173 Silent Dream Killers

When was the last time you felt really, really good? Accomplished, proud, joyful. And then how long did you let yourself feel that until doubt, worry, complaint and resentment came in. Until you remembered how far you still have to go?

You’ll learn:

• The sneaky ways our brains keep us from experiencing pleasure and what to do about it
• Why you’ll never want to say, “Wouldn’t that be nice?” ever again
• A simple exercise to challenge your capacity to feel good 

• Shape Shift Program LEARN MORE
• Instagram: @mindful_shape
• Free Self Coaching Resources
• Interested in getting coached by me? Go to my website mindfulshape.com

Transcript

 This transcript was auto-generated, please forgive any weirdness.

Hi, and welcome to The Mindful Shape Podcast. I'm Paula Parker, and my work is here to offer you specialized mind and body practices to shift into the next version of you. So I'm gonna talk about some, what I'm calling silent dream killers, because we all have dreams, right? We are all striving for something.



Why? Because to have the thing or to have accomplished the thing or to experience the dream that will bring us pleasure. So in this episode, I want to explore the tricky and what I'm thinking of as. And in this episode I wanna explore the tricky and silent ways our brain cuts us off from receiving that pleasure.

So there's gonna be two parts to this. The first part is a very specific, and it's about something so innocuous. You have definitely used it in the past to kill or dampen your dream. And then in part two, I'm gonna go a little bit deeper and show you how this shows up in a more general sense. Alright,

Part one. Do you or someone in your life often say things like that would be nice or wouldn't that be great? And you might agree. It's so benign that it was invisible to me until recently, but something always feels off about it. There's a tinge of sadness to, that would be nice. Right. There's a tinge of sadness to, wouldn't that be nice or wouldn't that be great?

Do you hear the, the, the longing in there, whenever we use the word would, it would be so great to achieve this goal or to reach this weight, to be super fit, to get that promotion, to live in that mid-century modern house on the ocean, right? To see them more often, whatever it is. What we are really saying is it will never happen.

There's a dismissive undercurrent. So subtle. The word would means this reality is not available to me. It's conditional tense. It's desirable. Yes, for sure. We want it. But sadly, it's, impossible. It's just the phrasing of it. So the next time you notice yourself thinking or saying or journaling, it would be, I want you to consider replacing it with, it's so fun to imagine, or I could.

Or I will. So notice the difference in how these words vibrate in your body. Even notice that the next time you hear somebody say it, these phrases denote possibility rather than it's impossible. And they denote intention when we say, I will, you know, by a beautiful house on the ocean. It's so different than, oh, it would be nice to have a beautiful house on the ocean.

So different, right? So they're a call, these phrases, it's so fun to imagine. I could, I will. They're a call. They bring you forward. They make you bigger rather than smaller. When we say wood, we imply I can't. It's like a silent scream. I love that expression. Silent scream to our subconscious that it's not for us.

It's not for me. It's not for us. And our subconscious believes it. And then we wonder why we're just not feeling motivated. Why we don't believe in ourselves, why we constantly doubt ourselves. It's no wonder when we are programming ourselves this way, when we're programming our subconscious mind. Alright, so part one, very brief, but I wanted to highlight the word would and offer you that substitute.

It's so fun to imagine I could. I will. Next is part two. This is gonna be a little bit longer because there are so many ways in which we do this, where we shut ourselves down in this way, where we dampen our dreams. They are often subtle and become so automatic we don't even detect them.

That's why I wanna talk about it today so that you can be aware of it and that you can change course.

Because I believe we are beings who strive, and that's not a problem. It doesn't mean we're never satisfied.

We go for things, right? We create, we have dreams. We make an impact in the world. We connect with other people. It doesn't mean we're never satisfied. I think the whole game is really to enjoy the journey. You know that cliche, it's learning how to be satisfied and enjoy the ride. It's like that satisfied, striving.

It can be the same, but no matter what, it seems like we accomplish, we want more. And not in a greedy sense, not in a greedy way. I think that that's why we're here. We're here to experience human life. So we get up, we make coffee, we do our work in the world. We have disagreements, and we take out the garbage.

We notice the dew on the grass, right? We notice the light shining through the trees. We hug our kids. We cuddle our pets. All of this, we are just doing normal daily life, all while striving, while having dreams for something bigger, for experiences, for emotional experiences, both positive and negative. So that could be you want to accomplish something for the sense of accomplishment.

You want to feel pride. You want to experience joy, but also the negative, the disappointment because you go for something and you didn't get it, it didn't happen.

Or you set a big goal and then you didn't achieve it, and you don't feel proud. Maybe you regret some of the choices that you made, or instead of joy, you experience a lot of sorrow, but we are meant to have the full range of human emotion, the peaks and the valleys.

It's when we try to escape that pain, the disappointment and the regret, the sorrow. That's when the suffering happens. It's not the pain that's like clean pain, but it's when we try to avoid it, we turn to distraction. We quit before we start. That's when we create the suffering, and as much as we avoid negative emotion through distraction, we're also a bit hooked on it.

You might think, not me, like I only wanna feel good. That's my problem. It's why I don't push through and do my workout. It's why I turn to food, or it's why I find myself scrolling on social media for a half an hour or procrastinating. That's my whole problem, is that I'm like a hedonist. I'm hooked on feeling good.

But is that true? What is your capacity for the positive for feeling intense, positive emotion, for feeling, accomplishment, pride, joy. We think we want those things. We all say, yeah, I, of course I wanna experience joy, I wanna experience contentment. We think we do. But then if you take a look at how often you are feeling those things.

Actually right. During an average day or any positive emotion that is meaningful to you, like emotions that you want to feel, how do you wanna feel? A sense of aliveness, connection. You wanna feel beautiful, calm, elation. When was the last time you felt that? Let's say a sense of accomplishment. Let's use an example.

This can be small. This can be, you got all of the laundry done, like laundry is never ending. Especially like if you have kids in our house, it's just never ending. Or maybe bigger, like you released five pounds this month. Maybe you got a big promotion, you reorganized your basement or some big project.

You rose to the challenge. You rose to the occasion. How long did you let yourself feel that until. It dissolved until you cut it off. Until that doubt, that worry, that complaint and resentment came in, came roaring back, roaring back with a vengeance until you remembered, oh yeah, you know what? Like I lost five pounds, but I still have so far to go.

Right. That's shutting off your pleasure. How long did you feel joy with your kids until you got annoyed by the mess? They knock over the milk, right? Spilled milk happens all the time. They knock over, they dump the whole Cheerios box on the floor. You're experiencing joy, and then bam, we cut it off. And to what extent did you feel.

Connection, feeling sexy with your partner. Maybe gratitude for your partner before you happen to notice, ugh, you know, they didn't close the closet door, or they didn't pick up their socks, or you really just noticed, ugh, how tired you were. You just noticed how tired you were. Right. Shutting down, tampering down.

That pleasure. Shutting down your dreams. Your dreams of experiencing pleasure. There's a couple more because I really wanna give you examples so that you can see yourself in this and just reflect in your own life, where are you doing this? Not to shame you or not to criticize you in any way.

Of course this is done with the most gentleness, but what of my goals in this podcast and in my work in general, is to help you understand yourself better. So then of course, when you understand yourself better, you'll be able to make the changes that you wanna make. So think about the last time you were going somewhere you were driving.

How often or how soon did you start thinking there was too much traffic or criticizing the other people and they're driving? Maybe they were driving too fast, they were driving too slow, reckless driving, any of that. Or you might be somebody, like most of my clients, they have full, rich, wonderful lives, and yet oftentimes even when we have that, we shut ourselves off to basking in the pleasure of that by thinking, you know, maybe I don't deserve everything that I have, or I just have too much to do. Like I have, I've committed to too many things. My, my life is too full. I've got too much going on. So maybe you can relate to one or all, or a few of these scenarios. I went for an early dinner with another mom friend of mine, so it's pretty rare that we do this kind of thing given, you know, family life and our schedules.

But we go to this nice little restaurant, we'd never been there before. And we just have a nice time. It's just the two of us enjoying the food, enjoying each other's company. Just chatting no kids as a distraction. And I come out of the restaurant feeling. More like myself, more connected to myself, more connected to my friend, just more connection in general.

I'm also feeling a little, I would say elated, like a little inspired. Okay. I get home, it's like around seven o'clock. It's early. 'cause of course she has to get home because her babysitter's gonna finish. So I come home, I open the door, I can hear the kids, they're upset, they're whining, they're crying.

House is a tip. So kitchen disaster. And I also know my husband is doing his best, like my husband is more of a clean freak than me, so I know that he has been probably trying to tidy up the entire time and it's still a disaster. What happens? I go from feeling connected more like myself in tune inspired feeling, so, so much like love in my heart, right into dread about bedtime.

Annoyance about the house and oh, I just remembered also that I'm super exhausted. Okay, so we have to challenge our capacity to feel good

oftentimes our default is not to maintain those good vibes. Our default is to go negative, and so our job then, or our opportunity rather, is to challenge. Our capacity to feel good. That intensity of any emotion, positive emotion is sometimes just too much for our nervous system. It's like we're so unfamiliar with being intensely happy or feeling joyous for an extended period of time that we cut it off early.

And most of us are very committed to slipping right out of our good moods. Okay? So our capacity for connection and joy cannot withstand a messy house or a crying child. Okay? So it's a practice. It's a practice to get good at maintaining those good vibes, because the dream is not a single event.

No, you will achieve that dream and then you will just find another dream, another goal, another accomplish, because you why You are built to strive. The dream is holding onto. Amplifying and letting ourselves revel in how we most want to feel, even when our brain is hooked on the negative story.

Like houses should always be clean or children should never cry. Okay? That negative story, one in which we think things should be different or better than they are right now. So my challenge to you is to. Challenge your capacity not to do more Challenging your capacity doesn't mean do more things, but to actively create and hold intense good moods, those good vibes.

So you create the scenario in which you wanna feel what you wanna feel, but then you hold. You, you amplify. You are vast. You create that within your body and then you hold onto it. So it's also my challenge to you is also to question, is it possible that these negative loops, these criticisms, judgments, complaints, any kind of self-loathing that shows up or resentments, they are simply here to help me avoid feeling tremendously good.

Valued, beautiful, worthy, connected, and inspired. Is it just possible that those negative loops are helping you, preventing you, right? They're helping you to stop feeling the intense longevity of feeling really good. Is it possible? So the first step in exploring this is to make a list of what your specific.

Favorite dream killers are. What does your brain love to go to? When you start feeling amazing, what does it love to go to to dampen that down? The ways you take yourself out of feeling good, possibly it's reoccurring thoughts.

So make a list, and it might be amazing to you to realize, to see what your brain is truly responsible for, because it's not because you know you're miserable or you're unhappy, or you're discontent because you're not striving hard enough, like you're not working hard enough or you're not accomplishing enough.

It's not that it's likely you don't need to change a single thing. You simply need to call out those dream killers and let yourself see and experience all the good stuff you already have now challenge your capacity to feel good. Okay, I hope that was helpful and give you a slightly new perspective and I'll talk to you again soon.

Bye.