With a title like Higher Desires and Lower Desires, you’re probably thinking that I’m talking about desire for sex and if you’re the higher or lower desire partner but that is not what this podcast is about. This podcast is about learning about your higher desires, as in your higher desires in life.  What is it that you truly desire in your life?  How can you lean into those to actually create the life that you want for yourself? How do you not succumb to the lower desires?  I promise this relates to sex…but it also relates to a lot of other things in your life, so let’s dig in.

So a couple of episodes ago, I talked about the lower brain and the motivational triad.  Our lower brain is motivated by three things

1. To avoid pain (both physical and emotional pain)
2. To seek pleasure (our brain loves that quick fix of dopamine, any way it can get it)
3. To reduce effort (it wants things to be as easy as possible)

The lower brain’s sole job is to keep you alive.  And it will offer you thoughts that go with that motivational triad to keep you alive at all costs.  The lower brain doesn’t want you to change how you are thinking, because that takes effort.  It doesn’t want you to try new things, because you might not be good at it and that would be painful.  So it offers you thoughts like “you aren’t capable,” “you can’t succeed,” “that will be too hard.”  It also offers you thoughts that distract you from what you truly want.  It will do whatever it takes to keep you exactly where you are.  But, it’s time for you to be on to your brain.  To see what’s actually happening.  To notice those thoughts that are keeping you from getting what you really want in life.

Those pesky thoughts from the lower brain, those are your LOWER DESIRES.  Too often we succumb to the immediate and emergent, those thoughts from our lower brain, which don’t really get us where we want to go in life.  A really good example of this would be with food.  If you have the higher desire to be a healthy person but you are constantly giving into the lower desires of ice cream, cookies, potato chips, and candy, then you aren’t honoring those higher desires.  You aren’t honoring YOURSELF in a way that is in alignment with your own integrity.  To be in integrity with yourself, then you need to: 

1. Recognize the thoughts that are getting in your way.  Notice what those thoughts are for you.  Most likely they are just sneaky little thoughts like “I deserve this.” “One won’t matter.” “It’s not a big deal.”
2. Understand where they come from – they are coming from that lower brain.  And it’s doing exactly what it was designed to do.  So, no judging yourself for thinking those thoughts.  It’s totally normal that you are thinking them.  But just because you are thinking them, doesn’t mean you need to give in to them.  It doesn’t mean you need to believe them and obey them.  Have compassion for yourself that your brain is just used to thinking the thoughts and it’s really trying to help you.
3. Engage your higher brain, tap into the higher desires, and make a decision for what you TRULY want.

Our higher brain is amazing.  But it definitely takes effort to tap into (which our lower brain doesn’t like.). It uses energy to create new thoughts and new habits.  So it’s no wonder it’s been so hard to change.  But that doesn’t mean that you can’t.  It just takes intention and thinking new thoughts on purpose. Being willing to be uncomfortable when your lower brain is offering you other thoughts.

So now that you’ve probably recognized how this is happening in small and subtle ways, or maybe in not so subtle ways in your life, let’s talk about sex.

If you are the lower desire partner, your brain is probably offering you thoughts like “I’m not in the mood,” “I’m too tired,” “I’m touched out,” “It takes too much effort,” or maybe it’s more personal like “my spouse is selfish.”  Can you see the pattern?  Can you see how that is just your lower brain trying to convince you because sex takes too much effort?  So your lower desire might say “give me sleep!” But your higher desires say “I want a good sexual relationship and marriage with my spouse.”

Or, on the flip side, if you are the higher desire partner your brain might be saying “I need sex right now and I need my spouse to give it me.”  Those are the lower desires.  The higher desires are again, to have a good marriage and good intimacy with your spouse, which you are sabotaging by pressuring your spouse into giving you what you want in the moment.

Why do we give in to those lower desires when we know what we truly want?  The biggest thing is, is that we don’t love ourselves enough.  We have put so many conditions on self-love and we continually sabotage ourselves over and over proving that we are not worthy or lovable.  By not unconditionally loving ourselves, we are constantly seeking that validation from others, and so we give in to those lower desires.  We seek to people please or prove our weakness.  We aren’t being true to our higher desires because it feels better in the moment to get that dopamine hit.  To get that validation.  

So how do you break this pattern?  You need to learn to be really honest with yourself.  Humans are really good self-deception.  We are really good at not seeing the parts of ourself that we don’t want to see.  So it’s important to be really honest and be willing to look at those hard parts of ourselves to see where we are getting in our own way.  A good way to figure out what those are is by asking yourself the following questions:

• Where do you yield to other people instead of honoring your own desires? 
• Where are you pressuring others to change so that you don’t have to do the work to change yourself?  
• Where are you maybe blaming your spouse for the problems and not taking responsibility?  
• Where are you telling them they need to change so that you are happier?
• Am I realistic in my choices or do I tell myself stories that are self-deceiving so that I don’t have to deal with reality?  

These are the parts of ourselves that really need the work so that we can honor our higher desires.  If you struggle with answering these questions, or think that you don’t do this, that is a great time to hire a coach, because we ALL do this.  And a coach can help you see what you are missing in yourself.

So how do we know what our higher desires are?  This takes some self-exploration.  This is not about who you “should” be or who you are “supposed” to be, but truly who you are and who you want to be.  We, as children of our Heavenly Parents, were given the ability to create.  To be creative.  That does not look the same for everyone.  But, we are all able to create something and be of value to humanity in some way.  We were born with the capacity to create goodness.  This could be in the home.  It could be in the arts.  It could be in the business world.  It could be in so many areas.  Don’t limit yourself.  But really take a look at the gifts you have been given.  What are the talents you have been blessed with?  Where can you create goodness in the world?  Then follow those desires.  Look at who you want to be.  Who you want to become.  And not so that you can get validation from others, but because that is who you were born to be.  That is who you want to be.

Over the years I have developed a lot of talents.  My mom always says I can achieve anything I put my mind to.  My coaching business isn’t my first business.  I actually owned the largest digital scrapbooking website in the world in the mid 2000s.  In that business I taught myself website design, graphic design, and really taught myself how to run a large company.  After I sold that business, I taught myself photography and had a photography business.  With my coaching business, I started coaching before I went through Certification.  I’ve taught myself how to start a podcast, how to run social media campaigns and Facebook ads.  I use my creative powers to create new content each every week for this podcast.  I create content for my clients in my coaching program.  I’m not telling you this to tell you how great I am.  I’m telling you this because I follow my higher desires.  I don’t let fear stop me.  I don’t let invalidation stop me.  I am a very successful coach and I know that I put a lot of goodness out in the world, but do you know what?  My family (not my husband and kids, but my parents and siblings) don’t support me at all.  They won’t even talk to me about my business or how things are going.  But I don’t care.  I know that what I am doing is good and right.  I’m following those higher desires even when others say I shouldn’t.  I’m turning inward to what is true for me.  Talking about sex in the LDS culture…that was really scary at first.  But I could feel inside of me that it is what I was MADE to do.  And I chose to follow it, even though it was scary, and I have been richly blessed because of it.  And I know that so many of you are blessed because I dared to follow those desires.  

I’ve created a worksheet for you to help you see where you are getting in your own way.  To help you figure out your higher desires and what lower desires take over.  You can download it below.  

I want to help you tap into your higher desires.  I want to help you learn to overcome that lower brain and those immediate, self-gratifying, self-sabotaging lower desires.  I want to help you create the life, the marriage, and the sexual relationship you want and don’t know how to create for yourself.  Come, sign up for a free mini-coaching session where we can discuss what is going on for you right now, what you truly want for yourself and then I will design a program tailored to meet your specific goals and dreams to help you create the life and the reality you truly desire.