74 ~ Universe's To Do List (Toolbox Edition)

Discover how surrendering control can lead to a more fulfilling and peaceful life.  Brenda and Catherine introduce a simple yet powerful exercise that will help you focus your energy, time and attention on what truly matters by separating what you can control from what you can release to the universe. 

Tired of letting anxiety and futile worries dictate your day? This episode will show you how to have more sanity in your life, encouraging personal empowerment and trust in the co-creation process.

By embracing this practice, you can conserve energy, reduce stress, and put your valuable resources on what you can truly control. 

Highlights of this Episode:
• Introduction of the universal list as an exercise to have more sanity
• Importance of identifying what is within your control 
• Personal insights on doing what you can control and letting go
• Exploring co-creation with the universe 
• Reflection on the serenity prayer as a guiding mantra

Chapters

• 0:08 The Power of Letting Go
• 14:41 Toolbox for Co-Creating With Universe

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:08

Welcome to. Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire, inviting you into our world. I'm Brenda.

Speaker 3: 0:17

I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life. Motherhood relationships and my business Desire has taken me on quite a ride and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher, turned coach and guide of the feminine.

Speaker 2: 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married. I've spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of tired and wired and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker and a forever student, even after decades of inner work.

Speaker 3: 1:00

We are humble beginners on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

Speaker 2: 1:12

On the Desires Medicine podcast. We talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked being responsible for our desire, piece.

Speaker 3: 1:24

That is often overlooked being responsible for our desire. Welcome listeners and friends to another episode of the Desire as Medicine podcast. This is Brenda, and I am joined by my wonderful and amazing co-host, catherine Navarro. So great to have you here today, catherine, and all of us, as we are here for another Toolbox episode. Maybe you've been listening for a long time to our podcast this is our second season. Maybe you are new and just joining us.

Speaker 3: 1:55

A Toolbox episode is a mini episode where we play with desire. So Catherine and I talk about desire a lot. Goodness, I never knew there were so many topics, so many branches of the tree of desire. So we really want to give you practices and tools to help you play with your own desire. So that's what these mini episodes are about, and we happen to love them.

Speaker 3: 2:25

So today is an episode that came out of Sarah Trudeau's episode, which was a couple of episodes back. Sarah is a genius at co-creating with the universe, and I did take her writing course, and one of the practices that she taught in this writing course really changed things for me, and when I talked to Catherine about it, she said oh, I've done this. So there's many different names for this particular practice. Whatever you want to call it. Catherine knows it as the universal list. I learned it from Sarah Trudeau as the placemat activity. There's probably many names for this, and the down and dirty of this practice is it helps you turn over to the universe what you cannot control and it helps you tap into the things that are yours to do.

Speaker 3: 3:20

If you are maybe a recovering control freak, like Catherine and I are, it's really great to know what are the things that you actually have control over in your life and what are the things that are not your business to do. And even when you try to do them, you can't control them anyway. When you try to do them, you can't control them anyway. There is a lot of power in putting your time and attention and your resources into the things that you can control and then turning the rest over to the universe. So, if this is relatable at all, if you are up at night worrying how is this going to happen, how is that going to happen? How is that going to happen If your mind is boggled down with so many thoughts and worries of how is your life going to be the way you want it to be, or how are your children going to do what you want them to do, or how is money going to get into your account? Whatever the thing is that you are up worrying about and it is definitely different for all of us I think this practice is going to help you because it's going to give you a clear line of what you can put your attention on and what you just need to let go of and turn over to the universe. So here's the practice You're going to get a piece of paper.

Speaker 3: 4:53

You're going to divide it in two parts. On the left you're going to write you, or maybe me, and on the right you're going to write universe, or God, or mother earth, whatever it is that is your higher power. And on the left, I want you to list all the things that you can do today. We're going to do this practice just for today. So for me it would be do yoga in the morning. Tell my partner I love him. Brush my teeth, shower, go grocery shopping. Take a walk. Call my mother. Water my plants. Call my mother what are my plants. Pay a bill, show up with Catherine at X time to record our podcast.

Speaker 3: 5:53

Whatever the things are that you actually can do. All of those things go on the left-hand column because you have control over them. You choose to do them or not. Drink water, eat good food, dance. Whatever it is that you need to do today, spend time with your children that's a really good one.

Speaker 3: 6:16

And then, on the right, I want you to list all the things that you really have no control over. Maybe you think you do because you're worrying about them, but worrying does not yield any results in my experience. So maybe on the right you would Include how other people react, your partner's mood, whether somebody emails you back, maybe if somebody that you love gets sick. My dog just died of lymphoma and I couldn't control that at all. So on the right hand side, I would put my dog resting and living out the rest of his days well and easy.

Speaker 3: 7:08

I'm doing a photo shoot tomorrow. I can't control how the photos come out. I could show up, I could bring nice clothes that would all go on the left, but how it actually comes out or how the photographer behaves, I don't have any control over that. So spend a few minutes, complete your list, and at the very bottom of the list I just like to write I release this, I turn this over to you and then everything that's on the right-hand side.

Speaker 3: 7:41

Just put it in a balloon and float it out to the universe, because these are things that you cannot control. There is a magic in letting go. When we grip and we hold on, we think that it makes things happen, but it actually doesn't. We think that it makes things happen, but it actually doesn't. So you put it in your balloon, you let it fly away and then you focus on the right-hand side, you make dinner, you go to bed on time, whatever it is that you feel that you can do today, and that's the practice. Catherine, I would love to hear any thoughts that you have on this practice, or anything that you would like to add.

Speaker 1: 8:26

I loved this practice. This practice for me I was doing maybe over 25 years ago and in the practice, one of the results that I received was to really learn how to delegate. I think I was going through a time in my life where I really thought everything had to be done by me, and it was a great practice to just say is this mine or can the universe do it? Can the universe do this, can the universe do that? And then I started to realize, oh, I have a particular grip on things that aren't really in my control, and what I mean by grip is my mind potentially would be circling the drain, worrying about particular outcomes that really had nothing to do with me, they really were not in my control, I really could not influence them. And so this exercise of creating the universe list of it's my to-do list, and then whatever I could bring over to the universe side, which was on the right-hand side, or sometimes I would do front back, like on the front side is for me and on the back side is for the universe, and sometimes I would break it in half and then just rip off the half that was for the universe and just toss that part. And sometimes I would put everything on the universe list so that I could see it and then say, okay, what on this list is actually mine. And then I would put whatever was mine on the left and just scratch it off of the universe Like, okay, universe, I'm going to take these, these are actually mine. But I would put whatever was mine on the left and just scratch it off of the universe Like, okay, universe, I'm going to take these, these are actually mine. But I would recommend people just play with it to see how it best helps you and how it can contribute to your sanity.

Speaker 1: 10:14

Because truth is that, yeah, I think often we control, we control, often we worry about things that are really not in our control. It helps us. I think it gives us this false belief that we can affect something that we really can't affect, gives us a false belief that we're somehow doing something. But worrying isn't really doing anything other than spinning our wheels, makes us anxious and at least me. For me for sure, worrying was not helpful. Worrying used to get me all sort of worked up and fully anxious in my body and I would be like you know, how could I do this. How could I do that? The truth was that there was no how because it really wasn't in my control. So I highly recommend this practice.

Speaker 1: 11:14

I don't do it that much anymore and there was definitely a time when I did it on a day-to-day basis definitely a time when I did it on a day-to-day basis. But now I have a much better understanding of what's mine and what's not. It's not as important right now as it was back then, and I don't think I would be in the right now or have the peace of mind that I have in the right now without that practice back then. That practice really helped me to be able to technically almost like put it down oh, I'm worried about tomorrow, because I don't know how tomorrow is going to turn out. Well, I mean, I literally have no control over that other than preparing. That is definitely up to the universe.

Speaker 1: 12:03

So, for example, I am in this present moment, I'm on the mend, I'm currently healing from a cold. There's really other than rest, which is on my side. There's nothing else I can do. Everything else is up to God, the universe. I don't know. I don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. I don't know how I'm going to feel in a few hours. It's sort of minute by minute.

Speaker 1: 12:28

But if I were to be worried about when am I actually going to feel better?

Speaker 1: 12:34

It's just so moot and so exhausting because it's really not in my control.

Speaker 1: 12:42

I have no way of fast-tracking health, no way of fast-tracking a decision, no way of fast-tracking how someone else is going to respond or how someone else is going to show up is going to respond, or how someone else is going to show up, like Brenda just talked about her photo shoot tomorrow and she said that one of the things that the universe left is the photographer.

Speaker 1: 13:07

Yeah, she has no way of controlling how the photographer shows up, or what mood the photographer is in, or what kind of camera the photographer has, or what time of day, how much sunlight there is at that time of day that you show up. There are certain things that are just really not in our control. But I want to say that it's bigger than that. It's sort of in every moment, every day, there will be things that are not in our control. It's just the nature of co-creating, the nature of co-creating, and the faster we can see the truth in that, the faster we can implement our own practices so that we can surrender things that are really not in our control anyway, the more peace we're going to have. Brenda, amen to more peace.

Speaker 3: 13:59

Amen to more peace. You dropped some beautiful bombs there, catherine. And the one I want to pick up on before we close out is co-creating with the universe. We want to create our dream life. We want to have things that we want in our life. We want to follow our desires. How do we co-create with the universe? Right, we can't really do it all on our own. We want to work with the universe.

Speaker 3: 14:30

One thing we talk about on this podcast a lot is that what the universe has in store for us is way better than what we can even imagine for ourselves, which is why we just follow the breadcrumbs of desire. And this practice is a great way to work with co-creating with the universe, by paying attention to what it is that you can do and then turning over the rest to the universe, to your higher power, because you can't control it. So that is this tool, is how you can better co-create with the universe, because worry and fear and all of that that you are getting stuck in in the middle of the night when you're thinking about these things that belong on the right hand side of this list just drain your energy. I want to close with a little prayer that I say to myself every day which goes with this activity and this toolbox so well, and you probably know it, it's the serenity prayer. So take a deep breath.

Speaker 3: 15:37

And I say this every morning and every when I say the parts, I picture in my mind what is mine to do and what I can turn over. Here we go. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen, amen. Please, let us know how this activity, this toolbox episode, lands for you and if you try it, we would love to hear. You can can tag us on Instagram Desire is Medicine Podcast. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine.

Speaker 2: 16:37

Podcast Desire invites us to be honest, loving and deeply intimate with ourselves and others. You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.