Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want, and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.
Hi everyone, welcome to episode number 87 of the Bloom Your Mind podcast, in which I record a podcast with my children in the other room. We'll see. Will we get interrupted, will we not? I don't know. They're listening to an audiobook about dragons. I think it will entertain them long enough.
Today we're going to talk about why it is my strong belief that we should always have an idea, and I have been thinking about this a lot over the summer, over the last few months, because I'm designing, making iterative redesigns to the Bloom Room and really thinking about all of the clients that I've seen go through the Bloom Room at this point, and then all of the clients that I coach individually, and how there is this common thread when we struggle less, it almost all of the time correlates to being focused on something that we're creating in the world.
And before you say I don't know about that, sometimes that's not a conscious decision. Sometimes that thing that we're focusing on in the world might be the fact that we've prioritized our family, or we're prioritizing work in that moment, but we're really focusing energy in on the idea of something that we're trying to create in the world, something creative, something productive. And when I say productive, I don't mean that in the sense that I think our society sort of has co-opted it to mean I mean productive, as in generative.
We are growing or building or refining, or you know, instead of receding in any way, we are building a skill or, you know, becoming more restful, whatever that thing is. We're moving towards where we want to be, and the times that people struggle the most are when they don't have something that they care about to put their time and energy and love into, and what happens then is that they struggle more.
And I've seen this over and over and over again in lots of people that I've coached, and I'm here to talk about it today to share a little bit about that with you, and it's kind of fun to think about. So, I'm excited to get into that.
But first, I hear people talk about human design all the time. Have you ever heard about this human design? I didn't really know what it was. Everybody was like oh, do you know human design? For a long time, I said no, no, I don't know that.
Eventually, when people tell me I should know about something, I look it up, different than the things that I usually work with. I usually work with things that are scientifically backed and based and that have, like neurobiological foundations or psychological foundations or leadership studies done on sort of some of the techniques that I use.
Or, you know, I love the spiritual realm as well, but usually the things that I'm focused on are somewhat measurable in some way. I did not realize that human design is similar to astrology, which I don't know much about either. So, there are, of course, like you know, it's measurable in the way of tracking planetary movement and birth date and time and where you're born and all this stuff.
Like that's all you know coordinates that are used. But I didn't realize that it's based on a concept of your personality being a reflection of the time and place and date and all this stuff that you're born. So, I was like, oh, interesting, I normally would not do this, but so many people have told me to do this and I'm just going to do it.
So, I got my birth certificate out and I realized that I was born at two, 51 in the afternoon. My husband, by the way, was born half an hour earlier, three years earlier, like 14 or something. Isn't that interesting? Both afternoon babies. So, there we are, I'm entering in my information and I'm like this is going to be cool. I hear people claim this so hard and it was the first information and I'm like this is going to be cool.
I hear people claim this so hard and it was the first time that I have taken a test like that. Usually, I take the types of tests where you have to answer questions. This is totally based on my time, birth and date where I got the results and I was like nope, everything I read. I mean, mean, I'm sure there are elements of it that are similar to patterns inside of me, but most of it I was like nope.
It said you have trouble articulating yourself. Unfortunately, that's not a problem. You have trouble communicating and saying what you think, and I was like, no, that's not a problem at all for me. You have trouble getting started. You have ideas, but you have a lot of trouble making them into real things and getting started. You need a lot of people to believe in what you're thinking about before you can make it real. And I was like, wow, that's the opposite of me, that I have trouble sitting, still, that my knees and legs and everything is always bouncing, that I'm always jittering. And I was like, no, I love to like lay on the couch for two hours and just read. So, it was pretty funny.
And that is not to bag on human design, not bagging on that at all. And I'm not saying that it is bunk. I'm not, you know, debunking it. All I'm saying is that I love how any of those personality tests or human design, whatever anything that we take to learn more about ourselves, always comes back to what we think. Does it resonate with me or does it not Right? And this so didn't resonate with me. None of it felt applicable to me, and I just like deleted the app immediately and ended my trial subscription or whatever Cause. I was like this is not offering me anything valuable, but I have lots of other things that do.
When I take the Clifton strengths finder, I find a lot of really valuable information in there, but that's more of like a Myers-Briggs style many, many questions that you answer, and so they're reflective of your cognition anyways. And so, anyways, that was pretty funny to me, and here's just the reason I brought it up is because so many people have told me to look into human design, along with many other things, but it was just something I ended up trying out of curiosity, and I think the value here is remember everybody that any test you take, anything that tells you anything about yourself you're the bottom line.
The sovereignty is yours. You decide what is anything about yourself. You're the bottom line. The sovereignty is yours. You decide what is true about yourself. You decide what information is valuable to you, and some of those can give you real insight and help you recognize patterns in yourself that you didn't see before, but some of them might just be flat out wrong, y'all. All right. So why is it important to always have an idea?
I've recorded a lot of podcasts to talk about how our brains work, how we have a triumvirate of priorities that come from our lizard brain, three things to do what's easy, to avoid pain and to pursue pleasure basically to be on Instagram all the time and I've talked about how the number one regret of people at the end of their lives is not living a life true to themselves. I've talked about the Japanese word of ikigai, which is having something that you're passionate about, that you're working towards in your life, and how that increases longevity in your life.
I've talked about how being focused on things that you're passionate about, that create positive feelings in you on a cellular level, actually creates more longevity in your life and increases the hormones that are produced in your body that relate to happiness, mood, love all those things. Love all those things. I've also talked about how, when we don't have something to focus on and this is the number one thing, I want to tell you today when we don't give ourselves something to focus on, our brain will eat the couch. Our brain is like a dog, left in the house with no stimulation, that hasn't gone on a walk, and it just is going to eat the couch.
If we don't give it something to focus on, it is going to do what it's wired for, which is to scan the world for threats. When we do that in today's society, that means we're looking for people that are wrong or looking for things that are bad. We're looking for things that offend us. We are looking for people that are doing offensive things.
We take everything personally. So that's what our brain naturally does, and some of us that have grown up in today's society also, we will end up, as part of that threat scanning, defaulting to something that feels safer, which is people-pleasing or being hard on ourselves. So, people-pleasing might mean fulfilling the requests that others have of us instead of focusing on what we want to focus on, and being hard on ourselves might feel like that inner critic bucking up and being big.
Okay, so these are all the things that our brain naturally wants to do Threat scanning, people pleasing, doing what's easy, avoiding pain, pursuing pleasure and all of those are in direct opposition to what all research shows us makes for a happy and fulfilling life.
And when we don't give our brain an idea to focus on a North Star, to move towards brain candy, to think about all day in a generative way, then our brain eats the couch. It does defaults to all these things that our lizard brain is wired to have us do. We kick back out of our prefrontal cortex into our lizard brain, and we have a lot more upset and drama and unhappiness in our life. I was reminded about this recently because I went through a few weeks ago some kind of hard stuff that I kind of started to feel a little bit depressed because I was going through some things that were feeling kind of hard.
And as I processed those emotions, I realized that one of the things that helped me to come out of that time was focusing on the romp room, which I've told you about in a couple of podcast episodes.
But we're building a romp room, or rumpus room, a place for my kids to have rock climbing holds on the walls and wrestling mats on the ground and like yoga swings and just a place for them to just party, like kids, you know. And I have found so much fulfillment in creating that room for them, in putting all of my ideas into it and doing paintings on the walls and creating something good and positive that reflects my values and reflects the love loving environment that I've built for my kids and my family.
And I realized that when I was putting all of my mental energy into that, as well as processing my feelings about what was happening it's not that I'm covering it up like frosting on an unbaked cake, right I'm feeling the feelings, processing emotions and then channeling my energy into something that feels wonderful having an idea that I'm trying to make real.
So, this is so helpful because it keeps us in an energy of growing instead of receding when we're doing those things that I just talked about, like scanning for threats, people-pleasing, doing what's easy, Instagramming, avoiding pain, pursuing pleasure, sitting on the couch, eating chips, watching Netflix. There's a time and a space for all of that, my loves.
Hey, I'm not bagging on that, but when we let our brains do that a lot more than we actually want to in our lives, it puts us into a pattern of sort of receding, of moving backwards. We're sort of floundering around, dealing with what comes at us day after day. When we have an idea that we're trying to make real, it keeps us growing. I think about it.
When I was in Hawaii, we did a night dive with manta rays. It was unbelievably cool and hilarious. Someday maybe I'll tell you the story of how funny it was, but it was really inspirational and beautiful, and I learned that manta rays are one of those animals, like sharks, which have to keep moving or they'll die. They have to constantly be in motion, or they will die.
That's very dramatic as a comparison, but we have to, like, keep our brains moving and our attention focused on something that we want, or else it will default to negative patterns, so we can teach ourselves to be in a constant state of turning an idea into reality, and that is what I recommend to all of us is to always have an idea that we're making real.
It could be to be experimenting with recipes. It could be a goal around our physical health. It could be an art project, it could be a business, it could be a book group, it could be a volunteer position, it could be a plan for travel. It could be literally an album that you're recording and make. It could be something big that you think of when you think of making an idea real, like writing a book, starting a business, making an album, whatever you think of. Or it could just be learning to be a better listener. It could be anything.
But when we give our brains something generative and positive, growth-oriented, to focus on, that we can research in our time off, that we can sort of test, evaluate, and redesign as we're getting better and better at the thing. When we get used to doing it with anything, it allows us to treat that as less precious. What I mean is, if I'm always working on some idea, then when there's a big idea that I really, really want a business I want to start, or a book I want to write. It's not that hard to get myself moving on it, because I'm always working on something cool, and the goal of turning your idea into a real thing is never that you think you'll be a better person or that we think we'll be happier.
On the other side, it's not even accomplishing the goal. Seriously, does that surprise you? It's not making the idea real. It's who we become when we try. It's giving our idea a voice. It's knowing, hey, I'm valuable enough and I have something to offer the world that the world needs.
And the minute we make that decision to prioritize making our idea real, we change. We have to become someone different. We have to think differently and feel differently in order to do something that we've never done before. The process of making the idea real is where the magic is. It's not ever really the end result.
Of course, the end result is awesome and fun, but it's in the actual doing that we become more of who we want to be, that we experience the thing we want to experience, more of who we want to be, that we experience the thing we want to experience and that we begin or evolve our ability to trust ourselves, which is what it is all about, y'all. Knowing that when we say something we'll do it, knowing that when we commit to ourselves, we will follow through, that we can trust what we say we will do, especially what we're committed to doing, when that commitment is to ourselves.
I always think about it like having an idea is like putting an address in the GPS of your car versus like hitchhiking. When we don't have an idea, we're just sticking our thumb up in the air and people are going to make all kinds of requests of our time. They are going to give us all kinds of reasons to be upset or things to do to please them. There's going to be so many opportunities for us to use our energy in reactive ways in the world. Like hitchhiking, we'll just get in any car.
We don't really know what we're doing. We don't know how many peanut shells are on the seats. We don't know how many people are smoking in that car. We don't know what. We're not in control, right Like we're just reacting to whatever's happening. We're hopping in whatever, whatever car and going to whatever place other people have decided they want to go. Hey, sometimes I love doing that when I am down for the cause, and I want to ride in that car, and I know who it is, and I know where we're going. I am down to follow someone else's lead.
But that in itself is putting a GPS address into your navigation system. But when we don't decide intentionally on an idea, but when we don't decide intentionally on an idea, then we're just rolling with what everybody else is doing and we don't know what that is going to end up creating in ourselves, whether we're going to backpedal. When we do it that way, we are much more likely to let our lizard brain lead.
We are much more likely to do what's easy, pursue pleasure, avoid pain, run after those dopamine hits, do things that actually end up creating a net negative in our lives. But when we put that GPS address in our navigation system, when we say this is the idea I'm working on right now, it gives our brain candy, and it allows us to choose something.
That idea, that is an idea that leads us towards becoming more of who we want to be, experiencing more of what we want to experience. Contributing more of what we want to contribute, creating and feeling more of what we want to experience. Contributing more of what we want to contribute, creating and feeling more of what we want. You are happening once ever, right now, and there's no need to do anything to have any idea that will prove who you are. There's nothing to prove, because you are as valuable and as worthy as you will ever be right now.
But there is a need to contribute because the world needs us right now and whatever idea you can come up with that you think will make the world a little bit of a better place, or that will make you be a little bit more who you want to be, experience a little bit more of what you want to experience, taste some recipes, listen to some songs, develop your singing voice, learn another language, create some community, whatever it is.
Engage in politics right, the fun is in the doing. The growth is in the deciding that that's what you want and moving towards it, because you follow through on your commitments to you. It's not about the destination, it's about the process, it's about who you become as you try. If we don't have an idea, we eat the couch and y'all. That is not the best tasting thing. So, let's always have an idea. Let's give our brain a GPS for who we want to be and where we want to go. That's what I've got for you this week and I will see you next week. Hey, we made it to the end.
Thanks for hanging out with me, friends. If you like today's episode and you want more of them, please take two minutes right now to subscribe and give me a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Then send this episode to a friend. See you next time.
