Latest / All The Light She Found / Maybe Delulu is the Solulu
Transcript
- kelly: Hello, friends. I'm so glad you're here. I'm Kelly McGurk, your host, for all the light she found. One of the fun things about doing a podcast is literally you have to be much more in tune to life so that you can get topic ideas, right? You gotta kinda be thinking about it all the time. And last week in sessions, a couple of clients were dealing with similar things. And I was like, this is so great for all of us, to be honest. So I Thought today we would talk about being a little delusional. How's that sound? I think it's fine. I saw this quote a couple months ago or a little over a month ago, something like that. And it said, What if Dululu was the Sululu? And I was like, my God, that is awesome. I didn't put it to a podcast yet, but now this is the way life goes. It leads me right to it. Can we bring back a little delusional? Come on, when did we become so afraid of hoping for a really good life? Like when did that happen? When did we just settle into our life and be grateful, which is great, but then not dream bigger? When did we decide that it was super smart to go low, expect less so you're not disappointed? When did pessimism become maturity, I wonder? When did protecting ourselves from disappointment? Become more than letting ourselves believe something beautiful might actually happen to us. Somewhere along the way, a lot of us learned don't get too excited, don't expect too much. Why don't you be realistic, right? You better have a backup plan. Don't get your hopes up. What if it doesn't work? What if you embarrass yourself? What if you fail? I mean, these are things that go through our head, right? Like we're constantly running these kind of, these kind of recordings through our mind. And maybe, just maybe, some of us need to get our hopes up again. I keep hearing people use the word delusional lately, and I'm kind of into it, I'm not gonna lie. Not irresponsible. I'm not saying, hey, kids, let's all quit our job on Monday and go do something amazingly cool that we're not. Really ready for or have a plan for. We still have mortgages. We still need health insurance. We're still gonna look both ways before crossing the street, I hope. Let's be honest. But maybe there's something to being just delusional enough to believe that your life could get better than it is right now. Delusional enough to believe you might meet somebody who can love you really well. Delusional enough to believe your business could actually work, the one you've been thinking on and dreaming about. Maybe delusional enough to think you could change careers at forty, fifty, sixty. Maybe delusional enough to believe you could heal something you thought you were gonna carry forever. Maybe delusional enough to believe the version of your life you secretly want might actually be available to you. What if we've confused fear with wisdom? What if a lot of what we call being realistic is actually just, I don't want to be disappointed again? And I get that. But you guys, there's a cost to constantly protecting yourself from disappointment. Eventually we start protecting ourselves from possibility too. Crap we say to ourselves because we're scared to hope, I mean think about how often we do this. Something good starts happening, and immediately we're like, well, we'll see. I don't want to get too ahead of myself. I'm sure something's gonna go wrong. We almost start apologizing for having a little hope. Someone says, I think I might really love this person, and five people immediately go, just be careful. Have you ever had that? Someone says something like, I really want to start my own business. And everybody suddenly becomes an economist. You know, they've all got feedback. the the market's bad right now or the the economy's rough. I don't think that's safe. Somebody might say to you, I think I want to move. And somebody else might go, what if you hate it? I wanna write a book. Do you know how hard it is to get published? I mean, these are the things that you throw out there to people and you get a lot of feedback and a lot of it is scared thinking. Why are we so committed to rehearsing disaster? I swear we could spend six months preparing emotionally for something terrible that hasn't even happened. But having something wonderful happen, whoa, let's not get crazy with our thoughts here. I don't know, have we ever thought about what if it actually works out? Right? What if it actually all works out? I think we ask ourselves a lot more what if it doesn't than what if it does. I don't know. Maybe you do get a business that's really awesome and it works. What if you actually make the money you've been dreaming of? What if you actually like the place where you move, some city you've never been? What if your nervous system actually can calm down? What if I know this is crazy? We stop feeling so responsible for everybody else. what if we meet friends we haven't met yet? This one's gonna be crazy. What if you actually fall ridiculously in love with a life that you haven't even imagined yet? We act like the negative outcome is the realistic one. But the negative hasn't happened yet either. Not on that topic, maybe. So if we're gonna make stuff up about our future, why don't we make up a really good story? I want to create a delusional list. I think this is so fun to think about. What would I want if I wasn't editing the answer while I was saying it? Not what seems practical. Not what your parents think. Not what your husband or partner would approve of. Not what your friends maybe would support or understand. Not what you think you've earned. What do you actually want? Maybe if you write your delusional list, I want to make really good money doing something I love. Is that really so delusional? I want a relationship that feels safe and exciting. I wanna travel more and see the world. I wanna work less. I would like to meet a friend who actually knows me. I want sex that's really good. Maybe you want a house by the water. Maybe you do want to finally write that book that's been in your brain. Maybe you just want your life to feel a little bigger. And the important part is you don't immediately have to go to explaining how you're going to do all of it. The delusional, the delulu list, let's call it the delulu list. It doesn't have boundaries yet. So I don't know. Why do we always kill our dreams before they even get in the planning stage, right? Like let's say you say, I'd love to go live in Italy for a month. I've said that. And before that sentence even gets to breathe, well, flights are expensive, and what would I do with my dog and my clients? Ma'am, sir, we are seven seconds into the thought of that dream. Can Italy just have one minute where she's not snuffed by all of the reasons why it might not work? Sometimes the first step is simply letting yourself want it without judging and questioning. This is where it came up in therapy. Sometimes delusional has been so far out of our belief system that we forget. We forget how to answer the question, what do you really want? We forget that you can have dreams bigger than what you've been doing. I have done this so many times in my life where I just forget that I can do things. And I'm like, wait, what am I doing? Like, I mean, even silly things. Like, but I'll be like, I've always done it this way. What if I do it this way? What if I decide I like something new and I try it? I think we kind of get caught up in this routine and we do our life as we've always done it. And You know, we used to have Friday night neighbor night. And Friday night neighbor night was the exact same every Friday. You know, we'd go out with the neighbors and we'd go out to dinner and we'd have a few cocktails and we'd come home. And I liked the steadiness of that and to expect it, but like we never thought of anything else on Friday. It was Friday night neighbor night. Like we never thought, maybe we should try a bowling league. I don't know. That one's lame, but I was just throwing things out there. You know, maybe we should. try pickleball on Friday night neighbor night. I don't know. But like it was kind of like you got in this routine that we all looked forward to, but we didn't think outside of any kind of box. That's a really simple one, but it came to my mind when I was thinking of when I don't think outside of the box. even in my career, I've been doing this so long. And sometimes I forget, You can try something totally different. Just because you've always done this doesn't mean you can't go to some trainings and try something totally different. And I'm like, yeah. I can and I have been for the last like 10 years and I've loved it. I've loved shifting gears out of my norm. I just think sometimes we don't give ourselves the room to imagine what we might want. question that I am asking my clients lately is why not you? Why can't you be deeply loved? Why couldn't your next chapter be your favorite chapter? Why couldn't you make more money than you've ever made? Why can't you be the healthiest version of yourself that you've been in years? Why can't you start over? Why can't life sometimes surprise you? You know, I think we forget that sometimes. We look around us and we notice other people who we perceive, by the way. We don't really know, but maybe you perceive their marriage is amazing and you're like, I wish my marriage was like that. Or maybe you perceive that they're completely enjoying their career. Maybe they are, but you're like, that's good for her, not me. Or wow, a friend of mine really has gotten into a health kick and she's a lot of things are changing. That's so good for her, but not me. Why? Why can't it be? There's a lot of people doing it. There's a lot of people doing the things, right? There's people out there seeing the world. There's people out there getting the healthiest version. There's people out there living in great relationships. So why can't we? I think one thing we need to be super careful of, all of us, is we need to be careful whose fear we're borrowing. Sometimes the voice telling you your dreams are too big isn't even yours. Somebody tells you not to start the business because they would be terrified to lose their steady paycheck. Somebody might tell you dating is awful because they had a hard time dating after a difficult marriage. Someone tells you, you better not move now, you'll lose your whole community because they could never leave their family. Someone tells you you're changing because your change makes them uncomfortable. Remember, we talked about that in a previous episode. There will be people who can't change with you. And they're gonna make it your problem. then there's gonna be a whole group of people that are cheering you on, and that's who you have to find. When we're talking about thinking about a bigger life and thinking about what if I could get what I really wanted. You definitely don't want people who aren't doing that because they're not gonna know how to support you in a way that you need. People, including ourselves, friends, often give us advice from their nervous system. You know I had to throw the nervous system in here. Their history, their disappointment, their intolerance for uncertainty, their childhood, their personal relationship with money, their relationship with failure, their fears. Don't forget that, you guys. They're gonna give you advice from their filter. And be careful whose fears you borrow. Because somebody can love you so deeply and still be absolutely wrong about what you are capable of. I have seen this so many times in especially family of origin, where they just don't know how to support you in a way that moves you forward or lifts you up. Somebody can genuinely be wanting to protect you and accidentally talk you out of the very thing that could change your life. And it's not because they're not happy for you or they don't care about you. It's because their fears are showing up. And sometimes when you hear things like, I'm really worried about you, I'd be terrified if I was you. okay. Thank you. You guys, we got to remember, nobody's doing it to harm us. We can listen and consider it and we can actually ask ourselves, is there wisdom in what they're telling us? Because a lot of times there really is. But we don't automatically have to adopt what they're saying as our truth. Before you change your mind because somebody else is scared, ask yourself, is this actually my fear or did somebody hand this to me? I think that's so interesting what you will find. Whose voice is it that's telling you that? Do I believe it or have I just heard it so many times that it feels true? Don't forget, I've already talked about this, but this is really key and it comes up all the time in therapy. People need you to stay the same for their comfort. Sometimes your big dreaming really disrupts their comfort zone. Your personal growth disrupts what they're used to. Your boundaries are going to disrupt people. Your happiness can even disrupt people. Because everybody in your life has gotten used to the version of you that they know. So just remember that when you are making changes and when you start to maybe dream a little bigger, if you start to make the Dululu list, hear whose voice is telling you that you can't. What if you actually go, hmm, actually I want more? Actually I think I am gonna go on that trip. Actually I think I am gonna try this new hobby. It doesn't mean you're doing something wrong just because people have an opinion about it. Don't forget, sometimes your expansion feels like rejection to someone who has benefited from your smallness. I bring this up a lot, and it's not because people are bad, okay? It's because, especially when people aren't ready to change themselves, you deciding to live bigger is gonna feel really scary to them. And it's not gonna come out like, I'm so happy for you that you're doing this. It might come out like, You've changed and I don't know who you are anymore. You've become selfish. These are things that are gonna feel really uncomfortable. I think instead of borrowing somebody else's fear, what if we just start borrowing possibility instead? I don't know. Find the friend who says, why can't you? Or a partner who says, absolutely you could do that. Find the friend who actually did what you want to do. Maybe they left something uncomfortable for something so much better. Find people in your life who say, my gosh, okay, how can we help you make that happen? Let's borrow positive beliefs. Let's borrow their courage for a while. Even if we have to borrow their imagination, sometimes that's what we do in a session. Literally, I'll say, what do you want? I have no idea what I want. Okay, let's pretend like you do. Let's just come up with things together. Let's brainstorm. And seriously, it's things they've never thought of. we don't always need people to bring us back down to earth. Sometimes we need somebody who will climb up there with us for a minute on the top of that Dululu list and just cheer. We're not saying that every dream is gonna be the perfect situation. I mean, I can come up with a lot of things that probably are a little bit too big. But it's okay first, can I let it just be alive for a minute in my head? There's so many things that I wanna do and try. And I think that the first step is to understand that hope is not stupid. Hope doesn't make us naive. Being excited doesn't make us look stupid. Wanting more does not mean you're ungrateful. My goodness, I wish I could really get that through to people. You and me and a lot of us, we've been through some crap. And we can still believe good things are coming. I've found for myself that's one of the bravest things I could do for myself. Life teaches us to brace. Grief has taught me to brace. Trauma can teach us to brace. Disappointment can teach us to brace. We start thinking to ourselves, if I expect nothing, nothing can hurt me, but that's not true. Because expecting nothing sucks. Never risking excitement hurts us too. I just think, you guys, why aren't we wanting more? What's so wrong with wanting more? What's so wrong about saying we've got one life and I want to do all the things and feel all the things? I deserve to have friendships that are nurturing. I deserve to have a relationship that's fun and exciting and safe, right? You guys, there's all these things that we can just think of. I just listened to a brief part of another podcast today. And there was a scientist on there talking about how neuropathways, here we go again, because I love this stuff, but neuroplasticity and neuropathways actually are indicators of what we're gonna do. So if we're constantly letting anxiety run the show or fear run the show, we've taught ourselves that we can't dream big. This is not toxic positivity, you guys, I promise. I wanna be clear. I'm not saying just manifest it and tomorrow it shows up. Okay, that's not that's not how it goes. And I'm definitely not a girl who says, pretend bad things don't happen because I've been through some things. So I get it. I'm definitely not saying ignore red flags, spend money you don't have. Come on. Those are not what I'm talking about here. This isn't also just because I dream it everything's gonna work exactly as I planned. You know what it is though, you guys? It's I trust myself enough to find out. That's different. Maybe some of our dreams do suck in the end. Maybe the business fails. Maybe the relationship fails. Maybe the trip goes bad. There's no guarantee to any outcomes, right? But all of us have survived things that we never planned. Come on. And you know what? I have learned to use that as something that brings me peace rather than anxiety. Because you know what? I've survived them already. And I really can't predict what will go wrong. Trust me, I couldn't have predicted what's gone on in my life. I mean, you guys, how many of the hardest things that you've gone through in your life did you predict? They just happen. And somehow we figure out how to move forward. Didn't mean it didn't suck. Trust and believe. Doesn't mean it's without tears or a lot of yelling or without losing your mind occasionally, but you figured it out. But sitting around and going, how do I make sure nothing goes wrong? That's not gonna help. But knowing that I'll make it through whatever it is and I trust myself, that's different. I want you guys to sit with this one. What would you do differently if you believed your life really could go better than you expected? What would you stop tolerating if you believed you deserved more? Where would you go? I just think there's so many things to think about. What trip would you book? If we stopped building our entire lives around avoiding disappointment and we lived a little bit delusional, I don't know. I feel like that's just some hope before there's evidence. So maybe being Dululu is the Sululu. Hmm. Believing before we have proof. That's maybe where we need to do it. Everybody loves a dream once it works out. The uncomfortable part is believing in it when there's no evidence yet. That's where courage lives. So maybe this week, get your hopes up a little bit. Want the thing, say it out loud, let yourself imagine a ridiculously good version of your life and think, why the heck not me? So I hope this week you guys find glimmers of hope, little lights around. I'm Kelly, and this is all the light she found.