Ep 41 - Are You Chasing the Wrong Goals?
Discover the Hidden Motivators Driving Your Life with Terri Trespicio
Terri Trespicio blew the lid off society's definitions of passion and success, leaving you questioning what's really fueling your daily decisions. In this powerful episode, Terri and I pull back the curtain on human drivers - the unconscious motivations shaping your choices.
You'll learn the 3 "doing" drivers secretly pushing you to chase achievements over inner peace, why listening to society's definition of success leaves you unfulfilled, and how to uncover your unique "being" drivers for a life of authentic purpose through a simple process that will finally align your daily actions with your true motivators.
Stop drifting through life on autopilot and gain the clarity to live fully engaged on your own terms. Terri Trespicio hands you the keys to understanding yourself at a deeper level than ever before, lighting the fire to design a life powered by your true inner drivers instead of someone else's goals.
For more information about this episode head to https://dralkapatel.com/podcast-health-hacktivators/
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To read the blogs that accompany the show and for even more focused health hacks, head to https://dralkapatel.com/blog/
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Discover A Hidden Health-Hacking Code That Unlocks Your Phenomenal Potential for an Outstanding Healthspan, Lifespan and Wealthspan.
Find out what most other Doctors don’t tell you, with cutting-edge health-hacktivating advice from Lifestyle Medicine Doctor, GP and Longevity Expert Dr Alka Patel.
Featuring candid conversations with celebrities, influencers and industry icons, hear the real-life stories of what it takes to be healthy, wealthy, and wise in today’s world.
It’s time to join the Strategic Self-Care Revolution and experience the profound effect this will have on your personal and professional success.
Take back control and get ready to live longer, younger, and stronger.
Podcast Transcript
PLEASE NOTE these transcripts are auto-generated and may not be wholly accurate.
Dr Alka Patel (00:01.36)
Welcome, welcome to the show, Terri. It's so good to have you here. Oh, amazing, look, I'm not gonna dilly dally at all. I'm gonna just get straight into this. Unfollow your passion. I mean, you are going right against the grain here, right? And you know that I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of people listening with their mouths wide open, like, what do you mean, unfollow my passion? So. Oh. Oh, thank you. Yeah.
Terri (00:04.938)
I'm excited to be here. Thank you.
Terri (00:24.838)
Yes, book titles matter, right? It matters. If it's something you've heard before, it's probably going to go right past you. But one thing I feel like I should always say now that I've done a few interviews about this, the thing I want to start with is if you are following your passion and it's working out, who in the world would stop you? That is not the intent. The point is there's too many people who think they should be following something. And that advice to follow their passion.
Dr Alka Patel (00:31.4)
I'm going to go to bed.
Terri (00:53.106)
often makes them feel worse because they don't know what that is and they feel they're supposed to know. So that's the challenge is that it's like, you know, we don't always know. And maybe, oh gosh, I was following this passion for music and do, but what if, what if it's not? And they have like a, you know, midlife crisis because they're like, I was following the wrong thing. You're not following the wrong thing. We need to give ourselves room to evolve and to shift.
Dr Alka Patel (01:16.648)
Hmm. And that is quite a shift for people because everywhere around us we are hearing so much more about passion and purpose. And if you're not following your passion, you're kind of headed in the wrong direction and do what you love. And even kind of from ancient cultures and Ikigai, etc. It's all about find your purpose and follow your passion and give to the world. But what happens? Right. Yeah.
Terri (01:29.323)
Right.
Terri (01:39.938)
feels too big. It just feels too big. And also how are you supposed to know? Like, as if some people know the secret to the world, no one knows how we got here or why, and we have no idea what happens when we leave. That means, of course, the human animal, the human brain is going to search for some kind of meaning. If we don't find meaning, we don't know what the heck we are doing, and it can be terrifying. So every religion, every philosophy, everything at all is
the search, of course, for meaning and purpose. I'm all about meaning and purpose and I love to, there isn't a person who doesn't like to feel passion. It just seems kind of, it just seems kind of like obvious. Like if you love something, you do it, but what if you're not sure what you love? It's not even that we're just not following what we love. We think we're supposed to be doing something that someone else approves of. And that's where that throws a wrench into things.
Dr Alka Patel (02:33.492)
Yeah, yeah, that's so interesting. Because I've often asked that question to people, you know, what do you love? What is your passion? What are your values? And most of the time I am met with very blank stares. Because like no one asks themselves that question. And then when you're asked that question, invariably you don't know, but you feel it's something you do know. So you kind of confabulate around it and come up with something. But how true are you to yourself? Like, do you think we know ultimately, like there is a piece of discovery that needs to happen or? Right. Yeah.
Terri (02:42.623)
Why?
Terri (02:53.455)
Yes.
Terri (02:59.422)
You discover as you go. The point is to be here. And I'd say the point is to be here and love as many people as you can, but that's not what serial killers think. You know what I mean? So I can't predict what people think that they think they're here for. But when someone, let's look at the social conditions. When someone asks you what you're passionate about, especially on a podcast, you better come up with something quick and something good that makes you look insightful and deep and thoughtful. And the pressure is to perform. When you ask me, if you were to ask me right now,
I would draw a blank too, because it feels like I'm supposed to have an important answer. And so what do people say? I love helping people. Well, yeah, the only people who don't want to help people at all, probably murderers, rapists. I mean, like, they're just helping themselves. Maybe they have other problems. But of course, we want to help people. That's wired into us. Totally.
Dr Alka Patel (03:49.708)
It's innate in us, of course it is. But then is there something more than that? Is it a chase for something that you can never really get to? It's almost as though there's this end point where like, I found it, hey! But, oh.
Terri (04:01.994)
No, I think if you think that, then you might be setting yourself up for disappointment later, because you think you're supposed to be done now. And if you think you're done now, the irony is, if we're looking for meaning in our lives, meaning is the ongoing uncovering and connecting. It's an ongoing thing. So to think you found it like an Easter egg would mean that you actually don't want to search for meaning, because all you want to be done.
Dr Alka Patel (04:07.507)
Yeah.
Mm.
Dr Alka Patel (04:16.476)
Thank you.
Terri (04:29.494)
doing is searching for meaning. You want to be done with the search. If you want to be done with the search so bad, then there's something about the search for that bothers you, and that is not a meaning seeker, that is a security seeker.
Dr Alka Patel (04:39.824)
Yeah, yeah, that's so interesting, isn't it? What are we actually seeking? Are we seeking just stability and safety and security? Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned the word love just a couple of sentences ago, and this idea of passion also kind of infiltrates into love from a relation aspect. And I know you've talked about this on TEDx talks as well. So it feels like this idea of
Terri (04:48.892)
That's it. Yep.
Terri (05:03.903)
Yes.
Dr Alka Patel (05:09.628)
and one passion and partner and one partner comes from a good place, but do you think that's the very thing that becomes the very conflict that we face?
Terri (05:19.646)
Yeah. I mean, what I'm saying is pretty counter-cultural though, right? Most people think you have to find the one thing you're meant to do and find the one person you're meant to be with. Meant to is very tricky and it will play all kinds of tricks on you because maybe you think what you're meant to do is really what your parents wanted you to do and you're doing it for another reason or you're doing it because people expect you to get married or expect you to be a doctor or expect to do all kinds of things. So...
Of course we want to feel love. We feel at our best when we're in the flow and connecting, when someone wants something that we have in it, we have something of value to contribute. Of course we want that. I want that. But why do we think it has to end up in one person or one thing? That TED Talk you're referring to is the TED Talk that has not had a million views yet. And I think it's just as important and related to the stop searching for your passion, which has 8 million views. It's the same thing.
the search for the one. If you like doing that, great, but the search for the one is what creates this kind of torment, self-torment, that I'm supposed to find the one. There's many people you could love, and maybe you don't wanna be married, right? Not everyone does, but you're supposed to. And maybe you're not meant to be a musician for your whole life. Maybe you'll do music for a while, and then you go back to school for psychology and do something totally different. We're living a long time. As my mother always says, life is long if you're lucky.
So why, who are you proving something to that you can stick with one thing forever? Are you afraid of looking like a failure that you gave up? I mean, in terms of, as you're saying about relationships and romantic partnering, the ideal in our society is that you don't survive a love relationship, you die in it. Someone has to die in order for it to be successful. Because if we both live.
Dr Alka Patel (06:48.956)
Mmm.
Dr Alka Patel (07:08.529)
Just explain that in a little bit more detail.
Terri (07:10.742)
Someone has to die in the relationship in order for it to be a successful relationship by societal standards. Because if you both survive the relationship, you've parted ways. Oh, poor thing. Why couldn't you get it to work out? What was wrong? Are you too picky? Why couldn't you learn to live with it? Well, why is the ultimate? Maybe a relationship ran its course. But in our culture, one of you has to die. If you die and your partner is still alive, oh, it was a successful, happily married for 20 years, 40 years, 80 years, whatever.
Dr Alka Patel (07:22.844)
Yeah.
Terri (07:40.566)
But if you survive it, you failed. What an irony. And it seems so silly to me.
Dr Alka Patel (07:46.568)
Hmm, yeah, I can get that kind of sense of why we've reached that position as society culturally as well. But there's also this kind of, it's all very romantic as well, this idea, isn't it, of having this partner and having this purpose and passion. And it feels as though that's what we're also pursuing, this sense of kind of a bit of interconnected romance between the one partner and the one passion. Hmm.
Terri (08:14.09)
Well, maybe, but ask anyone who's been married 30 years, is it romantic every day? Romance, the heart of romance is uncertainty. The reason why we yearn for the days of yore when you first met is because you were uncertain. Romance is uncertainty. Well, the good news is life is uncertain. And even if you have been married a million years, you don't know what could happen. So to keep romance alive, I imagine is to maintain. The amount of romance you'll be able to have in your life will depend on how much uncertainty you can handle.
Dr Alka Patel (08:18.225)
Hahaha
Dr Alka Patel (08:22.053)
Right.
Terri (08:43.702)
because the search to nail something down and be with them forever and ever, it's like, okay, maybe, but I don't know that the ideas are romantic, but ideas are romantic. Everyday life is not always. So it's like, what do you wanna live with? And I, for one, it doesn't appeal to me. I know it appeals to a lot of people and a lot of people thrive in partnerships, but there's a lot of people who don't and feel terrible about it and don't know how to get out without looking like a failure.
Dr Alka Patel (08:53.458)
Mm-hmm.
Dr Alka Patel (09:06.736)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And also uncertainty can feel painful. That, you know, it's a trigger to being uncomfortable. And there is this whole notion, isn't there, of let's get out of your comfort zone. The only way to live and grow and evolve is to get uncomfortable, do the uncomfortable things. Yet uncertainty itself is uncomfortable. And I know you've kind of disagreed quite vehemently about the kind of get out of your comfort zone mantra. So tell me a little bit about that.
Terri (09:38.078)
Well, the whole point of my counter take, which is this pressure to make getting out of the comfort zone the goal is to me the problem. If you are seeking discomfort at every turn and trying to be uncomfortable, it tells me you've led a pretty privileged life because people who have not had those privileges are uncomfortable all the time. And the fact is, most of us are uncomfortable a lot of the time.
It doesn't take much. Like you can be totally comfortable in your house whenever, but you get a weird email, now you're uncomfortable. Our natural state is uncertainty and discomfort. So the goal is actually to seek comfort. The problem is we don't do it in ways that are great for us. And so I love to be comfortable. I'm not trying not to be comfortable. Why? Because I'm a big baby, I don't take risks. No, I work for myself. One of the biggest risks you can take, but I...
I prioritize ensuring I have what I need to feel comfortable and secure so that I can take risks. So, of course, I mean, we're going to be uncomfortable. That's a given. And the uncertainty, as you said, can be painful. Oh, God, I wish I just knew. But can you learn to embrace the uncertainty and not love discomfort? Who loves it? You know, no one. And I, for one, have a problem when people tell women to...
Dr Alka Patel (10:41.59)
Mm.
Dr Alka Patel (10:53.128)
Mmm.
Terri (10:58.038)
uncomfortable and be okay with it because women have been uncomfortable for most of recorded history and beyond. So you know if you can find a shred of comfort hang on with both hands because even that's not going to stay.
Dr Alka Patel (11:09.096)
So that leads me to really thinking about the how, because we've got the kind of a little bit around the why from you, but how? You know, there'll be, again, people listening going, yeah, that sounds like that makes sense, but I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to be comfortable being uncomfortable or vice versa.
Terri (11:26.642)
Well, no, yeah, I get it. I totally get it. I mean, the way I have made sure that I maintain a comfort zone that can expand over time, like the people who are in the kind of not supportive comfort zones, the comfort zone keeps getting smaller and smaller and soon they can't do anything. You know, that it like, you know, I have a relative who doesn't walk much anymore. And the less he walks, the less he can walk.
That's not the goal here. The goal is to keep your comfort zone pretty elastic so that it can continue to stretch and breathe. I've done some of the most uncomfortable things that anyone wanna do. Stand-up comedy, there's nothing more uncomfortable and awkward than that. And I sought it out. Why? Because I wanted to be on my passions comedy, I'm gonna be comic? No, but because I wanted to be comfortable up there. I wanted to be more comfortable. So my goal is always, I want to master a thing. I wanna be able to do it comfortably. I got a Peloton during the pandemic.
Dr Alka Patel (12:07.293)
Yeah.
Terri (12:24.31)
because I love discomfort? No, it is uncomfortable to ride that thing. But I did it because I wanted to be more comfortable in my body. So the how is, do we pay attention to what feels good and right for us? And do we do that? Do we support that and nurture it? Or do we deny it because we don't wanna, we don't think we should be selfish or we think we should take care of the people, blah, blah. I take good care of myself. I mean, I know that's like.
That's why I'm able to feel as confident as I do. Does that make sense? Or do you think that's like talking in circles?
Dr Alka Patel (12:57.848)
No, that does make sense. But there is a circle to it. I'm here in this kind of cycle. It's like, get uncomfortable to get comfortable, and then get comfortable enough so that you want the sound to be comfortable.
Terri (13:08.29)
to be uncomfortable. Yeah. I don't say aim for discomfort. I say get ready for it. As my mother would say and does say, gird your loins. Like get ready because stuff will happen. You have to know that discomfort is coming. I think that when people say they want to be uncomfortable, but then when things don't go their way and they'll go like, oh, but it was supposed to be this way. Well, no, nothing is supposed to be. And nothing's guaranteed. I don't care that it was in your calendar. It's not happening now. We all saw that with the pandemic, right? So I think that
We talk a big game seeking discomfort when really the littlest comment, the littlest change to our schedule can throw us off. Can we let go of that and play a little loose with it? To me, that allows me to be comfortable, not because I'm a pessimist, I think everything's gonna be terrible, but because I think it's gonna be fine either way. Like I'm gonna make sure of it. And if this doesn't work out, what's a good thing I can do? What's something that I would enjoy? I think it's something we don't always ask ourselves.
Dr Alka Patel (14:06.68)
Yeah, it's more that kind of experiential approach to life, right? It is all one big experience and experiment. So create some hypotheses, experiment with it, experience it, and don't have a foregone conclusion. Because I think that's also part of the problem is we've got this goal in mind, that's the place we're reaching, that's the conclusion. And then when that doesn't happen, we're in trouble.
Terri (14:10.826)
Yes, yes.
Terri (14:16.099)
That's right.
Terri (14:25.966)
That's right.
Terri (14:32.97)
Right. If you're like, oh, this one, they'll get this internship, then I get that job, then I'll be promoted within three years, I'll be married by the time I'm 29. People have these plans and I don't know, do you consider yourself a planner? I'm guessing, I'm gonna guess that you are a planner. Am I wrong?
Dr Alka Patel (14:49.109)
Yeah, and I'm learning to really allow the creativity to come into that. And I think it comes to the point that you've got to learn that as well by doing, by having plans, by allowing them to kind of just not reach fruition and then creating that flexibility and that agility to go, yeah, but there's always another way or there's a different thing or there's something else that's come to mind rather than holding everything so tight. So that kind of loosen it, just that looseness is so useful.
Terri (15:13.893)
Yes, yes, we're not in control.
Dr Alka Patel (15:17.272)
Yeah, I love that. But you talk about your book, don't you? In your book, you talk about abandoning plans, like, right? Totally.
Terri (15:19.01)
for just not as much.
Terri (15:26.898)
letting go of them at least. Not like I, because I, in some sense, I'm a planner. In some sense, I'm not. In some sense, I just don't like logistics and details. It stresses me out. I just don't like doing it. So if I can get help in that area, I do. But I think that here's the irony. The people who I've known who have told me they're planners, they love to plan. Not all, but a lot of them are the most rigid and the least able to cope
Dr Alka Patel (15:32.69)
Mm.
Dr Alka Patel (15:42.844)
Mm.
Dr Alka Patel (15:50.312)
Hmm.
Terri (15:55.85)
when a plan doesn't work out. And I say, if you really love planning, then you wouldn't mind planning again when things change. But if you say you love planning and you only want to plan it once and it better work out that way, you don't love planning. You love certainty. That's it. And I just don't find that it helps. I'm an anxious person. I have all the markers, I've had panic attacks, I get nervous over things that shouldn't be nervous.
Dr Alka Patel (16:14.096)
Did you see? Yeah.
Terri (16:24.658)
And ever since I was a little kid, my mother was like, Terry, just try to rule with it. Just rule with it. She was always trying to, like, just try to deal. And it never left me, because if we don't, what's the alternative? You thought you were gonna be a pianist and then you lost a finger. Like, okay, well, maybe you'll do something else. Like, I don't know. This is all we know that we have. And if we get so hung up on what we thought we were supposed to do and meant to do.
Dr Alka Patel (16:39.112)
Mm.
Dr Alka Patel (16:48.232)
Mm.
Terri (16:53.198)
That's really the bone I'm picking here.
Dr Alka Patel (16:55.828)
Yeah, yeah. But what about the other way where people are finding it really hard to create plans back to the idea of kind of passion and purpose, because they don't have a sense of what they really wanna do. So how do you create some sense of plan, even though you don't wanna hold onto it rigidly, there's gotta be some kind of direction, some movement, but what if you don't really know? I mean, thinking more about career and work and satisfaction from that angle, what if?
Terri (17:24.138)
Well, yeah, and that's the biggest problem, right? If someone's just starting, just graduating, maybe, or has been laid off, or is ready for a career change or something, and then they say, but I don't know what I wanna do, and there's a fear with that. And everyone's in a kind of transition, right? Even I don't plan on doing anything dramatically different with my life, but at the same time, I still have to ask myself, what is the goal? What's the next thing? I think...
Dr Alka Patel (17:29.91)
Yeah.
Dr Alka Patel (17:38.756)
Mm.
Terri (17:50.994)
What if we took away this idea of a goal? Like, let's just say, publish a book. I had a book come out, my first book ever, and that was a goal. And man, was I proud to have achieved that. It was a lifelong thing. And I hit the goal. There's many phases. You write the thing, you sell the thing, you rewrite the thing, and then you publish the thing, and then you promote the thing. And I was like, okay, I did it. Now what?
Dr Alka Patel (18:16.42)
Yeah.
Terri (18:17.918)
Now what? Now my life's all complete and I can roll over and die? No, the book is, I'm very proud of it, but I'm not going to like, oh, that's it now. So what if, here's what I ask people to do, is to think, well, what is it that you want to feel like every day? My sister asked me this the other day, she goes, I don't really understand what it is that you want. I said, you know, I don't really know if I know either. She goes, well, what does it feel like? And I was like, that is what I ask other people. What would you want to feel like? Do you want to feel like you have so much more time or do you want to feel more
Dr Alka Patel (18:26.564)
Hmm.
Terri (18:47.778)
Do you wish you had more friends and more dinners? Or you wish you were home alone more? If we picture the life that we wanna feel like we're in, that can be a goal. Because otherwise, as you're saying, you hit a goal, you have a moment of hitting a goal and then you're past the goal. The striving is what's fun. Is it the right goal? Like a friend of mine who did a lot of consulting, she said she was excited about it because she was like, oh my God, I can get paid to help people do the thing I'm good at.
Dr Alka Patel (19:03.856)
Yeah.
Terri (19:17.066)
And then after a year or two, she goes, I would wake up and look at my schedule and it was packed with people. She goes, that's success. I did it, but I don't want to do it. And she said, I just got a headache every time I looked at it. So she decided no longer to take clients. She had to find another way. But she was like, I'm just not going to do it anymore. And now she wakes up, she likes to look at a blank calendar. That's her dream, but that's not a goal. That's how she wants to live.
Dr Alka Patel (19:25.677)
Mm-hmm.
Dr Alka Patel (19:38.468)
Yeah. No.
But she wouldn't have known that if she hadn't done the opposite of what she realized she wanted. And I think that's sometimes what we end up doing. It's just getting to know yourself, right? You sometimes have to go down that wrong path and go, hello, I'm taking a U-turn because I thought this was going to a bit of a... This is in it. And I think it's that U-turn that people are very, very afraid of taking, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Terri (19:45.942)
Right. That's right.
Terri (19:58.838)
This is not great.
Terri (20:05.004)
Yes.
I mean, could you have known 20 years ago you were gonna do a podcast? Like, we didn't even know from podcasts. Like, we didn't know, I didn't even use the word content. That wasn't a word that got thrown around. Our lives have changed and the tools and toys we use to share our insights and our expertise and to grow our expertise have changed. They're all gonna grow and change. So it's hard, the goals are moving targets, right? Like...
Dr Alka Patel (20:12.784)
Bye.
Dr Alka Patel (20:20.72)
Hmm.
Dr Alka Patel (20:30.988)
Mm. Yeah.
Terri (20:32.266)
Like, okay, you're gonna go with another goal. Are you happy about that? Or are you like, oh, my goal is I'm gonna run a marathon. And every day you're out there running, you're like, I hate this. Why are you doing that? So you can say you did it? That's not good enough.
Dr Alka Patel (20:43.264)
You're talking to a marathon runner, Terry. I ran just a few months ago, I ran the London Marathon. And I liked, I loved running during the marathon. Like that was just the most incredible experience for me. But did I like the training? And have I loved running as much since? No, I don't have, yeah.
Terri (20:45.41)
Do you like doing it?
Terri (20:51.115)
You must love it.
Terri (21:04.146)
Oh, so it was a peak moment for you. Marathon was peak.
Dr Alka Patel (21:06.904)
And it was a peak moment. And it's that, it's marinating in that peak moment is what I think that's the only thing people forget to do. Cause then you move on to the next bit of goal soul searching or you move on to that next bit of identity seeking, but actually just marinate in that moment and allow that moment to carry on for as long as it can. I think that's the key.
Terri (21:11.094)
Yes.
Terri (21:23.17)
Well, you're exactly the person. You're the person who should be running marathons. I'm talking about the people who do it, they go to do it and it's horrible and they broke themselves doing it or they didn't like it. You found the marathon running to be a peak experience. That's why you do it. I was like, take public speaking for me because I'm not running a marathon ever anytime soon. But public speaking, how long you on stage for? Maybe 45 minutes, 20 minutes. For that Ted talk, it was 10 minutes.
That's a peak moment. You prepare for it. You try to get the gig, you get the gig. And then when you're up there, it's not very long, but when I'm up there, I feel like you're running the marathon. It feels so good. So the goal isn't to just do this many talks or something. It's I wanna get to do that more. And so I have to keep trying to do it more.
Dr Alka Patel (22:02.897)
Yeah.
Dr Alka Patel (22:11.14)
Oh, I'm so, so with you on that. And I hope this is resonating for people listening because it is, again, I do a lot of professional speaking, public speaking as well. And in that moment, there is this feeling, back to your point about feeling, this feeling that this is where I'm meant to be.
Terri (22:27.254)
Yes, but you found it by doing it. I didn't grow up and be like, when I grow up, I'm gonna be a public speaker. And I didn't know. But if you, since you let yourself do it, you go, oh, it's discovery. The discovery is what makes life exciting. Not, I planned it, I knew it, and then I did it, and it was exactly as I planned. That sounds very unromantic to me.
Dr Alka Patel (22:30.065)
Yes.
Dr Alka Patel (22:34.424)
Yeah.
Dr Alka Patel (22:48.816)
Yeah.
Terri (22:48.99)
I like being surprised by it. Like, oh my God, this is amazing. Or I'm never doing this again. I learned something.
Dr Alka Patel (22:56.552)
There's something on curiosity there. That's the word that's coming up for me. Yeah, go on, give us some insight into that for you.
Terri (22:59.506)
Yes, my favorite is curiosity. Curiosity is underrated, under enjoyed. We think, well, if I'm going to do something, we even tell ourselves, like, I'm going to change the world. I'm going to do good for people. I'm going to big mission, big purpose. Curiosity is very quiet. Curiosity starts small.
It's a tiny voice. It's a wondering. It's a question. It starts before anyone knows it's there, but it's like a little rivulet of water that rips into a huge river. If you allow it and you feed it, curiosity is what will lead you to the next thing. Too often we shut it down. And I'm gonna say women in particular, because you think of the hero's journey, it's a man being like, I'm gonna see what else is out there. That's a hero move. But when you're a woman, curiosity will get you in trouble. They don't want...
through all of time that anyone can have written down on paper, they didn't want women getting curious and trying. They just be calm and be quiet and stop causing trouble. But today, curiosity is a powerful tool for discovering what you're passionate about, yes, for igniting excitement and making intellectual discoveries for yourself, about yourself, and about the world. I don't think we follow that enough. We squelch that flame. When really curiosity
and anger, I would say, are what start revolutions. What if?
Dr Alka Patel (24:26.868)
Yeah, exactly. That's simple. Two words. What if. But you know what? I also think it's not our fault. The world is noisy. It's so noisy. All that noise is what shuts us down. It stops. It's like that big block to even allowing your curiosity to go beyond the what if phrase because you just can't. There's too much to do that is now and that has to come first before you even allow yourself that kind
Terri (24:37.066)
Yes. Oh, yeah.
Dr Alka Patel (24:56.468)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you know what I, what I had to do, this was a year ago, actually, is I kind of felt I needed some stillness and silence because I couldn't hear any of that I lost sight of passion and belonging and me and I didn't even, you know, your own sense of identity. So I took myself off for seven days into silence, like nothing, no word as I did. I mean, I went off to have this sense that I just needed to be near a mountain. So I went off to
Terri (24:57.532)
You nailed it.
Terri (25:17.854)
You did! Wait, where did you go?
Dr Alka Patel (25:26.665)
And I didn't say anything. As a speaker, I didn't speak. No words came out of my mouth for seven whole days. And then I could hear. Then I could hear. And look, I'm not saying to people, listen, you've got to go sit under a mountain for seven days. No, but you know what? Have you tried seven minutes? Or have you even tried seven seconds?
Terri (25:46.274)
We're afraid of that void for one, and also it's so easy to avoid because the world is engineered to steal our attention. And there's not a moment that you're, grab, that's just the way it's set up. It's not evil. It's just the world is trying to interrupt you and distract you at every turn to help you maybe, but really the best source of insight is exactly what you said.
Dr Alka Patel (25:48.178)
Yes.
Terri (26:11.338)
which is being totally quiet. In fact, someone who I think you should talk to on this show is a guy named Dr. Mark Hawkins, who writes a lot about the power of boredom. And I read his book when I was writing my own and devoted a whole chapter to it. I was like, I'm obsessed with this guy. He talks about the effects of what we would say like boredom or the vanishing of meaning. When we're bored, we're like, oh, I don't care about anything and nothing matters. Oh my God, there's kind of a horrible feeling, but it's important that.
Quiet is where our creative impulses rise. I bet when you got back from your retreat, you were fresh, you were focused, and new things came out of you. How can you come up with a new idea if people are jamming Instagram ads down your eyeballs every second? You can't.
Dr Alka Patel (26:54.204)
Exactly. You don't know what you think because it's a constant demand, as you say, on your attention according to someone else's agenda, not yours.
Terri (27:01.342)
Oh, absolutely. Think of your attention as money. You're given 10 coins at the beginning of the day. You're only gonna really have 10 good coins. And every time you stop to pay attention to something else, you're spending it. Where are you spending your attention literally? Because you don't have infinite amounts in the day or in your life. And without that focused attention, you don't create or find meaning. So what an irony. If we're out trying to take in so much thinking that the world will tell us what to do.
We have now spent all of our coins and we have nothing to show for it.
Dr Alka Patel (27:34.408)
Wow, I love that. I love the idea of you're given a finite number of coins and what are you doing with that in terms of your attention? I think that's such a visual and wonderful analogy to carry with you because we do just give it away, let it drop, right?
Terri (27:51.018)
Well, I've gotten very stingy with mine, honestly. And it's not even something I'm proud of because I miss things like, I guess important memes that are going around or like celebrity news. I miss a lot of it because I say, you know, crap, I only have this many coins. And so I'm like, I wanna spend it on this. What's most, what would give me the biggest bang for my buck for my attention today? And of course, if you have children, like, yeah, you're gonna spend a lot of it, I guess, of course, but you still get to choose.
Dr Alka Patel (28:01.704)
Woo.
Dr Alka Patel (28:13.233)
Yeah.
Dr Alka Patel (28:20.279)
Mmm.
Terri (28:20.386)
So every time you go to do something, maybe you wanna go look at Instagram for a while. I don't have a problem with that. But know that you're now, it's like breaking a $100 bill. When you have a $100 bill, you have $100. Once you've broken it, now it's a one, some change, a five, it will disappear on you. So I try to keep them a whole. I try not to break the bill.
Dr Alka Patel (28:30.279)
Yeah.
Dr Alka Patel (28:37.925)
Yeah.
Dr Alka Patel (28:42.58)
Mm, mm. And it's the intention, right? Whatever you do, you have a choice. And if you do it with intention, whether it's scrolling on Instagram or binge watching Netflix or having that piece of cake, everything is choice. And there's nothing really that's not allowed so long as it's done with a little bit of, just that pause behind it to go, I'm doing this on purpose. This is something that serves me from doing this. And it's that, I don't think we give ourselves that
Terri (29:00.171)
That's right.
Dr Alka Patel (29:12.12)
even that tiny, milli-milli-microsecond of pause to recognise that, right?
Terri (29:17.11)
No, we really don't. We sometimes think we owe this attention to other people too. We owe it or we're in a debt of it or something. But oh gosh, this is your life. This is all we have. So like, this is it. We're not gonna have more time later. Logistically, that doesn't even make sense, right? We have less time later. And that book, which that kind of changed my whole perspective, gave me...
Dr Alka Patel (29:18.492)
Yeah.
Terri (29:44.542)
strength around it was Oliver Berkman's book, 4,000 Weeks, Time Management for Mortals. And basically he's like, you want a productivity check? You're not gonna live forever like this, is it? You're gonna do, because we get very optimistic, he says. We go, oh, I'll do that. No, I can take that on. I can do it. If we really understood that we're limited in time and attention, we'd realize you can't put 10 pounds of stuff in a five pound bag. And all you have is a five pound bag.
Dr Alka Patel (29:47.802)
Mm.
Dr Alka Patel (30:00.668)
Thank you.
Dr Alka Patel (30:09.02)
Mm.
Terri (30:11.062)
So being realistic about that makes you really intentional and makes your time really quality.
Dr Alka Patel (30:16.112)
Yeah, yeah. And you talk about, Terry, you also talk about baggage and luggage in your book, in your work as well. So just give us a little bit more into that. What's the comparison between baggage, luggage? What's the difference?
Terri (30:30.702)
Yeah, I've always had a problem with the word baggage because it always felt really rude. Like when people would be like, oh, that person, I can't date them because, you know, they were married once and they have a lot of baggage or I can't do this because I have too much baggage. I don't like baggage, the idea of it, because it feels like things that happened that might not have been in my control that are now foisted upon me and now I have to carry and drag it through life and so there's stuff I can't do. I hate that mentality. I refuse it.
Dr Alka Patel (30:52.794)
Hmm.
Terri (30:59.426)
things happen to us that hurt, that traumatize us, that have limited us in some ways, fine. But I, as someone who loves bags, I don't like the word bags, but I love bags. I love shopping for bags. I love buying good suitcases. I love luggage, good luggage, even though I'd rather stay home. It's very ironic. But a really good bag, I like to pack it the way I want to pack it. I pride myself on being very good at packing. And so that means bag is what you think happened to you and you can't help.
Dr Alka Patel (31:09.384)
Thank you.
Dr Alka Patel (31:21.234)
Hmm.
Terri (31:29.018)
Luggage is what you choose to bring with you, literally and figuratively. So rather than think you can't do a thing because...you had a life, what if you looked at it as, I'm choosing, yes, this bad thing happened, here's what I'm choosing to take with me from that, and here's what I'm not bringing. Because again, like you said, it comes back to choice. Choice in attention, choice in what you're dragging along with you. You can't let go of your whole memory, but
Dr Alka Patel (31:38.204)
Yeah.
Dr Alka Patel (31:54.264)
Right.
Terri (31:58.454)
What are you carrying around? That's the question.
Dr Alka Patel (32:00.4)
Yeah, yeah. What are you carrying? What do you need to put down? How are you packing your own bag? Yeah, oh, great, great analogy. That completely makes sense. And I guess, maybe to just kind of wrap up a bit, we've alluded to a few kind of myths and principles that most people kind of find themselves automatically following. And I know you've got some programs around this that kind of do a bit of myth-testing. So tell us about that. If people do want to kind of dive into this a bit
Terri (32:25.204)
Oh, yes.
Dr Alka Patel (32:30.219)
What are you off for? What do you do with your fridge?
Terri (32:30.91)
Yes. Well, if you don't agree with me, you won't like any of these things. But the book is Unfollow Your Passion and that's wherever books are sold. But the thing that I want to invite people to check out is a brand new free mini program that I created to give you the kind of the permission to break with some of these myths because I named five of them. It's called The Passion Trap, Five Half-Truths That Are Keeping You From Living a Whole Life. And what they are is the idea of
approval or authority, and other people bless your choices, motivation, talent, confidence. We think we need all of those things, all of them in order to do anything. And I think that we don't need any of them. And it sounds counterintuitive, and in a lot of ways it is, but the point of it is that you will feel freed of some of those ideas. That's the reason that TED Talk did so well. People said, oh, I can let go of that idea. Well, here's five more you can let go of.
Dr Alka Patel (33:28.565)
Yeah. Oh, wow. That's so, so helpful. I'll definitely put the link to that in the show notes. Because even as you're speaking, the use of the word trap and people feeling trapped and entrapped by those ideals, it's sometimes the very thing you just need to allow yourself to be free from in order to then live with passion, the very thing we're saying you can unfollow, but then automatically you probably end up living that, right?
Terri (33:32.051)
Oh, good.
Terri (33:40.918)
ideas.
Terri (33:55.122)
Yeah, that's the idea. Because what do you hear people say? Well, I'll have to wait until I'm more confident. I wish I were more motivated. I'm not talented enough. All that stuff goes out the window. And frankly, none of us has time to hang on to those ideas because they are costing us. And so that's the idea anyway.
Dr Alka Patel (34:11.868)
Love it, love it, love it. So I'll pop those links in. And how can people reach out to you, Terry? I think this has been a... Okay.
Terri (34:16.638)
I'm on all the things, except really on Facebook. I'm not really, but I'm on Instagram at TGSP Show. I'm on LinkedIn. But probably the best way is to hop on that list is terrigespshow.com slash trap. And that's, cause then when you get the email, you hit reply and I get those emails. So I'd love to be able to hear back from people.
Dr Alka Patel (34:33.488)
You're there, yeah. Amazing, amazing. Oh, thank you, thank you. Any final words for listeners today?
Terri (34:42.186)
I think question your sources. You know, we love and admire and want to please the people in our lives. And they, let's just assume the best, that they do love you. They want the best for you, but they are not unbiased. And people have ideas about you, things that they love, they may not be willing to let go of. And so they may cause you to not let go of them. So just know that people can love you and still not know what's totally best for you, only you know that.
Dr Alka Patel (35:11.512)
Yeah, yeah, thank you. Only you know you, so get to know you, right? To know you.
Terri (35:16.086)
That's it. Yet to know you. Take yourself out for dinner. Stop putting yourself through horrible things if you don't want to do them.
Dr Alka Patel (35:26.081)
Oh, wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much, Terry. It's been a fabulous conversation, given me food for thought as well. And yeah, I look forward to sharing your program with people as well. And get the book, unfollow your passion. It really does get you to really re-evaluate what you might be thinking. So go for it. Lovely.
Terri (35:36.194)
Thank you.
