Aware & Aggravated - 73. Fixation Is Rooted In The Fantasy Of Relief

Episode Date: September 6, 2026

Who inside you is fixating on things? And what is the relief you've convinced yourself is on the other side of achieving or understanding the object of your fixation?Merch & Sunglasses: 🕶️ https://leoskepicollection.comAmazon Storefront (Things I actually use/buy)https://a.co/d/04ENNIRFSocial Media: https://www.instagram.com/leoskepihttps://www.tiktok.com/@leoskepihttps://www.snapchat.com/add/leoskepiSubstack: https://substack.com/@leoskepi?utm_so... My App Positive Focus:(Apple) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/positive-focus/id1559260311(Google) https://play.google.com/store/apps/detailsid=com.positivefocusapp&hl=en_US&gl=US&pli=1Business Inquiries:[e-mail]

Okay. This is about to be real interesting. Well, for me, at least. I've been thinking this is real cool to learn about and like understand the whole topic of fixating on things and wanting clarity. Oh, it's, it's annoying. Honestly, how this is kind of like kicked back into like the topic of self-love. What a bitch. So the whole topic of fixating. Yeah, I've been real like caught up on wanting clarity. Like this has been driving me nuts. I've, I've been. I've been. been journaling, writing, like at least 100 pages a week. I keep going through like notebook inserts because I'm just having so much fun, like sit with myself. And I what I thought was a lot of sitting with myself to understand myself was secret motive, trying to find clarity and like pull it out of myself. But I noticed about my personality, I fixate on things. And that's all I've known how to do. And I see it as kind of like an adaptation thing. Like you learn how to adapt to things in life. And if I don't understand something, I fixate on it. But I feel like I've been in a period where I'm stuck in a standstill, where I feel like I need a sense of clarity of like what the next steps are

for me to take in life. I feel a big sense of freedom right now that I'm getting antsy about because it has an end to it. Like there's going to come a moment where I have to get back into having goals and working on things like my tank tops are done. I just haven't released them yet. Like I've perfected them. I got them made and I ordered like the minimum order quantity. So I got the bulk shipment and then I've had it in for a minute and I took 30 packs for myself. So I have 90 tank tops and I've just been happy with them like just enjoying them having them. Nice. Like I finally made the perfect tank top and I have it, I'm wearing it and I'm like happy and I'm like hey asshole you need to drop them you need to sell them and I've been trying to get myself to do it but like I just I feel like I need this clarity around like the whole point of doing a photo shoot and launching them and talking about them being on social media and like promoting the shit yeah but it's like I just can't get myself to get back into the whole charade of it like I'm happy as hell my tank tops like I'm happy as hell my tank tops like I'm

I have packs ready to go, ready to sell. And I cannot get myself to fucking do it. Because I got a problem with fixate. And I fixate on things. And I have this unhealthy obsession with shit. Anytime I have a goal in my life, it consumes me fully. And that's what I discovered when I was like, okay, I keep wanting this. I fixated on having clarity.

I want clarity so goddamn bad. I need to know what next steps to take. And it's like, I can see. see steps to take that are very obvious. Like with the tank tops, I know how to fucking do it. I know how to launch a product. But I'm over here just like, I need clarity. And I got fed up with it.

So then I looked at myself and I'm like, okay, who is the one that needs clarity? And oh my God, he has a voice. He started talking to me, a little motherfucker. Not like schizophrenic. If you get what I'm talking about, you go ahead and I'm talking about what the parts work thing. So the part of me that was so desperate looking for clarity. is the part of me that is excited to be lost again. So there's an aspect of me that only knows how to go into things and dissolve.

Like when I have a goal for something, every single thing about my life becomes that. It becomes reaching that goal. I've never done anything in my life with the intention of doing it in a way that you maintain it. I've done everything goal-driven of meet this goal done. And the way that I've met so many goals in my life and achieved so much shit is I dissolved myself. Like there's no concept of my hobbies, what I like, taking care of myself. I will put all that shit to aside to get a goal done.

And that's not a sustainable way to go. And I can see the resistance I had to getting clarity. It's like it's clear what I need to do. I'm just not clear about how to do it without losing myself because I've been reconnected with myself in such a way where I'm like, I know what to do. I just don't know how to take those steps. I don't know how to have like myself and what I'm trying to achieve. Because when I have a goal for something, anything about myself that is in the way or inconvenient, I will discard it. I discard so much of myself to get a goal done and complete shit and achieve what I set my mind to

when it was the whole concept of making money for me. Like making money is what I focused on. Granted, I didn't lose my integrity ever. And I suffered a lot to make sure I made money in a way where I felt good about it. But growing my social media wasn't really that intentional, but like a little bit. But making money was one thing. Getting my body in shape years ago, it consumed me. I'm not good at having one goal at a time.

But the things I've always gone to achieve are things that you have to maintain. making money and looking a certain way in the gym, having fitness goals. Those are two things that are not just one and done. That's not just something you do once. It's something that you do and you need to find a way that you enjoy doing it. I know how to fucking do that. I don't know how to find a way how I can maintain something to do forever. Because when I'm trying to make money, I discard everything that's not that.

I will discard going to the gym. I will discard everything else. It's like I'll do it enough. Like I'll make sure I eat right. If I'm not going to go to the gym, I at least make sure I eat right. And I'll like maintain like the tiniest little bit of effort where I've just kind of made that my way of being. But I'm laser focused on a goal. But things about myself and hobbies and things that I like take a back seat.

It's like I've gone at myself and I've been disposable to myself for a long time. So I've really been over here fixated on getting clarity so that I could get clarity on what to fixate and become next. Like what to fixate on next. I'm a fixate and to get clarity for what to fixate on. How does that make no fucking sense? It does make sense to me. But at this point in my life, I've done it all.

Not that I've done it all, but I've blown myself out with making money. I've blown myself out with social media. I've blown myself out with the gym and going after that. I've blown myself out with trying to make connections with people. and have people in my life. I have all of these things. I look at it like the bottom of a pyramid. And each corner is something different.

So like fitness, health, shit like that. Making money, making products. I love making things. Like, I love making clothing and like perfecting shit. I love to fix things on something and make it right. And then you have like another corner of relationships and people in my life. And then another corner is my self-reflection discovery stuff that I love to do and my podcast.

because this is the way that I understand myself is by talking about myself. Kind of cute. Like, oh, kind of funny. But that's like all the little corners of my pyramid base. I never saw it as a pyramid. I was running it like it was just a square. Like, I can only be in one corner at a time. I could be in the family and friends spot, maintaining their relationships,

and then I would have to jump to the money side. Okay, I have to make money. I want to make products. I need to worry about making sure I could take care of to people that I want to take care of and myself financially. So I would get stuck in that part of the pyramid the most. And it's like I can only light up one corner at a time. And I was like I was just ping ponging back between each one. But I'm only able to be in one corner at a time.

So everything else gets neglected. And then my life turned into running back and forth between each corner, not because I wanted to. It was because it became an obligation of something to maintain. So when I got stuck too long and trying to make money and figure shit out like that, I would be like, okay, I've neglected my friends and family. Let me run over to that corner and get, let me get these hangouts done so I can maintain these relationships. Okay, now let me run to the gym really quick. Maintain this, do enough just to get it done so I can run back to the money part. And then I would get so fucking burnt out with work, I would go into the corner of self-reflection and social media, my podcast, kind of expressing myself and understanding myself. And then I would neglect everything else while I was doing that. And then I would have to take off running again because it was like a never-ending cycle. Like it's my own version of a rat race with trying to maintain all this shit. But with each one, I felt like I had to maintain a different identity.

And it's like there was a different version of me that appeared in every single slot. Because like I said, when I'm trying to achieve a goal, I discard things that make it harder to achieve that goal. So when I'm trying to make money, I'm not worried about the gym. I'm not worried about my health. I'm not worried about fashion. I'm not worried about my hobbies. I'm not worried about fuck. I'm just worried about that.

When I'm with my family and friends, I disconnect from anything with anything else. And I'm fully there just with my friends and family. It's just been a matter of flipping between identities and discarding parts of myself where you're only useful here. So it left me feeling lost a lot of like, who the fuck am I? And I've started to realize like the identity. I've been blinded by I hate all of this shit because everything is just turned into like Obligation. So I've been in isolation mode.

But why I called this a pyramid at the beginning is because I'm the point at the top. All of these corners of the pyramid, I'm the light at the top that lights up each corner. Each corner builds into my identity. So I've been running around the four corners like a dickhead on the ground. No, I'm above it all. I'm the light at the top, and these are pillars of my identity and pillars of things that make me, me. So since seeing that visual, I'm just kind of like, oh, wow, fixating is not the way to go. Because when I sit at the top of the pyramid and I light up two, three different spots at a time, they're all lit up all the time because they're all me.

Now I can see things as like enjoyment because going to the gym is something that I truly enjoy. I like being a little bit superficial, a little bit of asshole and caring about how I look. I like that. I have fun with that. I like making products. I love hanging out with my family and my friends. It's things that I love, but once I saw, they all add to my identity and I don't have to create identities for them. It's kind of taken the pressure off of like, these are not things to maintain.

These are things that make me. so it's been nice and I've been blinded to things that I truly like and enjoy doing because I haven't seen it like that I've looked at it like I can have one of the other but another thing is I'm so multifaceted and I can take on a lot of different things at once but most of the advice out there is for people who can only do one I can fucking do it all and I have done it all for my entire life basically. Like with my social media, I do every fucking thing. No one has ever edited my podcast, but me. I shoot, edit, upload everything myself. And I've always done that. With my content on social media, I don't script it. Nobody tells me what the fuck to talk about. Nobody edits it,

but me. I control all of it. With all of my clothing and my merch and all that, I've always done my websites. I'm the one making all that shit. Customer service I did for a while. Now I have people helping me with that, that I trust. And now I'm the person dealing with my manufacturers one-on-one. I don't longer have a team because they fucked me the fuck over, the ones I was with. But I see now, like, the way that I was able to do it was because I would fixate on shit. And it's really easy to fixate on something. Like, you build your whole identity around it. Easy peasy. But it's to your own detriment. And there's no space for loving yourself. And there's no space for a sense of wholeness when you are constantly shredding yourself

apart to what is most useful. What I've realized is fixation is rooted in the fantasy of relief. That's all it is. Should I say it again? It's kind of kind, right? Fixation is rooted in the fantasy of relief. That's what you're trying to get to. So every single time that I've fixated on something,

it's because I thought there was relief at the end of it. And that's where I was talking about, I'm able to look at things and get them done. I don't like to maintain shit. I don't like to have to do things for a long time. time. I always flip between different things that I'm doing and different identities that I build for each thing. Exhausting. So then I start looking at what's the relief that I'm looking for with? Basically, to stop turning a knife on myself, to take the knife away from myself and stop cutting off

and cutting out things that are not useful for what I'm trying to do. Like I said, there's no sense of wholeness that can come when you're living like how I was describing. because every single time that there would be something that I saw about myself or a way that I was living that I saw was like in the way. I have something in my fucking nose. I don't know what it is. Pissing me off. Hang on. Okay, I got it.

I don't even know where the hell I was at. But yeah, basically the relief I was after was no longer flaying myself alive, cutting out certain parts and then trying to put them back in when they're useful again. and it's that constant exchange of parts of myself and things about me that are useful in one situation and not. They're all allowed to be there at all times. The way I've been going about trying to get to a sense of wholeness is through separation. And how to fuck do that make sense?

Like love to love myself to finally just like be like, okay, I'm here with you. I like you. I like all these things about you. There's nothing that needs to be cut out. to get to that state you can't get there by cutting everything out don't make no things my god how stupid i was low key between me and you i can see now how my psyche has kind of been preventing me from going into things anymore like this this whole like abrupt stop

period i don't know if it was my soul or my psyche i think it was both they both fed up with my shit even my ego was like enough girl tired Like, I can't keep doing this. It was like this feeling of being stuck where it was like going into something. I knew I was going to lose myself or I had a sense if I was going to lose something. I just didn't know what it was. And I couldn't bullshit myself anymore of these things will be worth it. Because like I said before, I've achieved a lot of shit in this life already.

Like I've achieved everything I've set out to do. There's nothing I can convince myself is worth. fixating on. If I say, okay, I can make this amount of money. I don't care. To look a certain way in the gym, couldn't get myself off the couch. Like with the make, even making money, I couldn't get myself up to go launch the products that I have. I think tops. I've been so excited about these for four fucking years. I've been trying to make these. And I'm excited about them. I love them. I'm enjoying the fuck out of them. I love wind every single day. Makes me happy as hell. And I just feel good. Like wearing it like finally i've solved my problem of feeling uncomfortable in the clothes that i wear because i wear

tanktiles all the time it's my thing it was like a deeper meaning to all that i might get into that later but it kind of ties into this so yeah i'll go into the whole like meaning behind why i'm always wearing tank tops like at the end of this but i want to talk some more shit so with convincing myself like there's things to achieve and want like i stopped wanting anything because my only way of going about shit was to fixate and lose myself to get it and i've got enough experience where meeting certain people, like meeting certain celebrities, hanging out with them. Like, I'm friends with a lot of people, and I've met a lot of people behind the scenes that I never talked about.

And there is nothing I could delude myself into doing anymore with the goal of another thing I have to do because everything's not been empty. I've just never been at the point where I achieve something. And then I get that state of self-acceptance and wholeness that I convinced myself I would finally have. It's like there's always just more and more shit. So I've stopped forcing myself to do shit. Like I've stopped seeking for more clarity and more ways I can fixate onto something to get myself up because fixating is not, I can't do that now that I know what's in it. And it's like, okay, if I'm a fixating person's a wholeness, well, why can't I just give it to myself now?

Why do I need to change? I started looking at all the things that I want to change about myself and looking at why. Who can't accept it? And why does it need to be cut out? I've cut out enough shit. And then I've had to re-put it back in, like sew it up. Oh, I get feel bad. But integration and wholeness is a whole different bitch when you realize why you've been slicing the dicing yourself. So there's nothing like I could make myself do. There's no way I could delude myself. I'm very good at being convincing. Very good. I can convince myself any fucking thing. But I cannot convince myself to discard part of myself anymore. And I think that is the new metric for like how well I'm doing and like the place I'm at now because I'm very much a sense of

peace. And there's nothing you could do. There's nothing anyone could offer me that could make me discard myself. And I feel like I'm now at a place of like wholeness and self-love. Because like if you want to say, oh, you'll lose money, take it. You won't look a certain way. Take it. I don't care. Like I genuinely, as long as I'm with me and I've got me, I don't give a fuck, you know. But I would never have been able to get to this point until I did it all, until I sacrificed every fucking thing I could of myself for things. Not everything. The integrity, never got rid of that one. Nothing can make me sacrifice that. You could put a gun to my head and I'd tell you pulled a trigger, bitch. You ain't fucking getting me out of my integrity. That's the one thing I

held on to oh ruthless ruthless i guess the thing i'm realizing is there's no external thing i could ever get that could beat the feeling of caring about myself and like accepting myself every part everything like there's nothing that could get me to turn a knife on myself anymore it's like i finally met that little motherfucker with a knife and i took the knife out of his hand and i gave him a hug. And here we are. Happy as can be. No more knife. Only thing I turn on myself now is my attention. I do think I want to do my next episode about the motherfucker with a knife and where that all comes from because it's an adaptive strategy for a sense of control. I want to get into that. I'll probably do that in the next episode. But I want to talk to you about my tank tops and why I always were to

tank tops because I've gotten comments about that for years. And I've never really like talked about why I'm always wearing a goddamn black tank top. So it was years ago, like probably like six years ago. And I didn't feel confident in the way that I looked. Really, this kicks back to like when I'm 16. So I used to always work out in T-shirts. Like I would only wear T-shirts from when I'm like 16, really before that. But when I started working out and trying to put on muscle, I was 16.

and I felt like I had to look a certain way before I could wear a tank top. And so I always wore t-shirts. And about a time I was 19, I got pretty muscular. Like I looked good under the t-shirt, but I still couldn't, I didn't feel like I earned the ability yet to wear a tank top. So I just made myself always wear t-shirts. Like I didn't feel like I earned the right to show my arms, no matter how much work I put in or how good I actually looked.

I feel like I had to earn that. And I would see people wearing tank tops and they would look smaller than me and would look less in shape than me. But I didn't look at them like, you don't deserve to wear that. I just looked at them like, I wish I had that confidence because I look better than you and I still don't fucking have that confidence to where I got damn tank top. So this took like more and more years after that because when I was 19, 20, I got. got in pretty good shape. And then still wearing a t-shirts, around 22, I was at a point where I was like, okay, I don't look how I did when I was 19, 20.

And I feel like now I have to at least get back to that before I wear a tank top. Because I don't know what it is. I've always just liked the look of a black tank top, like a tight shirt on a dude. Like tight tank top, loose pants. Always been inside. I don't like a tight on tight. That's the gay shit. I don't know.

I always just had this visual of like how I wanted to look and how I wanted to dress. I didn't feel like I earned the ability to dress like that until I looked a certain way. And I was not in good shape. It was like around suicidal type parts. And I was like, fuck it. I'm just going to buy tank tops. And I'm just going to wear a tank top. So what?

And I started wearing them around the house. And it was so uncomfortable at first to wear tank tops. but I was like, I'm just going to do it. Like, I don't have to look a certain way before I just wear the damn tank tops. I've looked better in the past still didn't do it. Like, I chickened out. What the fuck? Just wear the tank top.

So I got fed up with myself. I remember my first time wearing it out in public and I was so like in my head about it. But it kind of like set me free because I was like, okay, what now? I don't have to look a certain way to wear this. I'm wearing it. And it made me start wanting to go to the gym. Like I was trying to force myself to get back to the gym. I just didn't want to fucking go.

But as soon as I allowed myself to finally wear what I wanted, I was like, oh, my God, I want to look better in it. Like it came from a sense of joy of like, I finally have the permission to do what I want now. I don't have to wait. And then taking the actions of going to the gym, eating right. It made me excited to do that because every day I put on a tank top, I felt a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better and I just kept wanting to go but trapping myself

in that hell of you have to earn your way out of this to finally feel comfortable that's when I learned how to break that was my tank top and now I don't feel comfortable in a fucking t-shirt like I'll wear a t-shirt if I got more t-shirt but like I just I love my tank tops and it's a it's not like that deep of a fucking thing where it's like a symbol of thing like I just it's just it's just feels me. It feels like me. It's what I've always envisioned for myself and this is what the fuck I like to wear. But yeah, that's my story about the whole tank top thing. It was something so stupid, but I set myself free from a mental prison with it and I just love wearing them. Never white. Never white tank tops. Always black. It also was kind of like my first time of letting myself be proud of myself. Like the way that I looked and like the after working out for so many years, like after getting more like back in shape, I felt like.

Like, it was wearing the tank top when I looked how I felt confident was my first time. It was my first time feeling proud of myself and not feeling like I had to hide it. Because the other way I convinced myself to not wear tank tops was after I looked good, like when I was 1920, I was like you look like you're showing off if you wear a tank top. You don't want to look try hard. And it's like I would just keep myself shamed into not facing the truth of it of like, I'm scared. So yeah, that was the first time I like let myself be proud of myself and like what I've earned and like the effort that I've put in to look how I want to look and to be strong physically.

Like I like that. I respect that. I like when men are physically strong. I don't like weak men emotionally or physically. But it doesn't just mean like muscles and that type of strength. It's like guys can be in shape and not be super muscular, but be strong as fuck. so it's just like the strength of men I think should be there. I think physical strength in men is something that I always am attracted to and I like and I respect.

I feel like that's just a given. And it's like if you're not strong as a man, whether you have muscles or not, if you're not strong, what the fuck? I don't know. That was just something about me. But yeah, it was my first time being proud of myself and let myself be proud and be like, yeah, fucker. So self-acceptance, you could say. but talking about this like I'm very I'm proud of making the tank tops too because I went on this whole hunt and for years I've bought tank tops and they haven't been good enough like they I fixed

like I did like I wanted the perfect tank top if I'm going to be wearing them all the time I've been fixated on them and working on them there's been so many different companies that I've worked with with different shit and certain teams I was with and certain things that just like they couldn't get it right or I ended up leaving certain like management and shit and certain would end and then you know the shit show that I went through with this past year of things but I'm happy that I didn't quit on it but that's not something I was allowed to quit on like I made these for me like I said I have the fucking inventory I'm just not selling it like I didn't make these like with that like with that like my only goal that like my goal was like to give them to myself

but making them for me is why no matter what's happened I've continued through with And I'm finally at the point that I have them. So I guess that's kind of like the message of all this shit is like fixating on things and doing things because you feel like you have to or you think there's some kind of reward at the end. I did this and I've stayed with it because it's something that I genuinely just want and something that I appreciate and I want for myself. And that's how it survived being knocked into fucking shit nonstop and where I should have

quit and times I've wanted to quit. It's like I was never doing it for nothing but me. But now I just got to sell it. So I'm working on making women's versions too, but that's going to take me a minute because I'm not a guru. I have to have my girlfriends try them on and I've been sampling a couple things. But yeah, like whenever I can get myself to do it, it's like now talking about it's making me want to do it more.

Like it's making me want to do it for me, you know, because I want to order more. Like I want to have this be like a thing because I am proud of myself for doing the damn thing with this. I just got to get to the next step. of like sell it and let other people appreciate it too because I know there's other people out there wanting some fucking tank tops that are right like not the ones that you wash them a couple times they look like shit or like you wear them and they get loose and I don't like that like these have been these are a very specific material that I've custom made and a custom fit

so yeah they're perfect I have the perfect tank top and I'm going to call them man beaters because they're always called wife beaters that's like the typical term for them but brands nowadays are too pussy to call them that. Like a couple brands call them like wife pleasers and shit like that. So no, mine are never going to be called man beaters. Because what? I've been waiting to execute on it. And I feel like it's coming up now.

The more I'm talking about it, the more I'm excited. Because I'm not expecting self-love to hit me later. I want to launch this from that place. So yeah, that's all I got for this week. I guess. I don't know what emoji we should do for this week. week put whatever you think comment whatever emoji you feel like putting how about that if you made it this far on the episode do that also if you're listening to the audio version of this on apple

podcast Spotify do me a five stars rating thanks i appreciate it very much kiss for you also leave me a comment let me know what you thought if you're going to comment the emoji if you made it this far let me know what you thought of the episode too i always read your comments well that's all folks thanks for hanging out everybody be safe Take care of yourself and I'll talk to you guys next Sunday. Most likely, I know I didn't post for two weeks, but I was coming to a lot of realizations. Okay. So most likely I'll talk to you next Sunday.