Latest / Just Julia / The Dream I Can’t See Yet

Transcript

The Dream I Can’t See Yet · Just Julia

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever, like, achieved exactly what you set out to do?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then you just wake up the next morning feeling completely empty?
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that is such a real heavy feeling.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: You did the work, you got the title, you signed the papers, you hit the milestone.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of this grand sense of arrival, you just feel, uh, stuck.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like you're just suspended there?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are nodding your head right now, I just want to say, you are not broken.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: You've just kind of walked off the edge of your own map.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: That vertigo is profound.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's not even the fear of falling, really.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's not.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's more the sheer, suffocating weight of standing still.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like the path you've been following for a decade just vanishes into the mist.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's like spending years climbing a mountain, you know?
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: You put in the sweat,
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: make all these sacrifices, and you finally reach the summit and plant your flag.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: And you think, okay, I made it.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right, but then you look around and you realize the map ends right here.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: The fog is rolling in.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know you can't stay on this peak forever,
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: but you have absolutely zero visibility of the next one.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: You are just stuck between the life you knew how to navigate and
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: a future you can't even picture.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that is exactly what we are getting into today.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome to today's Deep Dive.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Our mission today is to explore that exact space—
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: The messy middle of it all.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, the messy middle of navigating transitions.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: We are talking directly to you, the listener.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've built a life or a career or an identity
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: that you once desperately wanted,
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: but now you find yourself in this period of profound uncertainty.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know something has to change,
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: but you have no clue what the next version of you even looks like.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the foundation for our conversation today is this beautifully raw essay called
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: The Dream I Can't See Yet.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a great piece.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: It really is.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's by Julia Callas from her platform Just Julia,
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: which focuses on real stories of identity,
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: confidence and, you know, the lives we become.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And what I love is that Julia writes from the middle of this exact experience.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she doesn't write from the finish line.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: She's in the fog with us, which is what makes it so incredibly powerful.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you are standing on that foggy summit,
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: our immediate biological reaction is just panic.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the human brain hates a vacuum.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: We crave any direction at all.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Anything to make the anxiety stop.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And in the absence of a clear vision, fear happily just jumps right into the driver's seat.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Julia admits this.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: She says she is genuinely afraid of the future right now.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: She has no idea what her professional life is going to look like in six months.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Will it be corporate?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: A new business?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: An entirely new idea?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: She doesn't know.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: And fear capitalizes on that, right?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because fear doesn't usually scream at us to do something wild or erratic.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: It whispers at us to just conform.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds so rational.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Fear offers very sensible sounding directions to fill the void.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: It says, you know, take the safe option.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hurry up.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Don't fall behind.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Be realistic.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Find another title.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure everyone knows you're still doing well.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: It demands continuity above all else.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Just keep moving, even if it's in the wrong direction.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I actually struggle a bit with vilifying fear here, honestly.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like, isn't fear just trying to protect us?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's a fair point.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: To me,
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: it sounds like fear is the pragmatic friend reminding you to pay the mortgage,
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: to keep up appearances,
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: to make sure you don't end up sleeping on your sister's couch.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, for sure.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: So when fear is the only voice offering a practical plan, it is incredibly hard to ignore.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: It is highly practical in the short term.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: But we really have to look at the source material fear is using.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like, where did fear get its map?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: From the past, probably.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Fear doesn't have a vision for your future.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: It only has a filing cabinet of your past.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Its map is constructed entirely from external expectations.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like the culture we grew up in?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: The culture,
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: the subtle pressures from our families,
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: the endless comparative scroll of LinkedIn and Instagram.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, man.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: LinkedIn will get you every time.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it's basically navigating using a script written by other people.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: By other people, and perhaps most insidiously, a script written by your younger self.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, what do you mean by that?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
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  SPEAKER_01: fear is often using a map drawn by the rigid ambitions of the 22-year-old version
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: of you,
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  SPEAKER_01: the version who decided a decade ago exactly what a successful life was supposed
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: to look like.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, study, build a career, earn more, get the title, find a partner, buy the things.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Fear just wants you to stick to that old script.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: It is completely blind to whether it still fits the person you have actually become today.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: So if that old map is useless to us now and throwing it away just leaves us blind in
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: the fog, what do we replace it with?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: How do we even begin to hear our own internal directions when fear is just screaming at us?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Julia writes about this concept of the inner GPS,
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: which operates in direct opposition to all those external milestones.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's a massive tension there between getting the title or buying the things
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: and this quiet internal whisper that just says there is more.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And we need to draw a very strict line here because this is where a lot
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: of people get tripped up.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: When Julia hears that whisper of there is more, she is not saying I need more.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about accumulation.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: I need more is the ego demanding a bigger house,
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: a better body, a more impressive job title or another passport stamp to post about.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's the difference between trying to frantically hoard water in a bucket
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: because you're terrified of running out.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's the I need more mindset versus realizing you're actually sitting on top of
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: a deep water well.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: I love that analogy.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like you don't need a bigger bucket.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: You need to dig.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: You realize you have a capacity you haven't even tapped into yet.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's the there is more within me feeling.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: That captures it perfectly.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Realizing you are sitting on that well is your inner GPS booting up.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: But here is why it frustrates us so much.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: It does not give you the entire route.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: It never gives you the whole route.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: A normal navigation app gives you every turn from start to finish.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: The inner GPS flat out refuses to do that.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: It simply requires getting quiet enough to recognize the next truthful turn.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Just one step.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: But how do you actually get quiet when fear is literally screaming in your ear
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: about your career stalling?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: What is the actual mechanism for tuning into that next truthful turn?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: It requires intentionally delaying the urge to decide.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Just sitting in it?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, sitting in it.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Fear operates on extreme urgency.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: It wants an answer right the second to alleviate the anxiety.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Getting quiet means sitting in the profound discomfort of,
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, for just one extra day...
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Or one extra week, until the panic subsides and genuine curiosity takes its place.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: You stop asking the GPS for the final destination,
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: and you just ask for the next 10 feet of road.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Which leads right into the biggest trap we fall into, I think.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: When we are lost, the default question we ask ourselves is, what am I supposed to do?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we always ask that.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: We want the next truthful turn to be a job title.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: We want the GPS to say, turn left to become a marketing director.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because asking what am I supposed to do demands a noun as an answer.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: It demands a job description.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Julia found herself stuck in that exact loop,
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: agonizing over whether she should take a corporate job or write a book or start
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: a business.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: She was treating purpose as a job title.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: But she shifts her perspective on this, drawing out a concept from Mel Robbins, right?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: Mel Robbins says, purpose is not the thing that you do.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: Purpose is the thing that happens in others when you do the things that you do.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that sounds incredibly beautiful.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I really have to push back here for the sake of the listener who has bills to pay.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Go for it.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Generating an active impact in the room doesn't pay the rent.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: A job title pays the rent.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: So how did she reconcile this deeply spiritual view of purpose with
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: the very real reality of needing a paycheck?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great question.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: The reconciliation happens when you realize that the job is just the room you happen
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: to be standing in.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I see.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: The purpose is what you do with the air in that room.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: Mel Robbins isn't suggesting you quit your job to become a wandering philosopher, you know.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: She's not saying abandon all responsibilities.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: She's saying that whether you are a corporate executive,
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: a barista or a stay-at-home parent,
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: the better question is, what happens in other people because I was here?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it moves purpose from being a static noun on a resume to being an active verb.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's a verb.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you could be a project manager.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's the noun.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: But your purpose,
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: the verb,
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: is that people leave meetings with you feeling capable and heard rather than anxious
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: and diminished.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Precisely.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Your purpose is entirely invisible on paper.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: That is so freeing.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: But to figure out what that purpose is, you obviously can't look at your LinkedIn profile.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: You have to look backwards at your lived experiences.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: And looking backwards at our lived experiences usually means confronting the things
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: that hurt us.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's a direct causal link here.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: The deepest impacts we have on others usually stem from our deepest wounds.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Julia gets incredibly vulnerable in the essay about this.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: She takes us through three very specific,
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: painful iterations of her life to show how unmet needs become offerings.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Starting with her childhood, right?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: She takes us back to when she was a little girl.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: She remembers being the girl at school who wasn't chosen by the boys.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: She felt unbeautiful, just entirely unseen.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: She carried that heavy feeling for years.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: She did.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: But look at the alchemy of that pain.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, because of that deeply isolating experience,
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: when she writes for women,
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: her purpose,
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: the thing that happens in others because she is there,
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: is to tell them that being unseen once doesn't make you invisible forever.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's beautiful.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then she examines her professional life.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: She talks about losing a professional title that had become deeply intertwined
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: with her core identity.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it hurt her.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: It still hurts.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was a profound loss of self.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: But the offering that emerged from that loss is just so clear now.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: She wants to tell other women going through
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: that exact same professional stripping away that a title only describes what you do.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: It never contains everything you are.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, she looks at motherhood.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: She realized she spent decades of her adulthood in therapy,
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: undoing limiting beliefs, learning self-talk, trying to unknot all these anxieties.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: And she looked at her son and thought,
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: why should kids have to wait until they are 30 to do this inner work?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: So she takes the exhaustion of her own unlearning and she turns it into a desire
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: to help children build a kinder inner voice from the very beginning.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: What we are witnessing in these three stories is the profoundly moving idea
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: that perhaps what we did not receive can sometimes become the very thing we give.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: We take the hollow shape of our unmet needs and we just pour our empathy into them
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: until they become gifts for someone else.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to pause here to highlight a massive,
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: crucial caveat that Julia includes,
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: because we are definitely not trying to slap a toxic motivational sticker
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: over trauma here.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: No, absolutely not.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: We have to be so careful with that narrative.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Julia explicitly says she is not preaching that pain happens for a reason.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes painful things simply hurt, period.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: They aren't cosmic lessons wrapped in tragedy.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: But transforming those unmet needs into gifts is just one way that pain stops being only pain.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: It gives it a place to go.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's a radical move from focusing on healing to focusing on offering.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: It completely takes the pressure off.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: How so?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you don't have to be perfectly 100% healed from losing your identity in order
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: to turn around and hold space for someone else navigating that exact same loss.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's such a good point.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: You can offer the gift while you are still nursing the bruise.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to be fixed to be useful.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: That is a deeply compassionate way to live.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: And this desire to give what we didn't receive leads naturally to a broader sense
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: of wanting to be useful,
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: which brings a distinctly spiritual dimension to how Julia handles her uncertainty.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Julia uses the word God in her writing,
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: but she's very sensitive to the fact
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: that you listening right now might use entirely different language.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: You might call it the universe or a life force or simply something greater than yourself.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: The vocabulary isn't the point.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: The posture is the point.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: She contrasts her old, outcome-driven prayers with her new approach.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: The old prayers were highly transactional.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, give me the job.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Make this specific idea successful.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Show me exactly what my purpose is.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's treating the universe like a cosmic vending machine.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I put in hard work and good behavior, and I press the button for a specific outcome.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And when the vending machine gets stuck, we feel totally betrayed.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Always.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: But her new prayer is much simpler and requires a total surrender of control.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: She basically says, show me where I can be useful.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Show me what I have that can serve.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Take what I've lived,
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  SPEAKER_00: the beautiful parts and the painful ones,
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: and help me do something worthwhile with it.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Use me for something bigger than my fear.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: does shifting the focus from what do I want to how can I be used actually change
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: the psychological experience of being in the fog?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: It changes everything.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: When your focus is solely on what do I want, your ego is completely in charge.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's heavy.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: The crushing burden of architecting a flawless future rests entirely on your shoulders.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: It is exhausting to have to manifest and control every outcome.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it really is.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: But when you ask, how can I be used, you decentralize yourself.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: You become a conduit rather than the source.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: It moves you from a state of anxious grasping to a state of receptive service.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: The energetic drain of having to force a specific outcome just sort of drops away.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: It does.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: But, and I appreciate her honesty so much here, the fear doesn't just magically vanish.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Even with its profound spiritual shift, she admits she still wants security.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: She still doesn't know her next chapter.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: She still has moments where she'd rather have the whole map than practice trusting
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: the next turn.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Of course she does.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: She is human.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: The uncertainty is still deeply uncomfortable.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: So what actually grounds her when that fear of the unknown creeps back in?
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: She returns to a core memory.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is really the emotional climax of the whole essay.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: She returns to the story of herself as a young girl in a small town in Brazil.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And when she was that young girl, her biggest, wildest dream was simply to live abroad.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: That was it.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: That was the absolute limit of what her mind could envision.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because she had absolutely no reference points for anything else.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Our imagination is entirely restricted by our experiential vocabulary.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that makes so much sense.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: That little girl in Brazil couldn't see New Zealand.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: She couldn't see Milan or New York or an international career at the United Nations.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: She couldn't see the complex people she would meet,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: the family she would eventually build or the woman she would become.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: She could only dream as far as she could see.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: And life went further.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: It went so much further.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Her life eventually became exponentially bigger than the dream she was capable
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: of imagining back then.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: This introduces the central anchoring question of this entire deep dive.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: What if our imagination is sometimes limited by what we have already experienced?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's a huge question.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: When we stand at the edge of the map,
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: staring into the fog,
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: and we say,
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: I can't imagine what comes next, we assume that means there is nothing there.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: We equate our inability to see with a lack of existence.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: But assuming there is nothing beyond what we can currently imagine is a flaw
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: in our own perception.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: It is not a lack of possibilities in the world.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's like trying to imagine a brand new primary color.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: You literally cannot do it.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, your brain just glitches.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Your brain doesn't have the architecture to conjure a color that doesn't exist in our spectrum.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: But your inability to imagine a new color doesn't mean the spectrum of light ends
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: with what human eyes can currently see.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: The universe is so much wider than our visual cortex.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Just because you can't see the next peak through the fog doesn't mean
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: the mountain ceases to exist.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: It just means you don't have the optics for it yet.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: You just don't have the optics yet.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: I want to bring this directly back to you, the listener.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: You might be standing at your own doorway of uncertainty right now.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: You are suspended between what you know and whatever comes next.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Look backwards for a second.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Consider whether something you once desperately wanted, a job,
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: a relationship,
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: a specific milestone,
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: ultimately became only the doorway to a life you couldn't have even imagined at
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: the time.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to leave you in that uncertainty today.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: We are not going to tie this up with a neat motivational bow.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: No, we aren't promising that everything works out exactly as you hope it will,
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: or that the fog lifts tomorrow.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Julia still doesn't know what her next chapter looks like, and neither do you.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: But the point is that not being able to see
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: the next dream does not necessarily mean there isn't one.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: The fog is not a brick wall.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: So as you go about the rest of your day,
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: we want to leave you with this specific sequence of questions to quietly reflect on.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: What if you don't need the entire map yet?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: What if your next step is simply becoming quiet enough to distinguish fear from direction?
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: What is yours to give?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: What happens in other people when you are most fully yourself?
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: And what if the dream you can currently see is not the biggest dream available to you?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: You might be white-knuckling a fading map right now,
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: terrified because you've walked off the edge of it.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Only to realize the ground is still holding you up and the landscape is wider
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: than you ever thought possible.