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55: Are You Lonely, or Just Uncomfortable With Change? · (re)Parenting Radio

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Reparenting Radio.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Lisa Watson, architect of human transformation.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is a space for leaders, parents, and anyone ready to break old patterns, regulate their nervous system, and show up in their life with clarity and self-trust.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you're ready to change the way you lead, love, and live, you're in the right place.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let's begin.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Hey friends, welcome back to Reparenting Radio.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: I know it has been a minute since I have been here and I have missed you guys.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: I have been going through quite a life transition over here for the past several weeks, actually, the past couple months.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Moving and settling into a new home.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've been taking on new clients.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: I've been getting my schedule organized and just navigating all the pieces that come with creating a new chapter in my life.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I have to tell you something.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: I am genuinely happier than I have ever been in my entire life.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I honestly do not say that lightly because I'm sitting here recording this episode from my new little studio apartment in Southern California, just a few blocks from my oldest son, which is the whole reason that I moved back to California in the first place.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I couldn't be more excited.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been getting to see him almost every day.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm close to the beach, and I'm just building a life that feels incredibly aligned with who I am today.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And for the first time in 58 years, I am living completely alone.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the interesting part is if you had talked to me back in February when I first moved here from Mexico and my husband stayed behind, you would have heard a different story from me because those first few months were really difficult emotionally.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And there were times when I would cry just seeing my husband's face on FaceTime when he would call me.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And now, eight months later, I am sitting here telling you that I've never been happier in my life.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've always I'm always optimistic.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I know a couple months ago I was happy too, but I was having these really deep bouts of sadness and missing my husband that would come.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so my happiness wasn't like sustained.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't staying there.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was sort of like more of an up and down.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I was, of course, programming and monitoring myself into uh a change of perspective.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: But what has changed?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: What has changed is exactly what I want to talk about today, because this experience is such a beautiful example of how our conditioning influences the way that we interpret our circumstances, how our nervous systems respond to familiarity, and how becoming conscious of our patterns gives us the opportunity to create a completely different experience.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to consider something as we go through this conversation.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: What if some of the things that you believe you need aren't actually things that you need at all?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And they're simply things that you've become accustomed to.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And what if some of the discomfort that you're experiencing isn't evidence that something's wrong, but it's evidence that something's just different.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Back in February, I moved from Mexico to Southern Cal.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And as you know, if you've been following me, my husband Brian stayed behind because we have three cats.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: He had worked in Mexico, and there were just some logistics with our lease that made it difficult for us to move together and finding a place right away that would accept three cats.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I was ready.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was ready to come back, ready to be closer to my son, ready to promote my book that I had published last year, and just really wanting to create more of an in-person coaching and consulting practice rather than the online one that I had been sort of trapped into living in Mexico.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Just really ready to build this next chapter of my life.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I moved.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And for the first few months, I was just much sadder than I expected to be.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: February, March, April, May, into June, I'm telling you, there were times when it this the sadness of mine just felt really overwhelming, you know, being separated from my husband.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And although he calls me regularly, like a couple times a day, and sometimes I'd answer his FaceTimes and I would immediately start to cry.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And there were times that I would just literally like throw the phone down on my bed and say, I can't do this right now.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to talk.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because it felt like every time I saw him, I was just reopening a wound.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And at first, I didn't really question that the sadness.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was separated from my husband.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, it was sad.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: That seemed like a perfectly reasonable explanation.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: But as the months went on, I started becoming curious because something about that explanation just wasn't sitting quite right with me anymore.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I teach this work, I teach people how to be conscious of their programming, their conditioning, their emotional patterns, and the meanings that they've attached to these experiences.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: So naturally, I'm constantly looking at myself through that same lens.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely walk my talk.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And as I began to question these feelings of mine and asking the questions that I think that most of us need to ask ourselves that are very powerful, what am I actually feeling and why?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Not just what happened before this, I started feeling this way, but what meaning am I attaching to what happened?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: What am I believing about this experience?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: What story am I telling myself?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because our minds are constantly interpreting what's happening around us.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And those interpretations are influenced by our previous experience, by our beliefs, by our expectations, and the emotional patterns that we've developed throughout our lives, as we talk about on this podcast every week.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes we accept those interpretations without even questioning them.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: We feel sad, so we assume something's wrong.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: We feel anxious, so we assume something's unsafe.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: We feel uncomfortable, so we assume that maybe, you know, we've made a mistake.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: But an emotion doesn't necessarily tell us the entire story.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's information.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to understand what was my sadness really trying to bring to my attention.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started thinking throughout my marriage, there had been plenty of times when I wished I had more time to myself, times when I wanted the house to myself, times when I wished that my husband would go away for the weekend so that I could just enjoy having my own space.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean that in a negative way towards my husband at all.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: I I love him, I love spending time with him, but I also love spending time with myself.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Astrologically speaking, I am a cancer and I often joke that I'm like a crab, and I enjoy retreating into my little shell when I feel overstimulated.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: I do I do also enjoy people and I enjoy meaningful conversations and I enjoy spending time with family and friends and my spouse, but I tend to recharge through solitude.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: So here I was having an opportunity for more independence, more solitude, something I've wanted for years, and I felt like I was spending so much of my time feeling sad about it.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, wait a minute.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Am I sad because I genuinely don't want this experience?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Am I sad because I can't enjoy life without my husband physically being present?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Am I grieving the change in our relationship, or is something else happening?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when I took a look at my history again.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: I met my first husband when I was 18 years old.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: We got married when I was 21, and then we were married for 25 years.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we were together for 28 years.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And in 2015, after I got a divorce, I did buy my own house.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you would think that that would have been the perfect opportunity for me to live alone.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: But within about a week of living there, a friend that I worked with, she needed a place to live.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: And since I had an extra room, I invited her to move in with me.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so she did.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then when she moved out, another friend needed a place to live, so I invited her to move in.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then I met Brian, and then Brian eventually moved in, and my roommate moved out.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And as I sat there thinking through my history, through my life, I realized that I had actually never in my entire life, not once, lived alone.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the youngest of eight children.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Growing up, there were always lots of people around me.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have my own bedroom.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: I shared the couch, the pullout couch in the parlor, as we called it in New England, with um two of my sisters, because although we had a good-sized house, there was not bedrooms for everybody.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then when I went away to college, I had roommates.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then I met my first husband pretty quickly as I was in college.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And from that point forward, I was sharing my home with a romantic partner for the majority of my adult life, for the rest of my adult life.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And even when I moved to California in February, I wasn't living alone.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was staying with my friend and her children, helping her to nanny them in exchange for the room that I was staying with.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: But for the first time in decades, even then, I wasn't sharing my daily life with a romantic partner.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't waking up next to someone navigating our routines together.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't having to consider someone else's schedule or simply having that familiar presence and energy in the house.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so after looking at my history, I had this realization that what if part of my sadness was simply the discomfort of being outside a pattern that I had lived in for over 40 years?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: What if I wasn't necessarily missing the lifestyle itself as much as I was experiencing the unfamiliarity of and that opened up an entirely different way of looking at what I was experiencing, which is the point of asking yourself these questions.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk about the word homeostasis here for just a second, because homeostasis in biology refers to the body's ability to maintain relatively stable internal conditions.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: But when I use the word homeostasis in my coaching work, what I'm referring to is the tendency to return to familiar emotional and behavioral patterns.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: We become accustomed to certain ways of living, certain routines, certain relationship dynamics, certain emotional experiences.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And those patterns can become so familiar that we begin to confuse them with who we are.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we talk about this all the time on this podcast.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is the foundation of reparenting yourself.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Think about someone who has spent their entire life being the responsible one, the person who takes care of everybody, the person who never asks for help, or is always working, always busy, always productive.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now imagine that person suddenly has an entire weekend with absolutely nothing to do.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe this describes you.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: You might think that this person would be thrilled to have the weekend to themselves.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: But what often happens is we feel stressed, we feel restless, we feel guilty, we start looking for something to accomplish.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because being busy is familiar and stillness isn't.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Or think about someone who has spent years in relationships filled with conflict, like I did, unpredictability and emotional ups and downs.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you finally meet someone who's consistent, kind, emotionally available, and peaceful.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they feel uncomfortable.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: We might even interpret the relationship as boring.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily because we want conflict, but because the emotional environment is unfamiliar.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that this is so important to understand that familiarity doesn't automatically mean healthy, and unfamiliar doesn't automatically mean wrong.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we confuse what we're accustomed to with what we actually prefer.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we confuse the discomfort of change with evidence that we should go back to what we know.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: But those aren't necessarily the same thing.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: I want to share a story from years ago when I was working at Nordstrom because it also illustrates this perfectly.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was managing customer service at the Nordstrom Rack in Denver, and I had this employee, his name was Solomon, credible salesperson.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: He was exceptionally good at opening credit accounts and connecting with customers.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And he was consistently among the best performers throughout the entire company at the RAC.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And at the RAC, employees were paid hourly.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: But at Nordstrom Full Line stores, salespeople earned commission on their sales.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew that with Solomon's abilities, he had the potential to earn significantly more money if he moved into this commission-based sales position.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he had a family and new baby.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I really wanted to see him succeed.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I encouraged him to make the move.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he trusted me, so he did it.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: I helped him get a job in women's shoes.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And about four weeks later, he calls me and he says, Lisa, I want to come back.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like this.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Why?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I just I don't like it here.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember thinking, Well, of course you don't.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's new.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Everything's different.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: The environment was different, the expectations were different, the compensation structure was different.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: And he was learning a completely new role.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew that he had the ability to thrive there.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was certain of it.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I said to him, Listen, I'm not gonna hire you back right now.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to give this 90 days.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And if you still don't like it after 90 days, I will make room on my schedule for you.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so he agreed.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I bet you can guess what happened.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: After 90 days, I got another phone call and he said he loved it.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: He was doing incredibly well.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: His paychecks were much bigger.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: He was used to all the changes.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: He actually became the top salesman in his department, which I absolutely knew was going to happen.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was no surprise to me.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just such a perfect example of this.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, just to be clear, not every uncomfortable situation is something we should stay in.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes discomfort is telling us that something genuinely isn't right for us.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes a job isn't a good fit, and sometimes a relationship isn't healthy.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we, you know, we do need to leave, but other times we're simply experiencing the discomfort of learning something new.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why asking ourselves these questions is so important and will help you get to the bottom of what the real issue is.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we leave something every time it feels unfamiliar, we may never discover what becomes possible once we've adjusted.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon didn't need to go back to his old job.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: He needed time to discover whether the new opportunity was actually a right fit for him.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized I might need to give myself that same opportunity when it comes to this sadness that I was feeling.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I started changing the conversation that I was having with myself.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of automatically interpreting my sadness as evidence that something was wrong in my life, I started asking, what else might be true?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: What if this separation was an opportunity?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: What if I could learn something about myself that I'd never had the chance to discover before?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: What if I could enjoy having more independence?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: What if I could experience being married while also having the freedom to create my own routines and enjoy my own space?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: So when sadness came up, I began to respond differently to myself.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: I would remind myself that, hey, listen, this is new.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: We've never done this before, but it's okay.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: You're safe.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: You can enjoy this, and you don't have to interpret this experience as something negative simply because it's unfamiliar or not what you expected your marriage to look like after nine years.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I'd actually laugh and say to myself, no, no, no, no, no.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like as I started feeling a little sad or something, I'd say, we're we're not sad.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're actually happy about this.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is an opportunity.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm not suggesting at all that we should suppress sadness or pretend we're happy when we're not.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what I teach at all.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what reparenting about is about.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: All emotions are valid experiences.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: If we're grieving, we acknowledge that.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: If we're lonely, we need to have awareness and recognize that.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: If we're hurting, we need to feel it.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: But we can honor our emotions without automatically believing every story that we've attached to it.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: We can feel sadness without deciding that our lives are wrong.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: We can feel uncertain without assuming we've made a mistake.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: We can feel fearful of something and still move forward.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: We can feel discomfort without immediately trying to escape it.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we can ask ourselves whether there's another way to experience what's happening.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I was doing.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't denying that my life had changed or that I was feeling sadness.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was consciously choosing to stop interpreting the change only through the lens of loss and something being wrong or needing to change.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And when I did that, something shifted big time.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: By the end of June, I was feeling so much happier.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: I actually started getting excited about all the things that I could do.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: I went out and bought myself some rollerblades, I got some paints, I started thinking about hobbies and activities that I wanted to explore, things that I could do simply because I enjoyed them.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Not because someone else wanted to participate, not because I needed to coordinate schedules, just because I wanted to.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I started becoming genuinely excited about this next chapter of my life.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I stopped having expectations of what it needed to look like, when my husband needed to get here, like what my marriage needed to look like.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: I decided to just accept and surrender to the reality that I was in and do my best to enjoy it.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized after a quick switch that I just wasn't having the same emotional reaction when my husband called.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was actually enjoying our conversations and I was enjoying my independence.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the external circumstances hadn't necessarily changed, but my relationship with those circumstances changed.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that changed my experience.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: So fast forward to September, I'm living with my friend and her children up in Carlsbad, building my life here in California, spending time with my son, working, and feeling pretty good about everything rollerblading, working out, painting, going to the beach by myself, all those things.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then my friend tells me that this living arrangement is coming to an end, that she had decided to make changes to her own living situation, and that I needed to find somewhere else to live.
• 21:59
  unknown: Now
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: My original thought had been that eventually my husband was going to return from Mexico and that I would go from Terra's to a place with him.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: But he wasn't ready to move back yet in September.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, okay, well, I got to find somewhere to live then.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I'm going to do this on my own.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And initially, I wasn't even looking for an apartment.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: I was just looking for rooms to rent, shared houses, like uh additional dwelling units on people's property.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: I because I really wanted to keep my expenses low and manageable.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to be financially practical, but I also wanted to just be prepared for when my husband came back to make it kind of easy to move back in with him.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And in these search that I was doing for a place to live, I came across this beautiful little studio apartment that happened to be right in my son's neighborhood, less than a half a mile from him, less than a half a mile from the beach, and at a price that was comfortable for me.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: I completely could afford it.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted it.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I filled out the application.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I was so excited about it because I had looked at like 20 places before this and roommate situations.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And this one just said yes, yes, yes.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't just fill out the application.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: I actually picked up the phone and I called the owner of the building and I introduced myself.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: I explained to her my situation.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: I told her how excited I was and everything.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it everything just rolled forward.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: She was like, love to have you, blah, blah, blah.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just perfect.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was moved in within a few weeks.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Everything came together effortlessly.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I have to tell you, I've never lived in a place this small.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a little studio.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's maybe 500 square feet.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I've never been happier either.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely love it.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: I love everything about it.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: I love that it's my space.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: I love that I can put things exactly where I want them and I don't have to compromise.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: I love that when I come home, there's nobody else's energy to accommodate.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: I love that I can sit quietly, I can cook, I can read, I can work, I can listen to music, I can do absolutely nothing if I want.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't have to consider anyone else's preferences.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: And there's something incredibly peaceful about that for me right now.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what's fascinating is that I didn't know how much I would love it because I'd never experienced it before.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I knew myself.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I knew what I liked after all the work that I've done over the past 10 years.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I knew what kind of living arrangement would make me happy.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: But because I had spent my entire life sharing space with other people, how could I possibly know what it would feel like to live completely alone?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: I could only imagine it.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that is an important realization.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we don't know what we would genuinely prefer because we've never given ourselves the opportunity to experience something different.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: We know our habits, we know our routines, we know our roles, but do we know ourselves?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Or do we simply know the patterns we've been living inside?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where I want to bring the conversation back to you.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because you don't have to be moving into your first apartment at 58 years old to experience this.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're considering a career change.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're thinking about ending a relationship.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe your children are growing up and leaving home and you're an empty nester now.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're retiring or you're moving to a new city, or maybe you're just beginning to set boundaries with people that you've spent your entire lives accommodating.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe those changes feel really uncomfortable.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you feel sad, maybe you feel anxious, maybe you feel uncertain.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe your first instinct is to go back to what you know, or to hold on to what you had in your mind.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: But before you do, I want to invite you to ask yourself something.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Is this actually something I don't want?
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it simply something I'm not used to?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's a very different question from asking, why am I uncomfortable?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it creates room for a very different answer.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we need to listen to our discomfort because it's telling us something important about our needs or our safety.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes we just need to recognize that we're learning to experience life differently.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that takes practice.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: It takes awareness, it takes presence, and sometimes it takes a willingness to stay with an unfamiliar experience long enough to discover what it might offer us.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: So here I am at 58 years old, living completely alone for the first time, and I think back to those early months when I would cry just seeing Brian's face on FaceTime, and I find the contrast fascinating.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because I could have spent the entire year reinforcing the story that being apart from my husband was something sad, that living without a partner was something I had to endure, that I couldn't be truly happy until we were living together again.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: But instead, I became curious.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: I questioned my conditioning.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: I looked at my history, I recognized a pattern I'd been living inside for 40 years, and I gave myself permission to experience something different.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm sitting here in this beautiful little studio, more peaceful than I've ever imagined.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I wonder how many other things in our lives might be just like that?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: How many things do we believe we need simply because we've always had them?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: How many situations do we interpret as wrong because they're unfamiliar?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: How many opportunities do we walk away from before we're given ourselves the chance to discover what they really might become?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: And how many times do we mistake our conditioning for our identity?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Those are powerful questions.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: And they're at the heart of what it means to reparent ourselves.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because reparenting isn't about becoming somebody else, it's about becoming conscious of the patterns we've learned and giving ourselves the freedom to choose differently.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what I would love for you to practice this week.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: The next time you experience discomfort around any sort of change in your life, become curious and ask yourself, what am I actually feeling?
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: And what meaning am I attaching to this experience?
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Is this genuinely something I want or don't want?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it simply something I've never experienced before?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then give yourself the opportunity to discover the answer because sometimes the life we never imagined for ourselves turns out to be exactly the experience that we needed.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it comes in the form of a tiny little studio apartment near the beach, where for the first time in 58 years, you get to discover what it feels like to be completely on your own and absolutely love it.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: And next week, I want to take this conversation a little deeper because there's something else I've discovered about solitude, which is how much of our identity can become wrapped up in being needed by other people.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: So next week, we're going to explore a question that I think is especially important for parents, caregivers, and anyone who has spent much of their life taking care of everyone else.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: People pleasers.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Who are you when nobody needs anything from you?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for being with me today, friends.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: I've missed you and I'm so happy to be back.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: I will see you next week here on Reparenting Radio.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to Reparenting Radio.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: If today's conversation supported you, take a moment to subscribe, leave a review, or share it with someone who knows they were made for more than the patterns that they inherited.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you're ready for serious inner work and real transformation, personally or professionally, you can explore my leadership pathways at Lisa-Watson.com.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're raising little ones alongside your own healing, you'll find my children's books at awakentheone.org.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, stay grounded, stay open, and keep reparenting the parts of you that are ready to come home to their authenticity.