Nancy: The time is now for you to really look at what your life wants to be, what you want your life to be, not based on what other people want for you, not based on convention, not based on what’s acceptable or what’s unacceptable. And really look at what you are feeling inspired by what you’re feeling drawn toward, what you are putting on your own map that was never there before. You get to make things happen that weren’t even in your mind’s eye ever before. Your vision doesn’t need to be realistic. Your vision doesn’t need to be logistical. You don’t need to know how you’re going to get there. You simply need to access your own sense of wanting, your own sense of desire, and then you get to bring it to fruition.
Nancy: Welcome to the Nancy Levin Show. I’m Nancy Levin, Founder of Levin Life Coach Academy, best-selling author, master coach, and your host. I help overachieving people pleasers set boundaries that stick and own self-worth, anchored in empowered action, so you can feel free. Plus, if you’re an aspiring or current coach, you are in the right place. Join me each week for coaching and compelling conversations designed to support you in the spotlight, as you take center stage of your own life. Let’s dive in.
Nancy: Welcome back to The Nancy Levin Show. I am really happy that you’re here with me today. I’m going to share something that has been sort of rolling around in my mind, and it is something I see that occurs often with clients I’m coaching or students I’m training inside of Levin Life Coach Academy when we are addressing the concept of vision.
So it seems that people lean one way or the other. Either they have a flourishing sense of vision that is chock full of passion, or they have an inability to see whatever it is they might envision. And I really get this because I lived much of my life without being able to see what I wanted. I didn’t have a sense of wanting because ultimately I had prided myself in not having any needs. I had grown up in a family where my older brother was very sick when I was born, he died when I was two. And so the beliefs that got imprinted in me at that time were beliefs like “better be self-sufficient and have no needs because other people’s needs are more important than yours.” Beliefs like there must be something wrong with me since there had been something wrong with him and he died, I thought, well, there must be something wrong with me. And then the belief that if I’m imperfect like he is, I will die.
So all of these shadow beliefs sort of were stewing around in me as I grew. And ultimately, I prided myself in having no wants and needs. And I became a chameleon. I just wanted to attend to everyone else’s needs. I was a peacekeeper, a people pleaser, a conflict avoider. I knew that the best way to keep myself safe was just going along with what everyone else wanted. And so I didn’t really have any clue what I wanted. And in fact, I only knew what to even consider wanting by what was available, what was on the table, so to speak.
So I didn’t even know how to want beyond what was in front of me. And what I was very tuned into was how to get things for other people, how to make things happen based on other people’s desires. In fact, I remember one of the relationships I was in, he, we were sort of sitting out on our deck eating dinner, and he had said to me, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a zip line from here to there? And of course, my mind immediately tries to concoct the way to get a zip line. And it’s not rational. It’s not my responsibility, it’s not reasonable. But that was the way that I knew how to ensure that I was safe and loved. Let me do everything I can to bring your dreams to life. And when I was married, that was really what threw me over the edge. I had sublimated all my wants and needs in order to fulfill all of his.
And so if, if anyone said to me that they wanted something or wanted something to happen, I took it on as my project. I took it on as something I needed to do. And I had a reputation in my personal life and in my job at Hay House, I was literally known as the queen of the impossible. It’s how I got all my value and all my worth by what I was able to make happen. And I was so consumed with that, that I ultimately felt suffocated by everyone else’s wants and needs because I had been abandoning mine for so long, I had lost sight of making myself any kind of priority. I had no idea what was of ultimate value to me.
So once I was able to look at the fact that I was consumed with what everyone else wanted and needed, and once I was ultimately in the space of my own, I was able to calibrate toward my own sense of desire, my own sense of wanting. And I was able to see that my own sense of desire was extremely limited because I thought that the only things I could want were things that were in front of me, or the things that made sense, or the things that were practical. I have not historically been one who daydreams. I don’t live in fantasy. My feet are on the ground. I’m not wishing and hoping. I’m very practical, and I like a practical process. And so I like to know what’s possible. And every single thing in my life shifted when I began to see that I did not have to limit my vision or my desires based on what was available. I could actually want something that I didn’t even know was possible.
Nancy: In conversations with coaching clients and students, I keep hearing the same thing.” I just wanna feel in control again, take a deep breath and enjoy my life, but everything feels so out of whack.” If this sounds like you join me for my FREE live virtual workshop, From Chaos to Confidence: Tune in, Take Control, and Live Your Truth, so you can quiet the noise and get back on track. Visit nancylevin.com/workshop to save your free seat now, and I will see you very soon.
Nancy: So the reason all of this has been swimming around in my head is that I am child free by choice, and I am solo by choice. And these are things that were not on the table when I was a kid. Everything was about getting married and having babies, and everything was focused on do you do have a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a person. I actually never knew it was possible to desire a life where I wasn’t part of a couple, where I didn’t have children, until I realized that I could create my life however I wanted it to be.
So I’m offering this to you today simply because I wonder if you are limiting yourself around your sense of vision or desire based on only what you’ve witnessed, instead of actually allowing yourself to have a vision for your life that is not on the map that you have been attached to. Being child free and solo was not on the map of my childhood. And in fact, when I got married, my mother said to me, why do you keep telling me you don’t wanna have children? And I said, well, if you keep asking me, I will keep telling you. So she finally stopped asking. And what I’ve noticed in the past few years is I have no desire to date, and I don’t have any desire at all to have a constant companion. I really love living life with myself. I love the life I’ve created solo. I have incredibly close family and friends, but I don’t feel any need to be part of a couple. And it seems a little suspect to some people because our society and convention is oriented toward primary romantic relationships. And, I’ve not been vocal about this, but I’ve not been silent either. And what is amazing and awesome is that I’ve noticed there are books and podcasts and people who are sharing more and more about these kinds of choices that are unconventional or that are not on the table. And you know, no one says, well, here are your options. You can be in a relationship or not. You can have children or not. Everything when we’re young is geared toward getting us into that primary romantic relationship. And I think to myself, if being solo had been on the table for me as a kid, how different my life would be. Because I often think my teenage self had it right, I was a loner, I was not someone who had a lot of friends, nor did I want a lot of friends. I was most happy alone in my room with my journal, my books, my schoolwork, and it wasn’t really part of my existence to be out partying and meeting people and doing all of that. I, I didn’t date until I was in college and even then it felt really forced. It felt very inauthentic, but it was just one of those things like, everyone else is doing this I guess I should do this too. And even I think back to the first time I had sex, I was like this, this is what everyone is talking about. It seemed incomprehensible to me. And you know, obviously through the years I’ve had great sex. I’ve had wonderful relationships, I’ve had shitty relationships, I’ve had all the things.
But I really just wanted to talk about this today because I really think that so many of us go through the motions in our lives based on what other people want for us, based on what we think we need to do in order to not feel inadequate in some way. And we end up caving into societal pressure. You know, again, had there been this option on the table, you can go this way or that way, you can actually make a choice about coupling or being solo or whatever feels authentic to you. Things could be really different.
So I invite you to look at what are the things that you did not know were on the table for you? What are the things that maybe your teenage self had right in some way – that you ended up betraying, that you now find yourself calibrating toward? What are the desires that might be unconventional, that might be unacceptable to some, but really ring true with your heart?
I feel like now is the time more than ever before for us to stand in our authenticity. For us to really know how resilient we are around what it is that we want. And it is our right to expand our capacity for desire and wanting, receiving and having.
And something that is just sort of coming in right now is that my friend, Mindy Pelz, who some of you might know, she was on my podcast a couple months ago, she wrote a fabulous book called Fast Like a Girl. We’ve been talking about this concept lately about how there’s an idea that is in the field, in the zeitgeist, and it’s just sort of waiting for someone to grab hold of it and run with it, expressing it. And it could be you, it could be me, but it’s going to come into the world somehow.
It reminds me of a podcast I listened to years ago with Roseanne Cash, the Daughter of Johnny Cash, and it was the On Being podcast. And she talked about this concept of song catching, that there’s a song in the air, and maybe I will grab it and get it down on paper and guitar, or maybe you will, but it’s going to come into the world no matter what. And I, I guess I’m talking about this because I feel like the time is now for you to really look at what your life wants to be, what you want your life to be, not based on what other people want for you, not based on convention, not based on what’s acceptable or what’s unacceptable. And you know, really look at what you are feeling inspired by what you’re feeling drawn toward, what you are putting on your own map that was never there before. You get to make things happen that weren’t even in your mind’s eye ever before. Your vision doesn’t need to be realistic. Your vision doesn’t need to be logistical. You don’t need to know how you’re going to get there. You simply need to access your own sense of wanting your own sense of desire, and then you get to bring it to fruition. And just by naming it, you’re already speaking it into existence. You are already creating momentum for it to come.
So this is your invitation. What is it that your teenage self was right about? Or what is it that you rebelled against? Or what is it that you betrayed in yourself at one time and it’s time to recalibrate now? it might not be anything that anyone else understands, and it doesn’t matter. What matters most is that you are living in alignment with what is most true for you. And I really truly feel passionate about each of us living the most true, honest, authentic, aligned, self connected life that we can because I know what it’s like to now honor that teenager I was, who had it right all those years ago. I invite you to find that part of yourself that you have repressed or pushed down, suppressed, denied, and bring it now into the light.
Thanks so much for joining me. I look forward to being with you again next time.
Thanks so much for joining me today. I invite you to head on over to nancylevin.com to check out all the goodies I have there for you. And if you’ve enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a rating and a review. I’ll meet you back here next week.