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00:00:01
S2 Ep. 4: Give Yourself Permission to Expand Your World
34 Plays26 days ago
In this episode, we jump into how fear can stop us from living our purpose and how life often presents unexpected opportunities disguised as endings. I focus on how important it is to “give yourself permission to expand your world” and let go of the "what was" that’s holding you back. It's all about trusting the process, letting go of what you can't control, choosing yourself, and leaning into who you're meant to become.
If you're navigating your own challenges or looking for inspiration to push forward, this episode is for you. Whether you're starting over or simply searching for clarity, I’ve got insights that will resonate with you.
Be sure to visit my website at wanderingthewildmess.com for some of my favorite book recommendations and ways we can continue this journey together!
Alexa play "Starlight" by Jon Pardi
Transcript
00:00:01
heatherdyann
Have you ever thought to yourself, I can't do that. That can't be me. That's too big. That's too hard. It's too late. It'll never happen for me. Well, then this episode is for you. Welcome to wandering the wild mess with Heather Morgan. I am so happy you're here.
00:00:28
heatherdyann
First off, I want to say I'm glad you're here because this is one of those episodes that is speaking so much to my soul. And I feel so called to just ah share this message and tell you if you're in that point in time where you're just like, what am I doing?
00:00:47
heatherdyann
I can't do that thing, but I really want to. This is the episode for you because that's exactly where I'm at. And if you're there too, let's just figure it out together.
00:01:02
heatherdyann
I've talked a little bit about how changing up my whole life and starting over has just really triggered, and I don't know if triggered the right word really, but has kind of opened my mind up to a lot of things. And I have this book that I read, I mean, a lot of different books.
00:01:22
heatherdyann
And I did, however, put the books on my web website finally. So you can find them at the top, wanderingthewildmess.com. There's a list of books. You can click the link. It'll take you right to the Amazon page where you can order it or on Audible. But this book is really what I think it is when you're a point in your life where you're like, what do I do now? And in the book, How Successful People Think, there's In the first chapter, it talks about give yourself permission to expand your world. I love that.
00:02:01
heatherdyann
give yourself permission to expand your world. I think so often when we make mistakes or things end, whether again, relationships, careers, ah friendships, we move away, we're just kind of like, I don't know what to do now. But I think the answer is give yourself permission to expand your world.
00:02:23
heatherdyann
I carried a lot of guilt and what I left behind between my life being with my ex-husband and leaving my family to be honest. But I have to truly know that this journey is mine and mine alone and I will bring the right people with me and they'll come along but no one is permanent except for me in my reality.
00:02:49
heatherdyann
And so I just have to give myself permission to expand my world. And it reads a little like this. If you want to be a big picture thinker, you will have to go against the flow of the world. Society wants to keep people in boxes. Most people are married mentally to the status quo. They want what was, not what can be.
00:03:15
heatherdyann
They seek safety and simple answers. To think big picture, you need to give yourself permission to go a different way, to break new ground, to find new worlds, to conquer. And when your world does get bigger, you need to celebrate. Never forget there is more out there in the world than what you've experienced.
00:03:39
heatherdyann
Really though, people, come on. Keep learning, keep growing, and keep looking at the big picture. If you desire to be a good the thinker, that's what you need to do.
00:03:54
heatherdyann
I feel like it's so often that we feel a little bit of like guilt to let go of the life we had because We loved it. And just as the book said, we have a desire to keep what was. But it's okay to grow and evolve. And I think that that's sometimes what simple minds don't want us to believe.
00:04:23
heatherdyann
And when we allow ourselves to believe that anything is possible for us, it just unlocks a whole different world. I want to share something that I i had wrote myself 10 years ago. And I'm kind of sharing all of these things right now because so much of my mind has been going and going into what was. And when I talk to people that I meet,
00:04:56
heatherdyann
I often learn that most people are so fixated on their past and it being gone that they don't even think about what they want in the future. The unfamiliar of the future is just too scary to face, so they spend their time dwelling on the past. 10 years ago, I would blog here and there.
00:05:21
heatherdyann
not really for any purpose other than my own. And I wrote, I found this that I wrote and I realized it rings true still today. And it's wild to think that my younger self knew this, all this wisdom, but she was doing nothing with it. It reads, I often think about if there was a specific moment when I lost my will to take on the world and let nothing stop me.
00:05:49
heatherdyann
Where did that fight run off to? And why did I let it go? I still feel at times it's it hidden inside me behind the grown-up bills that need to be paid, the doubts of fear ah failure the doubts that fear of failure hand you, and maybe more that, the fear of the unknown. Taking the routine life I've come to know and love and making it something I don't recognize at all.
00:06:17
heatherdyann
Moving to the unfamiliar is almost like being naked in front of a crowd, because who knows what will be said, the emotions you'll experience, and how long it will take for you to get your clothes back on and move on. But what if you could stand there carefree, forget your clothes, and be unbothered by the remarks from the crowded room? You just let them leave your mind as easily as you heard them.
00:06:44
heatherdyann
I know my happiness is a reflection of my own thoughts and nothing anyone can say is powerful enough to take that away. So why? Why do I let the thoughts that others might think even cross my mind?
00:07:02
heatherdyann
I realized after reading that a lot of the reasons we stay safe is because not only are we fearful of the unfamiliar, it's the perception of what it will look like. Because I believe most of what we want from life directly correlates with what we think will make us feel most accepted.
00:07:26
heatherdyann
When I talk to people that I meet and I will say divorced people, it suddenly becomes a topic. I learned that most of the people I ask when they get divorced, what they miss most, it's not their partner. It's just the life that they thought they were going to have and the life that they had. But really it's not about the person.
00:07:56
heatherdyann
If you think about that, you realize that we could build and create the life that we want ourselves without that person.
00:08:09
heatherdyann
And I'm not suggesting that marriage isn't a beautiful thing, but what I'm saying is when we tie our happiness or what success looks like based on an external factor, like and a partner or being married or the right job or the right house or the right things in life, what we think are the right things in life, or we've been told to believe by society,
00:08:39
heatherdyann
then we're always just chasing something that's never going to stay because external things come and go. You could get that dream car and someone could steal it. You could buy that beautiful home and it could be wrecked in a tornado. Everything external is not really going to make you happy forever because you don't know that it will stay. But when you're so happy and content in your own self and your own life, and you have no attachment to those external things, you could still build a life you want even if you don't have the partner you thought you'd build it with.
00:09:30
heatherdyann
That's been a big eye opener for me. And I'll tell a story of just A while ago, I was sitting at a hotel bar and a gentleman was sitting there, very obviously wanting to talk to people. And I realized this about men. They don't often have someone to talk to about their feelings. If they don't have a partner,
00:10:01
heatherdyann
then they usually don't have someone as often as women to listen to their day to day or even not their day to day, but even just thoughts that have crossed their mind. So I always try to listen when I feel like there's someone that needs it. So this gentleman in particular was in his fifties and he was glowing about his daughter that he just got to visit in college and he was so excited.
00:10:32
heatherdyann
And of course, I'm listening to his excitement and saying, that's wonderful. It sounds like you did a great job and you have a great daughter and a great relationship with her good for you. And that's genuinely how I felt so in my mind, of course, wishing that I still had my father around to gloat about me and vice versa. But, you know, needless to say, I didn't mention it.
00:10:57
heatherdyann
But he proceeds to tell me that he doesn't really know what it's going to look like when she graduates college and gets married. It'll just be a little bit more difficult. So of course I asked, why is that? And he proceeded to tell me that he was getting divorced after over 25 years of marriage. And he didn't know what he was supposed to do now. And I said, well, what would you do if you were married?
00:11:28
heatherdyann
still. Well, I would do what we always do. Okay, well, were you happy doing that? He stops. I guess I didn't really think if I was happy doing it. It was just my life. I said, All right, well, now you get to choose what you get to do. Because it's not all planned out.
00:11:54
heatherdyann
He said he never thought about that way, but it scared him to death. I think sometimes having choices scares us because we don't want to make the wrong one and we realize it's all up to us.
00:12:12
heatherdyann
When we have this partner to do things with, to help us navigate, you know, there's someone else to blame or there's someone else to help when we fall down or there's someone else. But when it's just us, it's, it's a lot. We have to think through all the new decisions and options that we have been given. And oftentimes instead of being excited about it, we're overwhelmed.
00:12:39
heatherdyann
So he looked at me and said, I just didn't want to have to do life all over. I thought it was going to be her. And I said, all right. Well, did you want it to be her? And he said.
00:12:57
heatherdyann
Well, I don't know. My therapist said she probably left because this and that and this and it was a whole bunch of things like menopause and, you know, all these other random excuses. And I don't know if they're excuses, but I'm sure they could all factor into this. But at the end of the day, I don't know if any of them matter.
00:13:20
heatherdyann
And I said, all right, well, put all those things aside. Would you have wanted, were you really happy? Did you think that was it? Did you really think it was going to work forever if you're honest?
00:13:37
heatherdyann
And he said, no. No, I didn't.
00:13:48
heatherdyann
so much of our time. And this could be true with whenever we're not doing what really feels our soul and makes us happy. We're just kind of settling in going through the motions. We're not being a allowing ourselves back to our book. We're not giving ourselves permission to expand our world.
00:14:13
heatherdyann
We know it's not what we want. It's not gonna last. It's not making us happy, but we just stay. We don't give ourselves permission to think outside the box about what will make us happy. And that stops us from becoming who we're meant to be. And that's really why I'm saying this message today is because us becoming who were meant to be is to to me, I hope to you, you can see how valuable that is in the world. You're just a better, happier human. If you're doing things you love, if you're choosing yourself, if you're expanding giving yourself permission to do the things you want to do.
00:15:09
heatherdyann
So I'll continued on a little more with this gentleman before I had to get up and go somewhere else. But at the end of our conversation, I sent him this podcast and he said, can I give you a hug?
00:15:25
heatherdyann
I said, sure, Bill, we'll go with Bill. And, uh, yeah, Bill's just said, thanks for listening. And thanks for reminding me that I wouldn't have wanted to stay, but I would have stayed. And I said, Bill, it sounds like it's time to choose you.
00:15:51
heatherdyann
And I bet your daughter will love that
00:16:01
heatherdyann
I'm going to end this by saying that you should choose you every day, every time, every place, no matter what.
00:16:15
heatherdyann
That is always going to be the right choice. So at the end of the day, when we're worried about where we should go, what we should do, what do we want to do that makes us feel the most purposeful, alive, and aligned with our greater purpose in life?
00:16:36
heatherdyann
That's the choice we make. We don't get hung up on what we could have done before or how much easier it was to not have to make all the decisions on our own. Believe me, there have been a number of times where I have gone to myself, why did you do this? You're all alone in this life now. It's so scary, Heather. How am I going to make it through?
00:17:05
heatherdyann
But you know what? The absolutely most amazing part of that is every time I know I will and I do and I have and I only have myself to think when I do there and do it alone. I see my own strength. I understand what I've been through and what I get through and I can give myself a pat on the back for being that person. So every time you choose yourself,
00:17:35
heatherdyann
You win. It's the only way.
00:17:43
heatherdyann
And so I'll leave you with this thought that I heard today, and I'll probably maybe
00:17:55
heatherdyann
I might jack it up a little, but it basically says, and I'm sure you've heard it before, we have to let go of the life that we thought we would have to make room for the life that we're meant to have.
00:18:17
heatherdyann
If it doesn't go our way, something better is on the way. If it doesn't pan out how we think it should, it's because something even better is coming. I know sometimes that just seems like unrealistic to even believe, but I promise you it is true. It's true for you. It's true for me. It's true for us.
00:18:45
heatherdyann
It always works out, but you have to choose yourself. So if you take one thing from this episode, it's to be proud of how far you've gotten and where you're going. It's just looking at the dashboard and forgetting about the rear view.
00:19:17
heatherdyann
You got this. Thank you for listening to Wandering the Wild Mess with Heather Morgan. You matter.