She's admirable. The one who, however, takes matters into her own hands, perhaps even prematurely, wow, she can get a different label. Too loud, pushy, demanding, difficult, even aggressive. So some of this waiting is not even like personal. It's our cultural training dressed up as this is how you behave. I've talked about the good girl tax, of who you should be as a good girl. It is a survival strategy that comes with logic to it. And like every survival strategy that I talk about on this show, the goal here isn't to feel ashamed of having built it. The goal is instead to notice it's running and ask yourself whether it's still earning its keep to stay. Like, do we actually need to keep running this? And here's the good bit. It's the part of the title that I haven't fully unpacked yet. And that's that there's good news. If nobody is coming to save you, that means your life is no longer contingent on someone else's timeline, someone else's growth, someone else's willingness to finally show up the way you've needed them to. Yeah, and that might sound like loss at first glance. And it's actually the opposite. It is a return to your own authority. Think about what it would mean to fully digest this. Like metabolically, you are processing this. If you stop waiting for the apology, you are free to make peace on your own terms today without needing another person's cooperation. If you stop waiting for the promotion to feel worthy, you're free to decide right now that you're worthy, independent of whatever the title, the job title is, that was never gonna confer it anyway. I can absolutely guarantee you that if you are pinning your worth to a particular job and the title that it carries with you, you might feel temporarily relieved as you get the adrenaline surge when you make it and you get the job. And then guess what's gonna happen? All the self-doubt and the lack of sense of worth is gonna creep back in in the disguise and costume of imposter syndrome or complex, where you start going, fuck, I don't really know how I got here. I don't feel worthy enough to do this job. I don't feel smart enough. I don't feel good enough. Shit, now I have to perform even harder because somehow I've managed to convince them that I am good enough to be here and I'm not, and I'm gonna get caught out. That's what happens when you pin your worth to external things outside of yourself. It might feel good temporarily, or you could just choose that you're worthy right now, regardless. If you stop waiting for a partner to change before you feel safe, you're free to ask yourself what safety actually requires of you in this relationship as it currently exists. And to act on that answer, whatever that action turns out to be. That can be confronting because immediately you guys might go to in your minds of thinking, well, that means that I'm gonna like go for the door. I'm leaving the relationship and I don't want to face that. I want to believe that they can change. Also, how is this a reflection of you? How is their behavior a reflection of you? So, for example, if a partner's not being honest and you're like, I just want honesty, where are you being dishonest with yourself? About what you need, about what your desires are, and standing up for them. Yeah? You get to create safety within yourself, and that can look different for everyone as to what the action might look like. And this is the part that people so often miss about radical self-responsibility. It's not actually a heavier load, it's a lighter one. You know what's heavy? Waiting. Waiting. So the weight of hope that's deferred indefinitely. Recalculating every day, never quite resolving. Self-responsibility, however, by contrast, it has an end point. It says, here's what's mine to do, I'll do it, and I'll stop outsourcing my relief to people who never agreed to be in charge of it. Boom. There's a particular kind of relief that shows up the moment you genuinely accept that nobody's coming. And it's not dramatic despair, actually. It's about coming home to yourself because that moment that the rescue fantasy in itself dissolves, you stop scanning the horizon for some hero on a white horse, and finally notice you have had two capable hands this whole time. They've just been busy late. Waving at the door instead of actually doing the work in the room. And I think this is why so many people describe their lowest moments as also being somehow a turning point for them. It's not actually because the circumstances changed, it's because something in them stopped waiting and started moving. The crisis didn't get smaller, their relationship to their own agency got bigger. So, how do you actually live this beyond like the philosophy or beyond listening to this podcast episode and going, that was the Peb talk I needed, and then doing absolutely nothing with it? Start by listening for the word once in your own internal language. Once he changes, once they apologize, once things calm down, once I get that tap on the shoulder, every once is a small flag marking a spot where you have handed your relief to someone else's calendar. And you don't need to eliminate every single one of them. Perhaps some of them genuinely, if that's your frame, they're out of your hands. That's okay. Just notice them because in the noticing is what gives you the chance to ask a follow-up question. Is there anything available to me right now, regardless of whether that once ever arrived? Is there anything available to me right now? Regardless of whether that once ever arrives? And often there is. Even if it's small, even if it's not like the full resolution you were hoping for, you know what? A small, teeny tiny step of action is still worth indefinitely more than a larger, hypothetical one that depends on someone else's choices. And then the next thing that I would invite you to do is get specific about the difference between fault and responsibility in your own story. Take something that's been weighing on you, and I invite you to ask two separate questions. First, did I cause this? And answer it really honestly. Sometimes yes, maybe your frame is sometimes no. Or sometimes it's this complicated mixture of, I've had a part in this, and also perhaps it's not all mine to carry. And then I want you to ask a completely yet even more important separate question. Regardless of the answer to the first question, what's mine to do about it now? What is mine to do about this now? And that second question is where the power lies. It's available to you no matter how you answered the first one. And finally, be gentle with the part of you that built that waiting room in the first place. Wasn't because she was weak or lazy or too tired. She was protecting you from a kind of disappointment that probably at some point it might have been more than you could bear. Thank her. And then put a reassuring arm around her and let her know that the building's been safe for a while now, and it might be time to step outside. Yeah, nobody's coming to save you. And it's not because you're unworthy of rescue. Who has watched voicemails for Isabel on Netflix? Oh my god, it's the best movie ever. Literally, it's gonna be the classic of all time, I think. Beautiful movie. It'll make you laugh, it'll make you cry. And you also might be like, what the hell has this got to do with the topic of nobody's coming to save you? He says a line at the end. I know you don't need a man, but I sure as hell need you. Or something like that. I mean, I don't absolutely know it word for word yet. I've only watched it twice. It's probably going to be watched another 2,376 more times. But it was along those sentiments. It's not about you being unworthy of a rescue. It's simply because the rescue was never anyone else's job to begin with. It wasn't his job in the movie. Just one more time, voicemails for Isabel. If you haven't seen it, watch it. Netflix. Brilliant. And then pop into my DMs and be like, oh my God, it was amazing. I haven't yet heard of anyone that doesn't like it. So prove me wrong if you will. Voicemails for Isabel. This line in the movie right at the end. God, did I just give a spoiler-year? Anyway, it's a really great line. It's not about you being unworthy of rescue. It just wasn't anyone else's job to begin with, and it was certainly wasn't his in the movie. It was always yours. Quietly waiting for you to just pick your power back up again. And once you stop waiting, something really remarkable happens, and that is that you stop being a character in someone else's story. Hoping for a kind plot twist. You actually become the author of your own life. Like a free life. One that feels so liberating. And if this episode has shifted something for you, I would love to hear which once statement you caught yourself holding on to. Come tell me on Instagram. At the same time, tell me what you think about voicemails for Isabel. And if there's someone in your life who is still very much sitting in that waiting room, hoping to hear their name called and summonsed or the door's about to open, send this to them. Sometimes the kindest thing that you can actually hand someone is the news that they were never actually stuck in the first place. Until next time, I'm Katie, and this has been To Our Core. Thanks for spending time with me today on To Our Core. If something landed in your heart or gave you a much needed giggle, consider sharing it with a friend who also may need this as a timely reminder. And go on. You know you want to. Give me a five-star review so that this podcast can land in the ears of many, many more people. Because remember that life is too short to stay on the surface. Keep living, loving, and laughing all the way to your core. Go make life great. And if you want support around this, go to the show notes to find out more. Until next time, I'll meet you back here with more truth, laughter, and a whole lot of heart.