108 ~ How To Move Beyond Quick Fixes

The space between knowing something and embodying it is where transformation happens. In this conversation, Catherine and Brenda explore what it takes to move from intellectual understanding to living change as second nature.

Catherine shares her 20-year journey of opening her heart and building healthy boundaries. What began as a desire for deeper relationships required years of therapy, confronting judgment, untangling codependence, and resisting the urge to rescue others. She reflects on moments of doubt and pain, and how her commitment to meaningful connection kept her moving forward.

Brenda reflects on her daily yoga and dance practice, now as natural as brushing her teeth but built through years of steady effort. Together, they emphasize that embodiment cannot be rushed or handed off to someone else. It is a deeply personal upgrade that requires patience, practice, and persistence.

This episode will especially resonate with those who understand growth concepts yet struggle to live them out. Catherine and Brenda challenge the quick-fix promises in personal development and speak honestly about the discomfort, uncertainty, and unexpected challenges that real transformation brings.

They invite listeners to ask: What desire is calling you into embodiment, and are you willing to walk through the messy middle to honor it?

Episode Highlights
• Morning practices as examples of embodied desires that become second nature
• How listening well requires noticing patterns and practicing consistently
• Catherine's 20-year journey to open her heart and create boundaries
• Moving beyond judgment, codependence, and rescuing others
• The new challenges that appear after transformation
• Why intellectuals often struggle to embody what they know
• Pain and difficulty as necessary catalysts for growth
• Embodiment as a personal upgrade only you can create

What's your invitation? What desire is calling you from within, and do you have the courage to follow it? Rate, Review, and Share this episode. We'd love to hear from you.

Chapters

• 2:05 The Gap Between Knowing and Embodying
• 5:29 Morning Practices and Personal Transformation
• 10:22 Learning to Be a Better Listener
• 16:52 Opening the Heart: Catherine's 20-Year Journey
• 29:57 The Pain Required for Change
• 37:10 Embracing New Problems with Growth
• 44:40 Closing Thoughts and Invitation

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.

Speaker 2: 0:58

Even after decades of inner work, 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, piece that is often overlooked being responsible for our desire.

Speaker 2: 1:28

Welcome back to the Desire as Medicine podcast. We are so excited to be here with you all today. This is Brenda and I am with my amazing, beautiful co-host, catherine, and this is very exciting because usually Catherine opens. So if you're like, whose voice is that opening? Well then you're in for a treat, because I am opening today. It just worked out that way and I'm really excited about it.

Speaker 2: 1:56

So Catherine brought up this amazing topic in our last episode, which is the difference between knowing and embodying. How do we actually embody something? There's something that we want, but how do we actually have it and walk around with it in the world where it's just part of our being, where it's just natural to who we are, where it's just natural to who we are? There's some gap in the middle that we need to be willing to sit with and walk through and move through. Some desire, something that we want, that we have to be willing to listen to and follow, and maybe fall and fail and mess up or completely forget and then come back to. And what does that look like? So we gave a bunch of examples in our last episode and I just didn't feel done with it because I think there's so much more to talk about and we hear about this all the time Three steps to loving yourself, five steps to losing weight, 20 days to having a profitable Instagram. There's a lot more to it and I'll give you an example.

Speaker 2: 3:13

This morning I woke up and I'm at my lake right now for the summer and I was down by the lake and I'm doing yoga and I have a new part of my morning yoga practice where I'm dancing. I love to dance and I don't dance every morning. I usually do dance every day actually but this new practice kind of emerged inside, where I'm doing my yoga and my dancing together and I'm dancing in the morning and I thought to myself as the sun was shining down wow, this is pretty amazing. This is just my natural part of the day. I do this every single day and it's not like, oh, I'm so great or anything. It's not that it's just that I wanted that, oh, I'm so great, or anything. It's not that it's just that I wanted that. I wanted a morning practice. I need a morning practice so that I can feel good about my day. It's actually a time for me to wake up, get into my body, stretch my body. I do my yoga and I could feel my body like creaking and cracking and moving and opening, and I just feel like I'm opening myself up for the day. And I was just sitting there going, wow, I'm so proud of myself.

Speaker 2: 4:37

This isn't typical for people Like I do know a lot of people who have a really great morning practice and who do yoga or running or whatever it is that they do every morning, but most people that I talk to most of my clients that I've had don't and they want it, and I'm like, wow, I've really done this. I've really done this, I've really given this to myself, where this isn't something that I have to want anymore, it's not something that I have to figure out how to have, I just have it. And how do we do that with more things in our life? There's certainly things in my life that I want that I don't quite have yet, and so how do we go about that? Catherine, what comes up for you around this?

Speaker 1: 5:27

Well, I think that we also have to have a delineation Some things that we want to have that we are the sole creators of, like your morning practice. You are the sole creator of that morning practice. Nobody can really do it for you. It's not something that can be outsourced versus something else that you may want that's outside of you. That would require different things. So I think that when we're talking about for today's conversation, we're thinking about desires and creation, moving from, or providing examples of moving from knowledge to embodiment in things that cannot be outsourced, that can only be done by us. One of the sparks or the ignition to this is wanting it.

Speaker 1: 6:23

I don't really have a morning practice, other than I don't know how to describe this but it's less about what I do. It's more about what I don't do, the things that I just do not do in the morning. But I think you would do this morning practice even if you were away on vacation. You would still do yoga, potentially dance, every day. Like these are things that have become part of you, who you are, no matter what, and they can't necessarily be outsourced and the circumstances don't change the outcome. So that's the biggest thought that I have when you were describing your morning practice and the things that you do. I'm like, oh, whether Brenda's home, staying at a friend's, or on vacation or traveling like when you were traveling the United States not that long ago, you probably still had this practice.

Speaker 2: 7:16

Yeah, totally, and I think that's exactly the point that we're getting to here. That I would love to flesh out more is it just is part of my day. It is like brushing my teeth when I talk to people about it, but it wasn't always that way. I didn't always do this. Part of it was I started doing yoga 20 years ago and I was like, oh, this is really cool, I could do some of these poses. Then I had some body pain and I learned a specific yoga pose pigeon. That actually helped with that pain, and so I started doing that every day and then it built up over time and I can say, no matter what happens in my day, whether I'm on vacation I was on a retreat last week. Even if I'm bringing someone to the airport at five in the morning, I will do a few of my yoga poses to just get myself going for the day, and I think it's a great example of truly embodying something and this isn't about a morning practice, but it's like anything that we want. How do we embody it? And like another example of something that I wanted that I really had to work for was years ago, when I became part of a community that was really all about connection and learning how to put attention out on other people, and it started to become into my awareness that I really wasn't that great at that, that I was very much like everyone else walking around, where I would just be in a conversation and then quickly turn it back to myself, which is typically how people are walking around the world too. About this assembly that I went to when I was teaching, where the speaker, after he gave his speech and his whole thing, he listened to people in a way that touched me so deeply and I thought to myself that was the first spark of this particular desire. I want to be able to listen to people this much and I saw how he did not ever turn it towards himself.

Speaker 2: 9:30

So many years later, when I was in this community, I had the opportunity to practice it and I saw all these people who were really good at asking high quality questions that would kind of have someone open and like really be willing to share about themselves with this high quality attention. And I didn't have that skill at all. I was always just turning it back to myself. It took me a long time to learn that, a lot of practicing and a lot of noticing with myself, like, oh wow, when people are talking, I very much just turn it back to myself, and this was something that I really wanted to learn and it took me a really long time to learn it.

Speaker 2: 10:12

A lot of practice, a lot of practice of being in conversations with people, where I would notice myself, turn it back to myself, and I didn't like that. So, okay, we're going to try again tomorrow. We're going to ask questions, be in a conversation, see if I can put attention on other people. And then I hit another part of the practice, which was this is so funny when you're learning something new, noticing other people and how they don't do it, and I was like, oh wow, look at him and look at her, how they just constantly bring the attention back to themselves instead of being a good listener.

Speaker 2: 10:49

So I had to go through that part of being like kind of judgy about it with other people to get to the point of saying, oh, you know, we're all at different skill levels and maybe some people just don't actually care about this, but it was something that I really cared about and it's taken me a long time to know how to do that and then also to be patient when other people aren't doing that. So it's like, how do we learn and truly embody something? You know, if we're talking about what we want in our life, how do we become the person who can have it? Any thoughts you have?

Speaker 1: 11:23

Yeah, I would go even slower. I think so. Even this is a great example learning how to be a good listener and learning how to be in conversation and all the thoughts I think with school. I'm thinking about teachers, I'm thinking about public speaking or even being on, let's say, like a debate team. You're listening to someone and you're listening for what you're going to argue, whether for or against. You're not really in the conversation. You're sort of trying to anchor your response before it's even time for you to respond. You're sort of like one foot's on the gas already. This is a great example for this.

Speaker 1: 11:59

When we're thinking about embodiment, what I continue to see in this conversation is knowing the person that we want to be and knowing the qualities that we need to have in order to be this person, and it not being so easy to follow through on the qualities that we need to be doing in order to be that person, that we need to be doing in order to be that person. So, if we want to have meaningful connections and meaningful conversations, one of the qualities is being a good listener and asking good questions, and then you slowly start to notice well, I don't really enjoy having this level of attention on someone when they either never ask me a question, they don't show up to the conversation in the same way that I do. It is all about them. Wow, this person really took 40 minutes to tell me this story. And how do you stay with? I want to have deeper connections with people. It will require me to put my attention out onto someone else, and this may not be something that this person is practicing or that it's even in their awareness, and it's not my business to tell them. And so what I'm hearing is us describing how we have these qualities currently that are completely work, unconsciously, competent in them, and it took us time to get here Some trials, some errors, some judgments, some other things.

Speaker 1: 13:36

Creating this is very different than creating. I'm living in my dream home. Because I'm living in my dream home requires so many other steps than I'm going to be a good listener. I'm going to be a good listener. There's usually desire there, the desire being I want to have more meaningful conversations, potentially, or I want to feel more connected when I talk to people. And how do we embody that? The example that I'm thinking of right now with myself I know this isn't the first time that I'm going to talk about it on the podcast is I didn't really have full access to the full range of emotions up until maybe in my 30s or somewhere between 30 and 33 or something of that nature.

Speaker 1: 14:17

It was very limited. And touching that and opening that for me to feel emotions my goal wasn't oh, I want to feel emotion. That wasn't the goal. The goal was, or the noticing was, I am in conversation with people and they're going through something that, for them, is really big and I can't touch it Like I in no way, shape or form can identify with whatever they're going through, and so it has me be really disconnected and really detached. It's going to require something from me and me being able to open up my own heart. To be in conversation with someone took years and it didn't start at I'm going to do this in conversation Like the practice in order for me to get there was like a thousand steps back for me to begin to feel and grieve and feel other things that I had suppressed for very long time in order to get to that location, to become closer and get closer to becoming the kind of person that can and wants to feel into another human so that I can be connected to them.

Speaker 1: 15:31

I had a. I guess even still now to a certain extent. I can feel deeply, but I'm not a bleeding heart. I'm very boundaried in that way. I don't just live in somebody's energy field. On the contrary, I keep my energy very tight and it could be because I'm an energy worker. But for the most part I'm not like spreading myself into other people's spaces. I'm very intentional with where I'm going and where I'm investing my time and energy. For sure, and when I say energy, I just I really mean I don't mean to bring in this other component of myself, but I'm very mindful of what is in my toroidal field, what is in my auric space, I.

Speaker 1: 16:18

But even that took years to develop and years of practice. I didn't, at five, know how to do this. I did not, at 10, know how to do this. I didn't even know that. I didn't know how to do it. I just didn't know what I didn't know.

Speaker 1: 16:33

Then, when I became aware of it, I said oh, I really want to practice and learn how to do this, for my own sanity and then for my own connection. My own sanity was I don't want to be connected with just anything. And then my own discernment became oh, but in the places that I do want to be connected, how do I connect if I've made sure that my energy is pristine and tight and nobody can get in? Oh, that was my first lesson in learning. You can't close your heart just to some things and not others. If you're closing your heart, it's all things Like. That location of your heart is just closed. You can't voluntarily open and close to something. If it's closed, it's closed. It's closed even to the things you want and that took some, yes, did I go too far out.

Speaker 2: 17:24

No, it was absolutely gorgeous, and I think that you're talking about something that people want and they're curious about, and I love how you just talked about this from such a deep expertise point of view, because you have this, you have this piece, you embody this, and what I hear you saying is that you weren't always this way. She's shaking her head, rolling her eyes, going oh no, folks, she didn't always have this peace and that's the beauty of it is that you are a living, walking embodiment of it, just like I am with my morning practice. But it wasn't always that way. How do we get there?

Speaker 2: 18:04

And I really do think that we have a particular soul's journey. We all have these things to learn in our life, and the things that we're interested in and kind of called towards, pulled to, are part of that. I would love to hear more if you're willing to expand on this open heart that you've learned to have, because you wanted to be connected to people, because you felt disconnected and you've become really aware of what's in your space. You've had sanity and discernment you've talked about, and you also are really intentional and you have boundaries, but can you?

Speaker 1: 18:49

slow it down a little bit and maybe give us an example of what it looked like in the middle and how you got there. It might require me to go a little further back. So for me, I was good. I was walking through the world, I was connecting with people and it was at my comfort level. Clearly, I was closed off, so I was totally cool. I'm like we can commingle like this.

Speaker 1: 19:08

But I was having conversations with loved ones that would say to me things like I know what you're thinking, I can see it on your face, and potentially they felt like I had disapproval, disapproval, and I didn't really feel like I was outwardly showing my disapproval. And I didn't really feel like I was outwardly showing my disapproval, but clearly it must have been there. It happened enough times that I thought, oh, I need to work on my judgment. So much so that just the other day, one of my family members said to me well, what do you care about? Because I just don't. When something's not mine, it is just not mine. I have taken that gift and been like, oh, this job here that I see, I see the problem and the solution is not mine, it's zero, my lane. And so my response to my family member was like, oh, I really care about what's mine. Like, really, if something is my responsibility, I care a shit ton about that, because of what I've learned in this discernment is that nobody can handle that but me can handle that. But me, what is mine cannot be outsourced. So if I have to become a better version of myself, if I have to insert whatever upgrade there is, the only person that can create that upgrade is me. So I care a lot about that. So that was the first part.

Speaker 1: 20:42

Okay, I started to notice and have people tell me that they felt like I had judgment and I also had tons of opinions and I would feel inside of me like I have got to tell this person what I'm thinking. It felt like if I didn't tell them, I was going to die, I was going to burst. It had this sense of urgency, like I need to tell them. They need to know because I know I am urgency. Like I need to tell them they need to know because I know I am right and I need to tell them, I need to warn them. I felt like you know I'm an oracle, I need to warn you. And the truth is that I did not. I did not need to warn them about shit. It was not my problem.

Speaker 1: 21:19

Can you imagine like the stressor, the sense of urgency, all that adrenaline in my body for no reason? It was not mine to have, it was not mine to own. Was it painful? It used to feel like I could watch, like I was watching a train crash in slow motion and I wanted to tell the person to get out of the way. Watching a train crash in slow motion and I wanted to tell the person to get out of the way. And what I've learned is if I'm watching a train crash in slow motion like it's not my crash, I'm literally watching it and I'm only watching it because I'm not the person that's going to get hit. It's literally not mine. That took a long time. That took a lot of faith.

Speaker 1: 22:08

I've also had a different family member say to me how are you so spiritual, so knowledgeable and still believe in god? I have a lot of family members who have really exercised their knowledge, muscle and God is not a God. It is like evolution and science takes such a front seat. And I said I don't know if I would have the peace that I have in walking through the world If I didn't think that all the things that I've let go of, that I thought I had to control, were not in God's hands. I know I've talked about this before. I'm slightly choked up now, but I honestly believe, with everything that is me, that there is something bigger than me that is at work and that the things that I used to nitpick about are not mine and it's God's business. And I think that really grew my faith. I think part of what had me want to control so many things was that I was lacking faith and really thought that my action was imminent, like I had to jump in. And now I know that that is completely untrue. I do not have to jump in. It's either me. Someone else, like God, has it covered.

Speaker 1: 23:37

So I've talked about, I've slowed down. I talked about the judgment, non-judgment. I've talked about how people didn't feel seen by me or felt judged by me. Then I would hear a feedback that I would get, and you know they say you don't have to take everybody's opinion and criticism. I just heard it a lot, so I heard it enough that I said okay, there must be some truth about what people are saying.

Speaker 1: 24:01

And the other thing was. I could see people have connections, but I wouldn't feel so connected Like I was invested, but not like them invested, and maybe I was looking at enmeshment or codependence. It's very possible I don't have that much sight for that long ago, but I can say that I didn't have really any of it. I was so avoidant, to use like therapeutic language so avoidant, I was like, oh, that looks like chaos, I don't want any of that. Or that looks sticky or tricky, I don't want any of that. But I did want to feel connected. So there was a disconnect. Right, I want to feel connected but I'm avoidant. You can't be avoided and connected. That's not one of the ways that you get there.

Speaker 1: 24:50

So it required for me to see and start working with, well, what are all the things that have me avoid? Right, that was one thing had to work on that. Also, my desire to jump in, my codependence, my need to fix things had to deal with that. My desire to rescue had to deal with that. My seeing people as incapable had to deal with that. I mean, there are so many steps you, brenda, you told me to back up, but there's like tons of stuff, tons of things that I had to work through in order to be able to accept life, as is Like to really truly embody. What I have now isn't three steps to freedom, it's like tons of tons of steps.

Speaker 1: 25:39

So I'm trying to recall what I stated, but avoidant, and how to be present, not codependent, not enmeshed, not have to rescue people, not see people as victims. I used to do that a lot, like if I saw someone being talked down to or like there was a bully. I needed to let that person know no, you don't do that. But it wasn't my lesson. I was able to say don't do that. So that wasn't my lesson. It was up to the person to say you can't do that to me. So all of these steps were steps that had to be taken in order for me to become the kind of person that's like, oh, there's my lane, there's God's lane and there's this other person's lane and God created all of it and we're all sparks of God and it's fine.

Speaker 2: 26:31

Thank you for that. That was a beautiful, generous explanation, and I have a little logistical question before we go on, just for the purpose of this conversation how long would you say it took you to learn this lesson? Because we're talking about these. Things take a long time. How many years about, would you say?

Speaker 1: 26:57

Maya, I would say that it's a stacking thing. Right, I worked on emotions themselves, for I mean, at first I thought I was going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, like legit. I was in therapy then and I would ask my therapist. So I always forget why I'm here. My life was working just fine. I need you to remind me of my desire. Why am I even here? Because what I'm going through is extremely painful, and so my therapist would say you're here because you want a deeper relationship. So I'm like okay, thanks, like why am I doing this again? Why am I torturing myself in this way? And the reason was one of the biggest things. I haven't even talked about this yet.

Speaker 1: 27:47

When I started to feel it became really hard to decide because I had never taken emotions into account. I was very black and white. I either wanted it or didn't want it. Hands down, and people used to say, well, but how do you feel about it? I used to say, but well, how I feel about it doesn't matter, it was a complete. It was a complete non-issue, like it did not matter. So once I started to really work on my heart space and started to feel everything so deeply well, I felt schizo, like what is happening to my mind. I could not. It was there was so much noise Like I feel like this, I feel like that, I feel like, and I was like, oh my goodness, how does anybody decide? And that took some time. Maybe I started to feel like I could feel and think and decide. It took maybe six years to get to that place.

Speaker 1: 28:39

By that point, I would say, I was able to stay in my lane, I was able to feel and decide. The things I had not gotten to yet was I still had tons of codependence to work on Tons of places where I was enmeshed, tons of places where I was getting involved in shit that was not my business. I was still in other people's lanes. Yeah, is there anything, any particular part or attribute? Because I feel like maybe the past five years I felt the most free in this arena, and so that would mean 20, 15, 15 years, and God bless my clients. I have clients that ask me this question and I would be lying if I said this happened overnight. I used to see my therapist and go to group therapy, so I saw him twice a week for six years and for three of those I was asking him to remind me why I was in the room.

Speaker 1: 29:35

Once I opened that Pandora's box of emotions, I realized why I pushed everything down and was avoidant for sure, and I felt so at the mercy of, and I didn't want that for the rest of my life. I wanted to embody that I was not at the mercy of, and we teach. A big part of our work you and I is teaching victim consciousness, and that didn't come into my realm of of. It wasn't even that. Those teachings weren't even present for me until like 2017. It hasn't even been 10 years, and that was that teaching really helped a lot like so much. It put so many things in perspective in 2017, when I decided, oh, everything is relationship. I want to dive deeper into relationship dynamics relationship dynamics with myself, with others, because by that point, I already had the soil right. I had worked on my avoidant, I had worked on my judgment, I had worked on my openness. There were so many other pieces that I had worked on in that twin body, like the level of discernment and confidence that I have now. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 30:55

So basically you're saying 20 years is what I hear you saying, and I wanted to break that down because I think this is a really important piece when we're talking about going from knowing something in your brain or, even before that, wanting something to knowing it. Reading books you can read a lot of books to learn something, but you don't actually do it. You can talk to people about boundaries, but if you don't have boundaries, it's just nothing to fully embodying it. Where you are walking around the world embodying something, it takes folks 20 years and there's all these doorways that open and what I heard you say I got to some soil. So it's like almost like you had to work through all of these pieces so many pieces and each piece could take years and you didn't even know those pieces were there To get to soil where you could actually start planting things and see things growing and see change.

Speaker 2: 32:13

It's like you have to clean out the basement before you can set up a new living room down there. You have to be willing to do the work and to walk into your therapist's office and say why am I here? Remind me why I'm here, and be willing to do that and not just walk out the door because it doesn't make any sense. There was something deeper that you wanted and it's just absolutely beautiful and I think it's really important. When we're talking about learning how to embody something, this isn't something that you can learn overnight. We're not teaching that and I think that's false when you see it in the world. It's false. If you take a program that's, you know, eight weeks to XYZ, yeah, you'll learn something, but you're not going to fully embody it. You know when it takes Catherine 20 years to get this piece.

Speaker 1: 33:04

I think there's two things of what you've that you've mentioned that I want to like put my finger on. Which is you can learn. I could have learned oh, my heart's not open. I could have learned oh, I'm operating from my avoidant, but it took a certain amount of handholding and somebody being with me, walking me through for me to get to the other side, and I don't know any other way to do it. So it's possible that Generation Z won't have to. I think Xers are doing a lot of the work, right. Maybe millennials and people will learn from our example. So I think people who are maybe Brenda, when your daughter has kids, has kids right, like we're talking about two generations of healing that child will potentially have certain things that are completely like what's what I'm looking for?

Speaker 2: 34:04

unheard of or no thought. They'll be natural to that child where I've had to crawl through the dirt with like worms in my mouth to learn these things and then, two generations later, it's just more natural and this is how we evolve and it's worth it, and we are in a big healing period right now.

Speaker 1: 34:29

What do you mean when you say we are in a big healing period? The world, earth people.

Speaker 2: 34:34

There's just a growing consciousness. That's around you. Just see it everywhere. There is a desire for more healing and for consciousness that I see, that feels new.

Speaker 1: 34:47

I feel like the words are around, like I see lots of people that talk to me and they have the verbiage and they can speak the therapy piece or therapy talk or coachy talk, and this is even why we're having this podcast episode.

Speaker 2: 35:07

I don't see as much embodiment 100%, and there are people who are embodying this and there's people that are talking about it, and it's all welcome. You know, I don't recommend teaching something that you don't embody. I don't think it works really great. I don't think that you can really teach something if you're not really embodying it, and we're seeing a lot of that in the world.

Speaker 1: 35:34

I didn't mean it from that perspective. I meant it from the perspective that sometimes I'll have students that are like I know all of this, but they don't see the translation, and it's almost like there's no conversation about the embodied piece, because we're talking to each other from a place of knowledge, like did you, do you know that you need to have more self-love, or do you know that you need to have boundaries, or do you know that you have to stand up for yourself? Well, yeah, everybody knows that. Right, that part is understood. The implementation piece is the difficult part. It's like I know how to drive a car. That's all put together. But if you give it to me in pieces, like I don't know how to put it together, like I don't know that part. And that's more of what I mean when I say embodiment.

Speaker 1: 36:19

I feel like I am seeing a different level of frustration, especially around intellectuals. But I have not had the words to describe other than what I'm using right now and I'm hoping that this becomes even better and more fluid for me and something that we can talk about as we're hashing it out right here. It's really frustrating for individuals that are intellectual, because they know what they're supposed to be doing and they don't understand why they're not doing it and they're like what is somebody going to teach me that I don't already know? I'm just not doing it and the one thing for sure that I know is a culprit of this is that there's not enough pain. There is not enough pain to want to do it differently. So there's no reason to do it differently. Like if you're just walking around like a jerk to everyone but you still have whatever you want, well, there's no reason to change you. Being a jerk, you get to just be the jerk that has everything. Like that's a possibility, there's no pain around it.

Speaker 1: 37:25

Or I have friends who have done really well for themselves and they have children and they'll tell me this kid does not have grit. I'm like, of course they don't. They didn't have to fight tooth and nail to get what they needed the way that you did. Your children don't have that. They're a different generation because you made it easy for them. We think about some of the hardships that we've gone through and we don't tend to pause and say, wow, what that gave me. So for me, it took me 20 years to get here and that was so hard and I could have quit. But wow, look what I have. If I had children which I don't, but if I did, maybe my children wouldn't have to fight tooth and nail to get what I have. Maybe they'd be able to model it or learn through modeling, but they also won't have the reward of having gone through it. That is something that I don't think passes through modeling it can't.

Speaker 2: 38:34

Yeah, that's a really great point and thank you for bringing that in. I really wanted to talk about and show and I think you did that really beautifully how long it actually takes and what you have to be willing to sit with to make a change, to really embody something, to own it and embody it and then potentially pass it on. And even though you don't have your own children, you have nieces and nephews, there's future generations, you have clients that you work with, that you are teaching this thing because you embody it. And I think that's a really important piece that I wanted to bring in was you know, you said at the beginning that these are things that can only be done with yourself. You can't outsource it.

Speaker 2: 39:14

That's what's so beautiful about desire is that desire comes to us right, it lands in our body. It comes to us like a spark or a wave or however it lands for you. There's something that you want, whatever it is. Maybe it's a morning practice, or maybe it's to have an open heart or better relationships, or to be a better listener, or to own a home. Whatever the thing is, there's something that we're called to, that's particular for us and only we can do it and we're not going to maybe do all the things in our life, right, maybe we will, but we're called to something that's particular for us. It's like it's prescribed and coded just for us, for our own evolution, and that's what's so beautiful about it.

Speaker 2: 40:03

And we see people in the world our teachers, you know our spiritual teachers, or even just your college professors. They know something. We're like wow, how do you know all of that? How do you sit up and teach this thing To some of my spiritual teachers? Wow, how do you know how to work with people in that way? I would be amazed at that. And the beautiful thing is that they've worked at it. They've somehow were called to something and they had the gumption to follow it.

Speaker 2: 40:45

And, like you said, it can be painful, it can be time consuming, it can feel like torture. The voices are noisy and loud, there's uncertainty, it's messy, it brings you new problems. It's like, oh, I didn't have this problem before. I was really happy, walking around, closed in the world, and now I have all these new problems. One of my teachers used to say oh, you have your desire, great. Now you have new problems. And are you willing to sit with that? Or are you just saying well, I wanted the three-step process. Well, that's not what we're teaching here. Anything that you would like to add into this, catherine?

Speaker 1: 41:37

You just touched on something that's so important. Yes, we're talking today about things that are ours, that only we can do, that we cannot outsource. We don't think about the problems that we will have when we're that version of us that we're striving to become so. For example, like I mentioned earlier, one of my family members saying to me well, what do you care about? Because they can see that I'm so detached, they can see that I'm not in the judgment arena, they can see that I'm not like pushing my opinions all the time, probably with my family, is the times that they can see that I'm not like pushing my opinions all the time, probably with my family, is the times that I most will cross that line, potentially that I'll feel like really compelled to share something.

Speaker 1: 42:21

I didn't think I would ever have a problem with people telling me that they're upset that I'm not giving my opinion Because I was completely on the other side. Right, I had tons of opinions and tons of judgments. How could I foresee that in the future, when I don't have that, people will be like but if you did have an opinion, what would it be? But if you did have a judgment, what would you be thinking? Okay, I understand you're not judging right now, but if you did, if you had to like people really want to know and I didn't see it as a problem.

Speaker 1: 42:55

I could not foresee that that would be a problem or that some people will feel potentially like I have to be, with the discomfort in my body of how some people may feel not loved because I don't have an opinion, may feel unseen because I don't have an opinion, may feel that I'm avoidant because I don't have an opinion, or may have other like there is something else that's happening on that side that I could not foresee. We think that when we get to the place where we get to be the person that we want to be, we have that identity shift or we have a desire and we become this different version of us that that version doesn't have problems. And it's not true. I see you smiling.

Speaker 2: 43:40

It's just so great and it's a whole other journey to learn the skills to be with that. It's a beautiful evolution, it's a beautiful invitation and it is an up level, it's an upgrade and there's so much more. I feel like we can just keep going forever and that's why we're in season three here, and I want to close with this quote that you said, catherine, which is so beautiful that you're the only person who can create the upgrade, that you're the only person who can create the upgrade. You said the only person who can create the upgrade is me. You have an invitation, and so we're asking you, listeners, what is your invitation? What's your desire, what's the invitation that you feel coming from the universe, coming from inside of you, and do you have the gumption to follow it? Let us know. Thank you so much for being with us today. Like share, give a review. We so so appreciate it. Until next time. Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast.

Speaker 1: 44:54

Desire invites us to be honest, loving and deeply intimate with ourselves and others. You can find our handles in the show notes.

Speaker 2: 45:03

We'd love to hear from you.