107 ~ Bridging The Gap Between Knowing and Doing

The gap between knowing and doing is often the hardest part of personal growth. In this episode, Brenda and Catherine explore what embodiment truly means and how to bridge the distance between intellectual understanding and lived experience.

What happens when advice like "love yourself more" feels impossible? Why do we scroll until 1 AM even though we know better? Through personal stories—Catherine’s evolving relationship with money and Brenda’s late-night encounter with dill pickle chips—they show how embodiment requires more than knowledge. It takes practice, mistakes, and self-compassion.

At the center of their conversation is desire, the force that drives change. Desire can motivate action, but it can also feel overwhelming when the next step is unclear. Brenda and Catherine invite listeners to honor their desires without shame and follow the breadcrumbs, even when progress feels slow.

They also discuss the four stages of competence, a reminder that today’s struggle becomes tomorrow’s ease. Like children learning to walk, we build strength through repeated attempts and gradually transform information into embodied wisdom.

In a world saturated with advice but lacking integration, this conversation offers a practical and compassionate guide to becoming who you know you are—one imperfect step at a time.

Episode Highlights
• The gap between having information and living it out
• How deep desire moves us from inspiration to action
• Claiming desires without shame as part of growth
• Practicing self-compassion when we fall short
• The four stages of competence: from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence
• Personal examples around money, scrolling habits, and food
• Embodiment as a process of repeated attempts and gradual strength-building
• The role of community in supporting embodiment

Brenda and Catherine invite listeners who want support in this work to reach out for one-on-one coaching.

Chapters

• 2:38 What is Embodiment?
• 5:01 Moving from Desire to Action
• 8:46 Claiming Your Desires Without Shame
• 13:43 The Practice of Self-Compassion
• 22:37 The Four Stages of Competence
• 35:15 Learning Like Children: Small Steps Forward
• 38:37 Episode Closing and Key Takeaways

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

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

Speaker 2: 0:16

I'm Brenda. 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 1: 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 2: 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 1: 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. Welcome back, fami, friends, listeners, brenda and I are excited to be here with you. We are actually now on season three of the Desire as Medicine podcast. Super psyched for that. We've had a great year. In September we'll be hitting. Actually, if there are 52 weeks in a year, that would be 104. We've definitely hit. We are in our third year. This is so exciting I don't think I did the math, folks, until right this minute. So super psyched and wow, that's three years recording and about a year and a half that Brenda and I were meeting prior to and we did some clubhouse recordings before that. While they weren't recorded, they were sort of like we spoke and it was gone, not recorded, some non-recorded radio style episodes. So we're talking four and a half years. So celebrate with me because I'm like, wow, this is fantastic.

Speaker 1: 2:28

One of the things that I've been wanting to talk about with Brenda and you guys is embodiment, and what does that mean? I think that in the self-help realm, people talk about embodiment all the time Like, is it in the body or is it just outside of the body? Is it like in the mind, is it an idea or is it actually in the 3D? Like, can we see it? And one of the ways that I see this a lot and often is I will have clients that have a lot of information in their mind but it doesn't translate into how they walk through the world or how they behave in the world. And we're not there yet. But I had spoken to Brenda and said, hey, I would love for us to have some experts on to talk about that, like what it looks like. But before we bring on some experts, she and I are going to jam on it. I'm going to jam on it. It's like what is that bridge between what we think and how it shows up in the outer behavior, like how the world can see it?

Speaker 1: 3:35

And there are definitely practices that we can do. I'm sure Brenda has tons of practices, so I'm sure when I turn the mic over, she can talk about some embodiment practices. I would say for me, my biggest embodiment practice is choice. So if I have decided, for example, that I'm not somebody that scrolls at nighttime, then that means when nighttime comes, I put my phone in a location where I can't scroll on it, and that action is somewhat of an embodied action, because I have the thought I don't want to be a scroller, I want to identify as a person who is a non-scroller, and that identity work is also embodiment work. It's like how do you become the person that you want to become, and then what actions are required to be taken? But if it's only knowledge in my mind that says, oh, I shouldn't be somebody that's scrolling, but I don't take any action, I don't have any behavioral change, then there's really no embodiment, it's just knowledge.

Speaker 2: 4:36

Brenda, how do you go from wanting something to actually doing it? And I think you touched on one of the hardest things. Nobody really wants to be scrolling at night. I think so many people are saying that, yet so many people are just scrolling at night. So how do you make that bridge? It's a great question. I'm going to try to answer it. First of all, you got to want it. You have to want it so bad that we're talking about desire. You have to want something so much that you're willing to take the action to have it.

Speaker 2: 5:15

One of my teachers used to say we either move from inspiration or desperation, and it's rarely inspiration. So maybe we have to experience some pain, and I think that's kind of a human way, like something has to hurt or we have to feel a rub or we have to feel some discomfort in order to make a change. Now, I'm not saying we always have to have that in order to make a change. No, when we get better at listening, then we can actually hear the pebble instead of the rock or the boulder falling on us, where the boulder is so loud and painful that we have no choice but to make a change. But through the practice of listening, we can actually listen to the pebble. That's great. But for those of us that aren't always there yet, we generally need to feel some kind of discomfort. So maybe that's oh my God, I can't fall asleep because of the light in my eyes. Or maybe I'm really disconnected from my partner because I'm on my phone every night. Or maybe it's oh my God.

Speaker 2: 6:18

I know, when I first started going on TikTok a few years ago I don't go on TikTok anymore. It just became a shit show. It's very addicting. I was on that thing till one or two in the morning and I didn't care. So I had to do that a few times before I was willing to make a change. I had to be really tired the next day before I was willing to say I am not going on my phone at night. So there needs to be some kind of discomfort.

Speaker 2: 6:45

Now, if you listen to the desire, like I said, great. But if you don't, there's maybe some discomfort which kind of backs up your desire, saying, oh yeah, let's do this thing, let's do this thing, and then you just have to try it. You know, you just have to be willing to take the action and do it. That's hard and it does require some self-love. It requires the ability to say and know that you're worth it, that you're worth it, that living the life that I want to live requires me to feel good during the day so I can show up to my business, to my relationships for myself, because those are my creations. So if I'm on TikTok or whatever till two in the morning, then I'm actually just self-sabotaging because I'm not able to fully show up for my creations, which is my life. So backing our desires helps us show up for our life and then build the life that we want. Otherwise we're just self-sabotaging. Thank you for that.

Speaker 1: 7:59

So I'm hearing you talk about like, okay, we have to increase desire. If we want to implement something that we know in our minds and then we want to see it in action either ourselves taking that action or see the creation of something different in our lives we have to increase our desire for it, like really want it.

Speaker 2: 8:21

Yeah, and it's increasing desire, but I think we also love to long. We love to want things and not even not necessarily take the action for it. So, yes, we need to increase our desire, but our desire could be really big and then we could just be victimized by it, or it could seem so elusive that we can't have it. The desire has to be there in some form, and maybe it just needs to sit for a while before we're willing to take action on it.

Speaker 1: 8:46

Can you say that differently, when you say we have an increased desire? Sometimes we can want something really badly, but instead we feel we want to be victimized by it. What does that mean?

Speaker 2: 8:59

Well, it means that we have a desire and we don't know how to have it. We have a desire and we don't know how to have it, and so it just becomes something that we use against ourself in our life, like I can't have this thing. It's so big I can't have it. Oh, woe is me. Instead of what we're generally talking about in our conversations of I want this thing, it's really big, I don't know how to have it and I'm just going to sit with it, I'm just going to own and admit that I have this desire and sit with it and follow the breadcrumbs towards it, and it might be really slow.

Speaker 2: 9:37

We like immediate gratification in this world and some desires are so big they're not immediate. This world and some desires are so big they're not immediate and we need to be willing to sit in it and whatever that means for everyone. I know for me, when I have a really big desire, come in, I just love to tell people about it. I just love to say I want this thing, I want this thing, I want this thing and I just love to juice myself up and share it with my friends and with the world and with the universe, like claim it. We have to claim that we want something and be willing to hold that, and that requires the ability to say I'm worth it. You know, we can't be in shame like, oh my God, I want this thing, like you have to be in approval that you're a woman who wants something and you don't know how to have it.

Speaker 2: 10:30

It's very vulnerable, very vulnerable, to say I want something and I don't know how to have it. I know so many amazing women right now who are looking for partners and they're like, oh, I want this thing. And I see some of them posting on Facebook. They're in their stories going okay, I'm going out tonight, I'm in search of my husband and it's great. They're just like fully owning that and I have that myself. I've shared that on this podcast. I have a desire for my own home. I'm not sure how to have that right now, but I'm sitting in it, I'm talking about it, I'm owning it and I'm saying I want this thing.

Speaker 1: 11:07

Universe, show me the way. So if I were to translate it when you say oh, you know, sometimes we want something, we don't know how to have it, so we become victimized by it, then a different way of saying that is if I don't know how to have it, then what was me? It must not be for me. If I don't know how to have it, then woe is me. It must not be for me, or it must be that I can't have it. Versus what you're saying, instead of saying I don't know how to have it, can I be with just the desire of it and see what opens, and not put the desire down, like never say to myself down. Like never say to myself, oh, it must not be for me. Never say to myself, oh, this must mean that it's not meant for me, or I can't have it or I don't have that blessing. There's a phrase or a quote of that which you desire. Desires you back and believing that, above the voices in your head that are saying well, if it's not here or you don't know how, well, then it must not be. Opening yourself to, potentially, to the miracle or the possibility, as opposed to closing yourself off because of the unknown path. So, instead of not being with the unknown, we're just going to close the desire up, shut it up and put it in the closet somewhere on a shelf where it's never to be touched again.

Speaker 1: 12:26

So in this conversation around knowledge and then embodiment, if I'm hearing us correctly right now, we're saying well, you have the knowledge or you have the desire of something, how to gain something, and then how do you implement those actions of something, how to gain something, and then how do you implement those actions?

Speaker 1: 12:47

And the act of implementing is also about being open to any possibility, but having to choose that action over and over. So the examples that we used of wanting to be somebody that doesn't scroll so the way that I embody that is by not scrolling. And so if, for some reason, I were to scroll, then I get to ask okay, what can I implement? That won't have me do that. The thing I've been able to implement is that I just keep it in a different room so that it's not with me, so I'm not touching it or looking for it. So I'm not touching it or looking for it. If we were to look at the version of I want to have a house, right, I am a person who owns my own home, then the embodied actions that are taken are really different than somebody who's a non-scroller right. It's like a completely different path and, being open to what that looks like, are you seeing any other connections between embodiment and knowledge, like what we know is good for us and then?

Speaker 2: 13:59

how to do it. We have to be willing to try, we have to be willing to fail, we have to be willing to mess it up, which is divinely human and, again, really vulnerable. We can't expect ourselves to just be able to say I want this. We're in an immediate gratification society and, my goodness, college students are ordering Uber Eats. I had to get myself to the chicken wing place to get chicken wings when I was in college. Like, everything is just very immediate these days, so we're not necessarily in tune with holding our desire or waiting a long time for things, and so we have to be willing to try it and fail. We have to be willing to scroll at night and then be like, oh shit, look what I did last night, Aren't I adorable. I scrolled until 1am, oh my goodness, and not beat yourself up for it, or this is why I always say trusting the journey there.

Speaker 2: 15:04

You may beat yourself up for it, you know. You may beat yourself up a while for not having the thing or taking the action and it doesn't quite go the way you want. But are you willing to stay with yourself? That's the question. Are you willing to stay with yourself and say, ok, we're going to try again tomorrow because, god willing, if we're living every day, every day is a renewable resource. You know, god willing, we'll tonight have the opportunity to put our phone in the other room and not scroll, and if we don't do it tonight, then we can try again tomorrow.

Speaker 2: 15:46

But are you willing to do that? Or are you just going to say fuck it, I can't do this, I suck, I'm just going to have to scroll at night. Or are you not willing to just parent yourself and put your phone in the other room? This is just a great example. But whatever the thing is, you know we have to take care of ourselves, and it is parenting ourselves and walking ourselves to the other room and putting our phone in the kitchen and then going back to the bedroom. Are you willing to take that in this conversation, like the ability to say I'm worth it and I think that's a great strategy for you.

Speaker 1: 16:38

It's not verbiage I would use. I would be more of, I'm not going to quit, like the only way to fail is to quit, and I would say, okay, I didn't get it this time, I'm just going to try again. I'm just going to try again. I'm just going to try again. Okay, what else can I implement that will make it this easier? And I'm going to try again. And I know we're using this silly like I'm not going to scroll as an example to highlight the bridge between who we are, the bridge between who we are, what we know and how to implement who we are and what we know into behavior Like what is the thing that is necessary?

Speaker 1: 17:19

Now I'm going to bring in a different topic to the same idea around. Let's say just self-love, for example. I hear this a lot, I've seen it a lot, I've been told this before. Oh, you just need to love yourself more, and I have found that to be extremely not helpful, because how do you do that? And it can be so different for so many people, and it can be so different for so many people. What does that even look like?

Speaker 1: 17:51

Yes, there are just topics that are a lot bigger than just put the phone down, don't scroll, or. I'm just going to keep it in my mind's eye. I have that desire to be a homeowner. I'm going to keep it top of mind. I'm going to, as they say, stoke the fire. I'm going to look at different houses, get on Zillow, see if I can go to open houses, feel into what it would feel like to have that desire come to fruition. But when we're talking about knowledge that we have in our bodies, and then how do we? I guess not. How do we? But the phrase that comes to mind is how often people will say to one another oh, I knew better, right, and we think then we want to get down on ourselves because we knew better but we didn't take the action. And I would argue that that bridge between what we know and how we implement isn't fully developed quite yet. We're not taking the necessary actions on the other side.

Speaker 2: 18:54

Yeah, and I think it gets developed by practicing, implementing it. There's no way to avoid that. There's no way to avoid being a human in the practice of desire. There's no way to avoid just trying stuff out and it not working. And this is really where we learn to be loving and kind with ourselves and have compassion for ourselves, because, I don't know, a lot of us weren't born that way. Well, let me say, we actually are born that way, but we learn over time to beat ourselves up. But it requires an enormous amount of compassion and self-acceptance to mess something up or not, do it quote right or it didn't turn out the way you wished, or maybe you hurt people along the way, whatever the thing is, and just to say, oh my goodness, take responsibility for that. And then move on and not get stuck in the barrel of shame and guilt and regret, you know, and just say, ok, I'm human, what can I learn here and what do I want to do tomorrow? And then do it. And it might just also not be as simple as that.

Speaker 2: 20:13

Sometimes we do repeat the same mistake over and over again. Why do we date people that are wrong for us? Why did I eat dill potato chips last night. Dill pickle potato chips last night. Why did I do that? I already knew that that's not great for me at night. I woke up this morning feeling like shit from it, but clearly I just needed to learn that lesson again. Is it the end of the world? Am I going to beat myself up? No, but I guess I needed a reminder and we have to be willing to be with that part of ourselves ourselves. We're not here to have a perfect journey. We're here to be a human and learn lessons and maybe have some fun along the way.

Speaker 1: 20:57

Thank you so much for the example of dill potato chips. I was like dill or even salt and vinegar chips sound absolutely amazing to me right now. But I digress. I almost want to spit fire and talk about the things that I wanted to have that fall under. I know it in my mind, but how will it look when it's actually implemented?

Speaker 1: 21:22

So self-love is definitely one of them, right, like the idea of oh, I want to love myself. Yes, I want to be somebody that walks through the world and exhibit self-love. Oh, I want to have the strongest boundaries ever. Yes, I want to walk through the world and have strong boundaries. Oh, yes, I want to be a great communicator. I want to walk through the world without getting activated and be completely unruly and just say some really crazy things on the other side. These are the boundaries communication, self-love. What else comes to mind? Confident, right, how to be confident in things, how to not self-sabotage I guess that's a word that you use. What are other things that come to mind that are part of the personal growth and development journey that we want to be able to do in action? But there is a time where it's just in the mind.

Speaker 2: 22:14

Totally. How about not being judgmental? That's a good one, accepting people where they are being loving to yourself and to others, right? I think these are all things that we want to do and sometimes we do them and sometimes we don't. And I know a lot of people who are like, well, I'm just judgmental. Even people on the other side of like a quote spiritual person they're like, well, I'm just judgmental, I can't seem to change that about myself and I'm just going to love myself Now. Are my actions outward going to reflect that? No, but yeah, you might have to go through the journey of that before you actually get to the place where you can be loving, but you have to accept yourself where you are.

Speaker 1: 22:54

I think judging is hard, to not be judgmental because we have opinions and I think the important part with judgmental, the important part to remember if you're someone that's wanting to not be judgmental Judgmental the important part to remember if you're someone that's wanting to not be judgmental is to know that you are judging based on your own opinion and that opinion that you have is based on perception and that perception you have is based on your own filter.

Speaker 1: 23:20

So it will differ with another human who has a different filter, different perception and different judgment. I think being nonjudgmental taps into understanding. This is just my opinion and I may not be right. I don't have a way of knowing if I'm right, whether it's in my own life because I'm not God and that's God's business and in someone else's life I have a judgment or an opinion, but it's definitely not my business, that's their business and God's business. So we've given some great examples on many different things that we want to practice. We want to practice not being judgmental. We want to practice being loving and accepting. We want to practice accepting life as is right, as Byron Katie.

Speaker 2: 24:17

So lovingly wrote a book Loving what Is. We want to do those things, but it requires a lot of trial, a lot, and we have our own conditioning and beliefs. And first of all you have to notice that you even have those. And then you have here's where desire comes in again. It's like, oh, I really wanna be more loving and kind and accepting of people. Well, you have to be willing to even. Like you said, they're your opinions. Well, you have to recognize that. So awareness is a really huge piece that could take years to just for that to drop in.

Speaker 2: 25:10

I did a lot of meditating at the beginning of my personal development journey, a lot of meditating to develop that other, the observer inside of me. To be able to see that. That takes years. And then, once you start doing that, then you just start seeing things pop around you. It's like, oh, look at that. Oh, look at that, look how I'm seeing things pop around you. It's like, oh, look at that. Oh, look at that, look how I'm judgmental here.

Speaker 2: 25:32

Okay, then you just start seeing it, but you don't quite know how to do it differently. Yet All of these steps are potentially years, you know. And then, even when you know it all. Then you still eat dill, pickle, potato chips at night and you're like okay, well, no, I'm not saying I know it all. I certainly do not, but I've practiced all of these things and I can mess it up on any particular day and it's where I need to just say, okay, brenda, we're going to do it again tomorrow and potentially apologize Very often it's to my partner because we spend time together and I'm like oops, sorry about that, you know, we'll just go from here.

Speaker 1: 26:15

Sorry about that, because you force him to eat dill chips. Is that what you mean?

Speaker 2: 26:18

No, he wouldn't eat that.

Speaker 1: 26:24

I hear what you're saying. There are various steps to embodiment and this is like the work that you and I do, right, with our clients. Like where are they right now? Can we find acceptance for where they are? Definitely, we do this in our one-to-one coaching. How can we like what's the next step for them? Because it looks different for so many people.

Speaker 1: 26:52

As I'm listening to you and I'm listening to the dill chip story, I'm like, oh, you're just not over dill chips yet, right, like you're not on the other side of dill chips, that's it. And then there comes a point where you're on the other side of dill chips. I'm trying to think of what that would be for me right now when something becomes embodied. So I'll share something that we haven't really touched on yet. It's my relationship with money. I've been working on my relationship with money since 2015. I've been in. I've had to consolidate debt. I've had to take out a personal loan for debt. I've had to. Yeah, my money journey has sort of been up down, up down. I've had to take out a personal loan for debt. I've had to. Yeah, my money journey has sort of been up down, up down. I've had times where I didn't have any debt. I lived debt-free for a really long time, so I've become intimate with my way of spending money, my way of saving money. I'm intimate right now with my desires for retirement and what that looks like. But there are certain things that I do that I want to say are pretty embodied now. But I'm not on the other side just yet. I'm like close, but not fully. So. One of the things that I do all the time well, I want to say all the time, but daily I look at my balances daily and I input my expenses like whatever I spent on. Input my expenses like whatever I spent on, down to like $2, anything that's 0.01. Like, if I spent a penny, I'm jotting it down.

Speaker 1: 28:16

But there's a version of me where I definitely did not want to do this. I was a strong believer of, like I really stood behind just make more money, just make more money, just make more money. And for those of you that are not past the 50 marker, I say this because Brenda and I are but our energy levels changed and we spoke about this part earlier like when the pain, the discomfort starts to really, really change and I was like, oh, my body doesn't want to do harder or more so with the practice of money, you can only cut expenses or make more, and I think when you're in the earlier years, you can't fathom what it's going to look or feel like when you can't do more, because it's not part of the reality yet yet. And then it comes into reality. And so how do you dance with that change of reality? Oh, this is something I really have to play with and be on top of, because I want to see myself as someone where I am not jolting my nervous system because of something that I've spent, that it's outside of my realm to spend or outside of my capacity to spend for all of the other goals that I have, all the other priorities that I have, and so it's a really interesting dance, even when we start changing our behaviors and we're changing our behaviors because we want to be this different version of us and we know what it's going to take. And how do we become? Oh, now I'm thinking of something completely that we haven't brought in yet to the conversation how do we become unconsciously competent? How do we become consciously competent? There are all these ways, right, there's.

Speaker 1: 30:05

Like you stated, we can't change something that's not in our awareness If we're just saying, well, I'm just judgmental, this is who I am, that's us not being in any way, shape or form, open to the possibility of what it would look like to not be judgmental. And what will it take from us? One of the biggest things that not being judgmental took from me was to really look at all the times that I was wrong and saying what if that's actually, more often than not, like I have an opinion of something that has nothing to do with me, it's not my business, not my lane, and I want to interject? And what if they are doing it exactly the way that they need to do it for their particular lesson? That I am not even privy to, because I don't know, because it's not my business and my wisdom is not there?

Speaker 1: 30:57

Yes, I'm going to pause right now as I think about the competence force. I don't know what we call that grid. It's not a grid. I'm making a sign for Brenda here, a continuum. It's like four squares, yeah, but the grid maybe.

Speaker 2: 31:15

Yeah, this is great. You gave some really great examples of how you worked with your money and how you took it from something you've wanted into something that you're actually living and you're changing how you are with your money so you could have something different on the other side as you move into retirement, and that is really beautiful. Yeah, the not my business part. I mean, you hold some really big medicine there. You're really good at that and we've done a bunch of episodes on that. I'm just always amazed at how great you are about staying in your own lane.

Speaker 1: 31:49

For the stages. It's called the four stages of competence. So you're unconsciously incompetent. It means you are incompetent in something and you have a zero consciousness around the thing that you are incompetent in, like nope, I don't know what, I don't know, like, I just don't know what I don't know. And then the next stack is you are consciously incompetent. You're like I now know that I'm not good at that thing. Like I am incompetent at that and I am consciously incompetent. I am very aware that I am not good at that. And then you start practicing conscious competence, like how can I be more conscious around this? How can I be more conscious around this thing that I want to be, learn, do? And then it becomes something that you can do with your eyes closed. You're totally like unconsciously competent.

Speaker 1: 32:47

The best example I have of this is like driving a car. It's something that you can do and to completely tune out and just be doing it. Or tying your shoelaces, brushing your teeth, making the bed, you no longer have to consciously think about oh, this is how I tuck the corners in. Oh, this is how I put the toothpaste on. Oh, this is how I tuck the corners in. Oh, this is how I put the toothpaste on. Oh, this is how I turn the car on right. You're just going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence, conscious competence and then unconsciously competent. I just wanted to make sure that I shared that because I think, ultimately, that's the thing. I think ultimately that's the thing when we're really embodied. It's completely unconscious competence, like it's just something you do. It's who you are, hands down, and the great news around this is today's easy was yesterday's hard, and today's hard is tomorrow's easy, and tomorrow's hard hasn't even shown up yet.

Speaker 2: 33:58

And it's just how we grow. It's absolutely beautiful. That was gorgeous. Thank you so much. I feel inspired right there.

Speaker 2: 34:03

I think the quadrant that we're talking about is learning to be conscious, like understanding that we're consciously incompetent and we're willing to practice it. That's really what we're talking about in so much of our conversations here. Take some self-love and backing and commitment and caring for ourselves and willingness to mess it up and come back again, and a lot of confidence to just say I'm learning to do this thing, I'm learning to work with my money, I don't really quite know how to put my phone in the other room, I don't know how to have the home that I want, and being willing to just stand tall with your shoulders loud and proud, and up and say I'm working on this, that's beautiful. I think that's really beautiful leadership to be able to say something like that. Say something like that instead of I have it all figured out and then underneath it's a house of cards that's just going to fall apart.

Speaker 2: 35:13

I think we're willing to be honest with ourselves and say I don't know how to do this, I'm working on it. It's divinely human and it gives permission for other people to do the same, because how else do we learn? There is no other way. No child goes from sitting up at six months old to fully walking. No, they fall over. Kids fall over for many, many times before they're a competent walker. And can we do that with ourselves?

Speaker 1: 35:43

I love that example because the other thing that comes to mind when I think about children walking which is one of my favorite examples of learning is that muscles are being built in between right, like your baby has belly time, has neck time. It's like the baby has to go through all of these stages so that it could be strong enough to do the act of walking. Likewise us when there's something we want to implement, whether it's better boundaries. Likewise us when there's something we want to implement, whether it's better boundaries. Oh, my goodness, I picked up that phone call with this person that's totally negative. Or insert the thing that you don't like at 9.30 at night, like I really have to learn to not do that Right and it's going to require doing it over and over and over and over and over again and being reminded why it's not a good idea until you start to change that. But none of that is happening. If you don't know that there's something wrong with that call at 9.30. If you don't know how it feels after the call, if you don't know that you didn't really enjoy the phone call, if you don't know that you have the ability to not answer the phone, that it doesn't make you a bad person, that you're not going to hell or purgatory for it. We have to be conscious of the choices. We have to even implement something different.

Speaker 1: 36:58

Brenda's giving me a smile. I feel like we have gone to many places today on the map. I really wanted to talk about what is embodiment and how do we become the person that walks through the world with all the knowledge that we have, especially in this day and age where chat, gpt or books are all just chat GPT. Right, I said B, I think it's P, like Peter. Chat GPT books, audio books, youtubes, reels, shorts are giving us snippets of. You just have to love yourself more. You just need more power, you just need more.

Speaker 1: 37:48

Insert the thing, boom, hook, close and then we're like but what does that mean? I know what I have to do, but how do I do it? And we're here today, brenda and I, to remind you that you do it one practice, that you do it. One practice, small step at a time. One small step at a time, whether it's meditating on your dream home, sharing with everybody that you want the dream home, deciding that you're not going to take your phone into your room, you're going to live in another room so that even if you want to touch it, it's not there or available for you.

Speaker 1: 38:25

Or deciding I'm going to have a better relationship with money because I am not at a place where I can really work that much harder. Working two, three jobs as a 50-year old is very different than as a 20-year old. How can I learn to live and love to live within my means? Oh, by seeing my bank balances every day. This is going to help me with that.

Speaker 1: 38:49

And, being honest, if you don't know what that looks like and asking other people hey, what does it look like for you to have a good relationship with your phone at night? Hey, what does it look like if you wanted a new home? What would you be doing or practicing? Oh, if you wanted a better relationship with money, where would you start? How would you do things differently? Like turning to your community for ideas and if you want to be led by Brenda or I, we are here. We are open for business, always taking one-to-ones. So if this is the kind of work that you're looking to do, with one of us as your guides, please reach out, click our links. We would love to hear from you On that. Note rate share like this episode. That's it for now.

Speaker 2: 39:38

Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast.

Speaker 1: 39:41

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.