Doing It Anyway

Sometimes change begins by doing what you want despite the old voice telling you that you can’t.

In this episode, I explore the hidden mindsets that can turn ordinary desires into overwhelming tasks. Through reflections on cleaning, creativity, social media, perfectionism, and inherited criticism, I examine how old internalized messages can quietly create avoidance, paralysis, and self-doubt. Real change begins when we recognize those voices as learned patterns rather than truth—and give ourselves a new experience by acting anyway, imperfectly, from what we genuinely want.

Walk with me.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:02

Hello. Good morning. Welcome to Embody Wisdom, Walk and the Talk with Dr. Brooke.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Live from my neighborhood. Um starting to feel like fall, my favorite season. I haven't done my walk and talks in the fall, so be hearing a lot. My favorite part is like leaves crunching.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

But not quite there yet. But it always comes, isn't that wonderful? Well, at least for now the seasons, they always change. Everything's always changing. So if you're unhappy with something, then um you can change it. Yeah. That's another there's a season for all things. Season for all things. Under having ecclesiastes. You don't think of that from a religious standpoint. I always think about that around this time of year. Because it's Jewish holidays and for me that I don't know. And the beginning of the school year, and although I don't really participate that in like that in the same way I used to, which is just stoltifying really. I can't still can't get over it. I never thought I'd be one of those people that watches the kindergartners walk to school and feel nostalgic for another time because I think the thing that maybe has to do with point of focus. Like, because when it's over, it's over. When something changes, it's over. It's done. When it really changes, not when it adapts. I think there's a big thing between, I've talked about this before, adaptation and change. When you adapt to something, it's sort of like it looks different. It looks different, but you feel the same inside. I don't know, you know what I mean? It's not the same as when something fundamentally changes, and something can fundamentally change outside of you, or it can change inside of you. You know, I just think this thing about like, you know, really changing. I've been thinking a lot about this, really changing. Because real change involves a big change in our mindsets. And the thing about our mindsets is that they've been fixed for a long time. Because, you know, we're brought up in a place and it programs our mindset, and the atmosphere we grow up in programs our neurology. And because of that, it's very um like uh convoluted regarding how we end up undoing that let's say how we end up undoing the that that that started long before we even had conceptualization of what was starting. So the reason why it's so hard, in my opinion, to change is because what we're changing, we're blind to, um, if it's a mindset. Often. You know, sometimes it's obvious, um, but my experience is often it's not. So we have a lot to say, we have symptoms, and we have sadness, and we have like very serious amounts of worry, um, high symptoms and intense symptoms of anxiety. Um, people come to see me and they make an assumption that that symptom is not really coming from an origin. But I um, but I don't, I I think it is. Um, the thing is that's not easy to change. And so these symptoms can be sometimes they're called intractable, sometimes they're called treatment resistant, because people don't really know what it is that's bothering them, and it's a blind spot. So when we're really gonna change, and we want to change something because something's causing us pain in our hearts, but we don't know what that is because we've repressed it, we've regressed it, we've erased it. I mean, our unconscious mind does this. Now, this is the thing, right? Our unconscious mind erases things that are too traumatic for us to comprehend. Erase is probably a strong word. It's probably more like you delete it on the computer, but it's already always there, you know. Someone can always find it. Like once it's there, it's there. That's what these type of imprints are like. So you have to have the confidence within you to understand that you're not dis-eased or uncomfortable or upset for no reason, there's something upsetting you, but that could be actually a mindset. So you see what I'm saying? If it's a mindset that's upsetting you, if you're constantly telling yourself, so if I could give you an example, um if I see if I really look at my house and I see a mess, and I'm saying really look, because let's say this is where there could be a blind spot. Usually locked if it's open today. Taking a picture of that. It's usually locked, but it's open today. See what that means. Um and the thing is, is things being messier or dirty growing up, it was like a federal offense. It was like, it was like the worst. There were so many things that were the smallest things ever. That was the worst thing that could ever happen in my house. And and the signs that were of disrespect rather than I don't know, you didn't, you, you know, your mindset doesn't focus the outside like mine, it more focuses on the inside to them just a mess. And because I'm a mess, I'm disgusting and because I'm never gonna have love. You know, it's like it becomes like this entire thing, and I'm disrespectful and I don't appreciate. I mean, it was unbelievable how much angst a dish in a s in the sink could cause. But this wasn't the only angst. It was everything was like that. It was like a nitpicking machine factory. Um, and it was intergenerationally like that. In fact, my great grandm my grandmother, my great, you know, my kid when they became a great-grandmother, my kids didn't want like her. You know, not because she was old and sometimes the way kids don't like the way older people feel to them, or whatever. No, it was because she wouldn't stop wiping their noses, like like compulsively, because you know, when they're little and they go to preschool and their noses are wrong, wouldn't stop it. And so they she became aversive to them because of that, and I she became aversive to me because of that. Um, I would argue that she even died because of that, because she wouldn't stop cleaning, she wouldn't stop standing up when she shouldn't, she kept paying your head. You know, so I sometimes I'll say like people in my family they die of compulsivity or they die of what they don't know because it tends to be an autoimmune issue that runs through my family, and it is all because of the deep emotions from behaving in ways that we do not agree with, except we don't know that. I mean, what is like the phenomenon here in the human condition that we purposely can't deal with, the things we can't deal with, so we purposefully, on some level, unconsciously forget them. And when we want to change them, we have such a deep resistance to changing them, and the reason why we have such a deep, you know, resistance to changing them is because uh we forgot what was bothering us, and that becomes resistance, it's not even purposeful, it feels like we're trying to do it sometimes, try and it's like not fair because there's a lot of things people have been trying to tell me a long time about my mental state, and I didn't understand what they meant, and the reason I didn't have an understand what they meant is really because I had no alternative, I hadn't had another experience, but let's say the nitpicking, so that I'm nitpicking myself, and I don't know I'm doing it, it's running, but wow, that makes you feel really bad. Makes you feel really bad. So yesterday was teeming rain here in this country. Now all of a sudden you're around we're around here yesterday, you got like imminent death threat things on your phone. I mean, I don't even know, like, but weather's weird these days, so but they're basically like don't leave your house because the flooding. I was like, that's not usual around here, but also maybe who knows the predictive variables are better, or maybe they're just freaking us out. I don't know, doesn't really matter. But anyway, the railings of my deck, the dirt on them, has been, I don't know, bothering me forever for this whole summer. And I decided yesterday, I mean it's the fall, uh, we're gonna have limited time only sitting on that deck. My kids are not home, they're not gonna be sitting, but all summer I realized something like you're disgusting. You're disgusting. You let these railings get this dirty, you don't take care of them, you're disgusting. This is telling myself. Except then, this is even better. When I would go to think about cleaning them, you're like, you don't know how to clean any. You're not good at cleaning. You can't do it. You don't know how to do it. And but it's pouring rain, so I'm like thinking, let me just try to do this my way. I didn't look up how to do it. I don't like how much rocket science here goes to the beginning of the session. How much rocket science could possibly go into what you know, and these are designed, they're not like wood, you know. I'm not trying to do something impossible, they're like designed to stay clean. You know, they're newer, they're not like all natural, that nothing like that. So I find a scrub brush, and my husband's like, wait, let's d-da-da. I'm like, no, no. No, I'm just doing it right now. And let me think the other thing about dish soap. Dish show and a ball and a and a bowl and teeming rain and a scrub brush. Because I could see some of the dirt was already coming off because the rain was so hard. And for an hour, I scrubbed it all down, scrubbed it all down. And but the thing is I was a psycho about it. I mean, it's like it's like I'm a psycho about dirt. And when I really came to like really came in touch with that feeling, I got really upset. Like not a little upset. Like this isn't fair. Not like like upset, like like you can hear in my voice today, like not like upset, like because I believed it was true. It was upset because I like believed it wasn't true. I mean, and then I went into, I mean, it was like a little psycho. Like, then I went into like, should I get the hose? Wash it down. You know, I don't think that the rain's gonna really, I really think I have to wipe this dirt away. And then I thought, wipe this dirt away. Hmm, maybe I should go get a towel. So I got a towel, I wiped the dirt away, and they were clean. Except the corners were not. And I could hear that the corners are not done. You leave everything left undone. I mean, it's really upsetting, but it was real. That was a memory of actual experience. And let's say it's the ancestry, because there's all these ideas of how we carry the ancestry with us, going, and and I'm thinking, like, how how am I gonna get anything done? Even let's say, because there's ideas about the ancestry I'm taking this pretty intense or very intense course. And and it's sort of like there's like a group of the ancestry that's kind of like, yeah, they like actually believe that. Like you're setting them free, because this whole idea about like the about why ancestors want you to have children, is because they need embodied beings, embodied wisdom, right? They need embodied beings to keep the generations going, to have human existence, for them to have a legacy, you know, and so they're gonna promote that. Um they're gonna promote the embodiment like of new individuals, and then they want their values carried on. And I don't know, maybe people, I you know, this is not, this is like, you know, you think about the stories people tell. I just watched a great movie, by the way, recommended. Uh it was called The Death of Robin Hood. It's a very intense movie, but it shows up how like, you know, how we inherit all of these ideas about things and about people and about who came before us. But how much how many of those stories are actually true or contrived based in trying to protect the next generation or oh by the way, here's some beginning of fall.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:42

Okay, so now I'm gonna I'm gonna jump over today because I would consider the way my mind works like that, a blind spot. Like the self-annihilation, because I don't didn't know, maybe you know, or I don't know, and sometimes I know it's when that's a tape running, or if that's something I actually really feel. So I actually really, really, really three months ago wanted to watch the f wanted to watch the um the uh railings. And I didn't because this tape was running about what a bad cleaner, how I don't know what I'm doing, that I should check with my husband. I mean, it was just going on and on and on. Well, for a long time, this is this was my intro to this this podcast, I have been encouraged to have a social media presence, you know, with my branding, especially with this leg of my business. And I can't tell you the number of times I try to do it. I try to do it a lot, a lot of times. And I start, they start it, and then and I make it, and here it is. It's like first of all, I make it into the biggest deal ever. Just like the federal cases that were made out of cleaning, going anywhere. I mean, it was like everything was the biggest deal ever. So here it is. This is the biggest deal ever, and it's the biggest deal ever. And I'm the most important person ever, and everyone's critique, I'm the center of everything, and everyone's critiquing my whatever, you know, whatever. Okay. Now, this is interesting because if you're of my generation and people multiple generations listen to this, you know, you get it because you didn't have social media your whole life. It's not something you're indoctrinated into. And so you can meet it with, I'm going to say, a more objective eye. What I mean by that objective eye is because I could sort of know, well, I don't like social media, and these are the reasons why, opposed to had I started within social media and that think I should like it. There's been a million opinions about social media while I've been on this planet, and not all of them are good, and not all of them are bad, and there's been a lot of reviews over the years, and I've tried this on and off over the years, and I think because I've come to terms with this nitpicky thing, it has maybe or hopefully helped with my paralysis around this because the same process that happened with the rattlings happens when I go to post something. Who do you think you are? You know, you didn't like this, this is stupid. Um maybe what you're saying is wrong, maybe no one wants to really hear what you're saying. And like the thing is, if I didn't want to keep, if I didn't want to do this, here comes the interesting thing about desire. Then I wouldn't want to do it. I I mean, I'm just saying, I just wouldn't do it. You don't have to do social media. Like, I don't do social media in my private life, but I do feel compelled to do it in my professional life. And why is that? I don't know. I don't know, and it's encouraged, people have encouraged it. Patients have asked me to do it, people want to hear more about what I have to say. I've been studying things my whole life for this purpose, and I was able to get started and be consistent with the podcast, and now I'm gonna try to do that, or I'm going to do that. But I have to confront this, and here is what I wanted to get at a little earlier, which came around a little later, is that it hurts. It hurts in a way that's very unexpected. Because when I see this in my mind's eye, it's not the end of the phone. I still gotta take out that microphone. I'm still planning on doing that, so sorry if you're getting some interruption, but um so the painful part is like is in expressing myself anyway. Okay, it's in expressing myself anyway, it's in cleaning the railings, even if I don't know what the hell I'm doing. And it's in step by step on social on Instagram because I don't know what I'm doing. And other people will be like, they might even say, like, oh, I love this. Super simple. They think it's deliberate, you know, it's all that stuff, it's vintage, you know. Like, no, actually, it's fear, not fear, it's it's I have no idea what I'm doing, actually. But in that it's genuine, it is a hundred percent genuine, and it's coming from a hundred percent genuine place. So, but let me tell you, it was I had to sit and commit to it, and I thought, I thought that these were hobby bushes.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

We have a lot of pictures today. A lot of pictures. I'm gonna see if I can put more than one picture up.

SPEAKER_02 21:55

So, sorry about that little break there. So, um not that you're not used to it. So anyway, I guess um, you know, seeing for me this podcast, it's such a I just come, I talk, it's imperfect. I show up, it's imperfect. You know, I come from this, you know, very cutthroat academic world where this is not, you don't just like show up and talk about something and it just be okay. You know, you gotta prepare for a hundred years to make sure it's all organized, it's all quoted, it's all proven. And, you know, I think a lot of times this is what we're trying to do, we're trying to prove those things wrong from our allly life. And then all this, instead of becoming like some fun endeavor, we're doing to see how we're received, see what we want to put out there, feel ourselves out. We're so restricted, and I see people suffer with this so much, it can make you feel so unwell. How restricted you are because you're waiting for something to change. And when I tell you, could talk about this until you're blue in the face, but until you are ready to do it, and that readiness comes at different times, and you could put your foot in and take it out and put your foot, take it out. But the pressure sometimes, and that's the pressure in the mind, it's a mindset, it's a windy part of the space today. Hope it's coming through. Um, that's important you stay close to context because that's what I was like thinking. Oh, this will motivate me to change up the um to the microphone because I want to make sure you can hear me. But you see, that comes, that's not from the picky land, that's not from you're crazy, that's not no, that's from like right in front of me. Right in front of me. And right in front of me is people telling me that the podcast helps them. That's what happens right in front of me. Not that everyone relates to everyone, nor should they, nor do I relate to everything I listen to, but I don't expect that. But I'm born to do it, so I'm doing it. I want to do it, so I'm doing it. I'm compelled to do it, so I'm doing it. But the overcomplication piece that comes from that original fused template is going, you gotta prove you're not what they said you were. And so, how are you gonna do anything? Because you're believing you're that, so you won't do it. That's how mindset get our way in our way. But I'm describing this for I wonder how long I could not see this. You're an enemy to yourself. Like how I couldn't see that I just wasn't doing it. I was preparing to do it. I was wondering when I was gonna do it. Same thing with the railings. It's not like I was like gonna leave them dirty forever. And it wasn't like I was waiting for someone else to take care of it. I mean, that's even the maybe that was the worst of it. It's like I didn't well, I spent a lot of time not noticing these things again because of my blind spots. And just having other people take care of them or paying for people to take care of them. And that's becoming increasingly unnecessary because my children grow and there's less to do. And that was an easy way out for a while, or maybe even necessary, because that's not where I wanted to focus my energy. But I don't know, I just feel like a lot of that avoidance, and I didn't do these things out of fear. Because I didn't wasn't a good cleaner. Like I knew I was good at talking people off the ledge. I mean, it's like, but it's because these things were so blown up. They were so blown up. And it at the end I was satisfied, but was I satisfied because they were perfectly clean? No, because they weren't clean in the corners. I was satisfied because I wanted to do it and I did it. And so when we have mindsets that build up these little things that make us the center of everything, but no one's even watching us yet. You know, if I I don't even know what I'm talking about. It's like really, and I was starting thinking like people post on my kids post on social media every single day. Twice a day, three times a day. I don't even know. And I'm making this such a big deal. It reminds me of the dishes, and but that's a mindset, it's generalized to a lot of places, it's like really hysteria, it's hysterical. So, but we have to again move from a metacognitive space, you know, if we're going to be able to see our own minds, and I think the reason why it's so painful, or why I've read it's so painful, is that once uh you remember, you remember the neurology, you remember the mind, you remember it because you're not seeing it as yours anymore. Now, the separation, it just takes a lot of repetition and a lot of paying attention, and we don't pay attention because what I what I said is I needed to have a different experience. I needed to have a different experience in order to know. I mean, this is the basis of psychotherapy, that if you have a different experience or a different relationship with a therapist who validates your experience, that you're gonna feel better. The issue I began to understand about that in particular, that's really as long as um you're able to get validated by your therapist, and that's very much often a choice. Um choice of therapists. It's very much about match, which is why match is such a big deal in the psychotherapy world. You have to have the right psychotherapy with match. But you know, therapists aren't always right, and they um, of course, uh are just human. So that's you know, so anyway, that's supposed to be a reparenting experience, which is supposed to reprogram you, which is supposed to bring you back to your truth, which is supposed to suppose to supposed to help you view, you know, view your mindset. I saw a grow therapy commercial, like, you know, pay attention to when you're feeling good. Pay attention to when you're feeling good. Like, you know, these things, they're they're all guidance, they're all all I could offer. I said to someone last week, is a change in your perspective. I mean, that's what psychotherapy is, and the change in perspective can mean everything. But when you go to actually do it, you confront the demons, and this is a lot of times why people don't change is because the demons are right on the edge of the wealth and the beauty, because here we are on this line that um the line between the grace and the beauty and the um of what it is you are, followed by the oh my god, this guy is cutting my tree down and he's oh my god. I think I have to take a picture of him. Okay, you know what? These are the types of things where you should pay somebody to do that. You should monkey. It's like funny. Money, they're cutting my trees down, not even telling you what you're gonna say. Alright, so I have to wrap up for today because I've come all the way around to see my trees getting uh pended to. But the the the take-home message is the more that you pay attention to what's going on inside and outside of you, and not only your mind, you're saying outside and inside to know the difference between what is coming through you from the outside. That's the best I have to offer you. Context, context. What's in front of you, what's coming from within, watch it, know your symptoms mean something, and just keep doing what you want and seeing how it but there are consequences, that's what we have to know. So this isn't about license, let me be clear. This is about finding what it is you desire and doing it in spite of what your mind or the old experiences may tell you. Okay, so I will walk with you again next week. Thanks for coming. Oh, and check me out at it's at Dr. Brook Tara. I've had another uh Instagram before this, so this is at Dr. BrookTara. B-R-B-R-O-O-K-E-T-A-R-A. And I'll be posting there more often. Okay, thanks everyone. Have a good week. Bye.