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How tuned in were you for some of your major life decisions? We only know what we know and for a lot of us, we made some big decisions a long time ago. When we were wee babies and now we might feel differently. Here is a little check in to see where you're at and what you might want to change.
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Hello, it has been a minute since I have been here, but welcome back to the Simple and Intentional podcast. I'm very excited to be back and to share with you some of my thoughts on what I've learned or relearned about decluttering and intentional living after moving through two pretty major life transitions getting divorced and moving into my own space. For those of you who don't know, I lost my mom about two years ago, and that really accelerated my push for an intentional life. It was a reminder to me of how short life is, and that really pursuing what matters to us most is super important and should be a priority to all of us. And I no longer wanted to sit with things that I wasn't happy with, that weren't working, that were stopping me from thriving. And I was ready to let go of those things and move forward and move through the discomfort, move through the difficulty to get to the other side and start building something new. And in those two years, I have separated from my husband, I have moved into my own space, I have lost another family member, and these are just reminders again of how short life is. And that I wanted to get really serious about pursuing a life that I created that is what I want, and to let go of the fear, let go of the worry, and to move through the discomfort of creating the change so that I could get to the place where I am now at the beginning of building again, but now from a place that I know what I want, I know what matters most to me, and that I get to create this on my own terms. And the reason I say that is because I think for a lot of us, and I know this was true for me, that in a lot of those major life decisions that we make around career, family, marriage, where we live, our schooling, you know, these big decisions we make in life, we didn't think through all of them in a way that necessarily aligns with who we are now and how we would have made the decision now. And what I mean is maybe when you decided what you were going to study in university, you didn't think as deeply about it as you would now, or you didn't think about it with the criteria that you would use now. And I think for some of these big decisions, we made the decision based on how we were feeling then or what felt good in the moment, and weren't necessarily thinking about it in the scope of our whole life. And that's not to say that that's true for all of those decisions, but for some of these, you know, maybe with a partner, it was like how you felt in that relationship at the time, but you didn't necessarily think about the things that would be supportive in a partner in the long term of a relationship, how they were gonna parent, how they were gonna show up as a partner in the household, how they were gonna divide, you know, the labor of life and of parenting, and were they gonna be supportive to you? You know, the things that now when you look at look at a partner, you might see as red flags or you might see as qualities that you don't desire anymore, were things that might have looked like fun or I don't know, you know, attractive qualities at the time. But in the grand scheme of life, you know, a lot of us, um, a lot of us women end up in a situation where we're in a relationship with somebody who is not fairly carrying the load. And if you can't get there in a conversation with them and, you know, work through it and get to a place where they're understanding how this impacts you and they care enough about you to start to make changes, then you're kind of stuck doing all of this invisible labor and carrying around this mental load all the time. And I bet it is impacting how your life feels, how much time you have for yourself, how much fun and enjoyment you get out of things, and how relaxed you feel. And let alone having time to pursue things that give you purpose or feeling meaningful in your life. So, you know, that's one thing. You know, maybe when it came to schooling, you picked a major or you pursued a program that seemed great at the time. And maybe as you moved through it and you weren't totally lit up by it, but it was gonna pay really well, or you know, your parents really wanted you to do it, or it seemed like a good job, and so you kept going with it. And then you've ended up in a career that you weren't super passionate about, but you know, it pays the bills, and you know, how could you go back to school now? And you know, all the things that kind of enter our mind when we start to think about changing our path. I know those things came up in my mind too. Um, so you know, I think when we've made these major decisions in life, the point I'm getting at is that we didn't think them through fully. We made decisions based on what was happening in our lives at the time and what we thought at the time. And as we move through our lives, those things shift and change. And that's okay. But then we also need to be able to shift and change when it comes to these major life areas in order to keep our life feeling good to us, to be able to thrive, to be able to live the way that we want to live and get the most out of our lives. But for a lot of us, we don't. And we don't because change is hard. Change is hard and our brains resist it like crazy. And that's for a good reason. You know, our brains are really efficient, they like things to be familiar, they like to know how to do things, they, you know, save us energy by keeping things the same. Also, it creates a sense of safety when things are familiar, and so that unfamiliarity creates a lot of discomfort, and that discomfort feels scary, and so we back away from it, thinking that that it's danger, that we shouldn't do something if it doesn't feel good. But I want to go more into this afterwards, but discomfort is definitely the price of building a more intentional life. So, having moved through this change of getting divorced and being in my own space and sitting with a lot of the feelings that have come up by going through those things, I can say that intentional living is not always glamorous. It doesn't always feel good, but it is 100% worth pursuing what matters to you and building a life that you love and taking the steps towards getting there because life is short, we never know what's gonna happen, and we don't want to have regrets. We don't want to say that we never went for it, because the other thing that keeps us really stuck is other people's perceptions. We're worried about what people are gonna think, and that is also really reasonable, just like our brain's reaction as people we need to belong. That sense of belonging is what helped us survive, and so it's really innate in us to want to belong and to want to be accepted, and it gets really, really challenging to do things that put us outside of that. And you know, this could be in a family situation, you know. Sometimes we have toxic family situations, and walking away from that is painful, even if it's a toxic situation, because that's our belonging. It can feel really embarrassing in front of friends or coworkers to do something that is different from what is expected of you. You know, shifting your identity to become somebody different is really hard because, you know, you look at people on the internet and you see them do things and you don't really think it's that cringy because you don't know them. But imagine that person doing that cringy thing online was your coworker or your sister-in-law. You're gonna start to have opinions about it in a different way. And those are the people that we worry most about, you know, when we change our identity or we shift and start doing something new, because we care a lot about those people accepting us. And often they've known us one way. They've known us as who we were, you know, especially, especially if you are a people pleaser or perfectionist. You know, you have shown up and you are used to doing things that get a response from people that is positive. People saying, Oh my gosh, thank you so much. Oh, you're so kind, oh, I couldn't have done this without you, or in the perfectionism realm, it is wow, look at what you accomplished. Oh my God, that's so beautiful. I couldn't have done that. You know, getting all this praise. And when we start to do something different than what is expected of us, that praise can dry up and it can be really uncomfortable. So again, I'm coming back to this discomfort, and I get it. I get it because when I started my Instagram account, I remember when family members started to see it. I actually cried. I actually had really bad anxiety around the people I knew seeing me put myself out there in a different way. Because this is true me and what I've come to love and value, and how I want to show up, and you know, really stepping into that and being the leader that I know that I am and sharing my ideas and being an expert on something. I was used to in most of my life making myself small, you know, being really pleasing, being really humble, you know, always like presenting things in a way that never shone the light too strongly on me. And I have really had to work hard to be able to let the sh light shine on me a little more because I know that actually I'm good at these things. And this is where my my strength and my passion lies. But it is really hard to show up that way. And so knowing that if you're gonna show up a little bit differently, that it is gonna feel painful, it is gonna feel uncomfortable, you know, that that is another piece of intentional living that we have to get prepared for the discomfort. So let me just talk a little bit about discomfort for a minute, because I think we've been taught discomfort is something to move away from. We've been taught that if things don't feel good or it feels too scary or hard, that sometimes we should back away from that. And I'm here to tell you today that discomfort and leaning into the things that feel really uncomfortable, sometimes emotionally painful, are the places we need to go when we want to build a more intentional life. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One, because things that are unfamiliar are gonna feel uncomfortable. But if you are building an intent an intentional life, the things that you need to do to change your life are going to be unfamiliar. So you have to feel uncomfortable to be able to change things. That's number one. Number two, you're gonna have to become somebody a little bit different than you are. Your identity is gonna change, the way you show up to things is gonna be different, the way you do things is gonna be different. Like I can say, you know, right now, having moved and easing into this time where I don't have my daughter with me because she's with her dad is really, really uncomfortable for obvious reasons. But also, here I am with this new version of me that I'm not totally familiar with yet. I don't know what this life looks like yet. I'm just starting it, I'm just figuring things out. Not everything's unpacked, you know. I'm getting my kitchen in order. And it's really uncomfortable to be in a new version of you, a new version of life, and to start to set the boundaries to that and make the rules and lay it out. And it's exciting because it's like a fresh start and a clean slate. But this is the piece that I think that when we are building a life of intention and when we are creating something that is ours and ours alone, we're we're stepping outside of that rule book that we followed a lot of our lives, you know, doing checking these boxes to go to school and get a career, checking these boxes about getting married and having kids and doing, you know, the things that everybody does. You know, we're stepping outside of the status quo and following what others have done. And we're creating something new and never before done. And that feels scary because what does that look like? How does that feel? We don't know yet, and so being with that discomfort and being with that sensation of not knowing and being in charge of figuring things out, it's it can be really exciting, but we have to lean into that fear, and that's the other thing I want to point out is fear. Fear is a piece of this, but also we gain a lot from moving through our fears and doing the things that feel scary because we build resilience, we see ourselves in a different light. You know, I wouldn't have chosen a lot of the things that have happened over the last two years, but in that two-year time frame, I have done things that I never would have thought possible, that I would have been too scared to do before. And now I feel like I can do anything. And that is something we gain in the pursuit of intentional living, is that we see ourselves as capable. We build our capacity for resilience, we see how much life has to offer and how actually anything we desire is available to us if we're willing to pay the price of the discomfort and the fear. So, what I want to leave you with is a question. And it's a question I want you to dwell on. I want you to take notes on. If you journal, journal on it. I encourage you to journal. Journaling doesn't have to be a huge practice, it can literally be just writing some thoughts down for a few minutes. But writing really helps with the reflecting. So I really encourage you to do the writing piece, but I want you to ask yourself this where in my life am I unhappy? Where in my life do I want things to change? Where in my life do I wish things were different? So just think on that. Write down your answers, dwell on it a little bit, and start to think what would you choose instead? So I will leave you there with those thoughts. And I hope you found this episode helpful. I will come back with another episode on my reflections on clutter after moving through this transition. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.
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