The Cult of Settling: Why You Stopped Wanting What You Actually Want

Ooooof. This one's a gut check.This is part three of the “Wants" series, all about the cult of settling. You know the drill…your relationship is fine, your business brings in steady income, your family is healthy, so why would you need anything more? Meanwhile you were always the carefree, adventure seeker who used to dream about traveling the world, or having the kind of relationship with your husband that felt like a raging fire, yet somewhere along the way you filed that pipe dream and kept moving.I call it the cult of settling. It's sneaky. It doesn't look like giving up, it looks like being grateful, being practical, being mature. It typically sounds something like "it's fine," "I should be grateful," or "other people have it so much worse." (Yet underneath all of that, you know it isn't actually fine.)In this episode I take you through remembering what it was like to be a kid running through a toy store going "I want this! I want this! I want this!" with zero shame and zero calculation about whether you deserved it, and what happened to that version of you along the way.We get into:Why settling is so sneaky, and how it disguises itself as gratitude, practicality, or just being realisticThe nervous system baseline concept (mentioned in ep. 3), and why bigger wants can feel unsafe to your nervous system simply because they're unfamiliar, not because anything is actually wrongThe five people you surround yourself with, and how their comfort zone can quietly become the ceiling on yoursFear of failure and fear of success, and why both can leave you thinking “this is fine, so why risk it”One foot in gratitude and one foot in desire, because yes, you can be deeply thankful for your life and still want more of itThe Staircase Approach - so if the “big want” feels like too much right now, what's ten percent bigger than where you're standing todayA full areas-of-life gut check (friendships, career, relationship, family, health) so you can actually feel where you've been calling something fine when it isn'tA guided visualization into your highest, most radiant self, and a list of questions to walk through afterward…and the question I would love for you to walk away with by the end of the episode: Why NOT You?You deserve it all. You have full permission to dream big and go after it. It's not too much, it's not selfish, it's not ungrateful. It's your gift to want it.Follow along on Instagram: @ohtheplacesashgoesWant to go deeper with this work? Join the email list for FREE weekly nervous system practices, live webinars, and first access to new episodes: ohtheplacesashgoes.com/join-nourished-woman-email-listKnow a woman who needs to hear this? Forward this her way.As always, let’s get nourished.