Oh my gosh, I’m so excited you’re listening. This is the time of year when I offer the once in a year experience, the life list experience listening to this episode and stay tuned to the end because I tell you how you can have the opportunity to run through this with me. This is once a year. This is life changing. This is also relationship changing. It helps all your healthy relationships. So if you are the mom of a preteen or teen or young adult, this is really important for you to do this time of year. I explain why. Also, if you’re a woman in midlife who is in a midlife relationship, this is really important for you to do right here, right now. I make it easy for you. Don’t make it hard on yourself. Listen to the end. I explain how I’m so excited for you.

Hi, this is the Love Your Life Show with Susie Pettit, certified life and wellness coach. Join Susie as she helps you with your wellness and mindset so you can live a life you love. Let’s go Warriors.

Hello dear listener. I am wondering when is the last time someone asked you what you wanted? Not what your kid wanted, not what your spouse wanted, not what needs fixing. Not what should happen next, but what did you want? And then when is the last time you knew? Like actually knew what you wanted? Many of us can answer immediately what our pre-teen wants, what our you know, what our husband wants, what our boss wants, what our parents might want. But ask me or other women what they want. And suddenly our brain is like this blank or a tangled mess.

All right. I mean, realistically, what I often get the first thing woman says is like, “I want everyone to leave me alone.” That’s for real when we’re feeling exhausted and burnt out. But my question is, then what would you want to do when you’re left alone besides sleep or numb out with your phone, which is basically turn your brain off, turn your life off? I get that there are times when we need that because we’ve been so strung out taking care of everyone else. But what I’m here today to bring a highlight to is what do you really want? What does your soul crave? And to help you understand why it is so scary to think of that, or to potentially admit aloud what you might want.

All right, so today, Susie Pettit here, your certified life relationship parenting coach. I want to talk about why this happens, this not knowing what we want or this fear around what we want and why creating a life list might just be one of the most important things you do right here in your life. This might be the thing when you look back at it and you’re like, oh, thank goodness I did that when my kids were this age. Thank goodness I did this at this stage in my marriage.

Okay, so first I want to normalize why we lose touch with ourselves, why we might be feeling like, I don’t know, you know, that question. Like, when is the last time someone asked me what I wanted? And when is the last time I actually knew what I wanted? Besides just shutting my brain off and numbing out? There are so many reasons, my dear warrior. Some of them are helpful, some of them are harmful, but all of them make sense.

First off, if you’re a mom, it is appropriate and necessary that when our kids are little, we spend more time thinking about what they need than what we need. That is normal. If we spent time thinking about what we wanted to do, like read a book, but our infant is hungry, it’s literal neglect to sit and read the book. And so it goes that from the very beginnings of our child’s life, even in pregnancy, our attention and focus goes to consider them more than to consider us like, say you want to, you know, party down some night and you’re six months pregnant. Um, okay. We start to learn earlier. This is actually what good and conscientious parenting is when they’re under the age of eight. Notice when I say when they’re under the age of eight. This is because at that age, in those ages, they’re not physically or emotionally capable of understanding what their needs are or, and or capable of meeting their needs. And that’s part of our job as a parent to help them meet their needs when they can’t. Like they can’t change their diaper, they can’t make themselves their mushy peas. Okay. So part of it is us learning what they need. And it’s our brain’s job to figure that out. They get to just play.

And yet then what happens when they’re fourteen and we’re still using our brain to think all that stuff and we’re, you know, thinking, considering what they need, not teaching them the other skills? So the shift from “What do I want?” to “What do they need?” is very healthy in the beginning, that’s very normal. The unhealthy part happens when we don’t begin to shift back, when we continue with our programming to consider others before we consider ourselves, to help others and consider everyone else before we consider ourselves, or else we’re deemed selfish.

All right, I want to be clear. I’m not advocating abandoning your child, but there’s a big space between considering their needs and prioritizing their needs first—which is what we need to do when they’re under seven to eight—to considering our needs and prioritizing our needs first, which is what I would argue is our path to fulfilled living and feeling good after they’ve left the house. Okay, so we have this period of time between seven and eight, you know, zero and or before zero to seven and eight when we’re like, it is definitely like in our best interest to consider them first. And then we have this period of time when after they’ve left the house, there’s this—it’s in our best interest and in their best interest. So what I’m arguing, some people don’t see that right away, but it’s also in their best interest for us to consider ourselves first. Then there’s this middle ground when we’re trying, when we’re sort of getting in this period of shifting from that.

An if you’re not a mom, don’t shut off this podcast because this shows up in your relationships too. I promise if your conditioned as a woman in this society, we have these sort of we get into these relationships and we think of them more and part of relationship maturity, which is part of parental maturity, is starting to understand that in the beginning we’re in this like, oh, what do they need? When we’re considering them. And in the end, we want to shift back to considering us. So whether it’s friendship or dating—let’s take the parenting out or the out of it—when we first are in these like a new friend or a new spouse, you know, potential partner, we over consider them. It’s fun, yeah. We’re like, oh, what are they like? What do they want? What’s interesting to them? Let me learn. Let me be open to trying some new things and warriors very quickly in our adult relationships, we want to move into equal consideration. Hey, they want to go to a club, but we want to stay home. All right. Let’s learn the skills of speaking up and saying, “Hey, let’s try the club Friday and we stay at home Saturday.” Both wants and needs have space in the relationship. It’s not about always going out or always staying in.

The problem is, if we had a parent who modeled self-abandonment, a parent who maybe taught us or modeled: if I speak up for my needs, that’s selfish. We very surely will feel that kick back in ourselves and we’ll think we’re being selfish. So we’re like, oh my gosh, okay, well, if they want to go to the club, well, we’re going to the club. As if us saying, “Actually, sweetheart, I know you love playing golf on Saturday morning, but boy, would I like to take a walk in the park on Saturday morning. Could we switch so that every other weekend we do what we want?” Or if your kids are out of the house, you—it is completely relationally healthy to say like, “I know you love playing golf by yourself on Saturday and I’d like to spend some Saturdays with you. Can we make a plan for that?” That’s not you being selfish. That’s you being relationally mature.

All right, now, I want to take a little pause here. And if you’re listening—well, you are listening—take a breath and check in with your body when I’m saying this. As you hear me saying these things, these differences that both people get to be considered, that you could speak up and say, “I know you like this and I like this. Can I be considered?”—what’s happening in your chest? Does it feel tight or does your tummy feel rumble jumbly or rumbly, sort of like—

Okay, that is showing you that—that you are coming up against your programming. Our bodies are always giving us signs. It’s not giving you a sign that you’re doing something wrong or you better shut off this crazy Susie Pettit coach talking in your ear about these things. No, it is telling you that you’re coming up against programming, and programming that has been limiting us to stay in our emotional immaturity. Your body is like, oh my gosh, wait, what’s happening? And I want you to see that. That’s—that’s a sign that you’re—you’re up against, you’re trying something new, like at the gym when your muscle hurts, it’s like, oh, it’s a little un—it feels maybe a little unsafe, a little wrong, possibly for you to consider what you want or what you need.

Okay, if your chest is feeling tight and your tummy is feeling jumbly, it sounds—it’s like you speaking up for what you want or need feels uncomfortable. And I want you to see that that is just like a rusty muscle we haven’t used potentially a lot of us since we were like six or seven. It’s not that you’re actually unsafe, it’s just that you’ve programmed yourself for so many years to consider everyone else before yourself that when you pause to consider yourself, your brain is like, “Wait, what the heck is this? Ah!”

I help with this in coaching to see the difference between our brain being scared because we’re changing patterns in a healthy way, maturing our relationship that are in the best interest of all versus unsafe relationships and actual life situations that we should be afraid of. I’ve had and been trained in both, so I can help you discern if you’re literally like, “Oh, I’m not sure if my relationship is safe for that,” get on a call with me. Please don’t wait. Don’t delay your life. [smbwell.com/coach], okay, let’s just do one session and—and see that difference.

And what I imagine is that most of us here, it is our conditioning that’s making us feel safe, unsafe. And so our feeling is very normal. But normal does not lead to a life of fulfillment and satisfaction. And so we want to look at, you know, what we learned in childhood and carried into relationships, whether from being a mom and needing to care for a dependent child or from being a kid and—and having a parent who wasn’t meeting our needs—which is no parent can meet all our needs. This shift from considering ourselves and knowing ourselves to considering others and knowing their needs and wants, happens to only considering others.

I mean, the problem is that many of us never shift into the second stage. Our kids grow, we add years to our anniversaries. We’re like, oh, we’ve been married for this long, this long, this. But our conditioning stays, right? What often happens is maybe people feel the ick and they go to therapy, and then they just spend week after week describing a different scenario with the same underlying problem. It feels like Groundhog Day. And we continue to organize our lives around everyone else’s wants, feelings, preferences, and goals. We think first, what will my husband want to do this weekend before we think, what do I want to do this weekend, because it feels so unsafe. And so we go to therapy and each therapy session feels a bit like Groundhog Day. It’s like it feels like a bit of a release to momentarily feel better. You get it out of your system, you get validated. Therapy can be great for that. But then it’s like, okay, suck it up, deep breath, you can do this, back in it, back in the battle, back into this programmed conditioning.

Which is why I got into coaching just in the side here, because I had been in therapy and I was like, oh my gosh, I want action. I don’t want to keep doing this for the rest of my life, living the same year over and over, calling it a life, rinsing and repeating and waking up in midlife thinking, why do I feel restless? Why do I feel stuck? Why do I feel like something is missing? That’s where I come in. That’s where I can help you.

If we are in safe relationships, you know, with a mature spouse, maybe our spouse says like, “Well, what do you want? What do you need?” Like, maybe we’re there and we’re just like, “I don’t want to do that on the weekend.” They’re like, “Well, what do you want? What do you need?” All right, if you’re anything like me at that point, I feel a little—little girl like, like I’m just sort of like, stomping my foot, like, “I don’t know, you should know.” I did this for years in my marriage, warriors. I’d be resentful towards him, like he always gets to do his thing, we go where he wants to go, doing what he wants to do. Why doesn’t he do what I want to do? And then he’d be like, “Well, what do you want to do?” And I was like, “I don’t know.” Isn’t that his job to read my mind and make it happen? I’d be like, “Well, don’t you know, can’t you figure it out?”

No, my dear one—and I’m telling you this softly—that was our parents’ job when we were younger. They needed to, when we’re eight and under, they had to read our mind again—we don’t know. We need our diaper changed. We don’t know that we’re crabby because we didn’t eat lunch. We don’t know that we actually like playing outside every so often, so our parent’s like, “Hey, why don’t you go outside?” But now that we’re older, we get to act older. We get to learn how to be the emotional adult, how to be the authority in our life that no one is coming along. Our husband is not our father telling us what we want, okay? And even if we still have a relationship with our father, I’m going to say you’re no longer under like—let’s figure out what you want. There is no parent out there telling you what to do or what to want, that we want to be out there. They’re over controlling if they are, okay.

My point to you is they don’t know better than you. Maybe you’ve been handing over your agency to them and asking them for advice. Mom and dad, what do I want, what? And you’re still at this age doing that? That’s—there’s no shame here. The first step to anything is awareness. And my awareness right here is to tell you that the real information and knowledge lies inside of you. This is not an outsourced job—this is turning into you.

At which point when we realize this, when we’re like, “Oh, I’m not a little girl anymore? I’ve sort of been handing this over as if I’m a little girl,” what happens and what happened to me is most of us can feel extreme shame. Like, what the heck is wrong with me that I’m this age and I have no clue what I want? Oh my goodness. For me, I could see the pattern once I stopped and had it pointed out to me. I was like, oh my gosh, I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to go to dinner with my husband’s family every Sunday. I didn’t want to watch the kids while he played golf. I didn’t want to be the only one in charge of all the school stuff. Sure, I knew what I didn’t want, but did I know what I wanted? Oh my goodness, no. And he’s like, “Okay, well, so we don’t go to my parents on Sunday, what do you want to do?” I was like, “Ah.” Which made me feel like a child, dumb. What kind of woman doesn’t know what she wants?

Which is why I’m in your ear. The kind of woman that doesn’t know what she wants is the kind of woman who’s put others’ needs before hers out of necessity and never learns to change back. Which is telling me you’re in the exact place you’re supposed to be right now. It’s time to begin the shift back. You’re not too late. This is the perfect time.

All right, maybe you’ve never considered yourself, but I want you to. I guess the shift back I just want to point out is not to never considering others, but I want you to think of it like a seesaw. Right now, they’re the ones in the air. The “they” could be your kids, it could be your spouse, it could be your friends, it could be your parents. Like you’re on the ground doing all the hard work of the seesaw, keeping them up in the air and happy and all their needs being met. We’re not looking for them to slam to the ground and you be up in the air and then be in this place. No, mature relationships—is it’s a little bit of up and down, a little bit of back and forth: some them, some us, considering both. This does go for your children too—not children eight and under, but children as they’re getting older, so we’re not raising these little narcissists that only think of themselves.

And to get there, we have to understand that it’s no one else’s job to figure out what we want and what lights us up but ours. It’s not our spouse’s job, it’s not our kid’s job, it’s our job. We get to—we’re not a child anymore, right? It’s so beautiful. And yet I find so many of us like—well, we just we sort of are thinking that someone else will fix how we feel or figure out what we need. So we’re sort of like, “Boo hoo, I didn’t have fun doing that,” and then we feel resentful, irritated, misunderstood—misunderstood, that’s a big one. “No one gets the real me,” and my soft Susie coach voice here is, do you get the real you? When we’re like, “I feel emotionally disconnected, I don’t think anyone really understands me,” do you understand you? Do you know what you want? Do you know what you need? Do you know what you love to do? What lights you up but helps you lose track of time? Most of us don’t—that’s normal. But how can someone else feel connected to you if you’re not connected to you?

Before you spiral—I’ve been there, done that—hear me when I say this is the perfect time to figure this out. This is—I’m not some cruel, sadistic life coach that’s like, “Okay, end of the episode, there you go. How can someone else feel connected to you if you’re not connected to you?” Well, there you go. Now I have the skills and expertise to lead you through this normal transition. This is a normal transition. You’ve done nothing wrong, and yet now is the time to start to shift that seesaw in your life so there is more you in your life.

Did you know the biggest, the number one regret of the dying? There’s an Australian hospice nurse, Bronnie Ware, who studied for years. She studied the hospital, she interviewed people asking for their top five regrets. And they had the normal things like not spending more time with people, working too much, etc., etc. But do you know the number one one? The top regret was that they didn’t live their lives aligned with what they wanted—what they wanted. What do you think you have to do to live a life that is aligned with what you want? We have to slow down to get to know what we want. These people on their deathbeds have deep regret that they lived a life that others wanted for them. They went along, they were good little girls and did what their spouses, parents or kids wanted them to do, but they didn’t slow down to think and figure out what they wanted to do.

It’s so real. And to me as a coach, it’s so devastating because it’s so fixable and it’s fixable without turning your whole life upside down, without blowing up all your relationships. In fact, making the shift doesn’t lead to the chaos you think when you’re living a life more aligned with what you want and need. It’s better for everyone. Your kids feel less pressure, less like, “Oh, poor mom, she’s going to be so upset when I leave,” more, “Yeah, mom will be upset, she loves me, she—but look at her living her best life! Yay, mom, I can’t wait to call you this week and hear what you’re up to! Yay, mom, I can’t wait to get together with you and be with a lit up, vibrant human!” Not someone who’s like, “Well, okay, I’m trucking it down for them,” no, that’s our kids.

Our spouses feel less pressure, less tiptoeing around us. They know that if they say, “Hey, I want to visit Ireland for ten days and play eighteen holes of golf each day,” that they can trust you to say, “Hey, thanks for sharing, sweetheart. I love the idea of Ireland, and I’d love to visit every castle and artisan market every day. But I don’t think those two things—you playing golf every day and me visiting every castle and historic landmark every day—align. So let’s sit down and come up with a shared vision so we have this lit up trip.” He can trust you to say that, to speak up for yourself instead of you saying okay to the golf and him not only sensing your irritation the whole trip when you’re like, “Okay, golf again,” because you’re thinking, I wish I was at a castle, or I wish he knew to say, let’s go to that artisan market. No, but also think of him when he overhears you later saying, “Yeah, well, he got to do what he wanted to do and play golf all day.” Someone’s like, “How was Ireland?” and you’re like, “Well, good for him.” To which point he’s like, “Why the heck didn’t you speak up and say something? Be an emotional, mature adult?”

I’m just pointing out that when we’re not doing this work, we show up more childlike, and that’s not what you want. I know it’s not what you want. You’re not listening to shows like this if you’re like, “Yeah, I want to learn how to be more of a victim in my life.” It’s just because you haven’t had a coach help you slow life down to consider what you want.

Which is why I’m so psyched you’re listening to this. If you’re listening live, I have the greatest news ever and that I am leading a group of women through—I do this once a year and it’s a life list experience. You can find out more, and you can sign up for only eight dollars at [smbwell.com/lifelist]—”lifelist” is all one word. I have the eight dollars fee because those who pay pay attention and I want you to pay attention to your life, I want you to. Plus, eight is a magical number and a number of abundance. And we’re doing this in August, which is the eighth month. And I figure, like, that’s just enough magic, ooey gooeyness that I just couldn’t ignore. And so I’m like, let’s just have this nominal fee so they get in there and they pay frigging attention because this is the one life you’ve got, right?

So if you’re listening and it is July or August twenty twenty six, take this as your sign to sign up. Yes, there will be replays available. Don’t let your brain make excuses. This is not something you can miss if the time of the actual life list experience is something where you’re, you know, dropping your kid off at camp or college or you’re in Ireland with said husband, fine. There will be replays available, but life is too precious to make excuses for. And yet we’re conditioned to go along and get along. Hesitation is the crack in which our dreams die, in which those poor women in hospice end up thinking, “Oh my gosh, why didn’t I stop to figure out what I wanted?”

I am here to say there is no shame in not knowing what you want. There is no shame in having, until today, considered everyone else before you’ve considered yourself. That’s what you’re conditioned to do. And I ask that you now, today, draw a line and say today is the day that you’ll begin to consider yourself, that you’ll begin to get to know your wonderful, sweet self.

Do you know how excited you feel when your like teen who’s usually like throws his backpack down and goes up to his room, when they open their mouth and share something that they’re like, “This happened at school today, this was fun,” and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I love knowing what’s going on in their head?” That’s the excitement that’s possible for you, this like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so excited to get to know about myself! What I like—I’m in midlife and it is time. It is time for me to consider what I want, what I like.” And yes, this is scary, but Susie’s going to help me. The time is now.

I do this in August so as to help as many women as possible to not waste their lives in January. We often pause to look at the life we’re living and we get this burst of motivation, then we’re just we get back into the life, you know? So maybe this January you made some changes, but maybe not enough. And August is a great time to pivot and stop and look again. Plus, if you are a mom with kids eight and over, the longer you delay in figuring this out, the more pressure you put on your kids to give your life joy and excitement—which is too much for that relationship to hold. And I see it time and time again: it leads to kids feeling more anxious than they need to and or their failure to launch because they don’t know how, because you’ve been using your brain to figure out their lives and solve their problems, instead of letting their brains figure out their reasonable problems and using your brain to figure out your life.

So now is the time, I am excited. I love this time of year. Your wants and desires are there, and you often need a coach to help get rid of this static of all the other like what we should be doing and selfish and all that conditioning and tune into what your wants and desires are. And actually, I love—I’m going to leave with this little analogy. Think of it like a radio station that’s been playing softly in the background for decades. You’re like, “I think I hear that, I think I hear that over there right now.” When you stop to consider it, maybe all you consider is static. You’re like, “Ooh.” Underneath that static, dear warrior, is wisdom, desire, life satisfaction, the reason why you’re here on earth. You matter. You are unique. You have a unique fingerprint for no evolutionary reason except to tell you that you have been made with unique desires and dreams that are here for you and yours alone. And it’s not to be over considering everyone else. The time is now. [smbwell.com/lifelist], let’s go.