Ep 22: "If I wanted to, I would."
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Kelli: [00:00:00] Welcome. This is Anything & Everything with Kelli Youngman Singh. We are here to live the most expansive experience of your life, guided by intuition and desire and rooted in self trust, authenticity, and love. That's what expands your capacity to receive, allow and fully enjoy what you really want. Nothing is off limits. Nothing needs to be justified. Here for an extraordinary life and to have it all on your terms. Let's begin.
Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I have been in a lot of celebration, but also a lot of capacity expansion. I think I was sharing on the last [00:01:00] podcast about Creating New Results and what it really looks like to step into a season where you are challenging yourself to be really honest with the results you wanna create, defining them, and then also stretching your capacity to start moving towards them. That, in real time, requires a lot of energy.
Now, one of the things that I wanted to say out loud for you, but also for me, is to communicate that I really am releasing the layers of perfectionism that have kind of stopped me from showing up here regularly and consistently.
Because in a lot of ways, the growth has been happening so fast. It's kind of been a little bit profound, and one of those kind of, like, washing machine moments where I feel like I'm being tumbled around, because things [00:02:00] are changing for me so subtly but so deeply in a lot of different ways. And so I think part of what's been, again, preventing me from showing up regularly was this thought or belief that this had to be a legacy resource, that it had to be, you know, something that was expanding and unfolding, and building in this very specific, cumulative way instead of letting it be a very natural evolution of sharing the work in real time.
And so I just wanna say that out loud, especially because I know that I have current students listening to the podcast, I have past clients listening to the podcast, I have prospective future clients listening, and I really want to let go of [00:03:00] the weight that's been holding myself back. And so maybe that's relevant for you, too. Maybe there's a certain thing in your life that you're wanting to do that you've been having a thought about doing it specifically in one way, and maybe it's helpful for you to hear that I'm also releasing that requirement of myself.
The best way to get access to my work and my brain and all of the concepts that I've developed over the years is always going to be to get in a container and to actually work with me. Aside from that, I am treating this as a bonus, as a way to share value, to impact lives in a way that is totally stress-free for me, but also for the listener. And I know that that will be more valuable over time if I show up and allow myself to do this imperfectly. [00:04:00] So just wanted to say that out loud.
And now I want to move into the topic of this week, which actually I think also could potentially resonate with what I just said.
Which is, "if I wanted to do something, I would." This actually came out of conversation with a coworker at my current restaurant job, where they are also an actor and had moved to New York City to pursue acting. And so it's been interesting to check in with them along their way and just see where they're at along the journey. Now what I thought was so fascinating and what makes my coach brain really turn on is thinking about when people, of course, aren't doing what they desire [00:05:00] or when they're telling themselves something that just isn't useful.
And so when we were in conversation, and they were speaking about their acting career, it was interesting to hear them say the sentence, "If I wanted to, I would." Right? Like, "I'm not super pressed about it because if I really wanted to, I would. If I really wanted to, I would." This really drove me crazy in the best way for a few nights after we had this exchange because I was thinking about all the ways people stop themselves from moving forward with something because of this kind of sentence, "If I wanted to, I would."
What I think is really fascinating about this is that it essentially uses your behavior to [00:06:00] reinforce a belief about yourself, which I don't think is always useful. I actually think that there are lots of things that humans want to do that they don't do. Not because they don't wanna do it, but because they have thoughts, beliefs, an identity that isn't supporting them moving forward.
And I was actually coaching a client on this today because they're bumping up against some procrastination of putting things off or avoiding things when they get into overwhelm, when they get into discouragement, right. Because if your identity is someone that doesn't follow through, you'll be in that cycle or that loop of behavior without really knowing why.
So I really thought, and why I wanted to bring it to the podcast, is I think that that sounds like [00:07:00] a thought that could be reporting the news, "If I wanted to, I would," when in fact, that in itself is a thought error. Meaning that it's using behavior, action, your results to reinforce a belief about yourself, such as, " I guess this doesn't really matter to me. This isn't important. I'm not as passionate as I used to be about it, so that must be where I'm at now." When that might not actually be true.
So how do you actually determine whether you want to do something or not? I actually find that a really useful metric is to check in with how it feels to not do the thing. And I have to tell you that even with myself and where I'm at in my performing career, and I think I might have touched on this during the last podcast, but I have really been evaluating myself and my career. [00:08:00] And I also had times where I had thoughts come up of like, "Okay, well, I'm not really working out right now. Maybe I'll intentionally deprioritize this thing, so I'm not in the failure of it," and sort of surrendering to being where I was. I'm not saying that's good, bad, right, or wrong. I'm just saying that that is a process that I witnessed in myself as I was aware of the fact that I wasn't exercising as much as I wanted to be. But I also don't think it's helpful to tell yourself that I wanna do things when you're not actually doing them.
So this is where it gets really interesting. But for me, in my performing career, again, one of the metrics I tapped into was, was I really actually at peace with letting my performing career go? Even though I've had lots of success over the [00:09:00] past years in growth, in development, in following new pathways of training, of being open to things as they came to me, I also just have not booked a show in a few years. Like, that is a neutral circumstance that I get to decide how I feel about. But I think with that circumstance of not booking a show, I think it is really natural for my brain to start offering me thoughts that fit the results. "Well, maybe it's time for me to shift careers. Maybe I am having more success as a life coach. Maybe I could just be a life coach and not be a performer anymore. Maybe this is where I'm just content at being."
And as those thoughts started coming up, I started paying attention to how it made me feel. And this [00:10:00] is where I talk about the fact that all of our emotions are so valuable, and especially jealousy and envy. I feel that I can't say this enough. All emotions are valuable. And when you notice that you start having jealousy or envy, It's not always a net negative thing. It's actually a direct spotlight on something that maybe you have been neglecting. For me, even though I wasn't working out, it didn't feel good to constantly be the person that wanted to lose weight. It didn't feel good for me, even though I could love my body and accept it as it was, it didn't feel good for me to say, "This is how I'm just gonna look for the rest of my life." Like, that resignation didn't feel good.
And the same was true for my performing career. I was like, "All right. Well, maybe this is just a season. Maybe I am getting too old. [00:11:00] Maybe I am in a new chapter." You just wanna pay attention to the thoughts as they come up and notice how they feel.
Because the truth was, for myself, that when I started seeing people booking shows or people at opening nights or people experiencing desires that I still have as an actor, as a performer, I noticed that there was a twinge of jealousy or a twinge of envy. And that, to me, actually let me tap into evidence of dissatisfaction that was really important for me to find. All of that to say, if I was telling myself, if I wanted to, I would, and then believed that, I would just start creating an identity where I don't live my dreams. I would be the version of myself [00:12:00] that gave myself different thoughts about my dreams or different thoughts about things that I wanted, and I would just maintain that low level discomfort, jealousy, envy, whatever you wanna call it, when I saw other people living what I desired. Because if I started telling myself if I wanted to, I would, I would just reaffirm this thing is not important to me. I would start building a belief system where I'm no longer the person who's pursuing this thing, I'm the person who stopped pursuing this thing.
Now, another reason why I think this is super important is that recently I taught a bunch of classes to high school students. And it was so fascinating to get to teach them some of the concepts and tools that I use with clients that are very high level, and I got to witness how they engaged with it and what came up out of their brains.
And [00:13:00] one of them was talking about the fact that, like, they wrestle with the idea of energetic output, not knowing if the result is gonna be guaranteed. And I really think that that is at the heart of, "If I wanted to, I would," because most people are walking around without the belief that they are gonna get what they want. Which is why If you don't think you're getting the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, you're not even gonna go on the journey. You're not gonna go to the audition if you don't see yourself as booking your Broadway debut. Or maybe you do. You could go to the audition being the version of you that hopes to book. But if you don't actually know that at the end of the work you're gonna get the result, that's where you keep yourself in this limbo of uncertainty, where it's like, "Well, I might be disappointed at the end of this, so [00:14:00] instead I'm gonna avoid disappointment. "I'm gonna avoid the discomfort of doing the hard thing because it might not be worth it."
I think that's where people are really sitting when they're thinking, "If I wanted to, I would." Because almost always in that state, we're thinking about the challenge, we're thinking about the obstacle, we're thinking about the struggle of the journey to get there. And in the moment where we're disconnected from actually achieving it, we're thinking it's not worth it. Or you might just not be giving yourself enough time with the result to actually self-generate desire to do the thing, right?
Even in this example of auditions and like, "Well, if I wanted to, I would go to the auditions. I would get up really early. I would do all these things." Like I don't know. I could see a lot of reasons why a human [00:15:00] brain would say, "Fuck that, never mind." The same way I was like, "Eh, yeah, it's winter. I don't really feel like working out. I don't really have the desire. It's not the most important thing to me right now to lose weight, so I'm just not gonna invest my time and energy there."
Like, there's nothing good, bad, right, or wrong about saying that, but that's not the version of me that's connected to living a healthy life easily, naturally maintaining my goal weight. That's the version of me that's thinking about all the work I'm gonna do, all the effort it's gonna take, right?
So you just wanna be onto yourself when you're telling yourself, "If I wanted to, I would," because I do think that's a sneaky out for when we wanna let ourselves off the hook.
And interestingly enough, in the last two months, seven weeks ago, I ended up getting a Pure [00:16:00] Barre membership, and I started taking two classes a week. And the reason I did that was because I started evaluating my career and because I started asking myself what I thought needed to change. This, I think, is a whole other podcast in itself and sort of along the lines of, like, am I doing enough? What are my theories? Like, what needs to change? Like, actually assessing what's happening without judgment. Like, really truly, that's a whole other podcast. But when I started doing this for myself, I was like, oh, even though I think I'm great, even though I know my skill, my talent, my ability, I have not been working out in a way that supports the stamina of an eight-show week. I haven't been treating myself like an athlete or like a performer in the way that I used to when I [00:17:00] was working consistently. And when I started realizing that, and when I started tapping into the possibility of the ease, but also of, like, my own hero's journey of like, well, wait a second, why am I tapping out of being in the best shape of my life? It was really interesting.
Once I reconnected to the end result, and not just the end result as a possibility, but having the end result as my lived experience, that's when I started creating desire to actually go to my workout classes. I was like, "Oh, this is probably gonna be really hard at first." Like, there was a little judgment, a little shame, a little embarrassment about the body or the weight or the lived result I was in. And it wasn't, like, heavy shame, but it was present. I was a little bit like, [00:18:00] oof, I didn't realize, like, how much I had let this go. I didn't know how much I had let this dream go until I was back in pursuit of it. And then once I was locked in, I was like, this is fun. This is connecting me to a result that matters deeply to me. And I started having the desire to do the hard, uncomfortable thing. All the, like, tuck, tuck, and tuck holds of Pure Barre because I was then experiencing the reality of having what I desire.
And if I had kept telling myself if I wanted to, I would, without receiving the nudges from myself and being moved forward through health initiatives like, I don't know, different supplements or, you know, not drinking as much and trying non-alcoholic spirits. Like, that's another episode I wanna do about really letting [00:19:00] your intuition lead. But I just started noticing that when I really connected to, "I'm gonna book a show by the end of the year." I've had that thought before, I can have it again. I'm willing to experience any potential discomfort, but also potential disappointment if things don't happen exactly as planned. But I'm gonna like myself more if I continue to let myself create the goals, the dreams, the results that, that I've always wanted to have.
I've done, and honestly, this is another episode too, is like I've coached so many people through body image, and weight thoughts and just body things, food-related things, all of it, 'cause I've really done that work for myself.
And I realized like, oh, I'm not just creating the result of weight loss, I'm creating the identity of a person who lives a healthy lifestyle. It started changing [00:20:00] the way I was approaching things because, again, I wasn't focused on solely the behavior or solely the habits. I was really looking at, what's the identity of the version of me that lives this life? It started becoming the simplest, easiest filter for what I was doing or not doing. It really changed so much, not only in increasing my desire to move through the discomfort of doing something new, like going to workout classes twice a week, but it also invited me to raise the level of my identity to let go of anything that would not be sustainable for the life that I wanna live.
I think the same is true if you're thinking about yourself from the lens of being an actor who enjoys their career. And not just the pursuit of a career, but like, an actual healthy, long career. Auditioning is something that you're [00:21:00] going to have to do forever. So why wouldn't you want to create a relationship with that experience that feels really good, but that makes you excited to get out of bed? Because you become the version of you that's actively pursuing your dreams. That's not just pursuing your dreams, but creating them, right? Because regardless of the outcome of the audition, you're constantly learning. You're getting to be a version of you that you like because you're the kind of person who takes your dreams very seriously, whether that's a dream contract, being in a dream marriage, having all of the things that you actually desire as your lived results.
So to summarize, this episode is really about being onto yourself and noticing where you might be currently telling yourself that you're not doing something, and then using your result or your behavior as evidence to [00:22:00] reinforce a belief that something is maybe less important than it really is.
Instead, I want you to honor the version of you that comes through in little nudges of dissatisfaction. I want you to actually listen for your dissatisfaction. I want you to listen for the places where you feel like you're not living up to your potential. I don't think that's a bad thing to engage with, and I don't think we have to make ourselves wrong or guilty or shameful when we have that realization. Instead, we get to just use it as data to let us know, oh, wait, we're not done yet. And I feel like that energy, switching into the hero's journey, the energy of a comeback, all of that can be really inspiring for you in your own journey. And what it will help you do is [00:23:00] not only self-generate desire to create the new result, but it will have you reconnecting to the lived experience of the reality that you're really desiring.
For me, it's like I wanna live a long, healthy life. I wanna be in the best shape of my life and do that in a way that's sustainable. That I can honor without obsessing about or without losing my peace for, but trusting that I actually can create that result in a way that feels really good. The same is true for my performing career and my financial goals and my family goals. Like, all of those things can feel really delicious.
And so instead of allowing your results to inform your thinking and feeling that keeps perpetuating your current results, you've gotta break out of that loop, start connecting to the new results that you wanna create, and start aligning your [00:24:00] identity and your thought-feeling combos on purpose to become the version of you that actually gets what you want.
I don't want you to just think about having what you want, I want you to actually get it. And that does require letting go of the frequency of, " Eh, if I wanted to, I would." That sort of false contentment with where we are.
Again, it's not a judgment if you're in that space. I totally was, too. And what I also know is that you can walk yourself into fire, momentum, hunger for the things that you desire in a way that really lights you up and makes you excited to get up and be alive in your current life while you're pursuing what you want. All right. That's what I got for you this week. I'll meet you back here for another episode.
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