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317. How to Let Go When You REALLY Want It | Non-Attachment · The Kathie Owen Perspective Podcast

• 0:00
  Kathie (2): What if the thing you want most is the very thing you need to loosen your grip on?
• 0:06
  Kathie (2): Not give up on, not stop loving, not pretending you don't care about.
• 0:11
  Kathie (2): Just stop gripping.
• 0:14
  Kathie (2): Because whenever I talk about non-attachment, there is one question I get asked more than almost any other.
• 0:23
  Kathie (2): But Kathie, how am I supposed to not be attached to the result when I really, really want it?" And I understand the question.
• 0:31
  Kathie (2): Maybe you really want the relationship to work.
• 0:34
  Kathie (2): Maybe you desperately want your child to be okay.
• 0:37
  Kathie (2): Maybe you spent 20 years building a business and you're preparing to sell it.
• 0:41
  Kathie (2): Maybe you're waiting for the phone call, the diagnosis, the job, the client, the money, the answer.
• 0:47
  Kathie (2): Maybe there is something in your life right now that you want so badly that the idea of"letting go" almost sounds ridiculous.
• 0:58
  Kathie (2): So what are you supposed to do?
• 0:59
  Kathie (2): Stop caring?
• 1:00
  Kathie (2): Convince yourself that you don't want it?
• 1:03
  Kathie (2): Repeat,"I'm detached.
• 1:05
  Kathie (2): I'm detached.
• 1:06
  Kathie (2): I'm detached," while checking your phone every four minutes?
• 1:09
  Kathie (2): That's not non-attachment.
• 1:12
  Kathie (2): That's attachment wearing a spiritual costume, and today I want to talk about the difference.
• 1:21
  Kathie (2): Welcome to the Kathie Owen Perspective Podcast.
• 1:24
  Kathie (2): My name is Kathie Owen.
• 1:25
  Kathie (2): I study human patterns under pressure.
• 1:27
  Kathie (2): I spent years studying psychology, human behavior, emotional regulation, leadership, reality transurfing, and the patterns we fall into when life does not go the way we expected.
• 1:40
  Kathie (2): I'm also the author of Human Patterns Under Pressure and The Truth Bubbles Up, and one of the ideas I come back to over and over again is non-attachment, because non-attachment sounds simple, and it is simple, but simple does not mean easy, especially when you really care.
• 2:01
  Kathie (2): Imagine you're standing at the free throw line.
• 2:07
  Kathie (2): I've used this example before because I think it explains non-attachment better than almost anything.
• 2:14
  Kathie (2): Imagine a basketball player standing at a free throw line.
• 2:18
  Kathie (2): There are two seconds left on the clock.
• 2:20
  Kathie (2): The game is tied.
• 2:21
  Kathie (2): He has one shot.
• 2:23
  Kathie (2): The crowd is screaming.
• 2:24
  Kathie (2): His teammates are watching.
• 2:26
  Kathie (2): The other team is watching.
• 2:27
  Kathie (2): Thousands of people in the arena are watching.
• 2:31
  Kathie (2): Maybe millions more are watching on television.
• 2:34
  Kathie (2): Does he wanna make the shot?
• 2:36
  Kathie (2): Of course he does.
• 2:38
  Kathie (2): Non-attachment does not require him to walk up to that free throw line and say,"Uh, whatever.
• 2:45
  Kathie (2): It doesn't matter." It matters.
• 2:49
  Kathie (2): He practiced for this.
• 2:50
  Kathie (2): He trained for this.
• 2:51
  Kathie (2): He has probably shot that exact shot thousands and thousands of times.
• 2:56
  Kathie (2): He absolutely prefers that that ball to go through the basket.
• 3:02
  Kathie (2): But there is a huge difference between I want to make this shot and I have to make this shot.
• 3:11
  Kathie (2): Listen to those two sentences again.
• 3:13
  Kathie (2): I want to make this shot.
• 3:15
  Kathie (2): I have to make this shot.
• 3:17
  Kathie (2): They may sound similar, but your nervous system knows the difference.
• 3:23
  Kathie (2): The second I tell myself something has to happen, I have made my peace conditional.
• 3:30
  Kathie (2): It'll be okay if...
• 3:33
  Kathie (2): I'll be okay if the shot goes in.
• 3:35
  Kathie (2): I'll be okay if the...
• 3:36
  Kathie (2): if they say yes.
• 3:38
  Kathie (2): I'll be okay if the deal closes.
• 3:40
  Kathie (2): I'll be okay if my child makes the choice I want them to make.
• 3:43
  Kathie (2): I'll be okay if this person stays.
• 3:45
  Kathie (2): I'll be okay if my business succeeds.
• 3:47
  Kathie (2): I'll be okay if the test result comes back the way I want.
• 3:52
  Kathie (2): I'll be okay when I know.
• 3:55
  Kathie (2): And now we have a problem, because I handed my peace to an outcome I cannot completely control.
• 4:04
  Kathie (2): Wanting is not the problem.
• 4:06
  Kathie (2): This is where I think discussions about non-attachment can become confusing.
• 4:12
  Kathie (2): People start believing they're not supposed to want anything.
• 4:15
  Kathie (2): I don't believe that's the point at all.
• 4:19
  Kathie (2): You are allowed to have preferences.
• 4:21
  Kathie (2): You are allowed to want the shot to go in.
• 4:24
  Kathie (2): You are allowed to want your business to succeed.
• 4:26
  Kathie (2): You are allowed to want someone to love you.
• 4:29
  Kathie (2): You are allowed to want more money.
• 4:31
  Kathie (2): You are allowed to want your marriage to work.
• 4:34
  Kathie (2): You are allowed to want the house.
• 4:36
  Kathie (2): You are allowed to want the opportunity.
• 4:39
  Kathie (2): You are allowed to want someone you love to be safe.
• 4:43
  Kathie (2): Non-attachment does not ask you to become numb.
• 4:48
  Kathie (2): It asks a much harder question: Can you deeply prefer an outcome without requiring that outcome in order to be okay?
• 4:58
  Kathie (2): That's different, and that's where this gets uncomfortable because sometimes we aren't holding a preference anymore.
• 5:06
  Kathie (2): We're holding a demand.
• 5:09
  Kathie (2): This needs to happen.
• 5:10
  Kathie (2): They need to choose me.
• 5:12
  Kathie (2): They need to understand.
• 5:13
  Kathie (2): My business needs to work.
• 5:15
  Kathie (2): The video needs to perform well.
• 5:17
  Kathie (2): My investment needs to pay off.
• 5:19
  Kathie (2): My child needs to listen to me, and somewhere along the way, our preferences quietly became a contract with reality.
• 5:29
  Kathie (2): I did this, therefore, reality owes me that.
• 5:33
  Kathie (2): But reality never signed that contract Reality transurfing calls this importance.
• 5:42
  Kathie (2): This is one of the ideas in reality transurfing that has fascinated me for so long.
• 5:48
  Kathie (2): Reality transurfing talks a lot about importance and what it calls excess potential.
• 5:54
  Kathie (2): In very simple terms, we can give something so much importance that we create enormous pressure around it.
• 6:03
  Kathie (2): I don't just want it anymore, I need it.
• 6:06
  Kathie (2): And the higher the importance becomes, the harder it can become for us to move naturally.
• 6:13
  Kathie (2): Think about our basketball player.
• 6:15
  Kathie (2): He knows how to shoot a free throw.
• 6:17
  Kathie (2): His body knows what to do.
• 6:19
  Kathie (2): Breathe, set, focus, shoot.
• 6:23
  Kathie (2): But then the mind comes in.
• 6:26
  Kathie (2): "Don't miss.
• 6:27
  Kathie (2): Oh my God, don't miss.
• 6:28
  Kathie (2): Everyone is watching.
• 6:29
  Kathie (2): If I miss this, we're going to lose.
• 6:31
  Kathie (2): What will people say?
• 6:33
  Kathie (2): Don't screw this up." And suddenly he's not shooting a basketball anymore.
• 6:37
  Kathie (2): He's trying to manage an imaginary future.
• 6:41
  Kathie (2): His body is standing at the free throw line, but his mind is already tomorrow morning reading the headlines.
• 6:48
  Kathie (2): That is attachment.
• 6:51
  Kathie (2): He's left the present moment.
• 6:53
  Kathie (2): And here's the strange paradox.
• 6:55
  Kathie (2): The more desperately we try to control the outcome, the less present we become for the action that could actually influence it.
• 7:04
  Kathie (2): This is where my own framework comes in.
• 7:07
  Kathie (2): I talk a lot about three things: peace, power, and presence.
• 7:13
  Kathie (2): Under pressure, I've noticed something interesting.
• 7:16
  Kathie (2): Peace often goes first, then power, then presence.
• 7:21
  Kathie (2): Think about what happens when you're attached to an outcome.
• 7:24
  Kathie (2): First, you lose your peace.
• 7:26
  Kathie (2): You're checking, watching, predicting, replaying, trying to figure out what everything means.
• 7:32
  Kathie (2): Then you begin giving away your power because you're trying to control things that may not belong to you.
• 7:40
  Kathie (2): Someone else's decision, someone else's feelings, the economy, the algorithm, the market, the diagnosis, the buyer, the audience, and eventually you lose your presence because you're not here anymore.
• 7:54
  Kathie (2): You're living inside a future that hasn't happened, and this is why non-attachment is not passive.
• 8:01
  Kathie (2): Quite the opposite.
• 8:03
  Kathie (2): Non-attachment can bring you back to the one place where you actually have power.
• 8:09
  Kathie (2): Here.
• 8:11
  Kathie (2): Now.
• 8:13
  Kathie (2): So how does the basketball player get there?
• 8:16
  Kathie (2): This is the part people want to know.
• 8:19
  Kathie (2): "Okay, Kathie, great.
• 8:20
  Kathie (2): Don't attach, but how?" I get asked this all the time.
• 8:25
  Kathie (2): How does that basketball player stand at the line and truly think,"I can make this shot, I can miss this shot, and I can handle either reality"?
• 8:35
  Kathie (2): Practice.
• 8:36
  Kathie (2): And I don't just mean practicing basketball, I mean practicing uncertainty.
• 8:42
  Kathie (2): This is where non-attachment connects directly to something I've been talking about a lot lately, the pause, the uncomfortable space between what you do and finding out what happens.
• 8:56
  Kathie (2): You send the email, pause.
• 8:58
  Kathie (2): You make the offer, pause.
• 9:01
  Kathie (2): You apply for the position, pause.
• 9:04
  Kathie (2): You tell someone the truth, pause.
• 9:07
  Kathie (2): You make the investment, pause.
• 9:10
  Kathie (2): You go to the doctor, pause.
• 9:12
  Kathie (2): You launch the business, pause.
• 9:15
  Kathie (2): You take the shot, and the ball leaves your hands, pause.
• 9:20
  Kathie (2): We hate that space because we don't know yet, and the human mind loves certainty.
• 9:28
  Kathie (2): So what do we do?
• 9:29
  Kathie (2): We try to fill the pause.
• 9:31
  Kathie (2): We check, we chase, we text, we call, we analyze, we predict, we Google, we refresh the screen, we ask 10 people what they think.
• 9:40
  Kathie (2): We create stories.
• 9:42
  Kathie (2): Sometimes we even take action that wasn't necessary simply because action temporarily makes uncertainty feel more tolerable.
• 9:52
  Kathie (2): And that's where I think the real practice of non-attachment begins, not with getting rid of desire, with learning to remain present after the ball has left your hands.
• 10:06
  Kathie (2): This is where the magic happens.
• 10:08
  Kathie (2): I can tell you this from my own experience.
• 10:11
  Kathie (2): This is not easy.
• 10:13
  Kathie (2): I've had to learn to sit in spaces where I didn't know what was going to happen, and everything in me wanted an answer.
• 10:21
  Kathie (2): I wanted to move, I wanted to predict, I wanted to solve, I wanted to know, and slowly I've learned something.
• 10:27
  Kathie (2): Uncertainty is uncomfortable.
• 10:32
  Kathie (2): But uncomfortable does not automatically mean dangerous.
• 10:36
  Kathie (2): And when I can stay there, when I don't immediately grab for certainty, when I don't force the next thing, something interesting starts happening.
• 10:46
  Kathie (2): I begin to see things I couldn't see while I was gripping.
• 10:50
  Kathie (2): Sometimes new information appears.
• 10:53
  Kathie (2): Sometimes another opportunity appears.
• 10:56
  Kathie (2): Sometimes the thing I thought I needed turns out not to be what I wanted at all.
• 11:03
  Kathie (2): Sometimes I realize I was trying to force an answer before reality had finished showing me the question.
• 11:09
  Kathie (2): That's what I mean when I say the magic often happens in the uncertainty.
• 11:15
  Kathie (2): Not because uncertainty magically guarantees you'll get what you want.
• 11:20
  Kathie (2): That would just be another form of attachment.
• 11:23
  Kathie (2): I'll surrender because surrender will make the universe give it to me.
• 11:26
  Kathie (2): Nope.
• 11:27
  Kathie (2): That's a transaction.
• 11:30
  Kathie (2): The practice is being willing to say,"I don't know what happens next," and remaining present anyway.
• 11:40
  Kathie (2): Non-attachment is not indifference.
• 11:42
  Kathie (2): This distinction matters so much.
• 11:45
  Kathie (2): Non-attachment is not indifference.
• 11:49
  Kathie (2): Acceptance is not approval.
• 11:51
  Kathie (2): Surrender is not passivity.
• 11:55
  Kathie (2): Regulation is not avoidance.
• 11:58
  Kathie (2): Flow is not doing nothing, and uncertainty is not danger.
• 12:04
  Kathie (2): These are half-truths, and I think we have to examine them.
• 12:09
  Kathie (2): People say,"Let go," half-truth.
• 12:12
  Kathie (2): People say,"Fight for what you want," half-truth.
• 12:16
  Kathie (2): People say,"Trust the flow," half-truth.
• 12:20
  Kathie (2): People say,"Take responsibility," half-truth.
• 12:24
  Kathie (2): Sometimes you need to act.
• 12:26
  Kathie (2): Sometimes you need to stop acting.
• 12:28
  Kathie (2): Sometimes courage means speaking.
• 12:30
  Kathie (2): Sometimes courage means not sending the text.
• 12:34
  Kathie (2): Sometimes responsibility means stepping in.
• 12:36
  Kathie (2): Sometimes responsibility means realizing this is not mine.
• 12:43
  Kathie (2): Wisdom lives in learning the difference.
• 12:47
  Kathie (2): Radical responsibility, courage, and non-attachment.
• 12:51
  Kathie (2): These three principles work together.
• 12:55
  Kathie (2): Radical responsibility asks what belongs to me.
• 12:58
  Kathie (2): My preparation belongs to me.
• 13:00
  Kathie (2): My behavior belongs to me.
• 13:01
  Kathie (2): My decisions belongs to me.
• 13:04
  Kathie (2): My integrity belongs to me.
• 13:06
  Kathie (2): My shot belongs to me.
• 13:09
  Kathie (2): Then comes courage.
• 13:11
  Kathie (2): Can I take the shot knowing I cannot guarantee what happens?
• 13:15
  Kathie (2): Can I tell the truth without controlling the response?
• 13:18
  Kathie (2): Can I make the offer without demanding a yes?
• 13:22
  Kathie (2): Can I love someone without owning their choices?
• 13:26
  Kathie (2): Can I build something without requiring the world to validate it immediately?
• 13:32
  Kathie (2): And then comes non-attachment.
• 13:34
  Kathie (2): Can I allow reality to answer?
• 13:36
  Kathie (2): That's the hard one, because eventually the ball has to leave your hands.
• 13:44
  Kathie (2): And maybe that's the image I want you to carry with you today.
• 13:47
  Kathie (2): The basketball player stands at the line.
• 13:49
  Kathie (2): He breathes.
• 13:50
  Kathie (2): He looks at the basket.
• 13:52
  Kathie (2): He has practiced.
• 13:53
  Kathie (2): He is prepared.
• 13:54
  Kathie (2): He wants to make it.
• 13:55
  Kathie (2): He isn't pretending otherwise, and then he takes the shot.
• 14:01
  Kathie (2): At that moment, his job changes.
• 14:04
  Kathie (2): There was a moment when the ball belonged to him, and then there is a moment when it doesn't.
• 14:11
  Kathie (2): Maybe that's non-attachment.
• 14:13
  Kathie (2): Knowing when the ball is yours to hold, and knowing when it's time to let it fly.
• 14:20
  Kathie (2): My name is Kathie Owen.
• 14:21
  Kathie (2): I'm the author of Human Patterns Under Pressure and The Truth Bubbles Up, and my work explores what happens to us when pressure, uncertainty, fear, and emotion enter the room, and how awareness can give us another choice.
• 14:37
  Kathie (2): If this episode resonated with you, I've created a companion article that goes deeper into this conversation, and it includes bonus resources to help you explore these ideas in your own life.
• 14:49
  Kathie (2): You'll find that article linked in the show notes and description below.
• 14:52
  Kathie (2): And if you're watching on YouTube, I'll put it in the first comment, so it's easy to find.
• 14:57
  Kathie (2): Because non-attachment isn't about learning how to care less.
• 15:02
  Kathie (2): Maybe it's learning how to care deeply without requiring life to obey you.