There are seasons in life where we feel like we have lost ourselves, especially in motherhood. We might feel stuck and like we aren’t enjoying our lives. I want to talk to how we can move ‘away from pain’ or ‘towards pleasure’,  and some simple ways we can bring delight and passion into our daily lives. 

• The language we use to talk about passionate living, desire, enjoying life, pleasure and callings
  
  • What I have learned about ‘callings’ and dreams
    
  
  
• Times in life we feel stuck and how that can lead to lowered motivation
  
  • Making decisions from a place of stress
    
  
  
• Two types of motivation: towards and away
  
  • 177. Understanding what is motivating you (chasing vs avoiding)
    
  • 201. Overcoming negative self-talk and to moving towards positive self-talk
    
  • Book – Pure Pleasure: Why do Christians feel so bad about feeling good? 
    
  
  
• The way our culture, upbringing and our own assumptions impact how we enjoy our life
  
• The discomfort we might feel with giving ourselves permission to enjoy our lives, especially as moms and the guilt that comes up
  
• The way martyrdom holds us back from enjoying our life
  
  • 67. Making motherhood harder than it needs to be (Mom Martyr)
    
  • 138. Is momlife UNFUN? How to be a more FUN MOM, stop withholding fun from yourself
    
  
  
• Start with simple things 
  
  • Show up for yourself in small ways
    
  • Listening to yourself 
    
  • Ideas on ways to delight in your life today
    
  
  

In this episode, I talk about the upcoming post I will be sharing in the Patreon on the topic of How to Not Lose Yourself in Motherhood.

• If you would like access to this bonus content and join the Patreon community, head on over to Life on Purpose Community and join us there. 
  

Full Transcript (unedited)

0:06

All right, this is Take three. Hey, friends. It’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counselor from simple on purpose.ca. Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. See, that was easy. I don’t know why it takes me so long to do that sometimes.

All right, so we’re getting ready here in BC. For spring break, we’re gonna have spring break with the kids home for two weeks. And I think we’re all excited about it, it felt like life has been really busy with extracurricular activities, hockey, all of that stuff in so we’re just going to hang out with family. Hopefully conor and I will get a night away, the kids will visit their grandparents just hang out around the house, I have the idea of making everyone watch the Harry Potter movies with me and going on family walks. But my kids have different ideas. They want to bike around with friends have sleepovers, and play video games. So hopefully we can do a bit of both.

Today, I want to talk to you about how excited you feel about your life. And if you’re already thinking and not excited, and is that even an option. That’s okay, let’s talk about that, too. When I was thinking about this podcast episode, I wanted to call it something like living with more passion, or passionate living, I actually don’t have a title for it yet. So we’ll see what I choose. This is language that I use for myself. ‘

But it is interesting to think even of the word passion, if you look it up, the Latin root of that word means to endure, to suffer, undergo. But in our modern culture, we usually relate the word passion to things related to lust or being fired up, we think it’s really positive and energizing feeling in general, because I was thinking about other terms I could use.

One was dreaming bigger with your life. But I think some people find the sense of dreaming bigger, childish, or even like pressure that where you are isn’t enough.

Enjoying your life, which is a slogan, you’ve heard me say, this is your life, you should enjoy it. And even when I do say that, I know that it can sound maybe unattainable or out of reach, or like you’re doing it wrong, if you don’t enjoy your life, that is actually not the context I want you to hear it in. When I say that from a place of permission, that you can enjoy this, even the simplest little happinesses and pleasures that are available to you in your day. And hopefully we’ll unpack that more here.

I thought about the term living with desire, but that can sometimes sound salacious. Or if you’re from a Christian background, those words can feel loaded with that caveat that our human desires can lead us astray from God’s desires for life. And I want to talk about that too.

And one term you will not hear me saying is that you should live your calling. I think that using the term calling can actually set up some kind of criteria that we all have this calling, we all need to find it. And if we don’t find it, we won’t be happy, we won’t feel self actualized. And we better find it or we’re just going to miss it all together. And over the years, I’ve been a woman and talked to many women who asked this question, what is my calling, if I can just find it, then things will feel things with you easy. I’m going to link some blog posts that I’ve written about that topic in the past.

Regardless of the term I’m going to use, I know the feeling I want to talk about it is that feeling of moving towards the good. One is the last time you were like really excited and energized about something that you just enjoy doing. That feeling towards the things that light you up pursuing things that are pleasurable, enjoyable, satisfying. Maybe it’s tackling ideas or projects or new routines that you feel committed to excited about, or at the very least curious about. This feeling is about doing things, pursuing things that make you feel alive in all of the best and self honoring ways. And people honoring ways. I think that just goes without saying.

But all of this can feel like a huge leap, especially if you feel stuck, or you feel out of touch with yourself. I work with a lot of clients who feel stuck, stuck in their relationships stuck with making a decision stuck in a hard situation stuck with their feelings just stuck along the road of life. And when we feel stuck, we stopped seeing what’s possible, we see a limited number of options. For one part, we’re operating in a stress mode, which means we’re making choices from a different part of our brain. And our choices are often related to the sense that if we can just make the pain stop, then we’ll be okay.

So we’re making choices from this kind of operating mode. We’re not making choices from that prefrontal cortex part of our brain that’s more curious, more open thinking long term. So our choices feel limited. And when our choices feel limited, there’s a part of us that feels that limitation on our lives. This sense it really moves us into a place of feeling helpless, feeling hopeless, and feeling unmotivated. What’s there to feel excited about?

Have you ever found yourself here I know I have a few times, at least in my life. I’ve lost motivation. I’ve lost touch with who I was what I wanted, and I was just stuck. One situation definitely happened earlier in my 20s when I was newly married, but then again in motherhood, having kids becoming a mom shifting not just your identity and this new role motherhood, but it shifts how you spend your time, how you spend your money, how you spend your energy, how you dress, the clothes you put on your body, it changes where you go, where you spend your time, where, what facilities are available to you, you’re going to new places you never thought you’d go, it changes what you do.

And in the Patreon, this month, I’m going to share on this I’m going to share an episode on how to not lose yourself in motherhood. Because from what I see what I experience, being a mom, and all that it takes from us and all that we give it, we often find that we’ve lost ourselves part of ourselves. So we’ve lost those parts of ourselves that is not mom. Along the way. We’ve tuned out those other parts, those parts that have some inner knowing, inner passion, eagerness, curiosity of what we want, and who we are.

As I work with clients who feel stuck, we can talk about a lot of things, the patterns that we’re in, the beliefs we’re living from, we can process what’s hard, we can work on how we’re dealing with stress. And this is all really great at revealing some foundation for them.

And once they feel ready, we can start talking about moving forward. There’s a shift when someone feels ready for this, there’s a shift in their whole body when we move from addressing the stuckness like you’re in the pit. And when we get out of the pit. So to speak, we feel ready to start that journey. It’s a very exciting time because we get to shift into a new way of approaching our lives our daily life. We shift our motivation, and I’m going to tell you about two types of motivation to pay attention to.

If you’ve heard episode 177 that digs deep into these types of motivation. One is away motivation. Moving away from the things that hurt, avoiding the things that hurt and the other one is towards motivation, moving towards things that are enjoyable or pleasant. And away, motivation is very common, we naturally want to avoid pain. So we have that negativity bias scanning for potential danger. I know for me, it’s really easy to live my whole day in that away motivation. Avoid the bad avoid the danger, especially in motherhood, where I struggle with that need to control the chaos.

I also think, towards motivation in a way motivation is interesting in the context of a faith lens to where some of us grew up with a very legalistic view on our faith. And our life had to be lived in a way to avoid sin. It can become very fear based it feels like a life of just sin management. Avoid the badness avoid the bad, avoid our badness like a bracing for the fight defense mode beyond guard, even talking about that I feel in my body. What about opening up our arms and moving towards what is good? That feels like living to me that feels more like life to me.

I’m reading a book on this right now. It’s called pure pleasure. Why do Christians feel so bad about feeling good, and I hope to share thoughts about that in the Patreon in the future, shifting ourselves our approach into seeking pleasure, chasing the good, chasing the enjoyable, it is hard. Whether we find ourselves stuck in a way motivation with the difficulties of life, we also need to consider that something else that makes it hard is what our culture tells us about what we get to enjoy and pursue.

Consider what you’ve learned from your own culture, from your upbringing from society as it is right now. There are expectations on us women, especially if we are moms with kids at home, there’s criteria on what society thinks is okay to enjoy what roles we are allowed to enjoy, and which roles we shouldn’t enjoy and how much and when and how. And when I talk about living with more passion. I don’t mean this huge, big life altering thing. I don’t mean find your calling chase your dreams overhaul your whole life. You’ve heard me say I don’t want you to overhauling your whole life. When I say this is your life, you should enjoy it. I don’t mean you have to smile all day every day and pretend like hard things aren’t happening. What I am saying is you’re allowed to make choices, even the smallest choices that bring you satisfaction and pleasure and delight. Not temporary fixes not coping but choosing things that nourished you and make you feel alive.

10:03

I remember during COVID, sharing something on Instagram about having a really rough day. And getting to the point where I had to give myself permission to just remind myself that happiness is available to me still. You’ve heard me talk about hard and awesome life has hard parts, like has awesome parts. We have hard parts, we have awesome parts our day, as hard parts are awesome parts, we need to give ourselves permission to accept the awesome to enjoy it.

Can you do something today that you enjoy? It might feel really uncomfortable to say I’m gonna go do some things I enjoy today, you might feel guilty, you might feel selfish, you might feel like it’s frivolous. You might feel uncomfortable or, or resistance, especially if you’ve been holding that martyr card, you can give yourself permission to enjoy things. When you’re in a state of expressing your martyrdom asked me I’ve been there. And I’m going to share more about that in that Patreon episode too.

But what helped me and what I would just offer you as an idea. Just an idea, all of this is just for ideas, is to start with the small things in the routine of daily living, we can build up the skills of listening more closely to ourselves, trying things out, getting curious, and practicing small moments of fueling that spark feeling a little bit more passionate and a little bit more alive, in ourselves in our bodies and our lives.

So I’ve got some ideas, here some ideas on how to start today. Choose the song you want to listen to on the radio, if you don’t have a playlist of main character energy, like your own soundtrack, you got to make yourself one it is so therapeutic. choose that song that just makes you feel like yourself. Watch an uplifting or funny video that you know make you smile. Set a timer though, so you don’t get lost in YouTube. But something that you know generates a really positive response for yourself. Put on clothes you love to wear clothes, it feel like you fabrics that feel good on your skin. Choose a meal that you’re excited about. You’ve been cooking for everyone else. What do you want to eat? You’re allowed to do that she was a scent, you’ll go smell it. Doodle something, sing something, move, move your body, our bodies need motion dance, golfer walk. Also, our bodies need rest. So if you need some rest, go sit in your favorite chair in your house, stare out the window at your favorite tree.

What matters here is the intention. What matters is that you show up and do this for the purpose of the pleasure, the enjoyment, it matters, that you don’t just go through the motions. And just Okay, check that off. But it matters that you do it on purpose change your posture towards this savor the experience of enjoying your life even in the smallest little doses.

I’m hoping to continue this conversation in the Patreon you’ve probably heard me mentioned Patreon like five times in this episode, so if you don’t know what it is, go back to the previous episode, hear all about it and decide if that’s the right place for you to be in community. But overall, I’m going to still be here. I want to encourage you to show up for your life, to enjoy it to own it and to live it on purpose. Alright friends, have a great week.