Ep 155 "I Don't Even Know What I Need"

Carly asked for a pink iced donut. She got a pink iced donut. It just wasn't the one she meant.

When weight comes off and nothing really changes. 

The promotion arrives and the fulfilment doesn't. 

Everything looks fine on paper and something still feels off. 

In this episode Carly shares her thoughts about why that happens, why it doesn't make you ungrateful, and three things that help when you can't name what you actually need (and what a doughnut has got to do with it).

Also, a thank you. The podcast has just passed ten thousand downloads.

If something feels off and you can't put a name to it, that's exactly what the Embodied Strength Profile is for. Not for people arriving with a neat list, but for working out what's going on underneath the thing you think you should be asking for. In person at Still Space Hull or online, wherever you are: Find out more about the Embodied Strength Profile

Thanks for listening to Rooted In Presence

If you’d like to get in touch with a question about today’s episode or find out how I can support you with coaching, here’s how to reach me:
📧 Email: carlykillenpt@gmail.com
📱 Instagram: @carlykillencoach

Do you crave unshakable confidence in your strength from midlife and beyond? Would you love to achieve your goals without sacrificing family time or self-care?

Ready to take your strength to the next level? Start building a stronger body and healthier bones with my Strong Bones Starter Kit; your step-by-step guide to safe and effective strength training at home.
👉 Click here to learn more and access today

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Thank you for being here, and I look forward to supporting you on your journey to strength, health, and confidence! 💪🦴✨

Transcript

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0:47

Hello, and welcome back to Rooted in Presence. I'm Carly, your curious midlife guide and founder of Still Space Hull. Joining you with episode 155. And, oh, before anything else, can I just say thank you, because this podcast has just passed 10,000 downloads. Yay, 10,000. Wow. So which when I started talking to a microphone in a small studio was not really a number I actually pictured. And I know that behind that number are actual people. People listening on a dog walk, in the car, folding washing at the end of a long day. So thank you so much for letting me be in your ears for a moment or two each week. It does really mean a lot to me. So right. Okay, so into this week's episode then. Today I wanna tell you all about a donut. So I'm part of a little membership that gets me a free donut each week. It's not the only thing, it's just a lovely perk, um, and probably more information than you needed, to be fair. But this week I went in to collect it and the counter was full of the seasonal stuff, you know, pumpkin spice and toffee, this and that, all the seasonal flavors as you'd expect for this time of year. But right among them was a lovely pink iced ring donut covered in hundreds and thousands, and that was the one I wanted. It's a bit of a classic. So I went and asked for the pink donut, and the person behind the counter was like, "Excuse me?" And I said, "Oh, the pink iced donut, that one." Well, it was busy. I had a load of shopping bags in my hands. It was a bit noisy in there too. So anyway, They gave it to me, I took it, put it in my bag to take home so I could enjoy it later. Except, when I did get home and finally looked inside the bag, it wasn't what I thought I'd asked for. It was a pink iced donut. It just didn't have a hole in the middle. It was actually a pink iced jam donut. Now, some of you might be thinking, "Oh yeah, bonus." But I'm not a fan of jam donuts, so my first reaction was after giving me the wrong thing, and I was a bit annoyed with them, with myself for, myself as well for not checking before I left the shop. But then I sat with it for a moment because who philosophizes over a jam donut? Well, obviously me. 'Cause they hadn't actually given me the wrong thing at all. They'd given me exactly what I asked for, a pink iced donut. I just didn't know, I didn't see that there were two kinds on the counter that day. And apparently the one I actually wanted was called a sugar strand donut, which I did not know either 'cause I didn't read the label. So was it the shop's fault for not asking or checking? Well, not really. I do think there's a level of personal responsibility in here somewhere. I asked for a pink donut and I got a pink iced donut. It just wasn't the one I meant So I've been thinking about this ever since, because that's what I do. And there are actually three things here, three different things happening, within that little exchange, something to reflect on for me, I thought I might share here. The first is that I didn't know what was available. I didn't know there were two kinds of pink iced donuts, so couldn't really have chosen that well between them. And the second is that I didn't really have the right words. I had the words I had, pink iced donut. Nobody had ever told me the thing I wanted had a different name, its own name. Didn't read the label. The label was available. But the words I used, I thought were good enough for that understanding to be there. Apparently not. And the third thing is that I did actually get exactly what I asked for, and it still wasn't what I wanted. And yeah, I didn't notice until I was already home with the bag open, too late to do much about it at all. So yeah, so that's a donut. It really does not matter. But I see some similarities in these things all the time in my work, and those things actually matter a lot more to me. Of course, I can't help but make these connections, but never mind. I guess that's just how my brain works. So these connections then, I often get a lot of people coming to me, asking about weight loss. It's often their opening line, and sometimes that's exactly right. It really does change things for some people. I've worked with a lot of people who've had a lot of body fat to lose. They lost it, freed them up in a real way. That happens. It's wonderful when they get to change their life, and that's part of it. But sometimes people arrive already having done that journey. They've lost the weight, hit the number they've been aiming at for years, and then they got there and nothing else in their life had really changed. They didn't feel the way they thought they'd feel. I also have people coming to me with a bit of a career version of this as well. They've built the thing, they've got the promotion they've been working towards. That sense of fulfillment they expected just wasn't there. And there's the one I hear most often. Everything looks great on paper. There's nothing you could point at and call a problem, and yet there's this sense that things could be better and no idea at all what you might want instead. And when we sit with that long enough, what most people are describing underneath it all is that they wanna feel alive again But no one walks into a room and says that. You, you might say, "I'd like to lose a couple of stone," because that's a thing you can name, it's a thing you can measure, and a thing you know how to ask for. It's the pink iced donuts. That's the language you have and, hm, yeah. Do I need to apologize for the analogy there, putting donuts and weight loss in the same sentence? Hm. No, I'm not gonna. But let's be clear here because this is the bit people are often so hard on themselves about. But if you asked for something and you got it, and you felt strangely flat afterwards, that doesn't make you ungrateful. Doesn't mean it's wrong. Doesn't mean that you're impossible to please or that you've moved goalposts on yourself or anything like that It usually means you asked for the closest thing available to what you actually wanted using the words you had at the time, which is a very reasonable thing to do in this world. Can't choose from a menu you've never seen So what do we do about this? Well, if you're sitting there thinking, "Well, that's all very well, but I don't even know what I need," there are three things I want to share with you that maybe they might help. So firstly, let's just go one layer underneath the thing you're asking for. So instead of stopping at, "I want to lose a stone," maybe ask yourself, "What am I hoping that will give me?" And then keep going, because usually the answer isn't that weight loss. It's maybe, I want to feel more comfortable in my skin. Maybe it's that I want to stop thinking about this all day and this being at the forefront of my mind, or I want to be able to keep up with the grandchildren. And those are very different things. They might even need very different steps. And if you haven't heard of the Five Ys exercise, this is something we would do there as well. If you keep asking yourself why, do that around five to seven times, you'll get to something that has some real meaning for you. So maybe something to play with there. Second thing you might want to look at is just notice that flat feeling rather than pushing it away. If you got the thing and it didn't deliver, that flatness, that feeling, it's information. It's telling you something about what you actually wanted, even if you don't know what that is. Sometimes getting what you don't want helps you to start realizing what you do want. But often this is an uncomfortable feeling. Many people bury it 'cause maybe they feel ungrateful, or maybe they feel a bit like a failure for not actually knowing what they wanted. But actually, not getting what you want sometimes is one of the most useful signals you will get. And the third one is to accept that you don't know what you don't know. There may well be a whole menu you haven't seen yet, ways of working, ways of thinking, ways of living that no one's ever mentioned to you because maybe no one in your social or family circle has ever lived the kind of life that you want. So getting curious about what else exists is not a weakness. You're not asking for too much. You don't have to settle anywhere that doesn't give you exactly the life that you are looking for, and this is how we find the thing that was actually yours all along. So that's what a doughnut taught me this week, that you can ask clearly, get exactly what you asked for and still be holding the wrong thing, and maybe the thing to help this isn't really to shout louder or ask again in the same way, but perhaps it's just to know a bit more about what you actually want and what is actually available to you. And if you're in that place right now where something feels off and you couldn't quite put a name to it, that is precisely what my embodied strength profile is for. It's not for people who arrive with that neat list of exactly what they need, although it can help those people too. But most people don't have that. It's to support you to work out what is going on underneath the thing you think you should be asking for. And we will look at how you move, we'll look at how you breathe, how your body responds to what life is asking for you. We might join some dots, and from there you will leave with a grounded next step that you can trust and often with language for something you've been carrying around for years without a name for it. And we can do that in person at Still Space Hull or online, wherever you are. So you'll find the details at stillspacehull.com and in the show notes. So until next time, may you meet yourself with compassion, walk with presence, and remember you already have everything you need