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January 24, 2025 16 mins

Discover how surrendering control can lead to a more fulfilling and peaceful life.  Brenda and Catherine introduce a simple yet powerful exercise that will help you focus your energy, time and attention on what truly matters by separating what you can control from what you can release to the universe. 

Tired of letting anxiety and futile worries dictate your day? This episode will show you how to have more sanity in your life, encouraging personal empowerment and trust in the co-creation process.

By embracing this practice, you can conserve energy, reduce stress, and put your valuable resources on what you can truly control. 

Highlights of this Episode:
• Introduction of the universal list as an exercise to have more sanity
• Importance of identifying what is within your control 
• Personal insights on doing what you can control and letting go
• Exploring co-creation with the universe 
• Reflection on the serenity prayer as a guiding mantra

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Email:
desireasmedicine@gmail.com
goddessbrenda24@gmail.com
catherine@catherinenavarro.com

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@Brenda_Fredericks
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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Welcome to.
Desire is Medicine.
We are two very different womenliving a life led by desire,
inviting you into our world.
I'm Brenda.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully
expressed true self in my dailylife.
Motherhood relationships and mybusiness Desire has taken me on
quite a ride and every day Ipractice listening to and
following the voice within.
I'm a middle school teacher,turned coach and guide of the
feminine.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the
truest and hopefully thehighest version of me.
I don't have children, I'venever been married.
I've spent equal parts of mylife in corporate as in some
down and low shady spaces.
I was the epitome of tired andwired and my path led me to
explore desire.
I'm a coach, guide, energyworker and a forever student,

(00:58):
even after decades of inner work.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
We are humble beginners on the mat, still
exploring, always curious.
We believe that listening toand following the nudge of
desire is a deep spiritualpractice that helps us grow.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
On the Desires Medicine podcast.
We talk to each other, weinterview people we know and
love about the practice ofdesire, bringing in a very
important piece that is oftenoverlooked being responsible for
our desire, piece.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
That is often overlooked being responsible for
our desire.
Welcome listeners and friendsto another episode of the Desire
as Medicine podcast.
This is Brenda, and I am joinedby my wonderful and amazing
co-host, catherine Navarro.
So great to have you here today, catherine, and all of us, as
we are here for another Toolboxepisode.

(01:46):
Maybe you've been listening fora long time to our podcast this
is our second season.
Maybe you are new and justjoining us.
A Toolbox episode is a miniepisode where we play with
desire.
So Catherine and I talk aboutdesire a lot.
Goodness, I never knew therewere so many topics, so many

(02:09):
branches of the tree of desire.
So we really want to give youpractices and tools to help you
play with your own desire.
So that's what these miniepisodes are about, and we
happen to love them.
So today is an episode that cameout of Sarah Trudeau's episode,

(02:31):
which was a couple of episodesback.
Sarah is a genius atco-creating with the universe,
and I did take her writingcourse, and one of the practices
that she taught in this writingcourse really changed things
for me, and when I talked toCatherine about it, she said oh,
I've done this.
So there's many different namesfor this particular practice.

(02:52):
Whatever you want to call it.
Catherine knows it as theuniversal list.
I learned it from Sarah Trudeauas the placemat activity.
There's probably many names forthis, and the down and dirty of
this practice is it helps youturn over to the universe what
you cannot control and it helpsyou tap into the things that are

(03:18):
yours to do.
If you are maybe a recoveringcontrol freak, like Catherine
and I are, it's really great toknow what are the things that
you actually have control overin your life and what are the
things that are not yourbusiness to do.

(03:38):
And even when you try to dothem, you can't control them
anyway.
When you try to do them, youcan't control them anyway.
There is a lot of power inputting your time and attention
and your resources into thethings that you can control and
then turning the rest over tothe universe.
So, if this is relatable at all, if you are up at night

(04:02):
worrying how is this going tohappen, how is that going to
happen?
How is that going to happen Ifyour mind is boggled down with
so many thoughts and worries ofhow is your life going to be the
way you want it to be, or howare your children going to do
what you want them to do, or howis money going to get into your
account?
Whatever the thing is that youare up worrying about and it is

(04:26):
definitely different for all ofus I think this practice is
going to help you because it'sgoing to give you a clear line
of what you can put yourattention on and what you just
need to let go of and turn overto the universe.

(04:46):
So here's the practice You'regoing to get a piece of paper.
You're going to divide it in twoparts.
On the left you're going towrite you, or maybe me, and on
the right you're going to writeuniverse, or God, or mother
earth, whatever it is that isyour higher power.

(05:09):
And on the left, I want you tolist all the things that you can
do today.
We're going to do this practicejust for today.
So for me it would be do yogain the morning.
Tell my partner I love him.

(05:30):
Brush my teeth, shower, gogrocery shopping.
Take a walk.
Call my mother.
Water my plants.
Call my mother what are myplants.

(05:51):
Pay a bill, show up withCatherine at X time to record
our podcast.
Whatever the things are that youactually can do.
All of those things go on theleft-hand column because you
have control over them.
You choose to do them or not.
Drink water, eat good food,dance.
Whatever it is that you need todo today, spend time with your

(06:13):
children that's a really goodone.
And then, on the right, I wantyou to list all the things that
you really have no control over.
Maybe you think you do becauseyou're worrying about them, but
worrying does not yield anyresults in my experience.
So maybe on the right you wouldInclude how other people react,

(06:40):
your partner's mood, whethersomebody emails you back, maybe
if somebody that you love getssick.
My dog just died of lymphomaand I couldn't control that at
all.
So on the right hand side, Iwould put my dog resting and

(07:02):
living out the rest of his dayswell and easy.
I'm doing a photo shoot tomorrow.
I can't control how the photoscome out.
I could show up, I could bringnice clothes that would all go
on the left, but how it actuallycomes out or how the
photographer behaves, I don'thave any control over that.

(07:23):
So spend a few minutes,complete your list, and at the
very bottom of the list I justlike to write I release this, I
turn this over to you and theneverything that's on the
right-hand side.
Just put it in a balloon andfloat it out to the universe,

(07:46):
because these are things thatyou cannot control.
There is a magic in letting go.
When we grip and we hold on, wethink that it makes things
happen, but it actually doesn't.
We think that it makes thingshappen, but it actually doesn't.
So you put it in your balloon,you let it fly away and then you

(08:09):
focus on the right-hand side,you make dinner, you go to bed
on time, whatever it is that youfeel that you can do today, and
that's the practice.
Catherine, I would love to hearany thoughts that you have on
this practice, or anything thatyou would like to add.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
I loved this practice .
This practice for me I wasdoing maybe over 25 years ago
and in the practice, one of theresults that I received was to
really learn how to delegate.
I think I was going through atime in my life where I really
thought everything had to bedone by me, and it was a great
practice to just say is thismine or can the universe do it?

(08:51):
Can the universe do this, canthe universe do that?
And then I started to realize,oh, I have a particular grip on
things that aren't really in mycontrol, and what I mean by grip
is my mind potentially would becircling the drain, worrying
about particular outcomes thatreally had nothing to do with me

(09:12):
, they really were not in mycontrol, I really could not
influence them.
And so this exercise ofcreating the universe list of
it's my to-do list, and thenwhatever I could bring over to
the universe side, which was onthe right-hand side, or
sometimes I would do front back,like on the front side is for

(09:34):
me and on the back side is forthe universe, and sometimes I
would break it in half and thenjust rip off the half that was
for the universe and just tossthat part.
And sometimes I would puteverything on the universe list
so that I could see it and thensay, okay, what on this list is

(09:55):
actually mine.
And then I would put whateverwas mine on the left and just
scratch it off of the universeLike, okay, universe, I'm going
to take these, these areactually mine.
But I would put whatever wasmine on the left and just
scratch it off of the universeLike, okay, universe, I'm going
to take these, these areactually mine.
But I would recommend peoplejust play with it to see how it
best helps you and how it cancontribute to your sanity.
Because truth is that, yeah, Ithink often we control, we

(10:19):
control, often we worry aboutthings that are really not in
our control.
It helps us.
I think it gives us this falsebelief that we can affect
something that we really can'taffect, gives us a false belief
that we're somehow doingsomething.

(10:39):
But worrying isn't really doinganything other than spinning
our wheels, makes us anxious andat least me.
For me for sure, worrying wasnot helpful.
Worrying used to get me allsort of worked up and fully
anxious in my body and I wouldbe like you know, how could I do

(11:03):
this.
How could I do that?
The truth was that there was nohow because it really wasn't in
my control.
So I highly recommend thispractice.
I don't do it that much anymoreand there was definitely a time
when I did it on a day-to-daybasis definitely a time when I

(11:23):
did it on a day-to-day basis.
But now I have a much betterunderstanding of what's mine and
what's not.
It's not as important right nowas it was back then, and I
don't think I would be in theright now or have the peace of
mind that I have in the rightnow without that practice back
then.
That practice really helped meto be able to technically almost

(11:50):
like put it down oh, I'mworried about tomorrow, because
I don't know how tomorrow isgoing to turn out.
Well, I mean, I literally haveno control over that other than
preparing.
That is definitely up to theuniverse.
So, for example, I am in thispresent moment, I'm on the mend,
I'm currently healing from acold.

(12:11):
There's really other than rest,which is on my side.
There's nothing else I can do.
Everything else is up to God,the universe.
I don't know.
I don't know what tomorrow isgoing to bring.
I don't know how I'm going tofeel in a few hours.
It's sort of minute by minute.
But if I were to be worriedabout when am I actually going

(12:32):
to feel better?
It's just so moot and soexhausting because it's really
not in my control.
I have no way of fast-trackinghealth, no way of fast-tracking
a decision, no way offast-tracking how someone else

(12:56):
is going to respond or howsomeone else is going to show up
is going to respond, or howsomeone else is going to show up
, like Brenda just talked abouther photo shoot tomorrow and she
said that one of the thingsthat the universe left is the
photographer.
Yeah, she has no way ofcontrolling how the photographer
shows up, or what mood thephotographer is in, or what kind
of camera the photographer has,or what time of day, how much

(13:18):
sunlight there is at that timeof day that you show up.
There are certain things thatare just really not in our
control.
But I want to say that it'sbigger than that.
It's sort of in every moment,every day, there will be things
that are not in our control.
It's just the nature ofco-creating, the nature of

(13:49):
co-creating, and the faster wecan see the truth in that, the
faster we can implement our ownpractices so that we can
surrender things that are reallynot in our control anyway, the
more peace we're going to have.
Brenda, amen to more peace.

Speaker 3 (13:59):
Amen to more peace.
You dropped some beautifulbombs there, catherine.
And the one I want to pick upon before we close out is
co-creating with the universe.
We want to create our dreamlife.
We want to have things that wewant in our life.
We want to follow our desires.
How do we co-create with theuniverse?

(14:22):
Right, we can't really do itall on our own.
We want to work with theuniverse.
One thing we talk about on thispodcast a lot is that what the
universe has in store for us isway better than what we can even
imagine for ourselves, which iswhy we just follow the
breadcrumbs of desire.
And this practice is a greatway to work with co-creating

(14:46):
with the universe, by payingattention to what it is that you
can do and then turning overthe rest to the universe, to
your higher power, because youcan't control it.
So that is this tool, is howyou can better co-create with
the universe, because worry andfear and all of that that you

(15:09):
are getting stuck in in themiddle of the night when you're
thinking about these things thatbelong on the right hand side
of this list just drain yourenergy.
I want to close with a littleprayer that I say to myself
every day which goes with thisactivity and this toolbox so
well, and you probably know it,it's the serenity prayer.

(15:33):
So take a deep breath.
And I say this every morning andevery when I say the parts, I
picture in my mind what is mineto do and what I can turn over.
Here we go.
God, grant me the serenity toaccept the things I cannot

(15:59):
change, the courage to changethe things that I can, and the
wisdom to know the difference.
Amen, amen.
Please, let us know how thisactivity, this toolbox episode,
lands for you and if you try it,we would love to hear.

(16:21):
You can can tag us on InstagramDesire is Medicine Podcast.
Thank you for joining us.
Thank you for joining us on theDesire is Medicine.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
Podcast Desire invites us to be honest, loving
and deeply intimate withourselves and others.
You can find our handles in theshow notes.
We'd love to hear from you.
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