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We’ve all had moments when a want feels clear, alive, and true, and yet, when it comes time to move toward it, something inside of us hesitates, tightens, or stalls.In today’s episode, we explore that mysterious place, the edge, where our heart’s desire meets old conditioning, protection, and the parts of us that don’t yet feel free.What if the pause, the freeze, or the resistance isn’t a sign of failure, self-sabotage, or “not wanting it enough”?What if nothing is wrong at all?Together, we look at why so many of us struggle to move toward the very things we care about, how our minds try to solve what doesn’t need fixing, and what becomes possible when we meet that edge with presence instead of pressure.Rather than forcing ourselves through fear, what's possible when we learn to stay with ourselves long enough for something new to reorganize inside?If you’re standing at the edge of a want, a longing, or a next chapter, this conversation is for you.Thank you for listening to the Innerverse of Business and Life Podcast. For more resources like this, visit Barb's website at Barbarapatterson.com (https://barbarapatterson.com/).SHOW NOTES:[00:00] - Exploring the Nature of Wants[03:23] - Understanding Resistance to Our Desires[05:11] - The Complexity of Emotionally Loaded Wants[07:03] - Navigating the Edge of Desire and Protection[09:05] - The Role of Presence in Overcoming Resistance[10:32] - Transforming Wants into Action[12:37] - The Power of Direct Experience[14:44] - Embracing the Full Range of Human Experience[17:04] - The Journey of Self-Discovery and Presence[19:06] - Awakening to Our True Potential[21:37] - Inviting Transformation Through PresenceSHOW LINKS:Subscribe to the podcast on YouTube Follow Barb on LinkedinFollow Barb on Instagram
We’ve all had moments when a want feels clear, alive, and true, and yet, when it comes time to move toward it, something inside of us hesitates, tightens, or stalls.
In today’s episode, we explore that mysterious place, the edge, where our heart’s desire meets old conditioning, protection, and the parts of us that don’t yet feel free.
What if the pause, the freeze, or the resistance isn’t a sign of failure, self-sabotage, or “not wanting it enough”?
What if nothing is wrong at all?
Together, we look at why so many of us struggle to move toward the very things we care about, how our minds try to solve what doesn’t need fixing, and what becomes possible when we meet that edge with presence instead of pressure.
Rather than forcing ourselves through fear, what's possible when we learn to stay with ourselves long enough for something new to reorganize inside?
If you’re standing at the edge of a want, a longing, or a next chapter, this conversation is for you.
Thank you for listening to the Innerverse of Business and Life Podcast. For more resources like this, visit Barb's website at Barbarapatterson.com.
[00:00] - Exploring the Nature of Wants
[03:23] - Understanding Resistance to Our Desires
[05:11] - The Complexity of Emotionally Loaded Wants
[07:03] - Navigating the Edge of Desire and Protection
[09:05] - The Role of Presence in Overcoming Resistance
[10:32] - Transforming Wants into Action
[12:37] - The Power of Direct Experience
[14:44] - Embracing the Full Range of Human Experience
[17:04] - The Journey of Self-Discovery and Presence
[19:06] - Awakening to Our True Potential
[21:37] - Inviting Transformation Through Presence
This podcast is a space to explore the profound connection between our inner world and our work in the world. We dive deep into the heart of what it means to live and work from a felt knowing of our essential selves – aligned, alive, and fully expressed. We’ll play at the intersection of business, spirituality, consciousness, and growth.
Through intimate conversations with thought leaders, change-makers, authors, and humans just like you and me, you’ll hear real stories of transformation and the internal shifts, “aha” moments, and wake-up calls that have helped them to access new dimensions of creativity, higher levels of intelligence, unlock dormant potentials and experience greater joy and fulfillment.
Barbara Patterson (00:56)
Hi everyone, welcome back. This is Barb. I'm really glad to have you here. Today I want to talk about something we all experience. I want to talk about wants, about wanting, and about the edge that wanting often brings us to. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about this in my blog and I got a lot of response, a lot of engagement, a lot of people that related to what I shared and I thought I want to bring it here and spend a little bit more time
talking about it and exploring it together with all of you. And ultimately, all humans, all of us, whether it's in relationship, in school, in our work, our lives, we have wants and we have this desire to want to grow or to have more intimacy or connection to create things. And at some point along our history around wants or new wants that will come up, we will
often come face to face with the places inside of us that actually resist. You know, we can sit in that place of excitement and desire about it and then notice that we're not really taking action towards it. And this has been a question that, you know, for me personally has been something that I've spent a lot of time wondering about and angsting about and looking at myself around.
And often I would draw the conclusion that the fact that I wanted it but couldn't get it meant something about me, about my character, about my psychology, about my personality. And really what I want to explore today is how the not moving in the direction of the want or this kind of place where it looks like it's a struggle to create.
What if it's not a sign of failure? What if it's not self-sabotage? What if it's not evidence that you don't really want it? It's simply what happens when the deeper truth and the heart's desire and a new longing or a new expression, a new potential. What if all that's happening is that comes up against the places inside of us that are still
being shaped by old conditioning or being shaped by our past.
You know the feeling, that feeling of when a want becomes real, it kind of lands in us. We feel the impulse for it, The want feels alive, it feels true, it feels beautiful, and then something else shows up, a tightening, a constriction, self-doubt, second guessing.
all of sudden we're getting all these memories of when we've tried that before and it didn't work, Or sometimes it's just this subtle, uh-oh, I'm not sure I can do this. And that moment is what we're going to explore. Because often at this point is when we start to rush to override it, to ignore it, or we try and solve it, or just kind of push through.
I am speaking from experience here. I know this very well. For years, anytime someone said to me, well, maybe you just don't want it enough, I would get irritated, you know, and I'd walk away kind of judging myself. Like, is that true?
at the same time, there was something that just didn't feel true to me about that. Like I did want it. You know, I wanted it deeply. â
there were times that it felt really aligned, like it was a deeper call within me. And I still couldn't move. So wanting wasn't the issue. What I started to see was something simply froze at the edge. I hesitated, I overthought, it shows up in a lot of different ways. And believe me, in my history and my past and all my training, you know, looking at the
subconscious, looking at conditioned thought, looking at behavior modification, But there were still some places where none of that seemed effective. And so I would get really puzzled. And it looked like me overcoming, discovering something, getting more clear, know, all those things where it looked like
the potential answer, but the truth was they didn't really lead to new realization or to shifts in behavior. And as I said, some of these wants were still really present. And this is the point at which I started to see that, â what if it's not a block or...
the hesitation doesn't need to be fixed. I don't need to muscle my way through fear or muscle my way through change. know, sometimes change is just hard, but you got to work through it.
You know, what started to feel more true to me was what if it's not a sign that you're broken or uncommitted or you're doing something wrong? Like, what if the edge is simply where our past meets our possibility, where conditioning meets consciousness, where our nervous system, meets our heart's desires?
both can be true in us, a sincere desire, a call, you know, a nudge to move in a direction. And at the same time, the hesitation, the freeze, the resistance.
And maybe you can relate to this, that there's a place where something in us has stopped while something deeper whispers go, keep going.
So in that place, again, just to say this is the edge or the place in which the want meets the protection, I started to see that what if it's not the want that scares us, but it's what the want asks of us. Asks of us. That's a mouthful.
Let me try it again. So it's not the want that scares us, right? That feels alive, that feels aligned, but it's what it's asking of us.
to allow us to feel more free internally. Now, before we start talking about what do we do, you know,
at that edge. So what do we do? You might be thinking at this point, okay, I freeze, help me. So we're going to get there. But I just want to clarify before we go any further, not all wants are the same. Some wants come from a really clean, steady, grounded place. Some wants are really basic and easy, like, you know, I want a glass of water, so I go get it. Or, you know, I want to see my sisters, so I call them and we set up some time. Those wants are easy.
And some wants are just, they feel grounded inside of us and they feel effortless and they are, they're true too. And so we move in that direction. But then there are these other wants that are what I like to refer to as more emotionally loaded. They're tied to old memories, to disappointment, to identity, to shame, and maybe to the places in us where we've not been met before or where we've been told.
what we want is too much, whatever it might be. So these loaded wants often bring us straight to that edge. They're the ones that bring us to the edge. Not because they're wrong, not because we shouldn't want them, but because they touch the parts of us that are not yet free. You know, all of us have a long history with wants, right?
Some wants were met, some were ignored, some wants were too much, some wants felt out of reach, out of our league, some came with ease and grace, some we felt audacious to even say out loud, and some were tied to disappointment and shame. So no wonder, right? No wonder. I mean, it makes sense that when a want arises, it can come with a mix of thoughts and feelings, and it can awaken everything in us.
that once learned to protect against this particular want, or as I said earlier, not the want, but what the want is asking of us.
And coming back to the clarification around wants, I think if a want looks like it's gonna fill a hole, â those wants are hard. Like if we're looking for worthiness, if we're looking for our identity, we're looking to be respected, we're looking to have people think about us in a certain way, or we have our wellbeing, our peace of mind, our happiness tied to a want.
those are going to be especially loaded. And they probably fall into a category which is like, those are going to be hard to do no matter what. And really often they're impossible. Because I think we know, like our deeper wisdom insight knows
That if we're looking to achieve something because it proves we're okay or it proves to others we deserve to be respected, that Those are going to create a lot of â angst. And if you
If you kind of can't see yourself getting behind those things with action or movement, I think that's a good thing. So if what you see is wants are tied to proving you're loved, proving you're worthy, proving you deserve to be respected, proving you're safe or happy,
Those ones I'm going to encourage you to look in a whole new different direction. And that's going to be within. That's a different exploration. That's an exploration of Do I know whole and complete are already available and within me? It's innate. Do I understand that peace of mind is found within, not via circumstances?
And that exploration has been one of the most powerful ones in my life and I encourage you to look in that direction if that's what you're discovering. If it looks like well-being, peace, worthiness is on the other side of a want, then where the opportunity for waking up more and evolving more for you might be in looking at your innate well-being, your innate wholeness.
But for today, what I'm really talking about is the wants that are alive and aligned and being prompted within us that then they're not happening or we feel stuck or challenged around them or we're exhausted by them because
you know, no amount of push is kind of getting us there. So again, coming back to that, that edge, that resistance, that moment of where we, you know, can be in the imagination but can't seem to be really creating traction
We often have to meet the place in us that is resistant to it, but not from a place of overpowering it, fixing it.
and trying to think your way through it or spiritually bypass it. My go-to response in the past around this, and I think even now I can forget, but has been to try and figure it out, to sort myself out, to sort my psychology out, to sort my thinking out, to sort, it on the right path? Is it the right thing? Is it the right strategy? And I would do this
endlessly. you know, endlessly. I could use lose days, months, maybe even years, you know, was this discipline? I just need to be more disciplined or is there a pattern? â I'd notice a pattern and then I try and look and understand the pattern more. You know, all of that kind of rethinking, looking at the pattern, the issue, me, my history.
took up a lot of time. It was a lot of activity and sometimes interesting, but it's an illusion of progress because none of it actually brought me any closer to movement in the direction around these
what I began to discover it wasn't the pattern that needed my attention. It wasn't the issue that needed my attention. It wasn't the past that needed my attention. It wasn't the story of myself and all of that that needed my attention. What was asking to be met fully, openly, willingly was the feeling.
The feeling itself, not the story of the feeling, not the narrative about it. Like the mind is gonna be, has all sorts of answers and is trying to help us and trying to figure it out, But really what I started to get curious about is,
What if I just sat with and met the feeling? What if I started to give presence to the resistance, to the feeling, rather than trying to solve it or overcome it?
A few years ago, a good friend of mine started talking about that idea of having more of a direct experience to life. And she makes this great distinction between what's actually happening in life right here, right now, and then there's what's happening in our minds. And she talks about it as imagination.
And that distinction really spoke to me. in the way of the desire I had to feel more alive in life, to lean into the full range of the human experience, to not shy away from feeling, but to embrace it all and let that aliveness expand my world.
And so when she started talking about that, it really struck me and through her guidance and other friends, we've had these great explorations. it started to look to me like, yeah, what if the way my mind wants to step in is just a protective mechanism? And...
Part of what I'm learning to cultivate within myself or become more available to is the direct experience of the moment, whatever that is. If it's expansion, it's love, if it's connection, if it's fear, if it's tension, if it's shame. know, like what if I didn't need the mind to direct those moments and I could just be with it and give full presence to myself?
the mind is going to start interpreting, it's going to try and be helpful, it's going to have a narration about it, it's going to have evidence, it's going to be doing its thing. But could I give less attention to what the mind was doing and more attention to what was happening in the body and in the felt sense of what was going on? Could I get comfortable sitting with the anxiety or the tension or numb?
Could I get comfortable sitting with the resistance not to solve it and not to direct it? What might I learn if I just allowed myself to be with the direct experience that was happening in real time rather than trying to rush through it or thinking that the mind really needed to be in charge of it?
And what would happen if I stopped thinking I needed to be protected? Like it wasn't a conscious thought, right? Like our brains are brilliant and it's happened so fast for all of us. We can start to feel something uncomfortable and then we are
like unconsciously most of the time just already in the mind analyzing, sorting, what is this? But as I started to get more attuned to that distinction my own curiosity was like, Wonder what would happen if I didn't do that as much. Wonder what would happen if I allowed myself and intentionally began to
open up to what was happening in the moment versus trying to change it, fix it, do something about it. And so that shift and openness and willingness began to show me so much I started to see
That's what wanted to be met. What wanted to wake up inside of me, what wants to wake up inside of you, where we desire more freedom, internal freedom, more liberation, is in those ideas, conditioning, thought patterns, nervous system responses, that
constrict, that tighten, can we see them for what they are? Can we be with it When we give our full presence to it, we recognize it's just energy moving through us. And if we didn't have to draw conclusions about ourselves or about the sensation, we begin to see
our presence giving our presence to it it shifts it it shifts and reorganizes us inside it opens it relaxes our body it Wakes up more of a felt experience of our okayness
What we start to see is our knowing that we're okay no matter what, the knowing of our wholeness, the knowing that we have what it takes to grow, to stretch, to try new things. That knowing comes in the day-to-day felt experience of it. So in those moments when we give full presence to whatever's happening in that, the fear response, the freeze response,
the moment when we notice we rush to our mind, can we bring our attention back down into the sensation within the body and see what's available to us by giving full presence to it? I mean, it's really, if you think about it, it's not much different than you might give to a friend or to a partner or to your children. those moments when it just occurs to us to be with them.
to just give them presence. or someone does that for us, we know how healing it is, how it changes, it shifts, shifts something within us. And so that's this piece. It's like, how do we give that to ourselves? So can we first see how we might be rushing to the mind to fix, to drive, to organize, to control?
because some part of us feels like whatever's happening in that moment might be risky or might be uncomfortable, But when we give presence, we feel it, we see it, we experience it, it shifts things. We don't collapse, we don't try and bypass it by getting in a better feeling or changing our thinking about it or convincing ourselves. It happens in the moment and we just sit with.
We feel the protection, we feel the numbness, we sit with the numbness, we feel the desire, we feel the aliveness, we feel the history, whatever might be there. And as we do this, what you discover as it shifts with presence, something else begins to happen. It might be small, it might be quiet, and it might be more dramatic, but the edges soften and the path begins to open.
we find is easier to begin moving, there's more of a natural movement begins to happen, or we discover, we start to realize like, â I'm just more open. I'm trying things that, you know, two days ago, I was judging myself because I wasn't doing. And this is where transformation happens, where awakening, not...
pushing, not the analysis, not the self-talk but presence and honoring what's real, what's here in the moment and allowing ourselves to be with it, with all of it, to build our capacity to give that presence to ourselves. And in that, the edges fall away.
in that the edges begin to soften, evolve.
we can have a sense of the fear or the tightening or the resistance, but at the same time, we can feel into the natural desire, the natural energy, the life force, the creative intelligence, the impulse that's encouraging us to move forward.
So I want to invite you, can you stay present enough at the edge with yourself? Can you be with all of it? And also, what inside of you is inviting you to that place right now? What's inviting you to the edge? Is there a want, a desire, a longing that's asking you to meet it with presence rather than pressure? To meet it with your presence rather than your mind?
to allow yourself to drop in and welcome what wants to evolve in us, what wants to be awakened in us, what wants to fall away in us. identities begin to fall away, old ideas about what's possible. That happens all naturally via presence
Thank you as always for being here. I'm so grateful to you and I look forward to hearing what happens for you, what you begin to see as you become open to
what the want is asking of you. If you know anyone that would benefit from this conversation, please share it. Thank you.