What you Have is the Enemy of What you Want (Chirripó Costa Rica)

Could you leave behind what you cherish most in your life right now?

Even if it meant you could replace it with anything you wanted?

For the past few days I've been staying near the base camp of Chirripó mountain, the highest peak in Costa Rica. I've had a chance to stay with and meet many Americans who have moved to this beautiful region of the world to experience the peace and natural beauty that's offered here.

There's a price to pay for those benefits. You might think it's relationships or comforts that are the enemy of making changes in life, yet it's really something much more subtle and powerful.

What do you have that's the biggest Enemy of What you Want?

Certainty.

Or rather the illusion of certainty.

When we have what we have, and do what we do, there's the illusion that we'll continue to get what we've gotten. At any moment illness, tragedy, or natural disaster can strike and take anything and everything that you have.

Effectively you own nothing except for your experience.

Everything is borrowed in this lending library of life.

If you're tired of what you have, you must be willing to return it to get something new.

The big worry is that we'll end up with something worse, and this just isn't true. You already know where the "worse" section of the library is and intuitively avoid it.

The only options available are: Same or Better.

If it can't get worse, then why not return to your current conditions and try for what's better? 

The only thing you can lose is certainty, but you never had that anyway.

What are you afraid to give up in your life instead of going for what you want? Let me know.

Watch the full video episode at Justin Wenck, Ph.D. YouTube Channel!

Check out my best-selling book "Engineered to Love: Going Beyond Success to Fulfillment" also available on Audiobook on all streaming platforms! Go to https://www.engineeredtolove.com/ to learn more!

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Transcript

Justin Wenck: 0:07

Hi, I'm Justin Wenck, PhD, and you're listening to the engineering emotions and energy podcast. Are you ready to bust burnout, pursue your passion have more time, money, energy, and relationships you actually love, including the relationship with yourself. If so, then this podcast is for you. I'm a best selling author, coach, consultant, speaker, and a leader in transforming people's lives from living in fear, obligation and guilt, to living a life of joy, ease and love. What's most important is that I can teach you all this in a way that's enjoyable, easy, fast, and can actually last, let's begin. All right, hi there, could you leave behind what you most cherish in life, even if it meant you could get whatever you want? In return? Today, I'm going to be talking about how what you have is the enemy of what you want. So what do I mean by that? Well, I'm coming to you with this episode, from the base of the Chirripo, mountain range, or mountain peak, which is the highest peak in all of Costa Rica, and believe it's something like 3000 meters, which it's really, really tall, it's the tallest peak in Costa Rica, did have a chance to start to hike up, the start of the trail, made it only from about an elevation of 5000 feet to 7000 feet. And that was over four kilometers. And it took two and a half hours to get up. And then about another two and a half hours to get down, it'd be about an eight mile hike altogether. And being here, I'm getting a chance to stay with a friend who lives here with her husband, have a great, great place, you know, so they're effectively moved here. And I've met a number of people who have moved here over the years. And they've had to give up something you know, they were most of these people were born in the US and used to how things work. And in America, and many other parts of Western culture, such as being able to put your toilet paper in the toilet and flush it down and Amazon Prime to day delivery, all these sorts of conveniences yet. What do you get here, like what, if you're watching the video behind me, there's just washes gorgeousness, and it's a little cloudy, but up behind me, there's the peaks of Chirripo, which is really, really gorgeous and amazing. And then there's a river going behind me, I believe it's called the Chipo river, or Rio, Spanish. So there's all of this beautiful connection with nature and ability to live a much more peaceful lifestyle, yet there's a price to be paid. Pretty much whatever there is that we want out of life, we're going to have to pay a price. And so the question is, would you be willing to pay that price, and the price is not necessarily what you think that price is, a lot of us think the price is like, you know, I said some of these creature comforts, that conveniences, the knowing that whatever you order online is going to be there, that you are going to be able to connect easily with the people that you've known and love for years and years super easily. Yet, I'm gonna tell you that those aren't really the things that you're gonna most miss. It's actually more powerful and more subtle. That keeps us from getting what we truly want. And this is one of the things that once you realize what it is that truly, truly is keeping you stuck. And when I explained to you that what this is, you don't even actually have that. You're gonna realize like, why am I not doing what I want? Why am I why am I sticking with what I have? If I don't even really have what I think I have. So you might be going, Justin, what is this thing? If it's not the people? It's not, you know, aspects of my health? If it's not, you know, my house or my things or my belongings or my status? What is it? What is it that keeps me? What's the enemy of what I want? What's keeping me where I am right now, not to say that where you are right now, there's anything wrong with it. In fact, if everything is great, right now, then you have no enemies. Except for this one thing could become an enemy. If you all of a sudden, the ideal life that you may be living, you might for some reason no longer live. And this idea, this concept that is the biggest enemy that I have found and really getting what you want. It's so simple that like many things in life. They're simple, yet. They're immensely challenging to work with, which in some ways is also a great opportunity to learn to grow to be better. And what this thing is, it's certainty. Certainty is what has to be released in order to get what you want. That's the biggest, biggest enemy to getting what you want. Because whatever you have right now, you're certain you're gonna wake up tomorrow and get it again. Like that's the thing It's great about living on Earth is the certainty that, well, the sun came up yesterday and the sun is going to come up again tomorrow. And it's highly likely that in our entire lifetimes, that that will be true. Yet at some point, there will be a day that the sun will not come up for this earth. We all know that. We all know that there's that in other planets and other solar systems, that suns die, then suns become born, planets die, all these things. And even we ourselves are at some point, going to die. That is a certainty. So even all of those things that you have the people, the thing is the status, that's eventually going away at one point, whether you you want to or not, the question is, how will you have lived? And how will you let that go. Because that certainty is an illusion. At any time, you can completely lose anything that you have, due to illness, tragedy, natural disaster, there's countless things that can happen that are completely out of your control, you control in your external world. Exactly 0.0%, what you do control is how you choose to respond to that your relationship to everything, that is what is under your control. And really your experience, is what you truly have. Because again, if all that stuff can be taken away from you Do you truly own that what you own is the experience that you've had and the journey to have those relationships, have those belongings have those, you know, certifications, or that pride or whatever it whatever it is that you've accomplished throughout your life, you will always have the experience of having gotten to get what you got, yet, there is no ownership of that. Really, life is just one giant lending library, where at some point, we're going to be returning everything to the great library of all existence at one point or another. So the question is, what is it that you want to be checking out while you have this opportunity to check out whatever you would like from that library? The one caveat is that you can't keep checked out what you currently have. I remember growing up it was we still didn't have internet everywhere, we actually had to go to something called the library and check out books. And there's usually a limit to how much you could check out. Like, you know, I believe six books was one of the schools though, right? So it's like, you know, check out six books. And, okay, I need a seven book, I have to figure out which one I want to turn back in. And life is a lot like that, where it's you know, you've, you've got a significant other, you've got some friends and you've got some certain amount of money. And at some point, you're like, I want something else. So you're gonna have to pick something to turn back in. Now, a book is a book, just like something in life is something in life. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a one for a one, you know, if I turn in a 10 page book, I don't have to get out another 10 page book, I can turn into a 10 page book and get 1000 1000 Page giant compendium of hundreds of stories such as life. So just because you're giving something in doesn't mean you're not going to get more in return. And you might be wondering, Well, Justin, isn't there a chance that I get something, it gets something worse, something that I don't want. And from my experience, because I've turned in a lot, I've lost a lot in life, let go of a lot of the things that I've had, through deaths of family members, my mother grandmother, loss of relationships, you know, marriage, girlfriends, loss of friends, letting go of identities related to what I do, and thoughts of who I am, and what really matters. I've let go of all of these things. And in my experience, we already know what the worst area of this lending library of life is. And we intuitively know there's no need to go to that section. There's no need to do that again. Yet when it comes to the, hey, let's do something better. That takes some will a little bit of intentionality. Because you we've currently been hanging out in the area of what I know and what I've had. And you might be saying, Justin, worst things have happened me into my life when this thing happened. Yeah, it's I'm sure if you and I sat down one on one, we could get to some things where whatever the worst thing happens in your recent history, there's probably something that happened that was very, very similar to that in one way or the other that sets you up that that really was not a new experience. That was just another cycle of a current experience that you had had. And when we say okay, I've had enough of this, I'd like something better and turn that in, we get a chance. We don't necessarily know exactly what we're going to get. This is again, the loss of certainty. There is no certainty in what you're going to get how you're going to get it when you're gonna get it. You got it presents the opportunity. And that's exactly what a lot of people who you know, leave countries, do they lose the certainty of knowing what they've known for their life. For the opportunity for something different, something better, there's always a chance that, you know, because there's the same wherever you go, there you are, you can always recreate what you had, you can always, you know, check one book in and check another, it's almost the exact same out. So you know, you had a Stephen King horror novel that you've been living checked out of your library of life, you can totally check that back in and just get another Stephen King horror novel where it's basically the same thing, the names are changed, maybe it takes place in another New England type area, yet, it's going to be the same thing. So it really does take that we check it in to say, I'm ready for something different, something new, and I'm looking for a comedy, or I'm looking for a romance, or I'm looking for adventure. And when we have that intention, then we'd have the opportunity, the possibility of getting what you want. It's gonna take getting used to allowing yourself to not have what it is you currently have. And really, you don't even have what you have you just have the illusion of what you have. So be really curious, what is it that you have that you're not willing to let go of? And what would it be worth getting in return to let go of what you have? Because again, you might as well enjoy everything that there is all that is to offer all the possibility because it really is infinite. And you don't have to worry about things getting worse. You've been there done that you intuitively know how to avoid that. Just allowing yourself to now have the fun, the joy, the excitement, of trying something new and better out. So what is new, what's better? What is it that you truly would light you up? Were like, oh, yeah, I can embrace the uncertainty. And I can get this let me know, send me an email at podcast, Justin wenck.com. Or, let me know on social media, you know, comments, if you're checking out a post with this, or send me a direct message. It's that Justin Wenck, PhD across all of them now. Well, not all of them. I'm not on threads. Not at this time. Not yet. We'll see maybe, but tick tock, Instagram, Facebook, also YouTube, check me out on YouTube. So we'd love for you to let your friends know about this. If you're enjoying it. If you're not enjoying it again, send me a message directly. Let me know what you'd prefer. Otherwise, yeah, thanks for being a listener. Thanks for supporting the show. And if you get a chance, if you haven't already, subscribe rate at five stars. And I'm going to be continuing my journey through Central America. So in a couple of days, I'm going to be leaving Costa Rica and going to Guatemala. So we're going to be in Guatemala for a couple two weeks about have been Guatemala, where I'm going absolutely beautiful. So more reasons to keep following me on social media, and checking out these podcasts that I'm doing, because you're gonna just love to feel and see what I'm at. And I'm going to be sharing other great learnings, things like that. And if you haven't seen it already, I encourage you to check it out. Because where I'm going, it's just phenomenal. It's beautiful. And I thank you for being part of the journey. And I'm happy to be adventuring with you. So until next time, good day.