how to get out of constant craving & into satisfaction and fulfillment

We're talking craving, yearning, and longing.

Are those habits of wanting keeping us from getting them, from achieving, from experiencing what we actually have?

Or are some of those cravings actually deep soul yearnings?

And how can you tell the difference between a lofty and true soul desire and old patterns of lack making themselves known over and over again?

More about Maia at MaiaWilde.com

Maia's mechanisms for self-realization at MaiaWilde.Thinkific.com

Orig. Aired on 91.3 FM WIOX

Note: The point of views of guests on this podcast are not always the view of the podcaster. And the podcaster is only expressing her own opinions. This is the disclaimer portion where we remind listeners to do their own due diligence, and that Maia is not a doctor or therapist and that you are a responsible adult, who is capable of knowing when to stop listening and when to seek professional support and help.

Transcript

Maia Wilde: 0:03

This is Dirt Road Less Travelled, where we talk about life with a capital L and take on the big questions such as Who am I really? And why are we even here? I believe we're here to express the hell out of our true selves freely and unapologetically. So this is the show where we talk about how to do just that. I'm Maia Wilde, welcome to Dirt Road Less Travelled. Today, we're gonna be talking about craving, and yearning and longing. And if it's any good for us, or if we should just, you know, find another way. And so the theme of today's show is I'm saying constant craving. And of course, that means I'm going to play a little Katie Lange for you later in the show, what is craving feel like to you? We're going to cover all the bases, we're going to look at, you know, yearning for love, right, or craving for success, all those the ego craving, and also the soul desire, and what kind of a purpose does craving serve? Food cravings. I've, I've experienced a lot of those in my life, I actually started to really look at the concept of craving, because I had such food cravings, right? What is the what's the cause of food cravings, I was always blaming myself for being emotionally weak. I share that because you know, the truth of the voice in your head is saying terrible things to you, right? When you have something that you're holding against yourself. And so let's just be honest about it. You know, if you have something going on, let's say like craving, are you blaming yourself for it? Or are you just running wild with it? Maybe and just going with it and never questioning it? Those seem like two opposites, neither of which seems to be fully integrated, obviously, but also maybe not fully serving us. So we're going to look at this from all sides, all angles. But to begin with, why don't you just start to think about, okay, what is craving mean to me? What's that word? Like? Is there a constant craving? In my life? Is there some kind of a theme that keeps occurring, maybe it's for food, maybe it's for love, maybe it's for money, or to be seen a certain way, maybe you crave being taken seriously. One of the things that I think is really interesting is that whatever the story, or experiences that you have going on in your life, let's say about craving could be anything, but maybe your story around craving, and not getting fulfillment or love, or the money or recognition that you feel you deserve, or just that you want, you just crave it, you want it and you feel incomplete without it. What was that story that you have in that experience that you have running, or I'm going to say that program you have running, right, because here's where I'm going with this. I talked to a lot of people in my coaching practice, and everybody's got a different story, right and a different experience. But it feels so real to each of us that a lot of times we expect that other people are having exactly the same experience, or they have exactly the same story. But really, I mean, and this is where it gets crazy, but also liberating. It's really just an old program running. I mean, I actually when I said that, just now I got resistance to it. Because when we're told oh, that's just your story, it's very dismissive, isn't it? That's feels very dismissive. And I felt something rise up in me and, and, and get angry at what I had actually just said, which is that it feels so real kind of like, it's not really real. But it's real for each of us, whatever the story is, and the experience that we're having. And so I want you to look at yours, because what's really important is getting a read on where you are coming from, like, what is your story? What is your inner experience? What is your craving? What's your craving for, you know, and we're gonna, we're gonna toy with and maybe parse apart a little bit the difference between, you know, what's an ego craving or an old program that's running maybe from your childhood that you just never cleared out of your system? versus what is a sole desire calling to you? Because craving can of course, as with everything, there's a light, a, you know, really positive side, and then there's the dark, not it just keeping you stuck, keeping you maybe even miserable. So, just take a quick read on. Where's your craving? What are you craving? What maybe have you always craved? Is there something you've always craved? Because sometimes say you crave recognition. One basic human need is feeling significant. And if that's a need that you personally have, you're just built that way. You're just designed that way too. desire significance? Again, that's a slight distinction, right? Between craving, recognition and desiring significance. Do you see that? Let's actually play with that for a second. Because I want you to see maybe how they feel. Try them on and see if they just feel completely different or even different in a very subtle way. Craving recognition, where do you feel that in your body? What does that feel like? What image comes to mind? Craving recognition, I crave recognition, or I desire to feel significant. Ooh, that's different for me, was that different for you? To desire, feeling significant, they both feel a little needy, to me, to be honest. But I think that these are, we're not going to dismiss out of hand any of your cravings or any of your human needs. That's not the point here, what we do under road less traveled as we really look at, how is it that you can run your own life your way? How do you get a roadmap for a life that isn't actually mapped out? In the old days, and maybe even the way you were raised? And maybe the people around you, there's a lot of people who are following a plan, an external plan? This show is about what if you have an inner compass? And what if there's a way for you to consistently interpret the messages that your inner compass is giving you so that you know whether to go this way, or that way, what to do with your life, where to find meaning, where to find fulfillment for you. And, you know, this is the thing where it's just be so great to have a formula, right. And I think a lot of us have tried that the formula of, you know, following whatever the roadmap was that was laid out for us in childhood or by the culture at large. And then there comes a time. And this is, you know, in my, in my coaching work with people. This is the moment that a lot of people reach out to me for life strategy and or business strategy, because it's that moment of, I've been going along, doing the thing that I've always done, and I'm not good with it anymore. I want more, maybe a craving occurs, or maybe the craving has occurred so many times, and it's happening again, and you're thinking, why does this keep happening? What is this? What's the point of this? Or, you know, sometimes something happens in an external circumstance, and someone's life brings them to me, although I have to say, off the top of my head, nobody's coming to mind for many clients I've worked with, who had an external life situation that drove them. To me, it was an internal life, situation, an internal experience that brought them to decide to seek out support and guidance from someone. That's interesting to think about that, right. I'm thinking about a client I had, several years ago when I first started out in my private practice, who she had worked for the Culinary Institute of America. And she, her doctor told her she couldn't go back. She was at the doctor's office, like, I don't know what's wrong with me, freaking out, body breaking down, and he said, What's wrong with you is your job, you're too stressed out, and you haven't taken any breaks. And you can't, you're not allowed to go back. And so that had happened a few months prior. So it looked, it could look maybe from the outside, like she got fired. And she thought, well, let me hire a life and business strategist to get myself back on the road. But actually, she and I met at an event that we were both at, and we were on the food lines, beautiful display of food. And I said to her, Wow, this looks gorgeous. And she said, I don't know if I should even start because I feel like if I started then I'd never stop. And I said, Oh, that's interesting to hear you say that, because I've had an eating disorder in my life and, and bulimia, and I said, Now I coach women to find freedom from emotional eating. And she became a client from that exchange at the food line at this event. And that's an internal experience that had nothing to do with her job. I had no clue when I met her that she'd gotten. Well, I don't know she she didn't get fired, right. She got sent on a medical and medical leave from her job. And she didn't want to go back. I think she had a year or something. But we worked on all the internal stuff. So this is why it's important for you to get a read on what is happening inside of you. I really think that's where all the answers are. That might not be where all the information is where all the strategies are. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying that you're going to pluck from the ether the information that you need to make whatever your decision is or to figure out whatever you're trying to figure out in your life. What I'm saying is though, that your inner compass will tell you with the information that you do seek out consciously with your mind whether This is a yes or a no. So this is what I'm saying. Just to clarify, I am not all airy fairy like, oh, the answers are gonna come from the ether, you know, just tap in. Although I am rereading the surrender experiment. What is it called the surrender experiment by Michael singer? Are you familiar with that book, he also wrote a book called The Untethered Soul. But the surrender experiment is all about how he started to meditate and get himself into this incredible zone. He was very disciplined. This is going back 40 years ago. And he decided to surrender to the flow of life and not try to make anything happen. And it was interesting, actually, he sort of went against his inner compass a little bit, because it's very complicated, isn't it? It's like, okay, I think we need to start parsing everything apart and figuring out okay, what's ego? What's small self with big self or higher self? So let's begin though with you just getting in touch with, where's a craving? Does it feel like a negative or a positive influence in your life? Has it always been there? And what do you want to do about it? Today, we're talking about craving. And I realized we never really defined our terms. So let's do that. I looked up craving online. And I also started to look up yearning because I thought, well, what's the difference? But this is what's interesting to write. It's this matter of really, if we're going to reflect on it, what what they mean to you, because some of this could be positive. Some of this could be really bad. So let's take a look here. So craving just says it's a powerful desire for something. Oh, yeah. Then they give the example a craving for chocolate. Of course they do. Have I not been talking about food already? Yeah. Then it says some synonyms of course, longing, yearning, hankering, hunger, hungering, thirst, pining desire, want, wish, fancy urge, need appetite, greed, lust, ache, burning, addiction, aspiration, aim goal, Yin itch. That's pretty fantastic, isn't it? That's craving. The, you know, I wanted to look at the etymology. I don't know if there's anything. Archaic means to beg for something. This is the origin of the word crave. I must crave your indulgence. And in Old English, it was a demand or you claimed something as a right. So alright, it comes from demand. That's pretty strong. This is the etymology of the word craving. Let's take a look at yearn. Yearning, it means to have an intense feeling of longing for something, typically something that one has lost or been separated from. That's an interesting distinction from craving, isn't it? Typically something that one has lost or been separated from. Here's the example they give, she yearned for a glimpse of him isn't some kind of a joke here online dictionary, because this all sounds like it describes me and my own personal experience and things I've yearned for and craved. And the synonyms are really similar Long Pine crave. Desire, want one badly wish to have or feel a longing, covet, lust, pan, hunger, thirst, ache, be aching, itch, be itching. We get the point. We know the feeling don't wait. Are you without yearning and craving? Are you always what would be the opposite? Satisfied fulfilled in the present moment, wanting nothing more? Here's what's interesting about yearn. The archaic meaning was to be filled with compassion or warm feeling. Isn't that so different? The example they give I'm not sure I completely understand. No fellow spirit yearned toward her. And it comes from the Old English comes from a Germanic base, which means eager. So yearning has a little more of a sense of eager and craving has more of a sense of demand in their original hundreds of years ago form. And it is interesting if you were here to talk to me about your own personal feeling of craving versus yearning versus longing or coveting or my favorite panting after something. You know, we might have a different internal feeling. We also probably would have a different internal definition. I know. I went for a big long drive my boyfriend and I took a big day trip out to Cooperstown. On Sunday, we went to see the her Brett's exhibit at the Fenimore house. And it was a great exhibit. Just all of these big photographs. It actually was interesting because it's these big photographs of you know, the 80s Madonna in the 80s. Or George Michael and Jon Bon Jovi. And so I got I got hit with the the feelings that I had as a 13 year old girl for George Michael and Bon Jovi are, you know, wanting to be like Madonna when I grew up. And you might have a completely different experience again, with those people, right? So this is what's interesting about getting in touch with your own inner meaning around things is that it's important because it has it, it helps you get to know yourself. So that, you know, like I said earlier, what you're meant to be doing and who you're meant to be and, you know, maybe to Stop faking it or being false at all in your life in this one wild and precious life. We're all living whether or not we believe in reincarnation, which I do, still, let's make the most of this one. Right. So that was a little bit of an aside, I'll return to the herb, ribbit RETs Exhibit A little later, because there's there was some good gems in there. But we had this drive, and we were talking and as I do, I brought up I brought up the question, this was the question, I was tired. It was a long day, you know, do you get what what gets you in that introspective place of like, maybe going a little to the dark side? Or maybe just getting more questioning and intrigued by the meaning of it all? I tend to live there. But I so I was saying, you know, what is the purpose of it all? boyfriend, he gets off. Like, who cares? What the point of it all. It's just there's no point it's, it's all you just do the best you can. And it's he did not want to have this conversation. I said, Well, what do you think the point of it all is a made him tell me because we were locked in a car together. So he had no choice, right? Just what my father used to always do to me make me have horrible conversations when I was locked in a car with him. So he said something really, I really liked his definition. He said, I think it's doing the best you you can with what you have like living a great life just, you know, doing that. And I said, you know, it doesn't sound like what you were actually saying at the beginning. What you were saying at the outset is actually true, where he was saying originally like, this is not a question worth contemplating. That's not the point. The point is to live your life and do the best you can. And I said it sounds like you actually have had this conversation with yourself whether subconsciously or consciously. And you've hit upon an answer that really feels right to you. And so now you're just living your life from there. Then he said, Well, that might be true. And I have done the same. That should be obvious if you've listened to the show before. I've done all of this, the searching and I've hit a lot of hit upon a lot of answers that I really feel solidly good with. But then the living out everyday as a human being I can get a little lost again, my internal experience can pull me off course and I can start to feel wretched, miserable craving, yearning, longing, panting after what I don't have. And maybe you've answered some questions for yourself but aren't we always don't we always return to different crossroads in our lives we do. And of course, we're all made slightly differently. My boyfriend is a Pisces, and they say that for Pisces, they're more easygoing, because they're fish in water. I'm a cancer. So I'm a crab. So I'm in and out of water and water, land, water land, right? It's a little confusing, which are you hardshell soft interior off, right? But a fish swimming through waters very at ease. In their own habitat. They don't know they're in water, right? Like we always like to say about fish, fish out of water. They don't know that they're in water. Like we don't really know that we're in air. Right? But with my boyfriend, if that's him, if he's just swimming around in the water doing life, even when it gets hard or bad, which I know it has for him. He just he's pretty good with it. He'll figure it out. You can pivot in the moment. You know, come to terms with he's good at that. And I think that might be a Pisces skill. I don't know. I'm just I'm not an astrologist. I'm just riffing on the concept. So don't quote me on that. But I think I think I'm accurate. I think I'm onto something. And the next day after this where he was so impatient with me trying to have this deep meaningful conversation with him on our Sunday when he just his son Mondays are he wants to just be off and just enjoy. My Sunday's are Ooh, it's me time I can contemplate the meaning of life in my place in it. All right, so we're made differently. So I ran into a younger friend, 24 year old seeker, I would call him he really has the qualities of a seeker. He's reading a lot of nature books right now. And I was like, how are you? And he's like, you know, what's, what's the purpose of it all. And I just started laughing. I could not wait to get home until Mike, that I ran into a friend. Right? The day after Mike said, Why would you be asking me the question of like, what's the purpose of life? No one this is not the that's definitely not the point to contemplate that you do life. That's the point. I got a kick out of that. So of course, me and my other friend had a great deep meaningful conversation about what's the purpose of life. And he was a little angsty, right, I remember being 24 When I was 24, that year, 24 to 25. I started going on Zen retreats, I read a lot of Buddhist books, a lot of contemporary Buddhist books, you know, where people are grappling with? How do we be human and also be evolved probably wasn't a word that was thrown around back in the mid 90s. Was that a word that was around around a lot now? evolving. But I did a lot of my seeking then and came to a bunch of really solid internal feeling internal conclusions, like they felt conclusive to me like, oh, I landed somewhere. And I was sharing that with my friend. keep seeking, keep asking the questions. That's beautiful to ask questions, you know, and ask the right questions and ask the big questions. Unless you're somebody like Mike, my boyfriend, he doesn't really need to spend his time doing that. He's content and he's busy. And he feels connected. And he's, he's good. Like, he's good. So, but if you're listening to this show, you might like the questions you might like to go a little deeper with it. So we're gonna we're gonna carry on. We're talking about craving today. Is it good? Is it bad we're musing or contemplating, we're treading in water. To follow up on my Pisces cancer. My friend, by the way, was a Capricorn. So I don't know where that fits in. You can we can contemplate that add that into the mix. But so yeah, musing on craving, and being human, and how we can tune into our inner compass. And what are the signs? What are what are we? What's the language of our soul of our higher self of our inner compass? And how can we be sure that we're hearing correctly? Because I, I, my sense is that craving is, what would be the right expression for it. It's a I don't know, like, Oh, this is what's coming to me a double edged sword, like it can be great, it can also be a little bit thrilling and exciting to feel you're on the hunt for something. I've been doing some studying of neurotransmitters and brain chemistry, and just the chemical makeup of emotions and why we feel what we do and being human looking at it from all angles. And what I have uncovered recently is that dopamine is the I almost said that the it's the drug. Dopamine is the chemical, the neurotransmitter chemical that has a seeking has us pursuing on the hunt, and that there's a certain sensation of it could be thrill it could be something milder than that. But it keeps us looking keeps us seeking keeps us yearning possibly keeps us craving. And if you are set to yearning, you might be high in dopamine, perhaps. And if you want to shift it, maybe we need to shift some of your chemistry. But sometimes it feels a little delectable to be in that yearning place, and even to be a little bit angsty, and then it becomes too much then you're done with it, and you want to move on to the next thing. I know when I went through my first major breakup when I was 22. And I was devastated. I was devastated. And it really hurt and I did a lot of crying. But I also remember these evenings walking around town, and just being alone in the dark. It was the middle of summer, in small town, upstate New York. And feeling this solitude and beyond that solitude, this connection to something greater. And this sense of being a being who was also connected to life which was also a being and I'm looking at flowers and wandering through the town and almost falling to my knees and praying, not a religious person at all, at that time, hadn't even gone through my Buddhist phase yet, writing in my journal, it felt like this very poetic kind of grief, a poetic sadness that felt beautiful at the same time, it was as it was painful. And so we're acknowledging that, that there's beauty in the pain sometimes. And sometimes there's not. Sometimes you've come to the end of the line, and you want to be done. And it's time to be done. And we're going to talk about that. But for now, let's linger a little bit. This is Laura Love with Wayfaring Stranger, because isn't that what we all are on this earth? Wayfaring strangers here on the planet? And we're talking about craving today constant craving? Are you constantly craving something? I feel like as most humans, we talked about my boyfriend earlier that he just doesn't have the same. He's not set that way. But and so you might not be. But I think that if you are listening to a show like this, you are interested in that inner exploration and constant, looking at something like constant craving and what it means to be human. And what are we stuck with? Right? That's a good question. What are we stuck with? And what can we change? It turns out, we can change a lot. We can change a lot. And so we're going to be playing around with that today talking about what it all is we're musing. we're contemplating. We're not on the linear path here today, or maybe most days. That's not that that might not be this meandering style is actually the best way I have found to happen upon true answers. And that's what we're looking at here, right? What's the truth? What's the truth for you? Where are you meant to go? Who are you meant to be? Where you faking it? Where things good and solid? And you can just leave them be? And where does something in your life need to be shaken up a little bit? Where do you need to shake yourself up a little bit. And so things like getting in touch with what your constant cravings are your inner world, they are part of the roadmap that shows you why you've done life the way that you have. And if something's not going great, how you can do it differently in the future. And we went, we went back into the etymology and the definition of craving. And that reminded me that I wanted to do a shout out to a listener of dirt road less traveled, who posted on my Facebook feed over a month ago, and I never responded, talking about craving I have found that Facebook has, it's doing a number on me, it is doing a number on me. And I'm mainly on a bit of a break from it, which I tend to do a couple of times a year. I like to take a few weeks off Facebook a couple of times a year because I see that going on social media consistently sets my nervous system to craving wanting to go on social media more just want to touch my phone, or my computer, on a tap the screen like my nerve endings tingle with that craving, and I hate it. That's a craving that is not working for me. So I want to apologize to this listener of the show that I never responded to her fantastic post from July 25. Rita, thank you so much for your amazing post. Oh, she says that we were listening on that July 25 show about new ways to break out of ruts. Yeah, I like to talk about that. And she says early on in the show you asked for the term for the transition state between awake and asleep? Yes, I did. I don't remember what I was talking about. But I am fascinated by that state. Because I think there's a lot of truth that rises to the surface. When we're in that state that place between waking and sleeping, you can get answers. I like to tell my clients to pose a question to themselves right before going to sleep or set an intention, say a prayer. Before you go to sleep call on your angels or on your higher self. I don't care what your belief system is. So I'm just going to throw out a bunch of ideas a bunch of different people's not the right word, a bunch of different spiritual guides you might call on. Or even just your inner self, right, like why I'm ready for the answer. And I have found that you can either drift off to sleep and wake up in the morning with a sense of knowing what the answer to your question was or something shifts inside you. Or you drift off slightly to sleep and in that state as you're going under. You see some kind of an image and of course the soul speaks in images, right? It's not does it's not going to speak to you in English necessarily. Sometimes it might. But it might speak in a An image that you see, and I don't know about you, when I'm drifting off to sleep, I feel like very meaningful things are happening to me inside, deep down in my soul. And I can't capture those images, I can't capture what just happened. I think it's a fantastic state. And now I have the word for it. Do you know the word Rita has told us it's hypnagogia hypnagogia. And she says here, one of the definitions or descriptions from Wikipedia, is that thought processes on the edge of sleep tend to differ radically from those of ordinary wakefulness? Isn't that why we like them? For example, something that you agreed to in a state of hypnagogia? Okay, that's true may seem completely ridiculous, ridiculous to you in a weak state. hypnagogia may involve a loosening of ego boundaries. See, that's why I like it, right? Because don't don't we want to set ourselves free from these ego constructions and live from soul. I do that's really if I, I think I say this a few times. And I say it. I probably say different things every time. But that's my main point of this show. Like you get to do it your way, like, loosen the strictures of all the old rules and live from soul. So yeah, loosening of ego boundaries, openness, sensitivity. Oh, I like that. That's very nice. Although then they go on to judge it and say, can be illogic. But you know, I don't care. I don't care. I think it's an important place. Because I really do believe that. Like, I've been saying that our soul has things to tell us you have an inner compass and inner knowing a place you're meant to go. And also, isn't there sometimes something beautiful about not being able to pin down mentally an experience you just had, but just to have the experience? We're so afraid, aren't we, in our culture of you know, they're talking in this Wikipedia definition of hypnagogia that people have heightened suggestibility when they're when they're in that state. And, okay, so we could use it for ill. Right, it could be used for ill. Absolutely. And I also think it's this opening when we're not so mentally ego. And I don't mean this in a negative sense, egotistically, I just mean like Earthbound. Okay. I need to get groceries and then gas and I forgot to call that person back. And oh, what time is it? Oh, no, what time is going to be late. And I write that just running through life dealing with material reality. And then your soul if you're not giving yourself a break, and a breather, your soul has no opening to communicate to you, except maybe when you're drifting off to sleep and when you're in that hypnagogic state. Thank you, Rita, so much for that. Hey, it's Maia, I am excited to announce Maia Wilde's prescription for a personal revolution. That's a fancy way of saying that I've got some cool new mechanisms for you to get out of your own way in life and start expressing the hell out of your true self. Come over to maiawilde.thinkific.com. You can take my free Life On Fire Self Assessment Quiz, because you need to know where you are, figure out where you're gonna go. Next, you can join my private Facebook group Wild Women On A Cosmic Mission And A Few Bold Men where you get to meet and hang out with like minded people as your real self. And I've also got a guided meditation on Lighting Your Inner Fire along with some journal prompts. There's a new masterclass to Set Your Life On Fire: The Three Keys To Ignite Your Life. It's available also at Maiawilde.thinkific.com. You do not have to walk this road of life alone, and you definitely do not have to stay stuck. So click the link in the show notes or just go to Maiawilde.thinkific.com. And if you enjoy this podcast, make sure you subscribe, share it far and wide. And leave a review on Apple podcasts. I love hearing your experience of the show. And I love having you as a listener to this podcast. So getting back to craving, you know, I think about craving, I feel like maybe we need to talk about the obvious, right? The let's talk about the bad stuff, the bad part of craving. Let's talk about food. And again, though, here's where it's just going to be a mixed bag. It's not always bad to have a craving I had this experience. I was doing Bikram yoga and Brooklyn, when would that have been 15-17 years ago? Feels a lot more recent than that. Let me tell you, but I was doing the 30 day challenge of Bikram yoga, which is hot yoga for those of you don't know the room has heated to about 106 degrees, sometimes it's hotter. And and I might have that number wrong. But I remember those numbers from 15 to 17 years ago. And you it's it's I would say it's almost a militant form of yoga, where the poses are timed. You do do each post twice. You hold each pose I think the first post was, is held for 60 seconds. And then the second pose is held for 30 seconds. So you do each side once for one minute and then each side again, once for 30 seconds, and you're looking at yourself in the mirror, sweating profusely while doing it. It's very intense and I was doing a 30 day challenge, which meant that I went every day to Bikram yoga for a 90 minute class like I just described, and then at the end of it, you get a free month of yoga, which I did not use. I did the 30 days, but then I just didn't go back. I switched over to vinyasa. I was like, Ah, it's not super hot in here. It's not so militant. I was a dancer. So I like the flow, right? So this is why this is why I'm telling you to listen to your inner compass and cravings versus desires because there are messages for you. I got the message, I should not become a Bikram teacher. I'm not designed that way. I, I got I actually got certified as a Vinyasa yoga teacher, because of my dance background. And I just like to be fluid go with the flow. That's how I made but some really great teachers in the big room world. And there I was doing 30 days of this extremely hot militant yoga in the middle of Brooklyn in January, February. And I could not stop thinking about pineapple. I could not stop I was obsessed with pineapple and there was this little Bodega half a block down middle of winter, right snow everywhere. And he had some overripe pineapples in the window. Just I gotta go get one. So I went got this pineapple, and I ate the whole pineapple just ate the pineapple. And it satisfied this craving in a way that didn't feel like when I used to go for the Cool Ranch Doritos. Do you know that craving? Like the craving for a pineapple is different than the craving for Cool Ranch Doritos, isn't it? And here's what's fascinating. I overheard a student who was also doing the 30 Day Challenge talk to one of the teachers a few days later. And she was asking, I feel so sore from doing all this yoga every day. What do I do? And the teacher said, well, Bikram would recommend that you drink pineapple juice. I was listening to that going what? Apparently I think it's the bromelain in pineapple is good for muscle soreness. How accurate was that craving and that was a craving that led to a fulfillment a healthy fulfillment not just some fleeting, emotional, needy, right bottomless pit hungering feeling I guess that's the panting after right that we were looking at in the yearning and craving definitions. But that was a desire that actually I never knew that I don't how did my body know that? I to this day I wonder about that could not stop thinking about pineapple. How did my body know? Tell Maia to go get a pineapple? And you know, of course so I said we were going to go to the dark side. The dark side is when you get a craving, like for Cool Ranch Doritos. And you think something like I deserve this. I've worked so hard. Right? Or it's the Super Bowl. I'm supposed to eat like this. Just some thoughts and plucking for my own brain to share with you. And then you pig out. I went off Cool Ranch Doritos for a few years because before I had healed myself from bulimia and binge eating, I had this day where I, it was I wanted to repaint my living room yellow. I was living in Jersey City. I had this big living room. I wanted to paint it yellow. And I hadn't gotten around to it. So I said to myself, That's it. You were staying in all day Saturday and you're painting this living room yellow was this beautiful sunny day out. I was so angry that I hadn't done it before and I was so angry that I had to stay in and do it that Saturday that I went out and I got myself a massive bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, and some Amstel lights. Oh, the good old days when I could I live down the street from bodegas right. Oh, I can't do that where I live here. So I came home and in the middle of summer painting my living room, angry hating myself for not doing it sooner and also for locking myself in the house on a beautiful sunny day. I ate this whole bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and a couple of Amstel lights. I didn't have anything else to eat that day or drink. That was it. Let me tell you i was violently sick all night. violently sick and I remember thinking I'm never doing that again. And like what was that craving that was? That was like a hate filled craving. That's not the that's that's the dark side craving right. When you are programmed for alcoholism and you have a craving for drink. I dated this guy who said that he realized he was an alcoholic when he had a DUI and he was taking whatever course you take. And there was a man and a video they watched who said the alcoholic will crave alcohol with every fiber of his being. I didn't even realize that the word crave was in there until I said it out loud. That's the dark side kind of craving. When you when you do bad things to yourself like I did, where I made myself, why did I make myself stay inside on a beautiful Saturday, I was so filled with self loathing and anger at myself. And then I did something worse to myself because of it. Instead of saying, let's look at the calendar, there's got to be another time in the next couple of weeks when I can paint the living room. That's going to work better for me. Not on a sunny Saturday when I want to be out in the park. But I didn't and then I fed that anger that self hatred with Doritos and Amstel light, and then I didn't have I don't think I've had an Amstel light since that was 10 years ago. And I I have had Cool Ranch Doritos since but what what's the difference? Because if you look at the places where you're craving, I was craving pineapple. Like there was a strong yearning there was a yen there was an itch, it was severe, it was intense, just like the dictionary told us, you're going to feel intensely when you crave something. It's not subtle. But it was a positive one. So how do we begin to interpret the difference between a good craving and a craving that's going to send you spiraling down into maybe, you know, vomiting on your bathroom floor like I did after painting my apartment that day? Or it's going to heal your body? I mean, that's a big question, right? And that is that this is why I work with people individually. And I've hired my own Coaches and Consultants because we need we can't get in there by ourselves necessarily. Sometimes you can. But usually, we need that the strength of an external container, when we're trying to do something completely new, or heal some old pattern or habit. And back then, not yet. It was it was it was after the Doritos incident, I hired a holistic health coach. And I really didn't think I could heal the bulimia and the binge eating, I was not. Here's what's interesting about the bulimia I had not chosen to purge, like I hadn't stuck my finger down my throat just to be graphic with you. But to tell you the truth, I had not done that in a few years at that point. But what was starting to happen was when I would follow cravings that were bad cravings that were covering up some kind of an emotion that I was supposed to be paying attention to. My body would reject the food that I ate, and it would keep me in the bathroom all night. Isn't that interesting? I don't pretend to understand how the subconscious and all of the inner workings of being human operate. But I find that fascinating. And since I've done a lot of the internal healing, that that doesn't happen anymore. When you go against yourself, that's when you can get the negative craving. I mean, it even makes sense, right? When I've worked with people who struggle with a lot of emotional or binge eating, one of the first things I say to them is, you're trying to feel better by eating this way. So let's just stop with the self castigation. That doesn't make any sense, right? That's now you're adding what, you know, self castigation and talking mainly to yourself on top of this behavior that you're doing that's hurting yourself because you have an old trauma, or you hate your job or your life. That's not the way to heal it. That doesn't work. What I have found does work. There's a few different things sitting with it. Right? Sitting with it works. And when I started working with this holistic health coach, and I thought, okay, she's gonna help me manage this food thing that I'd had for 20 years. I started to go on some cleanses. And there was one cleanse I was on. I know I've told the story on the show before but it's, it's, it's, it was really a striking moment in my life. So I'm going to repeat it as often as need be, because it's a good one and I want you to reflect in your own life. Like where are you covering up cravings that either are pointing to something you need to heal, or craving that's pointing to something that you need to honor in some way. So I was on this cleanse. It was vegetables for three weeks, basically men some cooked squash and stuff. But no snacks. Nope, no Doritos. And it was intense but good because I was in this group and I had this coach and I was in it with a bunch of other people and it just felt really positive. I was enjoying it. And I got up to go into the kitchen to put my salad bowl in the sink. And I saw on my shelf that I had this little baggie of a few macadamia nuts and I was over come with this Need to eat those five unsalted unroasted macadamia nuts. And it was like it clawed at me right and I was thrown, I sort of it was like It staggered me because I'd been doing so well and feeling so good. And then I see these stupid little macadamia nuts, right that weren't even salted or roasted. And it sent my system into this tailspin of have to have them like my inner wild animal came out, like have to have that. And I went back into the living room and I sat down and I thought, What is this, and the need to go eat those nuts was so strong, it almost took over me and animated me into walking into the kitchen. What I did was I sat in that chair. And I said, I'm going to sit here for two minutes, and I'm going to close my eyes. And I'm going to feel this feeling of need, but just two minutes. And it was so overwhelming. It was a physical feeling of like, I was being animated by this craving. And I hadn't been hungry before. I hadn't been tired, I'd been feeling really good. So it wasn't like I was struggling to get through this clean eating protocol. And okay, nuts might be a smart snack for me to have, right? I wasn't hurting myself in any way. But what was it about seeing those little macadamia nuts that triggered this internal response in May. I mean, it could have been habit right after all those years of doing what I'd been doing with food. But I sat there for two minutes. And I just felt these terrible feelings. And then I got I gave myself permission, you're going to you get to go eat the macadamia nuts. Like I knew that before I even started the two minutes, I'm gonna eat the macadamia nuts, we're not gonna, it's gonna be okay. But sit for two minutes. And that was the start of me consciously grappling with or wrangling with inner demons that are physiological in that way. And so if you're on the dark side, know that there is a light side to this, if you're in, I really believe that if you've got a dark side experience happening, then the opposite the light side it has to it's available. I think that's called the law of polarity actually, where, if you're having this complete one, whatever experience it is, it's very, very bad. That means that it's complete opposite. Something that is very, very good is also available in the realm of human experience. Today, we've been talking about constant craving, and looking at where it might be showing up in your life, and what's the dark side of it? And what's the light side of it? How does it serve us? How does it guide us? On our trek through this lifetime as human beings? Do you ever have that experience? You're like, This is so weird. I'm a person? How is this possible? Do you ever have that? Am I the only one you know, I this is one of those conversations that I'm not going to burden my poor boyfriend with, like the meaning of life conversation that he does not want to keep having. But if this is something that you're interested in, if you feel like you're a seeker on the path, this is good stuff to help orient you and find your way to do life your way because I think that is so unbelievably important. You know, just looking at to look at the here and now. And I think that we can so easily be disdainful of this. Talk about craving this drive in America to be happy, right? Be positive, be happy to we can look at that in the life coaching world. Which is in fact one of the reasons why I've honestly actually stopped calling myself a life coach. I call myself a life and business strategist now. Because it's so much more concrete and not out in the ether, like wow, it's all good. Everything happens for a reason the answers are within. That's not untrue. And there is a reality that we're all dealing with being human where you need strategy, you need to be concrete you need on the ground, which I think is a great phrase for what we're talking about right now in an on the ground guidance. I'm not I don't want to be I'm not going into the the false cheer realm at all. But actually looking at from a soul level, happiness matters. Healing Your old trauma matters. Honoring your dreams connecting to the right people honoring life listening to life matters. It's important and so if you need permission to do that, I'm giving you permission and not in a shallow superficial self centered egotistical way No but in a soul centered way. So that's what we're all about here on dirt road less traveled. And let's look at then what is like The Dark Side meets the light side, what is that maybe poetic justice in the craving or the poetic message or like I was sharing with my story earlier of going through this wretched breakup in my early 20s. And then discovering that there was an essence that I could connect to through that pain through that emotional pain, that actually felt really positive. And fulfilling. It was really this deep experience of the pain, with feeling connected to life, and death, and all these these beautiful things, these big beautiful things that are all part of being human, but that we tend to deny. So I'm not looking at or we tend to deny or dwell on, right? So I'm not, we're not dwelling or denying, we're merging, we're going to honor it all the dark and the light. And we are talking about the art of craving, or the experience of constant craving and being human and how that serves us how it doesn't. And I just think the lyrics of that song. You know, I heard it the other night as I was contemplating this today's show, and I thought, Oh, that's it. That's it's constant craving and I'd never really listened to the lyrics. She says it opens you might have heard this, she says even through the darkest phase, be it thick or thin. Always someone marches brave here beneath my skin. To me, that sounds like love, I don't know. But then listen to this may be a great magnet pulls all souls towards truth. Or maybe it is life itself. That feeds wisdom to its youth. That's deep. Katie Lang. Yes. That's fantastic. That's what we're talking about today is you know that mastering the art of craving, using it for good learning to read what it's saying to you, and is it saying to you, you've got this craving because there's an old wound there that needs to be healed, and it's crying out, it's calling out to you heal me, that's what's underneath this craving? Or is it a craving that says I you need more solitary time, you need more alone time, or you need more sleep, or like my craving for pineapple, you need more pineapple or some kind of a nourishment or nutrition, you know, could be an emotional nutrition and emotional nourishment or physical, but to really be able to unwrap what the craving is pointing to I mean that that's why again, you know, I was, you know, on that cleanse all those years ago, with a guide, because a lot of times we mistake the messages we're getting, and we do things like we think will I'm craving, you know, I had a client who was craving ice cream, and she was so angry at herself. She said, my whole life boils down to the fact that every night I eat a pint of ice cream, and I said, Would you eat meat. And she said, I've started again, eating a little chicken, sometimes fish, but now I've been a vegetarian for 10 years. And I said, I'd be interested to see what happens to the craving for ice cream. If you eat a hamburger or a steak. She called me back two days later, just amazed. Her body had been craving fat, but her mind had been telling her, you can't eat animals, because you're a vegetarian, he certainly can't eat red meat, because that's bad for you. But ice cream was okay in her internal philosophy at the time. And so she was then led down this path of like the mind not listening to the body or only able to interpret the body's craving or need in one certain way, because she hadn't given herself permission to eat meat. And so she blocked that option off. And so a lot of this again, we're talking we were talking earlier about that hypnagogic state, you know, the this is the power of suggestibility that's actually interesting and only internal. Right, so you're suggestible to yourself from yourself. So your internal rules and regulations and how you categorize what's good and bad, and what's right for you and what isn't, and how you identify, if you identify as this client, for instance, as a vegetarian, and she was proud of it, and she couldn't disengage from that until she had the physical evidence of wow, my body is hungry for food, she couldn't even recognize what she was actually craving because she had hidden you know, I You get what I'm saying that with this is why we can be confused and this is why it can be helpful to have somebody who can help you figure out what exactly the craving is pointing to. And there are so many we're not working I'm going to pause I'm always gonna say there's so many rules out there and formulas and you know, I was going to go on a rant right away about why you need to listen to your inner self And we're going to go there but I want to linger for another moment on the just the depth and that poetic beauty of that Katie Lange song and the experience of being alive and the experience of maybe having cravings because you're a searching human and you're always looking for more and how maybe that isn't a bad thing. Maybe it's just part of the mystery, and we need to absorb it all. This is, I'm going to read to you from this book called The immense journey. I don't I got this in some used bookstore, I think years ago. Oh, look, I paid no, it was a guy paid 50 cents for it. Lauren Isley wrote this book, The immense journey and the subtitle. It's interesting. I don't remember ever reading the subtitle before I just open the book and liked it and started reading it. So it's called it's an imaginative naturalist explores the mysteries of man and nature. So I'm gonna read a little bit to you from this book, The immense journey which isn't that life an immense journey through how many dimensions and how many media will life have to pass down how many Rhodes among the stars must man propel himself in search of the final secret? The journey is difficult, immense, at times impossible. Yet that will not deter some of us from attempting it. We cannot know all that has happened in the past, or the reason for all of these events, any more than we can with surely discern what lies ahead. We have joined the caravan you might say at a certain point, we will travel as far as we can, but cannot in one lifetime see all that we would like to see or learn all that we hunger to know. That's a mystical approach to craving, isn't it? an acknowledgement that we can't know it all or see it all or be or experience at all. This is Lauren Isley. I've skipped ahead a few pages. He writes this once in a lifetime perhaps when escapes the actual confines of the flesh, once in a lifetime if one is lucky one so merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole eons. The aeons that mountains and deserts no might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort. The mind has sunk away into its beginnings among old roots, and the obscure trickling and movings that stir inanimate objects, like the charmed fairy circle into which a man once stepped, and upon emergence learned that a whole century had passed in a single night. One can never quite define this secret, but it has something to do, I am sure, with common water, its substance reaches everywhere. It touches the past and prepares the future. It moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of air. It can assume forms of exquisite perfection and a snowflake, or strip the living to a single shining bone cast up by the sea. That was from the immense journey by Lauren Isley, an imaginative naturalist exploring the mysteries of man and nature. Which isn't that the essence of what we're doing here on dirt road less traveled. I have had that book for probably close on 20 years. I've read it a couple of times I have bookmarks in it. I was just yanking books off the shelf today to bring in for the show. And I thought, Oh, I have bookmarks in here. Have I read from this before? I might have. That was a repeat it was a good one. But I didn't notice. I didn't read it before I just read it to you. I didn't reread it before I just read it to you now. It didn't notice how he talks about traveling this road, this journey of life. That's what this show is all about. And that's what I'm inviting you to contemplate for yourself. When we're talking about craving. There's a mystery we want fulfilled. You know, if you read a mystery novel, you're just craving the end you're craving knowing the solution. You want to solve the mystery. There's that satisfaction that you want to get. And maybe there are moments like I mean, didn't it sound like he was describing that hypnagogic state the state between waking and sleeping? I mean, doesn't poetry arise from that state? Didn't Beethoven hear music and then write it down? Who are we to be literalist, to say that there's this mechanical way to live life and to ignore this? All this huge evidence that there is more that there's a mystery, even while we're dwelling on the material plane. Yeah, so how can we embody craving in a way that doesn't harm us? Without still solving the mystery? That might be the big question that we're really faced with today. We're going to go back to craving and then come back to that, you know, I I really hit upon the word craving. I don't No, I want to say five, seven years ago when I was studying some Pema children. I've always loved her books. Are you familiar? She's the American monk. I think she was the she was the first woman ordained in whatever her tradition, I think it's a Tibetan tradition. And she's written some great books that are so accessible is probably the word for their just relatable, accessible books. And but from this Zen perspective, but a very contemporary American perspective. And she was talking about the state of craving and how, when you're set to craving or yearning, you can never be satisfied, you can never be fulfilled. And one of her books I don't recall which, and that got me thinking about my own eating disorder. Why am I craving or my own desire at the time I was single, my own desire for romance, and thinking, I've met some really good guys, why am I not with any of them? I was always on the quest for my soulmate. Is that you? Or are you very practical about matters of the heart? And I started to think, Oh, this is why I'm single. This is why I'm hungry. Because my setting is set to my internal setting is set to craving. So I can never be fulfilled. Because that wouldn't be fulfilling for me. I would not be satisfied. I want I want to crave more years ago, when I got fired from my job, and I was just living alone in my apartment in Jersey City before I painted it. The summer, the winter before that summer, where I repainted it and binged on Doritos. I thought, I'm home alone. I'm newly single. And I have this hunger, this constant hunger for food. I'm just gonna feed it. That was my decision. 10 years ago, I'm just going to feed it. I started to bake this cake. Is this amazing? It's a sour cream, lemon, lemon sour cream. Cake. It's so good. And I thought you know what? We were having a lot of snowstorms. I'll pick that cake. Whenever there's a blizzard. Like that works. And then we were having like a blizzard weekly, and I would bake this cake and I was living alone in this outpost in Jersey City. Nope, I didn't know anybody in the neighborhood. And so I just had to eat the cake all by myself. Week after week. I started to call it Maia's sour cream. What did I call it? Maybe I just called it Maia's Blizzard cake. I still have that recipe on my computer somewhere mine's Blizzard cake. I would make it gluten free now. But I haven't made it in years. Because what I learned from that winter's experience of eating my lemon sour cream cake week after week, and then also going out for tiramisu. I think it was it is Rocco's this one of the Italian bakeries on Bleecker Street is so divine and huge the tiramisu they serve there's huge the first time they served me I can't eat all of that. And then I did. And then I went back every week twice for another piece of it and an espresso and I'd sit there and eat. And then I go home and have blizzard cake and then popcorn and vodka. And I thought, I'm going to feed this inner hunger until it is satisfied. It never became satisfied through eating food. And it makes me wonder what are you craving? And feeding? How are you feeding your craving? That is wrong that you cannot feed or satisfy that craving with what you're feeding it. Like my client who is feeding herself ice cream night after night, but she really just needed some fat in her diet. Or me with that blizzard cake week after week. I gained like 50 pounds. I don't know if it's quite that much, maybe 30. But I gained a lot of weight. And I realized you can not satisfy one of those negative cravings. You can't you can't feed your inner your we're feeding ourselves the wrong food. And so when I wound up going back to school, I went to a place called the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. So it was a big nutrition school but it was all it was integrating not just food nutrition, which is so obvious that we would be studying that but also how do you feed your soul? How do you feed your mind? How do you feed your heart? How do you feed that human part of yourself that desires company and companionship. And so I'm just contemplating now musing on my own self and I'm on a cleanse now I'm on a 28 day eating only fruits and vegetables. And I noticed occasionally a craving comes up whenever I walk past one of my Netflix DVDs. I want popcorn. Whenever I think about sitting down on a Sunday afternoon I want popcorn because I have eaten popcorn watching movies on Sunday afternoons like so there's that right? That reminder and what I'm doing with it because I'm not having anything like that I'm having fruits and vegetables for 28 days a Monday nine. So what I'm doing with that is what I did in my chair all those years ago in Jersey City with a macadamia nuts. I'm feeling the craving, and I'm feeding myself high nourishment, so my body never falls apart. Because that's key. That's key, you cannot be mean to yourself and withhold the good stuff that life has to offer all the good nourishment, the heart nourishment, the soul, nourishment, all of the good stuff that life has to offer. And then expect your human self who's sad, and withheld from and lonely and hungry in all of these, all of these different ways, whether it's physical or yearning for more intellectual stimulation or a better job or to move back to the city or out to the country, or spend more time in the woods or get a dog or whatever it is, you can't withhold all of that from yourself and then expect your human self to not give in to bad cravings to not crave in the first place. And so where does craving sprang from? I would say that craving springs from mal nourishment. If it's a physical craving, it springs from physical malnourishment. If it's an emotional craving it springs from emotional malnourishment. If it's a psychological or spiritual craving it springs from mal nourishment in that realm. You know, sometimes you just crave movement of a certain kind. But of course, if we're eating, we're dumping a bunch of bad food and we're not getting enough sleep and we hate our life, then you're not going to want to move your body. So your body might crave movement, but you've buried that craving under all of this distraction. So how are you going to how are you going to get to the heart of what the real craving is what the heart craving, or the soul craving is? How we're going to get to that if you're buried under all this falseness. That's that these are the questions we're working with today. We're talking about craving. And how do you go from constant craving to that beautiful merging? And feeling the magnetic pole that Katie Lang talked about? to something the mystery of life or that Lauren Isley in this book, The immense journey talks about how do you experience that feeling? Because if we're set to craving, we can't ever be fulfilled, right? We can't ever, the hunger can't be satisfied. Because we want more of that feeling of craving, or also the craving is pointing to a deficiency of some kind, like we've said, but what if there's a chemical makeup like we were talking about dopamine earlier being possibly the craving chemical, or your body? It's, it's, it's on the hunt, it's out looking for things? Like how can that be positive? And again, you know, I think that the answer is very simple. I think, actually, this is a great place to apply black and white thinking and say, when you shift over to it becoming a compulsion, it's probably because you have too little dopamine, or you're trying to replenish your stores. Or if it's a compulsion in the sense where you're addicted to always being on the hunt, means that you're set to that setting that craving, and that you have probably an overabundance of dopamine so that you there's not room for any other experiences, because there's not room for serotonin, or endorphins to come in. I'm not a scientist, so don't quote me on all of this. I've been listening to some podcasts. And I do in my holistic health work, I do work with amino acids that feed your neurotransmitters, to put it in a very simplistic way. But what I find fascinating is some of the research that has been done that shows that we can manipulate in the best sense of the word, our body's chemistry and our brains chemistry. So for instance, if you have a hard time falling asleep at night, they say to read a romance novel, because it will propel your body to create more oxytocin, which is the cozy love connected, belonging, chemical, and I find that fascinating. So if you're craving like, I've always been addicted to romance novel, so I can see it in the negative. Oh, I'm just like, I want to I want to get high on that ride of always seeking new romance. And I can also see it in the positive side. Oh, I'm looking to adjust my body's chemistry by seeking new romance because that will feed my brain which is lacking in certain essential nourishments. Whew, I just said a whole bunch of things. Are you looking for an energetic, inspiring, knowledgeable, wisdom and insight generating, mesmerizing speaker for your club, group team or mastermind, that those are not my words. Those are snippets of testimonials from people who have attended my talks. 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So you stopped falling off the wagon all while embracing the glorious mystery of being alive so you can finally express the hell out of your true self on this crazy ride we call life or you could go for This Is Not a Rehearsal a crash course and claiming the life you were meant to live where participants walk away knowing improvisation techniques for real life situations, create fewer regrets and recover fast when you didn't handle it the way you wish you had quick tricks for discovering your life's purpose and finding your tribe waste less time on people, places and things that are not right for you. And that laughter really is the best medicine, no more crying over your life situation, but instead happily embracing the absurd and laughing your way right through this lifetime and into the next one, or you gonna invite me in for a channeled event created exclusively for your people book me at Maia.Wilde.com, or by emailing me directly at Maia@Maia.wilde.com, where you can request my speaker sheet, media packet, or to reserve your next level Self Realization event where the talk is deep, but never happy. That's Maiawilde.com, or email me directly at Maia@maiawilde.com We're talking about craving. And we're a little all over the place today, back and forth. But I think that that is how we can start to zigzag our way deeper right into this musing that we're doing this productive musing this productive soul searching. And we've been talking about romance that's one of my that I got to say food and romance. Those are my two preferred drugs, if you can include caffeine in food you can write caffeine is a food. I know other people have cravings for money, or exercise, I love to exercise, but I'm thinking about when something's at the level of craving, right, and somebody becomes a bodybuilder or a professional dancer, or they hike all the peaks in the Catskills, you know, because we can have a negative craving also, again, that brings up adrenaline right. And these substances can be destructive as can the actions that they inspire. So if, you know, things can be corrosive different chemicals in our body. And I think of all this now, as I said adrenaline because adrenaline can have a corrosive effect on the body, including even on the heart, you know, so if you are seeking say, if you're an adrenaline junkie, seeking always the next rush, which I haven't I have not been I but I have clients who are and I have friends and I you know, and I can see, I can see the appeal because if you are low in, I don't know what that would be. So this is where this is where I'm not a scientist, so don't quote me on all this, do your own Google research, listen to your own podcasts and get more scientific information there. But I'm just I'm my goal here is to like, ooh, open up some doors and windows in the contemplation of craving, the conversation around craving. Adrenaline can be corrosive, but it can also be a lot of fun, right? And it can serve a purpose to get you all wired up to meet life or to meet adventure or to meet a challenge. So that part is fantastic. But the dark side, of course, is that it can be corrosive and addictive. So but then, I think here's where I'm going to opine, I think so can oxytocin, where people are just staying in their comfort zone, right, sitting at home, quietly, not wanting to ever experience the strongest stimulations of life that adrenaline has to offer, never taking risks. And for some of you, that is a very perfect life that is a soul aligned life. And for others, it means you're staying safe, playing it safe staying in your own old setting your old programming, and there's the risk that at the end of your life, you will not feel that it added up to what it could have and that you did not live up to your potential. And that is one of my other main goals that we have got to honor our souls because we got to honor ourselves and do something and it can be I'm not, it doesn't matter what it is, but it has to be right for you. It has to be true expression of you. Alright, looping back around to romance, which I was talking about originally. And that addictive quality that I know that I have experienced personally of getting lost in romance novels or always wanting, fantasizing about a new romance or finding a new romance, that in the positive that was me leveling out my inner chemistry in the negative it means that I'm set to craving and I can't be satisfied in a long term relationship. Then the discernment part comes in with is, am I meant to be polyamorous I'm that this is not actually I'm not. I personally am not actually going in that direction. But I see this with people like talk to you, like, Oh, does this mean that I am not straight? Does this mean that I am not monogamous. So that's the place where the discernment of you know the details of how you want to live your life come out. But we're talking in a broader sense today about cravings, how to interpret them. And if you find yourself hooked on adrenaline, or hooked on, you know, the hunt, and dopamine or hooked on romance, and you're, you're medicating yourself with one of these substances, it would probably make sense for you to look a little bit deeper, you know, under the surface and see what's there. When we're talking about craving today, when it's good when it's not, and I just I this is separate, I think is this, maybe this is sort of part and parcel of what we're talking about though that line in the song where she says the pain will past pass, it won't last. And I can't get on board with that reasoning. Like this too shall pass. I have certainly gotten myself thrive, endured through things by telling myself that I whenever I think this too shall pass, the first thought that comes to my mind is my first waitressing job in Manhattan. I was working at a place called pasta presto, on macdougal street when I was 26. And I had just moved down to the city to go to acting school. And I found this job they hired me I was making great money. But it was kind of a brutal job. It was in tourist Central and it just wasn't properly staffed. I think it's still there just is the late 90s. So, so I'm not I am not a hopefully saying anything bad against anybody who, who, what does that called libel. It just was a rough place to work. And it was my first job in the city. And I remember just telling myself, I could see myself in my white button up shirt and my tie, you know, and just telling myself, This too shall pass. And then I proceeded to wait tables for the next 10 years in New York City. Right? So I just I found like, okay, that's not a good way to help us get through. That's a helpless way. I think that that when somebody says to you, well, this, this will pass, it'll pass, it doesn't help. If it's a cycle that is kept coming back, if you've got this craving, and like it'll pass it'll pass. Right? And then what it'll come back. So what do I actually have to do to interrupt the old pattern? That's, that, to me, is key. That to me is how can we come out the other side, having transmuted whatever the original experience was that was bad into something that is very, very good and positive, and takes us down the right road in life. That's where I'm going with this. This is not a fruitless wandering that we're doing contemplating this idea of craving in the human experience. It's not just amusing in this philosophical sense. I want us to pin it down into our lives here on planet Earth in the material plane, because that's important. I mean, isn't that important? I guess there are some people who actually like my boyfriend sees me as somebody who likes to talk about the meaning of life away too much. But then I know that there are people who actually are happy contemplating the stars forever and never bringing it back down to earth. So you have to see where you fall on that scale. But I wanted to say that that line, you know, the pain will pass and it won't last. It's not actually very reassuring, but there are other there are actual ways to interrupt and heal the old patterns. I've mentioned a couple of times on today's show about how I had this compulsive eating disorder, binge eating bulimia for 20 years. And I still get food cravings like for popcorn, right? That still goes on but I'm not compulsive and I'm not over eating anymore. I just don't do that. It just don't do that anymore. And I don't have to manage it. I don't have to stop myself. I have to start Wrong are myself, right? Like we were saying earlier. What do you expect if you make yourself work a job you hate and be married to somebody you're not really happy with anymore who's mean to you and it's overtly a bad situation. You don't like where you live and you're not feeding yourself. Like, if you're doing all of that, then of course, you're going to get immense cravings for what are the bad things, overdoing gambling over shopping, right? sleeping around, eat binge eating very bad food, using drugs and alcohol, right? Just doing nothing with your life, what could look like, oh, I don't have an addiction. It's not really a problem. But actually, it's your life isn't adding up to what it could add up to right take take a look at that. Because I've also not just compulsively read romance novels, but also compulsively binge watch television. And we again, we have, it's okay, in our culture, like I binge watched, and sometimes it's fine. That's why I say there's no rules, you get the sense of when you're on the right track and when you're not. But it's important to know and I want to get this point across, it's important to know that it is possible to heal, and that any of your old patterns can be interrupted. And there is a way to do that. So for instance, with cleansing, like where I'm eating, just fruits and vegetables for 28 days, and I'm doing this by myself, I have some people in my world, one person in particular, who was a guest on the show several months back, who is a support for me. So I know I have somebody I can lean on or reach out to if I have questions also have some books that I'm following that feel very supportive and podcasts I'm listening to. So I'm not like all alone, in this 28 day cleanse following a protocol someone else developed. But what I'm doing is feeding myself as much as I need to eat of the cleanse foods, and then sitting in the woods. I'm not watching TV, what watching TV, right now, my boyfriend, he's been working a lot, he's a contractor, he still comes home and like chills out he reads a lot. But he also chills out in front of a movie or something right for an hour or two at night. I'm not doing any of that anymore. Because I know that by sitting on the couch like that, it triggers it reactivates all of the old crap. Now actually, now that I'm saying this, I'm going to I'm going to speak out against myself. Here's where I was going with my first train of thought that I'm not doing the old behaviors, I'm doing more soul nourishing behaviors, I have a ton more energy than I did when I was eating the way I was eating. So I'm healing some health issues. My stomach doesn't hurt any more. I sleep great. A lot of really positive things are happening from this cleanse already, which is freeing up a lot of space in my body to want to walk and stretch and do some yoga, I feel happier. And then I do things like we have a cabin across the lawn. It's a long big lawn on the other side of the pond. There's a cabin sauna building that my dad built. We've got some chairs on the porch of it, and my boyfriend will sit down to watch a show. And I'll say I'm going to go down to the sauna with sailor, my cat had to get mentioned in for the cat. I'm going to go down to the sauna and meditate. Or I'm going to go down to the campsite, we have a glamping site on our property with this really comfortable chair that makes you feel like you're floating on air defies gravity, I love this chair. So I'll go down there and meditate or I'll write my morning pages down there with a cup of tea. With the cat. Of course sailor the adventure cat comes. And so I get to have this great time out in nature, I get to meditate and do other things that feel really nourishing to me on a lot of different levels. And I actually solve a lot of problems like I, through meditation, I'll come to clear answers. Have you had that experience? It's amazing. And so through this cleanse, I'm both not exposing myself to some of the old habits that would then trigger a desire for popcorn, for example, or to be stationary and sedentary and sit and not move. But I'm also nourishing myself so well and so cleanly that a lot of the old cravings are not coming up, and I'm getting to a deeper layer of like that inner animal. I did it with a salad last night. I mean, it's amazing. It's amazing. I ate the salad while multitasking getting back to clients and just doing all this multitasking. Wolf down the salad basically without chewing it. And it was late. And then I went to bed and I woke up with sharp stabbing pains in my stomach for about two and a half hours. They went away I drank some fresh I juiced some fresh ginger root and added raw local honey and some lemon and hot water. Right there's ways to help when you're having an emergency that I've learned since my earlier emergencies, but it was terrible. It was terrible. And I realized oh there it is that inner feeding monster want to just eat the food and so I have now brokered a new deal with myself that I'm going to be quiet. I'm not going to multitask during this cleanse when I'm eating. But I'm also thinking, as I'm talking to you right now, about, sometimes it's time to expose ourselves, we can't keep ourselves from the causes of our cravings forever. That's one approach. And it can be good in the early stages of making a change. But I think I might go sit on the couch and watch a movie with my boyfriend, maybe even while he eats a bowl of the Forbidden popcorn. Because there comes a time where we need to re expose ourselves and just see then I can even just talking about it. Now I feel that inner hunger monster rise up. But isn't that how we start to strengthen, right and start to deal with the cravings and I can see the places where, oh, I can't just quietly nourish myself, I might also have to go do something a little bit more expressive, like some kind of movement therapy dance, I'm a big fan of Scream therapy, getting the old emotions out. So that you can make room for some of the more positive emotions and things that will also level your chemistry. And that the craving is speaking of that, if I were still eating on top of the cravings, I wouldn't get to hear the voice of that compulsion, or that yearning that is now pointing to a need to move or express or vocalize in a different way or do something slightly different somewhere in my life. And with that being covered, we can't hear that subtle voice. And so this is all about living life uncovered. How can you live life uncovered? How can you uncover your cravings so that you can hear what's underneath with the messages that's underneath. And I'm thinking also, one last point that I want to make, I would just like to speak into a little bit is there might be some places where you want to rebel against something that I've said, and there are times to rebel, of course, I'm for it. I'm for good, positive, focused, awesome rebellion, and for living a little, um, for that all. But I think about that one of the things that I teach is sort of a law of attraction concept. This idea Well, law of attraction, if you're not familiar is this idea that you vision, you envision, maybe you make a vision board, you also feel the feeling of the thing, the desired outcome. So you feel the feeling of already having what it is that you're envisioning that you would like to have, whether it's a relationship, or a job, or a house, or an amount of money or a health situation, or looking a certain way, or whatever it is. So this idea, that idea, in law of attractions, you feel the feeling of already having it and that will magnetize it to you, so you actually get it. Well, isn't that nice and tidy. Because the shadow side of law of attraction work is that it's just all about trying to control the outcome of life. Sometimes that works. And sometimes it's fantastic. And sometimes life doesn't deliver. Why? Because you're not supposed to have it and we're not meant to control. We're also meant or not maybe meant to just I don't think we're ever meant to control life, can we can we ever even control life, you can have some creative command over it. Certainly surely. And I think we all have some magnificent examples of attracting something magnetizing something to us that just seemed it's inexplicable how it came to you other than by evoking the concept of law of attraction. You know, and the thing that I always teach also is that just feels better. Like if you really are craving something like love to give yourself the experience of feeling the love, it might bring you a lover, but it might also just shift your inner experience of being alive and switch your setting from craving to feeling love. And that's fantastic. That is fantastic. So I think that we're not looking at necessarily controlling the I feel like I'm just dancing around it. We're not looking at controlling the outcome of life. We are however looking at how to embody all of the experiences of life and listen to what our inner mechanism is that is guiding us to whatever your right life is. Because we know we're even on the right track. You know, and yearning I think can tell us it can help tell us we're off right because here's the here's the deal. If we are constantly using feeling better to medicate ourselves, we are denying a truth of how we really feel so you can actually abuse Happiness are satisfied, you can abuse, the concept of feel the feeling that you want to feel. Because if you are one of those people who overrides your own internal experience, what that means is that if your internal experience is saying, I need to cry, I have a sadness that I have not cried through, I have a sadness that I have not resolved. I have a sadness that I have not owned and fully experienced and processed for lack of a more poetic term. The second you feel sadness, you throw false cheer on top of it or activity, and pump up your you know, whatever it is, you're on the hunt for something new, you go shopping, maybe your dopamine gets fired up, or you go, I don't know what it would be some something I've never done, let's say bungee jumping, right? So a cliff diving for God's sake, right to pump up your adrenaline. I know, for me, when I had chronic fatigue, I would watch a lot of thrillers and not thriller so much is action adventures. And it turns out that that is a way for me to spike my adrenaline a little bit so that I'm not just in the doldrums constantly. So even something that looks positive on the outside can be a manifestation of an imbalance inside of you. So where do you strike that balance? Right between? Oh, what is the phrase I want to use here? How do you strike that balance between faking it till you make it in the most positive possible way where you're uplifting yourself out of your old pattern? By experiencing a new feeling of love without the lover of abundance without the money, of health, with with illness? How do we do that in a way that's positive? And that moves us forward without denying and lying about what our true experience is? That's, that's the question. I think that might be the question that I leave you with today. That's the question I'm going to leave you with today. Because we're what did we say? We're just opening the door on craving? What's your relationship to it with it? Where are you using it for good? Where are you letting it manipulate you into doing things that are not good for you and that are not leading you toward the life that you most want to live? Where are you lying to yourself? Where are you? What what's happening underneath it all? What's the Dirt Road Less Travelled? It's owning the unexpected adventure of your life. Yeah, you're covered in mud, no map in hand, but you feel so alive. Like your life has real meaning, and you're absolutely on the right path. You've been listening to Dirt Road Less Travelled. If you like what you hear, share an episode with a friend or share many episodes with several of your friends and make sure that you hit subscribe. And if you want to find out how to connect what we talked about on the show to your own life. Check out what's happening at MaiaWilde.com, the conversation over there is all about how to live like you're on a mission and what's that mission? Doing life as the real you living on purpose, healing all the old being able to envision the new and of course expressing the hell out of yourself. That's MaiaWilde.com. I'm Maia Wilde. This is Dirt Road Less Travelled. Until next time, stay true to yourself out there.