113. Why you Keep Saying, "Someday": The Permission Problem

Holly Toscanini: I bet there's something that you've been wanting to do, to pursue, to change or begin, and you've attached some kind of condition to it, like, I'll do it when the kids are older, or I'll start when work settles down. I'll go after it when I feel more ready. I'll give myself permission when I've lost the weight, paid off the debt, figured out the next five years, stopped being so busy, finally gotten enough sleep, pick one. If any version of that sentence lives in you, You're not alone. Most of the women I work with have an entire someday list, desires that are real, that matter, and that have been there for years, sitting behind a condition that keeps getting moved. Today, we're naming that structure because here's what I've come to understand. The someday cycle is not a character flaw. It's not proof that you're indecisive or uncommitted or lacking follow through. It's a learned pattern with a very specific shape. And once you can see that shape clearly, you can start working with it. Today, I'm going to show you how. Welcome back to How to Lose the Weight. I'm Holly Toscanini and we're in week three of the Weight Framework Series. Now, if you're just joining us, welcome. Each episode in this series names one of the specific patterns that keep midlife women stuck in the witness phase, W, of the WAIT weight method. We've covered the inner counsel and permission givers in episode 111, the research loop in episode 112, and today we're looking at the someday cycle. which I think is the most quietly painful of the three we've covered so far, because this one isn't just about avoidance, it's about desire. Real desire deferred indefinitely and the particular grief that comes with watching your own life stay on hold while you wait for a condition or goalpost that just keeps moving. We are gonna name the pattern, understand how it works and use two tools from the Unwaiting method, micro moves and the wobble start loosening its hold. Not all at once, but enough to get you started. Let me give the someday cycle its actual shape because naming it for what it really is is the first step to changing it. Now the pattern looks like this. You have a desire, something you genuinely want and you've attached a condition to getting it. The desire is real and the condition sounds reasonable, but the condition has a very particular quality. It keeps moving. I call this the desire plus condition structure, and it works like this. I'll do it when is always followed by something that either hasn't happened yet or is entirely out of your control. When the kids are more independent, when the relationship is more settled, when I feel more confident, when the timing is better, when I've figured out this whole money situation, when I'm further along. Here's what makes this pattern so persistent. The condition isn't random. It's specifically chosen, usually without conscious awareness, to be just far enough out of your reach that you never quite get there. And the moment you get close to the condition being met, one of two things happens. Either the goalposts move and a new condition appears, or the desire itself starts to feel too risky now that it's actually within reach, and your nervous system finds a new reason to wait. This isn't you being difficult or self-sabotaging in some dramatic way. It's just your nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do. Protect you from the vulnerability of wanting something openly and pursuing it without a guarantee. Because here's what's underneath the condition almost every time. Fear. Not a failure necessarily, but fear of being seen wanting something. Fear of prioritizing yourself and maybe having it not work out. Fear of the change that getting what you want would actually require. Fear that wanting this much means something is wrong with you, that a good, grateful, responsible woman shouldn't need more than what she already has. The condition is the insurance policy against all of that. And as long as you haven't met it yet, you haven't started yet, which means you can't be seen trying, which means you can't fail, which means none of those fears have to be faced. The someday cycle is not a character flaw. It's a very intelligent, very exhausting way of keeping yourself safe from the risk of your own desires. Now I wanna go a level deeper here because I think this is the piece that most women haven't fully named for themselves. If the condition were genuinely the issue, if you truly just needed more time, a little more stability, a little more readiness, then you'd meet the condition and move on. But that's not usually what happens. What usually happens is that the condition gets met or nearly met and something shifts. Suddenly it's not quite enough or a new condition appears right alongside it or the original desire starts to feel smaller and more manageable, which sounds positive, but actually means your nervous system has quietly negotiated you down from what you actually want. I see three common versions of this. First is moving the goalpost. the condition keeps evolving. When the kids are older becomes when they're out of the house, becomes when they're settled, becomes when I know they're okay. There is no finish line because the finish line is not the point. The point is to stay in preparation mode, in waiting mode. The second is the condition swap. You meet one condition and a new one replaces it immediately, usually without you noticing the substitution. Work settles down and suddenly you realize you also need to wait until you feel more confident. You reach the goal and you realize you also need to wait until the relationship is better. Each condition makes perfect sense on its own and together they form an airtight case for waiting indefinitely. The third is what I call desire dilution. You start with a real specific alive desire, something that makes you feel something amazing when you think about it. And over months or years of deferring it, the desire just gets smaller. You start describing it in simple, vague terms. You stop telling people about it. The someday language gets quieter. This is the sneakiest version because it can look like acceptance or maturity when it's actually a slow erasure. You're not at peace with not having it. You just got very practiced at not letting yourself feel how much you really want it. None of these versions are permanent, but you have to be able to see which one you're in before you can start to work with it. And you have to be willing to feel what the desire actually costs you to keep deferring, which is often more than you've let yourself admit. Here's what I want to be honest about before we get to these tools today. The someday cycle does not break easily. It's been running for a long time in most women. It has roots deep in conditioning and fear and legitimate life complexity. We're not going to dissolve it in a single podcast episode. What we can do is start working with it, specifically using two tools from the Unwaiting method that are particularly well suited to this pattern. The first is micro moves. A micro move is the smallest possible action in the direction of the desire. Something so small that the condition doesn't feel relevant yet. Not starting the business, Just writing down what the business is going to do. Not having the whole conversation. Just drafting what you want to say. Not making the big change. Just spending 15 minutes with the question of what the change would look like. And here's why micro moves work specifically on the someday cycle. They bypass the condition. The condition says, I'll do it when. Micro moves say, I'll do this one tiny thing now, regardless of when. You're not waiting for the condition to be met before you move. You're not pretending the condition doesn't exist. You're just moving in the direction of the desire without asking the condition's permission first. This matters because the someday cycle runs on the belief that you can't begin until the circumstances are perfect. A micro-move interrupts that belief by not arguing with it, but by proving it wrong in one small, specific, undeniable instance. You moved. the condition wasn't met, and nothing catastrophic happened. That's evidence. And evidence is how this whole pattern changes. The second tool is the wobble, and this one is essential for the Sunday cycle specifically. If you've been listening to this show, you know the wobble. It's the discomfort that shows up right after you do something that breaks a familiar pattern. The guilt, the second guessing, the urge to pull back and return to the version of yourself that waits. With the someday cycle, the Wobble has a very particular flavor, I guess. It often sounds like, who am I to want this? Or this is selfish. Or I should just be grateful for what I have. Or a quieter version, just a creeping discomfort that feels like you've done something wrong by moving towards what you want even a little bit. Now I wanna name that feeling directly because most women interpret it as a signal to stop, as confirmation that the desire was unreasonable or the thing was wrong. or they were getting ahead of themselves. And it isn't any of those things. It's just the wobble. It's the nervous system registering that you broke a pattern, that you moved toward a desire without the conditions permission, and your nervous system set up a flare. The way through it is not to argue with it. It's to name it for what it is. This is the wobble. This is discomfort, not danger. And then to hold on to the move that you made. Maybe not forever, just for now. just long enough for your nervous system to learn that moving towards what you want does not in fact cause the thing it's afraid of been doing. The condition doesn't need to happen. The learning doesn't happen in one wobble either. It happens over a lot of wobbles, but each time you hold through it, the next one gets a little shorter, a little quieter. That's how the someday cycle loosens. Not in a dramatic moment of clarity in small micro moves held through the discomfort of taking yourself seriously. The someday cycle is not proof that you don't have what it takes. It's not evidence that you're too comfortable, too scared, too late, or too far gone. It's a very specific, very learnable pattern, the desire plus condition structure. And it runs on the belief that you need permission from your circumstances before you're allowed to want what you want. You don't. Your one practice this week is to look at your someday list, the real one, not the sanitized version. and pick one desire that has a connection attached to it. Just one. Write down the condition and then ask yourself honestly, if this condition were met tomorrow, would you actually move forward or would a new condition suddenly appear? And then take one micro move in the direction of that desire. Something so small, it barely counts. Something that doesn't require the condition to be met first. And notice the wobble when it arrives because it will. Name it, hold on to your action, hold on to that move, even for just a few hours. That's the work this week. If you want to understand specifically which patterns are running your weight cycle right now, for how long you are in the weight process, the Unwaiting audit will give you that picture. ⁓ It just a few minutes and it's specific, not a generic quiz. You're going to learn your confidence archetype. You might be the awakening woman, the inner critic warrior, the intuitive seeker, the embodied confidence woman or the reinvention ready woman. You can find the link in the show notes or in the description below the video. Next week, episode 114, we're staying in the witness phase and naming one of the most seductive patterns in the whole waiting cycle, what I call fear with a planner. It's the version of waiting that looks the most responsible, the most prepared, the most like you've really thought it through. It's also underneath all of that, just fear. Just planned and presented so well that even you can't always tell the difference. Now, if you've ever called your waiting being practical, This episode is specifically for you. Until next time, bye for now.