In this short solo episode, Rick Lee James continues his STUFF series—Sensations, Thoughts, Urges, and Feelings—by focusing on "urges." He defines urges as bodily‑based impulses that can drive us to act or not act, noting that they arise from what we consume (food, water, media, relationships) and are morally neutral until we act on them. He emphasizes the importance of probing the underlying reasons behind urges—whether they stem from a desire to persuade others, satisfy a physical need, or stem from anxiety or fear. Rick ties this reflective practice to his Christian devotional life, using prayer to examine his sensations, thoughts, urges, and feelings, and invites listeners to share their own experiences. The episode ends with a call for feedback and a reminder of his chaplain work.
Chapters
Welcome to the Neighborhood, a Mr. Rogers tribute podcast. Also, welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James. Uh, we're back again this week because we're doing a series that I've been featuring on both of the podcasts, actually, both on Voices in My Head, the Rick Lee James podcast, And welcome to The Neighborhood, a Mr. Rogers tribute podcast. Fred Rogers used to say that the greatest gift we could ever give another person is the gift of our honest self. And what I'm trying to do through this short series for just a few weeks on sensations, thoughts, urges, and feelings—STUFF—is to help us get acquainted with our true self. Not necessarily exactly who we are, but where we are. Which helps us to understand who we are and why we're acting certain ways that we are. So the first week that I started talking about this, I talked about sensations. And sensations being our bodily sensations. Things that are going on with inside of us. And I talked about ways of using our 5 senses in order to help us connect with the sensations that we're feeling. But also to pay attention to bodily sensations like Am I nervous? Is it showing up in my stomach? Is there a tightness in my stomach or in my chest? Is my back hurting? Do I have a headache? Do I have a neck ache? Things like that. So often those come from emotions that we are feeling and sometimes not dealing with very well. So that was the first week. So if you want to go back and listen to the sensations episode, you can do that. And then we talked about thoughts last week. And thoughts are sort of the driver of our imagination, or maybe the imagination drives our thoughts. It can go both ways. And our thoughts can be like clouds that kind of come in and then go away in our, in our mind. And we wonder, where did that thought come from? But then our thoughts that really drive us and move us forward are the things that we're dwelling on. And why are we dwelling on these things? And why can't I get this particular thought out of my mind? So that was last week. So this week, briefly, I just want to talk about urges, the, the third letter in STUF. Urges are an easy one for us to think about because an urge is like a sensation that we're having. It's an impulse to do something or maybe to not do something. The impulse to sometimes make other people do things, to kind of control people. We have an impulse at times. Some people do. We see this most clearly like in political seasons, which I know in the United States it feels like it's always a political season. But we see yard signs, and we put yard signs with favorite candidates because we are hoping to persuade people. It's an impulse that we are wanting to change other people's thinking. I'm not sure if that works or not, but we do it. We also have urges for various things. There can be an urge if you're hungry, you have an urge to eat. If you've— I have this big water bottle that I carry around with me, and I drink all the time. If I were to drink all of that water bottle, which contains about half half gallon of water, um, all at once. Guess what urge I'm gonna have shortly after because I've put all this water into me. It's interesting to me that when we talk about urges, urges are often based upon things that we're putting into ourselves, whether it be food that we eat, the water that we drink, the media that we consume, the conversations we have, the relationships we have, and they create these urges, these impulses. Around us. Urges can be good, urges can be bad. Just like our sensations, our thoughts, our urges are not necessarily moral one way or the other until we act upon them. But the urges are there. It can be urges for, for multiple things in our lives. The important thing that I want to focus on today is what's underneath those urges. They can just be simply natural urges to have. They can be urges we should act on. They can be urges we should not act on. But the important thing in coming to know ourself and giving the gift of our honest self to ourselves and to other people is that we get underneath what is going on with these urges that I'm having right now. Do I feel a special urge to try to persuade someone about an opinion I have? Do I have a special urge to try to persuade someone about a religious belief I hold? Is there an urge that I need to go do something right now. Again, these are impulses that we have. Sometimes they're for good reasons. Sometimes they're for bad. Sometimes they're just there and we're having them. But there's usually a reason underlying those urges that we have. So this is a brief episode this week, but I wanted to talk about it to make sure that we had a chance as we continue in our conversation, our thinking through sensations, thoughts, urges, and feelings. There are reasons behind the things we do. Some of them are very good reasons. Some of them— I mean, let's face it, they're all necessarily reasons because there's something underneath that's driving that urge. But often they are based on the things that we are putting into ourselves. So if you find yourself with an urge that makes you anxious, an urge that makes you fearful, You might want to be asking those questions of what is causing me to feel this way? What am I dwelling on in this time? So short episode this week, and I'm not in my car for once. I'm actually at my home doing this in my basement, but it's going to be one of the shorter episodes I've had for a while. So sensations, thoughts, urges, and next week, or whenever I have a chance, I know we have holidays coming up, but for the last episode of this, for both the Voices in My Head and the Welcome to the Neighborhood crossover, we'll be feeling things. So feel free to reach out, tell me if you have any thoughts, well, or sensations or urges and things like that, um, whatever you'd like to share. If these are helping you to think in new ways about what you're going through in life, this is a tool I use every day. I use it devotionally, personally, because I'm a Christian, and so I will spend prayer time, my prayer time, with my sensations, thoughts, urges, and feelings, just connecting with where I am today, uh, helping me to understand better where I am, and that leads me to know better who I am. So, all right, thank you so much for listening to, uh, Welcome to the Neighborhood and Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James. I'm so grateful for you. I'm thankful that you're here with us this week. I am off to the hospital for my work day as a chaplain. God bless you all. Again, thank you for listening.
