Embracing a life of joy and adventure beyond fear

Ever wondered how it feels to step away from the beaten path and craft a life of unadulterated joy and adventure? 

It's not Pollyanna. It's possible.

On Tuesday, I spoke with Scot McKay, a fearless globetrotter who's traveled to 110 countries. Scot has crafted his life in a way that cuts through the noise of societal expectations. He's truly living an untethered existence. 

In today's episode, I pull back the curtain on the main thing I see that he's done in his lifetime and how this philosophy can reshape your life's trajectory: Choosing curiosity and love over fear and control.

Today, I reflect with you about  my own path alongside my husband, where we've turned fear into a foundation of safety within our relationship – which sparked in our teen years. As we've peeled back the layers of our own relationship, we've faced some huge challenges. There are so many tethers and fear-based patters we've created between the two of us without conscious awareness. Dismantling them, one by one, has been quite a journey. 

This episode isn't just about wanderlust; it's an intimate exploration of how fear-based decisions can stifle personal growth and dim the brilliance of our relationships. It's a call to reevaluate the anchors holding us back and an inspiration to chase the life that makes us say, "heck yes, this is living!" 

Embrace the wisdom, the personal anecdotes, and the infectious optimism that could very well be the nudge you need to start navigating towards your own extraordinary, untethered life.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hi and welcome to Untethered with Jenless, the podcast that's here to help you break free, be you and unleash your inner brilliance. I'm your host, jen, and in this episode we're going to talk about how fear keeps you tethered to a life you don't love. Let's dive in. Hey there, unicorn, it's Jen. Welcome back to the podcast for a Thursday thread. It's a Thursday thread. It's a Thursday thread. It's a Thursday thread.

Speaker 1: 0:41

We are pulling a thread out of the episode with Scott McKay on Tuesday. Really cool. If you have not listened to that episode, you can go listen to it after this one, or you can pause this. Go listen to it, come back your choice, choose your own adventure or just listen to this one solo. Here's what I want to share about Scott's episode.

Speaker 1: 1:05

One of the main things that we talked about was how he has crafted a life that he absolutely loves. He's been to 110 countries. He's traveled all over the world, had so many wild experiences. He's at a point now in his life where he can take a month off, go get in his RV, drive off. He chose to not put his kids in public schools so that he could live that much of an untethered existence, so that they could travel together as a family and they could be what he called world schooling. Most people would not even think of that option, right, I think we don't even think of that option. We simply go the path that we think is intended for us, and it keeps us tethered, perhaps, to a life that's less brilliant than the life that we truly, truly, truly want to live. You can hear in his voice how happy he is. He made some comments as well about you know.

Speaker 1: 2:04

People might say that this is Pollyanna. I feel that way sometimes too. Here's the deal. Here's why those of us who are optimistic, who are positive, or who want to be optimistic or want to be positive, but feel this continuous I say this because this was me not so long ago feel this undercurrent of negativity, feel this undercurrent of guilt, this undercurrent of worry that is fighting continuously with our actual desire, with our truest authentic nature and our truest expression of our self, which is optimistic and positive and light and loving. It's because so much of our world is crafted around fear, crafted around fear-based strategies.

Speaker 1: 2:56

You're not new to this If you've listened to this podcast. I have talked about this before. The more and more I journey along this path myself, the more and more I talk to people, I look around at the world and I say, okay, who is out there living a life that they're like fuck, yes, this life is awesome, I love it. And Scott is one of those people and you're going to see more and more this year, more of those people. Because I'm like, okay, I just want to know the people who are just really living the life that I mean, if he died today, he would say that was brilliant. He would absolutely say that. And a lot of the people who I have on this podcast I mean pretty much that's what I'm looking for are those people. Because I want to know what did you do that allowed you to do it? And he specifically said in this episode it's because I allow myself to be open and I allow myself to be curious and I allow myself to set down the fear so that I can lean in to love. And this comes down to the very nitty gritty.

Speaker 1: 4:04

My husband and I, in our own relationship. We are, we've been together a long time y'all. We got together when we were 17 years old. We are now each 41 years old. We got together in high school. We have years upon years upon years of unconsciously living fear-based strategies together, fear-based reactions doing subconscious behaviors that we had no idea we were doing, that were enabling us to feel safe in a romantic relationship, that were enabling us to feel safe in our jobs. That were enabling us to feel safe in our relationships with other people.

Speaker 1: 4:39

Now, this might not be you. You might not be married to your high school sweetheart, but maybe you've had, you're looking for love. Maybe you're looking for a deepening of your relationships. Maybe it's not even a romantic relationship, but you're looking for a deepening of relationships with your friends or with your loved ones.

Speaker 1: 4:57

What really gets in the way is fear, and that's what Joey and I are finding again and again and again is that it takes a lot of courage to, in the middle of an argument, when your ego is so loud, to say you know what I'm going to be curious about, how he's feeling. I'm going to be curious and ask him a question about his reaction to what I said, but instead we stay in that fear-based, egoic mind, and one of the fun things that came up in this conversation was Scott. It was totally lippant. He did not plan to say this, but he said instead of running my business. I was ruining my business and it's the eye that was put in there that causes so many problems and I was like, ooh, that's fascinating, and I think that's true with our relationships too.

Speaker 1: 5:47

It's like, instead of letting the relationship just be, just run, just move as it's supposed to, at the speed that it's supposed to, at the pace that it's supposed to. This is all things. This is our career too, but with all things, we stick the eye in there and we want to see it through our perspective, we want to talk through our perspective, and that that that, that that I need to do it this way is totally an element of trying to feel safe and trying to feel in control. That is completely fear-based. And once we see that, it's like, oh my gosh, what am I doing? What am I doing in this life?

Speaker 1: 6:24

That element of control, trying to control the next thing, whether it's in your relationships or in your job that trying to plan it out, trying to grip onto control, keeps us from going and having wild, wildly cool experiences. You know, I mean it goes down to every little thing in our lives, like how much are we trying to plan our year to the point of our lives? How much are we trying to plan our entire human experience and saying, okay, I'm going to work this number of years and then I am going to retire, and then we are going to travel and this is how it's going to go, instead of opening up the door and the possibility to what if I simply had my most brilliant experiences this year, instead of saying Okay? Here's an example instead of saying Okay, probably in the summer, after we take our nephew on his graduation trip, then we're going to go get a dog. That was my plan. That was my plan, but instead I was open enough to the possibility of allowing Mr Alfred, aka Alfredo, aka noodle boy those are all of his names right now. We've only had him three weeks, so he has two nicknames. There will be many more, I am sure, over his many years.

Speaker 1: 7:47

That bit of magic that this dog is causing in our lives every single day, that is making my days so much more brilliant than I ever could have imagined slightly frustrating as well, so much more magical than I ever could have imagined would not have happened if I leaned into all of my fear based thinking, which was I can't have a rescue dog, I can't do that, I can't retrain a dog. I can't have a dog in Portland Oregon in the winter, when it's raining all the time and he's learning how to poop outside and I'm having to stand out in the rain, and all of the thoughts that I had had In fact I thought that I would only be able to get a puppy, that I couldn't do a rescue dog, that that was not something I was capable of doing. Instead, I leaned into the openness and the curiosity of maybe we can. What if we did? What if he actually came to us on purpose? What if this dog was really meant for us? What if it was a magical experience? What if we could do it? All of those questions are such loving questions and they help us to stand down to the fear base. And I'm not saying that we should be open to everything. We could have gone and seen Alfred and I would have immediately known in my body that it was a no.

Speaker 1: 9:00

And we have to be boundaries. We have to lean into and love ourselves enough to be boundaries and to set the boundaries where we need to set the boundaries. That's another skill, because that is involved with having love for yourself and not being afraid of disappointing others, not being afraid that you need to please others. All the guilt, all the worry, see, all of those things come from that other side. It's that self love of setting the boundary for yourself. If I hadn't done that, then all of these conversations that I'm having with Joey and everything that we're working through in our relationship would not have been possible. I had to come home to myself and love of myself and understand the why of putting up a boundary. I had to understand the yeses and the noes in my own body. What does that feel like? What does my intuition tell me? What feels good for me? Why am I doing this? When we truly understand that, then it helps us to untether. When we lean more into love for ourselves, we can lean more into love in our relationships. That's where the I does come in.

Speaker 1: 10:18

If you're not loving yourself and there's no love that you can give for other people and we have not been taught that we have not been taught that. So what is keeping us from being happy? What is truly, truly keeping us from being happy, from living the life that we really know is called on our heart? I believe it's not letting ourselves lean into love and instead letting the world tell us that we need to lean into fear. It's not letting ourselves feel joy and gratitude and the peace of a present moment, the peace of a breath. It's not letting us invest in the things that we know are actually serving us and instead investing in the things that society tells us will serve us, tells us will make us happy. We're not listening to ourselves, which is an act of love. So what one choice can you make today that would be a more loving act?

Speaker 1: 11:27

Now, understanding that love might require a little bit of courage, a little bit of the courage to be curious, to be brave, to be humble, to let yourself be grateful. What is one tiny act of love that you can do for yourself? Today, here, at the end of the episode, as I do on every Thursday thread, I would love to offer you an opportunity to gift yourself an act of love by pausing with me and taking a few quiet breaths, offering yourself a moment of peace and a moment of gratitude that you're even taking this moment to pause and to breathe. If you're able to be seated, you can do this seated. You can also pause if you're standing, if you're driving. Do this with your eyes open, ensuring that you are able to keep keen awareness if not come back to this another time If you are seated or if you're standing, bringing your awareness to your feet on the ground, feeling into that support beneath your feet.

Speaker 1: 12:42

If you're seated, feeling each of your sit bones on the surface beneath you, feeling the chair beneath you, that seat beneath you, reaching up and supporting you, the ground, reaching up and supporting those feet. And, when you're ready, beginning to breathe into the nose, out through the mouth, audible sigh into the nose, out through the mouth. You can continue with an audible sigh. Or you can breathe out through the mouth, gently, continuing to breathe, a few more breaths at your pace when you're ready, drawing an inhale into the belly, filling your belly up with air Once you feel like you're completely full, adding another sip to the top, exhaling completely, placing a hand on your heart, offering yourself thanks for this moment to pause and to breathe, offering yourself right now a moment of presence, bringing your awareness back into the ground, meeting your floor, bringing your awareness back to your feet, meeting the ground, feeling into that support once again, fluttering your eyes open if they were closed, coming back into the here and the now.

Speaker 1: 15:17

Thank you so much for listening to this episode and for offering yourself this moment of presence, this gift of considering where in your life you can offer yourself more love, more joy and more happiness. It means the world to me that you would listen to this podcast. If there was something that you gained for yourself, I encourage you to share it with a friend so that they can enjoy it as well. You can also share it with all your friends by taking a little screenshot of the episode itself, share it on social media and tag me. I'm UntetheredGen on Instagram. Thanks again for listening. You just keep shining your magical unicorn light out there for all to see. I'll see you next time. Bye.