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In this episode, Joel and Antonia talk about “the deferred life program” that people often find themselves living.
In this podcast you’ll find:
- Amazing things are happening around us every day, but all we can think of is the thing we need to be doing instead of being present.
- Are you deferring the moments in your child’s life assuming you will have another chance in the future?
- Everything is temporary. If you spend your life deferring everything, what will you regret when your life is ending?
- Some of us have deeply embedded programming that encourages us to defer life
- Society sees nobility in the deferred life program. There’s nothing noble about designing life the way you want it.
- People who create the lives they want are seen as lucky or selfish.
- We have more control over our day to day lives than we think.
- “Real life will begin sometime in the future. I need to suck it up now, but things will be much better in the future.”
- People will tell you to stay present with your children because they grow up so fast. That is considered a noble occupation.
- There is less messaging in society that you should quit a job that makes you feel miserable.
- People see nobility in the struggle of working a job that supports the family even if you are miserable.
- “Life begins at retirement.”
- Deferred life propaganda can rob you of your life and add needless stress
- It’s not whether you are allowing indulgences in your life, it is whether you are in your life right now.
- Are you living the life you want to be living?
- “Life is not a dress rehearsal.”
- This life is real. Stay present instead of waiting for life to begin.
- Some paradigms teach that this life isn’t the real life. That believers need to spend their time today preparing for a future paradise.
- It is a skill to take your circumstances and make the best of them, which is something we can learn from these paradigms.
- But some paradigms teach that nothing is good, so there’s no point in changing things for the better.
- We settle into unhappy situations because we don’t think we have the permission to change.
- We believe that making meaningful choices to suit ourselves is somehow bad, so we become more and more under-resourced until we can’t function.
- “I’m supposed to be living this.”
- “If I’m going to be a good person, this is what people do.”
- We can architect our life, but changing direction and architecting something different is difficult and time-consuming.
- “I don’t like my life! Who is responsible for me not liking my life today?” You are responsible
- Wanting something different means architecting something different which requires permitting yourself to want something different
- Stop kicking the can down the road
- The deferred life program involves a lot of waiting. Waiting for someone or something to come along and rescue you.
- We are actually waiting on ourselves.
- There’s no board of directors for our life that is planning the next phase for us.
- Maybe it is selfish to allow yourself to become so unhappy that you can’t be present with your children
- Suck the marrow out of life!
- We aren’t talking about delayed gratification: work hard now and get a better return in the future
- Deferred life is a different mentality: it is a lack of permission to live the life you want
- The first step is the awareness that you tend to think this way
- We wait for the movie moment that kicks off the life we want: wedding day, 21st birthday, the birth of our first child, etc.
- We keep waiting for the epic scene where we are the hero of our own story.
- “If it is to be it is up to me.”
- It is hard to design the lifestyle you want.
- Sometimes when we honestly look at our lives, we see that we live an enviable life, but we are still kicking the can down the road
- We get addicted to the future paced viewpoint
- Some types may struggle with the tendency to defer to the future more than others.
- What are the things you are deferring in your life?
- Slow everything down and take the time to get present in your life
- What would happen if you didn’t fulfill your promises? What is it you want to do? What is the ROI?
- There is a lot of work to make sure you are truly in your life.
- If you don’t want to live a deferred life you are going to have to go down to the wiring of your life and ask yourself the questions you don’t want to ask
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35 comments
Me too Kristy Howe. This was Insane that i found this today. Had been thinking along these same lines, b u t needed Antonia and Joel to articulate with their honest intelligence for me ToDay! Loved it and Thanks to you. Could thoroughly relate. Coming from a religiously f’d background (almost cultlike) it does create a space for one of ‘you don’t deserve – can’t have – will never qualify – you just don’t get what others have. YOU are the girl who is at the birthday party that doesn’t get any cake. Sorry b u t – that’s your life. Thank you Antonia and Joel for your Wonderful Work. It is Sooo helpful and inciiteful for me – the f’d-up Mennonite INFP. b u t – not any longer. After listening to that yesterday i am having the most wonderful, dreamy day EVER. I can have cake — and a Big piece too – party or no party … just on an average day!!
I’m an INFJ who recently retired from teaching, left my (adult) children and moved back to California. I wanted the mundane part of life to stop for a few months so I could catch my breath after 30 years of parenting and teaching in mostly extroverted environments. Instead I got pulled back into expectations of family and old friends who thought I would take care of them and put up with bad behavior (like I always had) or be more extroverted (like they remembered me). And expectations of what one should do in retirement – go to Napa, go out to lunch, travel. Instead, I want to do what I didn’t get to do enough of when I was working so much – I want to read and learn and connect the dots on the whole picture.
So I have been deferring life because I feel guilty. I won’t give myself permission to be happy because I feel guilty for leaving my children. And I feel guilty because after a lifetime of service I don’t want to put up with other people’s bad behavior anymore. So I’m looking at everything in my life (possessions, commitments, relationships) and deciding it I still want it in my life. Thanks for the reminder that we can decide how we want our lives to be.
Antonia, I took my children to California so many times to visit their grandparents because I wanted them to have a relationship with them. But because my parents didn’t like me, they didn’t like my children. I don’t think my children have any happy memories of their grandparents. I wish I had evaluated my beliefs of family duty long ago.
this is profound. thank you both for being generous and open with your emotions. you continue to make a difference in my life weekly (even more than weekly since i’m constantly listening and relistening to old podcasts). my life would be, at the very least, 85 percent worse had i never stumbled upon the personality hacker podcast.
also, like Joel emphasized, it was instructive to hear Antonia share personal feelings. it helped provide a more solid foundation on which to understand these concepts, particularly the idea of questioning perspectives and choices on an assumptive level. this is definitely an episode i’m going to keep returning to throughout my life.
Great podcast! I have not unpacked what is coming up for me in terms of type (INTP), age (48), or other circumstances, but I resonate with the topic very much. Antonia mentioned that awareness was a prime driver and it seems like her level of awareness has reached a critical point that is forcing her to examine everything even down to the assumptive level. The concepts that resonate with me are emergence, choice, cost and avoidance. I have a lot of respect for anyone who actually honors the creative freedom they have, to whatever extent they are able to muster, by accepting responsibility as the chooser (as opposed to the victim in need of rescue) and doing the noble work of living intentionally in the messy middle.
Thank you for unpacking this topic. The idea and the reality of Deferred Life is coming into stark relief for me as a working parent, spouse, and an adult child within a family of Deferred Life enthusiasts. It is so helpful to be able to listen to both of you talk — and actively listen — to each other about how this is unfolding for you in real time. I have definitely considered some of these same questions (maybe not at the assumptive level) with regard to Expectations and Obligations around work and family.
On a related note, I hope your team enjoyed the Chicago meet-up! I really enjoyed meeting Antonia, Charis, Nii, Joel, and many fellow fans of the podcast. Thanks for coordinating!!