‘What? What do MEAN you don’t eat oysters???’
My oyster farmer cousin was shocked when I said I didn’t want an oyster and fair enough. Oysters are great and I’m a fairly adventurous eater. In year 5, I was the only kid to eat a witchery grub on camp when we were learning about bush tucker. I’ve eaten rabbit, kangaroo, crocodile. I try really hard not to be a picky eater and I’ll generally try anything once. Being partnered with a coeliac who will slowly die if he’s exposed to excess gluten over the course of his life, I can’t be jumping in going ‘Oh I won’t eat that because I don’t like sultanas.’ I feel like there’s an unspoken dietary requirement limit per family and we like to save them for the stuff that won’t destroy my partner’s digestive system. For the record, I don’t like sultanas but if someone serves them to me, I’ll eat them because it won’t kill me and also I’m a grown up. Generally I avoid carbs if it’s my choice but if someone serves them to me, I carb up. No biggie. I will often refuse dessert because sugar makes me loopy but I reckon that’s fine. As long as you let people feed you a main meal, they tend not to be too weird about forcing their desserts on you.
Allow me to explain about the oysters. It’s not that I don’t like them. They’re fine. It’s just that they’re a premium food item that other people covet that are wasted on me. My father and my partner are oyster fiends and I’d rather not take away something that I feel luke warm about when it’s something they really, really enjoy.
And that’s what this week’s episode is all about.
Should we let our likes/dislikes be the keepers of our life?
The answer is… yes and no… but we’ll get to that later.
I had a great friend guest in mind for this episode. He’s the type of guy who historically has pretty great boundaries and doesn’t really bend on things he doesn’t want to do but in totally on brand fashion he didn’t want to be a guest on the podcast so he’s not on the podcast. True to form right?
This week’s actual friend guest is my mate Denen. He’s technically Ben’s mate (they met in about year 8 in high school) but I’ve definitely claimed him as my own. Denen is the best. He took amazing care of Ben when he had nose surgery a few years ago when I had to travel for work. Then he came and stayed with me and cooked me dinner and took the rubbish out when our kid was a baby and Ben was overseas. Everyone should have a Denen.
The reason I asked Denen to be the friend guest this week is because he’s a very amenable guy – he’s certainly not a push over but he’ll likely do almost anything you ask him to do, whether or not he wants to do it because he’s just really nice. He’s also a real go getter. He won’t say no to any adventure. I was curious about what he thinks about following your intuition of what you WANT to do versus not doing things that you know you won’t like.
In this episode I chat about…
- Boundaries and when to bend them
- Why we do things we don’t want to do
- When we should listen to our instincts and not the thing we don’t want to do
- Whether being adventurous is a built in thing or if we can develop the skill
- Dating with or against your typ
- How actively choosing someone who isn’t your type often works out brilliantly
- Considering the pain factor of the thing you don’t want to do vs the rewards of doing the thing you don’t want to do
- Considering the cost-benefit ratio of doing the thing you don’t want to do – what’s the cost and is it worth it?
- Does the thought of not doing it feel worse?
- It’s okay to own the things you don’t like
If you’re struggling with whether or not you should do something and you can’t decide, this episode is for you.
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