How To Create The Life You Want

I am Kimberly Johnson,

A Buddhist life coach,

Meditation teacher,

Writer and speaker.

Hello and welcome to episode 131 of Navigating the Modern World.

I am really excited about today.

Today I'm going to be talking about creating our own worlds and boundaries.

Really,

I wanted to come to this conversation with just authenticity that I am walking alongside you.

I hope that that's always felt in my podcast that no matter what I'm talking about that I am talking about it from a place not that I know everything,

But that I'm actually just walking this crazy windy hilly road called life right alongside you.

And specifically in this conversation because I don't feel as clear and I'm kind of okay with that.

I think the clarity of this type of conversation and this type of inquiry might be the inquiry of a lifetime.

So I'll just preface with that.

I'll start by kind of sharing my experience of life thus far and then what has kind of happened I would say probably over the last few years in a really deep way,

A deepening way.

But I would say for the most part,

Most of my life I have felt like life was happening to me and kind of like I didn't have much control.

And this could be from relationships,

This could be from my habits,

This could be and even in my career kind of like I've taken this stance of life is happening to me and so I just kind of show up to the party.

Whatever party arises every day I just kind of show up to that party.

And I'm not saying that this is wrong because I don't think it is.

I think partially this is somewhat true.

Like you're driving your car and something happens.

You don't really have much control over that.

It is something that just kind of occurs and then we get to choose how we show up.

And so for the most part of my 20s and then now the beginning of my 30s I've kind of taken the stance of how can I be so solid in myself that no matter what crazy wild party life throws me today that I can show up to that party.

And it has been so extremely beneficial.

And I'm noticing an edge over the last few years that I want to kind of talk about and that recently has been clarifying more and more and more.

And the edges is weight.

Okay life,

Some parts of life happen to us.

And kind of the you know this cultivation of how do I meet the party that arrives right in my life.

That's the creative part.

And I really am getting clearer and clearer on this because so a lot of times in my life how if something is happening that I don't really want to be happening.

I can often take the stance of I don't want to.

And it kind of sounds like this I don't wanna.

Right?

And it feels like this very immature I don't wanna.

No I don't wanna.

Right?

Like I don't want to deal with that.

I don't want that to be happening.

And so there's this edge that I'm noticing of like a maturity in life.

And I don't mean immature in a negative connotation.

Like I wanna say we all have areas of our life where we are mature and then we are immature.

It's just kind of like to me it's like where have we evolved and developed and where are we still developing.

Right?

Immaturity is just we have areas where we can continue our growth and our maturation,

Our evolution,

Our learning.

And then there are other areas where we still need learning and growth but that maybe we have grown more so far in this life.

And there's this edge that I notice that in some areas I can so easily like especially with like let's say my thoughts or my mind that I can begin to catch things and notice like oh I'm having a negative thought okay.

Am I really do I is it necessary to believe that thought what thought would serve me better you know like I can it's like I have matured in a lot of ways especially with like my thoughts and my emotions so I'll just say that.

I used to be a very very I would say reactive emotional person.

In fact it's kind of funny to me to think back because I can just I just remember having these episodes of just completely like almost like word vomiting emotional vomiting on whatever was occurring.

And that hasn't happened to me in years and so that feels really good.

And there's some other areas that I've been really curious about it.

And so the areas that I've been most curious about it is when I interact with the outer world.

So when something is occurring inside me I have developed kind of a method of returning to myself and taking care of myself and noticing what's here and you know really attending to my inner world.

And what I notice is where my maturation is kind of yearning where I'm yearning to mature is in the outer world.

And in fact like the edge I want to see if I can feel it even right now.

The edge kind of started like I started getting really really present to it during 2020 during COVID when at night in the evenings I literally didn't know what to do with my time.

And so you know this is also I want to say this is like a culmination of things right where all of a sudden at home all the time I work from home so I'm also home all the time for work.

And then there's this new layer of being home all the time and so you just have more space and energy and time and I'm somewhat of a social person so there would be a lot of evenings before COVID where I would be out with people or doing something taking a yoga class or you know whatever whatever it was teaching a yoga class you know.

And so now I've been home and I really haven't known what to do with my time.

And it's really really interesting because right there in that edge I don't want to take responsibility for my life.

Right there on that edge it's like I don't want to have to ask myself what do I want how do I want to spend my time.

And so for me what it's looked like it's really interesting and I can really see it kind of looking into my past what it has looked like is I often will just go along with whoever is in my life.

So partners specifically I will just go along with whatever they're doing.

And I didn't and I didn't realize that I was doing that because of this edge of like I don't want to be responsible for creating my life.

Because if I'm responsible for creating my life guess what you got to do stuff.

Whereas if I if I kept this kind of immature stance of life just happens to me and I can just kind of go with the flow.

And once again this is not a bad or wrong way to live.

It's just not exactly the life I want to live or the life that feels like it serves me best.

So if you're a person that does like to just go with the flow and just kind of interact with you know your partner and just do what your partner does that's fine.

If that's what literally lights you up perfect.

It does not light me up.

So but I've been noticing in the evenings that often I will just wait for my boyfriend to kind of tell me what he's doing and I'll either go along with what he's doing or it seems like in the in the moment that he takes responsibility for himself that then I kind of will lean in and be like okay well he's doing that now and you're just kind of alone what do you want to do.

It's like because he has done it it gives it has begun to give me permission to do it.

But let me tell you it has been so incredibly uncomfortable.

And I can't tell quite this is where you know we're we're in this together we're hand in hand is I can't tell if it's because since I run my own business you know it's kind of like is it because a lot of my energy is already trying to think about what I want to do in my business right and so at night I'm kind of like my brain like just wants to shut down and so oftentimes you know kind of when when my boyfriend will go do whatever he's doing I'll be like okay I'm just gonna bake something I'm just gonna bake something right it seems like it like will give me a little bit of pleasure it's usually sweet so I can like kind of get an endorphin rush on the sugar and it's a way to kind of like distract me it's a way to deal with my discomfort right eating and also just like doing something and so I've been really playing with and deciding like okay I don't just want to do that because usually also if I just eat sweets at night guess what I wake up feeling guilty right karma what you do you then you have to deal with the consequences of it so also the lower belly you know like all these things I can I just notice and I I can feel myself like okay like I'm suffering over these choices so what else do I need to do what do I need to look at what do I need to you know really investigate for myself and so there's this edge that I've been playing with of like okay at night one I just have been noticing my discomfort so if you follow this podcast at all you know that this is a huge part of my process is I just first noticed I'm uncomfortable and notice I've been even using the word boredom because I used to think I was never a person who was bored but I think it was because I was filling my space and my time all the time all the time and so now that I have all this open space I am noticing this boredom and so part of my process has been can I sit in the boredom can I actually be with the discomfort of boredom without needing to react to it so that's kind of been my first step is like okay can I be with this and noticing where it is in my body oftentimes boredom to me feels like a restlessness it feels like a um like oh I gotta do something I don't know what to do and it's kind of like you know I don't know if people listening have lived in a small house but I was joking with a friend the other day that like living in a small space it feels like you're just moving stuff all the time you're like you'll take something from your little living room and you're bringing it into the kitchen and then you'll take it from the kitchen into the bedroom like it just feels like sometimes out of boredom for myself that it just feels like um I'm moving stuff around and it's this restless energy it's kind of this like or baking you know it's like okay what I'm feeling restless what can I do and so my first part of the process has been and this is the creating my own life is like actually something I'm deeply interested in is being able to really really intentionally and kindly be with discomfort because I don't know about you but so much of my life has been uncomfortable my childhood extremely uncomfortable um my marriage uncomfortable divorce extremely uncomfortable trying to figure out who I am extremely uncomfortable right like life has these deep uncomforts and you know it's the first noble truth of Buddhism like life has suffering and so a huge goal in my life has been how can I be with suffering and what I notice is is that boredom is just another layer of that how can I be with this restless energy how can I be with this feeling of not knowing what to do with myself and instead of just filling the space can I be in the space can I feel it fully can I watch its ebb and flow can I watch it arise and can I watch it go away because all things if we if we have the you know the courage to sit with anything with anything all things have this kind of um this I'm going to call it a pattern right they arise they come with thoughts emotions body sensations sometimes reactions and actions and if we can watch them they arise they arise though a lot of times they'll have a peak where maybe the intensity in the body gets really high and then if you keep watching it it does kind of go away a little bit and then it might peak again and then it goes away a little bit and then it peaks again and then maybe it goes into a different part of the body and then it kind of goes away completely and then it could be one minute later or hours later but then it might come back right like you can kind of watch this almost like the waves of it oh here it is okay the wave is crashing okay it's kind of gone now oh here it is again and so I've been really trying to watch the boredom and sit with the boredom without reacting to it and there's this really cool space that begins to open up and um my boyfriend his father is a writer and him and I and Jordan over the holiday we did a lot of talking about creativity and there is this place in creativity that is indecision and so there's like two you know there's two ways there's like indecision and then there's decision and we have to actually we were talking about how we actually have to be able to be able to sit in the indecision because that's actually where a lot of creativity is born if we just have an idea and decide on that you know that idea over and over and over again without being in this kind of a limbo state this this in this in-between state then like you know potentially there's no way for our creativity to develop and deepen and so I think often in my life this space I have just filled it I filled it with social activities I have filled it with people I have filled it with activities that other people want to do I have filled it with substances I have filled it with food right I have filled the space filled the space filled the space and so I've been really practicing sitting with it and inside of this space it's really really interesting it's kind of like um I'm kind of just feeling it out before I speak to it it's kind of like I begin to almost like be more and more in relationship with myself so the more that I kind of sit in this discomfort and I allow myself just to be with this boredom I begin to kind of get curious about what I actually like and how I actually want to be spending my time and I want to say when I'm sitting with the boredom I'm not doing anything like I'm not writing about it I'm really just trying to sit with it and let it kind of come and go and then notice what's kind of there after or notice what's there during and it's really interesting because I've been what I've noticed is I've been playing music more because like that is something that really matters to me I've been reading a bunch more I already read a ton but I I've been it's like expanded my ability to read like I've been reading at night and I've been reading so much that I can't it's almost like I can't stop reading I'm just so engaged and also because I haven't been numbing my body can be more present it's it's this bizarre beautiful kind of thing that's arising and then the other thing that has come out of it is deep clarity about my life and so you know so as you guys know I have had a life coaching business for a decade now I can't believe it over a decade and I'm actually going to go back to graduate school and I'm going to become a therapist and it's kind of a it's something I've thought about before but I kind of I really didn't know if I would ever do it and I'm actually I'm going to go get my MSW so my master's in social work which will also open the door to a lot of other things but it's interesting because I it's it didn't come out of fear or didn't come out of lack it came out of deep clarity of like oh what's next what's the next step like what am I curious about now what do I want to dive into now and it really was it was kind of like birthed out of this this allowing myself to sit in indecision and then you know inside of the indecision I became clear about stuff and then I made decisions right so then I made decisions and and now I'm kind of preparing for those decisions but it's like inside of this space is like so much juiciness well so I want to talk about boundaries because something else that has that I so I'm in it I'm in a course right now and it's a leadership course and it's for my business just to get some mentorship and have some support which is so important to anybody who has a business if you feel lonely in your business do something to get yourself some support and do something to um have beautiful conversations with people you trust it's so important um and so I'm in this leadership course and something then has come out of it that was like this beautiful conversation that we had is boundaries and honest honest um a huge reason why I want to go back to school is to set better boundaries in my business and so it's really kind of cool and beautiful that like this leadership course was also talking about boundaries and so something that they were talking about and I'll just speak for myself and I'll kind of give you the version of both types of boundaries so you can kind of see which camp you like to live in so there's two camps one of the camps is barbed wire boundaries so when you have really strict boundaries and you're kind of like you just say no to everything or you like you know things always have to be your way or you like control right things are really really boundaried they're called barbed wire boundaries and those types of boundaries are often we we keep those intense boundaries because we don't want intimacy with others so we might have a fear of getting close to others others and so just notice how that lands that might resonate with some of you more than others and then the other type of boundaries you can hear my cat always getting into something you the other type of boundaries is when you don't really have boundaries and so let me just tell you from my personal experience what this looks like it just looks like that you do everything for everyone else you're constantly the one taking care of everything um you're constantly like asking like what does that person need before you even check in with yourself you're kind of a giver you're the caretaker you give give give give give and these having no boundaries is often because we don't want to be intimate with ourselves and i can interweave this and when i heard this i was almost like it almost just had me like freeze in my tracks because i was like oh interesting you know i've been getting so intimate with my feelings and my emotions and my thoughts over the last years and now i'm like oh now it's time for me to get intimate with my life with my outer life and the way to do that you know is to get more intimate with my inner life too like not the feelings and emotions necessarily but these big questions of like wait what do i want my life to look like and then the maturing aspect is really learning to let go of this idea that i don't have control and that life is just happening to me or i don't wanna right the childish ways that i'm like no no you can you can hear it like notice how you say no sometimes you can really feel the almost immaturity the childlike nature and i want to say this is normal like this is why we get older and mature is because so think about it when you're a young child most of the time you just do what your parents tell you to do it's like you know um you just end up in dance class right or you just end up at the swimming pool like there's not much choice life is kind of happening to you and what you realize as you get older is that oh i then have to take on the parental role for my own life whereas before you were just kind of thrown into things and like life was happening to you and part of maturing is saying like okay things still happen to me like that's a part of life and a big a bigger part of life potentially is what do i want and how can i create it for myself and so like in this space and in these interesting you know insights i've been having around boundaries i really recognize like oh my goodness like it feels so uncomfortable for me to ask what i want or what i need or how i want to spend my time because i don't know and that's the boredom restlessness the like the automatic i don't know and so we just fill our space with stuff that doesn't matter and what i want to say is that if we can pause and say i don't know and it's okay not to know and can i be with this can i be with how uncomfortable it is to be uncertain to be uncertain about what i like to be uncertain about who i am to be uncertain about what i want and what i desire can i be with that discomfort and then sitting with that discomfort and asking the questions what do i want and so a big area you know that well it's been coming up in every area of life it's like kind of like um you know dye it's like if you put a drop of dye on a on a cloth like literally it just seeps all over the cloth that's kind of what's been happening it's like it started kind of in my career i'm like okay what do i want i don't know this feels uncomfortable and then it kind of bled into like noticing like how restless i am at night okay wow i'm really restless i'm really trying to just fill my time i don't know how i want to spend my time sitting with that and then having some clarity and beginning to take action in that and now it's bleeding into my relationship and it's really interesting you know being a woman who got married very young and then got divorced after you know seven years later and then now being almost i've been divorced for longer than i was married um and really like almost like being an adult for the first time on my own kind of and then trying to navigate relationship inside of that too you know i've begun to notice this deeper inquiry of like okay and this is you know maybe this will help somebody who's in relationship that's been feeling certain ways but what i have recognized is and this is over the years of dating and you know meeting different people and then being married and getting divorced that nothing no relationship is ever gonna fulfill me it's just not gonna fulfill me it's lovely sometimes it's nice to have a person to do stuff with but it's not the thing that's gonna make me feel amazing and love my life and love myself and it's the same with everything i'm beginning to notice it with everything oh food that's not gonna make me love my life oh my career that's not gonna make me love my life and so if you begin to notice that this outer world isn't the thing that fulfills you but actually being closer to yourself and more intimate with yourself is the thing that fulfills you and then having that intimacy bleed out into your outer world that something begins to shift and happen and i'm kind of in the process of this so stay tuned um but this kind of thing begins to happen where i'm like okay i know my relationship isn't going to make me feel whole and complete it's not its job so if you think your partner's supposed to make you feel a certain way and they're not doing it remember it's not their job be gentle as you hear those words and it's not their job and so i'm kind of like okay so if i know that then what do i want in relationship what aspects do i want my relationship to add to my life and it's interesting because what begins coming up is like adventure like i want partnership to bring adventure into my life like i like going on adventures with people right um like someone that i can talk to about the things that i'm interested in um it's interesting it becomes very specific like oh like i do kind of want these aspects of a relationship and it also as it gets specific it also allows more room for the person to be whoever they are it's like i'm not trying to if you listen to the last podcast i'm not trying to change my partner they get to be whoever they are and does this person bring into my life the things that matter most to me and that i value and that i find most important for a relationship because everything else i am doing for myself the intimacy the love the care the all of that like i'm doing for myself i want that in relationship but i don't necessarily need it as much anymore or like something that i really needed for years and years and years was attention you know i felt like as a young child i didn't get the attention i needed and so i was always trying to get attention from someone else and really what it just left me with is this empty feeling of deep sadness and grief of just like you know really this lack of intimacy with self but i was trying to get it from the outside world and now as i get more intimate with myself it's really cool it's like i don't need so much someone out here to give me the attention that i yearned for i can you know i can place my own hand on my own heart and i can say hey babe i'm right here i'm right here what do you need you need attention i'm right here where do you need attention and maybe i'll like rub my legs or give myself a foot massage right and i'm not saying that we need to um relationships are super amazing and helpful and good like sometimes it does feel so good just to have somebody to lay your head on and to cry with and to have somebody hear you and see you that's so important too i'm not saying that and i think we can do a lot of that work for ourselves like i see you to myself i see you because the outer world and our partners they can't always do it for us and part of creating our own world is knowing that we can create whatever we need in whatever moment so if i need attention that i can turn within myself and i can give myself the loving caring attention that i'm needing and not waiting for the outer world to give it to me or not waiting for my partner to be in the right headspace to be able to give it to me and this is that creating and then inside of this intimacy this turning turning towards self and for me you know lately it's the turning towards self and asking like what do i want how do i want to spend my time you know the other day i realized i love adventure and there's also like a part of like where i want my partner to be a person i can adventure with you know but also like i can't expect my partner to be the person that creates all the adventure so i went on a rampage i was like googling all the hikes nearby and i was saving them and planning you know part of it is me really taking responsibility you can hear the difference if i was just waiting around for an adventure to show up one will show up eventually i can guarantee it like if you live long enough one one an adventure will show up eventually and if i want adventure if that's something i crave if i crave to be in nature if i crave these things it is my responsibility to begin creating them and the the discomfort that i've had to sit with to really recognize this is the discomfort of kind of like the maturation process the maturing process of like okay life hasn't felt how i necessarily wanted to right so maybe it it hasn't been as fulfilling as i thought it would to just think life is happening to me and that i'm just here kind of you know without any agency waiting for life to happen but actually that's maybe that's not quite it okay what is it well i'm not sure that in between right that's kind of the boredom i was talking about sitting with that in between and almost wrestling with it like you guys i have had a lot of days of wrestling so over the years like the wrestling process has been and it's somewhat painful it's kind of like do i believe that i can create my life like what do people mean by manifestation you know just like it's this wrestling this wrestling is wrestling and it's really interesting because the more that i wrestle the more that i can allow the discomfort of not knowing it's kind of like in in that not knowing okay it's almost like this um so think about a pond or a water puddle or something right if every time we get we get uncomfortable if we just stomp around in the water right we just fill our time we just go to the kitchen and bake something we just go outside and do something we just call a friend we just you know we muddy the water we don't actually know what's going on inside of the discomfort it's just all muddied you can't see anything in it you just kind of see a brown murky but if you have discomfort that arises and you sit still long enough like water if it sits still long enough all the sediment falls to the bottom and you can see everything very clearly and it's like that it's like the more that i sit and allow the discomfort so in my relationship right allowing the discomfort of like is this what i want a lot of times i think we're scared to ask those questions because we may not like the answer you know we may not like the answer that one we don't know that's what i would say is like most of the time we don't like the answer of not knowing but also we may not like the answer that it might change the path of our life and so as i've sat and the water has cleared i one begin to get more clear on what i want and so it's cool because i can i can then create that for myself and then i can invite my partner in it's almost like the all of the focus on partner kind of goes away because i then am in control another area that i've been doing it and so jordan listens to this sorry sorry um is around like sex um is like okay like i want certain things in sex which for a lot of women and probably men i know it feels hard to ask for that and mostly if i've asked for it if i've asked myself like what do you want it's like i don't know but because i haven't you know if i don't sit in the discomfort of not knowing then the water can never get clear but because i've been willing to sit i've been able to then make requests like oh i think i want this and and like playing playing in the realm of like oh i think i want this i think this would be really nice and then asking for it and it's really cool because asking for it or going moving toward it is how we get what we want in life and like i think a lot of times in my 20s i just kind of was like whatever like just rolling with the flow of life and trust me i had many fun times and had you know great things happen and maybe i'm in the part of maturing where i really recognize oh if i want something specific it is my responsibility to make that happen for myself and to work toward it without necessarily needing it to look how i think it should look like right that's the not holding it so tightly so if i if i request something let's say maybe sexually requesting it but letting the other person meet you like it's gonna be different because there's two people involved so you know being flexible in that it kind of shifts as that person interprets what you say and they begin to interact with that request and being like curious and excited about just the kind of like dance that two people can do in a relationship or with my business you know like really listening to what i want and what i need and then being open like going back to graduate school like being open about what that experience is actually like not expecting it to be a certain way but kind of like opening my heart to experience what I need and being open to experiencing whatever it actually does look like and so you know what i want to say is that if you're listening to this and you're kind of like hmm like maybe begin you can be a good beginning place is notice an area of your life where you feel uncomfortable or maybe you feel unsatisfied and first just sitting with that discomfort giving yourself permission to just sit in that be okay with being uncomfortable and then maybe in that in that area of life maybe beginning just to ask the question what do i want and when we begin to ask these questions i want to be very very clear we have to have patience the answer i don't think just comes i think the answer comes with a dedication to the living question because what we want changes and what we need changes and who we are changes everything is always changing so if you can live in the living question it's almost like what do i want now oh what do i want now who am i now what i how do i want to how do i want to spend my time now and being willing to live in that kind of ambiguity the space in between of not necessarily knowing and being okay with that and giving the water time to settle and then just seeing what happens noticing what begins to arise as you kind of interact with this process and really begin maybe also noticing where in life you kind of feel helpless and noticing maybe if you have like a tinge of that life is happening to me i don't have control i don't have any say notice that kind of immature you know thoughts process emotional process don't judge it just notice it we all have it very human experience trust me i work with people very human experience and then give yourself permission to say one wait i do have control over my life i do have choice maybe that's a better word i don't really like the word control but that's also i should sit with that um but i do have choice i do have choice so maybe that could be a starting place of just i do have choice what could i choose what do i want to choose what choice might make me feel the way i want to feel and just beginning to really live in to those questions and sit with the discomfort trusting that with patience and persistence if you've ever done a papasana of course you know maybe you know that phrase with patience and persistence so patience for the process but persistence with sitting with the discomfort and persistence with asking the questions that matter for you and your life this is your life you have choice and you have choice you have choice and your choice creates the karma of your life what you choose today creates the next thing and i've been seeing it so huge in my life and i just want to keep you know bringing it forth what you choose creates your next moment yes life throws us curve balls but with the curve balls we have choice how do i want to see this how do i want to respond to this how would i respond that made me feel how i wanted to feel you are not the victim of life you have beautiful choices and sometimes really hard painful things happen and i recognize that and those things also take patience and persistence to move through them so this isn't about blaming yourself it's just knowing that you have choice also okay you guys inspire the crap out of me you're so amazing thank you so much for being here until next time