Doing What We Want

The greatest suffering may come from asking permission to be who you already are.

On a spring walk, I reflect on desire, guilt, and the difficulty of knowing what we truly want when our wants were not reinforced. Through motherhood, work, mortality, and everyday choices, I explore how self-betrayal often hides beneath “shoulds”—and how doing what we want can return us to ourselves.

Walk with me.

Transcript

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Hi. Good morning. Or good afternoon or good evening, depending on what time you're listening. Welcome to talk.

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Dr.

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Brooke. Um live from my neighborhood. Good morning, hi. And today we are gonna talk about doing what we want. Now, this is the thing about doing what we want. We don't always know what we want. And not knowing what we want comes from not having that reinforced. So I mean by that is if you have a need or a desire or a want and you grow up in a house, and that need, desire, or want is respected. I mean, like when you grow up in a kid in a house, you know, say every every childhood is a prison. Um you know, I'm actually uh interrupted. I'm actually gonna go with this interruption. So someone had told me that one of my neighbors had passed away. I knew that he had been ill in the past, but I didn't realize he'd had a resurgence of his illness. And um and he he passed away. Um I believe, you know, within the last week or so. And outside of his house, there is one of those signs just really taken aback for a moment. You know, his daughter's graduating from high school, and um and her dad just died. It's like wow. Um that's a lot. So I just think for to if we take one moment we realize that could happen to any of us at any time. And meanwhile, we're some we're stressed out like what to wear to graduation or what our kids are doing next, or it's just always to me a good stop in your tracks. Just stop me in my tracks reminder of like life is fleeting and it's short. Oh, look at how this circles back. So we should do what we want to do. Um, we should bring the joys into our life we want to bring in because life is fragile and we never know when it's gonna be over. Now, morning, hi. Um a really long time ago, I was I always have thought like this, kind of the way my mind works, about like, you know, this type of existence, these type of existential questions. And I was like, I want to live like I'm dying. And my therapist at the time was like, well, you can't do that because you're not. And I was like, oh well, that's a good point. I think it was around the time there's that um, oh god, I'm not gonna recall this, but um, but you know, it's like how many song country songs are there about uh the live, you know, live like your dying type of themes. And I think that was there was probably something that I heard in a song and I brought it to her and she was like, well, that's not your reality, so you know, live instead. And I thought, wow, that's um that's an interesting perspective. Like, well, if you're not dying, you might as well be living, right? So, but I think that if we live in a prison, I always say like every childhood's a prison, because we can't always do what we want, or our what our wants are not respected, or they're not reinforced, but our lives are not a prison. I guess they're depending on philosophically how you look at it. Yes, we could be trapped in a human experience, a spirit human experience, but we're not trapped like we were when we were kids in whatever experience we were being given. So I just think the art of doing what we want could be difficult, especially if we have things in well, if I do this, whatever it is. See, this is like very common women, young children. If I go and I do my this fun dancing thing on the weekend, well, that's taking away time from the kids, or my husband's not gonna be happy with that, or who am I gonna find to watch the kids? Or you know, I don't want to babysitter stay with them, or you know, it's this whole process, just so you could go out and dance for an hour, and that type of thing, if you had conditioning that was like, no, you need to do what you want, it's healthy, it makes the children healthier, and you're then giving permission, permission, yeah, and this is another big one, to do what you then you do it. But if that permission wasn't permission, quote unquote, was not granted to you early, then you're not doing what you want. You're not doing what you want because you got to ask 10 different people permission, including like your young children, before you could do what you want to kid, we have to make sure it doesn't bother anyone. Now, that's a conditioning that was reinforced. You could see a parent did that, or like let's say a parent didn't prioritize their own wants, they never even had a want, they just slept. You know, they didn't do anything fun, they didn't do what they wanted, they just worked, and I can argue, well, then that's what they wanted. Now, this is the irony about these things. As adults, I think we actually do do what we want, even if that's avoiding what we want. Because at this point, we become accountable when we actually can do what we want, we become accountable to doing what we want. And if you bring in the Saturn lesson, that time on this planet is finite. That's a gift of Saturn. In other words, we're gonna run out of time, right? That guy ran out of time, and I hope he did what he wanted. And I hope his children learn from this that they should do what they want in their lives. But that's not often the takeaway. It's that life was cut short for him. And maybe it was. It's a shorter lifespan. But latest thing I've heard is like flip the script. Flip the script, I guess. You're gonna flip the script, you're gonna be like, uh, and and you know, sometimes silver lining, it's kind of kind of like people kind of don't like silver lining because it's basically like, you know, this sucks, but you're gonna try to make it look pretty. And but there is something about crisis, you know, the Chinese endeagram. I think I've mentioned this before for crisis is danger and opportunity. So this is an age, this is age-old when I'm what I'm offering, but also can be annoying to people. Uh, because when they're suffering, they don't really want to hear that there's a positive side to the suffering, even if there always is, even if you can always flip the script. So if we come back to then, like sort of trying to decipher what you want to do, you know, sometimes we have confusion. We have confusion, or we have um battling, you know, I gave a couple, we have battling values. You know, it's like you do, if you work, you do want to spend time with your children, and you do value spending time with your children, and you also need to make it for yourself. I remember at some point I I said the my kids were babies, and I was like, oh, work is time for myself. And everyone's like other women like well, okay, I'm gonna have to change that philosophy because uh that is time away from the children. I guess at the time, you know, twins. Wow, that was um that was a time, that was uh uh a rationalization because it was more relaxing for me to go to work than it was for me to be at home because their their demand, you know, the needs were very high when they were babies, obviously, and it was easier for me to go talk than it was uh my physical the physical demands that they were offering. So then it was like, and at the time, the person I was working with was such a wonderful mentor, I refer to him, Dr. Amber Sino, I was like, he was like, well, then stay home. And I was like, I don't want to stay home, and he's like, well then then stay at work. I I I I always felt like I should be somewhere else. But I knew, I knew, I knew I was a hen mother, not a hen mother. I always knew I wasn't a hen mother. So if you haven't heard this before, there's the idea of the hen mothers versus the uh versus the um tiger moms, and the hen mothers, you know, they sit on the eggs, they stay at home, they hang out, they're on the eggs. But the tiger mother goes out, you know, kills the prey, brings it back. Different uh, different constitution. Because if you're a hen, you're a hen, but if you're a tiger, you're a tiger. Now we don't choose these things, but our wants and our desires come from that. So I definitely want to be at work because I'm built like a tiger mom. I just felt guilty. And the irony is I would go to my mother who didn't work to try to get the permission to do what I wanted, except she had no idea about that challenge. So then I realized, you know, maybe I should talk to my colleagues that work, and then they start coming up with there's a study that women a hundred years ago, you know, they spent less time there with their children than we do because of all the household tasks. And I was like, oh, well, that's interesting. That supports my desire, may even give me permission. Yeah, okay, maybe that's a crock. It's not a croc. I mean, obviously that's a that's actually was a real study, but it supports the idea of the tiger ma, opposed to calling my mother, who may or may not. I think I was looking for reassurance from her because my whole life, you know, she was home, but she wasn't she wasn't there, and she couldn't be there emotionally. She was suffering too much herself, and and so how how why am I asking her? But really, she always told me, be a professional, be a professional, have your own money. She's always talking about this is this is a big 80s theme, so you're not alone if you heard this. So you can divorce, so I could have divorced your father. If you have a career, you have a profession, honey, then you you as a woman could do what you want. Because if I did, I would divorce your father. Okay, so like this is an entire generation of women who all basically learn from their mothers, be independent. So you could divorce your husband if you want to. No, I was always a little resentful of the let's say the underside or the underpinning of that. Like, why can't you just tell me to be a professional? But I I've learned I'm older now, I'm wiser. If I if there are things you can't figure out and you're not yet 50, just give yourself a chance because it all happens in time. And just I really just think it's because you can see the farce from the tree. So there's a lot of forgiveness, I think, that happens as you get wiser and older. Just because we get wiser from the age as we walk on the planet and we kind of give up on things that we thought, or maybe it's because we validate ourselves, we don't ask for permission anymore because we're too sick of asking for permission, or our bodies go. I hear a lot of this. Your body starts having symptoms from not doing what you want, but anyway, what we want, let's say, is programmed within us, it's it's in there, it's just that we undermine it, or it has been undermined, right? So if I'm gonna go to my mother to reinforce the conflict, that I'm leaving my children in the care of another person, and I feel bad about that because society might have taught me that, or I learned that along the way, or maybe I do have a longing, or maybe I am afraid that to not be, you know, watching them or with them, all reasonable, especially for a new mom. And and a little windy today. So you know, I still have not got my uh my um. I still haven't gotten my my uh new headphones. So sorry everybody about that. Um if you heard that wind or the wind coming through or don't always hear me well, clearly. I will put that on my list so I remember. Hi, buddy. Hi, good morning. Oh, you're so cute. Have a great day, beautiful. God, that dog's so cute. Um haven't talked about my friends along the way recently. A lot of people I out today. Maybe I came out at a different time too. So, um, anyway, so if I go back to the idea of what we know, what we want, it's inside of us, and I want it to work. Not because my mother told me to, right? But because I'm a tiger mom. Now, the problem is if you don't do what you want, now listen, sometimes circumstances, now we're in a different category if circumstances don't allow for what you want, but you know what you want. And maybe you want to stay home, but you can't. But is that really true, or is that what you tell yourself, kind of like me? So I was going to my mother because she's the one who said it's okay, or let's say necessary or mandatory to have a career, right? And she told me that, so I can divorce my father. Wait, so she could have divorced my father. So I could divorce, maybe that's a slow, so I could divorce my husband if I wanted to. No, I thought this again, I hated this whole idea, hated it, but yet I came to understand. So, anyway, what we want is it's inside of us if we listen. But it's hard, it's hard to listen when we have all of this asking for permission, asking for permission, waiting for validation, and until we come back to validate ourselves about what we want, and and you know it's it's a process. I should just know. No, no, you really shouldn't. It's confusing because you have one thing, you have your inner saying, I want this, and then you have all the outer pullings of what you feel you're responsible on to. That you will feel here we go, guilt. Guilt. Now I've mentioned before, I don't know if on the podcast, but I definitely mention I mentioned this in my teachings on a on the regular, that dropped completely out what I was about to say. I mean, I got distracted by a thought in my head. Um and completely lost the train. Wow, I mean, this is crazy how these things happen, right? How we are in the middle of thinking something and then, or maybe it doesn't happen to you, but wow, I could see how this happens to me. Um so I'm just gonna let it let it go away. Let it go away. I'm sure it will come back again. I'll pick it up at another time. Um so if we know we're programmed, that we're all programmed internally to know what it is we want. So it's like when early in my in my career, I knew that I did not want work for anybody. You know, I didn't even understand the breadth and the depth and the pressure of working for yourself, but I just knew I couldn't work for anyone else. So sometimes our wants are discovered from what we know we're not. So maybe we know we're not the um the tiger, you know, we know we're not the hen mom. We know it because we don't want to be at home all day. It's not what we want. But then that the overarching ideas of what we learned, the conflict comes in from our condition. Okay, I'm back to the the guilt, the guilt part. What creates guilt? So, in a little aspect of what I read um a really long time ago in a section of Freud Civilization and its discontents, is that uh guilt is really because we betray ourselves. So it will be this idea that we feel guilty, it gets inverted because the minute we go outside of us to see, like we go outside of us to ask permission for what it is we want or what we are, that's a betrayal, and that's what produces the guilt. Not not doing it, actually not being who we are, selling ourselves up the river for love, type of thing. Like I'll do what society wants me to do so everybody will love me. I'll do all these things, I'll check all these boxes, I'll do everything I'm supposed to do according to society. So here comes this conflict I was in about I think I should stay home because I don't know, I shouldn't leave my, you know, I shouldn't let a nanny raise my kids. That's something someone said, well, I'm not having a nanny raise my kids. I was like, it like shook me at the core. I was like, my nanny is not raising my kids. My nanny's staying with my kids while I'm working, I'm raising my kids, but wow, that guilt came over me. But the guilt came over me because I'm listening to him, and and he's also a man. This guy was a man, it wasn't even a woman, so he doesn't know how I feel at all. That's easy, easier for men. Like that they're not programmed to stay with the kids, they're programmed to go out, so they have a different set of pressures. So, and it's an interesting concept. I tend to I start to understand that more and more. When I first read it, it was hard for me to get my arms around this idea that guilt is caused by us not doing what we want because we're selling out for the approval of society. It's like, oh god, but that's it's kind of like, well, wait, now do I do what my mother said? Have money, have independence, have, or do I do what society says, like, don't let your nanny? And it's like, oh my god, well, what do I want? What do I really believe? What do I so that's what happens when you get someone goes, oh, there's this article, and it says it's okay. Oh, good, thanks, thanks. So I don't have to feel guilty about betraying myself, guilty about listening to someone that doesn't understand my circumstances, and not listening to what I'm programmed to want. Because what I will tell you is the greatest suffering of all in life is not being who you are and not doing what you want at the core and asking permission to be yourself. It is the greatest pain I have seen because so much of our pain is wrapped into that without our recognition. So much of symptoms, root cause of symptoms, are wrapped into this. Asking for permission. To be what we already are and can't help but be it. And so we almost with our heads, we go we look forward, we look kind of up. Right? We look up, we look out. And we're going, we're like, we're after that thing. The thing that says we're gonna get love. The thing that says, I hope you can hear me. The thing that says you're gonna get that evil gratification. You're gonna be told that you're good. You're gonna do that reinforcing thing. That's your like head looking up. But inside, you you're crying because you don't want to study one more hour, or you don't want to participate in that event anymore, you don't want to do that sport anymore, or you don't wanna that's examples from my life, or you don't want to keep working in the same way you were working before. You want to do something different, you're ready to do something different, but something keeps you in the same. Some feeling of a desire for a very high level, a higher level of safety. I mean, I gotta tell you, today my route, it's like a weird route. I I don't know what to say. Like it's kind of weird. Um, and I because it's like I'm avoiding the people that I already saw. This is so me. Oh, I can put a little joke tag here. So do you so how often do you do that? Do you be like, oh, I'm gonna walk over here because I don't want to talk to that person. And so by the way, I'm giving you I'm giving you the pass on that. You have the absolute power there to do what you want. Um, because people say that too. Oh, I have social anxiety. Um, I avoid people, and I'm like, you don't have social anxiety, maybe you don't feel like talking to them and they're chatty Kathies, or they're more interested in talking to you than you're talking, or like the other day, I somebody hadn't seen her in a while, and I realized who was. I was like, oh my god, yay, um, I haven't seen you in so long. And she was like, have everybody was like good. She's like, okay, and she just went walking on, except that that's what I do. So if someone does it to me, I'm upset. But if somebody um does it to, you know, but if I do it to somebody, I'm like, oh, I'm just gonna get my walk in, especially if I'm doing a walk in a talk. That's funny because that's why I'm also avoiding, because I'm gonna see these people again, and they might want to stop because their dog's so cute, and we might have a conversation we haven't met before. Where do you live? Um, you know, love your garden, you know, type of thing. And I'm like, no, I'm doing my walk and talk. Like, I can't talk to you right now. So, anyway, that there's another thing to just put out there about what we I didn't even realize it could circle back to what do we want? Do I not want to talk to that person? Here comes the guilt. I should, I should talk to them, I should be gracious. Uh no, you shouldn't. Not if you don't want to be, because you could be gracious and also not wow, I keep running, everybody's running around in the same, this is the same thing, the same people over and over again. I'm just gonna keep walking in this circle today. So, but um, because that's what I want because I don't want the podcast to get interrupted. So you see where I'm going with this today? I hope it makes sense that life is too short or life, there's there's a limit on life, so we actually do learn that time is short, and so it forces us to make decisions that we may have otherwise not made if we had all the time in the world. And this idea that we should have all the time in the world is not how life is designed. So doing what we want can bring us greater contentment in whatever time we are here, because I feel like what most people complain about at the end of their lives is that there are just things they didn't do that they wanted to do, and they encourage other people to do it. Or they they talk about what did work in their lives. Those is a when I was talking to a lot of dying people, that's that's what they would talk about. They would say, Honey, have faith. Have faith, you know. Um, that's they would give me messages to take with me on the journey about what brought them their the most contentment. But you know, one person's feast is another person's family. But I love to listen to people who were far wiser than me. And simply because they lived on the planet longer. Um, and there was some, you know, let's say, and there was also not wise things, those aren't not as much any of the things I chose to remember. But um all right, so I'm gonna wrap for today. I hope that you enjoyed. It's always fun to walk with you. Um, even when I feel like I don't think I want to, I remind myself that that's just me worrying that I'm not gonna be able to deliver. It's not about what I want, it's that old conditioning coming in, going, it's gotta be great, or uh what are you gonna talk about? Or um nobody care or whatever. Those on and no, like this is what you want, this is what you enjoy, go do it. And every single time I remind myself that and I go out and I do this, it is turns out to be exactly what I wanted. So um be well, and I will walk with you again next week.