00:00
Support comes from WISE, the smart way to sendmoney around the world.
Your life is global. Your money should be too.
Some providers promise no fees on overseastransfers,
but extra costs often hide in bloated exchangerates.
Choose WISE. You can send money overseas foreducation,
or spend in over 40 currencies while traveling.
Get the exchange rate that you'd usually see onGoogle.
Plus, count on 24-7 customer support.
Be smart. Get WISE. Visit WISE.com. T's and C'sapply.
Have you ever reached a goal you worked on foryears only to feel empty the very next day?
It's a strange feeling, isn't it?
It's like climbing a mountain, reaching the top,
and realizing you forgot why you wanted to bethere in the first place.
Many of our listeners tell us they feel thissuccess hangover with their English journey too.
Exactly. They hit a level, maybe B2, and suddenlythe hunger is gone.
But today, we're not just talking about English.
We're talking about the engine behind everythingwe do. Our desire.
Welcome to your English Toolbox. I'm Martin.
And I'm Julia.
Today we're looking at what Jay Stringer calls theArchitecture of Desire.
This is a deep dive into why we want what we want,
and why sometimes our own desires feel like amystery to us.
We'll explore why understanding your deeper why isthe ultimate productivity tool.
And we'll do it using clear, natural English soyou can build your vocabulary while you build a
better life.
Julia, let's start with why that success hangoverhappens.
Jay Stringer suggests we often treat our goalslike a cure.
Like a medicine for the soul? That's a veryrelatable way to put it.
Yes, we think, if I reach this level of English,my social anxiety will be cured.
Or if I get this promotion, my feeling of beinginvisible will be cured.
But the goal is just a landmark, Martin. It's asign on the road.
It isn't a doctor. It can't heal a wound from theinside.
That is why we feel the false horizon.
You know that feeling when you're hiking and youthink you see the top of the hill?
Oh, I know it well. Your heart jumps, you pushyourself to reach that line,
and then you get there and see another, higherpeak behind it.
03:05
Exactly. That's the neurochemistry of dopamine.
Our brain gives us a little reward for reachingthe goal, but it immediately points to the next
horizon.
This is why we are always doing, but neverarriving.
We are treating our lives like a broken patientthat needs constant fixing.
Stringer invites us to stop trying to cureourselves with goals
and start understanding the architecture of why wechose those goals in the first place.
To do that, we have to listen to the three voicesof desire.
The first voice is the impulsive voice.
This is the child inside us that wants thechocolate cake, the Netflix binge, or the instant
gratification.
I know that voice very well. It's loud, it'surgent, and it usually appears when I'm feeling
stressed or lonely.
Right! It's an escape.
Then there is the social voice.
This is the architecture built by other people,our parents, our boss, or social media.
This is the voice that says, you should want a bighouse,
or you should speak English without an accentbecause that looks more professional.
It's a borrowed desire.
It isn't yours, but you've lived in it for so longyou think it belongs to you.
It feels heavy because it's a performance.
And the third voice, the one we usually findhardest to hear?
That's the authentic voice, the voice of the soul.
This one doesn't scream or demand. It's a map, nota megaphone.
But it's so hard to hear the soul when the socialvoice is telling you to work harder
and the impulsive voice is telling you to hidefrom your problems.
This is where we build the architecture offantasy.
We create mental movies of a future where we arefinally perfect just to escape the discomfort of
today.
We spend so much time in the fantasy of being afluent polyglot
that we actually forget to enjoy the reality ofthe conversation we are having right now.
Fantasy is a drug, Julia. It numbs the pain offeeling not enough.
But, like any drug, the crash is inevitable whenyou realize the fantasy isn't real.
06:02
So the goal isn't to live in the fantasy, but todecode it.
But what is the fantasy trying to tell us aboutwhat we truly need?
If your fantasy is being a famous speaker, maybeyou don't actually need the fame.
Maybe you just need to feel that your thoughtshave value.
That is a much smaller, much more reachable goal.
You can find value in one conversation todaywithout needing a million followers.
Exactly. It's about finding the authentic needhidden behind the social craving.
In the next part, we're going to look at wherethese blueprints come from
and how we often inherit them from ghosts in ourpast.
Julia, have you ever looked at your life andrealized you are living in a house that someone
else designed?
Someone who isn't even you?
That's a strange image, Martin. But yes, I think Ihave.
I realized recently that my obsession with beingproductive wasn't actually my own goal.
It was my mother's fear of being seen as lazy.
That is exactly what Jay Stringer calls theinheritance of desire.
We don't just inherit our eye color or our heightfrom our family.
We inherit their unfulfilled dreams and theirrigid fears.
It's like being born into a room with no windows.
And you never think to ask why it's so darkbecause that's just how the house was built before
you arrived.
And if your parents were always worried aboutmoney,
you might grow up with an intense desire for ahigh-status job,
even if that job makes you miserable.
You aren't chasing the job because you love thework.
You're chasing the job to fix a ghost's anxietyfrom 30 years ago.
That is the ghost in the architecture.
We are using our adult energy to solve childhoodproblems that don't belong to us anymore.
But it's hard to stop, isn't it?
Because we feel like we are betraying our familyif we change the blueprints.
Exactly. And that brings us to the architecture ofshame.
Shame is the blindfold of the soul, Julia.
Shame tells us that if we look too closely at whatwe truly want,
we'll find something bad or broken.
So we hide our true desires in the basement of ourpersonality.
09:00
We lock the door and we pretend that part of usdoesn't exist.
This is the betrayal of the self.
We choose to be a good version of what otherswant,
but we leave our true self in the dark.
But here is the psychological truth.
When you lock a desire in the basement, it doesn'tdie.
It just gets louder.
It starts to bang on the pipes of your life.
Is that why some people have sudden, strangeoutbursts of anger?
Or why they suddenly quit their jobs without aplan?
Yes, it's the authentic voice trying to breakthrough the floorboards.
The more we suppress ourselves, the more distortedour desires become.
It's like a river that you try to block with awall.
Eventually the water will find a way out, oftenthrough a flood.
So, to remodel our life, we have to go down intothe basement
with a flashlight and look at what we've hidden.
Support comes from WISE, the smart way to sendmoney around the world.
Your life is global. Your money should be too.
Some providers promise no fees on overseastransfers,
but extra costs often hide in bloated exchangerates.
Choose WISE. You can send money overseas foreducation
or spend in over 40 currencies while traveling.
Get the exchange rate that you'd usually see onGoogle.
Plus, count on 24-7 customer support.
Be smart. Get WISE.
Visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply.
But most of us don't want to go into the basement,
so we use the numbing paradox.
Numbing. That means to make something lose itsfeeling,
like when a dentist gives you an injection.
Exactly. We use doing as a drug.
We stay so busy, so productive, and so efficient
that we don't have to feel the basement banging onthe pipes.
Stringer says that when we numb bad desires,
like our loneliness or our fear,
we accidentally numb our good desires too.
This is the paradox.
You can't selectively numb emotions.
If you turn down the volume on your sadness,
you turn down the volume on your joy and yourcreativity too.
That's why so many high achievers feel flat.
They are successful, but they can't feel the sunon their face.
Their architecture is soundproof, but it's alsojoyproof.
12:00
We use our phones, our to-do lists,
and even our English vocabulary exercises to avoidbeing still.
Because in the stillness, the smoke of our desirebecomes visible,
and we are afraid of the fire.
But the fire is where the energy is.
If you want to be fluent, if you want to be aleader,
you need that internal heat.
So the cost of doing is actually the loss of ourown vitality.
We are working hard, but we aren't alive while wedo it.
So, Martin, how do we find our way back?
If our mind is full of social voices and inheritedblueprints,
who can we trust?
The mind is a great liar, Julia, but the body isan honest witness.
I've noticed this.
When I'm doing something because I should,
my shoulders are always up at my ears.
I feel like I'm carrying a heavy backpack.
That is a social voice desire.
It feels like a burden.
Your body is telling you,
this isn't yours, this is a borrowed blueprint.
But when I'm doing something authentic,
even if it's very difficult,
my chest feels expansive.
I feel like I can breathe deeper.
That expansive feeling is the soul saying,
yes, this is a room we were meant to live in.
If you listen to the body,
you can distinguish between an impulsive voice,
which feels like a scratch you need to itch,
and an authentic voice,
which feels like a pull toward a horizon.
But to hear that pull,
we have to pay the cost of being.
We have to be willing to be still
and feel the discomfort of the basement.
Most of us are terrified of being bored or beingquiet
because that's when the architecture of shamestarts talking.
It says, you're wasting time.
You're not good enough.
Why aren't you working?
But if you stay in the room with that voice,
eventually it runs out of things to say.
And underneath it, you find the real blueprint.
It's like waiting for the mud in a lake to settle.
Only then can you see the fish at the bottom.
This is the most productive thing you can do foryour personal development.
Stop building for five minutes and just look atthe foundation.
15:04
Are you learning English to prove
you are smart to someone who isn't even in theroom?
Or are you learning because your soul yearns
to hear the stories of people on the other side ofthe planet?
One is a wall. The other is a bridge.
Your body knows which one is which.
Listen to your breath. Listen to your heart rate.
Your body is the architect's assistant,
and it has the original plans.
In our final part, we're going to talk about thesacredness of failure
and what happens when the whole building fallsdown.
Because sometimes, Julia,
the best thing that can happen to a bad house
is a storm that shows you it needs to be rebuilt.
I'm looking forward to that.
It sounds like hope, even in the ruins.
It is hope.
Because you are not the building.
You are the architect.
Support comes from WISE, the smart way to sendmoney around the world.
Your life is global. Your money should be, too.
Some providers promise no fees on overseastransfers,
but extra costs often hide in bloated exchangerates.
Choose WISE. You can send money overseas foreducation
or spend in over 40 currencies while traveling.
Get the exchange rate that you'd usually see onGoogle.
Plus, count on 24-7 customer support.
Be smart. Get WISE.
Visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply.
Julia, let's talk about a feeling that most of ustry to hide
because it feels a bit ugly or small inside.
I know exactly which one you mean, Martin.
It's that little green monster we call envy.
We usually feel a deep sense of shame
when we feel envious of someone else, don't we?
We try to push it down and pretend it isn't there
because we think it makes us look petty orcompetitive.
But Jay Stringer has a completely differentperspective
on this specific emotion.
He says that, in the architecture of desire,
envy is actually one of your most valuablediagnostic tools.
That's a radical way to look at a feeling wenormally try to delete.
Think of envy as a high-resolution map of your ownunlived potential.
So, if I feel a sharp pain of envy
when I see a colleague speaking with incredibleconfidence in a meeting,
what is that map showing me?
It is showing you a room in your own house
18:02
that you haven't given yourself permission to openyet.
It's saying that I have that capacity forconfidence too,
but it's currently covered in dust and old boxesin my basement.
Exactly.
Envy points directly to the parts of your soul
that are tired of being suppressed.
Instead of resenting the other person for theirsuccess,
we should actually be grateful for them.
They are acting as a flashlight,
showing us what is actually possible for our ownarchitecture,
if we are willing to build it.
This requires a very different way of talking toourselves, doesn't it?
It requires a more humane vocabulary of longing.
We often use very shallow words like cravings
or wants to describe our internal movements,
but Stringer prefers deeper, almost sacred termslike yearning or ache.
Yearning feels so much more meaningful
than just wanting a new gadget or a higher salary.
A yearning is a deep soul-level desire forsomething beautiful,
like connection, self-expression or freedom.
And an ache is a physical reminder in the body
that a vital part of us is currently missing fromour daily life.
If you feel an ache when you see someone traveling
and using their English fluently,
don't just ignore it or feel bad about yourself.
That ache is the architect inside you
telling you that your current lifestyle has becometoo small for your spirit.
It is an invitation to look at the blueprintsagain
and realize you were meant for more than justsurvival.
But what happens when we try to build that newroom
and the whole structure collapses?
That is the moment we all fear more than anythingelse in our personal development.
We work on a project, we study for a difficulttest,
or we try a new habit and then we fail miserably.
Jay Stringer uses a very strange phrase for this,
the sacredness of failure.
It sounds almost offensive to call a mistake or acollapse sacred
when it hurts so much.
But think about a building that has fallen down ina storm.
When the walls are gone you can finally see thecondition of the foundation
clearly for the first time.
When things are going well,
we are too distracted to check the basement or thequality of the soil underneath us.
We just keep adding more bricks and more weight toa structure
21:00
that might be fundamentally unstable.
So a failure is often the only time we are forcedto be completely honest
with our own architecture.
It is the moment where the social voice and thearchitecture of fantasy
are finally stripped away.
And in the ruins, we can see if we were buildingon the sand of other people's expectations
or on the solid rock of our own truth.
Many of us actually need a crash to realize
we were building the wrong house for the wrongreasons.
It is a painful experience,
but it might be the most honest moment you willever have.
This is where the real identity shift begins totake place.
You realize that you are not the building thatfell down.
You are the architect who is still standing in themiddle of the debris
with the tools in your hands.
You can look at those same bricks, your skills,your past mistakes,
and your hard-learned lessons, and build somethingnew.
You can build something that actually fits theauthentic voice of your soul this time.
This is the ultimate productivity tool,
the courage to quit the race you never wanted torun.
It allows you to finally start walking your ownpath
at a pace that feels like home to you.
Before we close the toolbox today,
I want to give our listeners a way to apply thisto their own lives tonight.
We call it the Final Desire Audit.
Pick one major goal you are currently chasing withall your energy.
Now look at that goal through the lens of thethree voices we discussed.
Ask yourself,
is this goal being driven by an impulsive voice
that is just trying to escape a feeling ofloneliness or boredom?
Or is it being driven by a social voice
that is still trying to please a ghost from yourchildhood?
If you realize that the goal is inherited ordisplaced,
please don't be hard on yourself.
Just acknowledging the old blueprint is a massivevictory in itself.
Use the Body Witness tool we talked about duringthe second part of our show.
When you think about reaching this goal,
does your chest feel tight and restricted,
or does it feel expansive and light?
A tight chest is a warning that you are building awall.
An expansive heart is a sign that you are buildinga bridge.
If the architecture feels like a heavy burden,
24:00
maybe it's time to change the plans entirely.
You have the right to move the walls and paint therooms however you like
because you are the one living there.
We've traveled through the dark basement of ourshame
and stood in the ruins of our failures today.
How are you feeling after this deep dive, Martin?
I feel like my own house is a little bit bigger
and has much more light in it now, Julia.
I feel the same way and I hope our listeners dotoo.
We are moving from performing our desires to beingour desires.
This shift makes the world feel a lot quieter andmuch more peaceful.
You stop needing the world to tell you that youare enough
because you finally understand the architecture ofyour own worth.
Remember, friends, English is just the path we arewalking together
to reach these deeper truths.
It is the wood and the nails we use to build theseconnections
with ourselves and others.
But the real destination is a more conscious, morehonest,
and more humane version of yourself.
Be a kind architect to yourself this week as youlook at your daily habits.
If you find a crack in your motivation,
don't just patch it quickly with a new to-do listor a new app.
Stop and look at what that crack is trying to showyou about your foundation.
It might be the only way the light finally getsinto a room you've kept dark for years.
And maybe that room was meant to be full of lightand life all along.
This has been your English Toolbox.
I'm Martin.
And I'm Julia.
Thank you for giving us your most valuable assettoday.
Your attention.
We know how precious your time is.
Take care of yourselves.
We'll see you in the next episode.