Episode 164: Passive vs. Active: Take control of your life’s direction
Feeling overwhelmed and disconnected from your personal path? It's time to reclaim control and steer your life in the direction you desire. Join me as we delve into actionable strategies to rediscover your inner voice and confidently embrace your dreams. Learn how to identify your true desires and assertively shape a life that reflects your authentic self. Tune in now to take the first steps towards living a fulfilling and empowered existence.
Topics
Signs of being a Passive Passenger of your life.
Reasons for Being Passive.
Steps to Transition from Passive to Taking Control and Being Active.
Links
👉Want to create your own life's blueprint?
Let's work together! 👈
Transcript
[AUTO-GENERATED]
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:00:06]:
Welcome to the Self Growth Nerds podcast. I'm your host Marie, a courage coach, creative soul and adventure seeker. Since thru hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in 2019, I'm on a mission to help you embrace your most confident self so you can achieve your dreams too. If you're eager for deep conversations, big questions and meaningful connections, join me on the quest to discovering how we can create a more magical and memorable life. Hello, nerds. How are you? I'm good. Today we are talking about going from passive to active in your life. We're gonna talk about what that means and how you can identify the areas in your life where you're a passive passenger, why you get there, how that happens, how the problem is created, the impact of being passive, and actionable steps that you can take in order to shake things up and take the control back over your life and your decisions.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:01:19]:
Okay? Let's start with the signs that you are being passive And this might be in your whole life, but it might show up in one area more specifically. Maybe you're very intentional in your career and with your friends, but when it comes to your marriage or your intimate relationship, you've just kind of let things go. The first sign that you're a passive passenger is that you say I don't know a lot. There's an aura of confusion or uncertainty around you. You might not say the words I don't know, but if someone asks you about your life, you're in a, like, a meh zone. I'll give you an example. I've told this story a few times of when I went to a stand up comedy show when I was a graphic designer, and the, the comedian pointed at me in the audience and he asked me what I did for a living. And I said, I'm a graphic designer.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:02:20]:
And there must have been like a a question mark in my voice, or maybe I had like a deer in the headlights kind of face because his response was to say, are your parents forcing you to do that? You don't seem like, it doesn't seem like that's what you want to be doing. That was a moment in my life where I was a passive passenger. There was this aura of nonchalance or indifference around me. I was letting myself float down the river without really thinking about where I was headed. I had a general idea of where people are 5 years down the line when they do the job that I was doing. I didn't see myself in those shoes, but I was not doing anything about it. Sign number 2 is that you feel like you're doing a lot of things you don't really want to be doing, Or that you hang out with people that you don't really wanna be hanging out with, but it seems like these are the demands of life. What's expected of you and you don't really have a choice.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:03:26]:
Sign number 3, you spend a lot of time having to numb your dissatisfaction. So that might be through watching a lot of TV, playing a lot of video games, drinking wine, daydreaming about a better life that you're gonna have one day. I see this one a lot. And finally sign number 4, you rely on hope. Hope is your fuel. You just hope it's gonna get better. You hope you're gonna have more time. You hope people are not gonna ask so much from you next week or next month.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:03:59]:
You hope you're gonna come back relaxed from your vacation. You hope it's gonna work out. You hope you're gonna get the job that you want. I mean you get the gist. I could carry on giving you examples, but I think you understand. There's a lot of hope going on and if you're tired of hoping maybe there's some cynicism that has made its its entry into your thinking. Cynicism might sound like, oh, this is just how I am. I never finish anything that I start, or this is just the system, the system's broken.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:04:30]:
We live in a broken world, and that's just how it is. There's nothing to be done. And finally sign number 5 that you're being a passive passenger is that there's a lot of talking, but there's not a lot of doing. You spend more time talking about what you could maybe do one day or complaining about what you don't have right now and what you want more of than actually taking action. And when I say taking action, that doesn't include busy work. Your schedule can be fully packed doing things that maintain your current lifestyle, pushing buttons, but not doing anything that's actually meaningful, that's going to help you truly progress. So these are the 5 signs. Let me quickly repeat them before we keep moving.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:05:22]:
So sign number 1, you say I don't know a lot or there's this aura of nonchalance slash indifference slash confusion slash uncertainty around you. Sign number 2, there's a lot of things that you do or people you hang out with that you don't really wanna be doing or that you don't really wanna hang out with, you just feel like you have to. Sign number 3, you spend a lot of time numbing, trying to escape your reality, trying to avoid thinking about your dissatisfaction. Sign number 4, you rely on hope a lot and there might be a sprinkle of cynicism in there. And finally sign number 5, you do a lot of talking, you do a lot of one day I will, but you don't do a lot of meaningful doing. Now, if I was to ask you what's the problem? Why is this happening? I think most people in this situation would tell me, I don't have enough time, I don't have enough energy, I don't have enough money. And of course, that's an important part of this puzzle, but it's not the whole answer. And the solution certainly is not to get better at time management, to get better at productivity, to go on a vacation so you can come back ready to tackle everything that's on your plate.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:06:43]:
No. These are surface level solutions, and I wanna talk about what's hiding underneath the surface that we don't address often enough. To me, the reason why you're being pulled in all kinds of directions and you feel like you're not in control of your own life, like you're not navigating your own life is because you have not chosen a clear personal direction. You haven't taken the time to ask yourself what you want out of life. And there's many reasons for that. Part of it is you you don't even know that's possible. You don't even know you can do that. You just sort of let things happen without making any bold decisions because that's just how you've grown up.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:07:36]:
You've that's what you've been used to, not having a voice, being told what to do, being given a manual of instructions. This is 2nd Growth, this is what you need to do to get the 3rd grade. This is high school. This is what you need to do to get to college. Your parents telling you here's what we think you should do next. So after years years of being told what to do, you just forget that you have a say. Or you might, underneath all of that, have an inkling of what you want, but you are scared to speak up. You're scared to speak with conviction about it, to say this is where I'm going, this is what I want, because you've learned that being passive equals safety.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:08:25]:
If you don't make decisions then you ensure you won't make a bad one. Either a bad bad decision in your eyes or other people's eyes. Better to wait to be given, your next step than to actually try to take a step in a direction that lights you up, that you are curious about and being told off about it, being criticized for it. Also, you've learned that if you don't do anything, you ensure that you're not gonna make mistakes or you're not gonna upset anyone. If you've been punished for going against someone's expectations of you, if you've been made to feel responsible for someone else's feelings, then of course all of that has been internalized into your nervous system, into your unconscious and you're going to associate taking risks moving forward without, absolute certainty to danger. It's gonna feel dangerous. So you're gonna just stay where you are even though it makes you feel miserable. And that is how you bury your inner voice.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:09:33]:
How you can live in denial for years years years because you have unlearned how to listen to your inner whispers and trust what they have to say. Something that used to come easy as a child. All the kids do it without thinking. It comes natural to them. And then we grow up in a culture that wants us to walk a straight line, and so we have to unlearn our ability to follow our inner compass. That to me is the root cause, the real problem, And of course, it would be easier to get back in touch with our core self if we didn't live in a system where we need to work work work work quirk to pay the bills, if we had more time to to sit still, if we didn't live in a capitalistic society where we walk around with our phones that are filled with apps designed by companies like Meta, who wants to keep us addicted to social media, to keep us scrolling, TikTok also, just wanna keep us scrolling to make more profit instead of thinking about the impact that that's going to have creating, like, super accessible slot machines for people as young as, like, I don't know, how old are are kids when they start using things like TikTok and Instagram? It's it's basically like they're using slot machines as Nerds, and that is because we've got this be these big companies whose goal is to make as much money as possible instead of considering our well-being. We've got to be aware of this so that we can outsmart this broken system and take care of ourselves, take care of our community. We have been used to putting our well-being in the hands of the the big folks.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:11:36]:
When we were kids, we didn't really really have a choice in order to survive. And then as teenagers, many of us have been told by the grown ups in our lives what we should do, what makes more sense, what would be based on what we're good at or what daddy used to do or or or whatever that is. And so now many people just rely on the system to take care of them, but that's not what the system's focus is. There's this quote by Napoleon Hill, control your mind or someone else's will. We could also say control your life or someone else's will, If you just surrender your will to the system, the system will decide where to put you, and it's definitely not going to feel nourishing or fulfilling to your soul. Okay? So it's it's a rewiring of a deeply ingrained pattern, and it's not your fault if you realize listening to this podcast that you've been a passive passenger in your life. It's not your fault. However, it is your responsibility to change.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:12:43]:
No one is going to come save you. You can actually live a passive life for the rest of your days and be fine. So instead of beating yourself up, if you realize that you're not where you want to be, if you realize that you've been letting things go, just go, oh, yes, this is me, This is what I've been doing. Now what? It kinda reminds me of what a former client of of mine was telling me the other day during our, I think it was our last call. She said, before I started working with you, I was just I would go to work. I didn't really like my job. I didn't feel like I connected with anyone there. I just came home, and then I would play Zelda on the couch, and I would start the cycle over and over again.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:13:30]:
And at one point, I just got tired of this. I got annoyed with myself. Another one of my clients, she said she would just smoke a lot of weed. And people thought she was depressed. She thought she was depressed. And turns out her quote, unquote depression was not anything to do with, like, chemicals in her brain. It was just her not owning what she wanted. Not being able to say this is what my inner voice is saying and I'm going to listen.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:14:00]:
So many people are think they are depressed, but their depression is just a matter of, pursuing their ignored calling. Ignoring your calling, the calling of your soul, is going to lead to depression. And to me, I see it there's a difference between depression that's due to an actual issue with the release of chemicals in your brain, of hormones in your brain, versus a depression that's that's caused by denial of your truth. And that also makes me think about a client of mine that was quite intentional in lots of areas in her life, but when it came to dating, she kind of didn't know she could have standards. She didn't know she could have non negotiables. She thought she needed to be as low maintenance as possible. Just take anyone that wants to, that wanted to be with her. And of course that would lead to huge frustration and disappointment over disappointment.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:15:03]:
She had to realize it's okay to put your foot down and speak up about what it is that you want. That's what I did too, personally. I was, you know, a year ago, left a 7 year relationship in which I had been passive because I just thought I needed to settle. You know, you you found a good person. You can't make them upset by leaving, so find a way to to be content where you are. But actually, I was out of touch with what I wanted in my core, down in the basement of my heart, until I did what I'm about to share. I really want you to take the exercise I'm going to to tell you about seriously. It's time for you to go on an undercover revolution, to have a an internal revolution.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:15:56]:
You don't have to tell anyone at first. You just have to be honest with yourself. That's what's most important. To leave denial. That's what's going to light your fire again. Okay? If you feel lost, if you feel aimless, if you feel disconnected from your true self, this is gonna help you get back. This is the first step to getting back to yourself. What you're gonna do is you're gonna grab a piece of paper or journal doesn't matter you can burn it afterwards if you don't want anyone to see it and you're gonna finish this sentence.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:16:35]:
If everything was possible, here's what I want in my relationship or in my career or in my lifestyle. You can go through each one of them, and I want you to make a list of desires. And I want those desires to be rebellious, to feel rebellious, to feel over the top, to feel delusional. I want them to feel outrageous. Okay? I remember the day I did this when I was in my old relationship. It was a day where I was tired of being disappointed. I sat down with my journal and had just wrote a bunch of desires I had. Here's what I want in a relationship.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:17:16]:
I want this. I want that. I I was angry. If you're angry, use your anger. This is a way to tell your inner voice, here I am. I am listening. I am back. I am advocating for you.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:17:31]:
I have stopped ignoring you. Tell me everything you have to say. And beware, there might be a tsunami of desires coming to the surface. Or it might be really shy to come to the surface because it's been ignored for so many years. You might need to reassure Self. You might need to be patient. You might need to come back to this exercise a few times until that part of you feels safe to speak up, and to help it feel safe try to allow everything. This is not a an exercise where we want to think about the logistics of how we're gonna get things done.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:18:14]:
This is a a space where everything is possible. All the desires are possible, that there are no limits. We're not we're not going to do what's on the list necessarily. We just want to unlock the flow. Just want to create a a safe space where the ideas can come out in a messy way. That is step 1. Step 1 is a very important step, but it does not stop there. Step 2, you have to start telling the world about some of this.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:18:49]:
And when I say the world, it can just be one person. Doesn't matter, but it has to come out of your mind eventually. Okay? I have a friend of mine, Flo. I know she's listening. Hello, Flo. We meet every now and then and we share our big dreams with each other. This is a space where I know I don't have to feel ashamed of having big goals and being very ambitious because flow is the same and we've created a a a space where we can talk about this openly and encourage each other. You've got to surround yourself with people like this.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:19:28]:
I believe that what you want has to come out of your mouth, so that the universe has to hear you talk about your desires in order to deliver them to you. I'll give you a very concrete example from when I was an illustrator. I remember writing a little bucket list of the projects I wanted to do, and and I scanned the the page of my notebook and published it on my website. And then the next day I got a call from someone who wanted me to illustrate a children's book because they had seen this project on the bucket list. K? I had to speak up about what I dreamed of doing in order to to tell the world that I was available for this. Right? So you first have to figure out for yourself and then step 2 is you have to tell the people. Let's say you're looking for a partner, but you don't really know what you want. You first have to figure out what you want and then maybe make a list and share it with a friend.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:20:37]:
You've got to find a way to own what you desire, to be vocal about what you desire. You know what this makes me think of is when I was a kid and I would go to, shops like Claire's where you could spend, I don't know, like $10 on a surprise bag full of cheap stuff, and maybe you would like, like, one little thing in the bag. And that was fun. It was a thrill. It's a gamble. Right? But sometimes you just wanna take those $10 and spend it on exactly what it is that you fancy in that moment. Another question that you can ask yourself that was super impactful in my life is would I choose my job again? Would I choose my partner again? Would I choose this city again? If I was to start over from 0, if my life was to start today, would would I choose the circumstances that I'm in? Why or why not? And that doesn't mean you need to leave tomorrow. It might mean you have to make adjustments.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:21:49]:
And finally step 3, once you have identified what it is that you want and then you've practiced owning your desires more openly, is to take action. And that is the hardest part. That's why I think it's helpful to get a coach for a certain period of time, to have someone walking next to you, encouraging you to keep going when it gets tough. During every session, you'll get better and better at owning what is true to you and at taking courageous action to create a life that feels like a glove instead of a pair of tight jeans. I'm not sure about this analogy. I'm not sure about this analogy at all, but you understand what I mean. You might feel right now in your life like you're stuck, like it doesn't it's not you. It's not who you know you are deep down.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:22:47]:
You're trying to fit into a mold that doesn't allow you to breathe. By working together we can for sure change that. You will feel lighter and you will feel proud of the life that you're living. Like it like it's actually your own life and not a life that you've taken off of some basic blueprint. So if you're interested to learn more, just book a call. It's free at self Growth nerds.com/audacity. It's gonna be you and I for 45 minutes together talking about where you are right now, what you're dissatisfied with, and how working together can help you. Then you'll have all the information and you'll be able to decide if you wanna jump in.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:23:35]:
And that's it. I hope today's episode was a good shake for you. That was the goal. Shake you out of being a passive passenger and step into the shoes of the leader of your life. So that you can get old without regrets. Okay. That is it for this week, my loves. I wish you all a beautiful time and I will talk to you very soon.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:24:05]:
Bye. Hey. If you love what you're hearing on the Self growth Nerds podcast and you want individual help finding a new direction for your life and developing the courage to make your dreams a reality, you have to check out how we can work together on selfgrowthnerds.com Nerds message me on Instagram at self Growth Nerds. My clients say they would have needed that support years ago. So if you're tired of feeling like you're wasting your life, don't wait. Get in touch now, and I cannot wait to meet you.