That 'One Thing' You Can't Solve

“If I just — (fill in the blank) — had enough money, got the promotion, had the right team, was in a relationship, had a better job, lived in a different town…  THEN I would be happy!” Right?

• What if that ‘one thing’ that is eluding you is your greatest gift? 
• And in getting it, you’d be cheated out of all the meaning, and unfolding beauty, of your life?

The tantalizing shortcut, the quick fix - what if that is actually just rushing our life away? They say that we get to the end of life and wish for more time - because we missed the journey.

This week, Stephanie and Maren offer a quick, fun and powerful exploration of that ‘one thing’ that eludes each of us.

Spoiler alert: You were intentionally designed to have the ‘thing’ you can’t solve - we all were. It’s your passport on a journey of joy and delight - if you choose to take it. 

• 00:31 The one thing that eludes you
• 03:35 How it’s designed
• 07:25 But, please, just fix this one thing!
• 09:52 Ungrateful buggers, it’s heart work
• 13:29 Beyond the striving, getting there
• 15:32 Meeting the conflict
• 16:16 There must be a shortcut

“There's a reason that that one piece is meant to elude us” - Maren

TRANSCRIPT

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Transcript

Stephanie Allen: 0:04

In a world where we have everything and it's still not enough, we're often left wondering, is this really it?

Maren Oslac: 0:10

Deep inside you know, there's more to life. You are ready to leave behind the old push your way through and claim the deeper, more meaningful life that's calling you.

Stephanie Allen: 0:19

That's what we invite you to explore with us. We're your hosts, Stephanie Allen and

Maren Oslac: 0:25

Maren Oslac, and this is The Soulful Leader Podcast.

Stephanie Allen: 0:30

Yay!

Maren Oslac: 0:31

Welcome back to The Soulful Leader Podcast. I'm Maren, and I'm here with Stephanie, and we were talking before we got on about the fact that we all have kind of that one thing that eludes us, right? So for somebody, it might be, they just can't make enough money, right? They can't get past that always striving to just barely make ends meet. And for another person who's, oh, I got the money thing covered, but I can't ever quite get healthy enough, right? Or there's somebody who can't ever either gain enough weight or lose enough weight, right? Like, so there's, there seems to be this one thing that each of us has in our lives that we can't figure out. We've tried all the stuff...

Stephanie Allen: 1:24

We can't master it. For some reason we don't feel like we have mastery over it,

Maren Oslac: 1:28

Yeah, it still runs our lives, and we may have all of the other stuff The reason this came up for me was I was working with a client, and that's one of the things is...she's like, I have my whole life, it is amazing and wonderful. I've been doing personal development work for last 6 to 10 years and I'm so good at manifesting things. I've got this, I've got that. I've got the other and I can't do it in this one area of my life, and it's making me nuts. I can't figure it out. And I thought isn't that true for all of us? And I know people hide it well.

Stephanie Allen: 2:11

Or sometimes you get one area of your life you've been focusing on for a long time, and it finally gets like...Ahhhhhh! It finally harmonizes, right? And then the other shoe falls off over here. And then you know, its this balancing. You're trying to have all those plates spinning in the circus, you know, where the plate spinner comes along. And just as one starts to get going, another one over there starts to slow down, you got to spin that one. And then you're running around like your head cut off kind of thing.

Maren Oslac: 2:41

I played that game at my studio. We would get one element of the studio, because we served adults. We had a children's program because it was ballroom dance. We had a kids program, we had an adult program. We'd have fitness program, and we'd get the fitness program like, whoa, that's like, rockin and the adult program had fallen off, and they would go and work on the adult program. So, yeah, the spinning plates thing. So, I mean that's one of the things as leaders, you know, like, what does this have to do with leadership? There does seem to be even in our businesses, where we can get certain things going and then something, there's some little piece that keeps eluding us. And the thought for me was that's intentional. There's a reason that that one piece is meant to elude us. So I'm going to share a story. Last week I was looking for something. I had been looking for something literally for months. So someone had told me a story, and I didn't know how to spell the the name of the story, so I had been looking online and I had gotten this and they said... Oh, I think it's in the back of this book, or maybe this other book. So I had bought three books, and I had started to read this book and started to listen to that person, and I was on this whole journey trying to find this one darn thing, and I happened to mention it Stephanie. And Stephanie looked it up and it's right there. Like, literally, it took her about two minutes online to find something that I had been looking for about four months.

Stephanie Allen: 4:25

Yeah, and in some of our worlds, we go like, Oh, isn't that wonderful, isn't that great? But I realized that I had, I had taken away an opportunity of your journey of discovery.

Maren Oslac: 4:37

And the good news for me was that I had actually found it, and I had ordered the book. The book that it's in is no longer available online, so I had to order it. It was on its way to me, and the journey that I had taken, and that's what I realized, was that the journey that I had taken was the real reason that I wanted that thing, that I had this longing for the story that I had heard.

Stephanie Allen: 5:09

Well it's like that saying, you know, it's not the destination, it's the journey. We're trying to rush all our life away only to get to the end of it for what? Then we're at the end of it, and we're like, oh my God, I wish I had more time, because we missed the journey, even all those things like, you know, stop and smell the roses, all those kind of sayings, of like, can you be present and not try to figure it out, but to be present to what might be calling you? Or what might be alluding that you might miss otherwise?

Maren Oslac: 5:46

I think that's so key. And you know, I mean, I know for myself, a lot of times when I hear those things, I think of them almost as platitude. Stop and smell the roses... yep! Because it's just Yeah, yeah, yeah... I know that. I know my thinking mind knows that, and having had that experience with you, I know how much the book that I read, the lectures that I listened to in in the attempt to find this one story, all of the stuff that I did and that I read, and how much it changed me, and how excited I was about everything that I was learning. And it took me to the next thing into the next thing to the next thing to the point where I kind of almost forgot about the story.

Stephanie Allen: 6:40

The story may have been that elusive thing to get you on the journey. It may not have anything to do with the

Maren Oslac: 6:48

And so it got me thinking about the one thing in story. our lives that drives us, because it just eludes us. We can't quite figure it out, and the person right next to us, is like, it's right there. What are you looking? Like you did, right? It's right there. What do you mean you can't find it? It's right here. And so it's not about the person next to us or the judgment that they could do it and I can't. It's about my journey. So every single one of us is going to have the thing that eludes us.

Stephanie Allen: 7:25

I often say that to my clients with who are struggling with pain or illness, who will come and say, can you just fix this? Can you just make it go away? And I go, you might miss it when it's gone,

Maren Oslac: 7:38

Right. I'm taking your gift.

Stephanie Allen: 7:40

Yeah, because there's buried treasure in there and yeah, I mean, I could help and support, but I don't necessarily look at myself as a fixer, healer, that kind of thing. I look at myself as someone who's a fellow traveler who's standing next to you with a flashlight and someone to kind of bounce things off. So I can help guide, more than anything, and question, because, you know, people come in and they... I recently had that client who had a very short time to live, and, you know, I said, there's lots of gifts in this moment, especially when you know perhaps that you only have a short time to live. You're able to really... and you feel good because she did. She goes, you have a, you have an opportunity to say your goodbyes, to make amends, to be at peace, to really savor all the things you love and find a value in beauty. And we don't know what the overall or the overarching plan of our life is, and whether or not you believe in God or spirit or a friendly universe or not, doesn't matter. There's something that makes our heartbeat, there's something that puts air into our lungs. Where do we go when we sleep at night? There's all these questions that we have. I call it the ghost in the machine, that perhaps these seemingly difficult conflicts, challenges, irritations, are not meant to be fixed and solved, but they're meant to send you... they're your passport on a journey.

Maren Oslac: 9:21

I love that.

Stephanie Allen: 9:22

You will discover lands that you've never would have even known were possible or imaginable. You're going to meet people that you didn't even know existed. It's going to put you in a way that is going to develop your character and let go of beliefs and doubts and fears, like there's such treasure in the journey. And like what I did with you, too. You remind your, I think we're so created in this world to come up with answers and fixes and solutions, and that when someone disregards your fix or solution, you think, well, that wasn't very grateful of them. They didn't really value or appreciate me, didn't they? And obviously they don't want to change, but you might have just taken away a key to their treasure to unlock it.

Maren Oslac: 10:17

And it's not about wel then I just won't help anybody, right? It's not that. It's finding that that sweet spot of there are times and places where it's it's appropriate for somebody to just give us something, and it's not ours to work through, right? And then there are the other times and places where it is ours to work through. And there's something when I when I think of this type of work, there's such judgment around it. Of, well, you can't figure that out, what's wrong with you? As if I'm some sort of a failure, instead of looking at it as heart work. This is something that's going to improve me as a human being, as a person that's going to change me from the inside out and help me to to soar in myself. And when I look at it like that, then it's no longer like, I have to figure this out and it doesn't feel so crunchy.

Stephanie Allen: 11:20

Oh my gosh, yeah. And I mean, I think if you look at anything in your life that may have been or is a challenge to you right now, and you look back maybe even last month, last year, 10 years, even when you're a child, you're not the same person, right? I can guarantee you you're not the same person that you are now that you were back then. You might be parts that are similar. But I say the same thing, too, when I look at when there is something that you're seeking, that you're longing for, you're going to need to evolve in order to get there, and it's not about getting there, it's about the evolving.

Maren Oslac: 12:06

It is. And I'm so glad you brought up longing, because I think for myself anyway, that's a clue for me that it's really important for the piece of me, the part of me that needs to evolve and not just get it. So the places where I have the most longing are the things that will make me, that will... I don't even want to use the word make... that will allow me to become a different person, the person who can have that, the person who can be that, the person that can do that, whatever that longing is. On a small level, the story, like I now have, I now own that story, and I'm so excited I read it last night. Whoo! (laughter) And I also have all of the pieces that went into learning, all the learning. I'm not the same person that started looking for that, you know, four or five, six months ago. I am definitely a more evolved being, and I can't tell you how excited I am that that A, that I have it and B, that I recognize that. There's that piece where we get past the constant striving, which exhausts... it's just exhausting. We're so exhausted by that thing we long for, that we're striving for, and we have to try this, we have to do that, we have to buy this solution we have to do this, we need to take that pill, and we need to...

Stephanie Allen: 13:50

It's a lot of energy! Oh, my God! I think sometimes by the time we get there, wherever.... wherever there is, you know, it's like you finally arrive at your destination, and you look back and you're like, Wow, is that it? Like, I'm here, and this is it? I did all of that for this? You know, we can say, well, now what? Instead, instead of going...wait a minute, I'm not the same person. So in the beginning, the person that was that I was looking for this longing to manifest or to create or fulfill, this longing I had to change and become and let go of and learn and ask for help and be vulnerable and cry a little, and all these things. Now I'm there, and I'm like... oh, that's it. I'm here. To be able to turn around and look back and go... Oh, wait a minute...I have really grown. I've really changed.

Maren Oslac: 14:52

It's not the thing.

Stephanie Allen: 14:54

Yeah, it's me. I've changed. And maybe that's been my carrot all along. So that I would evolve and that I would change. And I see this in relationships, because I hear again and again people saying, Oh, I just want to be happy. I just want to be happy. And if I had fill in the blank, you know, enough money or a relationship or the right job, or I lived in a different town, whatever, then I would be happy, right?

Maren Oslac: 15:20

If I just got the promotion, if I just had the right team...

Stephanie Allen: 15:24

And so, but it's this evolution of going for the dream, because that's a good thing. Go for what you want, because it's going to change you.

Maren Oslac: 15:32

And that makes me think of the fact that there are multiple roads to Rome, right? And I'm not saying the only way that you get there is by recognizing that you're on the journey and enjoying the journey. That's one way to get there, and it's so much easier when you do that.

Stephanie Allen: 15:51

Oh, yeah. How you meet conflict differently, like Okay, this is pruning me. This is this is helping me evolve, right? And instead of running away or fighting it, you go... okay, what is being asked of me? What do I need to let go of? What do I need to become? You're gonna you're gonna focus on the difficulties totally different, which is gonna give you inner resilience,

Maren Oslac: 16:16

Yeah, and I'm going to use the story as an example

Stephanie Allen: 16:16

yeah, you want the shortcut. of I allowed myself to take the wandering road to find this one story, and I got completely involved, and I enjoyed it, and I read all these other stories, and I learned this stuff, and I went on this fun journey, and then I also got this bonus of, ah! now I have the story, right? And how often in our lives do we

Maren Oslac: 16:45

Give me the shortcut. I want the one thing. just want to move all that out of the way. That's not important. That's not important. I don't care about that guy, who told you... I just thought... And so we don't enjoy the process, and we'll probably get there eventually, doing that shortcut hardcore.

Stephanie Allen: 17:15

But you miss out of the pruning, you miss out of all the succulents that life is trying to give you.

Maren Oslac: 17:22

If you didn't evolve, then something else...that's the spinning plates thing... something else is going to fall because there's still that need in you that needs to...there's that part of you that needs to evolve and change and become a different person. So some other plate is going to fall and give you another opportunity.

Stephanie Allen: 17:46

That's right! This has been great, and I think anyone out there listening who's feeling like they're making up a story, that they're not good enough, or that they can't do it, or they've given up hope, or they're still fighting, you know, just stop and notice what the journey has given you. Notice how it's it's actually feeding your soul in ways that you didn't even know possible, and to claim those gifts, because there is a purpose, there is a reason that you have a longing in your heart and a desire, because it's not just about getting it. It's about what's going to happen between point A and point B that is actually the real, real fruit of your labor.

Maren Oslac: 18:26

I love that. So remember, you can find us every other week right here at The Soulful Leader Podcast and you can find us on our professional website www.tslp.life. We'll see you in two weeks on The Soulful Leader Podcast.

Stephanie Allen: 18:54

And that wraps up another episode of The Soulful Leader Podcast with your host, Stephanie Allen

Maren Oslac: 19:00

and Maren Oslac, thank you for listening. If you'd like to dive deeper, head over to our website www.thesoulfulleaderpodcast.com.

Stephanie Allen: 19:11

Until next time...