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This post was featured in a Simple Saturdays newsletter and I received so much feedback from it, that I felt it deserved to live on the blog as well. You can join Simple Saturdays here

I recently bought something simple that is bringing me a lot of joy…. spoons.

I know, it sounds so boring and basic…. But there has been some unexpected and paramount drama over the years for me and spoons.

We received cutlery for our wedding…16 years ago. And a strange thing happened. As the years passed, the number of spoons we had dwindled.

I couldn’t figure out where they were going (but of course made up some accusatory stories in my head that I won’t let go of #spoongrudge).

At one point, in response to my constant comments about the missing spoons, a loving family member bought me more spoons.

But they weren’t MY spoons! They were replacement spoons!

Every time I reached into the cutlery drawer and felt the curve and weight of the replacement spoons a part of me had Cutlery-Related Tantrum.

(Which is very similar to Someone Ate My Leftovers Tantrum, or a They Don’t Ship To My Postal Code Tantrum)

And this is what I would call a tolerationYou may have heard me talk about it over the years.

Tolerations are those little things that wear us down but we don’t give them a ton of conscious attention and we carry on with our day.

Tolerations are the broken things, the unfinished things, the unresolved, the unhelpful things, the clutter, the distractions, the lack of boundaries, the lack of order, etc .

They may seem small – like how a work calendar is set up or a friend’s constant expectation that you will text them back right away – however, they do have an impact.

They make us a little edgy, add to our stress, and give us baseline discomfort.

Then….. naturally, we look for reasons to explain our vague sense of unease and might get blamey towards others or shamey towards ourselves

We use this discomfort as more evidence that what story we have on this must be true. We add to our inner narratives about what it all means (about them, or ourselves, or our lives)

For example, every time I have to use this broken toaster I might reinforce my narrative that ‘we can’t have nice things’

Or when I look at all those notifications on my phone, I might feel this inflamed sense of busyness and overwhelm with my life

Tolerations are often things in our home, but they can be in relationships and systems and habits too.

Like…..

• Those pants in your closet you don’t wear but still keep, and every time you look at them you feel bad you aren’t wearing them
• Not breaking for food throughout the workday.
• The mere existence of the corner kitchen cupboard.
• Unfinished projects and plans.

The spoons were a toleration for me.

I was fed up with it, I wanted to take back my power and enjoyment of my cutlery experience.
I used google lens to search for my spoons and found them on amazon for such a reasonable price that I muttered to myself how ridiculous I was to not buy them sooner.

Now, with my 8 new shiny spoons that match the rest of our cutlery, I open the drawer and smile.

So simple.

I KNOW spoons are a first-world problem.

That is a whole other conversation about the fact that many of our North American tolerations are first-world problems.

However, another side to this conversation is the notion of taking back control of your own experience, where you can and how you can.

Sometimes feeling empowered means getting resourceful, working on acceptance, getting scrappy, making due, changing your thoughts on it.Sometimes feeling empowered means solving, repairing, finishing, delegating, stepping up, addressing the conflict.What are some of your tolerations?
Where can you empower yourself to make changes?

READ MORE about tolerations: What Clutter Do You Tolerate?

Get the free Bust Your Tolerations Workbook

The post Taking control of your space (tolerations) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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Dearest listeners, today is the finale episode where I share with you my experience of the podcast, answer your questions and sum up the takeaways I hope you have had from listening to the podcast.

Episode topics and related links* the start of the blog + My C-Section & The Feelings I Was Ashamed to Admit * my two main goals with the podcast * how the podcast has changed me + How To Find Your Enneagram Type (and how it has changed my life) + Enneagram 101 (what is it and what are the nine types) + anchor words (Bless It and Release It came from Stef Gass) * Making life adjustments + looking at decisions through the lens of our resources - You Can Simplify Your Life Series + our relationship with time - Don’t wait for the Golden Years (seeing gold in the every day) + growing through turning off the autopilot and taking an opposite action - 175. What will your future be? More of the same? Or will you turn off the autopilot? - 79. Six signs you are living your life on autopilot (and what to do about it) + listening to your life - Listening To Your Life - Show Up For Your Life [series] * What I hope listeners take away from the podcast (my wishes for you) + It is ok to feel your feelings - all episodes on feelings are in this playlist - if you can’t access that playlist, start here with 156. 3 things to know about feeling negative emotions + everything is hard AND awesome - 162. Think the best of me, or not. Allowing the hard and awesome in ourselves and in our lives. - 207. Our judgements and assumptions of others (fundamental attribution bias and how it impacts our relationships) - 201. Overcoming negative self-talk and to moving towards positive self-talk + you are not alone - 145. You aren’t alone mama, I go through that too - 76. Why it matters what you think (limiting mindsets in motherhood) + address conflict, rather than avoid it - 139. Are you TOO comfortable? And what is it costing you? + take care of yourself - The Meeting Your Needs Series + own your life - I was a Mom Martyr, here’s how to tell if you are too and what to do about it - Build a life based on your own definition of success, not everyone else’s definition + small things matter - 78. Small things that can change your whole life (the compound effect) + enjoy your life - When Did I Stop Enjoying My Kids? (and my journey back to enjoying them) - 203. Being a mom who enjoys her life - Enjoying the simple pleasures (why it is hard and how to do it) - 163. Have fun with your kids, on purpose + reasons we don’t have fun

Ways to stay connected1. Sign up for the Simple Saturdays email 2. Save the Spotify playlists, grouped by theme 3. Email or DM me the topic you are looking for, I’m sure there is an episode on it and I will send it your way 4. Of course, 1:1 coaching and counselling is available

Listener FavesThis a list of episodes that listeners sent to me, as being their fave episode of the Simple on Purpose podcast

• The ‘mom martyr’ episode
  • 1. Making motherhood harder than it needs to be (Mom Martyr)
• The most common search term, of late
  • When Did I Stop Enjoying My Kids? (and my journey back to enjoying them)
• Mindset for new moms
  • 1. Show up for momlife with these empowering mindsets
  • 1. How to deal with the emotional struggles of being a mom of babies and toddlers
• Letting go of our ego
  • 1. Think the best of me, or not. Allowing the hard and awesome in ourselves and in our lives.
• Building a sense of capability vs a sense of control
  • 1. A Controlling mom, or a capable mom?
• Hearing from moms of each enneagram type
  • The Enneagram + Motherhood Series
• Various conversations around self-care
  • The Meeting Your Needs Series
• Living on autopilot
  • 1. Are you TOO comfortable? And what is it costing you?
• Framing your experience of motherhood
  • 1. Change your motherhood experience by changing how you make memories

Full transcript (unedited)0:07
Hey, it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counselor from simple on purpose.ca Welcome to the finale episode of Simple on purpose. Yes, I am retiring. But the podcast episodes, they’re all gonna stay here for you to use the archives. And all the different topics we’ve covered over the years are gonna stay here. But this is our retirement party episode, I want to sprinkle in some input from you listeners that you’ve sent in. I want to toast to what I’ve learned during the podcast, and I want to make some retirement wishes to send along with you. Yep, it’s the retirement speech you didn’t ask for but you’re gonna get it. And we’re going to start of course, with some twinkling flashback music, to where it all began. You’ve heard me share this, maybe I started blogging in 2011. After my first child was born by emergency C section, it was a difficult delivery was a difficult experience. And I felt like nobody really got what I went through because my circle of moms didn’t have that experience. I was feeling really overwhelmed with these emotions and what to do with them and who to talk to. And my postnatal nurse recommended I write about it. And that was dovetail blog dovetail blog was born from that place. It was a place I shared about motherhood on the regular. And then it shifted into the simple on purpose blog. In 2016, I made a new change and I had at home a two year old a four year old five year old and after consistent blogging for many years, I decided I needed to take it off my plate for a bit. And I was just going to send out a regular newsletter a bi weekly email called simple Saturdays. That was the birth of simple Saturdays that’s still happening that bi weekly email and I just love that place. Also, during this time, I had been listening to podcasts, some of those oh geez like the happy hour with Jamie Ivey cat Lee’s podcast, she had one about motherhood. And what about blogging? Jeff Goins was another voice that I was listening to a lot. These days, there’s, I don’t know, 1000s Millions. I don’t know how many podcasts there are. But those were some OG ones. And I was just soaking them up. I was loving them. I could just listen to them on the go and get that motivation, inspiration, interesting stories, interesting people. And I really fell in love with podcasts as a way to communicate and create a community. So in 2018, I started making an audio version of the simple Saturday’s email. If you go back to those first episodes of The Simple on purpose podcast, that’s what they are. They’re kind of recaps of the simple Saturday’s email, I realized that there were people like me who preferred to just listen on the go. And I really wanted to keep spreading the simple on purpose community. Quickly, I found that I had a chance to say things and I wanted to do more than just recap the simple letters email. So it turned into episodes about a single topic from there. That was six years ago. As the podcast has grown over the years, you listeners have helped it rank over the years in the past, in the top 20 for parenting podcast with Apple, Canada, and in the top seven need for self improvement podcasts with Apple, Canada. That felt like a huge win. One of my leading goals with the podcast was first and foremost that episodes be tight, a tight 2020 minutes or less. Because in my opinion, which is very biased unless you’re doing an entertainment podcast, and people are coming to you for entertainment. Unless you’re interviewing someone. Or maybe you’re human and you have just like four hours of research you want to share though I think it’s still way too long. I think it’s unnecessary to have such long episodes. I feel like 20 minutes is important. It forces me the podcaster and you the listener to come into this really efficient and focused time. I don’t want fluff. I don’t want chatter, usually unless you’re here to entertain me. So I just assumed other Altair would want the same. And I’ve heard that from many of your moms that you appreciate a quick episode. You’re listening to me on your drives on your walks while folding the neverending laundry while making dinner. To prepare for this episode, I emailed you guys I put it on Instagram, and I asked for your favorite episodes or questions that you had for me about the podcast. And first of all, thank you for all of your messages back. You guys have given me some really kind and supportive and sweet words. And I’ve been reading them all I might not email back just yet, but I’m reading them. And I want to thank you all for that I have shared on the podcast and I think this is something that anyone is a listener or a consumer of content on the other end. I think it’s helpful to understand that for someone who’s putting something out there it can feel really one sided sometimes to put out my stories and thoughts and ideas out into the interwebs it’s kind of like tossing a rock down a well and waiting for the plunk. You want to hear the plunk You want to know, the rock has reached the water, the plunk tells you it’s been received. So hearing back, hearing back from you has been the feedback that kept me feeling like I was on the right track, and I’m doing something of value for you. So I hope you feel my adoration of you listeners who have made this feel like a conversation. And let me know that I was helping you live more simple and more on purpose, which, of course, was my other goal in all of this, and I would anchor this idea with the word that I would say to myself over the years, and that word was freedom. It has been my mission to bring women freedom, it has been it still is it will be freedom from being overwhelmed by your motions, freedom from the autopilot, living freedom from the all or nothing thinking and the belief that you don’t actually have a choice, freedom from all of the checklists on who you should be and how your life should look and how your kids should act and what your husband to do. Freedom from all the clutter in your space in your brain and your life and freedom from all of these things so that you get to make choices you choose. You set your vision you decide your values. I had a question, how has this podcast changed me, a couple of things come to my mind. One, the biggest one is given me a voice literally and metaphorically, which as an Enneagram. Nine, that’s been a challenge for me to cultivate and really embrace over the years. For so many years, I just believe that I don’t have a voice or my voice doesn’t matter. And now I created a platform for myself where I was putting my voice out there, it was so awkward. And it was a place I was fully in control of. So when you have a voice and you’re finally in control of it, you start being a lot more mindful of what you want to say sometimes to mindful, overthinking. But it has made me think so much more about what I want to say how am I living? What am I noticing, it encouraged me to research and deep dive into topics and to kind of unearth these things that I want to bring to you guys. And it’s made me more accountable into living simple and on purpose. Not that I did or do it perfectly. I hope you get that from me. I am not here to be anyone’s aspiration. I am not here to be a spokesperson or an exemplar. I am here to have the conversations. I’m here to talk about ideas. I’m here to remind you that you get to choose, you should not be a cookie cutter of anyone else. You need to listen to yourself and your life and decide what you will pursue. Another way this podcast has changed me is it’s made me resilient. There were seasons of the podcasts where I didn’t get feedback, no plunk when they dropped the rock. There were seasons where someone would say something unkind. There were seasons where I would lose an editor and I had to do that part for a while there were seasons where I felt overwhelmed. Or I wasn’t sure what I should be talking about, or I doubt it every single word coming out of my mouth. And I’m not sure if you ever put these things together. But I’ve never monetized the podcast these days, right now you might be hearing an ad or two. But that sense, and I have not done any monetizing of the podcast all these years. Not that I am noble, costs money after all, but just that it always felt like something I would figure out later, later, really never game turns out. But through all of this sense of doubt, and defeat and confusion, there was something in me that just wouldn’t quit, I grew a lot of resilience in myself. And I had to root myself, ultimately, I have to root that in something. And I rooted it in the belief that this was the right thing to do. I was really carried along from one doubt to the next, by your notes, by your ratings and reviews by your messages when you’re doing things that you could just quit and you’re kind of like why am I here, it’s really important to root yourself in purpose and hope and intention, and something you’re passionate about. So my anchor thought would be just bless it and release it put this out into the world and choose to believe that maybe this episode isn’t for everyone, not everyone’s gonna get something for it, but it is for that one person who needed it.

9:15
I’m sure just listening to this, you can imagine that this is a hard thing to leave. And also it’s not. It’s weird, because I’ve known for a long time that I would be leaving the podcast, I felt like God was just slowly whispering into my ear to prepare me slowly so that when the time came, I could just make that choice clean and assured that the time was right. And the reasons that prompted me to retire the podcast are simply time and energy. If you listen to me in the past, I would call these two of our resources, our resources, what we have available to us to budget and allocate in our own lives. Time, money, energy, what whether that’s physical or emotional in our physical space. These are all things we have an unlimited supply each day. Sure we can make make some big moves, we can change the amount of money and energy and space we have. But time is always a concrete limit on us. There’s only so much time. And I don’t know what you feel when you say the word time, but I’m at a place in my life where time is a word that rings in my bones when I say it, time has become something so precious to me. So bitter sweet. It has tangles in thorns, but it’s also blooming and beautiful. This relationship I have with time, no doubt is formed from seeing my mom losing herself to dementia. There is time I cannot regain. There are conversations I can never have. And I’ve shared this before on the simple senators email on the blog, watching my parents experience of time seeing how people could set up their whole life to just get through to the next stage or to the golden years almost living on autopilot until life can be enjoyed and then that just crumbles in your hands. It’s made me so hyper aware how precious time is. Oh, did you know you’re getting the extended version? My decision to retire the podcasts? Yeah, these are the deep thoughts that are really informing these decisions for me. Ultimately, my time and energy had to be reassessed because I have had an opportunity to work more in a healthy communities job, which meant less time for one to one clients, which means something has to be taken off of my plate. So rather than than fighting my life to make it all work, I knew now is the time to drop the podcast. And it’s been tough. I value this place in these conversations so much. But it’s a decision that’s really bringing me some peace and some breathing space. I’ve noticed, I shared in a similar set simple Saturdays email this month that I found myself just taking time to think like, what do I feel like doing right now. And I could go for an afternoon walk. Instead of drafting up episode notes. I could go downstairs and play the piano or prepare some lunch for myself. Instead of drafting an episode, I could sit on the deck with my husband for the afternoon instead of recording and editing a podcast episode. This weekend, I also found myself solo parenting. And I spent an afternoon on the deck helping my almost 1210 year old cut and drill wood to make a chair that he dreamed up in his head. And I was noticing, I didn’t feel any urgency or mental chatter. I didn’t find myself reaching for my phone I didn’t like evaluate in my head, when am I gonna go get work done on the next episode, I was just there with him. This is what I wanted to just be there. Because deep down, I’m driven by this knowledge that we don’t know how long we have one another. We need to balance our goals and productivity, with our intention and our presence. Being able to just be there, it felt reassuring that I have peace in this decision. Not just relief, which is temporary but peace, right? There’s a difference. And who knows, maybe my retirement will be like Garth Brooks, and I’ll come back a few times over the next decade. Who knows? Who knows. But what I’m trying to really reflect here is that life is seasons, you can always change your mind. And you can always decide to commit through the hard seasons through the doubt builder options. And in working with many women over many years, I would encourage you that depending on your natural instincts, we often do the most growing when we do the opposite of our instincts of our autopilot for me, it would have been easy drop the hard thing and change my mind when it got tough. I knew I had to see it through and only leave when I felt like I had really taught myself that resilience and commitment. For others who never quit even when they should. You might need the reminder to stop fighting your life to make something happen just because you said you would. You might need the reminder, you can always change your mind. And if you can give yourself compassion and acceptance you don’t need it for anyone else from anyone else. Listen to your life. Listen to what it needs this season. Throughout this episode, I’ve just been answering some of the questions that were sent in to me through what I’ve been sharing. But I want to address one really specifically, it’s a really great question a listener wants to hear a sum of things that I would like the listeners to take with them. I’m going to call them my wishes for you. And I want to answer that first by sharing a note that was sent in to me from a listener and part of what she said was this. You have taught me that it’s okay to feel my feelings. And something can be hard and good at the same time. You also gave me the much needed perspective that I wasn’t alone who like if I retired knowing that I was able to offer this to one mom. I will retire pretty darn satisfied that my goals with this podcast have been completed. But I also want to point out you can listen to advice and ideas all day long. What you do is it is up to you. I can’t take credit it for you being open and humble and self reflecting and doing no work of applying any concepts or changes to your life. So, pat yourself on the back. I am going to make that quick summary list of things that I hope listeners are taking away. And as mentioned, in that note, I just shared feelings. Feelings have a purpose, feelings are for feeling. And there’s a lot of wisdom in our emotions if we can learn how to pay attention to them and use them in very healthy and useful ways. Hard and awesome. It’s a saying in our house, saying I give to clients, everything is hard and awesome. The day the season your home, your people, you you are hurting, awesome. And you aren’t alone. Part of realizing this is letting go of extremes. I really hate the notion that there are two camps of mums. One we feel like are the beautiful robots running the PTA. And their kids are always listening. They probably wash their hair every day. And the other ones who forgot it was wear green day at school. So they wrap their kids some Christmas paper shoving out the door. They’re living off toast and coffee and maybe wearing the four year old maternity bra and sweatpants that just feel so uncomfortable. Like I don’t think we are one of these extremes. I really think because it’s in my experience too. We’re in the middle, we’re moving between these two, we don’t have to be a hot mess. And we don’t have to be superhumans. We can be both in different ways. And at different times. I do have an episode on this. But what I want you to let go of here is that idea of extremes. I’m this or I’m that it’s us versus them her versus me. And then we find common ground. We’re just women. We’re moms, we kind of all want the same things. We just want to love our kids well, and maybe a nap. And then if I were to add a few more of my wishes for those who listen to the podcast here is what I hope you have been encouraged to do over the years. One address conflict rather than avoid it. taking the easy way out often leads down a harder road. To take care of yourself like real care. This is no one’s job but yours and I don’t mean self comfort but self care. Three, own your life. Don’t be a martyr. Empower yourself. Give yourself capability and hope and strength and own it. For we enforce small things matter. Do a small thing today that’s in line with who you want to be these build up over time. And the last one my favorite. Enjoy, enjoy your life. Enjoy your people. Enjoy your own company. Enjoy the way the sun shines through the trees. Enjoy the hum of the dryer at night. Enjoy stupid TV shows. Enjoy fresh sheets and your favorite soap. Enjoy a kitchen dance party. Enjoy saying goodnight to your kids enjoy the simple things. One of the most common ways that people find simple on purpose is through searching some kind of topic related to I stopped enjoying my kids, I don’t enjoy my kids. If you search this to find me, you aren’t alone. There’s a reason I wrote it, there’s a reason I shared it. My end goal with all of this is that you can remove all the distractions, the clutter, that you will find tools and strategies and empowerment to make the time and energy and space and money and intention to actually enjoy your life and the people you choose to have in it. With all of that, I’m gonna go enjoy my day, you’re going to Well, I’m going to edit this and post the show notes. Then I’m gonna go sit in the Sunbeam for a bit the kids are going to be done school this week. I know an empty house will not be available to me for a few months. So I’m gonna go do that and I hope you go do something you enjoy to. To wrap up, stop by the show notes. I’m going to try and pack them with all the related links, the list of listeners favorite episodes. And you can always read the transcripts or at the bottom of every episode if you’d like to read these things. And then in another thank you because I wanted this to be a celebration of us. Thank you for being part of this community.

19:11
Thank you for your messages whether you hit reply on simple Saturdays or you found me on Instagram. Thank you for sharing the podcast to your Instagram stories. Thank you for sharing it with your friends. Thank you for any rating and review you ever left on your podcast player and you can still leave on if you want. I love to see them. Thank you for any posting you did in the Facebook group or the recent but short lived Patreon and just thank you for subscribing. Thank you for being a listener. To stay connected. Make sure you subscribe to the simple Saturday’s email is still coming out twice a month. And you know since I’ve kind of been on a hiatus with Instagram, you’re gonna find me overcompensating for the lack of podcasting and lack of Instagram and probably just generally oversharing that email some ideas for you if you want to make use of the 200 Plus episode archive. There’s a few things you can do. One is, check out the podcast playlists, save those playlists on your Spotify. These are all themed by different topics like habit change mom on purpose, minimalism, emotional intelligence, and email me or DM me on Instagram. If you’re looking for a topic. I’m sure there’s an episode on that. Just email me and I’ll send it your way. And check out in the show notes. Check out the fav episodes list. I’m going to list out some of those listeners favorite episodes that they shouldn’t send it to me in the show notes. Kind of like a best of according to the listeners. Alright friends, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you for letting me share my voice with you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for coming alongside this journey with warmth and love. Take care of yourself. Enjoy the awesome. Learn from the hard and have a great week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post 209. What I hope you take away from the Simple on Purpose podcast (retirement party!) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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Years ago I learned a simple tool that has improved all my relationships. This tool is about looking for the cues that others are giving us – and using those times to connect. They are called Bids For Connection, a Gottman term. I will outline what bids are, ways to respond, and how to simplify the process.

Before we jump in, remember to stay connected through the Simple Saturdays email, you can sign up here.

Key points and related links* What bids for connection are + Our marriage was struggling, here are 12 things that helped us heal and strengthen it + When They Tell Me I’m Lucky to Have Him + Why it’s worth paying attention to love languages and expectations in marriage * Noticing different types of bids for connection in your partner, kids and friends + Gottman’s list of type of bids * Three responses to bids for connection (turning towards, away, against) + Gottman research on bids and relationship success * Applying bids for connection to parenting * Recognizing your own bids for connection, and unmet needs * Benefits of responding to bids for connection with empathy + 85. When empathy is hard in marriage and friendships + 84. How parenting with empathy can transform your relationship + 207. Our judgements and assumptions of others (fundamental attribution bias and how it impacts our relationships) * Starting simple by noticing and responding to bids for connection + Using bids to connect through presence, not just problem-solving + 16. When did I stop enjoying my kids? Knowing your vision and values. The best waffles ever. + 203. Being a mom who enjoys her life

Full transcript (unedited)

0:00
Hey friends, it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counselor from simpler purpose.ca. Welcome to this and on purpose podcast or right away. Announcement, I mentioned probably in the emails, at least maybe on the podcast, I can’t remember that I will be wrapping up the podcast for the summer. And at this point, what I am deciding to do is actually retire the podcast, at least for the time being, I just shared this in the Patreon as well, because I’ll be shutting that down. The main reason is that I am taking on a new job and going to be working more hours there. So it’s a matter of me just juggling the hours that I do work because I do mainly kind of work school time hours. So I need to be very discerning on the work I choose to do. And I wanted to really choose the work that I really love the most. And for me, that’s a one to one clients. So I’m going to unpack this a lot more, I’m going to have a retirement party episode coming up, I’m going to ask for your input your feedback. So watch out for an email on that coming soon. If you are part of the simple Saturday’s email, you will get that, if not, I recommend signing up for that I will be continuing this simple Saturday’s email, I’ll put a link in the show notes on that. So in light of that, I want to get to the topic. And I’m actually really excited that this is one of the final topics that I’m sharing on the podcast, because to me, it is such a great tool. And it’s such a great practice to bring into our relationships. And I’ve been talking a lot about relationships in the Patreon this month in here on the podcast. And this is a tool that is from the goblins. If you’ve heard of the goblins, they are a couple of psychologists and researchers. They are a couple. And they are all so these things and they use study relationships mainly love relationships. And their training for therapists is so good. I’ve taken it. I’ve loved it. There’s so many practical tools and simple concepts. And this is one of them. It is called bids for connection bids for connection and I might just call them bids. While I’m talking about this. The first time I heard about bids for connection was at a time when we were at a really challenging time in our marriage. We had a lot of walls up a lot of resentment a lot of scorekeeping, a lot of fear a lot of pride. I’ve shared a bit on this on the on the blog, so I’ll make sure to link that in the show notes. But I was probably looking at things on connection or how to improve our communication or something noble, like how to get my husband to validate me more, I came across this article and explained what bids for connection are and how they can be a really basic way to improve your relationship and I text it to my husband. And at this time he was really used to being peppered with my hashtag advice. But this is something he actually read and reply to he said something like that was good. I agree. And for me at that time, it felt really pivotal because I had sent him lots of things in the past always didn’t get an answer. So this felt to me kind of like answered prayers level to have that response from him. A bit for connection is any attempt you make at engaging with another person. This can be verbal attempts, direct questions, or comments or even comments that aren’t necessarily directed at you. Like someone sitting beside you on the couch and muttering Oh, there’s never anything good on TV. They can be nonverbal attempts, facial expressions, body language, physical closeness. So they can be as simple as your kid saying, I hurt my finger, or your partner saying I read an interesting article today. Are your kids sitting down and just like big sigh your kids saying watch this, your partner saying something about the game last night, even if you don’t even know what the game was or who’s playing what these days. The purpose of the bed is to interact with you and ultimately connect with you. A bit might be saying play with me. Join me, help me, see me laugh with me, support me. problem solve with me. Enjoy me there’s different purposes that a bit can have the Kaufman’s have a little bit of a list, I’ll make sure to link that in the show notes. Bits of connection are important. First of all, we can just see right off the bat that they make someone feel seen and supported. And this is really a basis for safety in a relationship. In Gottman terms, they are important because they’re considered an experience of positive effect. And they use this metaphor of adding to the emotional bank have a relationship that our emotional bank needs more positive than negative experiences. And if we can fill our emotional bank proactively with positive experiences, then when we’re in a state of conflict, or something negative occurs, we aren’t going to run a deficit in that and obviously something to think about it’s easier to build up positive experiences when we are not in conflict. This is more something they studied more in love relationships but in My experience is that it applies to all relationships that we actually care about. I definitely see it in talking with my own family and my own kids. So we have someone offering a bid for connection. And there’s three responses we could have. One is turning towards so we’re engaging positively, we’re acknowledging the bid. Someone says something about nothing being on TV, and you might respond. I know, right? Like, I feel that way too, that I never find something I want to watch. Or your kids saying, I feel like an idiot today. And you might respond with like, Oh, that’s so tough. What’s happening. When we turn towards we’re telling the person they matter, even if the topic feels so mundane. We’re saying it’s important to me because you’re important to me. I even think of how we physically turn towards each other. So often, we don’t even look up and make eye contact, which is so crucial. So turn to words, turn your eyes toward someone turn your body towards someone. The Gottman approach their research by looking at what makes the difference between couples who stay together and couples who separate what, what equates to failure and what equates to success. And when it comes to bids for connection, couples that stay married, tune to one another 86% of the time. It’s like an A right? It’s not 100%, that’s for sure. But those in the studies who separated they turn towards each other only 33% of the time, because here’s the other two options, turning away or turning against. So turning away, it’s ignoring it’s not noticing and not responding, or responding in ways that actually say I’m not listening, which could be changing the subject. When we turn away, we’re sending the signal that their subject is not important, we’re not present with them, or their subject that they’re talking about. It’s just not worth our reaction, we might just change the subject altogether. So naturally, what a person takes away from that is, this isn’t important to you. I’m not important to you. turning against means we’re responding dismissively, negatively, we might have irritation, we might snap, we might give them a look, glare at them, blame them point out how we were right about something how they were wrong, we might criticize, we might condemn, I think of the example of a wife coming home and a husband or swap partners, whatever. One partner saying we did that garden in the back and the other partner says Why would you waste your time doing that that is turning against that is eroding that connection. I want to mention a couple of things here. The first is our responses don’t have to be over the top. That training video for the Gottman training, it was really interesting because it was a normal couple and they kind of put them in this lab that feels like a home. So if we’re supposed to imagine them being at home, and one of them is staring out the window and the other one’s just right in the other room. It’s all open watching TV. And the person looking out the window is saying something about what they see out there like oh, the clouds are rolling in something about the garden back home. And it’s actually the man staring at the TV and he made some comment back like, oh, rain will be good. And it wasn’t dismissive. It was just simply responsive. And she came and she sat on the couch beside him. And he said something similar about what was on TV, and she just made a gentle comment back. They didn’t need over the top responses. And now we have to unpack it and get like questions and I have to be in your business, they were just present with one another. Sometimes turn towards does require us to tap into empathy, or curiosity. And I think a key here that I hear is that we stay in a place of non judgment, where we’re just open and present and where we want to listen to this person. And we’re not using this as an opportunity to put on judgment or criticism.

8:44
And then when it comes to kids, I want to preface this that we’re not ever looking for 100% As parents, especially when your kids are younger, they might be doing things you don’t necessarily want to encourage, we might need other tactics like redirection or setting boundaries. And I think of the research around the term good enough parent. And what that research tells us is that we cannot and should not be 100% emotionally attuned to our kids every time not only because they need to start to learn these skills on their own, we need a gradual weaning from being their emotional attunement and responding to all of their needs. But because it’s also an unrealistic expectation of a parent, mother or father, at the end of the day, they need us most of the time to feel like they are securely attached to us. Either way, I think it’s important to just simply do the work of noticing our kids behavior and their language being a bit for connection like all their jumping onto my lap, they might want to have fun with me, they might want my attention or they’re putting my their head on my shoulder while we’re sitting beside each other. I remember one of my kids being about six years old and they put their head on my shoulder and I was just like soaking it all in and a bit of time goes by and and they get up and then They say you might, you must not want me there because you didn’t put your head back on mine was so glad. They told me because I was having a moment like I was in it. But they were looking for a more clear response. So that was them needing me to actually turn into them and turn towards them. As our kids get older, they’re still bids for connection. They’re telling you, their teacher sucks, they probably feel like they need some support with that, your kid asks you to bake with them. And I hate baking, it makes such a mess. But I know that they want to do something fun, and they want you to be around for it. They tell you have a band concert of a basketball game or a practice next week, that’s a bid. They want you to show interest, they might not even want you to be there. If you’re doing something in another room, like you’re working, or you’re watching TV, and they just come in, and they’re just there. And they can come in under the guise of a lot of different things are being silly or whatever. But they are there because they likely want to connect with you. A real common one is if kids these days showing you a funny video, or teaching you about their slang or a song that they heard, they want to connect with you they’re overall my goal in sharing this topic with you is that so you can notice this notices in yourself and notices in others, we can notice our own bids, because we still have needs to write we are putting out bids for connection, we might even learn that we could try some different strategies to relay our bids, especially if our partner doesn’t know what bids are, they might miss the cues, that maybe we’re looking for some chitchat, maybe we want some support, maybe we want to play a game, maybe we want to hug. And of course, remember, in relationships, especially love relationships, we have conditioned one another on what to expect from our past actions towards each other of turning away, towards or against. So there might be some repairs that need to be made there we have not turned towards often enough, we have not supported emotional safety and taught the other that they can come to us that might be something we need to repair. A big thing I take away from the concept of bids for connection and in looking at it as a practice in how I show up in relationship is that it is about coming out of my own world and my own self, and out into what’s around me like looking up and seeing what’s around me. I’m coming out of my own inner world, this person is coming out of theirs. And we’re both finding this common place where we can be together be to gather presence. Finally, I hope this helps you just notice it in others because we all struggle to understand when we’re feeling alone or in need of validation or support or companionship. I bet even in explaining what bids for connection are you looked back on recent things and realized in yourself that you are offering a bid for connection, I bet you can look back on it as a child and see the things you were doing as a bid for connection. But we didn’t have this language or awareness that what we wanted was some fun or a hug or someone to help us we often don’t realize that. So I hope that this can give you a little bit more language and awareness around that. And ultimately hope you know, if you see this in others, you can remind yourself this person wants to connect with me. And the more we respond, the more bids for connection we respond to the more connected we’re going to feel, the more safe the relationship will feel. Even if we don’t solve problems, which I think we all need to step back from trying so hard to do. We do this so often where if someone else is uncomfortable emotionally, we just want to fix it. We just want them to feel comfortable again so that we can feel comfortable. I want you to be okay, so I can be okay. So bits for connection aren’t always for the purpose of emotionally solving someone’s problems. We can’t always fix it. But we can just be there. I can just be here with you. I might not be able to solve this. We can talk about ideas. But I’m here for you. And that must be so tough. Can I do anything? We need to ask permission to solve people’s problems before we just try to jump in there and change how they’re feeling and doing things putting our way onto them. Because that’s not what people always need. They just need to be seen and validated and supported. And ultimately I hope enjoyed really this is this is what’s changed things for me is it helps me to enjoy the people around me. When someone offers a bid for connection. I want to I want to respond most of the time, right? Like sometimes I’m busy enough to say wait, especially with the kids like I’ll be there in a minute just wait. But I want to show up for that bid for connection. They’re offering me something of themselves. And I want to ask a question or express empathy or anything statement I can make to just make that person feel heard. Unlike I’ve processed it, I didn’t go to my own world and my own self, I stayed with you there, which is a hard shift to make. Because we are so used to turning it back about us to making the conversation back about us. to it, we might think we’re connecting. But often the other person doesn’t actually feel like we’ve heard them or stayed with them there. We’ve come back into our own world. That’s why I call it a practice because it really is a practice of listening in staying and responding. I’ve probably made this meta and made it something you know, more bigger than what it is. But I think it’s because I’ve been trying to do this for so long. So start simple. Start simple guys. If your someone around you is offering you a bid for connection, keep it simple, a simple response, something warm, something non judgmental, a question is great. A follow up question is great if it’s coming from genuine curiosity. Empathy is always helpful. I’ve got some episodes on that wherever you can express any reflection of what they might be feeling if that feels appropriate. But just start simple and just start looking for ways to respond. And I hope that you experiencing experience, the connection that it can bring, and just the enjoyment you can start to have of another person in your life and ideally, you’re reciprocated. You’re getting that to, that’s what I would hope for you. Alright, the retirement party episode is coming in June. I’m just going to say everything I have to say about that for then, and I will wrap up with Have a great week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post 208. Improve relationships with this simple tool (bids for connection) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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We all make assumptions and judgments of others – but did you know there is a bias we have in our judgements?

This bias shows up in all of our relationships and it can create an opposition and divide in places we actually want empathy and compassion.

In this episode we explore the Fundamental Attribution Bias, how it impacts our relationships and what to do about it.

As mentioned in the episode, you can find the Spotify playlists here, and sign up for Simple Saturdays here.

Key topics covered in this episode * The purpose of relationships, how this has shifted over generations + Relationships and wellbeing: The Havard Adult Development Study * Making assumptions about others + Filling in the blanks and mind-reading - 199. Mindset traps to be aware of (cognitive distortions that might be holding you back in motherhood and life) + Perception is a projection, how our judgements and assumptions can reflect our own struggles and opinions * The Fundamental Attribution Bias + How we judge the action of others vs how we judge: character or circumstance * The me vs them mentality (or Us vs Them) * Examples of it in marriage + 62. My husband put the groceries away wrong, he doesn’t care about me (love languages and expectations in marriage) * Awareness and empathy + 84. How parenting with empathy can transform your relationship + 85. When empathy is hard in marriage and friendships * Accepting the hard parts of ourselves + 162. Think the best of me, or not. Allowing the hard and awesome in ourselves and in our lives. * Getting 1:1 coaching support + Book a session with Shawna here

FULL TRANSCRIPT

(unedited)

Hey guys, it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counselor from simple on purpose.ca Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. I want to give you a heads up right away this podcast will retire for the summer. So just a heads up. Our summer starts at the end of June. I encourage you in those months to use the archives, we have over five years of episodes on all of the topics. So if you want to be intentional about listening to them, I suggest you use the Spotify playlists and define those, you can go to simple on purpose.ca and click listen. You’ll find the links to the playlist we’ve got them on different topics like habit change mom on purpose, life on purpose, minimalism emotions, they’re all there for you check them out. And this summer also follow along with a simple Saturday’s email. If you aren’t a subscriber, I definitely encourage you to join that that is just a really like, warm and cozy place that I love to be with you guys. It comes out every two weeks, so it’s not gonna overwhelm your inbox. And I like to share some simple and purposes, purpose thoughts, some posts you might like. And that’s actually where you guys gave me this nickname, your nerdy girlfriend. So it’s a really great space to be. I’ll link that in the show notes as well. Let’s get into today’s episode this month, we’re talking about relationships. What is the purpose of a relationship? Is it to support your survival, emotional support, to entertain you to find love to find connection. This has definitely changed over the years of purpose of a relationship, especially if you look in the context of a marriage. It used to be about survival for a woman to be under the care of a man that was the world that was the culture unfortunately, it still is in some places. But even friends and communities, there was a need for support and survival, there was a need to do things together. So it is a more modern concept that our relationships are there to entertain us to make us feel loved to feel connected and seen and valued for the better and the worst, right, and that’s a whole other topic. But we all know that we are a social species. And maybe some of us feel that it is definitely true, that relationships are important to us to our to our well being.

studies have concluded this that supportive relationships are actually the number one predictor of well being in your life, it’s not money, it’s not your health or your job or how trendy your clothes are. It is people deep relationships. This is from the longest running study on the topic called that Harvard adult development study. If you have some people in your life, and it doesn’t need to be a lot that you feel like you can rely on who you support, and they support you that is the highest predictor of feeling well being in your life. Kind of crazy. So we know deep within us that we need relationships for many reasons. However, we run into obstacles just to be in the daily life of relationships with others, I want to talk about a common way that we create opposition in our relationships. And that is our assumptions. We fill in the blanks a lot. We fill in the blanks on what others are thinking we do this more often than we should probably we mind read. Have you ever mind read what your husband was thinking and decided he’s probably mad at, you know, just me, we fill in the blanks on what others are thinking, often what they’re thinking about us, they think I’m overreacting, they don’t think I’m good enough. They think I don’t know what I’m talking about. They know why I’m mad, and they just don’t want to admit it. And a lot can be said for what we’re projecting of ourselves and our own insecurities into this blank space. We also make assumptions about why they’re doing what they’re doing, what are their motives. And this is where I want to talk about the fundamental attribution bias, which is about this bias that we have when we look at what other people are doing, and what our brain makes it mean about them. Now, I don’t think this about people that don’t want to give an example, if you see somebody who doesn’t take the grocery cart back and you are someone who takes the grocery cart back, what are you thinking? Are they are they lazy? So I live in a town where the carts are free, you might live in a world where you gotta get that coin back. And you might come to different conclusions. But this can go the other way, right? So imagine you’re someone who never takes the cart back. And you see that person across the parking lot who is taking the cart back? What pops up for you? They’re probably judging me. Oh, they think they’re so great. We do this really quietly in the back of our minds. We look at other people’s actions, and we make assumptions about the type of person that they are. We’ve heard so often actions speak louder than words but we forget that any action can have a lot of circumstances, thoughts. feelings experiences conditions that express that action that lead up to that action. And I’m not talking about obvious situations where someone is causing harm or acting unethically in a morally, I’m talking more of that day to day stuff in our relationships, the things we judge in those around us. Relate relationships are one of the most common topics in counseling, because we know we need relationships. So when our close relationships feel off, our sense of stability feels off. Relationships, our deepest work, we live in relation to others, others are a mirror for us, a mirror for our own defenses, our triggers, our measuring sticks, our struggles, the things we rejected ourselves, our self judgment, perception is a projection, our experience of, well, anything but our experience of another person depends on us. So imagine we’re reading a book or watching a movie or someone said something, really anything, we all develop different meanings about the things because we are different, and we’ve had different experiences that shape, what meaning we give to things. Our perception is a projection of us of our own stories, our values, our cultural upbringing, our likes, our dislikes, our experiences, what we’re comfortable with what we’re not how we measure right and wrong. Here’s an example, if someone is very oppositional, but you grew up believing that it was noble and kind and diplomatic, to keep the peace, that oppositional person is going to trigger a lot in you, you’re going to have a lot of discomfort in judgment of the person. Or you will deny all those emotions and just wonder why it’s such a struggle to be around them. And imagine the opposite. If you grew up believing it was necessary to be oppositional that there are in justices in the world, someone has to take a stand. And if you care about something, you will say something, then they look at the person who seems to placate or seem apathetic, and that will trigger something in them. With a fundamental attribution bias, we make conclusions based on what we see in others. If a coworker is late to a meeting, we might assume that they’re disorganized. They’re disrespectful. We see the action and we make an assumption about who that person is their character, their motives. And maybe it’s true, like with most things, right, maybe sometimes they’re disorganized or disrespectful, maybe sometimes, but probably not all of the time. Like this is true for most things. But the most important part of all of this, the thing that I think can actually help us shift our perspectives on how we look at others make assumptions about them, Sidner judgments about them is the flip side. This bias has a flip side, which is when we do the thing. We attribute our actions to external circumstances, we justify it not by our character, but by what is happening to us. If we are late to a meeting, we have reasons right. Like, I had to get my kid off to school, I’m a mom, right? Or I had to print those meeting notes. The printer didn’t work. This bias is in almost every relationship from siblings to coworkers, to the lady at yoga to our kids to our partners. If my partner doesn’t want to talk about a subject, it’s because they’re scared to be vulnerable. They can’t handle their feelings like something’s wrong with them, right? Confirm this for me. But if I don’t want to talk about a subject, it’s because I’m not feeling safe. Right? Something else is the problem not perfect little me. If my partner doesn’t text me back during the day, I can assume they don’t care about me. They care more about work. They’re dismissive, how selfish of them. But if I don’t text them back during the day, I was busy. There’s so much stuff on my plate, I got distracted. Don’t you know how hard I work? There’s just so much I need to take care of how can you expect me to text you back like that? This is the contrast. How about with our kids, if our kid has a bad attitude, and we know they can have bad attitudes, we have a lot of assumptions about them. They’re moody, they’re petty, they’re dramatic. Oh my gosh, drama queen in the house. But if we have a bad attitude, we can probably list seven different external reasons that caused our bad attitude. We do this with perfect strangers to think of how you feel when someone cuts you off in traffic. I mean, sure, there’s obnoxious drivers and we just assume they’re being jerks. But if we found ourselves in that situation where we’ve had to cut someone off, we can tell you about all of the conditions out of our control that led up to that like Siri didn’t tell me I had to merge here. Soon enough, the person beside me didn’t let me in soon enough, whatever. We do this in the service industry a lot where opinions are formed on the employees or the managers based on how long the food takes or how long the line is at the cashier and you know that People who have worked in the service industry, you can see them, they are a patient, they are like a weak headed, we know what it’s like to be understaffed or someone calls in sick, or maybe the training wasn’t great, or you’re over scheduled, there’s a lot of demands on you, you can just tell the difference for the people who have been there. We make assumptions about people online, we can build up elaborate stories about the type of person it takes to make that certain type of social media post, and you fill in the blanks with whatever you notice in yourself, because we have a life online. So we do this quite often online. Whenever I learn about the way our brain filters information, and it has this bias, sometimes this bias actually doesn’t make our life better. I just wonder why. Why are we built this way? The short answer is to save energy. So our brain is always doing this. Assessing, categorizing, assessing, categorizing, it is the most efficient way, it would be too labor intensive for our brains to stop and think about all the external factors and this person’s life experience and all of the things in order to accurately know them their motives, their character. But if we can just look at the information, we have a person’s actions, we immediately categorize this person good, bad, right? Wrong, then we can know how to handle that person, and we will stay safe in that social environment. So these judgments are often too quick to perceive. And yes, they’re based on our past experiences and opinions. But ultimately, this is here to keep us safe is protective. And we do need some of this for sure we do. We need to have that intuition to help us navigate our social settings. But we also need to be aware of times where this fundamental attribution bias creates a me versus them mentality, or even in us versus them, when we applied to groups of people, which we see a lot more of, especially politically these days. So imagine you’re at work, and you have a co worker, and they always slack on this part of the job. Or we think oh, they’re entitled, they’re lazy, and probably I’m not gonna get too close to them, because that’s not who I am. That’s not in line with my values.

But what about the things that others might think that we slack on? Well, it’s probably because we’re under resourced, or we think it’s a low priority, we used our assessment, or we need training for it, or our boss won’t offer whatever. We also do it with social groups right here right around us. Imagine like as moms, you see, that group of moms over there, they are so blank, fill in the blank. And since I am not like that, I will not get close to them. The fundamental attribution bias helps us feel a sense of control, when we can read a person so to speak. This can show up a lot more for us in new settings, uncomfortable social settings, where we need to establish some safety within ourselves. We use this to quickly categorize who is safe, who is not, it gives us a sense of control. Ultimately, the bias is not based on facts, the facts will require work, curiosity, conversation, vulnerability, empathy, this bias can just bypass empathy and go right to conclusion. And that’s normal, right? Sometimes empathy can be a risk, it can cloud our intuition, it can make us vulnerable. But in a relationship where we do want safety, connection, compassion, we know empathy is like oxygen. I’m going to link some notes on that in the show notes of past episodes I’ve done on empathy and different relationships. Where we want more empathy, we need to be especially aware of this bias. If we seek more empathy, especially with the people we love. We cannot rely on our instantaneous assumptions. Again, based on our perceptions. We need to get more curious, we need to ask more questions. It reminds me of that account that I’m sure you’ve seen online called Humans of New York, where they take this portrait of someone in New York, and it’s just some person you’ve never seen before. But you look at it. And you might form a story about them in your mind. But the thing that they pair it with is someone’s deep and very personal story that they share with this post. Again, if you’re just looking at the photo, you’re going to make some conclusions. Perception is a projection but then you read their story and you look at them again, and your perception is rewritten. From all of this, I encourage you to remember there’s always a flipside, where we find ourselves taking these actions, we attribute them to our external circumstances, or maybe we even do this for our kids. We we don’t use this with just ourselves. We sometimes use it with people that we need them to be viewed a certain way. We let ourselves off the hook we let them off the hook. But when others take that action, or when another kid takes that action, we attribute it to their internal character. When I learned about this bias, I could see it by up a lot, mostly in my marriage, because that’s a place that’s really vulnerable. Marriage is really an arena of two people triggering each other all the time. So as I’ve seen my own bias come up, here’s some things I try to do. One, I try to laugh, like, I really laugh out loud at myself, sometimes with the conclusions I come to. I know I’ve shared this post before, something like my husband put the groceries away wrong, he must not care about me. And so like our brain can work. So I’m going to link that in the show notes. And then second, I stopped taking myself so seriously. And I don’t mean lowering my standards, but really about having compassion, and not making everything feel like this big, high pressure situation on who I need to be really making peace that I am messy and selfish and careless, sometimes I am all of those things to it has really brought me a lot of freedom and allowing it and others and then myself. Of course, I’ve got an episode on that. I’m going to link that in the show notes Two. And three, I get curious. If it’s a stranger, I find myself making up stories to practice different conclusions like that person is speeding, because they’re sisters in labor, like I did that, that happened to me. Or that person didn’t record and return that shopping cart, because they want to leave it handy for someone on this other side of the parking lot. Again, I don’t care about cards, like that’s kind of for me, or this person is probably having a really crappy day, and it’s hard for them to pretend they’re okay, and make a small talk at the grocery store with me, I don’t need this cashier to make me feel better. Like they can just have their own experience in view and whatever they’re in. And if it’s someone I can have a conversation with, I want to ask rather than assume, I don’t want to keep filling in the blanks. I don’t want to keep mine reading I want to ask. Ultimately, we know our judgments can become walls. So where we want to seek connection, we need to learn to dismantle our judgments and our stories of one another and man that takes humility, and hope and commitment and Jesus and hopefully some sense of humor and all of this. I’m going to put some links in the show notes, I always encourage you to go check them out. Go to simple on purpose.ca. Click Listen, you’ll find all of the episodes there. I filled them all with show notes and there also is a full transcript too if you ever want to read the episode. I really enjoy talking about relationships. I really enjoy working on them. They are one of my most favorite arenas to do this work. If you want one to one support on this, you can look into coaching with me. I’ll link that in the show notes as well. All right friends, have a great one.

The post 207. Our judgements and assumptions of others (fundamental attribution bias and how it impacts our relationships) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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When you think you need all the things and the dream home to be happy…. then you realize you need to shed the weight of ‘stuff’ and consumerism in order to find yourself and find peace. Renee Benes, of the Unstuffed Podcast, shares some of her story of downsizing, decluttering the closet and what it taught her about herself and her life.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Renee gave up her dream home to downsize and adopt minimalism
• The process of decluttering the closet, letting go of those clothes that no longer fit your identity or body
• How to navigate an appreciation of fashion with minimalism
• Capsule wardrobes, seasonal clothing, shopping
• The influence of social media on us and how it impacts approaches to minimalism

This episode is a portion of our interview, the rest of the interview covers topics such as:

• Death and loss
• Raising kids
• Scarity and abundance
• And even kid’s bday presents

There is audio and video available for the rest of this fun interview!

Find Renee at the Unstuffed Podcast and on Instagram

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Be part of the Life on Purpose Community

Full Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00
Welcome to the simple purpose Podcast. Today we have a very unique episode. This is a guest episode, which rarely happens. And the reason you’re hearing it here today is because I have recently started the Patreon the life on purpose community, and I would like to offer guest episodes in that community. So I wanted to make sure and share some of the year so you can meet Renee, who I’m talking with today. And here’s some of her story. Because I enjoy her story. You’ll hear me tell Renee, that I have followed her on Instagram for years. And I was really drawn to her content, because she was talking about the things I was interested in about saving money, but like just the real practical, like discomfort and stuff about saving money and shopping. And she was talking about becoming a minimalist and how it was changing her life. And she was very laid back about it. It wasn’t all curated, tablescapes and rose gold and just do these three things, and your life will be simplified, and it was really relatable. So Renee has a podcast called unstuffed. And she’s also an Instagram I’m gonna make sure to link are in the show notes. What you’re going to hear, hear, hear, hear, what you’re going to hear today is a mini version of a longer episode. There’s actually two more parts to this episode one is an audio podcast, and the other is a video and those will be available on Patreon coming soon. In this episode, though, we’re going to talk about downsizing, Rene’s experience with downsizing our home. We’re going to talk about closets and clothes and how consumerism and social media plays into all of these things about our lives and who we think we are. So I want to just jump right in. I hope you enjoy. Welcome

Shawna Scafe 1:46
to the podcast. I’m so excited to have you here.

Renee 1:49
Hi, Shawna. Yeah,

Shawna Scafe 1:51
thanks for having me.

Renee 1:52
I’m excited to sit down and chat. Yeah.

Shawna Scafe 1:53
So I don’t often do well, I rarely ever do guest interviews. But I’ve been following you on Instagram, I was telling you earlier, I found you on Pinterest started following you on Instagram some years back. And when you reached out to me, as I absolutely like I’ve followed you for a while, I’m going to also be sharing some of this content in the Patreon only. So this was just really inspired timing as well, in my opinion, to be doing this interview with you. So aside from that, tell us who you are. What you do you know the basics. Yeah, well, thanks.

Renee 2:27
I’m so glad first of all, that you still like me from the blog? Like thanks for hanging out. But um, yeah, I started my minimalist blog in 2017. After we had just downsized our house. We downsize our house by 2000 finished square feet, and just started practicing minimalism. And I did it in a way of like, hoping to be able to reconnect to myself, I felt like I had kind of gone through life just on autopilot and collected stuff on autopilot. Yeah. So going through the decluttering process for me was an internal and external just all around life transformation.

Shawna Scafe 3:11
Yeah, and I know, I know some of your story from following you over the years, I know that you were in this huge home. And like you said earlier, there was just a lot of things happening all at once. That kind of prompted you to make a decision to downsize. Could you kind of in a nutshell, give me an idea of what that was like at that time.

Renee 3:30
Yeah, it was like, so obnoxious in the sense that I felt like I had I got everything I ever wanted, everything I thought I should ever want. And it couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t happy. Like, everything just felt worse. It almost felt worse because I thought it would feel better and it didn’t you know, and I started to it talk about like how serendipitously I found, self help spiritual author Wayne Dyer. I didn’t know self help was a thing I didn’t read. I didn’t read after high school. But my marriage was struggling. You know, and my husband had been my best friend so to like, not have my best friend around but this roommate kind of person in my house. You know, it was so awful. So I had a friend say, Well, I’ve been going to the library a lot. And I thought, Well, okay, I heard about this, dude, wait, I’ll just go see what his books are. And they were life changing. And I think that’s how things happen. A lot of times those were just brought to the right message that we need. And it started to encourage me to seek more than stuff in my life to seek a deeper, more fulfilled life that wasn’t just reliant on external things or collecting the things we’re told we should want, you know?

Shawna Scafe 4:58
Yeah, I don’t know if this is how you felt at the time. But it’s like we spent a lot of our 20s building up the life people showed us and told us and you know, we’re you go into winners, and this is what you buy, I think maybe you guys call it something different there. But you go in, you buy the things at the store that you think an adult would need. But then you come home and it just fills your home. And maybe it’s actually not really you like, what, what was that contrast, like to notice between, I have all this stuff. But this is actually who I want to be. So it was

Renee 5:30
tough. It was a weird thing that was kind of like, I’m winging it, I hope this helped pave the road for me. But you’re right, like, our parents, you know, we’re born. And we, it’s what we’re supposed to do is listen to our elders, right? They taught us how to eat, they taught us how to walk, they taught us how to wipe our own butt, you know, things that we need. And so then we just kind of keep listening to the messages that were given from teachers and from parents and, you know, go to college, get the house, when are you going to have kids? And a lot of times nobody questions like, oh, but is this actually what I want? Or do I even have an option for these things? And then unfortunately, you know, I think a lot of people already accumulated the things like you said, and that’s where I started to hear a lot of stories from like the minimalists. Who got the climb the ladder at the six figure job, and we’re like, this isn’t, I don’t like this. I don’t want I want to be here. And so I, for me, it started in my closet. And I think you said you find a lot of peace and decluttering your closet as well as like I couldn’t. It’s so difficult to say like, Hey, figure out who you are. Who are you really what do you really want? That’s a big question. So my solution was, well, I’m gonna go on my closet. And I’ll start with the clothes I actually liked the most. So I picked out all the things that I always wanted to wear the most, you know, the, you know, the shirt that you’re like, I always feel cozy in the shirt. I love the way this shirt looks on me. These pants, oh my gosh, they’re my favorite. I picked out all those things. And basically got rid of the rest. Yeah, I kept a few pieces. But the rest was like, Okay, you’re gone.

Shawna Scafe 7:23
Oh, wow.

Renee 7:24
And that was kind of my stepping stone to figure it out. Me.

Shawna Scafe 7:28
That is I think clothing is a great space to start. But you probably hear this often. How do you actually let go of the things that are, you know, maybe I was pregnant, and this fit me then and it won’t fit me right now. Or I used to have a job. And this is what I used to wear? Like, how did you give yourself permission to really let go of the things because we hold on to clothes for like, safety, like a security net? Or, like, I need options? Like, what did you notice going through and letting go of that stuff? Yeah,

Renee 8:00
I in that moment. I think it was just such a deep emotional desire to figure out to figure out who I was to let go of it all to kind of start fresh. It was like I wanted to wipe the slate clean, and figure it out. And I think that’s such an important part of decluttering a lot of times is to, to I mean, not everybody everybody’s journey is different. No one’s no one’s is like mine. It’s mine. It’s weird, I feel like but to like, have a deeper idea of what you’re reaching for because it makes it so much easier to let go of those little things, you know, but you’re right, those those deeper topics. So for me in that moment, it was like, I just need to start fresh. It was really easy. But I remember talking to my aunt who it’s been maybe two years now since she retired, she sold her home. She girl just went crazy. She like she had a home that was very filled. She had a very large beautiful home that was filled with things and she would give me things and then she would do the things she does. If you don’t want this or if you’re when the kids are done give it back give it back to the setback. Yeah, but I don’t know what clicked in her. But she was like sold it all get rid of the house don’t care. And they moved to Arizona with like just one storage tube you know, Storage Cube filled with things. But her she said that her her work. clothing was the biggest struggle for her. Yeah, like you were saying like what about these work clothes? I think that’s so huge, especially and this was part of why I started to declutter was a lesson as we build our identity around our stuff we attach our worth and our value to the things that we own. So for her and I get this man because she’s an impressive woman. She is You know, really worked her way up the corporate ladder. And for her that was in the 80s when women weren’t necessarily taken seriously, and she was the boss she like, was able to accomplish huge, wonderful things. And so for her this wardrobe was a, you know, yeah. It was, I didn’t this this is even high was that Yeah, great. Um, and I think stuff like that is giving ourselves the grace and that emotional healing, like, you’re letting go of more than your work clothes. You know, or you’re letting go of more than the clothes that fit you before you got pregnant. You know, I struggled big time with bikinis after I had babies. You know, me stretch marks, like letting go of a person. You’re like letting go of who you

Shawna Scafe 10:59
used to be version of you. Yeah. Yeah. Letting go of the bikinis is letting go of the version of you that was wearing bikinis. And yeah, all of that setting companies. That experience Yeah. Right.

Renee 11:12
It can be such a tough thing. You know? We’re Yeah, we might think like, why can’t I let go of these, you know, my skinny pants or my skinny jeans or the smaller clothing size. And a lot of it is, you know, maybe accepting that you’re not that person accepting that you’re not that size person. Because chances are like, if I were to all of a sudden fit into my smaller pants that I wore before kids, and I still had all the old ones, I would want to go buy new ones anyway, you know, cuz I wouldn’t want the old ones. I wouldn’t want the old tops that used to fit. If all of a sudden my stretch marks are gone, and I had a six pack at home. To go by myself. New bikinis is what I’m gonna do. You know? Yeah.

Shawna Scafe 11:59
I think there’s that rational part of it. And also like a truly a healing emotional part that you have to let go of more than just the thing. Or release. Yeah, yeah. And clothing is so interesting, because we live in fast fashion where it changes every season. Remember, growing up, you were kind of beisbol I mean, the 80s and early 90s was they were a bit different. But ideally, we were just buying something and we would have it till it wore out or if we outgrew it. But it seems like now we’re in an era where we refresh our closet constantly. And I’ll say I enjoy that. Like, I like the feeling of going and getting something new I love. Okay, how am I going to use this? How am I going to wear it like this is exciting. It’s something new and novel. And I can satisfy that feeling with thrift stores and how many downs but there, but I do notice the contrast of what a minimalism capsule wardrobe should be that we buy these statement pieces that lasted a decade plus, versus how maybe there’s a part of us that enjoys clothes and fashion like, what did you notice in yourself about that as you went through the years of really paying attention to your clothing and your shopping? Yeah,

Renee 13:13
that’s funny that you say that. I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Because I did a blog post called How to be a minimalist and so like clothes. I always did. I always liked my clothes. And I think the more I learned who I was, the more I bought clothes that aligned with who I was versus before that I kind of just bought whatever was trendy, whatever was on sale, whatever. Other people you know, if you go shopping with someone, you’re not going to get them but it’s so cute. You’re like, okay, I

Shawna Scafe 13:40
guess I’ll buy it, you know, right. twofer run all the things Yeah. Right.

Renee 13:44
And so I am I’m like you were I feel like I buy things and then have them for a few years and then it starts to be like okay, I you know, I I want to refresh it because I do like having new clothes. And you’re right with the capsule wardrobes. I tried. I’ve tried capsule wardrobes. And maybe you relate to this being in Canada, and I’m in Minnesota here like in the winter, I put some winter stuff, I put summer stuff away. I’m not gonna put on a dress. I think he’s gonna your kids wear shorts in the winter. I am not wanting to do that. Again, in Minnesota, it’s like but in summertime, I still keep all the sweatshirts and the sweaters because,

Shawna Scafe 14:29
yeah, you’re probably

Renee 14:30
going to need them. But beyond that, I I can’t quite limit myself. I do think it’s good to have those basic statement pieces for me at least like the undershirts that are white, neutral, black. Those are something I always turn to like there’s something I’ve always continually used. But giving yourself the grace and the peace to know what your style is and to be okay with it. And if you have an amount of clothing that feels overwhelming for you Maybe it’s out like a little bit, you know?

Shawna Scafe 15:03
Yeah, I think that’s a good point is that we all come into decluttering simplifying with a certain amount of stuff already. And for some of you, it could, like, I’ve watched documentaries and seen people with a rules stuffed full of clothes that they have to declutter, and they get it down to half the room. And you know, that is good work, versus someone who has like the five foot closet, and they just declutter a bunch. So it’s just like meeting yourself where you’re at doing a little bit of work. And I think we’re in this kind of interesting era of social media, where we have a lot of influence on what our home should look like, how we should dress, how we should look, I can’t tell you what my algorithm is, but I’m getting so much information on makeup lately that I’m like, do I need all new makeup? But do I need a makeover? Like it just starts to stick with you? Right? Do I need to buy that? I keep seeing it. I really like it. So there is that component of this mass influence in our lives that’s in our pockets in our faces, constantly throughout the day. What have you seen or noticed for yourself in terms of maybe how social media and being a minimalist and enjoying clothes like how has that all kind of melded together in your world?

Renee 16:16
It’s so tough, isn’t it? I mean,

Speaker 1 16:19
as we continue talking, this interview took a turn to some really deeper content. In the rest of this conversation, we talked more about finances, those existential questions on how we are living Rene Shaner experience on her dad’s death when she was 19, and how that impacted her. All of that’s in the bonus episodes in the Patreon. And that bonus video to where we talk about parenting scarcity and abundance, how we approach minimalism with kids how what we grew up with or without shows up in how we parent, letting go of negative self talk and meeting yourself where you’re at, it was really just this huge range of topics from closets to grief and loss to money to birthday presents. So if you aren’t in the Patreon, I hope you’ll join us this month, you’ll hear me talk about the Patreon all of the time, because I know if you’re here listening to simple on purpose, then you ought to be in the Patreon you’ll love the content in the life on purpose community. That’s where we take whatever we’re talking about here. And we get deeper we get more personal, we expand on things. I like to share worksheets if I can create one for an episode. It’s kind of like we have this monthly theme that we’re able to unpack and work and discuss and just be mindful of throughout the month. Plus being in the Patreon support, so content that I put out through simple on purpose. Alright, I so enjoyed talking with Rene, I hope you go and listen to more of that. Thanks for joining me in this little coffee date I had with her and if you have any guest requests for the Patreon, send them my way. Have a great week.

The post 206. Finding peace through downsizing + decluttering the closet and shopping, with Renee Benes of the Unstuffed Podcast first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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Our relationship to ‘enough’ can show up in all the areas of our life. Whether we struggle with discomfort, self-worth, setting limits, or offering ourselves more – we all can consider how the concept of ‘enough’ and ‘sufficient’ can play out in our minds, hearts and lives.

Key topics in this episode, and related links for more information* Enough exercise for this season + TRX videos in my workout playlist of videos I used and loved * Setting boundaries with our phone + Intentional phone habits (episode and worksheets) * Having a constant need for comfort + Type 9, How the enneagram changed my life * Times of parenting that are so difficult and what ‘enough’ looks like in those seasons + Difficult parenting * Asking what is ‘enough’ when decluttering + Can A Minimalist Have a Full Kitchen? + Til We Have Just Enough Stuff * Struggling with moderation and knowing what is too much and what is too little * Hurdles for women really knowing what is enough, for themselves. * Relying on external sources to compensate our ‘not-enoughness’ + 186. Doing life with less (summer challenge) + 192. Who are you when I’m not looking (internal vs external validation) * Having a mindset of ‘not enough’ + 40. Does the ‘not-enough’ mindset show up in your momlife? (Scarcity/Abundance) + You Can Simplify Your Life Series * Looking at this through a faith lens + the BEMA episode on Genesis, Creation, Enough

Questions mentioned in this episode that you can use for reflection and journalling: * What relationship do I have with the terms ‘enough’ and ‘sufficient’? * How skilled to I feel at gauging ‘enough’ for myself? * Where does scarcity show up for me? * Where do I struggle to feel like I am doing enough/am enough/have enouhg? * How has being online made me feel like there is something about me or my life that isn’t enough? * What does the world around me, seasons and nature, teach me about ‘enough’? * Where do I feel like I have too much in my life? * Where do I feel like I have too little in my life? * Have there been times in my life when I felt a sense of ‘enough’? * How do I act, in the different areas of my life, when I feel like there is not ‘enough’?

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Full transcript (unedited)Hey friends, it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counselor. Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. So we’re coming into April. And this is a weird season. It’s like an in between season for me, because summer is not here, the

Speaker 1 0:18
kids are still in school. But hockey is over which hockey took up for weeknights, and most weekends. So there’s a definite, like, calm period, I would say, the boys are playing more Xbox. But they also move their backboard out of the basement, which is really nice. So they’re out in the yard, shooting pucks, and I kind of get the basement back again, I can put the TRX up and I can do a TRX workout, which I really enjoy the TRX it’s something that you hang from the ceiling or a door and has these two straps that you can like adjust with handholds, and it’s a weight trainer, there’s some really great videos online that I like to do. And I always feel it after even if I’m doing like a really quick workout, like, even 20 minutes, it’s all my workouts are 20 minutes. It’s something that I really am enjoying, too, I think it’s really important to find a way to move that you enjoy. And really one of my goals is strength training. So I’m really happy to reclaim that my basement from hockey and many sticks. And I think, I don’t know, maybe this kind of nicely goes with the topic of the month, which is the theme of balance and moderation. It’s something I’m going to be actively talking about in the Patreon as well as we go through the month. So I want to talk more about the concept of enough. And with this topic, I have a lot of thoughts. It’s like walking through different rooms in one house. So I want to share some different ideas. And I’m going to approach it to be almost kind of meditative, like reading a bunch of daily bread pages, did you grow up with those little daily bread books or daily bread? My mom always had them in the bathroom. She had a lot of bugs in the bathroom, actually, which I find myself doing like my mother now. But a book in the bathroom, it kind of just keeps me from bringing the phone in, which I think is a good boundary. Anyways, the daily bread, they’re like these little books in each page, there’s one page for a day, and has little story, a little thought and then some scripture. So as I drafted up these notes for this episode, I kind of laughed at myself, because I thought it’s not a Reader’s Digest version. And it’s not like 10 points on something. It’s kind of a daily bread version of thoughts. So let’s just start with the first thought. And the first thought is me kind of first thinking about the concept of it enough, the first time I actually really thought about it as an adult. And there was that time in my life where I had my first two kids remember, they were 16 months apart. And it was really overwhelming probably the most overwhelming time of my life because I had a toddler and a baby. But this baby only wanted to sleep on me and was quite mad when she wasn’t sleeping on me. I felt really up against my personal limitations, one of them being a need for constant comfort. And at that time I had written on my chalkboard in my hallway, My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in your weakness. And man did I want power I wanted the power of God coming into my life and rescuing me. And I clung to this verse, My grace is sufficient. In some translations, it says My grace is enough. And that’s the part that stuck with me this concept that enough? Is a version of satisfied or sufficient. And I don’t think I let enough really be the same as satisfied because enough felt lacking somehow. There’s no extra buffer, there’s no security. But enough is sufficient. Isn’t it a sufficient amount? It’s what’s required? No more, no less. When I was decluttering, I would think about the word enough quite often. What’s enough forks for one house? What are enough pairs of tweezers? What are enough pairs of jeans? What’s enough bars of soap in the drawer? What’s enough cleaning products? And of course these are personal questions. There’s no one right answer. But it’s a question that we need to engage for ourselves in all areas of our life. What is enough? What’s enough hours of work? What’s enough hours of time online? What’s enough space in a home and how big should a closet be? What’s enough? What’s enough stuff in the cupboards? What’s enough food for me? What’s enough for drink? What’s enough shopping? And enough is that limit between too much and too little? How do we know we’ve crossed that line into too much or too little? And more importantly, how do we recalibrate, settle, rebalance into enough A lot of the women I work with struggle with moderation with knowing what is enough and remaining in what is enough. For lots of us, it’s either too much or too little also known as all or nothing. Too much shame and criticism too little love and grace, too much distraction, too little intention, too much stuff, too little of the right stuff. How skilled Are we at gauging what is enough for ourselves because the world doesn’t help us with this, the world tells us all of the time, we aren’t enough. We aren’t youthful enough, attractive enough, healthy enough tanned enough vacationed enough, our teeth aren’t brushed enough, they need that special toothbrush, we aren’t smart enough, intuitive enough. We aren’t gentle enough, we aren’t assertive enough. We are energetic enough. So we buy and accumulate a lot of stuff and products and content, so that we can finally be enough. I’ve got an interview coming up in the Patreon with Renee Ben is and she shared this sentiment about her Shopaholic times, where she said she was some something to the sentiment of I was buying all this stuff to feel like I was enough. But then I was just in a constant state of seeing all the ways I wasn’t enough. It’s a core issue. Its core fear that we all need to reckon to some extent. And my enough, what’s our default answer to that question? It’s no, because saying no, you’re not enough, that’s gonna protect us. Because if we’re not enough, we can figure out a way to be enough, and then we’ll be safe. I was looking in the bathroom the other day. And I noticed I have this shelf of lotions and potions that I thought were very necessary when I bought them online at midnight. But now I think they just confused my skin and make me feel like I am now in this lifelong contract with hyaluronic acid. And I can’t do life without it. It’s something I shared when we were doing the live with less challenge in the summer, there are these products that have become my baseline for living. Like I’m just not enough on my own. I need these. I need that daily coffee, I need that certain type of food, I need this beauty product just to be enough. When did I decide I needed these things? When was what I had and who I was not enough? I think what would my grandma’s say? What did her generation think was enough? Surely they did not have a row of skincare products for all the different components of their skin in areas of their face, they probably didn’t have five different types of socks, they probably didn’t have all the streaming services we know they didn’t. But here we are, with more and more options each year on the things we think we now need to make us enough they become a necessity of life. When I approach my life with this underlying thought that maybe I need these things, this puts me into a place of lack of not enough, I have eyes for that now, scarcity, we call it Where does scarcity, not enoughness show up for you? Where do you struggle to feel like you are doing enough or that you are enough? It’s one thing to just be a human in the world and struggle with this question. But we now live in a time where we have to ask how is being online made me feel like there is something about me or my life that isn’t enough. A while back in a simple Saturday’s email, I shared a podcast that is one of my staples. It’s called beyma B E M A. It explains the ancient Middle Eastern culture as the Bible was written in it. And if you want to understand the Bible at all, this is a must listen, it has transformed my faith. But on this podcast on beyma, they were talking about Genesis the story of God creating the world and how we approached creating the world by knowing when to say enough. God said it was good and then they rested. So if you consider things through a faith lens at all, this is kind of a beautiful image to remember that there is such thing as enough and see it displayed all around us. We have seasons and oceans and this natural cycle all around us. We have daylight and nighttime we have limits on how much energy we need. On how much sleep we need. We have limits on time and space. Enough who needs to honor the season it is in. And now if we are creators, our own little world, if we don’t stop and remind ourselves that we are the ones to say enough in our own worlds. Then we become overrun, overwhelmed, and spread then trying to do all the things be all of the things have all of the things all of the time

Speaker 1 9:47
for me to go back 11 years and tell myself with a toddler and a baby, that God’s grace was enough for me it was sufficient for me this was not fun is not what I wanted. I didn’t want sufficient. I wanted overflowing prestige. Easy Button Godsend a live in nanny who makes gluten free waffles. That’s what I wanted. I didn’t want enough. But as I would see that written on my chalkboard all the time, I knew I had to get familiar with what enough sufficient looked like, and what it felt like because it was uncomfortable to be in a place of enough. Because I had always been scrambling for the sense of what I would call plenty and comfort. And now I had to trust it. Now I had to look for it, I had to appreciate it. And most importantly, I had to be responsible with it. As we wrap up, I want to offer you some reflective questions for yourself. I’m going to put them in the show notes. So you can go and refer to them. Maybe pause and think about them, maybe use them as journal prompts. And yes, making a bulleted list counts as journaling guys, however you get it out of your head and reflect about it that counts. So here are some questions. Where do you feel like you have too much in your life? Often we have too much consumption, too much accumulating too much hoarding too much maxing out our resources, which are time, energy, space and money. And we have too little creating too little generosity too little margin too little saying not yet to ourselves. Have there been times in your life where you felt like something was enough? I think this is a double question because it really requires us to ask if we’ve ever really felt paid attention to what it feels like to have a sufficient amount to have enough. And probably one of the more interesting questions you can ask yourself, How do I react when I feel like there is not enough? This is just really great to notice about yourself. Think about the areas of your life, and how you act within that area when you feel like there’s not enough. Thanks for coming on this kind of metaphorical tour through the House have enough with me. I want to keep this conversation going in the Patreon. I’m going to be sharing that interview with Renee Bennis from unstuffed. And I’ll also be sharing a podcast episode on what is enough in terms of parenting and teaching enough to our kids. I also want to talk about that related topic of scarcity and abundance. Because really, that’s the mindset behind deciding what is enough. A reminder that life on purpose community, Patreon, it’s a members community, it’s a way to support simple and purpose kind of like buying me a coffee to keep fueling all the things I share here through simple on purpose, but really ultimately want it to be a place where people join in, so that we can grow as a community together and a place for me to just show up in one place. center my time and energy into one place. And that’s the Patreon so check it out. If you’re at all interested, you can always try it out and leave if it’s not for you. I’ll link a post in the show notes about that. Show Notes are fun guys go and check them out. I tried to fill them with a lot of links on related episodes I’ve done over the years and blog posts I’ve written over the years because like we’re coming on to almost 13 years of blog posts and many many years of podcasts so go and check that out if you want to keep digging into this topic. And if you feel so inclined as always I don’t ask for it but I’m always thinking about asking for it is to leave me a rating and review some of you guys message me your thoughts on the podcast in I would love it if you would put that in a rating and review on your podcast player. Those really helped out All right friends. Sometimes I sign off simple Saturdays with this reminder and I’m going to share it with you here. Of course it’s so fitting the reminder that you are enough. You do enough and you have enough. Have a great week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post 205. Finding balance through ‘ENOUGH’: motherhood, minimalism, self-worth, and personal growth first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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The most common question I get is “how do you balance motherhood, life and work?”. We are all seeking to have more balance in our daily lives and make sure we get everything done. In this episode, I share my struggles with having a toddler and baby and looking for balance in my life. I share the common themes I hear from clients on the topic of balance. And I want to offer you different ways to define balance for yourself.

Main topics covered in this episode (and all the related links you might like):The Life on Purpose Community is open on Patreon* Listen to a quick episode about what Patreon is and what to expect from the community * Join the community here * This month we are covering the topics of balance and moderation

How our culture influences our definition of balance, and the societal expectations on moms, working moms and women in generalHow do you define balance? What has your culture told you about what balance looks like for a working mom?

How does the workplace support working moms, working families?

• 1. Being a mom who enjoys her life
• The Meeting Your Needs Series
• 1. Motherhood & Social Media (how online communities impact your motherhood experience)
• 1. I stopped calling myself a lazy mom (addressing the overwhelm of motherhood)
• Hurdles to being a mom who has dreams and hobbies
• 1. The Joy of Being Mediocre (hobby without the hustle)

Both my personal experiences and working with moms tell me that we think others are finding balance but we aren’tWe get the sense that others have found balance and ease in their life, we don’t see their struggles or inner critics.

• 1. You aren’t alone mama, I go through that too
• What I Learned While Searching for Balance in Motherhood
• 1. Overcoming negative self-talk and to moving towards positive self-talk

Reframing the definition of balance can bring a lot of freedom to a mom who is struggling to make vague or unattainable standards of balance in their life* 189. Prioritizing the day: if everything matters nothing matters and how to apply this in motherhood * 149. How to find what matters to you (uncovering your personal values) * Know Where You Are Going (why vision setting matters + free LIVE YOUR VISION worksheets) * 190. Planning the day: my weekly routines and rhythms for work, home and family * 78. Small things that can change your whole life (the compound effect) * 133. 4 simple habits that make my momlife better * 175. What will your future be? More of the same? Or will you turn off the autopilot?

Looking for more?Follow along on Instagram

Sign up for the Simple Saturdays email (twice a month!)

Join the Life on Purpose Community

Book a session with Shawna

Full transcript (unedited)

Speaker 1 0:00
Hey friends, it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend counselor from simple purpose.ca. Welcome back. Welcome. If you’re new to the simple on purpose podcast, around here, we talk about ways to simplify your home, your heart, your life, and show up for your life on purpose. A lot of the conversations we have here on the podcast, are my aim at getting you to really step back and just kind of watch what’s happening for you get awareness about yourself in your life, and how you’re showing up so that you can turn off that autopilot, that reactive that default living that status quo, because if you’re here, you probably want something a little bit different. You want something more intentional. And so we try to talk about being intentional in how we’re showing up in how we’re parenting and in how we’re living our life. That’s the life on purpose Park. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. So we can keep talking about all of the simple on purpose topics. And speaking of simple on purpose, how is your spring break? Was it simple? Was it on purpose? Maybe sometimes, maybe not all the time. I took our two weeks off here in BC, I took our two weeks off of work pretty much for spring break. In the back of my mind, I actually thought I would have pockets of time to draft some episodes get ready for tax season. But my kids really wanted to hang out with me. It’s a surprise. Their friends went out of town though. So I was tagged back in to being an acceptable person to hang out with. We played Monopoly. If you’re on my Instagram, you saw that that was a days long event, because we do it in doses so that we preserve our relationships. We also reread the rules to monopoly. Did you know you can still collect rent and bid on property in jail. So we’ve totally changed our monopoly approach. We watched movies I mentioned I was hoping we would watch Harry Potter and we got up to movie six. So I’m proud of us. We had fires, we went out of town, we played mini golf into an arcade. So it felt like we did a lot. But we still had a lot of time just kind of hanging out at home, which is my favorite to have some downtime. Over the spring break though I did release an episode in the Patreon and if you’re like what is a Patreon? I don’t know what that is. That is an app that is where I hold our members community, the life on purpose community, that’s our members community. And you’ve probably heard me in the past talk about Facebook and Facebook and Instagram are really hard places to grow community and show up on so we’ve moved over to Patreon so that we can show up really intentionally. This is a place where people join on purpose, which means the conversation is also a lot more engaged. There is a bonus Patreon episode on losing yourself in motherhood. And there’s been some really valuable conversations. Following that episode, women sharing their insights, their own struggles, their own strategies. So if you’ve been thinking about joining the life on purpose community, I encourage you to check it out. It’s a really great way to be intentional with how and where you show up for online community, you get bonus episodes, I’m a little bit more in depth, I’m a lot more in depth, actually, I think and a lot more personal in those episodes. And ultimately, it’s just a great way to support the work of simple and purpose. So if you’re interested in that, check out the link in the show notes for the life on purpose community. As we move on this month, we’re talking about the topics of balance and moderation. And balance is the most requested topic that I get. It’s something I talk about with a lot of my clients, especially if they’re moms, or they have really demanding jobs. It’s something I get emails on. And questions are like, how do I balance working? And home? How do I not crash and burn? How do I make sure I’m doing all of the things I’m supposed to do in the day? Some interesting questions that come to my mind with this topic are what is evidence that you use to tell yourself you’re not balanced, that you’re not living a balanced life? And what does balance mean to you? How do you know if you’re more aligned? As I asked, What does balance mean to you? What comes up for you? What do you what sense do you get what visions do you get that life will look like when you have more balance? You noticed a theme here that when I talk about these issues that we are facing, I often talk about how our culture has influenced our concepts and assumption of these issues. And this is simply because our culture is the soil that we’re grown in. And if you consider all the cultures all over the world over all the ages, you sense that each each culture is producing very different values, different rules for living different rules for the people and the roles they play different words for things. I think emotions is a great example of how our culture teaches us different things. For example, in some cultures, emotion shouldn’t be repressed, should be hidden. In other cultures, emotion is an acceptable part of being human. And you can be passionate and you can express your emotions openly. So as we talk about balance, especially as moms and women, we need to consider how we are taught to define balance. A very North American way of defining balance, in my opinion, is finding the time and energy in a day to do all of the things we think we should be doing emphasis on this should. This is where our cultural influence plays a part. What should we be doing? I’ve talked about this many times, the societal expectations on moms and women. I’ll I’ll link some episodes in the show notes on that. I think most of us think that balance is living that ideal day, every day, where we have time for health, the meals are prepped socializing, we talked to friends, we’re connected with other people work where we show up engaged in productive family, where we are present with our kids and patient, community, sleep hobbies, checking with our partner exercise, reading a book, we live in a culture that tells us balance is living that ideal day every day. Also, we live in a culture that does not make balance easy for a woman and mum, the domestic duties are defaulted to the mum, we are expected to carry that mental load, manage the Google Calendar, get all the emails, and now we’re working and still doing all of the same domestic duties. I will say though, I think we’re seeing a shift in this, I think our generation and the one behind us, because your girl, here’s Gen X. So I think there’s two generations maybe three parenting right now, I think that we are on this shift where we are shifting what we grew up with, we are shifting the domestic norms. We are in this generation where both parents are working. And that’s maybe what we saw our moms doing in the 90s and stuff. But we’re having more conversations about it with our partners on how to share that workload. However, there’s still a lot of culture that clings to those traditional domestic roles. And if a if a mom is to work outside the home, they enter into a workforce that is set up for the working parent rather than the default parent. So moms are expected to be the default parent while working in jobs that offer no little supports for them to do that. Well, that workplace is still a system set up for the male partner. And it doesn’t allow even for the male partner to have flexibility in work and parenting. This is not I’m not a sociologist, right? This is just my cultural evaluation. So take from it what you will, but this is definitely my soapbox. Let’s get back to balance. How do you define balance in your life? What would that specifically look like if you had a balanced day week? Get specific because vague answers are unsatisfiable goalposts. Ultimately, here’s how we’re entering into this conversation on balance, one with the expectation that we should be able to do all of the things sidenote related. Now we also have the shame and guilt, when we don’t do all of the things and how that impacts us and our self concept and our motivation. And to we’re also entering into a culture that expects us to do all the things but does not offer us supports to do so. If this is how we are entering into the expectation that we should be able to find balance, which to me feels vague and unsatisfiable. To me, we’re set up to fail, if this is how we approach the concepts of balance.

Speaker 1 8:40
You know where this is going? The big question, what if you could rethink balance and what that looks like for you in your own life? As I think of this question, where people have asked me over the years, how I balance it all, how I juggle it all, I really draw blink some days. Some days, I feel very balanced. I feel like life is doable, and it’s intentional. I feel like it’s in a good flow. In some days. I feel like my life is falling apart. I’m totally overwhelmed. I’m living off protein bars and coffee and I’m going to cry at least once today. Some so you just don’t know what you’re gonna get. I think back to the really early days of motherhood, where I recklessly believed that balance was something I could just do if I found the right tip on Pinterest. I believed I could make a home cooked meal while the toddler and baby were at home. I could get up early for a workout and devotions. I can have enough patience and energy for the whole day. Because that’s what I thought people were doing. I saw them on Instagram. That’s what they were doing. And I cannot tell you over the years how many women I have talked to who carry so much workplace stress, relationship stress issues with their kids struggles with their parents, health issues, mental health issues, home issues, conflict, confusion, overwhelm, and they say to me, why can’t I figure this out? Why can other people do this? And I can’t. I remember feeling that way. And if you feel that way, you are not alone. We think others are doing it and feeling good about it. We think other women don’t struggle with inner critic or inner shame or a lack of motivation. We think others have figured out how to make all of this work that may be even their gods favorite morally superior, Hashtag blessed. And I’m here to tell you, nobody feels like they have it all together all of the time. You might see someone in a calm season where their routines are working. Sure, but real life has tough seasons and conflicts and demands that we alter our definition of balance as we move through it. I used to chase this productive version of balance where I could be a super woman and do all of the things in the day that I should do. I used to think I could find on the internet, that mindset hack that life hack, that willpower tip that would make it all happen. I used to think that those pursuits, they were thwarted pretty fast out of the gate into motherhood. And I’m going to link a post about that in the show notes. I have changed my mind about balance about what it means to me. And I want to share these with you to give you ideas. First of all, to me balances making the time and energy for what matters the most right now. You’ve heard me say it over again, we need to make choices, we need to prioritize. And in order to do that, we need to know ourselves, who we are, and what we want, both for this season of life that we’re in, and hopefully that bigger, longer term version. This is the work of knowing our values and our vision that’s in the life and purpose workbook that’s in the life on purpose worksheets, you can get those on the website, we need to know what matters right now. And we need to prioritize that. That also means letting some things fall to the wayside, letting other things not be done, we need to honor that season we’re in there were seasons of my motherhood, where I just didn’t fold some of the laundry, kitchen towels, just throw them in the drawer kids PJs, just throw them in the jar. The only thing I was folding was shirts and pants. They were seasons of my motherhood, where I was spending less time with friends. As our kids grew and we all went back to work, we’d had to shift on how we connected how we gathered. There are seasons in my life where I was creating something every weekend. And then there were seasons of my life where I was on the road to hockey games every weekend. And then there are seasons where I’m cleaning up on the weekends after a busy busy week. There’s seasons of our life. And we need to know what matters because if everything matters, nothing matters. To me balance is zooming out to that bigger picture. I remember hearing this great concept about how kids eat in which is something I will say I did not anticipate being such a huge issue for me as a mom, I thought my kids would just eat whatever I serve them. But I have one especially discerning eater. So I’ve been trying to read a lot and learn a lot about how kids eat. And I remember hearing maybe it was a dietitian sharing that, yes, our kids need things like protein and vegetables. But if you look at how kids eat, they might only eat meat for three days. And then they just want bread and then they eat every apple in the house and then every cucumber, they are spreading out their nutrition over the week, where I was trying to force this, like structure and template on a daily basis. So letting go of that. Zooming out, that has brought me a lot of freedom. And I think that’s a nice concept that we can apply to our lives. This notion of what we’re doing what’s ideal, spreading that out over the week, the month, maybe even the years. The next thing that has helped me reframe balance is thinking that balance is doing small, simple things in my day, that make me feel like I am the person who has balance. I know that’s a confusing sentence. So what I mean is, I self identify as someone who pays attention to her work to her kids, to her health to her home, because I do it in little doses. And I let that be enough. Years ago, when I first started intentional living, I put the saying up in my hallway, do something today that your future self will thank you for. And that just seeing that as I walked down the hallway, just seeing that every day, it helped me change how I was approaching the little things in my day, I became very focused on these little actions. Drink some water, go eat a carrot. Take some deep breaths right now and respond with love in this one situation. Read a page in this book, one page, stretch for 10 seconds to me, balance became doing small, simple things often. I always tell you small things matter. I’m going to link to some episodes on that where I unpack that more and the concept of the compound effect. And I say this because it’s been my reality. My life has been built on the little things. And that doesn’t mean I have these rigid daily The routines have micro habits. But that means I’m always flexible in looking for ways to show up for myself and the life that feels balanced to me. I know, overall, the things that make me feel balanced. I know kind of like the big things I want to hit on, and I can do little things for that each day that helped me to be that person. I hope this episode has helped you unpack some of the pressure that you put on yourself, I hope that it has helped you reframe balance for yourself and for this season of your life. If you are in the life on purpose community, I would love for you to stop by the post. I would love to hear your takeaways, what you realized about how you have to find a balance for yourself in the past, and how you would like to define it moving forward. I also had more to say on this topic with some tips and thoughts on creating more balance in life. So I’ll make sure to add that in the life on purpose community as a mini bonus episode for the month. I’ve mentioned a lot of different callbacks to other episodes, so stop by the show notes. I’m going to fill them up with a lot of related links a lot of related episodes on the different topics that we talked about here. So the show notes are always at simple on purpose.ca. Click listen and you’ll see all of the episodes there. I also have full transcripts if you prefer to read them. But everything is there for you and I’ll make sure to link the Patreon if you’re interested in checking that out. I hope to see you there if you are alright friends have a great

Unknown Speaker 16:24
day

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The post 204. Reframing BALANCE in motherhood and work life first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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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.

In this episode, Shawna Scafe, Professional Counsellor and Coach speaks on:* 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

The Life on Purpose Community 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.

The post 203. Being a mom who enjoys her life first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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I am going to stop spreading myself thin across the internet, and I am launching a member community in Patreon called the Life on Purpose Community. I chose this name because I want one of the overall goals of this community to be nurturing YOUR life on purpose. I want to encourage you to have passion in your life and enjoy your life.

In this episode I run through * What is a patreon? * Building community and where those efforts are best spent * The limits on public content vs private content * Creating a space where content can be more unfiltered * Being a content creator and having to decide where to spend your efforts * Why I chose the name Life on Purpose Community * What exactly to expect in the Patreon

If you are interested in the Patreon, learn more about it here.

Full transcript (unedited)0:08
Hey friends it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend a counselor from simple on purpose.ca Welcome to the simple on purpose Podcast. Today is just a quick episode where I want to come in and share with you about something that I Low-key mentioned the last episode and that is the life on purpose community Patreon. So I mentioned it in Episode 201 that I was having a follow up episode to that podcast in the Patreon and I realized I know it’s not something I shared officially about. So here we are, we’re gonna do that right now. First of all, a question I get often is what is a Patreon? Patreon is a term for the app or the website. It’s the program the program that is used to host a private members only community and many podcasters will talk about their Patreon. And often their Patreon is a place where you get extra podcast episodes that are private. So members in the Patreon can take a special URL from their Patreon group, add it to their podcast player and you can listen to the private Patreon episodes in whatever podcast player you use iTunes overcast Google podcasts. So Patreon is that platform. If you subscribe to someone’s Patreon, then you can view everything they share in the community, you can comment on things, you can watch any special videos that they have shared, any special trainings, downloads, you can be part of the chat there, get the private episodes, whatever they have in their Patreon community. So that’s what Patreon is, I am part of a couple of Patreon I, especially for their private podcast episodes. That’s something that I was drawn to for these specific podcasts I wanted the deeper content that they had. And I take that podcast URL, I put it in my apple podcasts. And I get those private podcast episodes in my normal podcast player. It’s great. As I’m talking about this, I think the first thing I want to talk about is community because to me, that’s why I’m here. Back in 2020, I was running the life on purpose Academy, it was a member community, it was a coaching community, I had monthly lessons and weekly coaching calls, it was a higher price point. And every week, many of the same women depending on who could make the call, they would come onto this call, they would share their struggles, their issues, their questions, they would share support with each other in the chat. And it was one of my favorite things that I have done. It was warm and intimate. And there was so much growth that happened there.

2:48
At the end of that year of running that community, I did close the program for one, the workload had become a bit unmanageable with the way I had set it up. And I was also heading back to school. However, since then, I knew I just kept coming back into my mind that I wanted to have a community again, you know those things that you know, you’re just gonna do them no matter what. It’s just a matter of when and not if, to me, that’s what creating a community is. Over the years, and one of the ways I actually tried to do that was the Facebook group. In the Facebook group, the simple on purpose community, I have shared a lot over the years I’ve shared tours of my closet, and my kitchen and live q&a is with all of your questions. If you go back into that group, you’re gonna see a lot of videos, a lot of photos, I was sharing Tuesday Tips and questions about setting your weekend intentions. But if you’ve been part of a Facebook group, if you’ve run a Facebook group, then you know that the group members don’t see all of the posts. Unless you specifically go into your Facebook group and change the notification settings, you’re not going to see those posts. So the group has almost 1000 people. But the amount of people who actually see my posts in that group is around 10% of the group, depending on the post, and then the amount of people who engage with that post commented on it is even less. I do also want to say I am grateful for the conversations we’ve had there. There’s been great stuff that’s been shared quite great questions that have been asked. We’ve done some great challenges together. We’ve talked about how we dress and doing a 30 for 30. We’ve talked about simplifying the summer and doing a summer of less. We’ve done a lot of fun things over there and I see you and I value that. However, I don’t want to break my back trying to find an algorithm and Facebook when there are other options to deepen community out there. So for a while now I knew I was going to have to leave that platform as a place where I build community and I want that place where we to build community to be someone, something that someone intentionally seeks out, if you’re on Facebook, you’re not there. With the purpose of joining in that specific community conversation, you’re there to just like scroll and catch up. But if you are a part of a Patreon, and you go open your Patreon app, or go to the Patreon website, you’re there specifically to be part and of that community and be engaged. The next thing I want to talk about is content content. The internet is full of content, ideas, tips, podcasts, videos, reels, you can get endless knowledge on any topic. And just to like, while this time we live in, I’m going to be 42 this year. So I’m always just amazed at how much knowledge we have like I didn’t get a smartphone till I was 26. And I was just mostly playing tap fish on it, not not much of substance. So you can go to my blog, simple on purpose, you can find over a decade’s worth of content. If you search the archives, you’re gonna find so much stuff, there’s posts on minimalism, intentional living worksheets on so many things life on purpose, family rhythms, simplifying your life, there’s just so much content over there. And here on the podcast, I share a lot of my thoughts were like over 200 episodes of me talking to there’s a lot of content. And then in the simple Saturdays, email, there is a lot of content. But you know, the interesting thing to me, that I pay attention to is that I have so much more to say, in my mind, there’s a limit on what you broadcast publicly for all of the internet. So having a Patreon, a members only community, to me, that represents a place where I can go deeper, where I can be a bit more unfiltered and what I share, I can share more in terms of what I’ve learned how I work, what I’m in the process of learning, where I can share more of my life, and my own journey as a woman, as a mom as a person. So if you’ve liked the blog, the podcast email, it’s about to get a whole lot richer and raw in that Patreon. A conversation about content also needs to consider the content creator because creating content takes energy and time and resources. And to me this Patreon represents a place where I can condense my efforts and focus my energy into one place. Rather than being a little bit everywhere Facebook group, email, blog, podcast Instagram, I can allow myself to put my energy into one intentional space. Especially now that I’ve been counseling for a while. And that is something that I am growing and enjoying and still want to make space and time for. I need to be intentional about where I spend my time I need to declutter my efforts and my energy and you know, me, I’m all about making things simpler and more intentional. Finally, I want to talk about the name the life on purpose community. I chose not to use the word Academy, which I had in the past, because to me, it’s not going to be that kind of school like setting as it wasn’t that 2020 program. And I chose life on purpose instead of simple on purpose. Because my hope for this community is to really tap into the living, like into the passion that we want to have in our lives into showing up for our lives into enjoying our lives, and into living on purpose. Yes, there’s still always work that we can do on how we limit ourselves, how we avoid our life, how we avoid emotions, and conflict. That’s all part of it. But I want this to also be a place where you get excited about life, where you feel like you can get more clear on what you want in your life. And I want to help nurture that. I want to help nurture a community of women who are excited about life about their lives. I’ll wrap up with what exactly you can expect in the life on purpose community. And right now I want to keep this community simple. I’ve got a few things that I’m going to focus in on. The first one is extra podcast episodes. And the thing that will be different about the Patreon episode is that I can expand so much more. With a simple on purpose podcast. Like I said, I do keep a limit on what I publicly broadcast and how deep I go with things. I restrict myself to the topic to the timeline of about 20 minutes. I am careful about taking a topic too deep or getting too personal. I just hope to allow myself more freedom to do those things in the Patreon. I also get requests for guest interviews and it’s something I’ve done maybe just a few times on the podcast. I will be sharing guest interviews in the Patreon and these are episodes where I’m also hoping to get your suggestions. If there’s someone you ever wanted to hear me talk with a guest you ever wished I would have brought on the show I will want to hear from you. I want to reach out to that guest and try to get that in the Patreon. I will be keeping the Facebook group on Then that’s always going to be a place where you can go back and look through all posts and post things. But I will be shifting my energy into the Patreon community as a place where we can have regular conversations. I’m also planning to have q&a Is there where I go on live? Ideally, and answer your questions. At this point, I’m imagining them to be every month or two. I’m going to be sharing what is kind of an email newsletter. So I’m going to take that simple on Saturdays, simple Saturday’s email, I’m going to get a little bit deeper with you. They’re things that you have loved in the simple Saturday’s email like the currently lists the behind the scenes of our home and our life. The recently decluttered posts that I share, they’re the mini essays I share, I’m hoping to kind of take that in expanded origins and nurture it excuse me in the Patreon.

11:01
As of today, and this is we’re talking in March 2024. Right now, there are a couple of things already posted in the Patreon. One is a training that I did for a virtual summit on the topic of I don’t have time, the I don’t have time mindset. And it’s really digging into the all or nothing thinking we can have with our time. There’s the worksheets included in there too. The other thing is the follow up episode on positive self talk overcoming negative self talk. So episode 201. Here on the simple on purpose podcast, I went through scenarios that were sent in to me on situations where the listeners struggled with positive self talk. I noted the potential cognitive distortion there and offered questions to help shift those mindsets in that scenario. And I covered I think about three or four different scenarios and in the Patreon I follow up with five more scenarios that were shared with me with questions around procrastination, not getting to that work or project, feeling socially insecure, when rest is hard in the winter blues. So that’s in the Patreon. Right now the Patreon is seven US dollars a month that is the launch price. Launch. Your girl not so great at launching. There have been no countdown clocks, no earlybird perks, no teasers no urgency, I just set it up and took the pressure off myself to make it this huge, huge buzzy thing. So if you’re listening to all this, at the end of the day, it’s up to you. If you’re excited about the idea of the life on purpose community, if you feel like that’s a place you want to be, I hope you’ll join me I hope you’ll come see what it’s about and just help create that community. And if it isn’t for you, let’s just keep doing what we’re doing. Let’s just stay here. I hope to keep sharing that you’ll keep joining me here on the simple on purpose podcast. Finally, if you’re listening to this and you have questions, your comments about any of this you can find me on Instagram at simple on purpose.ca and message me there or you can hit reply in any of the simple Saturday’s email that have come your way and let me know I’m here for all of it and I am so glad you’re here. I just in joy this so much I enjoy always hearing from you guys. So let’s keep it going. Have a great week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post 202. Introducing the Life on Purpose Community Patreon first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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Negative self-talk can our work-life balance or ability to manage parenting challenges. In this episode, Shawna Scafe, Counsellor and Coach, discusses how to identify common cognitive distortions and challenge them to help rewire your self-talk to be more empowering and motivating.

This episode is a follow-up to the introduction on Cognitive Distortion (Episode 199). Listeners sent in examples of situations in their day where they struggle with positive self-talk. In each example, I point out what cognitive distortion might be at play and offer some questions to open up awareness of other ways to talk to yourself.

Topics and related links covered in this episode* normalizing the struggle with self-talk * how negative self talk impacts us, vs how positive self-talk impacts us * three things to know about how our brain works when it comes to negative self-talk * using CBT to reframe self-talk (and cautions about using it as an emotional bypass) + 156. 3 things to know about feeling negative emotions * Scenarios covered in this episode: + The inability to feel good enough at work or at home – the inability to properly balance either to the point of feeling like you could possibly be proficient in both. - Window of tolerance mentioned, you can hear more about it in the Meeting Your Needs series + When you have many littles, don’t get enough sleep often and are sleepy grumpy during the day and can’t seem to shake it! - 74. Show up for momlife with these empowering mindsets - 73. How to deal with the emotional struggles of being a mom of babies and toddlers - 162. Think the best of me, or not. Allowing the hard and awesome in ourselves and in our lives. + When you work so hard to get everything done, just to start over again. And when you’re feeling annoyed at your family - Byron Katie - Hunt, Gather, Parent

Joining the NEW Patreon, the Life on Purpose Community!* The scenarios covered in the follow-up Patreon Episode: + When you just can’t get to that workout/assignment/project + Walking into a room with confidence when insecurities seek to make you feel less than or unwelcome in a group setting. + When I’m tired or sick – I find it difficult to not feel lazy when I want to rest. And though I know I should rest – it’s hard! + When I’m procrastinating but have a work deadline looming + Making it through long, cold winter days without much social interaction. It’s so cold that I literally go to work and come home. I’m a teacher and don’t have a ton of adult interaction during my days and I feel like the winter blues are getting the best of me.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

0:06
Hey friends is Shawna your nerdy girlfriend and counselor from simple on purpose.ca Welcome to the Simple on Purpose Podcast.

Guys. How is it March? How is where did February go? Okay, February felt like a blur of hockey. I’ve been setting up a new office to do some local sessions and getting that painted and all set up and I just look up and suddenly it’s March. Oh yeah, by the way, I had a kid turn 13 last month too. Isn’t that crazy? What’s also crazy is that means I’ve been sharing with you guys for almost 13 years because the very first thing I ever posted way back on a blog spot called duck tail blog was the story of my C section. And I had a lot of big feelings about it. A lot of disappointment and frustration and anger and and nurse had recommended that I write about it. That was the first blog post that really started this whole online community online relationship that we were able to develop and how it’s grown, how we’ve changed how we’ve grown together. And now we’re talking about things like cognitive distortions and motherhood and mindsets and just really keep digging in deeper and peeling off the layers and going deeper together, which I just I cherished so much, that you guys are on this journey with me and we can do it together. Alright, so this episode is a follow up to the one I did two episodes ago on cognitive distortions. The topic was brought up because I had a request to talk about positive self talk during the day, which made me think when we’re paying attention to our thoughts, we really have to notice the way that we filter our thoughts and the cognitive distortions we might have. So I’ve covered some of the main ones in that episode, like all or nothing thinking disqualifying the positive emotional reasoning, overgeneralization there were also some download wallpapers to get with that, as well. I’ll make sure to link that in the show notes. And this episode will be the follow up, I’m going to answer the scenarios the specific scenarios you submitted to me in the Facebook group. On the subject of times in your day that you feel you need some positive self talk, I’m going to give you a heads up right here that I am going to be launching a Patreon guys, I’ve thought about this for many years, actually, ever since we closed down the life on purpose Academy and 2021. I knew I wanted to bring a community back, and it’s going to be on Patreon. So I’m going to cover a handful of the sooner scenarios here and have an additional episode in the patreon to really keep digging into this. Alright, self talk, positive self talk, maybe you struggle with positive self talk, maybe you notice it in a lot of areas of your life. Maybe in certain areas where you feel a bit more shaky, or unsure. Maybe you notice you feel defeated about things. And often we struggle with negative self talk, when we’re feeling defeated when something’s not going quite right. It’s interesting, that negative self talk we use negative emotions to motivate ourselves. Specifically shame, criticism, self bullying. And the hard part is these negative emotions, they might be effective, but they’re not empowering, it is negative reinforcement. Avoid that negative feeling versus positive to seek out the positive a totally different approach, we can take totally different emotions that are driving us got an episode number 177. On that if you want to dig into, towards motivation and away motivation a little bit more. If you do struggle with negative self talk, I want you to know three things. The first one is isn’t your fault. And what I mean by that is you likely didn’t choose negative self talk on purpose with detention intention. Sorry, you didn’t decide. I would like to think poorly of myself, I would like to feel negative emotions here. As with most of our inner narratives, this was formed before you consciously knew it, our thoughts, our default thoughts, how we react, the main themes of our thoughts, they are handed down to us in a way we learn and then we adopt them. The same way we learn language, how we learn to call water, we learn how to think about ourselves, our abilities, our opportunities, who we are in the world who other people are in the world, we learn how to think we are programmed with cause effect event, meaning belief result, from our upbringing, from our culture, from our experiences. It’s like just the blueprint that we formed from observing and learning and that cause and effect that has taught us and then the more we think in a certain way, the more we think that way. Neurons that fire together wire together. And I like to think Have our thoughts as a path. When you think a thought you’re like, treading little trail through the woods, and the more you think it, the more that path gets worn down and hardened. And next thing, it’s like an eight lane freeway, and it’s your default thought you don’t even notice it happens, it happens so fast, without intention without conscious awareness even. And our brain does that to be efficient to save energy. That’s why we have habits. That’s why we have automatic thoughts to save energy. So you didn’t do it with intention on purpose likely. And the second thing I want you to know is that if you want to think positive, if you want to shift that, you have to do it on purpose. This is because our brain not only has this kind of blueprint that we’re thinking with, but it additionally has a negativity bias. I call it danger brain, our brain is looking for what could go wrong. It’s important, we need this actually, it’s a very important way that we have been kept safe over the generations. Because if we are aware of what’s negative, what’s the danger around us, that means we’re aware of the risks to our survival. So spot, the danger manage it survive. It’s very useful, right? Our brain is looking for problems, it’s looking for danger. And managing that. I often joke with my clients that we think our brain is just going to naturally make our lives better. But we have to be intentional with how we use that. It’s like having this great computer, it can do all these things. But whatever program it’s running is this result we’re going to get, and our brain really just have this program of running that is a negativity bias. It has a lot of assumptions and stories that we adopted from early on that have never been challenged. The program has never been revised to what we want it to be doing right now. I hope I’m not going all over the place and being too meta. If we seek to think more positively, we want to use positive emotion emotions to empower us to motivate us, then we need to program that in we need to revise our programming, and we need to practice it, which is the third thing. Our brains are neuro plastic, which means we can change our own minds. But it takes time and it takes effort which your brain won’t be excited to do. We can forge a new path for our thoughts, we can blaze a new path and we can keep treading down that path and hardening it and strengthening it. It will take practice but it is doable. What I would like to do for this episode is run through the scenarios that were shared with me. I want to talk about the cognitive distortions we likely have involved in this. And as we are working on changing our minds about what we think about ourselves in our lives, I don’t want to tell you what to think. You know what I might tell you, in some cases, the thoughts that I go to, but remember, I can tell you what I think about these situations, but that might not work for you. It is important to do the work of dismantling your current thoughts and finding a new thought that works well for you. Something that feels believable and helpful. The thoughts we want to shift into have to align with our values and the stage of change that we are in. And this is CBT work cognitive behavioral therapy work, which is shifting our thoughts in order to shift how we feel and act. And I want you to keep in mind that with CBT work, feelings still matter, we still need to address our feelings. We aren’t here to just change our thoughts with positive affirmations and use that as an emotional bypass. Our feelings still matter, we need to validate these emotions, they are there for good reasons. And I’ll make sure to put an episode on negative emotions in the show notes as well.

8:44
As they go through the scenarios, I want to offer you some questions that you can use to challenge your current thoughts. And consider how you want to achieve a more motivating emotion and motivating thought pattern in this case. And as always, this podcast is not a substitute for personal therapy, where you feel stuck, or overwhelmed, or you just want to personally grow, bring these topics to your safe and trusted person. The first scenario that we’ll cover is here it is the inability to feel good enough at work or at home, the inability to properly balance either to the point of feeling like you could possibly be proficient in both. I get asked very often about balancing home and work and I’m going to do an episode on that in the future. But there are two components to pay attention to one is what you’re doing and to how you feel about what you’re doing. And we need to address both. When it comes to what you are doing. It helps to really audit and observe yourself. How are you spending your time? Where can you declutter your time? Where do you need to be more proactive? What needs planning in order to help you be more successful? This goes with number two because if you let’s say you never plan a meal and you get home from work, and you’re just rushing around the house and you’re not sure what to eat and like, we’re already feeling stressed out and hungry, and so is everyone else. That is probably a time that you are going to feel really defeated. And really like you can’t balance things. So what plans can you put in place in order to set you up for success in order to help you feel like you are managing things. The other part to pay attention to is how you’re feeling. In this example, we probably see the cognitive distortion of overgeneralization, which can be really normal. If you feel bad in one area, it’s normal to sometimes make a blanket statement on how you’re showing up poorly over all. The other cognitive distortion that we see here are some sneaky shoulds, the shoulds we all have these shoulds. These this checklist, and it might not be we’re fully aware of it is just under the surface, a checklist on how this all has to look what we should be doing or not doing. What we should be feeling even more how we think we should be feeling some questions to ask yourself here to challenge that overgeneralization are, what have I done? Well, what are three things I did? Well, today start looking for evidence challenge that confirmation bias your brain has, which is that strategy our brain uses to seek evidence to support its beliefs, our brain just wants to be right. And so if you have a belief, a narrative that you aren’t finding balance, you aren’t good. Your brain has that bias to filter out evidence to the contrary. That’s the confirmation bias. So you probably do have a lot of evidence that you are not proficient that you are not doing well that you are not balancing things. And part of us needs to take that counter position with ourselves and search for evidence that something else could be true. What did I do well to day and there is no small thing here small things matter. The next is to ask what are my shoulds? Get to know them? What do you expect of yourself? What should you be doing? How should you be feeling? Do you like your shirts Do you want to keep them and as a side note, something to always pay attention to is your stress level here. What is your window of tolerance, like right now that window of tolerance where we feel like we have capacity to deal with our day. If we are out of our window of tolerance, we’re either going up into hyper arousal or down into hyper arousal. And when we have a reduced window of tolerance, we feel less capacity, we feel lowered capacity, it’s hard to have a sense of resilience and capability. And we quickly and easily fall out of the window of tolerance. I’ll make sure to put some episodes in the show notes on that as well. The next example we have here is when you have many littles don’t get enough sleep often and are sleepy and grumpy during the day and can’t seem to shake it off. Right off the bat, I want to send you to Episode 74 and 73 those talk about the emotional struggles of being a mom and empowering mindsets that you can use in early mom life. In this question, I’m assuming that I’m talking to the parent who is the one that is sleepy and tired? Because I know it’s like to have more than one small kid I’m sure I was so sure they had secret meetings and would be like who’s taking the 1am shift who’s taking the 3am shift. And they would plan out which shift they would wake up to make sure their parents were not sleeping, those Sure. So let’s just stop and take a minute and validate how hard it is to not be sleeping. If you are not sleeping through the night consistently. That is hard. It reduces your window of tolerance. It changes how you feel it changes the amount of capacity you feel you have it changes your emotions. So I think just stop and give yourself some appreciation that you are doing a hard thing. And sure, let’s hope it’s a season. But sleep is very underrated. So I would go back and listen to those past episodes. I even talk specifically about the mindset of being tired. And I would also point you to the heart and awesome episode. If you feel like you’re not able to shake off that grumpy part of you. When you feel when you are in a state of feeling like you just can’t shake it off, you might have a couple of cognitive distortions going on. One could be emotional reasoning. I’m grumpy. So there must be all of these external things making me grumpy or I am just identifying like I’m a grumpy person. I’m feeling stressed. So I must be a bad mom. I must be unable to handle this. And my encouragement to you here is to get some distance from your emotions. Instead of just in that perpetual state of grumpy which just grows and grows just like even holding your hands out and saying I’m feeling grumpy because I’m tired. Like I I am experiencing grumpiness because I am tired and separate that emotion from you. And also acknowledge that your emotion Since are existing and create an experience in your body that is separate from the external things happening. The other cognitive distortion that might be going on here is all or nothing thinking, if you feel like you really can’t shake off this feeling, it’s that either or situation that all or nothing, either I’m grumpy or unhappy, I’m tired or I’m not tired, the day is good, or it’s bad. And I think that’s where the heart and awesome episode might really be helpful. A question when we have all or nothing thinking is to notice what’s in between what’s in between the either or the black or the white, the, it’s either good, or it’s bad. And as well, sometimes it can help to let both of those things exist in saying something like, even if I have hard parts of my day, there’s still some awesome parts I can have. Even if I am tired, there are still ways I can enjoy my day. So allowing that goodness back in. So a couple of questions to think about here. How can I separate out these emotions and let them exist without making it mean a whole lot of other things about me and my life. And challenge that all or nothing thinking the day can still have good parts in it.

16:10
I’m going to cover one more scenario. And then I’d encourage you to go over to the Patreon if you want to keep digging into more. This scenario is when you work so hard to get everything done just to start over again. And when you’re feeling annoyed at your family. And first of all, how relatable I know I feel like this. I feel defeated at the relentlessness of keeping a home and managing a family. A major cognitive distortion we often have here are the should statements, what are your shoulds for your standards in your home. And I’m not saying You’re unreasonable. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have standards. I’m just saying notice. Notice what you expect out of yourself and your home. What are your shoulds for the people in your home again, this can meet resistance. I am not saying that you should never expect your family to help out or that you should just expect your family to be doing what they’re doing. I’m not telling you to let go of this, I’m just saying notice. And I say notice it. Because I’m guessing your list of shoulds for how things should look and how people should act and how you should feel and how you should act. They’re probably different than your reality. And when our shoulds are different than our reality that becomes a source of suffering. Byron Katie is a really great resource on this topic. Some questions to ask yourself here. What are my shoulds? My shoulds for the house my shirts for how it should be maintained my shirts for what others should do my shirts for what I should be doing? And do I like them, you might decide some of your shoulds can be put aside for the season. Also ask yourself here very important. How do I show up when things don’t go how they should? I think that’s where we see the annoyance coming in. How do I want to handle the difference between my reality and my mental list of shoulds. Like I said, this is such a relatable example. I feel it too. It is frustrating to feel this way. And we can really get stuck in that spiral of defeat. It’s hard to come out of there. I know for me personally, this thought shows up most for me when I’m already overwhelmed. I feel an act and think differently. When I have had a maybe a crazy workday or I feel overwhelmed. There’s a lot of things on my plate. And I come into the kitchen and it’s just like a hot mess. And I just feel overwhelmed. And I get really defeated. Sometimes a little salty about how the house is kept. But if I feel like I am on top of things, I feel relaxed and I come into the kitchen, I just start cleaning it because I’m like, oh, like, now I can make the kitchen how I want it to look like I empower myself with that. So I know really how hard it is. And pay attention to how you’re already feeling and addressing that window of tolerance you’re in. And without specifically knowing your situation and how your home is run and what you want more of or less of. I just also point you to some episodes on involving kids with chores on Lincoln episode on that. An interesting book I had read that I haven’t really shared much on but I found it really interesting was hunter gatherer parent and they talked about different approaches that different cultures have to get kids involved with cleaning and helping out around the house. But I just validate you it is a frustrating thing. And sometimes the thought that helps me is we live here, we live here and acknowledging that it is by fact by nature, it is going to be a relentless is situated word, but it is going to be a constant cycle. There’s always going to be dishes, there’s always going to be laundry there’s always going to be shoes at the front door. And like weird stuff in the bathroom that doesn’t belong there that’s always going to exist as long as other people are living here. And that just helps me get some distance like just accepting, like, that’s reality. And now what do I want to do about it and not to say I still don’t get frustrated and defeated and need to do the work of getting everybody on board helping out a bit more. All right, friends, I hope that this has been a helpful episode for you, I hope that you are able to step back and think about what you’re thinking. Because how we’re thinking has a really big impact on how we’re feeling and how we act, how we show up. And my encouragement to you. My mission in all that I do is to help you show up how you want to show up in line with your values with who you want to be. And with the life that you want to build. I aim to help you live life on purpose by paying attention to these things. As I mentioned, there will be a Patreon community opening up called the life on purpose community. I’m gonna link in the show notes. You can go check it out if that’s something that you’re interested in. Have a great week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post 201. Overcoming negative self-talk and to moving towards positive self-talk first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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As a way to celebrate 200 episodes and 5 years together, I asked listeners for their questions on any topic. In this episode, I’m answering questions on the most important question to ask when decluttering, abundance vs scarcity mindsets, motherhood stages and seasons, and more from AMA (Ask Me Anything) questions

Here are the questions that I answered in this episode, and related links to posts and episodes that you might like:DECLUTTERING1. What is the most important thing to consider when trying to declutter as an Enneagram type 7?

• Enneagram 101 (what is it and what are the nine types)
• Enneagram + Motherhood Series
• 1. How to let go of IDENTITY CLUTTER
• 1. Declutter ‘what if I need it one day?’ items from your home with THIS shift
• 1. Decluttering decisions and guilt [Q+A]
• 1. Our relationship with stuff, and other decluttering questions

MINDSETS2. How to develop a positive mindset when dealing with a chronic illness or health worries of family members?
3. Did you always have an abundance mindset? If not, when did it change and how do you nurture it?

• (LISTEN) 40. Does the ‘not-enough’ mindset show up in your momlife? (Scarcity/Abundance)
• (READ) The ‘not-enough’ mindset (how to spot a scarcity mindset and shift it to an abundance mindset)
• 1. Understanding what is motivating you (chasing vs avoiding)

SIMPLE ON PURPOSE4. What has changed since starting the podcast? What is the purpose of the podcast now?
5. What is your main source of inspiration for your work?

MOTHERHOOD6. What’s something you’re loving about your family’s ages, stages and dynamics right now?

• 1. Planning the day: my weekly routines and rhythms for work, home and family

• How can I best parent my middle child?

• 1. Have fun with your kids, on purpose + reasons we don’t have fun

• When Did I Stop Enjoying My Kids? (and my journey back to enjoying them)

• How do I know if our family is meant for another baby?

FUN AMA9. What is your favourite book?

• Books mentioned: The Glass Castle, Outlander, The Nightingale

• What are you manifesting right now?

• What’s on your bucket list?

Working with Shawna, learn more here

The Simple Saturdays email, sign up here

The Simple on Purpose Community, join here

Instagram, come say hi!

Full transcript (unedited)0:11
Welcome to the simple purpose Podcast. Today is our 200th episode. And for this episode, I wanted to make it really collaborative. So I went to Instagram and Facebook and email. And I asked for questions. I wanted this to be a q&a episode, where you are kind of opening it up and asking the things that have been on your mind, things you’ve wanted to ask me things you are interested in. So we’ve got a range of topics. We’ve got decluttering, and mindsets and motherhood, all my favorite topics. And I couldn’t get to everything. So if you don’t hear your question answered here, hopefully, I’m going to address it in an email in the Facebook group or in a future episode. Let’s just jump in. The first one is on decluttering, what is the most important thing to consider when trying to declutter, I’m a type seven, and this person is referencing the Enneagram, that they are a type seven on the Enneagram. For those who have never heard of it, the Enneagram is a self discovery tool. It addresses our strengths, our stress habits, and something that makes it different is it addresses our motives as well. It’s a tool that I use with clients who are interested, I have a lot of posts and episodes on it, I’ll make sure to link those. A type seven is someone who avoids negative feelings and pursues the things that make them feel good. So it’s going to look a little bit different for each person. But that type seven does has have the stereotype of being enthusiastic moving on to the next thing. And if you’re a type seven, you might get distracted and never finish when it comes to decluttering. So in terms of decluttering, an important focus for a type seven would be having a bit of a plan, like slowing down, writing out maybe three steps and finishing finishing type nines the type I am, they’re guilty of not finishing to, you know, getting stuff into a pile is one thing, getting it out the door and another I rely on my type three achiever husband to generate the movement on that. Overall, to answer this question, though, I want to distill it down and I spent a lot of time considering what would I distill it down to would be the most important thing when trying to declutter. And here’s what I came up with, at this point in my decluttering journey, I would ask, What would my life be like without this item. So like I said, I’ve had years of decluttering, helping people helping family. And I know that we keep things because we think our future selves will need it, or we’re going to sell it for money, or we’re going to do something with it. But that thing just becomes an obstruction of space and mental energy, we never get around to fixing it or listing it online, or we did and no one came to get it. And or we listed it and no one wanted to buy it for what we think it was worth, we think it’s worth more money, or we never use it, we never cook with it, we never wear it, we never read it, we just never make a use for it. But there it is in our space, reminding us that we should use it, sell it, fix it, whatever. Every time we open up the closet, go to the basement, pass that room where the stuff just is. It’s almost shouting at us, you should use me, you should take care of me you should sell me you aren’t doing the thing you should do. And in my opinion, that clutter causes a lot of emotional and mental drama, that could all go away if we just let it go. Instead, we’re letting it take up space, we’re paying money to store it in our homes to heat it to cool. And that space we could use for living? What would my life be like without this item? What would my space be like without this item? What would my closet feel like? What would my kitchen feel like without this item? I have a couple episodes that I think relate to this on identity clutter? And what if I need it one day, I’m going to link those in the show notes. They were a couple of questions on mindsets. And the first one is a two parter. One part of that is how to develop a positive mindset perspective when dealing with a chronic illness. Also how to not spiral into constant worry about health, health of family members during difficult times. I’m going to try and address both of these in one notion. And remember, these episodes are never a substitute for therapy. They are ideas you can try. When you get to sit and talk with a professional one on one, you get so much more insight and tools that fit with your life and your circumstances. So if you are struggling, or you simply want a new way of approaching things and thinking about things, I encourage you to talk to someone one on one with answering this question. The thing that stands out to me is that it is hard to think positively about an experience that you actually feel is negative. So trying to shift into positive thinking it will feel fake your brain won’t buy it your mouth might say it but your body won’t sink into it. And in these cases I encourage you to meet yourself where you are at meet yourself in the worry in the defeat and validate those emotions validate how you’re feeling. It is defeating to have a chronic illness. It is a lot to be worrying about loved ones, these are hard things to carry. And it’s important that you acknowledge them. Rather than trying to jump into a positive mindset. And not to say you can’t shift into a positive mindset, but you have to meet yourself where you are at first. Start neutral. You don’t have to like your chronic illness. You don’t have to love life and feel totally great and feel totally peaceful with the health of everyone and yourself. But what would it look like to shift just up one level from where you’re at right now? This is a question that I think we could spend a whole episode on. And these situations are really great to bring into counseling, especially if you have a counselor who works with act acceptance commitment therapy. The next question is, did you always have an abundance mindset? And if not, when did it change for you? And how do you nurture this? What is an abundance mindset? I’ve got an episode on that. I’m going to link it. The abundance mindset is the flip side of the scarcity mindset. So it’s scarcity versus abundance. Where scarcity says there is not enough time there is not enough friends, there’s not enough opportunities, not enough to go around. If someone else is good at something, then somehow that makes me less good. Versus abundance, where there is enough what’s meant for you will always be available. And if someone is really great at something, there’s room for you to be great too. And this question when I read it, did you always have an abundance mindset? It almost made me snort, laugh? Because No, I definitely had a scarcity mindset. When it came to my abilities, my looks to opportunities to money for sure. I had scarcity of time. And this time in my mind that of how this timeline of my life had to go. And when it changed was when actually I just learned what scarcity and abundance was. I shared this in the Related podcast episode, I had first heard this concept in relation to the story of Rachel and Leah in the Bible, who were sisters. One was beautiful. One was not one was praised and revered for her beauty. And because they’re sisters, there’s this comparison thing that naturally happens to siblings, unfortunately, who is and who is not if you are this than the other one is not. And it hit me as one of three girls in my family noticing the ways that I felt like I was not because they were. And that’s really when I learned about this mindset, and how do I nurture it? I feel like I view opportunities as something that are always going to come back again. If I say no to things that don’t work well for me, I feel like I can have an assurance that if something is meant for me, it’s going to come back again, I have less FOMO if things are meant for me, they’re going to come back again. decluttering stuff is a lot easier. Again, if I’m meant to have that thing, I’m going to find a way, I’m going to find an alternative. If plans get canceled or a session gets canceled. To me that’s a gift of time that God has given me for a reason. And I try to view that as now I have this little abundance of time. If I’m holding an event or something and not everyone shows up. Well, I believe that the people who are meant to be there, they came and I go all in with them. There are other people doing things on the internet similar to me podcasting or counseling, and I think good. I think that’s good, because this stuff matters. And I know I’m not for everyone, but I’m here for the people who want to work with me. And then more people out there sharing the messages of intentional living and simplifying your life. That is good. Moving on, I had some questions about how I work do business do the podcast in the first one is what has changed since starting the podcast? What is the purpose of the podcast now? In man? Are you my business coach, I might need you. I’m reflecting back in 2018, the first episode of this podcast came out and back then it was called simple Saturdays and it was an audio form of the simple Saturday’s email. So it was a brief episode covering snippets of about three to four topics. And then I did the you can simplify your life series. And it became this format a 20 ish minute episode on a single topic. And so I’ve maintained that format. But of course I feel like I have changed, where I was focusing a lot on simplifying and decluttering I feel like that groundwork of doing those things has been laid. And as I’ve grown more in my own simple on purpose journey, I’ve grown more in counseling and coaching. I’ve been working with a lot of women and moms all over the world. My eyes have seen a broader range of topics or just different topics available to us as modern parents as modern women. Now I feel like the purpose of the podcast is to support you where you are at to To help you see new ways of thinking or approaching your life, to give you ideas and strategies to try and to normalize what is hard and let you know you aren’t alone. And really community. I personally love it when you treat this podcast as a conversation, and you share your thoughts with the Facebook group where you respond to me whether that is through Instagram or the Facebook group. I actually want the Facebook group to be your community. That’s my challenge for you from this episode, friends, go into the Facebook group after this episode or on Instagram and share something any thoughts? Keep the conversation going be that other part of the conversation for me here? What is your main source of inspiration for your work? Right off the bat, I’m gonna say I avoid listening to podcasts or reading Instagrams of people who are doing work very similar to mine, because that pulls me out of my own lane. It pulls me out of the things that are actually on my mind and on my heart to be sharing. And inspiration for me comes from my own life and working with clients. There are themes that come up over and over again, if you’re a client, if you have heard me share an episode about a topic that we just talked about, please no, it is not because of you. But it’s because it’s enough of a theme that if there were this handful of people who brought it up and needed it, I feel like it’s worth talking about more generally. And I also get inspiration from my life. Like I said, this is called simple on purpose. And it started with me sharing this journey of decluttering my house wrestling with being intentional after years of being on that autopilot. And I was processing with you sharing what I was learning and I still am I think that journey is still going I’m still processing still learning.

11:45
And of course, there are times where I doubt what I’m doing or it feels weird. To talk about my closet rental or intentional parenting. I don’t know how much to share. I don’t know if I’m sharing too much or too little. And then you guys send me a message of encouragement. And I write you back and tell you how much it means to me because it really really does. Your messages, your feedback. Those things really carried me through times of doubt. You guys are my inspiration. Oh, which also reminds me another huge source of inspiration is your feedback on the reader feedback survey the reader listener feedback survey that I usually send out in the spring. And any questions that you guys ever share with me when I asked for your ideas on topics and questions in the Facebook group on Instagram. Definitely you guys what you want to hear that inspires me. We’re gonna move on now to topics around motherhood, motherhood stages and motherhood seasons. The first question is, what’s something you’re loving about your family’s ages, stages and dynamics right now? And this question makes me smile because things are so different. That baby stage, that toddler stage, that elementary Primary School stage, it is so different. Those early stages, especially babies and toddlers, they are so demanding of your time and energy. If you are in that season, one of the hardest seasons of motherhood is that baby and toddler stage guys. Now my kids are almost 1311 and nine, and this season, there’s a lot more inside jokes. There’s a lot of music playing on Spotify, there’s a lot of refereeing how they’re treating one another how they’re talking to one another. I think it’s because they are all peers in the same middle school right now. They’re all going to the same school. So the way that they interact socially and try to like go to each other on I think that’s coming home. Some of the main themes at this stage of parenting are extracurricular activities. So between the three kids, they each have one activity. But that means every afternoon and most weekends, it’s practices and games. So that perceived free family time that we had when they were younger, you know, where the afternoons were really, whatever we wanted them to be the weekends were whatever we wanted them to be. That’s something we have to be so intentional about. And sometimes that means we all pile into the truck, and we go to an away game and another town and just be together because we’re family. So we really have to be intentional about family time. Other things are screen time. We have limits for Xbox and the iPad that we share as a family. Definitely more limits than we do on the TV because the TVs in the living room. We’re all watching it. It’s pretty social. I also have my soon to be 13 year old pitching me that they need a smartphone versus the flip phone that they currently have. So these are ongoing conversations that we’re having. Some of the things I like at this stage, they have more responsibility. They’re helping out more with chores. Of course that comes with a lot of talking to them about it and getting them involved and helping them see eyes for what needs to be done. I like that we can have more of a matured theme in the TV we watch or the movie movies, they’re not just cartoons. I really like that we can communicate through music. And we like to share new songs and artists that we found with each other. I like that they can make snacks for themselves, they can get themselves ready for school or activities ensure they forget to pack enough snacks, or when we go on a trip, they forget to pack themselves socks or something important. And yeah, I am the kind of parent who just kind of let them figure it out live with those consequences, because I want to keep encouraging them to grow in their independence and do these things on their own. At this stage, my favorite thing is at the end of the day, when everyone’s home from their activities, and they shouldn’t be getting ready for bed, but we’re all in the kitchen, because someone has to eat a late dinner. And we’re just kind of like in the kitchen living room. And we’re just chatting. I’ve never had this dynamic growing up, and just being in a space together, talking about nothing listening to music, it feels so healing and sacred to me. What matters to me, as a mum, is the relationship being a safe place for my kids. They don’t like all my rules, I have to choose my battles. But at the end of the day, at this age, it feels really important to me to just keep showing up each night asking what’s up if there’s anything on their minds. And usually it’s the night time where we have these conversations, there’s something about all of the distractions being gone. And they’re alone in their room with their thoughts, that they kind of want to talk about stuff at this point. And so they’ll call me back into their rooms. And I’ll always go they know that. And they’ll just kind of share what’s been hard for them. And, and to me, that is one of the things that matters the most to me as a parent. Moving on to the next question, how can I best parent My middle child, and this made me smile, because it’s something I asked myself. And just from my own experience, I think it helps to first notice your family’s dynamics. Where does the energy go? Where did the resources go? What does the family conversation focus on? In our family, I noticed we talk a lot about hockey. My daughter has a brother on either side of her that are in hockey. And if you have kids in sports, you know it takes over. So I try to be more mindful of that and bring a little bit more balance for her. Some ways are small, like changing the conversation topics away from hockey, turning off sports net, and some are bigger ways. Like at the end of the hockey season, I take her away on a getaway, I call it the hockey sisters get away and sometimes team up with other moms whose daughter had to sit through a lot of hockey games for their brother in that’s just a way to kind of honor the effort that she is putting into supporting her brothers and supporting the family. But as a middle child and the GIBBO. My own experience being a middle child, I think the best way to parent them is to notice them, to seek them out, talk with them, check in with them just go sit in their room, what are you doing what’s up. And most importantly, this has been a goal of mine this year, because I think about when I was at age, what would have made me feel more connected and seen. And that is simply to have fun. Just have more fun. sure our kids could be cleaning their room more and become more responsible. But really at this age to connect with them. I think the best way to do that is to just have fun. Another question was how do I know if our family is meant for another baby? And this is such a personal question. There’s so many layers to it. What was your vision for what your family would look like? What does it look like right now? What do you feel like another baby would bring in to your family? What would be hard all of these questions. And if you’re unsure, I think you need to sit and explore these things and honor the truth in your answers. I will say this is a personal question that only you can answer. And if I had one piece of advice it would be if you have a partner involved in this decision that you and your partner are really both on board. We’re going to wrap up with just a few questions about me and the first one is my favorite book. There are a lot of books I’ve liked. I don’t think I really have a favorite but three are sticking out to me as eras of my book reading life as an adult. And the first one is The Glass Castle by Jeannette walls for a long time. This would have this would have been top of my list. It was one of the first memoirs that I read that really had a peek into someone’s childhood and family and that really deeply impacted me to see the freedom in writing about actual experiences about one’s family. Then of course Outlander really guys It ruined all historical fiction romance novels. For me nothing will compare to Outlander. And finally, the most current one and this is maybe in the past 10 years is the Nightingale by Kristen Hanna, who was an amazing author but her books are off In tragic men really about the female bond, this book the nightingales, about two sisters during World War Two, and they’re very different experiences. And the reason why I picked this is because it’s a book that I did not stop thinking about long after I read it. It’s something that I would think about when I was outside laying on my grass is something I would think about cooking my dinner, because it had such a contrast to the freedom that was lost for the sisters to the freedom that I had in my own life. The next question is, what are you manifesting right now? And well, I picked a theme word. So I wonder if that’s the same. That theme word for me as deepen. And for this year, I am really thinking about deepening in my work, deepening in my relationships deepening in my community, it does feel a little bit overwhelming to think about these different aspects of my life and going even deeper. When I do feel like there isn’t a lot of time and energy for things. So trying to be really mindful of how that can be done while still honoring the balance that I seek. And kind of also pushing me out of my comfort zone a little bit. The last question is what’s on your bucket list? Such a good question, because I don’t think I consciously have a bucket list for my life. I have a lot of goals and purposes and visions for how I want things to be. But a bucket list. The first thing that came to mind is traveling to Europe with my husband. It’s something we talk about often just seeing the history in the buildings, the culture, eating the food, and going all the places definitely on my bucket list.

21:36
And the other thing that’s been on my bucket list since I was a teenager is to build my own home. When I was a teenager, I was like drawing out floor plans of the ideal home is something I had done over the years. So I like to think in my retired years that something that would be possible for me. We’ll see. So this wraps up our 200th episode, thank you so much for being a part of it. Thank you so much for being a part of simple on purpose. I am here because of you, you listening. I am here because of you. And I thank you for being here. In the last episode, I talked about cognitive distortions, and that’s going to be part of the next episode coming up on positive self talk throughout the day. A reminder, stop by Instagram and say hi, or stop in the Facebook group. If you’re there, share your thoughts, ideas, questions with the community there. And if you feel inclined, share a rating and review of this podcast in iTunes or your podcast player. Those always help out in that you appreciate them so much. All right friends, have a great

22:38
day

The post 200. Motherhood, decluttering, mindsets (the 200th episode, listener Ask Me Anything) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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How we talk to ourselves matters. I was asked to share an episode on positive self-talk and want to open up with a review of the common mindset traps (cognitive distortions) we can have. By noticing these cognitive distortions we can better understand how we might be holding ourselves back and the impact our thinking can have on our lives and relationships. I will share the common cognitive distortions, what they are, and some examples that we might have in motherhood and life.

Topics in this episode and related links you might like:* Habit tracking for the new year + Habit Change, for Moms Playlist is right here) * Positive self-talk + consider what story and emotion are you operating from + Why it matters what you think (limiting mindsets in motherhood) * What are cognitive distortions + The negative filter we see things through + How cognitive distortions impact our assumptions and view of things + How they impact our behaviours, relationships and lives * Common cognitive distortions + (wallpaper download form is below) + All or Nothing - Our marriage was struggling, here are 12 things that helped us heal and strengthen it - 162. Think the best of me, or not. Allowing the hard and awesome in ourselves and in our lives. + Overgeneralization - 158. MVP/ Do you typecast your kids? How labels impact our parenting and our children + Catastrophizing + Personalization + Jumping to Conclusions - Mindreading - misFortune Telling + Emotional Reasoning + Should Statements + Discounting the Positive - Minimize the positive - Focus on the negative * How to handle cognitive distortions + how to pay attention to your thoughts, challenge your thoughts, the power of noticing and naming

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FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited)

0:06
Hey friends, it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counselor from simple on purpose.ca Welcome to simple on purpose podcast. And welcome to February. What was January like for you? I’m a hockey mom in Canada. So like most hockey moms and probably most sport moms,I spent most of the month Driving driving to different towns sitting in rinks. And always telling my kids pack more snacks pack more snacks, because I don’t want to buy food on the road.

0:32
And also in January, I’ve started to track my habits. Again, it’s something that I have done over the years. And I shared this in this simple Saturday’s email, if you get that, um, I was just sharing on this that I’m not necessarily adding a new habits this year. Well, that’s not true. I did add one habit to the habit tracker, and that was to get outside and not so much to make sure I’m getting outside every day, but to just kind of tracking, see what is happening already. Kind of like get the baseline info of what’s going on. So I’ve been tracking my habits using an app. And I hope to share an update on that in the future as I go through the months and just see how that goes.

1:10
Today’s episode is based on a request that I had. And I had a request I asked in the Facebook group for Hey, what do you want to hear this year on the podcast or this month or whatever. And someone mentioned positive self talk during the day, which got a lot of people saying yes, I would love to hear on that. So positive self talk. What I mean when I say that is how you talk to yourself during the day, you know, you talk to yourself a certain way like you can be mean to yourself you can be nice to yourself is the things you say to yourself. And those things really matter. The stories you have about you matter.

1:47
The way you view yourself matters, what you tell yourself about you matters, the things we think are true about us or not true about us, we perpetuate them. We feel them. We carry these stories. I talked about this a bit more in Episode 76 What you think matters. And if you have a lot of negative story, you’re gonna feel that in your body, you’re going to feel negative, you’ll be operating from places like shame and frustration and scarcity. Versus if you have a more positive story or even neutral, hey, let’s start neutral. We don’t have to feel like we’re the best. But neutral is good, too. You’re gonna feel more capable. Hopefully you’re going to feel more empowered.

2:28
It’s kind of like watering your garden with vinegar versus water. I don’t know if that’s a good example. Because I’m not a gardener. I don’t know what vinegar would do. I’m assuming it’s not going to be helpful. But it’s just hard to grow beautiful things. If you’re not taking care and watering and letting the sun shine on it is a great topic, I think because most clients that I work with, have some negative self talk in in their day, we all do. Don’t let my garden analogy make you feel defeated. We all have some vinegar, we all have some weeds.

2:59
With this request to talk about positive self talk. I took it to Facebook, and I asked for scenarios like where exactly do you need this? What’s going on for you. And I had so many great scenarios. I’m going to follow up in kind of a q&a style q&a q&a q&a style episode shortly on that. But one statement kind of stopped me in my tracks and made me realize I had to do an episode on this topic. The statement was this. I’ve realized how much I fall into the all or nothing mindset trap. I’ve realized I can address my thought patterns and use positive self talk more effectively, when there are certain mindsets I’m having, such as the all or nothing mindset. So I’d love to learn how to identify these types of mindset and ways to use self talk to speak to myself when I’m finding myself thinking these things.

3:47
And she mentioned the all or nothing thought trap. Such a great example all or nothing is that black and white thinking. It says I’m either 100% or I’m 0% I’m either a success or I’m a failure. I’ve yelled at my kids today, so I’m a bad mom. It’s no in between. I must eat perfectly. There’s no room for moderation. If I make a mistake at work. I’m a horrible employee. If I didn’t finish my to do list today, I failed at life. There’s all or nothing, no middle ground, no matter at moderation, no days off, no B pluses, there’s no middle ground. Good, Bad two categories. And I was kind of laughing as I was thinking about all or nothing thinking because I remember my husband saying to me, when we were first married. It’s either good, or it’s doom and gloom with you like there’s no in between. There’s no space for conflict or tension or us just not being what in my mind was ideal. And man, I’ll tell you marriage has been a journey. I’ll link some posts on that in the show notes. That all or nothing thinking is really invasive. You can probably notice already some areas you might have it in and I’m going to actually unpack all or nothing thinking as it pertains to our relationship with Time in the virtual summit called let’s get more time, I’m just one of many speakers in the summit. Registration is open now that it’s February. And that is happening the weekend of February 22. So I’ll link that in the show notes. It’s a free Summit. If you’re interested in that.

5:16
When you slow it down, and you think about some all or nothing mindsets you have, you can probably see how that thing you’re thinking isn’t helpful, and probably not true. If you miss a workout this week, should you just quit the whole thing? No, we should accommodate for missing a day sometimes. If you get stressed and yell at your kids, are you a bad mom? Is the whole day just a bad day? No, sometimes moms yell. And sometimes parts of our day are hard and some parts are great. There’s an episode that you might enjoy on that episode 160. To think the best of me, I talk a bit about marriage, but also about allowing that hard and awesome in our lives, and also how we talk to our kids about it. So I’ll put that in the show notes.

6:03
Those are examples of all or nothing thinking we can’t see the entire story, we can’t see what else could be true. And this is what a cognitive distortion does. It’s kind of like looking through a dirty windshield, we can kind of see where we’re going enough enough to make it. But we’re missing some things. Not everything is totally clear. A cognitive distortion is a term for patterns in our thinking that are not fully accurate and cause us some distress. So keep this in mind. We’re not talking about hope and trust and abundance and empowerment. We’re talking about the negative bias our brain has to spot the danger. When you spot the danger, you keep yourself safe. But that negativity bias leaves us with cognitive distortions which cause us some distress in some way.

6:47
If you’ve ever been to a therapist or counselor that uses cognitive behavioral therapy, you might have heard cognitive distortions, you might have even heard the all or nothing thinking cognitive distortions, a term from Aaron Beck. They’re also called mental blocks, thinking errors, cognitive biases, distorted thinking negative thoughts. In the past, I really like to call them thought traps. And in this episode, I want to run through the main ones, I’ll cover about eight of them all, there’s more. And I’m going to put them in a PDF. So you can just scroll through them after you don’t have to write anything down or try to remember everything we’re talking about. I want you to keep in mind how a cognitive distortion that I mentioned might show up for you.

7:27
But even more importantly, keep in mind how you act when you have that cognitive distortion because cognitive distortions have an impact on our lives. They change how we view ourselves, how we view others, how we see the world, how we see our choices and our opportunities, how we just generally feel about things. They impact how much hope we have, how much resiliency how much safety we feel in our relationships in our lives. And we act from these beliefs we treat others based on these beliefs. We isolate or retreat, we doubt we limit our options, we fight we defend, we get frustrated, we get helpless.

8:06
So we’ve covered all or nothing thinking that seeing situations as entirely good or entirely bad. The next one is overgeneralization, which is drawing a big conclusion without enough evidence or just a few situations and applying it to all situations. So we’re going to use words like always and never a common one common example is if you’re in a social social, that if you’re in a social situation, and you are uncomfortable, and you ramble a few times, you might use that as evidence to draw the conclusion broadly, I am always so awkward. Or maybe you have it about others. If your kid is reluctant about something a couple of times it might become my kid never wants to do this, my kid never eats. Well, my kids such a picky eater. I have an episode on that about typecasting our kids to labeling, giving others labels giving ourselves labels,

9:01
catastrophizing, that’s another one expecting the worst possible outcomes, maybe even exaggerating the significance of a seemingly negative event. I think we do this one subconsciously, because we all have this kind of subconscious internal checklist on how things need to be. And when that list feels threatened, our mind goes right to worst case scenario. If you’ve been a mother, it could look like my kid isn’t growing at the rate they should. They might be delayed their whole lives, they might not have the social skills, they might be an outcast and so on. I have a kid who catastrophize as everything we call it, the spiral and if one thing felt off, or I told them I was upset about one thing, Oh man, it’s like everything’s gone bad and you’re so disappointed. Like, everything is so big. Maybe your brain goes to my boss said they want to meet with me. They must have horrible things to say I might be fired. They might be so disappointed in me that’s catastrophizing.

9:55
Personalization is when we take responsibilities for events that are due beyond our control, but we take responsibility we take blame for them somehow. So maybe it’s like, my friend is upset I’m it must be something I did. Or the garbage guy, he knocked over my cans when he unloaded them, he must not like me, or I must have put them out the wrong way. How about his mom’s, let’s say, your kid is out of the park, and they fall and another parent is there, and they’re helping your kid and you feel guilty, you find a reason to blame yourself for something that was really out of your control. When I thought of this morning was, let’s say you make plans for the weekend, and you’re excited about these plans. But then someone invites you last minute to do something B already planned, and you feel guilty, like you’ve done something wrong.

10:43
The next one to talk about is jumping to conclusions, which is assuming things without actually knowing. There’s two ways that we can do this one way is mind reading, where we are assuming we know what the other person’s thinking about us. And it’s often negative. And we often don’t have concrete evidence or proof that they think that it can be common in social settings, where we have any level of insecurity about something, whether we think other parents are judging us for what we put in our kids lunch, or other women are thinking we dress ridiculous or not good enough or too good or whatever. For me, it’s like I hate going to the gym because of this because I think everyone is looking at me and seeing how incompetent and uncomfortable I am. Or we think someone’s disappointed in us or doesn’t like us without actually knowing for a fact. This is a really great one to get awareness on how you act. How do you avoid How do you overcompensate in those situations.

11:43
The other way we jumped to conclusions is fortune telling, assuming we know what’s going to happen, but remember, it’s not positive. So I would actually call this Miss Fortune Telling maybe someone new invited you over for coffee and you just think it’s gonna be awkward, I’m gonna feel uncomfortable. Or maybe you think I could have that tough conversation with someone on this like conflict we’re having, but you predict how they’re going to react. There’s a lot of anxiety here, alarm bells are going off often telling you just avoid it altogether.

12:14
Emotional reasoning is when you believe that because you feel a certain way, it must be true. This is kind of a fascinating one. It’s so subtle, it looks like I feel guilty for taking time to myself. So I must be selfish. Or I’m feeling stressed right now. So I must be a bad mom. And I just can’t handle all the stress. I’m not like one of those calm patient moms. Or maybe you have something coming up that you feel nervous about, I feel nervous about that presentation. I must be a bad presenter. Or I’m feeling uncomfortable in the social setting right now. So I must just be really socially awkward as a person. Emotional reasoning is, it’s really interesting because it takes a lot of emotional intelligence to really spot what you’re feeling. And then separate yourself from those feelings.

13:04
The next one I want to talk about is should statements. These are when we set standards rules shoulds for ourselves and others. And when these standards are not met, we feel guilt or frustration. And who doesn’t have this one, right? Like moms live with so many shirts women do I know I talk about this often. We think we need to be all the things and do all the things and look good doing it and be happy doing.

13:31
So get to know your shoulds. What do you think you should be doing? What do you think others around you should be doing because we have checklists for others to how our spouses should act, how our kids should, how our family should our bosses should have how the cashier at the grocery store should act unless she Sandra, cause Sandra’s splendid, but we have these shoulds these like checklists for ourselves and other people. I’m going to link a couple episodes on that in the show notes that might be helpful to dig into. If you feel like you are shoulding on yourself, I think that’s a Brene Brown saying I’m not too sure don’t should on yourself.

14:06
And finally discounting the positive. We have two strategies here that helps us do this. One is minimizing the positive and the other one is maximizing the negative. If you struggle to receive a compliment or praise or positive feedback, you might be doing this it’s like when a friend says Oh you look so nice today. Or someone tells you did a good job or dinner was so nice think is or your home still nice. And you just laugh and tell them all the reasons they’re wrong. Women are definitely conditioned to do this. Be modest downplay don’t break. When we’re in this cognitive distortion, we might say things like, it was just luck. They’re just being nice. They feel sorry for me, whatever. They say that to anyone. Or help out like anyone could have done that that test was so easy or anyone would do that. or how about Yeah, maybe I did that thing or this thing happened. But here’s everything else I do wrong. Here’s my list of how you’re actually wrong. And then I’m actually not that great. We discount ourselves, our achievements, our strengths, we downplay what’s positive, and just give this laundry list of things that are actually wrong. And we might not even do this verbally to others, we might even just do it internally. In our own minds. We would never say Oh, I’m so proud of myself, I got some movement in today. Instead, we’re gonna say, one workout all week, like, that’s nothing, you’re still so out of shape. Like I said, women were really conditioned to downplay our positives and focus on our negatives, mom’s especially. And the result of this is feeling a lot of discouragement with ourselves.

15:48
Those are some of the major cognitive distortions, I hope you can see why those are important to know, a huge part of making change in our self talk, which is changing our hearts and then involves in to change our lives is understanding the story we have the self talk we have, and the story we approach our life with. So we need to pay attention to those cognitive distortions, those thoughts, those stories, those assumptions. And Michael singer says, Be the observer, observe the thoughts that come into your mind. After all, you are not your thoughts, you’re the one experiencing them.

16:26
As you pay attention to the thoughts coming up, you can notice now you have some language, now you have some cognitive distortions to turn to. And you can notice, oh, there we go, I’m using should statements, I’m using all or nothing thinking. And then you can decide what to try next.

16:43
Noticing is critical, you cannot change things you are not aware of. So the more we notice how we have this filter on our thoughts, and therefore how our lives our relationships, our self identity is being impacted. The more we can notice it, the more we can name it, the more we can shift it.

17:03
And as always, if you feel stuck with this, get some personal support, you can learn new ways of considering these things. You can wash your windshield, so to speak. Of course, you know, I’m an online coach and counselor. But what matters most is finding someone you feel connected with someone you can be open and vulnerable with that is very, very important.

17:23
I will follow up this topic with the q&a on the examples that were given in the Facebook group on areas of your day that you want more positive self talk. So if this episode has been helpful for you, if you’ve noticed anything, I would love for you to share it in the Facebook group, the simple on purpose community. And as always, the shownotes are gonna have a lot of related links. I’ll put the PDF download in it of different cognitive distortions, as well as that link to the let’s get more time Summit. So I encourage you always to stop by the show notes. If you cannot find them in your podcast player, go to simple on purpose.ca. Click Listen, you’ll find all of the episodes there with transcripts as well and all of the fun links and also a way to sign up for the simple Saturday’s email. It’s fun email, guys. It is fun, I think. All right friends, have a great week.

The post 199. Mindset traps to be aware of (cognitive distortions that might be holding you back in motherhood and life) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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What does it mean to live on purpose? This is a question I get from listeners who want to live intentionally but aren’t sure how to apply it to daily life (as a mom, because mom life has a lot of urgency and autopilot wrapped into it). I want to unpack how I approach intentional living on a daily basis as well as the bigger picture.

This is a listener question: how do we live each day with intention and purpose?

We will cover what holds you back from intentional living and how to get started with simple steps.Main topics covered in this episode (and related links):* Feeling unmotivated with life + For the mom who is ‘waiting’ for life to happen + 177. Understanding what is motivating you (chasing vs avoiding) * Feeling swept up in routine and living on autopilot + 79. Six signs you are living your life on autopilot (and what to do about it) * Deciding you are ready to make a change and pursue intentional living + The Making Change Challenge * Decluttering the distractions, to make way for living intentionally + 189. Prioritizing the day: if everything matters nothing matters and how to apply this in motherhood + 161. Why having LESS matters, the benefits of decluttering and minimalism + Intentional Phone Habits Series * The Eisenhower matrix (important/non-important, urgent/non-urgent) can help you set daily focus

• Looking out for all-or-nothing thinking when it comes to approaching life on purpose
• The power of small shifts done consistently, to help you shift into intentional living
  • 1. Small things that can change your whole life (the compound effect)
  • 1. 4 simple habits that make my momlife better
• Setting your intention starts with getting to know what you want your life to look like
  • 1. When you don’t know what you want in life. Life on purpose for the non-dreamer
• Having a vision to be intentional towards, what this can look like and tools you can try
  • Know Where You Are Going (why vision setting matters + free LIVE YOUR VISION worksheets)
• Deciding what your future holds, on purpose and not on autopilot
  • 1. What will your future be? More of the same? Or will you turn off the autopilot?
• Having more fun with life on purpose
  • 1. Is momlife UNFUN? How to be a more FUN MOM, stop withholding fun from yourself
• Knowing your values is key to feeling like you are living intentionally
  • How to get that feeling (why values matter + free LIVE YOUR VALUES worksheet)
  • 1. How to find what matters to you (uncovering your personal values)
• Aligning your action with your values
  • 1. Will a simpler home bring me peace?
• Other tools you can use to help you live your life on purpose
  • The Life on Purpose Workbook
  • Life on Purpose Roadmap

As mentioned in this episode:The enneagram was referenced, here is a series on the Enneagram + Motherhood

Hygge was mentioned, here is a post called Hygge vs Minimalism

The Spotify Playlists for all Simple on Purpose episodes right here.

The Let’s Get More Time Virtual Summit, registration opens in February

The Facebook group, a place for you to share thoughts and questions and support

Full Transcript

0:00
Hey friends, it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counselor from simple on purpose.ca. Welcome back to 2024 with the simple on purpose podcast.

0:09
So it’s been a while I think my last episode was about a month ago. And I was in that winter break mode with the kids home and I took time off work. And it was really cozy and Heuga relaxing. We had lots of slow mornings, we had lots of stick and Puck that the kids were going to during the day and movies on the couch.

0:32
So coming back to the routine, the routine of school lunches, and after school drop offs and pickups and I tell you that like second shift for me that three to 8pm, maybe three to nine, by the time everyone’s in bed, it’s a lot of driving places and picking up and trying to make dinner, and sit with that restless feeling that I feel while all of this is going on. It’s quite a contrast for me.

1:00
I think my type nine comes out a lot in these kinds of moments. If you’ve heard me talk about the Enneagram, that self discovery tool that type nine is the peacemaker, but they’re also a little bit of a sloth, they really like to be slow, and conserve their energy. And so coming back into things, it really forces me to generate momentum and to generate motivation. And that can be really tough. It’s not something I think I’m naturally skilled at.

1:27
But here’s something that motivates me and gives me momentum is your feedback. You as the listeners, sending me messages on Instagram sharing in the Facebook group that really is like a motivator and fuel for me to keep going with the podcast. Because otherwise, what am I here for it to just talk into my computer and hope it gets out there and hope you guys like it. So thank you, thank you for sharing your feedback with me and bringing your thoughts and questions to the Facebook group so that we can keep talking about things and talk about them at a community level. That’s very, very important to me, that we have a community that we can bring these kinds of issues to and support one and other. And so if you’re in the Facebook group, I encourage you to keep engaged in there and keep going back to it and being connected with us.

2:15
Alright, so speaking of the Facebook group, I asked in the group, what topics you would like to hear on the podcast for 2024. And so today I’m going to share one of those suggestions. And the topic is how do I be more intentional in the day?

2:30
And I think I get this question in a lot of different ways. It’s a question that I work on a lot with clients, just like how am I feeling in my day? Do I feel like I’m swept up and distracted? Do I feel overwhelmed or bored. And my just feeling time, am I just going through the motions. And I know I’ve operated this way. So I know how it feels when you are operating in this mode, you tend to feel kind of unmotivated with your life and restless a little bit, you don’t have a lot of things that you clearly feel excited about or that light you up, things just feel like maintenance, like just getting through it. And when you’re in this mode, you start to get this sense, like maybe I’m doing it all wrong.

3:14
I have felt all of these things I could see, years back before I started this, just this Wake Up Call of how much complacency I had in my life. And I could see clearly I was going through the motions of motherhood of marriage of being a stay at home mom taking care of my body of all my relationships just on autopilot.

3:34
And there is this sense that if you can kind of be in this space, and reach out and say I’m still craving something more, I’m still craving that sense of purpose and passion. I still want to be present in my life. This might lead you to ask these questions. How do I get there? How do I live more intentionally? How do I feel like I’m living on purpose. So I want to give you some tips that have worked for me and things I discussed with my clients.

4:02
Now remember, I’m a counselor, I’m a coach, but this podcast is not a replacement for therapy. And also remember, I’m not here to give you a cookie cutter way of living your life, or a checklist on what is the right way to live your life. Not everything I say is going to work for you. This is all for ideas.

4:20
And that’s something that has really helped me hearing ideas because an idea is just a tool you can put in your toolbox. And it’s something you can go to if you want it’s totally up to you, you’re in charge.

4:32
Alright, so I think the very first step in intentional living is deciding kind of deciding it is time. And I want to do an episode on this on the future of the things that make us ready for change. But long story short. You need to decide it is time for change in order to actually make change. I mean, there’s some other factors here you need to work on. But Deciding it’s time is a really big step that you need to make.

5:04
And you’ve heard my story on this podcast like standing alone in my basement of clutter my basement of shame, and just crying with that realization of how complacent I was in my life. And there was some grief here, there was some shame.

5:19
But there was also this flipside of something could be different. I could empower myself, that sense that I’ve had enough of the autopilot. And the phrase that came to me at that time was, I want to be in the driver’s seat of my life. I, I was ready, I wanted that.

5:36
The next thing is to start letting go of the things that are distracting you. And I really like to use the Eisenhower matrix for this concept, because it puts things into four boxes. There are things that are urgent and important. There are things that are not urgent and important. And then vice versa. There’s things that are not important, but urgent. And then there’s things that are neither in or urgent or important. I’m sorry, if it’s confusing to say it out. I’ll try to link that in the show notes so you can get the visual. But it’s a really helpful concept because a lot of what distracts us are things that feel urgent, but they’re not important. Or the time sucks the time killers, they’re not urgent or important.

6:20
So knowing how we’re spending our time and our energy, are we spending it on what a lot of other people want of us? Are we spending it on things that are just filler, so get to know what those distractions are, I think decluttering your home is a really good metaphor for intentional living, because a big first step of that process is to get rid of the things that are not useful to you. Not useful or beautiful to you in some way. I’m going to talk about at the end of this episode, a virtual Summit coming up all about time called let’s get more time.

7:02
As I go into these next steps, what’s important here is to take off all or nothing thinking, don’t overcomplicate it, you don’t need it. For intentional living, you don’t need to quote unquote, find your calling. You don’t need to join a gym and completely overhaul your whole life. In fact, I have done it the opposite way My whole life has been transformed by small shifts consistently over time. Of course, that led to some bigger shifts as I was doing the work. But small shifts consistently over time, make change. So the next step I want you to think about without overcomplicating it, taking off that all or nothing thinking is to get to know what you want.

7:47
And when I say that, it might feel exciting, or it might feel daunting, and just kind of listen to your reaction here, explore that a little bit. Rather than trying to ignore it or overpower it. Just be gentle with yourself here. If that feels like too big and too much or too far away, we’ll let that exist.

8:07
The overall idea here is we’re removing the excess and distractions in our life. And we’re making space for what’s important to beautiful, but we’re making space for what’s important and beautiful to you to you.

8:21
This is what intentional living comes down to if something has intention, it has an aim. It has a plan. So what is the aim? As I like to call it what is the vision? intentional living means becoming more future focused, and not the future of default and worst case scenario of anxiety, or not this like vague unknown, like, I don’t know what my future is gonna hold. Because we know what our future holds. It’s more of the same, we perpetuate our present into our future. I’ve done an episode on that I’ll make sure to link it in the show notes.

8:55
But the future that we want to intentionally build into, the changes we can make now that will change our future. This is the reason why I feel like intentional living has become part of my nature. Because I’ve spent so many years considering what I want out of the situation what I want in the long run, where I want to end up. I’ve spent years refining what I want to use my home for being flexible with that allowing it to shift and adapt with my family, but still holding on to that longer term vision. I’ve spent a long time and a lot of work, getting to know what kind of wife I want to be. something I think we’re constantly working on when we’re in relationship with another person. I’ve spent a lot of in insight into myself and into how I want to live considering what I want healthy living to look like to me. I’ve spent a lot of time trying Trying to understand what matters to me and how I mother, my children in that long game of being their mother. I

10:07
‘ve done this for about seven years now, I think we started in 2016. And it’s something that I come back to most every January and not exactly New Year’s, but New Year’s ish, I still haven’t gone through the life on purpose workbook this year. And that’s a tool that I’ve used over the years is that life on purpose workbook, we’re in coming back to these different areas of my life, and keep refining and keep deepening and letting go of what didn’t work, and keep working on the things that are important, the things that matter to me. So what intentional living needs is an intention, it needs a vision, I’ve got worksheets on the website that I’ve linked many times in the past, I’ll link them again, there’s also the life on purpose workbook. And both of those are going to go through the nine areas of your life and help you set a vision. But if that feels like too much, just start with one area of your life. And if that feels like too much to start with one day.

10:58
I think it’s helpful and most useful to have that bigger vision and consider the small little ways you can move towards that. But if you’re not there yet. If you feel like you just can’t take a beat to sit and set out a little bit of a vision, then just consider the vision for the week, or for the day or the situation. What do I want to get out of this day? What do I want to get out of the situation? And I think even a better question that I have found helpful is what’s important here. What’s important to me today,

11:35
I can remember being at home with the kids, when they were all at home, because they’re all like three and a half years apart. And so there were many years where it was just me and these three kids. And I would lay in bed in the morning and like mentally run through what I had to do that day, like what was scheduled. And think about what’s important, like, what’s important to me what don’t want to make sure I do who I want to be today.

11:59
A couple of tools that have helped me, this is one I really like to use around that New Year’s time, just for a quick assessment and a quick direct redirection is called the more of less of what do I want more of this year? What do I want less of this year can be just simple, like even three simple things. I think a 2024 version I’ve seen floating around on Instagram is the what’s in and what’s out what’s in this year, what’s out this year. And I think those are fun, too.

12:27
Another strategy, like I mentioned, when I was home with all my kids was I would write lists of ideas. Because whenever I’ve been overwhelmed or in doubt, I would just make a list write that down. That is the most underrated life hack, write a list, write a list. And I would have a lot of lists of the things that I wanted to do with my kids.

12:48
And here’s how nerdy I was getting. I had a Trello board, if you haven’t seen Trello it is a really cool way to organize information. And you make kind of these rows with lists in them. And then you can like move things between lists. Anyways, it’s worth checking out. I did Trello board on intentional parenting, and I had my like, vision or value at the top and then a list of ways that I thought I could embody that value or do that thing. And I sent it to one of my besties because we were talking a lot about intentional living. I wonder if she remembers if she’s listening. She was probably like, oh my gosh, slow your roll, girlfriend.

13:31
But yeah, making lists List of things you want to do. Even for some of us a list of small tasks that we feel like we could fit into pockets of our day, if we feel like we need support with that. A list of things that would be fun, a list of things you could just try because you think they would be fun, you’re allowed to have more fun.

13:50
Okay, so the other thing intentional living also comes down to I live, there’s two things, knowing what you want. And then the other thing is, knowing who you are, who you want to be. In my opinion and experience. We want to be the version of us that is living in line with our values, the version of us of us that we are proud of, and not the values, not the version of us that everyone else tells us we need to be.

14:20
For many of us, we have this gap between who we think we should be our ideal self and our real self. And this gap is uncomfortable. It’s called cognitive dissonance. And it’s just an indicator that something something isn’t lining up for us.

14:35
You know, what helps us line up is our values is knowing what’s important to us what makes us feel like we have integrity. And you can feel it when you’re on vacation with your family that you worked so hard to earn and plan and prepare for but you are just this walking storm of anxiety. You know, this is what you want, but not who you want to be. This is not how you want it and I am sorry Speaking from experience, it matters less what you do, and it matters more who you are when you’re doing it. Will, I declutter my whole house, and suddenly it’s peaceful? Maybe I have an episode on that something to think about.

15:14
You could be very purposeful and productive with your time. But if you aren’t purposeful and intentional with your energy, and your attitude and your thoughts and your emotions, and I’m not belittling the fact that a lot of our thoughts and emotions are just automatic. But if you don’t feel like you can come back into line with your values, and who you want to be, you probably will never feel that peace and purposefulness, and presence with your life, you probably won’t feel like you are living intentionally.

15:48
This is something that I work on almost weekly with clients. So if you want to work together on this, I hope you reach out book a free consult call or session, there’s no package you have to buy, you just come as you need support. That’s what I’m about. My door is always open and I am here for whatever you want to work on.

16:08
Finally, I mentioned the let’s get more time virtual Summit. This is a really cool project that a podcasting friend invited me to be a part of. So it’s a virtual Summit. And the structure is really clever, because it’s a three day Summit. But over three days, there’s quick 15 to 20 minute presentations, they’re pre recorded.

16:29
So it’s not like that weird thing of being on video that you have to worry about. You can just show up and listen to these over three days. And the topics are very broad. We’ve got mindsets, we’ve got tools, there’s sessions on Trello. There’s sessions on the Google Calendar. But there’s also sessions on things like boundaries and working around your cycle, which I think is really important, and habits.

16:52
My own presentation will be on the I don’t have time mindset. So I’m going to link that in the show notes.

16:59
As always, if you can’t find the show notes, go to simple on purpose.ca. Click Listen, all of the episodes are there.

17:05
There’s also a link to the Spotify playlists. So if you go to simple on purpose dot c, click listen and find the Spotify playlist you’re going to see all of the episodes because we’re almost at 200 Guys, there’s a ton of episodes and you will find these episodes grouped into main topics like motherhood on purpose, emotional intelligence, habit change, simplifying, so I encourage you if you want to dig deeper in any of these topics to go check out those playlists.

17:34
Alright friends, I’m so glad to be back with you. And a reminder I love to hear from you. So make sure to stop in the Facebook group and say hi or message me on Instagram at simple on purpose.ca. Have a great week.

The post 198. How to live each day with intention, as a mom (life on purpose and intentional living while in motherhood) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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This is part 2 of the situations that can feel tough around the holidays. We explore how we deal with grief, family dynamics and clashes and ways we can take care of ourselves and look for ways to enjoy what is available to us. Tips from a counsellor to consider for the holiday season.

Main topics of this episode:* Part 1 unpacked topics like anticipatory anxiety, routines, loneliness, overspending and transitions + 196. When The Holidays Feel Hard (stress, anxiety, loneliness, overspending, transitions)- tips from a Counsellor * Dealing with grief over the holidays + When you need permission to grieve + The 4 tasks of grieving + Canadian Grief Support mygrief.ca * Family dynamics + Owning your own values - 149. How to find what matters to you (uncovering your personal values) + Family roles - 8 common family roles - 134. Do you typecast your kids? (Labels + how they impact our parenting and our kids) * Boundaries help maintain a relationship vs barriers which block a relationship + Knowing when to use each one * Coping well, taking care of your capacity over the holidays + The Meeting Your Needs Series * Bringing the fun with you, you are allowed to enjoy moments + 162. Think the best of me, or not. Allowing the hard and awesome in ourselves and in our lives. + Finding Joy In Your Every Day (#theperfectmomentsproject) + 163. Have fun with your kids, on purpose + reasons we don’t have fun + Five Tips to Make Your Christmas Simpler and More Enjoyable + When Did I Stop Enjoying My Kids? (and my journey back to enjoying them)

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FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited)

0:10
Hi, It is Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend counselor from simple on purpose.ca Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. And I’m just going to jump right into it. This episode is a follow up to 196 When Christmas feels hard, in that we introduced the concepts of making one shift for yourself this Christmas in the US things that feel hard. And we talked about anticipatory anxiety that you might be feeling stressed around the lack of routine, the pressures that we feel on Christmas spending money, being alone at Christmas being in a time transition. So those were all really great intros in situations that were shared. And I’m going to pick up and continue on with the topics of grief, family dynamics and boundaries. So the topic of grief was shared in the scenarios that women shared about the things that feel hard at Christmas. So there are things that we are grieving, we might be grieving this deed of the world right now, we might be grieving, a loss of what we thought this year would be. Maybe we’re walking through a loss a loss of a person that you love, a loss of a relationship, a loss of a family, or friends system as you knew it. And if if someone has lost someone in the recent years, they’re going through these seasons of life without that person for the first time. If someone has had a divorce or changes in their family, even if it was wanted, they’re still left with this blank space that was once filled with familiar patterns and people and traditions they could rely on. And they know there are people grieving losses that happened over the past few years and didn’t really get a chance to mourn during COVID Things have gone unaddressed. And new griefs can trigger old griefs. I wanted to share an experience that I had with grief around Christmas time. A few Christmases ago, during COVID, my mom had what was suspected to be a mini stroke, and she already had dementia. So from this, she was put into the hospital and then moved into a care facility. But at that time when it first happened, and she was in the hospital, she couldn’t talk. She wasn’t very responsive. She had to be spoon fed, she was in a wheelchair. And this was such a dramatic contrast to where she had just been. I mean, my dad had taken care of her for years. And this incident had forced her into a care facility. It also meant because it was COVID, she had to be isolated for two weeks, no one could go in and see her. And there’s so much more I could share on this than I’m going to write here. But at that time, I thought my mom was dying. She has recovered from this and is in care and doing well. But at that time, it was Christmas time. I was supposed to be enjoying this time with my kids and grief felt like water rising and flooding over me. It felt like such a great sadness. It still is a great sadness in my life. And that’s the thing, grief doesn’t look at the calendar. It doesn’t wait for the holidays to be over. It doesn’t take a break during the holidays. Grief is something you carry with you like rocks in a backpack and over time, you acclimatized to it, it’s still there. It’s important to acknowledge and validate this, acknowledge that things feel hard. If you have the space and capacity for it, acknowledge what you’re missing, who you miss what you miss about them what you wish this could be right now and validate this. If it feels appropriate, do something to honor that person that you miss. One way I tried to honor my mom at Christmas time is to intentionally and with love and mindfulness admire all of the ornaments that she had given me over years, which I took for granted as a child. But each year there’s the date on the back. And as I hang them up, I look at the back I think about old I was and each ornament is represents a picture of who she saw me as over the years of my life. Each one I feel like has a bit of a story. And sometimes I will share that story out loud to the kids and to my husband. And that is a way that I feel like I bring her in to my Christmas and and carry it on through me for grief. There are different stages that we go through and those around us are grieving in different ways or at different stages. It can feel tricky to navigate our grief amidst the grief of others. My encouragement to you here if you feel like you’re in a period of grief at Christmas is to keep getting support from it. Like listen to podcasts. I’m sure there’s so many great ones. Read about it. If you feel like it could help you talk to someone. Get support calling a support line, talk to a therapist or a friend or go to a support group but get yourself some support. Grief doesn’t have to be gone through You’re alone even if it makes you feel alone. The next major category of scenarios that were shared with me were issues related to family dynamics. Some of the examples shared with me were in laws, expectations from in laws, communicating expectations within laws, feeling annoyed my family, but I don’t want to feel annoyed, the differences in personalities of the people around and those differences are usually inflamed by alcohol. We see there’s difficult people, there’s personality clashes, and they often become heightened at the holidays. One part of our pain is that we’re wishing the other people were acting differently, if they would be easier to get along with and be better communicators fill in the blanks, if they could just do this, then it would all be easier. And the other part of the pain is that mentally and emotionally, we start thinking things and feeling things and we don’t want to like the great example shared there is that scenario of I’m annoyed, but I don’t want to be annoyed. Because we don’t like how that feels in us. We don’t like who we are. In that situation. We don’t like how it makes us think and feel an act. And we just want it to feel better. If I can give a starting point to shift here. It would be acknowledging the facts of how you’re feeling like I do wish it were different. I do wish they would do this and act like this. And I do wish I would feel like this. And that isn’t happening. And that makes me feel what overwhelmed mad sets just start there. For family dynamics, I received this situation that I thought was wildly insightful. This is one that is big for me is how I revert into old mindsets around my family, especially when it comes to my appearances, like not wearing makeup when all my other family members do not buying into diet culture weight discussions, even though all my other family members do. Also feeling like my choices are not being accepted and being treated like a kid again. And the first thing I hear in this one is that you have values now that your family of origin might not share. And it is hard when we stack them up against the weight of the family capital T capital F no family. One way to think about this, that could help is the concept of owning your values. Right now your values are being challenged. And this is exactly when you need to back them up and feel empowered by them and put them into action in a loving way. For me, that would sound like okay, everyone’s on their journey, doing what feels genuinely right to them, even if I think it’s misguided. Because we don’t want to get into the space where we’re trying to convert others. We also don’t want to keep feeling like we have to buy what they’re selling. Of course, it would be easy if everyone thought the exact same but we all have agency and opinions. You can also consider that there might even be a situation where others feel a bit insecure. When they stack up their own values up against yours, the way you live might challenge them and that would make them feel uncomfortable. And the easiest way for us to feel like we are right is to find a way that someone opposing is wrong. I mean, we both do it to each other. Step back. Let others have their own journey focus on feeling empowered about yours. For many of these quote people scenarios. If we look at a big picture, we can see a lot of us reverting to the roles we play within the family system. As you gear up to spend time with the people that you clash with. Or just being back in your family in your old town in your own in your old home. It could be worth asking, what roles do I play? What roles do I give to others? What roles do I give to myself? Do you play the peacekeeper? Do you play the victim? And who do you make the villain in contrast to that

8:50
is someone in your family the scapegoat receiving blame for everything that goes wrong? You can google family roles and you can get a lot of examples. What we’re doing is we’re putting ourselves and others into these roles. When we’re together, we’re playing it out, we might not even be aware of it. These roles are the ways that we cope and communicate with each other and it’s so ingrained in us. It’s how we were raised essentially programmed to operate within this family system. And now that we’re back in the system, we take on the role we have always taken and we look to others to do what they have always done. If you find you’re starting to talk in absolutes, you’ll notice this, they always do this, they never do that. I always have to do this. When we’re doing that we’re filtering out evidence to the contrary, that’s our confirmation bias. We can’t see any instances where they are acting in a way that doesn’t confirm our belief about them. I talked about this a bit more in the episode on typecasting your kids I’ll link that in the show notes. The starting point here that I would offer is to grow more awareness of yourself versus awareness of others. This season, one shift you can make pay attention to you? What’s your experience like in your body and your mind? How are you acting? What stories? Do you show up with what triggers you? How do you react? Who would you be without these stories? As we talk about having difficult people to deal with during the holidays, it also brings up the concept of boundaries. And when I say boundaries, I don’t mean barriers to keep people out. I mean, you might need, you might need barriers for the people that could cause you harm. But generally, boundaries are the things that we are going to do for ourselves to ensure our resources are protected our energy, our safety is protected. So some examples could be if the conversation is aggressive or inappropriate, I just get up and leave the room. If I don’t have the time, or money or capacity to participate or contribute, we can assertively loving and shared, I’m sorry, I can’t do that. But I can do this instead. And no one will protect your boundaries. That’s actually your job. And it does come with some pain that is for sure. I have had boundaries for myself around Christmas, even Christmases where I wanted to be home with my kids, and I didn’t want to travel and all that kind of stuff. And so we’d made the choice to stay home. Another Christmas where I had to have boundaries around attending an event where there was a person that I didn’t want in my life or my kids life. And that was hard. Because there was all these people gathered at Christmas that I really wanted to be with them. But I wouldn’t put myself around that one person. And I was missing out. Of course, the people I love were upset. And I had to hold strong to that, that it was actually the right thing to do that it was very values based and very loving. With all of these situations that we go through when it comes to gathering together and the events and all of the expectations and the situations and gatherings it’s it’s worth noting that something that can help all of us is to take care of our own capacity. And by this I mean sleeping, eating good food, like you’re good enough cheese and pickles and salami those check off a lot of books, it’s right there. I’m sure God made me celiac as a gift to me. So that I wouldn’t destroy my own body. Yeah, I can still by the way, I’m sure. So nourishing yourself getting outside moving around doesn’t have to be an hour the gym guys like just go for a walk, talking to people that you enjoy that you love talking with phone up a friend planning activities that you want to do at Christmas time. Maybe taking some time away heading into your room for a nap, or some time away and limiting alcohol. When we don’t do these things. And when alcohol gets involved without limits or intention, we will often find that our emotions will take the driver’s seat. And our logic is just too tired and worn out to step in. Protect your capacity. Protect your capacity to deal with the situations by taking care of yourself. My final piece of advice in all of this is to give yourself permission to hold on to hope and to even enjoy things. We sometimes trap ourselves with this notion that if we enjoy things, and by default, we must approve of things. It can almost feel necessary to stay in a state of disapproval or grief or overwhelm as a statement maybe to say we don’t approve, we will not feel happy. I will not let out a lap. We won’t stop and make eye contact. We won’t look up from what we’re doing. We won’t engage. It feels protective, it feels so necessary. But this protective layer keeping everyone out and ourselves in it’s keeping the goodness from getting in. One way I’ve tried to challenge this for me myself, is to make fun for an event if there’s kids, like make it about the kids plan a fun game for them. One year, I planned a big trivia event for my family gathering. I had questions in there about our family history about each person in the family. And that was just a way for me to channel all my nervous energy, my grief about the changing situation with my mom not being able to participate, how she would have and just offer something, bring something to the situation that felt like it offered a connection and it felt light hearted. It’s hard to feel this way when Christmas is hard. But happiness is available to you. Even in hard times. There are little moments of goodness and you’re allowed to enjoy things even if you’re grieving or things are genuinely hard. This is a time to lean in to two things being true. I wish it wasn’t like this that I will show up for the good things that are available to me. I will let hard things be hard. But I will also soften myself to engage with those moments of goodness that are still there for me. The hard and the awesome wow. drafting this episode alone, it made me feel the fields. Big time and I’m feeling them again talking about all this in drafting it up. I was really transported back to hard seasons. I’ve had a Christmases over the years Christmases that have broken my heart, there have been quite a few. And I was also brought into yours too. With each scenario that was shared with me, I just wanted to like, hug each woman who shared because the burdens we carry are real. And you just want to hold everyone’s faces in my hands and tell them they’re doing amazing. And life is hard, and you’re brave, and you’re doing our things, and I’m proud of you. So take care of your hearts this season, take care of your people, and make a point to enjoy one little thing in this holiday. Because it’s your experience too. And your experience matters because you matter. I’m going to sign off until the new year, I would love it. If I came back in the new year to a rating and review that you leave on iTunes, even if you don’t listen on iTunes also will computer robots. They really love those reviews on iTunes. In order for the podcast to show up in search results. Those reviews really help. And I also encourage you to enter the new year as being a member of the simple Saturday’s email. It comes out twice a month. There’s 1000s of you guys on there. It’s fun email. It’s not like other email, it is cool email. There’s a lot of little thought nuggets and behind the scenes and things that are happening that don’t make it onto Instagram or anything. It really is the best way to stay connected because it doesn’t rely on the algorithms of social media which you guys, I don’t play those games. Have you you’ve probably seen a reel back from me but it was by mistake. So if you really want to stay connected with simple on purpose, join that email and the link for that is of course in the show notes. If you can’t find the show notes, click on simple on purpose.ca Click Listen, you’ll find all of the episodes, all of the show notes all of the related links and at the very bottom. You can find the transcript alright bands, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, whatever you’re celebrating. I hope you celebrate it on purpose with them.

The post 197. Holidays + Grief, Family Dynamics, Boundaries, Self-Care and Joy – tips from a counsellor first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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I asked listeners to share the tough scenarios they expect to encounter during the holidays and Christmas. I will start with Part 1, going through the themes of scenarios and sharing an idea on a shift you can try to make this season, from a counsellor’s perspective. The goal is to give you some tools on how to handle the reality that life can still be hard and things can feel tough, especially around this time of year.

The interview with Brandi Hofer of Colour Me Happy Community

• On Youtube – Brandi Hofer Studios
• On the podcast – Colour Me Happy Community

Main topics covered in this episode:

• The expectations of Christmas/The Holidays vs the emotions we carry as humans
  • 1. 3 things to know about feeling negative emotions
• Anticipatory anxiety, one way to deal with it
  • 1. Christmas hygge ideas + understanding how the window of tolerance impacts your stress in motherhood
• Tough scenarios during the holidays, lack of routines
  • 1. A Controlling mom, or a capable mom?
• Overspending to make the holidays FEEL good
  • 1. When shopping isn’t making your life better (mindful and minimalist tips for shopping)
• Being alone or missing family during the holidays
• Times of transition during the holidays
  • 1. Making motherhood harder than it needs to be (Mom Martyr)
• Simple Christmas (all posts here)

FULL TRANSCRIPT

0:10
Hey friends, it’s Shawna Scafe, your nerdy girlfriend and counsellor from simple on purpose.ca I thought I would add my last name in there because I never say it and you’re probably reading it and don’t really know how to pronounce it. So nice to meet you guys. My Instagram used to be Shawna Scafe. But the way it was written everyone thought it was Sean is cafe. And people were genuinely wondering where my cafe was. And that would be so dreamy to have a cafe so but I don’t, I don’t have a cafe. So I just changed my instagram name to simple on purpose. Anyways, here you are, you’re at the simple and purpose podcast. Welcome. And today has been a really busy day. This morning, I did an interview with brandy Hofer. She is a Canadian artist. She’s a muralist. She’s a portrait artist. She’s an educator, she’s a speaker, and I have followed her work for actually a lot of years now. And I just love her work. It’s so beautiful. It’s like a feast for the heart. It’s just so wonderful. And I recently had commented on one of her Instagram posts, and she wrote me right back, and she asked me to come on your podcast, which was so cool. On one hand to be asked, because I just admire her so much. And on the other hand to realize she had a podcast, I hadn’t missed that in the Instagram algorithm. So I said, Yes, I started listening to her podcast, it’s called Color Me happy, which is also the name of her book that I just ordered. I’m excited about it. Because the more you talk to her and the more you listen to her podcast, the more you see just how have a real deal. She is like genuine, honest, open and passionate, like you can feel her passion for what she does, and for empowering other women. So her podcast is about being a community for motherhood and art, you don’t have to be an artist to listen to it really like I listened to it. And it’s women talking about issues that women deal with in different areas of entrepreneurship and motherhood. So I’m gonna link her in the show notes, I recommend following her everywhere, and getting your book in follow your podcasts, especially because she’s Canadian. And we let just love fellow Canadians around here, don’t we? So then, after I did that, I went to put on my long johns, because there’s snow here today walk down to my kids school, because they’re all in the same school this year. And because they’re in the same school, I thought I should probably help out, I should be more involved. So I signed up to become a noon hour supervisor, which as I say it, I’m like, you could have done other things. But this is what we chose. Because I knew there was a little bit of a gap there that some more supervision was needed on one certain day of the week. It has come with some reluctance from my kids, for sure. And if I’m honest for me, too, but today, I went down first time went to learn the ropes. And the bonus of all of this is a couple of my besties work there. So I’m gonna get to see them more often. And I just hope it all outweighs the hard parts, right? hard enough. There’s going to be hard and awesome. Moving on to the issues of today. winter holidays coming up, whatever you’re celebrating, whatever background you have, whatever celebrations you partake in, at this time of year, it most likely involves some get togethers, some parties, family events, and all of that naturally comes with expectations, expectations on what it should look like, what it should feel like what you should be doing what you shouldn’t be doing. And in my young, 41 years of living and spending hours talking with people and hearing the things away on them. I know just enough to say that the holidays do not always feel good. They don’t always look like they should they don’t feel like they should. But we live in this culture where we’re fed that steady stream of Hallmark Christmas perfection everything works out and twinkly warm cheese commercials where families are laughing together in their sweaters and those stock photos of smiling couples sipping in their coffees in front of the fire. Like everything we’re bombarded with, it just doesn’t leave much permission to feel mad at Christmas, or lonely or sad or grief or disappointed overwhelmed, annoyed, anxious. These feelings still exist at this time of year. And my very wise supervisor has reminded me these feelings are often magnified this time of year. Here today, I wanted to offer you a place to talk about the reality that Christmas holidays whenever you’re celebrating does not always feel good. And I want to offer you a few ways to approach this season. What I did was I asked the Facebook group and I asked on Instagram for women to share topics that feel hard around this time of year. And I feel like there was such a range, really real and relatable situations that were shared. I would love to go in depth on each and every situation in you probably by accident I probably will but I’m going to touch on each one

5:00
For short, of course, we won’t solve all the situations in 120 minute podcast with some ideas in it. Or even in one Christmas, really, because this is years of history, relationships, roles, habits, coping and pain. And it takes a lot of time, a lot of intention, a lot of awareness, a lot of practice and work to reconcile these things. But that being said, my aim here is to offer you one simple shift one thing to focus on the season one different way to show up a different approach. And I’m going to just share ideas, I’m going to share ideas on things that could work in some of them might be a fit for you, some of them might not, maybe it’ll get you thinking about an alternative that could work for you. Because the goal here is to just try something, make one shift in the system. And really, we make that shift with us because we are the only ones in the system that we can intentionally make changes in. And ideally, if we start making shifts, maybe other shifts will happen in response over time. It’s always worth saying this episode is not a replacement for therapy. And I will let you know that I feel like these episodes are jam packed, it might take two parts, we’ll see I might do two episodes, they’re going to be jam packed, I’m going to try and load up the show notes to be a place where you can come and get a little bit of a bullet version of everything and additional resources, because so much of what we talk about here has been touched on other episodes that might be helpful for you. So stop by the show notes. If you want more. And you can always scroll down to the bottom of the show notes and read the full transcript as well. If you’d like to take your time with things, as we start this conversation about the things that feel hard at Christmas, I want to talk about what happens before the gathering or event or whatever even happens. And gearing up to the holidays, you might notice a lot of what’s called anticipatory anxiety, which is anxiety we get about that upcoming situation. And it might even be anxiety we feel about the anxiety we’re going to have, in my experience, a difficult part of anticipate anticipatory anxiety is that it changes how you show up now before the problem quote unquote problem has even happened. So it steals your presence and joy now, and then again later. A tip for you here is to pay attention. In the days and weeks leading up to whatever gathering or event, check how you’re feeling. How are you feeling right now? What are you thinking about? Are you worrying? Are you ruminating? Are you thinking about worst case scenario, if you can use worry, to make a plan that feels like it’s going to help you great, but if your worry is just keeping you stuck and suffering, that’s something to pay attention to. For me, I am usually not aware that I’m getting into the stage and tell I received some feedback from my husband that I’m on edge.

7:47
And if something is coming up, that is stressful for me, I have reduced capacity. I’m not fun to be around. And it will often take him pointing out to me, for me to even connect all of these dots and say, Oh, I’m not actually mad about what’s happening right here right now. That’s not the problem. But rather, the problem like underneath is the emotion of anxiety that I have. I’m feeling overwhelmed. We talked a lot about window of tolerance in the, in the past how much capacity we have to deal with something. And when I can say to myself, Okay, I’ve reduced capacity, because my capacity is being gobbled up by the anxiety of anticipating the anxiety. Everything’s irritating me, I have a short fuse, I’m being hard to be around, I am not being the person I want to be right now. And that amount of paying attention is often enough to give you your power back and give yourself a little break. Take a little break for yourself. let your family know, Hey, guys, I’m feeling stress. I’m going to take a minute, take your power back. So I want to talk on the topics that were shared. I’ve tried to group them into categories, so that I could share some advice on each one. And the first category is stress around the lack of your team. You know, it’s Christmas, you’re traveling, you might be staying at different places, eating different foods, there’s events happening at different hours of the day. And the routine is going to be disrupted. This sounds trivial, doesn’t it? Oh, well let them stay up. Let me do this. Let them do this. It’s Christmas. It sounds trivial. But it really is not. Especially if you have health issues with you or someone in the family if you are dealing with anxiety. If you’re managing kids, especially if you have kids with special needs or a baby like a baby that needs that routine, so they sleep through the night. It’s also an issue if you’re doing some work of grieving, which we’re going to touch on more later. Or if you’ve had adjustments in your family system. And as moms we’re often that routine keeper we know the routine we know what has to happen to keep things on track to keep them running smoothly. If we have the routine maintained, then like things will work out we almost need it for us to maintain our own capacity. Of course we can cling to it too much. Sometimes I covered that in an episode on

10:00
Controlling versus being capable. But if this is an issue on your plate this season, I would encourage you to acknowledge and honor that you actually want the routine and look for ways to still get it. Or at least some of the crucial parts, maybe you’ll be more relaxed on food, but you’ll focus on sleep. As a mums, a big part of this can be owning it. Sometimes we will let go of the routine and make others feel happy or comfortable. And then we get a little bit burnt out and resentful about it. So own it own, that you’re prioritizing this nap own that I’m going to head out early and get these kids to bed. Because if I don’t, I’m gonna lose my mind. Guys, I need my kids in bed next year will be different next year, we’ll stay a bit later, or maybe we’ll be back in the morning. We’re not leaving forever, like let’s help chill out. If it helps you as a mom to keep things on track, then own it and have your own back. Another interesting scenario that was shared is in relation to the expectations and the pressures that we put on Christmas. The scenario was shared with me of spending too much money to make Christmas feel good. And the words too much money are important because it indicates we’re exceeding the money available. The money we plan on spending, which gives us this negative outcome financially at the end of the season. And we don’t want to end up with that, right? I can relate to this scenario. And I think I feel it more as my kids get older. And they want those higher ticket items. And they are more aware of what their friends are getting. It’s so natural for them to compare. And I can even remember some Christmases that I as a kid felt let down, I didn’t get what I wanted or hoped for. Or the presents I did get. It didn’t feel like they were a fit for me. Like it didn’t reflect actually who I was or what I wanted, or even maybe fit me. And in my kid brain. It made me feel a little bit unknown and unseen. course as a parent. Now I look back differently on it. But I think it shows that it’s worth reflecting on our own experience and how it’s informing our approach to Christmas. Now, this can be a part of why we parent the way we do at Christmas time. The other part here is when it comes to making the magic at Christmas. It’s based on how we want our kids to feel or not feel are we Christmasing for if it’s a verb, or we Christmasing them from a place of lack, like things that didn’t feel like they were enough and we’re making up for it. Are we doing it from a place of discomfort that we can’t handle anyone possibly feeling even a little bit down on this event that you’re only supposed to feel good things, I could say I could tell you the standard advice, make a list, make a budget and stick to it. But those emotions of scarcity and fear that we’re going to see others be disappointed they’re going to override the logic of that. So this situation is really more about reconciling those emotions, the discomfort, the fear the scarcity and learning to tolerate them. That’s really the work to do here. I’m going to cover one more scenario. And then I’m going to wrap it up here and continue in the next episode on grief, and on family dynamics. This next scenario will be where we need to let hard things be hard. An example that was shared is I have great in laws, but I’m missing my family of origin. And that’s really hard to contrast those two conflicting emotions. If you’ve ever had Christmases away from your family, you know that it is a really lonely experience, I can remember living up north and being alone on Christmas away from my family, my husband was working. And I was just so sad. I listened to the Sarah McLaughlin album, A Song For winter’s night and lit candles and I cried.

13:49
It was really, really lonely. And a strategy I think that’s worth trying is Let it be hard. Let yourself be sad. If you can do something that honors the people you’re missing that honors maybe your family of origin, whether it’s making them a cool care package, trying to plan a FaceTime date, carrying on a tradition bringing it into the family or the people that you’re with, like bring them one of your traditions. And something that helped me when I was alone at Christmas was still finding a way to be around other people. There was extended family who would invite me for a dinner there was my friend who would take me to the Christmas Eve service with their family. There was opportunities to volunteer. So still getting out and getting involved. If you find yourself alone at Christmas can can just be a way to feel like you’re you have a little bit of a community you have some people around you. Other hard scenarios that this time of year can be if you’re in times of transition, a new baby, a new move a new job, those kinds of things that even if they were wanted, and you still wanted them. There’s still times transition times where they can rock our self concept, our routines, our stability or kappa

15:00
City, our identity. These are big letters, life events, where adjustments are rocky and uncomfortable and stressful and you aren’t really too sure if you’re doing it right in the moment. My advice here is if it feels hard, you could let hard things be hard. I would really encourage you to watch how you’re coping through this. They’ll pay attention. How are you acting in this scenario? Hurry, maybe you trying to compensate in this scenario? How are you coping in this scenario, often we find the things we’re trying to do to handle it can make the hard thing even harder. It helps also to shorten your window of focus and focus just on the short term, the stay this week, these two weeks of how you want to cope. And all in all, through all of that validate that adjustments are hard. Adjustments are hard. That’s why they’re called adjustments. It if it feels hard, it doesn’t always mean you’re doing it wrong, it often simply means you’re doing it. As you know, my aim is to keep these episodes short, so that you can just bring them into your day in small doses. I’m going to wrap this up here and I want to encourage you to check out the next episode where we’ll talk a little bit more about grief and boundaries and family dynamics and those kinds of fun things that can really make get togethers a little bit difficult. So hop on over whenever you’re ready for that one.

The post 196. When The Holidays Feel Hard (stress, anxiety, loneliness, overspending, transitions)- tips from a Counsellor first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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A major hurdle that many of us moms to rest is the underlying belief that we need to ‘earn our rest’. In this episode, Professional Counsellor and mom of three unpacks how this belief impacts our abilities to rest well, our relationships and our coping habits.

This episode is in follow-up to Episode 194. I stopped calling myself a lazy mom

In this episode, we discuss topics such as:

• relaxation vs pseudo-rest, burnout
• opportunity costs, and how we insert ourselves into the equation
  • 1. Motherhood & Instagram Culture (how online communities impact your motherhood experience)
  • 1. Prioritizing the day: if everything matters nothing matters and how to apply this in motherhood
• the cultural views on motherhood, being lazy, and earning rest
• how we apply the logic of ‘earning rest’, seeking external validation, martyrdom
  • 1. Making motherhood harder than it needs to be (Mom Martyr)
  • 1. Who are you when I’m not looking (internal vs external validation)
• the escape hatch, dealing with our feelings
  • 1. Emotional needs in motherhood (what they are and how to meet them)
  • 1. What will change cost you? (Paying the status quo or investing in change)
  • Show up for your life
• getting the cycle backwards between rest and hard work
  • the Instagram post you all loved about rest
• the cycle of hyper-productivity then crashing
• meeting your needs
  • the series is right here

Join the Simple Saturdays newsletter right here

FULL TRANSCRIPT

0:00
Hey friends, it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend counselor from simple on purpose.ca. Welcome to the simple and purpose podcast.

0:17
So if you’re new here, welcome. I am Shawna, I am a mom of three kids in Canada, I am a counselor. And my aim is to equip you with tools and ideas and insights that help you live more simply and more intentionally, in all the areas of your life.

0:31
So this episode is a follow up to the last episode where I was unpacking that concept of asking yourself in moments where you are finding yourself with a desire to relax, am I being lazy? Or am I overwhelmed, because when we can differentiate between the two, we can handle it accordingly.

0:48
When we’re overwhelmed, we’ve maxed out we’ve reached capacity. And I’ve talked about that window of tolerance. That’s that range where we feel a sense of resource and ability to deal well with the day in all its demands. being overwhelmed takes us out of that window of tolerance. And we have this dilemma of actually being worn out and needing rest. But then that voice comes in that says, if you’re resting, you’re lazy, you should be doing this or that.

1:09
So in that moment, we have a choice, we can be lazy, or we can go and get more things done. One leads to guilt fueled pseudo arrest, the other leads to even more burnout.

1:20
A concept I’ve shared over the years is the concept of opportunity cost. And that is the acknowledgement that when we say yes to one thing, we say no to the other, and vice versa.

1:30
For example, if I say yes to a day of work, and all that comes with it, career advancement, maybe job satisfaction, a wage, etc, then I say no to maybe being a stay at home, parent, and all the stuff that would happen then if I was a stay at home parents, someone’s there to do chores, make meals, childcare, whatever, vice versa, there’s no wrong choice. I’m just saying these simple choices, we are weighing against our own values and goals have a cost on either side.

1:56
But as moms when it comes to the opportunity cost of rest. We live in a culture where we have put ourselves into the transaction.

2:04
We tell ourselves this math, if I say no to me, resting, I say yes to getting more stuff done. And since I live in a culture where busy is glorified, I should choose that. Or vice versa. If I say no to getting stuff done, I’m saying yes to me being a lazy mum. And since I live in a culture where being lazy is at worst a sin, or at least tacky or undignified. This is a generalization I’m making.

2:30
What is that going to lead us to in the decision we need to make there? Right? If the opportunity costs of me resting versus me doing always points towards one culturally acceptable choice? What are we going to be doing? We’re going to be saying no to ourselves, and yes to the expectations of ourselves to do more.

2:49
And those expectations feel necessary, don’t they? The expectations we have on ourselves as mom, it’s something that I talked about in a past episode, I’ll make sure to link it in the show notes. All in all, bad math, it’s costing us either way you spin it, it costs us, the person, the woman, the mom who’s denying herself rest.

3:07
So in order to reconcile the transaction, do we rest? Or do we do, we turn it into this formula, where we justify the choice with the criteria of ruining rest.

3:20
In working with mums, I feel like this isn’t a conscious formula. Like if I fold a basket of laundry, I give myself permission to read my book for 20 minutes. It’s more of a subconscious rule. We’ve adopted like a core belief that rest must be earned through working hard.

3:35
And there’s this framework we have are not too clear, though, on how to apply this logic, how to measure it and who decides the measurement? And how do we know when we’ve reached it? How do we know and we worked hard enough to earn that rest. You don’t really have that criteria is kind of vague.

3:49
But we’re applying the concept nonetheless, which I think can and did, for me at least translate into us becoming martyrs. Sometimes, if you’ve read my post about being a martyr, it’s one of the most read posts ever, I’m going to link that in the show notes. Because we might find ourselves in a situation where we need to prove our hard work to others in order for them to give us permission to rest. We can’t draw a line in the sand and tell ourselves well done self, you can rest and now we are looking to others to do it. It’s not their job, but we are looking to them to do it.

4:26
We are looking for that external validation. Someone needs to tell me I’ve earned this rest. And oh, if I’m an especially good murderer and a very hard worker, then they have to force me to rest. And I’m not going to do a good job of it. I’m going to still find a way to be productive while I rest.

4:43
It does create a whole other problem doesn’t it if it sets up this unhelpful dynamic and is in a relationship where we need that external validation.

4:51
So from this underlying rule that we might be living with that we need to earn rest, we have some outcomes. First, we aren’t too clear on how to apply it. So We look to others to apply it for us. And in order to do that, we need their validation. So now we need to express our experience to them, show them the evidence be the martyr. So then they have the information they need in order to validate us, oh, you should go rest. Now, that creates an unhelpful dynamic in any relationship. And we still haven’t actually rested.

5:20
How do you feel when you are not well rested? Not awesome, right? Like, that woman you missing out on rest and nourishment and restoration, she’s not feeling great. And when we don’t feel good, we start to think of ways we can just feel better.

5:36
We might not even be aware of it. But we might find ourselves reaching for the phone, or calling someone up to gossip or online shopping, just whatever feels better than how we’re feeling now. So from this whole system, we create another layer of problems where we have what I call the escape hatch, the escape hatch, those things we do some kind of secret indulgence that we turn to as a way to deal with how we’re feeling. And we’re not feeling great, because we’ve deprived ourselves of meeting our needs. Plus, we’re looking for this external validation Plus, we’re worn out, it’s just kind of like murky waters we’re swimming in and that escape hatch, that guilty pleasure, it’s different than coping like coping is going to help improve our lives, improve our situation.

6:22
But the escape hatch, it often costs us something in the long run, like these little ways, we’re trying to just get some enjoyment, scrolling on the phone heading to the pantry, alcohol, online, shopping all of it, it’s might not make our lives better in the long run and decrease a secondary problem, that now we want to change those habits.

6:41
The other month, I shared a story on Instagram that was so well loved. Code, lots of you press the little heart icon when you saw it. And it said this, I’m going to quote it. Instead of asking, have I worked hard enough to deserve rest? I’ve started asking, have I rested enough to do my most loving and meaningful work? That’s Nicola Jean Hobbs.

7:00
Because we do have it backwards, don’t we, if we think we need to work so hard exhaust ourselves to the point of being a husk of a person, and then we can rest we’ve got it backwards.

7:12
I know, as I say this, I’m just another voice on the internet telling moms they should rest. I mean, I have a whole series on this called meeting your needs. But if I could just offer you one mindset shift today, it would be to let go of the notion that rest has to be earned. And it’s probably one of the stickier harder ones to let go of, because it feels necessary. Even worse, it feels noble, it feels noble. So that threatens our personal sense of integrity to live in opposition to this made up rule.

7:45
But the rule doesn’t feel made up. Like let’s acknowledge that because it’s probably how we were raised, or how we learn to raise ourselves to meet the culture around us.

7:53
There’s another issue that I wanted to share that I find interesting, and that is with clients who have the experience where they’re so productive, getting all the things done, and then they hit a wall and crash. And to them, they use this as evidence that they have failed, they feel they should not have hit a wall. If they were doing it right, they would have maintained that level of productivity.

8:15
And in the most loving way possible. This is not the problem we need to solve. It’s not a problem that you’ve expended so much energy now you need to recover. I mean, it makes sense. It’s like the facts like if you drain the battery without recharging it, it’s going to run out.

8:29
What I see is more of the problem is that we expect ourselves to operate in that perpetual state of productivity. It’s a problem that we don’t allow ourselves smaller doses of rest, and then beat ourselves up when we do take a lot more recovery time. And it is interesting to explore why we expect to set yourself the mentality that we should be able to do it all without ever resting is how we ensure we’re keeping up the energy to meet that expectation that we need to earn rest. They’re all tied together.

9:02
From this conversation, I want you to take away permission to challenge the idea that you need to earn your rest. Rest is not a reward, especially not one with such vague or externally sourced criteria to achieve. And just the way we look at our kids and we know they need rest and we encourage their rest. We need rest too. In fact, when we rest we do better work like after a good night’s sleep. Don’t you feel so much more capacity for your life?

9:31
I mean, you wouldn’t take your phone out for a whole weekend without charging it first. Okay, well maybe would like the battery monitor of my friend group and if I see that their phones are like below 80% I’m gonna say plug your phone in. I guess we all have this different window of tolerance when it comes to our phone battery.

9:47
But the metaphor is solid guys. If we knew we needed a tool for a long period of time, we would make sure that tools charged or we would have to face the reality that we’re gonna have to stop and charge it when it dies mid project like that. It’s just facts, we don’t have to get all emotional about it and it’s not charged. Now we need to charge it.

10:04
If you are challenged with the idea of resting, I encourage you to listen to the meet your needs series. In that series, I talk about how our culture and our upbringing influence how we as moms, meet our needs or don’t meet our needs. I talk about the difference between self comfort and self care, which is the reason we don’t rest well, right. We’re just comforting ourselves instead of actually caring and restoring ourselves. And I go through meeting each of the basic needs and share how I learned how to take care of that part of me and talk about eating, moving, sleeping, and our emotions.

10:38
So Christmas break is coming, winter break is coming for us. I hope you find some ways to give yourself permission to rest. I hope that you maybe do a little test for yourself and see what happens if I do a little bit more resting, maybe I can do a little bit more work. If I’m well rested, maybe I can show up better. Instead of doing the opposite, like try out an experiment, see what happens.

11:02
As usual, I have stack the shownotes with a lot of links that I hope will be helpful for you. It expands on different concepts we’ve talked about here, stop by the show notes and check them out. And if you can’t find the show notes, simple go to simple on purpose.ca. Click Listen, all of the episodes are there. And in each episode post you will find the show notes, links and at the bottom of each post you’ll find a transcript if you prefer to read things on but I don’t edit it. So there are some spelling mistakes or, or weird words situations that are put in there but you’ll figure it out.

11:35
And all in all, I encourage you to sign up for the simple Saturday’s email. That’s where you get updates about what’s happening at simple on purpose. And I have exciting plans for the new year in the email squad is going to get access to that first stop by the show notes. That is a biweekly email from me. It’s called your virtual coffee date with your nerdy girlfriend. That’s what the listeners have named it. And I just love to spend that time with you and check in with you every two weeks and send some little nuggets and behind the scenes to your inbox. All right friends, have a great week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post 195. The cost of ‘earning’ your rest first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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Do you ever find yourself trying to rest or relax and get this nagging voice telling you that you are being lazy? As moms, this can be a nightly experience, when we finally get the kids down and would like to unwind. Instead, our R&R gets hijacked by this notion that if we aren’t doing chores, hobbies, exercise, etc then we are being lazy. But, odds are you are NOT a lazy mom, rather you are overwhelmed.

In this episode we cover some of these topics (and related links you might like):

• The original blog post When I realized I wasn’t a lazy mom, I was just overwhelmed
• Naming our experience
  • The power of naming our emotions (how affect labelling can improve your emotional intelligence)
• Societal expectations on moms
  • 1. Motherhood & Instagram Culture (how online communities impact your motherhood experience)
• Self-definition (limiting identities)
  • 1. Why it matters what you think (limiting mindsets in motherhood)
• Three ways we are exhausted during the day
  • Physical exhaustion
  • Emotional exhaustion, mirror neurons, our kids’ emotions
    • 1. Emotional Intelligence 101 (and by Enneagram Type)
    • 1. Tolerating tough emotions in our kids (and ourselves)
    • 1. Why you aren’t thriving in motherhood (stress and surviving)
  • Mental exhaustion, mental load, decision fatigue
    • 1. How to lighten the mental load of DECISION FATIGUE
• The counter-argument of ‘just be more organized’
  • 11 Things That Make My MomLife Simpler
  • 1. 4 simple habits that make my momlife better
• How do we handle this voice telling us that we are lazy
  • Window of tolerance
    • understanding how the window of tolerance impacts your stress in motherhood
  • 1. How to move from ambivalent to ambitious (making change takes more than just willpower)
• Knowing when you are overwhelmed and when you are feeling lazy
  • 1. Self-care, self-comfort, self-love & what we have learned from our mothers
  • 1. Does your ‘to-do list’ overwhelm you? Expectation overwhelm and how to handle it.

Get the wallpapers for the Beautiful Words Episode right here

All of the Simple Christmas posts are right here

FULL TRANSCRIPT

0:00
Hey it’s Shawna, you’re near to go find a counselor from simple on purpose.ca. Welcome to the Simplon purpose podcast.

0:17
So it’s December guys we made it is December. And today when I’m recording this, it’s snowing in BC, which I know what’s going to make it beautiful here, except I have to drive out of town for a hockey tournament. So That’s never fun to be driving through these kinds of conditions. But hey, that’s the life of a Canadian parent with a kid in winter sports, traveling through all the conditions, bringing all the snacks and the vitamins and the gear is just like a whole thing, isn’t it?

0:42
So we’re in December, many of us are thinking about Christmas planning for it, whatever you’re celebrating, we’re thinking about it. And I do like to share content that is seasonally relevant. And often I would share a lot of posts about Christmas. But I’ve shared so much in the past that I’m not going to rehash all of it. Again, I’m just going to lead you to the archives of all of the posts all of the episodes about all of the things when it comes to simplifying Christmas, and having your Christmas be intentional and purposeful in something that you just show up for and enjoy. So stop by the link in the show notes for a little landing page for all of that.

1:19
I’m going to talk about a well loved post that I shared a few years back called I stopped calling myself a lazy mom. And when I wrote it, I was writing it from that experience of feeling like I was momming hard all day long, three small kids.

1:34
Just reminder, my kids now are 12,11, and nine. So when they were all at home, they were all like close in age and it was like hot, hot and heavy situation. So I would be home with all these kids momming hard and then at the end of the night, you get them to bed, you sit on the couch, and suddenly, when you should be kind of like feeling like Oh yeah, I’m like come check out. What happens instead is this feeling of being flooded with the expectation that I should be doing something I shouldn’t be doing something I should be maybe meal prepping a freezer meal or folding this perpetual basket of laundry on my couch. Or I should take up a hobby because I haven’t been creative enough and use my brain in those ways. Or I should definitely exercise goodness knows I’m overdue or calling a friend catching up whatever felt was necessary to be more balanced and more productive as a woman in the world. That feeling that should do that expectation contrasted with the desire to just sit on the couch with my husband and my little bowl of ketchup chips, and enjoy something interesting on TV together.

2:46
And the contrast matters here because we have two camps on one camp is who I should be I should be productive. I should be doing all these things. And the other camp is who I am currently being which is lazy, being lazy,

3:01
lazy and complacent. Man, that is a word I used against myself for years. And when I boil it down to where I got that self definition from it was really due to the fact that I was not a morning person. It was kind of this determining factor, this default result that if you hate mornings, you’re lazy. If you want to sleep in you are lazy.

3:26
So what do we do when we give ourselves any kind of identity, we inadvertently and sometimes inadvertently perpetuate that identity. And I’m going to link to an episode on that in the shownotes.

3:38
So this post about stopping calling myself a lazy mom, it came at a time where I had this big aha moment that maybe I wasn’t who I thought I was, at least not in all of the areas of my life. I might be lazy at some things. But I didn’t feel like I was lazy at all of the things. after all. We were eating meals of food that I made, we were wearing clean clothes that I put through the wash. We were generally getting the dishes done most of the time. And that made me think if it wasn’t entirely true in all of the areas of my life. Maybe it’s not even true. Maybe I wasn’t lazy.

4:15
So on one of these nights when we got the kids to bed, and I’m just sitting on the couch beside that emotional support basket of laundry scrolling on Pinterest, instead of cleaning the kitchen, I came across an article and the article open with this line. Are you really lazy or Are you overwhelmed? And you know in the last episode when I talked about the power of naming things, how it feels validating informative, that’s how I felt right then validated. Overwhelmed. That was the word for it. I wasn’t lazy. I was overwhelmed.

4:46
And of course I was overwhelmed. I had three small kids, and every single day was like a circus that was on fire and I was just trying very, very hard to lead it well. The amount of physical energy emotional energy and mental energy it takes to be A mom is underrated. And I know a huge factor in that is two things. One, the expectations we put on ourselves with how we approach modern parenting. And the other factor is that we live in a more isolated manner than the generations before us. But until we address those factors, we just need to acknowledge how exhausting it can be.

5:22
It’s physically draining, let’s talk about that we might not be sleeping through the night, we’re always on alert watching for our kids. We’re gonna pair this with the reality that we don’t often feed ourselves, well. We’re not being physical in the ways that entered, that energize us. It is physically draining,

5:39
it’s emotionally draining, thinking of all of the people and their feelings and your feelings about their feelings and your own feelings and feelings about your feelings. And what do we do with all these feelings? And how are we carrying these feelings and processing these feelings? It is a lot. Dealing with feelings takes energy, we can spend that energy trying to avoid the feeling and resist the feeling and stay in that state of resistance. Or we can expend the energy being reactive with our feelings. Often as moms with small kids, we are in a stress response, we’re operating from a stress response to that takes a lot of energy. I mean, there’s so much science around burnout, that operating in that chronic stress response will burn us out.

6:22
And the feelings of others like that’s our emotional experience. How about the feelings of others? Because we’re picking up on that we’re absorbing that? Have you ever been to a very tense, also social situation? Like it’s tense, you can feel the tension in the room, and then you leave and you like, get in your car and you’re like, Oh, what am I feeling like, I feel this weird buzzing inside of me. That’s because we pick up on the emotions of others, we have something called mirror neurons in our brains, and they are reading all of the cues around us of what others might be feeling. And we’re picking up and we’re mirroring that back.

6:55
And the feelings of others I find as a mum, that my kids feelings can be one of the most overwhelming parts of motherhood, I mean, it might be a part of being maternal and being wired to be in tune with your kids emotions. But we’re just wired naturally to pick up on the emotions of others. And if we aren’t clear and confident about what to do with other people’s emotions, it can feel like we’re just swept away in all of it.

7:21
And finally, the mentally draining part we’ve heard about the term mental load, right? That is the amount of burden in your brain. As the family manager, you have the calendars, the inventories, the preferences, who likes what, what needs to go where, and when, and how it all has to get done. It’s this running list in our heads of all of the things and it’s like this mental swirl of clutter. And as we just go about our day, fielding questions about icicles and meals and who gets to do what and where did the shoe go? And what’s for dinner? And what do we do now? We fatigue, we get decision fatigue, cognitive fatigue.

8:01
And I want to share this with you to just point out that these are real things we experienced, they’re not metaphors, we are being drained. These things this drain on our physical, mental, and emotional resources, move us out of our window of tolerance. That window of tolerance. I’ve talked about it before. That’s that range where we feel like we have capacity to deal well with our day.

8:25
So here we are, we’re worn out, it’s been a demanding day, even if we just spent it at home with our kids. And now we’re sitting on the couch, calling ourselves lazy, because we would just like to unplug from the overwhelm of our day. But how does our rest actually look when it’s held hostage by this notion that we are being lazy. And when we shouldn’t get up and do something, we’ll commonly do one of two things here on one,

8:52
one situation, we might shut down, just kind of go into that shutdown mode, do nothing. And we aren’t really doing things that are restful and restorative to us, we’ve just turned it all off. And as we are doing nothing, in a sense, we’re actually getting further behind, at least mentally on all of the things we should do, which probably makes the shutdown even more.

9:14
Or you might respond to this, you might gear up get into productivity mode, you see all the things you have to do you stay up late to do them. And we reinforce the beliefs and habits around never resting will also increase the likelihood of burnout.

9:26
And both of these shutting down or being hyperactive over it. They’re not great options at giving us a life that feels like it balances rest and productivity. And I point out the situation because it goes to show that we cannot rest well, when we have this kind of shadow over it this belief that if we rest we’re lazy.

9:48
Now, there is an interesting counter argument out there. The argument that you are lazy, you’re not overwhelmed. You’re the problem. You’re standing in your own way. You just need to get more organized. Get up early. Make a plan and do the tasks so you don’t feel overwhelmed.

10:04
And in my experience, both personally and as a counselor and coach, I would say take this with a grain of salt. Like, who is sharing this information? Is it middle aged white men? Who aren’t the mental load bearers of their home? The reality is, nobody else is in your shoes. Nobody else knows what it’s like to be you. And yes, sure, some structure, some plans are great, let’s put some simple ones into place. And I’m going to put some links in the show notes about that. But it doesn’t erase the realities of modern motherhood being an overwhelming experience, especially with small kids at home. It might help it manage it, but it won’t solve it.

10:43
So back to the real issue that I want to be discussing about calling ourselves a lazy mom is watching our language when the temptation is there to label ourself as a lazy, step back and ask, Am I lazy? Or am I overwhelmed? And spend some time with this? Because you’re going to deal with it differently depending on the answer. And if you aren’t sure, take stock. Do I feel like I have capacity right now? Do I feel worn out from the day? Or do I feel like I still have a little bit of energy? I could do something but I’m choosing not to.

11:18
And if you realize, yeah, I’m being lazy. Choose it. I choose to be lazy right now. I mean, sometimes we just feel lazy. And we can own that, right? Like, just sit on the couch and be lazy, fine. Give yourself permission to be lazy, without making it mean you’re unethical or not worthy or not a value, just relish in the joy of being a little bit lazy for a bit.

11:41
But if the answer is no, I am overwhelmed. I feel maxed out. What you need is rest, restore, recharge. Sure, do some brain dumps make a few plans for tomorrow, break things down. But allow yourself give yourself permission to unplug. Or maybe like plug back in. I don’t know. I’m thinking like a battery, you want to recharge. I know all of this sounds easy, doesn’t it.

12:06
And as I was drafting up this episode, I was really unpacking a lot more of the side issue that is really brought up over this topic. And that is the issue that many of us feel like we need to earn our rest. Even if we can acknowledge that we are overwhelmed. It’s still a mental hurdle of actually giving ourselves permission to rest this belief underlying belief that we need to earn our rest.

12:31
So I want to unpack that. And I want to give it a lot more attention. I’m going to do that in the next episode. So if you’re interested in that concept, head on over and listen.

12:41
And one more thing before you head out is to let you know that the wallpapers that I had made for the previous episode have beautiful words and embody simple and intentional living. I made nine wallpapers for each of the nine words that I shared. And I wondered why nobody was downloading these free wallpapers because they’re so pretty. And I realized the link was broken to sign up for that. So I have fixed it. I’ve added it to the shownotes here, if you’re interested in those wallpapers of nine beautiful words, run and grab yourself those Alright friends, see you in the next episode.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post 194. I stopped calling myself a lazy mom (addressing the overwhelm of motherhood) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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Words are incredibly powerful, they can communicate exactly what you are thinking, feeling, wanting, needing, in sometimes as little as a single sentence. But that only works when we understand ourselves and have the vocabulary necessary to name our lives. Join me today as I talk about nine beautiful words from other cultures that capture the heart of simple and intentional living and discuss how they can influence your life.

Naming our experience

• The power of naming our emotions (how affect labelling can improve your emotional intelligence)
• 1. Emotional Intelligence 101 (and by Enneagram Type)
• The Facebook Community Group

Hygge

• Hygge vs Minimalism
• Three ways to bring hygge into your daily life
• 1. Christmas hygge ideas + understanding how the window of tolerance impacts your stress in motherhood
• 30 Ways to Hygge When It Is Cold Outside

Lagom

• 1. How I am finding balance in my life this year
• 1. Prioritizing the day: if everything matters nothing matters and how to apply this in motherhood

Sisu

• 1. The Finnish Way (sisu) + Do we need so much pantry space?
• 1. Facing change and uncertainty with a growth mindset
• 1. Are you TOO comfortable? And what is it costing you?
• 15 Practical Tips for Moms to GET STUFF DONE

Kaizen

• 1. Small things that can change your whole life (the compound effect)
• 11 Things That Make My MomLife Simpler
• 1. 4 simple habits that make my momlife better
• 1. A new approach to habit change: routine and habit refinement
• 1. Brain dump, kid’s clothes storage, minimum baseline to change habits.
• 1. What will your future be? More of the same? Or will you turn off the autopilot?

Meraki

• 1. Who are you when I’m not looking (internal vs external validation)
• For the mom who is ‘waiting’ for life to happen
• 1. When you don’t know what you want in life. Life on purpose for the non-dreamer
• Hurdles to being a mom who has dreams and hobbies
• 1. Are you idling on your goals or moving them forward (passive action vs massive action)
• 1. Have fun with your kids, on purpose + reasons we don’t have fun

Simple Christmas, and The On Purpose workbooks

• The Simple Christmas Planner
• All the Simple Christmas posts
• Life on Purpose Academy
• All of the On Purpose Workbooks

Sign up for the the Simple Saturdays email (a fun email, twice a month)

GET THE WALLPAPER downloads for the words discussed in this episode

FULL TRANSCRIPT

0:10
Hey friends, it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counselor from simple on purpose.ca. Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast.

0:18
So welcome new friends, old friends, this is a podcast for anyone looking to be more intentional with how they’re living. And we talk about ways that you can declutter the home, the heart, the life, in order to make space to get rid of the distractions and the clutter and make space for the important things, the things that matter to you.

0:37
And to let you know who I am, if you’re new here, I’m Shawna. I am a Canadian. And I am a mom of three as well as a counselor. And I’ve been blogging for about a decade at simple on purpose, where we talk about decluttering intentional living and motherhood and I offer coaching and counseling services. Online. I’m an online counselor if you are looking for an online counselor coach.

0:59
Alright, so today I want to share some of my favorite words with you. And these are not English words. But these are words that you might have seen floating around the internet, and maybe you haven’t heard some of them. They are words that I’ve picked up through the years. And I’ve probably shared about some of them, and I’ve just pondered on them. And I’m sharing these specific words, there’s going to be nine of them for two reasons.

1:20
The first reason is that they are words that embody a lot of the concepts, we talked about your finding balance, being mindful, the simple pleasures of life and really building up a life based on meaningful things, things that are meaningful to you. And I also chose them because they give a name, they give a name, to something that sometimes can be intangible, to an emotion or an experience that can be hard to name.

1:46
And as a counselor, I know that naming things has so much value, you might have heard it said name it detainment, this is also called effect labeling. I’ve made a recent blog post about it, I’ll make sure to link it in the show notes. But naming something naming an emotion naming an experience. It’s a core skill that we can all use. Because when we name something, we can categorize it, we can give it meaning, naming an emotion is so important for our well being.

2:17
And any time that I have named an emotion and there are times where I couldn’t actually pinpoint it. And someone else looking into my life, my best friend, my husband, my own Wonderful Counselor, when they were able to offer what that emotion could be. And we could name it. I was like relief, like, oh, yeah, that’s, that’s what I’m feeling. And with clients, and in the blog posts that I’ll share, I use this analogy of how important it is to name our emotions.

2:43
So let’s use an example. Let’s imagine that you have some symptoms that like, maybe a weird pain in your stomach, it’s achy, it’s hot, it’s grumbly. But you don’t know what it is, you don’t know what’s causing it, you don’t know what to do about it. How is that experience for you? It’s probably a nerving, you’d feel uncomfortable with all those sensations you’re having your brain might be spinning, or you might just try to ignore it. Or you might just start running around doing all the things you can think of to just make it go away. And that’s what it can be like when we don’t name our emotion. We just have all these uncomfortable sensations in our bodies, they can feel overwhelming, they can feel wrong, they definitely feel uncomfortable.

3:27
Now contrast that to an a situation where you notice you’ve got a runny nose, sore throat and you’re coughing, maybe your eyes are watering. You could go to the doctor for some help. Or you could just tell yourself, I have a cold, like this is a cold and just naming it you know what’s happening, you have relief, like, Okay, I know what I’m feeling I know what to expect. You don’t have to panic, you know how to deal with a cold, when you can name something, you know what you’re dealing with. And ideally, you know, what tools to use or what you need to do about it. Okay, little counseling moment over. If you have questions or thoughts on that, please bring them into the Facebook group. And I’m always happy to talk more about that.

4:12
Now on to beautiful words that embody a simple living and inspire mindfulness. The first one, you’ve heard me talk all about it. Let’s just have a recap. It is Hygge (hue-gah). If you read it, it looks like the word hyg. And hygge is a Danish word. And it doesn’t have that direct English translation, but it embodies this sense of coziness, comfort, connectedness, and it’s more than just a word, right? It’s a cultural concept that really fills up that experience of warmth and contentment, intimacy quality, especially with your loved ones.

4:50
And I’ve written a lot about this in the past. One of my most popular posts ever is hygge versus minimalism because they are a bit different. Some of my favorite hygge Moments of late are sitting around with my family at the end of the day when everyone’s finally home from all their activities. And we’re kind of in the kitchen living room zone. And maybe there’s music playing, and I’ve turned some of the lights down, because I’m hoping people will start getting tired. And we’re just chatting is just slow and quiet, and easy. Easy, as you know, I do want to get the kids to bed, but they don’t want to.

5:25
Another moment that I really love lately is being at a restaurant booth with my besties. And it’s a rare experience that we finally all get to one place. And we’re at this little booth, and it’s got his little candle, and then we’ve got the menus, but we’re too busy just catching up to even look at the menus. And that’s just a real hygge moment.

5:44
Another favorite one that happens for me a lot is that time of night where we spend time with each of our kids. And usually we play cards with them. So we’re sitting on their beds, and they’re bundled up in the blanket, and I’ve got the cards dealt out. And they’ve turned their twinkle lights on and they’re like bedside light on and it’s just like, the lights are down. It’s just this cute little moment. So that’s that’s the feeling that you get from hygge, I do have a list of 30 ways to Heuga in cold weather, I’ll make sure to link that in the show notes. It’s a great way to bring some coziness into your winter.

6:18
The next word is fika. This is a Swedish word. And it is about taking a break to enjoy a coffee and a treat with a friend. And just appreciating the moment appreciating the conversations. And this is actually one of my hobbies. My hobby is to fika, my husband will even buy me a little treat. And I don’t really have a sweet tooth, but he’ll bring it home and he’ll say this is for your fika. And so I make a point to do that. Because just all about slowing down and just being with your people. And just like that simple pleasure that you can get in that moment.

6:49
The next word and other Swedish word is lagom. And that kind of roughly translates to just the right amount or sufficient. And it embodies this idea of balance, moderation, just having the right amount of things. It’s often used to describe a lifestyle or attitude that it’s avoiding extremes, right? It’s not about extremes, it’s about contentment, it’s about just enough. And that kind of harmony and balance, whether it’s about work or relationships or just your personal well being and this is something that’s ingrained in Swedish culture. It really reflects that value of moderation and collective welfare.

7:27
I think this is a word a lot of us struggle with, especially in North American culture where we have so much all or nothing thinking with how we approach our lives. And I see all or nothing thinking and most clients that I work with, because we have it in so many subtle ways. Let’s say we ate one thing we didn’t plan on okay whole diet out the window, or we couldn’t work out for that whole hour. So why bother for the 15 minutes, or we can’t take a weekend off to declutter our basement. So don’t even worry about doing one shelf. We might experience it with just how we show up in relationships or a day where maybe there was a weird interaction, a conflict or a hard moment of the day. And just everything feels off than it really is a very common cognitive distortion is all or nothing thinking. And moderation can be really hard for us it can be hard for us to accept just enough, especially in the productivity culture, the busy culture, the consumerism, culture, we might struggle with how to rest and play in moderation. We might struggle with how to eat in moderation, we definitely can struggle with how to use social media in moderation. And so I really love that there is a whole cultural approach to this, that the goal is just an offering of a different way to approach life without those extremes. I especially love this word because my grandpa always said to us everything in moderation. And he passed away a few years ago and I had a dream about him I think last year where he told me, okay, don’t drink too much whiskey just to live. And I thought that was so adorable because that was just how you approach life. Everything in moderation.

9:05
The next word is a Finnish one. And I’ve shared it before maybe about five years ago, I was reading a book called The finished way. And so one of my earliest podcast episodes I was sharing about that. And Sisu is a Finnish word and Sisu is the word for grit, resilience, courage, determination, like going into the challenge. I think it actually pairs nicely with Heuga where we’re resting and connecting. But then sisu also doing that hard things and having some grit in life, which I always think about when Winter’s coming. When I talked about this book a while back, I mentioned that the book contrasts our cultures, with the Finnish culture that in the Canadian culture of how we can have a learned helplessness in our culture. And sisu can be a different approach where we are doing the hard things that make our life better and our bodies healthier. When I read this book, I wanted to think of ways that I could improve He’s more sisu in my life and one of the things that got me doing is adding in a cold rinse to my showers not a long one, and not doing it always. But there are times when I’m like, I just know I need a little bit more grit and I want to kind of like grow that resiliency. And just something as simple as turning the shower to cold and letting it blast over you. I feel like it’s growing my sisu slowly over time.

10:24
All right, we’re just over halfway through this list, and the next word is a Japanese word. wabi sabi. wabi sabi, which is about finding beauty in the imperfections in the imperfections of life in the imperfection of items and appreciating that things are impermanent, things wear down things age and wear. And from what I’ve read about it, it can really contrast our consumerism, our need for perfection, youth symmetry, flawlessness, all of the things we’re told that we always have to be and how our homes have to look. And on that kind of sentiment. There’s an aesthetic to wabi sabi, and that aesthetic is natural, slightly imperfect, you know, maybe there’s a pink drip or roughness, things are worn down, things are not symmetrical. You might see pictures of the broken pottery, and it’s mended with gold. This is also considered a wabi sabi aesthetic. At the heart of it, though, is embracing that that imperfections, the wear and tear that nothing, none of this is permanent, and we don’t need to make it otherwise.

11:30
Here’s one of my favorite words, because it’s, again, one of my favorite hobbies, if you’ve been around the Simple Saturdays, email, you know, one of my favorite hobbies is staring out the window hit tree, or just staring at trees, particularly staring at how the light passes through the trees. And as each season comes and goes in, I get four seasons here, the light changes through the trees, the color changes, the intensity changes, and if there are sun beams, Well, geez, I’m pretty sure God’s like talking to me through sun beams, and I tried to capture it in a picture and show my family and tell them, they just did, they don’t even know how majestic it is. To me, that is just one of the simple pleasures of life that I’ll never capture. I’ll never get into photo I’ll never get in words. And there’s a word for it. Komorebi. It’s a Japanese word that doesn’t have that direct English translation. But it refers to the way the sunlight streams through the leaves of the trees to so beautiful.

12:25
Okay, I have a German word for you. And I had to look up how to pronounce it, I’m still going to get it wrong. So I’m going to say it once. And then you can read how it is spelt Vaadin-some-kite (Waldeinsamkeit). It’s a German term that translates to forest solitude. But the meaning is more than just for solitude. It goes kind of beyond that, and captures that profound emotional experience of being alone in the woods, surrounded by nature, feeling that connectedness, connectedness to nature, almost even maybe a spiritual experience. And you know, one of my favorite smells is a warm pine forest. It’s grounding. It’s nostalgic for something I don’t even know I’m longing for until I smell it. So this concept is always a great reminder for me that I want to be out in nature, I need to make that happen more in my life.

13:12
And there’s even a growing movement in therapy for a modality called forest bathing or nature therapy – it is a Japanese practice. But there’s even more interest in more science growing about it, how even the molecules that the trees emit in the forest can impact our well being. So next time you find yourself in a park or an area with more green and gray and take a minute, breathe it in soak up that atmosphere, your forest bathing.

13:40
I have two more to share with you. The next one is Kaizen is a Japanese term, and it translates to change for the better or continuous improvement. Originally, it was about manufacturing and business practices. But there’s a partner phrase that you often hear with this and it is 1% better each day, I think we can apply it to our whole lives really. And if you’ve listened for a while, you’ve heard me say small things matter doing small things matter. And a concept like this really reminds us that the small things we do add up, that’s called the compound effect. I like to think of the metaphor of a big ship, and it’s going to a destination over a long ways. And it’s going to make micro shifts to its course. And just a micro shift can totally take it to a different direction over that whole destination over that whole journey. And I like to think of it this way. If there’s something that we are doing often, then we can think every time that we’re going to show up for it. What’s one little shift I can make to improve this. Whether it’s I always have to have this kind of conversation. What’s one little way I can show up differently or making dinner every day, right? We’re always doing that what’s one little way I can make this easier for myself? I think this also again, challenges are all or nothing thinking. We don’t have to find that one key thing to overhaul in our lives. To which we kind of want that we kind of want that one big answer that one solution that’s going to make everything better. Instead of doing the small changes over time, and when we’re working on anything in our lives, we can just start with one simple thing. I have episodes I’ve shared about this in the past, I’ll make sure to link them in the shownotes.

15:19
The last one is a word that I actually hadn’t heard before. But when I came across it, I thought, I’m going to add this to the list. And that word is Meraki, a Greek word that is about doing something with your soul, with your creativity with your love, and really putting a piece of yourself leaving a piece of yourself into something. It reminds me of that verse, whatever you do, do with all your heart. And a concept like this. It goes beyond just going through the motions, but about doing things with a genuine, wholehearted passion. Can you think of people in your life who do this, I have a couple of people in my life who go all in on what they do, and it is impressive. And I think two of my one of my kids, my daughter, how over the years, she’s created art, and she’s just really put herself on a page or a box or something, whatever she’s making, of course, with that trail of glitter and paint stains behind her. I love this notion of having passion of putting your heart into things. What would you love to put your heart into? What would you love to do with more passion? I think it’s hard for us, I think there’s a lot of reasons why this can be hard for us. For some of us, we’ve turned it off, we’ve been burned, we might not see the point, we might feel it’s frivolous, we’ve might had it shut down in ourselves over the years. Or we’re just really tired, right. And I’m not saying this is easier or possible for all of the things in our lives. But I think it’s something we can be mindful of. We can work on bringing in more passion and more purpose into the way we approach our lives.

16:54
So those are my words for you, I hope that there’s been at least a couple that have inspired you that have made you see that the things that we’re trying to do with simple living with mindful living with intentional living, that there are your whole cultural concepts outside of maybe our North American culture that really embrace this. So I made each of these words into a screenshot graphic. And you can go to the show notes, sign up for those downloads. And you can just put one on your phone, if there’s one you want to be working on, you can rotate through them, and you can have them on your phone to remind you about the things that you felt are important to kind of pay attention to right now.

17:31
So I have a few things for you. Of course, always the show notes, there are transcripts with every show. With every with every episode at the bottom of the post, there’s transcripts unedited, there might be a few spelling mistakes. There’s also the simple Christmas planner, Christmas is coming up. And the simple Christmas planner has been out for a number of years. And it helps you sort through your ideas, your expectations, it’s full of ideas as well. And different things you can do for gift ideas, tradition, ideas, all those kinds of things. And it’s a place for you to kind of bring down, maybe get the family involved. And there’s also calendars that you can start planning with. And I updated it for this year. And I also made the calendars fillable to use for any or so I took up the dates, and you can use that year after year. So the simple Christmas planner is there in the shownotes. You could also find it at the life on purpose academy.ca where the digital versions of my workbooks are we’ve got the life on purpose workbook, homemaker on purpose workbook, somewhere on purpose and the simple Christmas planner, we’ve got one for all the seasons, all of we’ve got you covered, we’ve got you covered.

18:36
And finally, I would like to encourage you to leave a rating and review on your podcast player. It’s not something I’ve asked for in a long time. But it is something that is valuable for podcasters to get their show out there. And to kind of also hear back from you to have my words echoed back to me hear from you guys to know what you’re listening to what you like, what you want to hear more of what has helped you. I love to come across those if you get a chance to leave a rating and review it is greatly appreciated. Alright friends, have a great week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post 193. Beautiful words that embody simple + intentional living first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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If I asked you how you are feeling right now, what would you say? Probably ‘fine’ or maybe you could become aware that you aren’t too sure what you are feeling. It can be hard for us to be aware of what we are feeling. We go through our day living in our heads, ignoring the body’s sensations, and looking for the next best thing to pursue.

We often keep our awareness of ‘how we feel’ set to low, at least until how we feel starts to become quite apparent. Whether this emotion is ‘negative’ or ‘positive’ we generally don’t attend to it until it becomes quite potent.

Emotional intelligence is the skill of learning what you are feeling and how to work with it – both within yourself and within a relationship. And a core foundation of emotional intelligence is EMOTIONAL AWARENESS. This is where a concept called ‘name it to tame it’, or affect labelling becomes helpful. This is where we are able to name what we are feeling. It is simple but takes practice. Not only can it help us in our own emotional experiences, but it can also be a skill we teach our children too.

It is a skill we can all learn When working with clients I most often use the analogy of relating to our physical symptoms. Imagine you had some symptoms that were uncomfortable or even getting painful. You weren’t sure what it was from, or what to do about it, or what to expect. You would probably be anxious and looking for answers (or avoiding it altogether). It would be a very unnerving experience to be unsure of what you were feeling or why or how to handle it.

Now, take the experience of having a cold. You have had one before, you know how it goes. Your head hurts, your throat hurts, you are coughing, you are blowing your nose. And you can say to yourself, “I have a cold right now. That is ok, I know what to do with a cold, I take this cold medication or I use the sinus rinse, and I wait it out. I know what to expect, I can handle this”

This is what naming an emotion can do for you. When you know what an emotion feels like, you can name it in your body. It makes sense, it is less overwhelming. You feel capable of handling it, even if you don’t necessarily like it. When you know what emotion you are dealing with you have more information on how to address it (because all emotions have a job, they are all indicators to us).

Why naming your emotions can be helpfulCategorize the Chaos Giving a name to our emotions brings clarity. Instead of feeling like a blur of sensations in our body, or a mental tangle, when we name our emotion we can categorize it and it becomes something identifiable, “Ah, that’s frustration knocking on the door.”

Slow Down Emotional Overwhelm We are complex and can experience a mix of emotions, we have emotions ABOUT emotions. This can create a lot of layers that can feel overwhelming. When we stop to name an emotion, we can pause for a minute and disrupt the accumulation of emotions.

Tapping Into Our Intuition All emotions are there for a reason, they are prompting us to take action. Once we know the emotion we are dealing with, we can turn towards it and look for what it is trying to help us with. We can ask, “Why are you here? What triggered you?” It’s an open invitation to explore the roots of our feelings and what our feelings might be indicating to us.

Emotional Regulation “Name it to Tame it” is the secret sauce to emotional regulation. By understanding what we’re feeling, we gain the power to respond rather than react impulsively.

Discomfort Tolerance We often have low tolerance for discomfort we don’t understand or know how to handle. When we can name our emotion, we can practice growing our tolerance for experiencing it, and altogether improve our discomfort tolerance (which can be very important to helping us build more rich and meaningful lives)

RELATED: Feeling better or getting better at feeling

Teaching this to our kidsThis is one of the core approaches I also take to my own kids’ emotions. (I am a proponent of emotion coaching). I have seen that simply listening and offering some options for what that emotion could be really helps my kids name what they are feeling. When we name, it we feel validated and we feel like all of the turmoil inside actually can fit into a category that makes sense.

Steps to take to work on naming your own emotions 1. Mindful Observation:**** Tune into your emotions. When a feeling arises, pause and observe. What’s the dominant emotion at play?

2. Labeling:**** Give your emotion a name. Is it joy, sadness, frustration, or maybe a cocktail of emotions? The more specific, the better. For many of us, we need support with this. You can work with a friend, or counsellor, or practice with an emotions wheel (something I give to many of my clients)

3. Reflective Inquiry:**** Ask yourself what could have triggered this feeling. Explore the thoughts you have had about the situation, and even times you have experienced a similar situation in the past. Understanding our stories about the situation that prompted this emotion can help you better understand your whole experience.

4. Expressive Outlets:**** Find healthy ways to express your emotions. Whether through movement, music, journaling, art, or conversation with someone you trust.

I hope you can see how this simple concept can actually bring a lot of function and purpose to any emotion. And when we have a purpose with it we can use it rather than repress it or over react to it. =

See all podcast episodes on Emotional Intelligence right here

The post The power of naming our emotions (how affect labelling can improve your emotional intelligence) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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We live in an audience-performer culture it is hard to know which decisions we are making for ourselves and which ones we are making for others. What you buy differently, how would you spend your time differently, how would you be differently without feeling like the world is watching?

In this episode:* The song that started it all: “Who Are You When I’m Not Looking” by Blake Shelton * How hard it can be to ‘play’ as an adult + 126. The Joy of Being Mediocre (hobby without the hustle) + Doing things for an outcome * Fashion, identity, and societal influences + Simple style posts (capsule wardrobes, 30for30 challenge, dressing your age) + Spending habits * The Audience-Performer culture of social media + Influencers in the wild (article on it here) + What is sacred vs what is for sharing online + Our lives as content, for external validation and approval * Being part of society, while also being ourselves + 188. Motherhood & Instagram Culture (How Online Communities Impact Your Motherhood Experience) + Being valuable and fitting in * Learning self-definition through the reflection of others + Moving from external validation to internal validation + 134. Do you typecast your kids? (Labels + how they impact our parenting and our kids) * Women and beauty standards of our culture + What does it mean to be a woman when no one is looking? * Making decisions that are true to you and your passions and preferences, how to get started in small ways + Validating the little things for yourself

Connect!* Make sure to share your thoughts and questions in the Simple on Purpose community facebook group! * What would you like to hear about when it comes to the topic of Simple Living? * Sign up for the the Simple Saturdays email (a fun email, twice a month)

Full transcript (unedited)0:10
Hey friends, it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counselor from simple on purpose.ca. Welcome to the simpler purpose podcast. Around here we talk about ways to simplify your home, your heart and your life. So my aim is to help us all slow down, quiet the noise, remove the distractions and just look up for a minute at your life and consider what you want to keep and what you want to let go of.

0:35
So this week, I’m a little under the weather, I took a sick day yesterday. And that actually worked out well because one of my kids needed a soul care day. So we took it slow together, we each took turns having a hot salty bath with a TV show on the iPad and warm drinks. We did some brain dumping on paper, you know, get out all those stressful thoughts and feelings inside, listen to music went and bought vitamins. It was a it was kind of a beautiful day, even though I didn’t feel great. And I think hot, salty baths, match that with a coffee and an Advil, boom, this is this is why I’m here right now, I can make some progress over the next four hours of my day. And then I’m probably going to move on to burgers and a hot toddy. Because I’m pretty sure that’s the cure for a cold. And I should be good by tomorrow. I’m sure of it, I’m sure of it.

1:25
So today I want to talk to you about a concept that has just been rattling around in the back of my brain for years now. And it’s a notion that I like to hold up to the different areas of my life. And just consider how it shows up in these different areas. So I think about it often. And I wanted to share it here because I think it might be interesting to you maybe even helpful for you too. And I’m going to share this concept by sharing some quick stories. I promise they’re all gonna end up going in the same direction. But it’s a little bit of circle time vibes right now. So go get a pillow and a coffee meet me on the circle rug.

2:02
On a cold Canadian day in February, almost 13 years ago, I was in early labor with my first child. My husband was driving us to the hospital in the hospitals over an hour away. We have to drive out of town to deliver babies. And this Blake Shelton song came on. It’s a country song and it’s called Who are you when I’m not looking? And my husband was singing it out loud. You know, he’s keeping up the vibes like he does, which is one of the reasons I married him. And I think I even snapped a picture of him just bundled up in the cold weather driving our little SUV totally chill, while I’m over there sweating bullets about going into labor.

2:39
And then as the hours went on, and the Labor said in, I was asking him to distract me. And so he was singing the song to distract me. And this song, it became our first child’s anthem, mostly against his will. He’s not into this song. We played it for him recently. He did not really like it. But I just love the idea of this song. The lyrics are, who are you when I’m not around, when the doors locked and the shades are down. And this idea of asking someone who they are without an audience, it’s a really interesting notion. To contrast the private person we are versus the performative person we are.

3:16
I remember about five years later, after delivering my first and playing Lego with my kids. And my sister was over with her kids. And I was building like a Lego house or something. And she was like, I just don’t get it. Like how do I just sit here and play Lego. And we laughed both the both of us laughed at this idea that we’re so outcome based. And we just need to know the expectations and it’s just hard to think of something to make for the sake of making it and then you destroy it. And nobody ever sees the outcome.

3:46
I think about how we show who we are to the world in how we dress. And I don’t think I well I know that for most of my life, I didn’t really care how I dressed. I did enjoy however thinking I had this hippie vibe. And though we shopped at the thrift store a lot for necessity, I took that as a chance to express myself through foil blouses and peach colored dresses and just you know really embrace that retro side of me. And for much of my life style seemed like inconsequential or something that other people did. Moving out into the workplace. For the first time out of university I worked in a very male dominated industry. And to me professionalism in that industry meant loose khakis, ill fitting polo top and some sensible black shoes. The heavier the better.

4:37
And you probably have heard me share this story in the past that my little sister basically had a fashion intervention with me took me shopping, and made me try on all these new things I never would have tried on and it felt like this whole new door opened. And I could think of how I wanted to express myself as an adult woman. I could choose things that I really loved things that actually felt like me.

4:57
So over the years you’ve heard me share a lot about mom’s 30 for 30, challengers and capsule wardrobes. And over the years, I’ve tried to curate a closet of clothes that I love and feel like me. But I still struggle with that scarcity mindset that maybe it’s not right or it’s not enough, or it’s already dated. And I really am trying to balance this acknowledgement that I’m someone who enjoys clothes, trying new things, even if they’re thrifted and Hami downs, while also acknowledging that I’m someone who values sustainability, and financial responsibility. So it’s important to me to shop mindfully when it comes to clothes. But one of the hardest things is to be mindful of teasing out what I actually like, versus what society tells me will make me irrelevant.

5:42
I read a post from Rachael Cruz, and she wrote, how to love your life, not theirs. I’m pretty sure that book is called. And she asked if nobody ever saw this purchase, would you buy it? Would you buy this thing? If nobody ever saw it? Would you just buy it for you? Or are you buying it for other people to observe it on you? It’s such a good question. Especially in this current culture, we live in this outfit of the day Instagram, fashion blogger, where it’s just normal to share your clothes with the Internet. In fact, it’s it’s a whole industry, right? We have fashion bloggers and influencers who just get free clothes just to post pictures of them wearing them. And then they go into some ever growing closet never to be worn again.

6:26
And do you ever have this situation it feels vulnerable to share this, but I will wear you put an outfit together and you’re like, Oh, I think this looks great. I think this looks so cute. Should I Instagram this? Like, I think this in the back of my mind, I don’t Instagram it very rarely. But the fact that this question even flashes into my brain, I think it’s really just a product of this audience, performer culture that we now live in.

6:51
There’s a young teen in my life, and one time I was sitting beside them, and they opened up their photo app to show me something. And the photo role was 95%, selfies, the same face pose but with different clothes, maybe different hair, different background, and on and man, I think the Lord that I was not a teenager with the internet and a cell phone, because I cannot imagine that what that would have done to me to see myself reflected constantly and feel like I had to share that and put myself up for evaluation, and measure myself through comments and likes.

7:26
It reminds me of that account on Instagram called influencers in the wild, where it’s people taking videos of other people who are taking selfies and videos of themselves, often in very socially inappropriate ways. And it really is about making a mockery of this culture we now have where people are doing ridiculous things, for content of themselves, all that content to just be put on a stage for evaluation, entertainment, and affirmation.

7:55
And we’re just in this audience performer culture so deep, we no longer can really be in a place where our lives are not content. I mean, you can be in your own home wrapped up in blankets in your bed in the dark, sharing content. You can totally unplug go out into a cabin in the woods. But you can record all these reels and upload them next week to Instagram.

8:16
And all of our life is content these days. I see Instagrams of people holding their dying grandparents hand in the hospital bed. women’s prayer circles with their heads bowed down, quiet morning intimate moments with their kids in their jammies, in their bed, head all messy and or meeting a friend’s brand new baby their first entrance into the world, I see people whose lives seems to be photoshoots. So they can share this curated feed of bright and lovely photos. And it all feels like all of our life is up for consumption on the public stage.

8:51
And I don’t mean this in a judgmental way. Because I think it’s a struggle we’re all facing, how much to share, versus how much is sacred just for us just for our family just for our friends, how to be relevant without forgetting to just allow ourselves to exist without observation.

9:09
Who are we when no one is looking? If no one came to see you today, and you didn’t post yourself online? How would you dress? If no one ever came into your home and you never shared it on the internet? How would you decorate it? How would you keep it? What would you create? How would you spend your time without an audience without having to share the outcome? In real life or online? Who are we when no one is looking?

9:32
I think our instinct is to say, well, I’ll just become a Kaos goblin live in dirty sweats eating peanut butter right out of the jar with a spoon. And I think this response is just to the pressures of being observed all the time. It’s like the pendulum swung hard this way. And now we’re going to swing it back harder the other way. It’s like exhaling after holding your breath for so long. And I think we might be like that for a little bit but not long term. I know this seems like I’m pushing us to live independently of the opinion minds of others and that yes, but yes, but we are also social beings, we learn by watching one another, we have a primal need to belong. And I mentioned this in the motherhood and Instagram culture episode, I’ll make sure to link that in the show notes.

10:17
So we are constantly observing those around us to make sure that we are fitting with the social norms that we are seeing socially appropriate, socially acceptable, socially relevant, because there’s safety in that. And I buy into this just as much as the next mom on Instagram. I enjoy following people on Instagram, I enjoy seeing how they spend their time. Some of them I just want to hear their thoughts, and in their opinions on the things that they’re experts on. And I think I’ll always wrestle with this idea of being just another person sharing their life on Instagram, and really listening back into myself about what feels good about that, or not good about that.

10:56
The question who we are when nobody is looking really highlights how we can define ourselves in relation to other people. From an early age, we hear what we are from others, we build up a concept of ourselves from the way others talk about us into us and treat us our identity is formed by the reflection of others, into us into ourselves. So now we have this image of who we’ve been told we are we need to uphold it, I need to be the strong one, the sporty one, the fun one, the nice one. And we’re typecast into this role that we didn’t choose but was handed down to us. And now we don’t know how to matter. Without being that thing. That person that that identity. I did an episode on this years ago called do typecast your kids. And many of you have shared with me, that was a really helpful episode, I’ll make sure to link that one in the shownotes.

11:49
Who are we underneath all of this performing and coping and mattering? Some of us might grow out of this of this way that we need to define ourselves constantly through the reflection of others. And some of us might decide that the reflection we’ve been getting is like one of those crazy mirrors at the fair, it’s all distorted, it’s not accurate. It’s based on that skewed lens of the person doing the reflecting. And for some of us, this allows us to start internally gauging who we are looking internally, what’s important to us, we learn to validate ourselves internally, rather than relying on that external validation. Rather than constantly needing that reflection back to us of what we are what makes us valued. What makes us accepted.

12:34
When my daughter was about four or five, I remember her asking me why I put on makeup each day. And I told her because I think it’s fun. Such a mom answer and I let that be true. I let myself have fun with it. But it also feels just too tragic to say, Oh, honey, we live in a society where a woman has to look a certain way. And if I don’t wear mascara and concealer, people will see I haven’t slept in five years. And let’s just be real mascara looks good on everyone.

12:59
But can I ask myself, what would make me feel beautiful? If I was truly alone, with no audience, not even my husband. Even when we ask as women, what makes us feel beautiful, we can not unpair it from that deep cultural conditioning on what it means to look like act like feel like a woman? How would we spend our money and our energy differently? If our womanhood was based on our personal passions, and individual expressions of who we are, instead of being based on women being a consumable product, the culture is the consumer, our image is the product, and the image has to meet this checklist. And this checklist gets expensive. And it makes us all kind of a different version of each other. And when we are all versions of the same thing that quickly breeds comparison.

13:50
Who are we when nobody is looking? How would we live differently if our life wasn’t on display? Or something to be consumed by others? Or if we didn’t give the audience directorial control of the performance of our lives? How would we spend our time differently? Would our bathroom look differently? I can tell you I’ve all the lotions and potions in my bathroom, when I still have those. Would we parent differently? Would we treat our spouses differently? Would we shop differently? Would we feel different about ourselves in our lives, with the things that I’m working on change if the outcome was only for me, and all of the balance that I want to feel in my life versus the outcome being for the audience, and all of the cultural standards put on me.

14:35
I often reflect of the phenomenon that we spend a lot of our youth trying to fit in really trying to fit and be part of the group where the same things and then a lot of our young adulthood, and even into our 30s trying to stand out and find ourselves underneath all of that. I really think it’s an ongoing process to keep refining yourself closer to who you are at your core versus who you are for other people.

14:59
So If all of this feels like a challenge, if this is challenging you and you’re like, I don’t even know who I am, this is such a common thing I hear from my clients, I don’t even know who I am. Start small. What is one little decision that you can make today that feels like it’s just for you, and it’s true to you. Maybe you put on a song you want to listen to or dance to or sing to. Maybe you sit in the in your favorite chair in the house. Maybe you make a meal that you love and just add some toasted peanut butter for the haters cuz they’re gonna be disappointed in dinner. Maybe you wear that sweater that accessory that makes you smile. The thing is called dopamine dressing, just wearing things that make you feel happy. And start to ask yourself, when I spend my time like this, spend my money like this, when I post this or share this when I decorate like this, am I doing it for me? Or because somebody else might be looking.

15:55
I know I’m a classic over thinker. But I do hope this concept has been interesting to you as it has been to me. And I hope it helps you just shrug off some of the things that you know you’re kind of doing for the validation or observation of others that you no longer want. I hope it helps you shed a layer of who you tried to be so you can show more of the true you underneath all of that.

16:18
If this episode has made you feel feelings or think thoughts, I hope you will share them in the Facebook community. That community exists to carry on the conversations that we have here to share questions and share encouragement with with one another.

16:33
One of the questions that I’m actually asking the community right now is for feedback on the topic of simple living. I get a lot of episode requests to talk about simple living, but I’m not exactly sure what to share. I mean, I can think of 15 different aspects to cover on the topic of simple living. So I want to hear exactly from you. If simple living is of interest to you. Stop by the Facebook group. Let me know what questions you have about it and what specific issues would be helpful for you. All right, friends, have a great week.

The post 192. Who are you when I’m not looking (internal vs external validation) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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When we think about the motivation we have to take action, we can sometimes take action that is more passive. The type of action that feels productive but doesn’t quite move us in a forward direction. This concept from Brooke Castillo contrasts passive action and massive action.

In this episode, I discuss topics such as:

• How simplifying the home leads to an aim for intentional living
• living intentionally and overcoming complacency
• self-motivation and limiting beliefs
• the concept of passive action vs massive action
• the discomfort of taking action

The upcoming workshop on motivation can be found right here at the Life on Purpose Academy

Related episodes you might like

• 1. Give your discomfort a purpose #uncomfortableonpurpose
• 1. Are you TOO comfortable? And what is it costing you?
• 1. What will your future be? More of the same? Or will you turn off the autopilot?
• Two Months In To The #onesmallhabit Challenge

Sign up for the the Simple Saturdays email (a fun email, twice a month)

Full Transcript (unedited)0:11
Hey friends, it’s Shawna, your nerdy Brooklyn counselor from simple americans.ca. Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. If you’re new here, welcome. I’m Shawna, I’m a mom of three. And the whole aim of this podcast is to just be a time for us to take a minute, slow down. Take a breath. I know sometimes I just hear that word breath. And it reminds me to take a breath. And my aim is to help you to stop and take stock of what feels like too much. What maybe it feels like not enough. Where are we on autopilot? What is distracting us? And most importantly, what do we want? What do you want? And I aim to help you move forward with all of these questions, I aim to help you simplify and it might start with decluttering, your home, a drawer or a closet. And we’re quickly going to see as I did that, decluttering it helps us to declutter ourselves, if decluttering our space helps us to declutter ourselves. And as we do that, we’re also inspired to declutter our lives. And so I often say, I’m here to help you simplify your home, your heart and your life. But all of that clearing that space so that we can fill it with something different so that we can fill our homes, ourselves, our hearts, our lives, our days, with what matters to us. And that’s the life on purpose part. So I’m just want to acknowledge that this recording is different. I’m in a hotel right now. And right before I was leaving, yesterday morning, I was searching that was everywhere for this special little adapter that I needed. So I could plug in my microphone, my usual microphone to the computer that I was bringing the laptop. I couldn’t find it anywhere. It’s such a mystery to me where it has gone. So when I do finally find is going to be somewhere probably ridiculous. Like a kid’s duffel bag in the basement or an old like, bin of wrapping paper or something i I’m just it’s a mystery of where I could put it anyways, I’m in a hotel right now I’m at a conference, I’m at a counseling conference, and learning some great things, meeting some great people. Anyways, here we are on a Friday night together in a hotel.

2:15
And I am also going to say it’s been a long day for me my brain. It’s Monday, it’s been a long day, and seven o’clock. And I thought yeah, maybe I can just push this episode back a week. But I needed to tell you about the motivation workshop I’m holding on Friday. And I needed to get this done so that it could be edited this weekend. So I need to get it done tonight. So I had to motivate myself. I had to use all my own tools to get this done. Do all of my motivation tricks. Here we we talk a lot about being on autopilot, and about moving into living intentionally living on purpose. And I think sometimes about who I was pre life on purpose, pretty simple on purpose. And just how complacent I was how reactive I was. I was living in a house that had a lot of stuffs. And I didn’t really question it, I just kept accumulating it. And when I felt like it had lived its season, it went to the basement or stuffed into an already stuffed closet. Like it didn’t even occur to me to be clutter for the most part. But I also noticed this complacency, this autopilot in my relationships. My parenting, it was really reactive and fear based. My marriage probably the same because I was reactive and fear based. And I just was living with a lot of like the weight over me of all the things I should be doing in my life. I think I was at that stage where I was aware that there was things I should be doing, but I wasn’t doing them. A lot of like, I should be fit, I should play with my kids more I should bake from scratch. I should organize my whole house, I should be a better friend, I should have a better marriage. Like I knew all of the things I should be doing. Why am I not doing them? How do I do them? That was my question. How do I do the things I know I shouldn’t be doing but I’m not doing? And my answer was well find out how other people are doing this because I see them out there. They’re running. They’re getting up early. They’re drinking smoothies and protein shakes, they figured it out. So I don’t most of us do and we know we want to make a change. I flip on Pinterest or YouTube. For me it was Pinterest especially, and motivation. That was the search term I would put into Pinterest many times over the years, especially when I was at the beginning stages of living life on purpose, so to speak, because I had this contrast of all of the things I shouldn’t be doing could be doing. And me my lack of motivation. How unmotivated I was. I was really on Pinterest a lot and we had this cultural messaging It was this like era where you’re getting up and doing things like morning pages like I, that’s when you get up and you just start writing. And it’s supposed to be, I don’t know, really relieving or something I don’t really actually know, people are getting up early to exercise. I tried doing that, too, turns out, two of my least favorite things to do get up early and exercise. So stacking them together was just like a double hurdle for me, in showcasing how little motivation I had. This was an era where decluttering was just starting to become a big thing. This was a self help season of kale juice and bullet journals and positive affirmations. And so we really had this cultural messaging at least on Pinterest, that we should have this great big checklist of everything we should be doing. Get up early morning pages, devotion, green smoothie exercise, put your laundry through all before your kids even got up, right. And I think all of those things have value for short. But in my mind, I needed to be all of these things. And every day that I woke up without meeting this checklist, it just confirmed how unmotivated I was. I constantly called myself lazy and viewed myself as undisciplined. Eventually, I would have some perspective on this and stop calling myself lazy, I would understand that I was actually just quite overwhelmed. I wrote a post on that a few years back. And a lot of people at that time reached out to me to thank me for it because I think it was probably a post that we needed in response to the Pinterest productivity culture of the day. So I was operating a lot with these limiting beliefs I had about myself being lazy and undisciplined. And so again, turn back to Pinterest, find the hacks for willpower, find the hacks for discipline, because if I had more willpower, I would fill in the blank. Usually it was get up earlier, for some reason for most of my life, I thought that was the gold standard on like, quote unquote, humans who have their life together. If I was more motivated, I would fill in the blank. I asked this question on Instagram the other day. And if you’re following me on Instagram, thank you, I love sharing that space with you. But man, Instagram can be frustrating, because I’ll post something. And sometimes like, three people comment, and sometimes like 30 people comment, I just don’t know, it’s so tough to know if that’s a place I should stay. Because it’s so sporadic for me anyways, there were a few comments, I had to sleep back, if I was more motivated, I would get up earlier, clean my baseboards get outside, you notice the theme here though, these are all very active things. No one said, pin more pins about motivation. Listen to another TED Talk, talk to my friends about the things I want to do that I’m not doing. And so I want to talk about that difference between the types of action that we can take. And this is concept I heard years back from Brooke Castillo, and I still find myself taking stock of it in my own life. And this is a concept of massive action and passive action, the two types of action that we can be taking. So passive action is when we are doing things that feel productive, but they aren’t actually moving the needle so to speak, they aren’t actually producing results, so to speak. For me in my life, passive action would look like reading books on decluttering. And don’t get me wrong. This was valuable, helpful and necessary for me to get motivated. But eventually, I had to put down the book and open a drawer and start decluttering. It looks like pinning all the ideas I had for organization and Pinterest me the Pinterest version of me. If you look at my pin board, oops, she’s living life. She’s productive. She’s the best parent, she’s got all the fitness routines, or home is organized with the beautiful containers and the labels as Pinterest me, it’s not really. But that was action that I was taking to make all those pins to put those boards together. That was passive action. And Pinterest is great. It’s got all of the ideas. But it is the ID all like I can’t actually do all of those things and do all of those things. I need to decide what works in my actual life. Turns out I hate the canting things into smaller containers. But I was pinning all of these ideas. Eventually I’m going to have to decide how I want to organize my house how it’s going to work. For me. Researching exercise was something that I did a lot of because I had zero motivation to work out. But it was one of those things that we put on our list of something we should do. This became I’ve shared in the past something that I felt even heightened pressure to do because my mom had dementia and people are saying oh the risks of dementia can be lowered with exercise. So in order to motivate myself to exercise more, I needed research I needed data I needed science I needed to see On paper, that it would be necessary, almost like physically and medically necessary for me to exercise. So I spent a lot of hours on researching when I could have eventually said, I’ve read enough. Now I need to go for a walk. In my home passive action has looked like talking about all the ideas for my home, but not actually even learning at start or making a budget for it to save up for it. In my earliest days of online work, it was a lot again, research and ideas and dreams, I would fill out content plans, I would make calendars, but I wasn’t showing up to do the work that would really move me forward, I was just kind of maintaining things. And that’s passive action. It’s easy, it’s comfortable, it’s kind of status quo. It’s the color coded calendar that you never follow. It’s the meal planning notepad that you bought, but you never use it style workout subscription or the gym membership that you pay for, but you don’t actually use it. It has very little risk. And just enough movement to make you feel like you’re doing something. But not enough movement to actually produce the results that you want. And I’m not here to knock your something, if you’ve done something, something is not nothing, something is something. But I am just here to remind you that when we want to live intentionally, we do need to get uncomfortable, we do need to start taking massive action towards the things we want. We need to get uncomfortable. And I’m I’ve talked about this in the past about how we have to choose our discomfort, if we’re uncomfortable where we are, but we’re going to be uncomfortable doing the work, we got to choose our discomfort, I won’t, I’m going to link those episodes in the show notes. Taking action that moves us forward will be uncomfortable, but it is a discover that has a purpose. And only you can decide that purpose only you can decide how you want to be living, how you want your home to function, what feels like wellness to you. Only you can decide what matters in your life, the goals you might have, the vision you might have for how things can be, I’m going to share a few ways that I find myself taking massive action this weekend. I do a lot of passive action. Still. I love a good calendar color coding session. I love a good Pinterest session, I still read the books, I still listen to the podcasts, I am taking all of that in. But you gotta pair it with actually moving forward with actually moving your body to get the results you want. So some things that I’m doing this week, getting this podcast with you here I am recording it. I’m proud of me. I’m dropping a bag full of stuff off at the thrift store this weekend. I’ve got it in the truck with me here, the city I’m in. This is something that I will just start to compile stuff for the thrift store and let it sit in the basement until my husband is like, I’m putting this in the truck and you need to not come home with it. And then I have to get rid of it. When I get home, we’re going to finally put flooring in our bedroom, we’ve had the flooring in the basement, we’ve had to rip out our carpet years ago in our bedroom. So that is something that’s finally happening. And on Friday, here what we’re what I really want to talk to you about, I’m holding a workshop for anyone who is interested on the topic of getting yourself motivated. I want to a normalize your lack of motivation, your normal turns out and to teach you about willpower, oh and three give you a toolbox on how to get motivated when your motivation is low when it’s moderate. And when it’s high. I want you to walk away with practical tools that you can always turn to. And we will do a live q&a and coaching session with this workshop. So this is a great deal. If you’ve been curious about coaching if you want help getting unstuck. If you have specific questions, plus you get this workshop on motivation, it’s going to be fun and informative. My two favorite things. If this is of interest to you, it is on this Friday the 27th I changed the time of my workshops a little bit this one is at 12:30pm PST, Pacific Standard Time. So if you’re on the East Coast, you’re looking at around 9:30am There will be a replay available if you can’t make it live. So if you’re interested at all, stop by the link in the show notes and check it out. And if you can’t find the show notes in your podcast player, go to simple on purpose.ca Click listen. And you will find all of the episodes there with all of their show notes and all of the transcripts and of course the you know the two places to find me in the Facebook group if you’re part of the Facebook group, and on Instagram you can always meet at some blunderbuss.ca Alright friends have a great week.

The post 191. Are you idling on your goals or moving them forward (passive action vs massive action) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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This is part two of a two-part series about planning your day. If you haven’t listened to part one (episode 189), I highly recommend you do so and then come right back to listen to this one. Join me as I guide you through a typical day in my life as a work-from-home mom. I discuss how I use time-blocking, rhythms and answer your questions .

In this episode I discuss: * My typical weekday + My weekly rhythms for work, home and family + Time-blocking * How the changing seasons also change my days + Family life, priorities and routines * Answering some questions I’ve been asked about planning my days + Exercise, laundry, meal prep, groceries, planning the week + Derailed plans

All the fun links you might enjoy * Family rhythms (setting your own, and worksheets) Family Rhythms + free worksheet * Planning the week with your partner What happened in my marriage when we started weekly calendar meetings * Exercise for wellbeing 184. Movement as self-care (exercise for wellbeing, not weight loss) * Establishing a chore routine 61. How we introduced chores to our kids (Saturday Morning Chores) * Creating your own simple cleaning routines Homemaker, on Purpose (the guidebook) * Working on your sense of capability 115. A Controlling mom, or a capable mom? * 170. Planning the Day (reactive vs proactive, tools and approaches I use) * 129. Does your ‘to-do list’ overwhelm you? Expectation overwhelm and how to handle it.

Sign up for the the Simple Saturdays email (a fun email, twice a month)

Upcoming workshops and coaching:* The Oct 13 group coaching session

The Oct 27 workshop on motivation

Full transcript (with timestamps)0:00
Hey friends, it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counselor from simple on purpose.ca. Welcome to the simple and purpose podcast.

0:16
This episode is part two, actually. So I would encourage you to go back to the previous episode and listen to that first. These episodes are on planning my day planning my week and the first episode I talked about applying that concept of if everything matters, nothing matters. And I think that’s just really a good foundation to have in the back of your mind when you’re thinking about filling your day, and how you’re going to fill your day. So I encourage you to go back and listen to that.

0:42
Let’s talk about my typical day, which is a question you guys have asked me. I kind of like hearing on other people’s days, I don’t know, I they used to do that Instagram challenge, like a day in the life or I forget what it’s called, like one hour every? I don’t know. Anyways, I thought it was really interesting. I like to peek in on how other people were spending their time. So I’m going to talk about my day and then answer a bunch of questions that you guys have sent in.

1:09
So my typical day, week day, I’m going to wake up around 720. And I have a timer for the Internet and like the Internet app on my phone. So the kids can’t turn the TV or iPad on until seven because they were waking up really early just to watch TV. So they are watching a little bit of TV by the time I’m up. And I get up, we all kind of get ready, the kids leave. Generally, they’re all over the door by 830. And then I can eat breakfast, make a coffee and get started on my workday.

1:38
So I spend my day working, I break for lunch in lunchtime. I like to like go out in the kitchen, listen to a podcast, maybe go outside, if the weather’s nice, maybe go for a 10 minute walk, go back to work. And you know, because I’m working from home, I can do things like throw the laundry through, get the meat out of the freezer, because we’re always forgetting to build a meat out army, do a quick living room tidy when the kids are heading out the door. And I head back to work.

2:04
So the kids come home between three and 330. Actually, my oldest usually comes on first. So we actually get about like 10 or 15 minutes to just catch up and talk. And that’s actually a really special time of my day.

2:18
When they get home, I aim to be in the kitchen because they’re unpacking their bags or eating a snack. They do a chore in that area. And then they’re gonna head out and probably play their screen time, their further time limit for the day.

2:31
So when they’re coming home, I just want to hang out in the kitchen, I will tidy up the kitchen, usually one of them has to do dishes. So I’ll reload the dishwasher. I eat a snack too, because I need a break I need to eat. And I also just want to be available. You know how kids when they come home, they just held it together all day they’re exhausted and sometimes just being there that presents whether or not they come to you for anything, it’s just I think it’s comforting.

2:58
So they’re heading out after about half an hour and they’re hanging out with their friends going to meet up with their friends, whatever, or they’re doing their screen time. And suddenly, I’m alone in the kitchen again. So I try not to go on Instagram, I really try not to go on Instagram, whenever I find myself alone in the kitchen, which is usually from the hours of 330 to I don’t know, they’re in bed. If I have a little bit of work left to do like session notes or drafting up a podcast, I’m just going to pull up the computer in the kitchen, like bring the laptop into the kitchen and just to be around them if they need me. But you know they have screens they don’t need me. So that’s that anyways, and then we get ready for whoever has activities that night.

3:40
We’re going to get packed up and get a bunch of snacks and water and all those things together. I was asked recently on Instagram, how I simplify our family life. And that’s one thing that has helped us is limiting each kid to one extracurricular activity because times three kids that’s just a lot of activities right? So two of them were in hockey actually which hockey’s a lifestyle guys like hockey’s a lifestyle commitment. You have to be all in as a family it takes over everything weekends. So we limit it one extracurricular each person.

4:15
The afternoon like four o’clock on I’m shuttling people to the places. I start making dinner depending on what it is I just couldn’t like let it simmer on the stove or whatever. In generally I start dinner early, regardless of activities happening in the evening. Because foods just a priority for me, especially being gluten free. It’s hard to get excited about food. So it’s something I have spent a lot more effort on, especially in the recent years. We get the farm box for some of the years so that is something that I try to enjoy and use well and I’m googling recipes and trying different things. So Dinner, dinner is a big deal to me and probably my husband the kids generally are disappointed in whatever I make but I’m enjoying So, in this is recent, right? I think I shared in the last episode that some seasons it was toast on eggs and I would look on Instagram and wonder how are these moms roasting chickens and making biscuits with toddlers? Cue the episode I just did on Instagram culture because I definitely had warped expectations, thinking I could do all of the things all of the time that other moms with toddlers, were making these beautiful, elaborate homemade meals. Geez, no way it was toast on eggs or I don’t even remember waffles, right? We talked about the waffles.

5:36
Anyways, so dinner now I’ve got time about space got energy for it. And sometimes I will put in an air pod and just listen to a show or a podcast while I’m making dinner, enjoying that process. And I’ll be in the kitchen doing dishes you guys are asking me when I get cleaning done. Kitchen is just like as we go along through the evening. And then we aim to eat dinner together between six and 630. When everyone’s home from all the places eat dinner, someone has to have a shower, people are making lunches. And then we will aim to get the kids into their beds by eight.

6:09
One thing that we do in our house is we spend time with each of our kids at night, we’ll play a card game generally with them. Or sometimes we were doing like hurdles or wordles or spot the difference on the iPad. So we’re spending that time and it’s like 845. By the time we’ve gone through all three kids between the two of us. And it is a lot of time. But it’s a ritual for us. And I think that our kids really rely on that. And maybe I rely on that to that touch base in that connect, to have that consistent time where no matter what the day was like, I know that my parents are gonna show up here and they’re gonna ask me how I’m feeling and what I need help with. And you know, whether they want to just like pop quiz us on all the Space Jam characters, or ask us why the rules seem different for boys and girls, both of those questions. My kids have asked me at nighttime, it’s just a really meaningful thing for me to just be there as a parent for any of that.

7:09
So bedtimes 845. And then, if my husband’s working in the morning, we’re both going to head to bed. I mentioned in the last episode that over the recent years, I’ve come to priorities, prioritize sleep in a big way, and my life feels so much better for it.

7:24
So that’s my typical week day. Doesn’t really sound exciting. My weekdays are seasonal when it’s not hockey season. I generally have a weekend. And our routines are Friday night treat. And movie Saturday is for church chores. And then an outing and Sunday is church and chill.

7:43
I was asked how often I spend time planning out my week. And this was something that used to be a very intentional thing to sit and plan the week, when all of the kids were at home, Connor and I would have weekly calendar meetings together when he had his set off. And that was when we would plan, look at the calendar, who’s doing what who was to go where and making sure that we could put in time for the things we wanted to get done that week.

8:06
Nowadays, I do look at my calendar often. And I think about what’s happening and what I want to happen. And maybe I’ll schedule things in. But as the seasons have changed, my life is very predictable. It has a rhythm and things just like slot themselves into my day, so to speak.

8:25
So you might know that I work on environmental health job, I work that Monday, and then Wednesday mornings. And then I’m counseling on Tuesdays and Thursdays, clients can book themselves online. So I just know what to show up for. That leaves Fridays, like today’s a Friday for emails and podcasts. And if I have time left, I’m gonna go do other things or things that need to get done.

8:46
So I have a little bit of Fridays and somewhat Wednesday afternoons that are definitely time for just me, being a human going to the dentist, seeing a friend getting the mail fitting in a client if they needed some extra availability.

9:00
And to me, this is kind of a large scale time blocking and I mentioned time blocking in a recent group coaching call. That’s where you block time in your calendar for a type of task like exercise, draft emails, meal prep, and so on. If you google search time blocking, you’ll see a lot of Google Calendars beautifully color coded with time blocking. And to me, this is just large scale. So I know what work happens on this day. And they show up for it. I like the name rhythms. So I think it flows. We have a rhythm to our life rhythm to our week.

9:31
And this is the flow of my week. I can keep it the same. I can adjust it as things come up and they do. We got sick kids, we got appointments we got husband’s going away on on teen trips, and then we know that the routine is going to even itself out eventually again. So I can have that sense of like not scarcity, not urgency, but I can have that assurance that the routine is going to come back online. Once we’re over this little hurdle And because the days are predictable, I know where I can move things to, in order to shift things around.

10:06
I want to answer some specific questions I’ve had on this topic, I was asked when I exercise, this is seasonal too, in a way, as in the monthly seasons, I approach exercise differently depending on my cycle. So it looks different from week to week. But I do prioritize it, I will look in my schedule in the week and think about where it’s gonna go, I want it to happen about three times in a week for will be great. I want to do it for about 30 minutes. And you know, maybe have time for a quick shower after. So if I don’t get it done, if there’s not kind of a chunk of time within my work day where I have time between sessions or just in that extra time on the Wednesday or Friday, I will do it. Once the kids go on to their screentime like after we’ve had that post school routine and check in and they go to their friends or to whatever, I will do it then and probably just shower like later that night, I’ll just be dirty. I’m gonna link to an episode I did on exercise for wellbeing. On the meet your needs series.

11:13
I was also asked how to do laundry. And if you’ve noticed my Instagram stories are mostly therapy points, Mom memes and just photos of my laundry basket on the couch, you know, in sunbeam or something.

11:26
My only good laundry advice is some seasons you don’t have to fold everything. There were seasons of my life where I only folded kids pants and shirts, big towels and our own adult laundry. Everything else was thrown into the drawer, socks, PJs, tea towels, just throw it in. For me, I will have laundry going through most every day because I’m at home, I’ll put it in the morning and then put it into the dryer later on. And what’s happening is all of these baskets of clean laundry are laid out in the basement. I stack them to create kind of like a train like a double decker train. And then once a week, I’m gonna bring it all upstairs, put on a good show, have an old fashioned didn’t get it all folded. And that basket you see on my coach is the towels. I separate the towels as I’m folding the laundry, and I leave that basket there. I don’t know how the system was developed in our lives. But I’m folding everyone’s laundry and putting it in their little baskets. And it’s all like folded all nice. And then I leave all the big towels and someone else can fold those. Usually it’s a kid who wants to earn money or Connor who’s like just being kind and helpful. And that’s he’s got that he’s got that.

12:35
I had another question on meal planning. When to get groceries. When do you do the meal prep groceries are simply for us in the summer, we get that farm box delivered each week. And we generally have a lot of farm meat from my wonderful in laws who are stocking up our freezer. So I can just kind of look through the house. There’s meat in the freezer there’s produce from the farm box. And then we all go to Costco and stock up like on those extra things pasta noodles and peanut butter and those kinds of things. So we don’t have to go grocery shopping a ton my husband can do it on his week off. But I will also do it on a Friday evening. I combined my grocery shop with our Friday night treats.

13:15
So this is another rhythm we have as in our family every other Friday when cars at work and I’m with the kids. I take the kids to the store after school and they pick out a Friday night treat. And I will take this time to grab the extra groceries I need. meal planning is something that I rely heavily on and I spent a lot of time and energy really interesting. Pinning, meal planning all of the ideas and I feel like it’s a really crucial part of making my life easier. I can save money I can save time I have a plan. Even if you make that plan in the morning even if you go to your freezer and you see what’s in there and go to your pantry Susan there go to your fridge and then you’ve done this like inventory of everything in the places and you Black Box Challenge yourself. These are my ingredients. What will I make it might not be awesome. You might have like frozen peas and scones, whatever, that’s fine eat it for dinner.

14:11
Another strategy I like with meal planning is to have a template. This has helped me a lot during the busy hockey seasons. So I’ll write it out on the fridge a template like Sunday is soup and sandwich. Monday is past Tuesday’s tacos, of course, and so on and I find that template can be helpful.

14:28
I had a question on when I do cleaning. And I have counterintuitive advice about cleaning I clean when the kids are home when they’re at school or at activities. I am probably not cleaning, especially when they’re at school I want to fill my time with stuff that I prefer to do without them around like work or exercise or just zoning out on the couch.

14:51
I will say that decluttering my home has made cleaning less of a big deal. But our home still gets messy. I share these pictures all the time on Instagram with the house Should we live here, because we might have done decluttering all this, but we still live here. The house is messy, especially during the day, generally, I’ll go into the kitchen and there’s dishes in the sink great. Like it’s not spotless, I am a clean as you go kind of person.

15:14
I think though that having some routines like Saturday chores, the daily chores the kids help out with and, you know, doing the kitchen, when, right after dinner, we tidy up the kitchen. I think that keeps things tidy enough. All that being said, cleaning used to be this whole big brain drama for me and I actually wrote a book on it, you might not know, I made a book called homemaker on purpose. And I put in everything I’ve learned about challenging my concepts of time, and tidying and stacking habits and all of the strategies that I use to help me just create simple routines that I can stick to that’s in the homemaker on purpose book. And I’ll link that in the show notes.

15:53
Finally, I had a few people ask about what to do when plans are derailed. I’ve had this question in a few different formats, actually. And what I think this question is actually getting to is derailed plans challenge our sense of control. We think that if we planned it, we can control it, we and we want control. That’s why we’re planning things, we want the control. And the lack of control feels scary, it makes us scramble, we’re going to look for control anywhere we can, I want to link to Episode 115 on being a controlling mom, or capable mom. Because this is where we have the work to do and this is what we can fall back on is when we don’t have control, we can still fall back on our sense of capability. We can develop a sense of capability that we can handle things when they don’t go according to plan. You’ve proven it to yourself, probably you have handled things and you can handle things again.

16:48
When we lose control, the plan is derailed, we might hyper focus on regaining a sense of control, we can buy into our own sense of urgency. Or we can shift into building our sense of capability that we can handle things we can let go of the urgency just for a moment, just long enough to ask what’s important here, what is actually urgent. These are two questions that Stephen Covey gave us in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

17:15
And he’s using the Eisenhower matrix that’s distinguishing between what’s urgent versus non urgent, what’s important versus non important. Remember, this is going to take us back to the last episode, when everything matters, and nothing matters. If you were trying to do it all, everything feels urgent, everything feels important, you lose your ability to prioritize, and put things to the side. So you can focus on the things that actually need to get done right now.

17:44
When our plans don’t work, this is also an area where all or nothing thinking can be very apparent. So it’s really important to remember here, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. It doesn’t have to be either this gets done or nothing. There are smaller steps. There’s alternatives, you have other options that you’re not thinking about. Because you’re buying into your own sense of urgency and your own need for control. So just slow it down for a minute, maybe and write these questions down on a piece of paper, plan it ahead of time, even what’s urgent versus not urgent, what’s important versus not important. Set that framework for yourself. So in the moment, you can refer to that.

18:20
I hope that I’ve answered your questions. I hope I’ve given you some ideas that will help you feel more empowered, in planning your day, your week, your season of life. And if you want more, if you’re feeling stuck, you want support, you want strategizing, I have some options for you. The first one is to go to the shownotes. Dig in. I’ve got a lot of content on this over the years about a lot of related posts and episodes.

18:43
The second option is to come to a group coaching call with me. I’ve got one on October 13. That’s open to any kind of topic we talk about here. common topics our mindsets, simplifying motherhood, and actually this episode was prompted by a conversation from a recent group coaching call.

19:00
I also have the motivation workshop coming up on October 27. I want to talk about why motivation matters. How we motivate ourselves in helpful ways and unhelpful ways and how to change the unhelpful ways into helpful ways. How the brain motivates us or doesn’t motivation and willpower and generating our own motivation on purpose.

19:22
Everything is there for you in the show notes. If you can’t find them in your podcast player. Go to simple on purpose.ca Click listen from the menu and you’ll find all the episodes. The transcripts to the episodes are at the bottom of the post and you’ll find all of the links and you can always email me I always write back you can always email me Shawna with a W. Shawna at simple on purpose.ca. You can also find me on Instagram at simple on purpose.ca or just drop a post in the Facebook group and share it there. Alright friends, have a great week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post 190. Planning the day: my weekly routines and rhythms for work, home and family first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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Planning your day, week, month, even year is a great way to stay organized and on top of life, but it can become overwhelming and cluttered very quickly if you are not careful. When we plan without intention, and without knowing what the important things are, then we will be stuck in a lot of distractions and autopilot priorities. Join me in the first of a two part series about planning your day as a mom.

In this episode I discuss: * My first blog and how it changed my outlook + The post that started the original blog My C-Section & The Feelings I Was Ashamed to Admit * Advice for working-from-home moms + A strategy I used to plan my day with kids at home How To Plan Your Day As a Mom (3 Simple Steps) + Simplifying mom life 11 Things That Make My MomLife Simpler * Some tips for how you can look at your available time + Honouring your season, validating the season you are in What Moms of Toddlers Need to Hear - Doing the hard thing to make life easier + Simplifying your life, consider the resources of your life - The Simplify Your Life Series (with worksheets) * Values and vision worksheets available in the free resources + Knowing your own values 149. How to find what matters to you (uncovering your personal values) + Knowing the vision for the nine areas of your life Know Where You Are Going (why vision setting matters + free LIVE YOUR VISION worksheets) * Establishing family rhythms (worksheets too!) 28. How to plan your summer on purpose, family rhythms we have and how to set ones you love. * Doing the work of small consistent habits 78. Small things that can change your whole life (the compound effect)

Sign up for the the Simple Saturdays email (a fun email, twice a month)

Upcoming workshops and coaching:* The Oct 13 group coaching session * The Oct 27 workshop on motivation

FULL TRANSCRIPT 0:10
Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. If you are just joining welcome, it’s great to have you here. I’m Shawna, I’m a counselor, I’m a mom of three, living in Canada. And my whole goal with this podcast is to help you just take a minute slow down, get centered on the things that really matter to you and encourage you to clear out all of the distractions and the excess that keeps you from showing up well for your life.

0:38
Some fun things around our house these days, we’re doing that closet Reno, you might have seen the pictures and the simple Saturdays emails, I’m going to share more on that in the future because we had to reduce the size of the office to increase the size of the closet. And I feel like it’s just kind of had a few aha moments for me. So hoping to share on that in the future. If you have questions about it. I want to answer those questions. So send me those questions over Instagram or the synthesizers email, or in the Facebook group.

1:05
Of course, we’ve got some kids in hockey, hockey has started. We’ve got a kid in theater. So my social life is really just saying hi invite other moms. Essentially, thank goodness my bestie calls me on the telephone like an OG bestie that she is, it’s awesome.

1:23
I’m recording this before Thanksgiving in Canada, we’re celebrating it this coming weekend. So Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians.

It’s amazing that Thanksgiving can be such a social, like special time. It’s one of the best holidays, I think it really is just about gathering and eating. Two of my favorite things. Gathering in small doses though, I am an introvert.

Alright, so in this episode about planning your day, I was asked to talk about how I plan my day how I structure my week how I get things done the various forms of the question asking the same thing. And I did have a lot to say I wanted to offer you a lot of my reflections. So I’m going to do this episode into two parts. This will be the first part, I encourage you to listen to it first and then move on to the next.

And this first part I really wanted to talk about the overall concept I’ve learned and something I think a lot of us struggle with when we’re trying to plan our day get things done. And that’s the concept that when everything matters, nothing matters.

So for me coming into this online space, developing what I would call a work from home job. I started blogging when I had my first kid if you are an original blog reader of dovetail blog way back when on the Blogspot so nice that you’re still here. You we’ve grown up together probably. And the reason why I even wrote one sentence opened up Blogspot pressed publish was because of my first birth experience in my firstborn was an emergency C section.

And that whole experience for me, it was complicated. The recovery was complicated. The C section surgery was complicated. And I had a really hard time with that being my first birth experience. And I felt like this all these hard emotions, and I didn’t know what to do with them. I would reach out to friends who had babies. And they’re like, yeah, don’t really didn’t really go through that. And I felt so alone.

And this was like 2011, I was searching the internet for some kind of shared experience to read. And then that was back when it was blogs or Yahoo groups and they were each hard to find. So I was feeling really alone with it and just really burdened by it in the public health nurse because we have public health nurses who walk us through those early postpartum days. She suggested I write about it and just write it out. She said, and once I wrote that out, I thought someone else needs this. If I needed it, someone needs it. And that’s what I did. I put it on the blog spot. And boom, there it was. I was going to be a blogger.

Well, I didn’t call myself a blogger. I didn’t even really tell anyone because it was new and weird. And I had a whole career in environmental health. I’m not a writer. I’m not a blogger and like this is one kid How could I be a parenting blogger like that didn’t even know but it just writing became my outlet, a lens for my day. I could narrate my experiences in my head I could write them and it was just giving me this kind of like lens through my day.

It was giving me a little bit of a different purpose with how I was approaching motherhood and interacting with my life and my day A forum that this hobby of blogging was something that my family now had to accommodate.

So I think it helps to consider that I started doing this online stuff as a hobby. I didn’t show up for it like it’s my nine to five job. And you know what, that made it hard, it made it hard, because for one of my husband was not and still not on the internets. And here, I was asking for these afternoons away when we had tiny kids all at home, like, they were all born within three and a half years of each other. And I was just like, I’m gonna go to the coffee shop, so I can blog, what blog, I wasn’t making money, I was spending money. But my mind was kind of committed that if I just kept showing up, and blogging that this would become a job sponsors would fall into my lap, and it would all pay off.

And spoiler alert, it didn’t end up like that for many reasons. And I’m glad it didn’t. But this leads me to my first kind of piece of advice for any moms, especially work at home moms, who are asking how to get things done. And that is to be clear, be clear on what you’re doing, why and how you see it fitting into your life. I’m not saying don’t have hobbies, unless you can justify them. That’s really not what I’m saying.

But I, in my heart, I was treating this like a job without really knowing how to do that. And it was hard because I actually didn’t know what I was doing, or how it was going to work. And my husband was as supportive as he could reasonably have been. But if I didn’t know what I was doing with all of this, what I was doing and why and what it was all leading to, he definitely was wondering what I was doing. And you know, with two toddlers and a baby time away was at a high premium is so high that I probably said no to him a lot more. So I could have seen that being very frustrating to him and a definite blind spot for me at the time.

So get clear on what you’re trying to accomplish with your time. And if you want it to be a business, you need more than dedication and hope you need an actual plan and target. You might even need to bring them in income that covers your expenses at least.

My other piece of advice for work at home moms is to do work when you’re off mom duty. Specially when I was starting this like 12 years ago, MLMs were huge. And we were being sold the dream. I think that’s a podcast to about MLM is actually it’s really interesting, sold the dream that mums can work from home and earn some extra cash and get those things that quote unquote, you deserve. But have you ever tried working on something important with toddlers around? I mean, we’re working with them around all of the time.

But here is where we can make hard things harder. If we put a lot of emotional weight and onus on this task, like I need to post this thing for my Instagram. For my business. It’s important. There’s so much extra weight in there that any interruptions we have are going to be met with escalating frustration. And then we’re upset that we’re frustrated mom and our kids are upset because there’s like one at a snack. And it’s like this whole thing.

So if you have important work tasks, where you know, you’re going to be frustrated by interruptions and set that time aside, to get that work done when you have some kind of childcare. When my kids were all at home, like I said I was working when my husband was off work. And then eventually it moved to also me getting a babysitter every other week. Another thing we would do sometimes is swap kids with my bestie. So I’d watch her kids, she can go do whatever and she take my kids and I’m going to just do whatever I want to get done.

What’s ultimately happening is when you set that time aside to do these things, you will be much more calm and present with your kids. Because you won’t have this nagging sense of urgency but all the things you should be doing. You will just remind yourself yeah, and that happens on Wednesday mornings, add it to the list of things you want to get done. Declutter it from your mind brain, dump it and carry on with your day. It lets you show up with a lot more ease and kind of that less like inner panic running the show.

Over the years, I’ve tried many tips and approaches to planning my day. Goal setting planners, bullet journals, changing habits, all of the things that middle aged men with child care have written books on which goes to say that over the years I have had to learn how to do these things as a middle age stay at home mom. And as I was thinking about how to share with everyone how I plan my weeks and days now, I want to point out that I have worked on this for years and it’s been a lot of trial and error. There are years where I was overwhelmed, spread too thin, directionless, defeated, thinking just the right type of planner would save me or planning for all of the wrong reasons.

So in the next episode that we’re gonna get to in a second here I want to tell you what works for me and how I plan my day how I plan my week, but I want to share some of the core concepts the core or concepts is like so sciency the core things that I’ve learned that I must account for, in living on purpose living intentionally getting things done as a mom as a woman, as in the world.

And the first one is to honor your season. And this was advice I heard a lot, but I just glossed over it and probably even fought it. Or rather, I focused on what I wanted to do more than what I had to do. Like the good type nine, I’m like, I just want to do the things I want to do. And I thought the hard things should just be easier. Like this whole mom thing should just be easier. And if it was easier, then I could do all those other things I wanted.

So rather than just letting it be hard, and in it, for all of the heart, and all of the awesome, I was just trying to figure out a way to make everything easy, so I could get everything done.

One of the most validating things anyone ever said to me, as a mom with young kids, and she was a seasoned mom, you know, she had grown kids, she was observing me with my three small kids and being so lovely and talking to me. And she said, This is the hardest season that you’re in. I’m gonna put up a post about that. But that was one of the most validating things that kind of clicked for me like, oh, yeah, she’s been through it. She’s saying like, this is the hard one. When they say honor the season, they’re talking about kind of this season, like honor this season. It doesn’t go by fast, it goes by really slow, everyday is so slow. But we have to honor the season that we’re in.

And I just want to give you some encouragement now, from someone who just might be a little bit up the road where my kids are on school. If you are home with children, this is intense, and demanding. It won’t always stay like this. They might not hit the school soon, and you’ll exhale for the first time in a very long time. The baby and toddler years are a big investment in your time and your energy and it is very limited. So you need to be selective on how you spend your time and energy.

Which brings me to my next point. And that is you have to choose. This is about setting priorities about knowing what gets our Yes. And what gets our No.

And the cold hard truth is we cannot do it all. And there’s a part of us that fights that can you feel that you’re like, No, don’t cut off my options don’t limit me, I can do all of these things. Because once someone tells us, there’s limits on us, we suddenly feel like we’re missing out, or we’re not good enough. And that’s really the wrong fight to have.

We shouldn’t be fighting for the right to exhaust ourselves. We should be fighting for our right to live a life that pursues the things that matter to us, to our values to our vision to what we want out of all of this. And think about it from just like the essence of time. That’s our resource. It’s limited. We can’t do everything with that time. But we can do anything. And you get to choose what your anything is, it can be exciting.

If you have done the work, to outline your vision for your different areas of your life, I’ll link that in the show notes, then you should have a page of things that light you up your vision and your values need to be your compass. They tell you where to spend your time and energy. What matters to you. It’s different for each person, sometimes each person in your house, but you have that answer within you.

And if you aren’t in touch with your own values, you will just let everything matter. Everything will be important. Everything feels important. Everything feels urgent. It’s like metaphorically filling your house up with just stuff. Because if everything matters, nothing matters.

So the same way we need to ask what we want to use our home for our space for what what stuff feels like us? What stuff do we use? What stuff is beautiful to us, our life is the same. Declutter your life. Make space for the life that matters. You will always feel spread too thin and directionless. If you don’t know exactly what your priorities are, with how you spend your time and your energy.

The third point I want to make is that seasons change and so can you it’s intimidating the idea of selling on our vision and values. People get really overwhelmed with this exercise. I still use it with clients. And it’s exercises that are made in life on purpose workbook about four or five years ago. So I’m still using these concepts.

And it’s overwhelming to think and we just distill it down to this season. Like let’s just think about this season. Because you aren’t locked into a single thing. You write it on paper your values revision, you get to change your mind. Your seasons will change your babies will grow you will sleep again. Your time will expand you will finish school you’ll finish your renos, that broken vehicle will eventually be repaired.

But for us there are seasons where we had a lot of toast and eggs for dinner or leftover waffles just like constant waffles. There were seasons where the baby’s bedtime routine took precedent, because I just needed to be alone at the end of the night. In this particular season of my life, I’m choosing to work Monday to Friday 830 to three, or Monday to Thursday, I’ll explain more in the next episode. And it wasn’t always this way. And maybe it’ll change in the future. But that’s what’s working for this season.

So when you’re thinking about what you want out of life, about getting your work done, about how to make all of these things happen, remember, you are in a short season of a long game. So when you are considering what your vision is for the different areas of your life, what your priorities should be, and your priorities are like based on your values. Think about for just this season, what moves the needle for you this season, what sets you up for the long game, what’s important to you, right now, in this year of your life.

What we’re doing here is we’re getting focused, we’re prioritizing we’re zooming in, and we’re getting rid of the distractions in the excess. It’s, it’s a whole other conversation on the discomfort of letting go of the things we think are good, and calling them distractions, calling them excess and zooming in on these core things. But we are more successful when we can measure success by doing the thing that’s important right now, rather than measuring success by trying to do everything, everything’s important, and we can’t get it done. So we feel like a failure. That is all or nothing thinking and you got to be on the lookout for that.

A final takeaway I want to share is the power of doing the hard thing to make my life easier. Because for so long, I just wanted things to be easy. And when it was hard, I thought I was doing it wrong. If you were in the LOPA, the life on purpose Academy, the coaching program a couple of years ago, we talked about this in the hard things lesson. And you will remember what we talked about. When it is hard, it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong, it often just means you’re doing it.

My life feels simpler now. And for one yes, my kids are on school, that vibe is real friends. But also because I think I’ve done a lot of background work a lot of front loading for the change that I wanted in my future, which my future is now.

For myself, I have been working on the life on purpose workbook for years, each year working on setting my vision, setting my values, and picking things that were going to move me towards this bigger picture, whether it was choosing to go back to school, or decluttering the house so it’s easier to maintain, or doing something like the 30 for 30 challenges so I can have more fun, and feel more empowered and more control over my closet. to learning how to meal prep. I actually remember to have an episode on this 11 things that made my mom life simpler. I’ll link that in the show notes.

It sounds intense, right when I say I’ve been doing all this front loading stuff. But this has been over many, many years, right. And definitely been doing a lot more of it once all of my kids started school, all of them in school five years ago.But over the years, I was choosing to be consistent with the little things.

Of course I failed. Remember I had years of overwhelm failure like to feel directionless, but I was still doing the work of establishing habits for myself little things. Were getting really nerdy about it, I was establishing new neural pathways and dopamine reward systems for the things that I wanted to do. But I didn’t yet love, like exercise or eating vegetables or going to bed early.

We’ve been front loading as a family to we have routines as a family that we aka me have worked really hard to establish the after school routine of what goes where and who does what and some days were to 60% success rate but better than zero to the routines we have around Saturday morning chores. I’ll link that in the show notes.

Those were things that took a lot of upfront work, a lot of hand holding and lists and emotional support. But eventually we made it a habit a routine. So it doesn’t have to be prompted and questioned and emotional tantrums about it. It’s just can happen.

When you’re applying this concept. Consider what can I do in this season that sets me up for the longer game. And what I want in my life and my family and my home and my work. I’m going to make sure to link the values and vision worksheets in the show notes. So stop by the show notes. I’m going to jam packet with a lot of related posts on these topics.

And if you’re listening to all of this and you want some support, if there’s something that felt like a sticking point for you or a place you’re stuck or a place that you just want to strategize on, come to the group coaching session, I have one on Friday, October the 13th. And I’m also doing a motivation workshop on October the 27th.

So check those out in the show notes if you think that’s going to help you and let’s continue the next episode I’ll be outlining my typical day week and answering the specific questions that you have sent in

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post 189. Prioritizing the day: if everything matters nothing matters and how to apply this in motherhood first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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How has social media shaped our culture and expectations around motherhood? As moms, we often turn to our phones for a sense of community. Being online can be a great way to keep in touch with old friends, make new connections, or get inspiration for your life. But not every online experience can be positive, and sometimes we find ourselves scrolling through our phones, feeling overwhelmed about our own motherhood. In my experience as a counsellor, working with moms, I see first-hand that the online culture we create has a strong impact on how we FEEL about our own motherhood.

In this episode:* The role of social platforms in creating a community for moms * The difference between in-person friendships and online friendships * How we relate differently to real-life moms vs moms online * The ways our culture shapes us * The impact our culture has on our roles as mom, wife, woman * The responsibility we have to choose a culture that uplifts us

All the fun links you might enjoy * Moms30for30 wardrobe challenge * When I instagrammed my own life, and not my kids * #instamomclub (an OG blog post on being a mom on instagram) * Emotional needs in motherhood\ (on looking for sense of connection) * Why you should date your friends’ (investing in friendship) * Think the best of me (on being hard and awesome) * Phone habit, episodes and worksheets + Your phone habits on autopilot + Intentional phone habits and boundaries

Sign up for the the Simple Saturdays email (a fun email, twice a month)

Monthly group coaching sessions

Share your thoughts with me:

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FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited)0:11
Hey friends it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counsellor from simple on purpose .ca

0:18
If you are new here, I’ll let you know I am Shawna I’m a mom of three kids. I live in small town BC. And my simple on purpose journey really started with me many years ago decluttering my basement, and in decluttering, these boxes of stuff, I was really face to face with the notion that I was living complacent, complacently, that I was not living the life that I wanted, I was not in the driver’s seat of my own life. And it launched me into this approach called intentional living, living life on purpose, which eventually led me to training in coaching and counseling.

0:53
And over the years, I’ve been working with women all over the world on the issues that they feel stuck in, to help them simplify declutter all of that, and live their own lives on purpose, with their own purpose, their own values, their own vision for their life.

1:09
I want to talk about our culture today, and specifically our online culture. And I’m thinking about how I started out with my own experience about 10 years ago being at home with a toddler and a newborn. And I was fortunate enough to have a best friend who I would walk with most every day. And sidenote, I look back on that now. And I see that that was one of the things that truly kept my sanity in those early years.

1:34
But other than my best friend, I didn’t really have a support network, I didn’t have family around, my husband would work long hours and shift work. She was my village. And that’s a lot for one person, right. And so she wasn’t my entire village.

1:47
So I did what many moms do and have done, and I formed an online village specifically on Instagram, I like tothink I’m an OG Instagrammer, which probably explains my personal aversion to ever making a real, I made a real by accident this week, though, I thought I was making a video. But then it got posted as a real I don’t even know what I’m doing. But please don’t ever expect reels from me. I will be in your stories. But please don’t expect reels.

2:13
Anyways, so the original Instagram, we were just sharing photos and updates of our day. And at that time was finding a lot of other moms in the same boat. And I really grew to love that community that I had online. And this was back when Instagram was chronological. So you could scroll Instagram and see all of the accounts that you had followed, in the order of what they were posting that day, I could literally reach the end of my Instagram, it wasn’t that big, it was totally doable. And I could catch up with all of these moms. And I was learning from these moms. They were sharing what they were cooking or wearing or what activities they were doing with their kids. They were sharing snippets of their day. And it was really just helpful to get ideas. And to see I wasn’t alone. And I would touch base with the same people every few days, we will comment on each other’s posts, we started challenges like the moms 30 for 30. We shared each other’s blogs, it was a village.

3:09
To me, it was a place where I felt connected. And when you are lonely in motherhood at home with your kids, and you do feel lonely. Finding connection is really, really something that you’re drawn to and I was finding it online. I think a decade ahead into the future. Now, many moms are still turning to social media to find their village. And in some ways, it’s easiest to make a village online than in real life. After all, you can go online when your kids are watching TV. In the dark hours of night nursing well, they nap a little bit different than in real life where you’re working around all of those things. And online, how you interact and who you present yourself to be. You can curate all of that you curate your comments and your images and your words. You don’t have to try to make small talk with a new mom while your toddler is doing like toddler cave person things and throwing their snacks at everyone or at you or whatever. It is just easier to make connections online for some of us.

4:08
But I also think it’s worth saying that in my years of being online, I have learned that in real life community is always better. It is so worth making the effort to establish connections and relationships in your real actual life. I think this could be a whole other episode, but I think it’s worth pointing out.

4:27
The other thing I’ve learned from being online and from working with mums who are in these earlier stages of motherhood is that the online community has a great influence on your motherhood experience on how you feel as a mum and how you go about your own personal motherhood. So years ago on Instagram, we’re sharing photos. It’s in the moment there’s like one good filter called Valencia. And then you put in a caption and some quippy hashtags. And for me I was choosing to follow women who seemed to be in a sim life stage. And since brands weren’t big on Instagram just yet, the vibe of Instagram was laid back it let’s let’s polished generally non monetized. Nobody was scheduling posts, nobody was getting photoshoots to fill their feed. Nobody was linking products or using all 30 hashtags. But as that changed, the landscape of Instagram shifted into something more polished, people became brands, and everyone had to follow the unwritten standards of aesthetics, and algorithms.

4:27
And over the years, as we’re using this platform still, every time we click follow to another account, we are slowly building up our own online community in this isn’t just Instagram, right? It can be any app where you’re choosing who you follow online. This could be podcast, this could be Pinterest, this could be Tik Tok.I don’t know I’m not on Tik Tok. How does it work?

5:53
But why does this even matter? Why does it matter who you follow, because who you follow becomes your community. This is the culture you put yourself into the people you surround yourself with online and offline or your community. And that matters. And it matters for these two big reasons.

6:10
The first one is that we look to the culture to inform or support our practices and values. You are influenced by your culture? Why do you think they call them influencers, you are influenced by your culture, our culture shapes us online, and offline. The culture we grew up in, offline and online, it teaches us implicitly and explicitly about how we should act and think and be and talk the culture. It can be our family around us, it can be our school, it can be our community. The culture is our community.

6:46
And our culture teaches us the meaning of things, the meaning of everything from the word for water to the roles we play in our families. And you can probably think right now of the things that your culture has taught you, it’s taught you about gender roles. It’s taught you about what foods to eat, or not to eat, about what things to value, what’s acceptable, what’s not acceptable, what to celebrate what to hide.

7:08
And consider some of the things you learned some of the expectations that you now are seeing you have on yourself as a mom or a wife or a woman in the world. You’ve picked this up from your culture, either from your upbringing, or from the culture you followed online. And even though we’re adults, we’re still shaped by our culture. And now we have an entire self curated culture community in our hands, we are choosing who to be and how to live based on this online culture that we immerse ourselves in on a daily basis.

7:40
We look to this online culture to fill in the gaps, to answer questions about who we should be, and what we should value. And this can be especially true if the culture you grew up in it left you with pain, or questions or insecurity about how to be a woman, wife, mom, whatever, we’re going to turn to this online culture to fill in those gaps to inform us.

8:04
The other reason why this matters, is because we expect ourselves to meet or leave the culture. The people in your culture are who you have to compare yourself to. You’re looking to your community to keep you informed on how to act fit in and what to expect of yourself.

8:21
But there’s something different about it being online versus in person, right? Think about the people in your real actual life. Think about your mom, friends, your girlfriends, you can have coffee together, you chat, you share troubles, you share stories, you’re around them, you’re around their kids, you hear them parent, their kids, you know, their kids, you know, generally what a day in their life look looks like. You’ve sat beside their baskets of laundry on their coach, you know what they struggle with, you know what they shine, and you get the entire person, hopefully, hopefully you get these friendships that are authentic, that you can be authentic in.

8:56
But what I’m trying to distinguish here, is that how we look at our real life people, we get the whole picture. We know they are hard and awesome. We know they have flaws, but they are so totally rad. I’m also going to link to an episode on that about being hard and awesome. But when we look to our online culture, the people we’ve chosen to follow online, we don’t get this, we get the highlights the photoshoots.

9:22
And we forget that for some of them, it is their literal actual job to make their house their outfits, their life look like a magazine to the camera. We get their online personas, we get snapshots and scheduled posts and filtered images. But we cannot help but look at this online culture we are in and subconsciously measure ourselves and feel the expectation an instinct to follow along.

9:49
After all, we have a survival instinct to fit in with the group and if not fit in then to lead the group. And this instinct is important. It’s helped us keep us alive by being Part of a social network traditionally is going to be called a tribe. It’s the band of people who protect you and support you and you can turn to their safety in numbers or safety in the group. Being in a group means surviving.

10:14
And even now, in our modern times, if you’ve ever felt your position or place in your culture being threatened with exile, you will know that this is still a dangerous or threatening experience to be outcast from your culture or community. So we have a very deep and primal instinct to maintain status in our group. In order to remain in the group, we need to be in compliance with the norms of the group.

10:40
So if we know that our culture matters, and that it is one that we are looking to as a way to measure ourselves, and to make sure we’re following suit, because that’s safe, we need to consider the culture that we have built up for ourselves online. And I bet you’re thinking of accounts or online people that bring you life that grow you that nourish you. And maybe you’re also thinking of ones that, okay, they felt aspirational at the time, but now they just feel like another checkbox on this endless list of all the things I need to do to be a better mum, woman, wife, whatever.

11:14
Think of these things. How has been online, in the online culture, people that you follow influenced you? What messages are you getting on what it means to be you who you are as the roles in your life, a mom, woman, wife, employee, sister, daughter, friend in your culture? How should you talk? How should you eat? How should you dress? How should you treat your kids? What should you own? What should your house look like? What are your priorities? What books do you read what activities like we could go on? Right?

11:44
On one hand, it’s fun to follow brands to follow people who are doing things that you aspire to, they seem to be creative, they’re inspiring to have in your feed. On the other hand, if you open up Instagram or whatever app, and you just feel the weight of the contrast between your life and the lives of quote others doing it better. It leaves you with this kind of gross feeling or a heavy feeling, then we need to reconsider this online culture that we’re in.

12:14
The reason I wanted to talk about this topic is from my experience with coaching and counseling buttons, and more specifically, moms of young kids who are in a similar boat that I was 10 years ago at home, looking for connection looking for community looking for kind of a distraction or something to do to feel the time when you’re just restless and you’re at home. And we’re finding it online. And yes, it’s a beautiful convenience to have all of this right in your hand. But it can become a burden to a mum.

12:43
A burden in the sense that it piles a lot of unspoken expectations on a mum, and the phenomenon of us, opening up our phones scrolling through these curated squares of the lives of multiple women in a matter of minutes. It fills her head with a compilation of everything that we’re seeing, we see the collective highlights. We see the homemade dinners, the adorable packed lunches, that gentle parenting tips, that one exercise that’s going to make our life better the shoes we need this season. How about the makeup product that we haven’t bought yet that we should buy and the date night we need to go on? Did we mention the parenting tips and don’t forget to also work through your personal trauma and read these life changing books. And then make sure to go play with your kids and enjoy them. And you’ll get all of this just by looking at a dozen posts in the span of three minutes.

13:32
And this is what our culture is doing. So this is relevant information. We need to internalize it our brain sees us and it files it all. under the category of important things we need to do in order to stay in our culture.

13:46
I think we can maybe also call out the opposite culture the hot mess mom culture, the one that only focuses on the hardships and the nonsense of motherhood. The one that seems to polarize motherhood into two categories. You’re either a mum was put together and totally out of touch or you’re a hot mess. Real mom who probably forgot what day it is kind of mom the hot mess mom, the one who’s only talking about how your kids never listen, your identity is turned to a dirty pair of sweatpants and you live off wine and kids leftovers.

14:16
Sure that is part of motherhood. I am both of those moms. The hot mess mom is not the whole picture. And the highlight reel mom is not the whole picture. They’re both the picture motherhood balance matters, variety matters. And the whole picture is what we’re getting from those real actual women in our lives.

14:33
So back to this online culture that we follow as moms because I have had so many conversations with other moms who feel the burden of the scroll. The burden of every time they scroll, scroll through Instagram, they are having more and more added to that mental checklist of what it means to be a good mom or whatever.

14:53
It’s happening so deep you might not even be aware of it. You can just sense it in your body. That part In. Sidenote, can we also call ourselves out for how we think scrolling on the screen is going to give us a break or a rest. But is it? Is it working? Are you feeling rested? Or do you lose track of time and then put down your phone finally feeling guilty and like gross that you could have spent your time in so many other more restful or nourishing ways? Like we’ve all been there, guys.

15:23
With the topic of online culture, though, I wanted to briefly mention that we can also be conscious of the culture of women, we are building up in our real lives too. Do you share similar values? Do you encourage one another? Do you spend your time together doing things that you find genuinely nourishing? do you how do you feel after hanging out with them? That’s a nice question to ask yourself.

15:44
So I encourage you to be mindful of how your culture is impacted impacting you. If it’s online, it’s a pretty easy thing to adjust. Either don’t go online, be aware of your mental state when you do. And always give yourself permission to unfollow an account that just doesn’t feel like giving to you anymore. And those emails to you can unsubscribe. And if it’s offline culture that you’re considering, consider how you can create a friend culture of life giving friendships.

16:15
If this episode is brought up the topic of phone usage for you, which is a struggle that many of us moms have. Then I’m going to also link in the show notes two episodes on the topic of phone, phone habits on autopilot and setting intentional phone habits. There’s episodes and worksheets for both of those.

16:31
I would love to hear your thoughts on the online culture that you have put yourself in as a mom and how it’s impacted you. I would love it. If you would come on to Instagram, share a DM with me, tag me in your story. And let me know what you’re thinking about this episode.

16:46
And a reminder that I do have the monthly group coaching sessions open. The September call was so great, it was really great. It was intimate and warm. And I felt like it was informative. We covered some interesting topics such as doing it all as a mom spiraling with negative thoughts, managing the daily routine with kids and the emotions that come with that and how we’re measuring success as a mom and strategies for being a work at home mom. So if you have a topic that you feel stuck on and you want to get support on or if you just want to listen in to the community conversation, then check out the group coaching sessions. I’ll make sure to link those in the shownotes.

17:25
As always, friends, I love to hear back from you. You know where to find me on Instagram at simple on purpose.ca. And if you’re part of the Facebook group, come and share a post there anytime that an episode brings something up for you. I want that Facebook group to be for you to have these online conversations where we’re continuing the conversations from our podcast podcast into that community. All right friends have a great week

The post 188. Motherhood & Social Media (how online communities impact your motherhood experience) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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The post 187. Feeling better or getting better feeling first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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We are celebrating 15 years married (19 years together).  When these ‘round-number’ milestones come up, there is a wave of ‘should we do something special?’ that washes over you. And ... Read more

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The post 185. Emotional needs in motherhood (what they are and how to meet them) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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I have gone from be an avid gym-avoider, unathletic, didn’t even own a pair of running shoes, complacent with my health in many ways to someone who PRIORITIZES movement as a way to improve and maintain my sense of wellbeing. I want to share how I got here, what makes exercise tough and simple ways to get started with moving more.

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Topics covered in this episode What I learned about exercise as a kid. 1:54 + The ideal body has shifted over generations. + The modern human moves around 30% less than the 1960s. * Learning from the culture around us. 3:50 + Learning from culture and home culture. + Limiting identities and how they shape us. * What Is physical literacy? 6:12 + Lack of physical literacy, lack of motivation, knowledge and understanding. + The importance of movement. + The wake-up call I had + Getting started with yoga * It’s not about the goal but about the process. 11:05 + Challenging the lifelong belief of complacency. * The benefits of exercise. + How exercise changes the brain’s anatomy. 13:42 + Exercise changes the brain’s anatomy, physiology and function. + Exercise reduces stress and cortisol. + How exercise can help with depression? 15:07 + Exercise can provide temporary anxiety relief. + The benefits of prolonged exercise for over 20 minutes. + Exercise can be a form of meditation. * What will keep you from experiencing the benefits of exercise + Perfectionism, all or nothing, using exercise as a distraction * How exercise helps you care for yourself better + Increasing capacity and showing up better. 19:19 * Why exercise is hard + Our relationship to our bodies + The resistance and excuses our brain gives us when we are faced with potential pain (hard work) + Building a dopamine pathway for exercise * Strategies for incorporating movement into your life. 21:40 + Consistency is key to long-term motivation. * Consider yourself 20 years from now*

Exercise, with a toddler at home Links related to the episode * References + Books - Move by Caroline Williams - The Joy of Movement by Kelly McGonigal - Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski - Move the Body, Heal the Mind by Dr. Heisz + Episodes, articles and studies - The brain-changing benefits of exercise by Wendi Suzuki - Move the body, heal the mind on the Art of Manliness podcast, with Dr. Jennifer Heisz of NeuroFitLab - Physical literacy - The secret to why exercise is so good for mental health. ‘Hope Molecules’ - The truth behind ‘runners high’ * Blog posts/my stories + My VBAC Birth Story + I’ve Been Living On Auto-Pilot and I’m Changing My Ways (aka Why Running Makes Me Cry) + I’m Running My First 5k. Here’s Why + Umm…I Thought You Were Running a 5km? + 164. How I am finding balance in my life this year + Building self trust + Athletic skillz, according to 12 year old me + What We Say About Ourselves (and why it matters) Limiting Identity + 78. Small things that can change your whole life (the compound effect) + 150. A new approach to habit change: routine and habit refinement

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FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited)

0:07
Hey friends it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counselor from simple on purpose.ca Welcome back to the simple on purpose podcast. And if you’re new here, welcome to just give you like a quick nutshell about simple and purpose. I am Shawna, I’m a mom of three kids, I’m a counselor. And over the years, I have shared my journey online at simple on purpose.ca. With simplifying my home, decluttering my home, how it brought me face to face really with the complacency in my life in all areas of my life, really. And that led me to the strong urge to take control of my life, put myself in the driver’s seat of my life, and do my life on purpose. And that’s where it symbol on purpose comes from. And so I really like to talk about ways that we can simplify our home, our heart and our life and just show up for this whole thing on purpose. We’re continuing on with our series on meeting our needs. And over the episodes, we’ve talked about how we’re raised and what we’re taught about meeting our own needs and meeting the needs of others. We talked about the cultural expectations on moms to take care of themselves. And we’ve been through some of the basics of self care, I’m really sharing my experience and kind of my thoughts on these different topics we’ve covered and nourishment and rest. And now we’re talking about movement. And as I open up each of these topics, I talk about the importance of about reflecting back on what we’ve learned in our upbringing. And I don’t think I can overemphasize how important it is to reflect back on what you’ve learned growing up, even if you don’t logically agree with it. Unless we do some intentional work to address those core beliefs underneath it all, then what we learn in our early years really tends to become our default response response we have when we’re not being intentional, it can also be a default response that we struggle with opposing. When I think of what I learned growing up about exercise, I think I’ve learned a lot of things similar to many other 80s babies out there, I learned that exercise was how you manage your body to ensure it looks acceptable, and acceptable was what was defined by our culture at the time. I think for my era, I was born in 82. And I think about the boys my age, and the posters they had on the wall, the things they talked about, and it was definitely the Pam Anderson look was the ideal image of womanhood at the time. That really isn’t an interesting how the ideal body what it looks like has shifted over generations what was attractive 1000 years ago, 50 years ago, or even 20 years ago, it’s different than now it’s different than what society tells us is the ideal body, which just goes to show you, the whole thing is made up. It’s just made up. Anyways, exercise was what you did to lose weight or keep weight off, it wasn’t viewed as something you would do for self care, like our grandparents were never been like, take care of yourself, go to the gym. Well, maybe they would have, because they got to that age where they realize they had to keep moving their bodies. But it also makes sense because we see stats that say, the modern human moves around 30% less than our counterparts in the 1960s. That’s a stat from the book moved by Carolyn Williams, I’m going to have a lot of references, I’m going to make sure to link them all in the show notes move by Carolyn Williams was one of my favorite books that I’ve read on movement. And just getting back to what we’ve grown up, I think some of us still have this lingering belief that exercise has to be tied to weight loss. If you hear another mom talking about working out, does your brain immediately go to the weight loss aspect of it? Or do you think about working out and immediately go to the weight loss aspect of it, I think we would ultimately do well to unmarry weight loss and exercise and let them be their own things that may or may not overlap, really. So we learn from the culture around us. And we also learn from our home culture. And I think for me on my family story level, the family story that was adopted was I was born early, I was very small. And even my dad reflects to me now that my mom was so cautious about me texting my heart, I had a hole in my heart when I was born. So she was so cautious about it. And they were very gentle in that regard and gentle in terms of not encouraging or pushing me to exhaust myself in any way. So that was kind of just something I adopted. I didn’t really think about it. If you pair this with my general lack of coordination and strength. I think I wasn’t that kid that was attracted to team sports because I wasn’t good at it. I didn’t really see my role in it all. And I’ve even been sharing with my kids or my husband. This experience I had around grade five or six or seven where I was in mini ball and I was excited at this idea of learning basketball. I thought I can be one of those teenagers who plays basketball in high school and learning how to do a layup and attempting that there was a situation where there were some older boys who were helping out Teenage boys. And they were making fun of me and my attempts. And I was so discouraged, I just tapped out, officially, didn’t even open the door again. And all of these little things add up. And I, it almost was also the family joke that I lacked athletic ability. I really did live from that identity, I didn’t question it. I nurtured it, I never challenged it. And this really shaped my view of my body myself my abilities for decades, decades before I decided to challenge that. I’m going to link a poster and an episode in the show notes because I talk more about this, I call them limiting identity, limiting identities. These are the things we believe about ourselves. So we don’t challenge your question, we just assume they’re true. I’m gonna make sure to connect that because I do unpack this one a bit more in there. From these experiences from this place of programming upbringing, I had a general disconnect with my body. And over the years through experiencing autoimmune diseases, pregnancy, just realizing where I carried stress and trauma in my body, and going through different learnings and writing out journaling and insights. I can see how long I’ve lived with this disconnected my body. And it’s it’s created a lack of physical literacy, which is a term I learned later in life. And Physical literacy is the motivation, competence, physical competence, knowledge, and understanding to value and take responsibility for the engagement in physical activities for like, what a mouthful, but it’s really like, I know my body can do it, I believe in it, I’m going to try it. It’s important to me and I see my kids doing that it makes me so proud, especially to see my daughter doing that, trying out different sports and being in her body, paying attention to how she’s using her body and feeling confident in that that’s physical literacy. So if you are someone like me, who never developed physical literacy, who viewed exercise as a form of torture to achieve weight loss, or maybe you are someone who has disconnected from their body because their body hasn’t always felt like a safe place, who has nurtured and unathletic identity for decades, or maybe you’re at the point that you’ve just decided that athletic version of yourself from the past is she’s just gone, you’ve just decided she’s gone forever, I can’t get her back. Well, these are all going to be something to address as we aim to add more movement into our life because movement is a form of self care. It is a way we can take care of our bodies take care of ourselves. And I want to share a bit about my journey. And some steps I’ve taken along the way. Because there is a version of me that is about eight years back, and I couldn’t jog a block without dying. And now there’s a version of me who exercises about four times a week and actually craves it and enjoys it and is build up stamina so that I can feel real, genuine impacts from it. After my second child was born, and she was a VBAC, by the way, I had a lot of hip and back pain. So I started going to an osteopath and a pelvic floor physiotherapist. And as they were asking me questions about my body and where I’m feeling things, I realized I wasn’t even paying attention. I wasn’t connected to my body, I was just a head floating on top of a body. And it was taking chronic pain for my body to get my attention. And just in those few sessions with these practitioners, I had this huge realization, it was like a wake up call, that I was so disconnected just living in my head. So the first thing that I started doing at that time with two toddlers, or a baby and a toddler at the time, as I started doing yoga, it was gentle, it was soothing. It was increasing mobility. And I was doing it in my living room in my pajamas with that baby and that toddler crawling around jumping on me watching me from the floor, I’m going to, I’m going to look for a picture my sister snapped at me one day doing this and see if I can add it to the simple Saturday’s email, or in the show notes even because it wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t how it was supposed to look, it wasn’t you know, the gym and the outfit and all this stuff. But I had to do something. And as I was doing it, I really came to enjoy it. I was feeling more connected to my body. I was feeling healthier and more in control, specially at that time of my life where things really felt out of control. And I enjoyed continuing on with yoga yoga was a really great practice for me to get back into my body and and do it gently.

9:28
Then after the third was born, a friend asked me to run a five kilometer with them. And I said yes, because there was this idealized version of me in the back of my mind. I think I shared a bit about it last time. She’s a morning person. She was getting up early, she’s going for a run. She’s journaling. And I hadn’t let yet let go of these idealized version of who the culture told me I needed to be. So I was still looking for all the hacks and all the motivation and discipline to make me fit into this mold. So I said yes. And I started to run. And when I say run, I mean jog, don’t get that confused. And I could not run a block. I was like, I’m going to get there, I’m going to train and I’m going to run around the neighborhood. And if there was someone on the street that I knew, because you’d kind of know everyone in small town, I would feel so silly if I stopped running. So I would push and push and push, turn the corner, and just be like, dead. That was the ultimate for me to push myself. And I can also remember around the same time going snowshoeing, with my sister in law around Christmas. And it was something I enjoyed in the past. And I thought it was going to be this really beautiful experience. But I was so winded the whole time, I had to keep stopping, taking breaks. And I think I even teared up at one point, and just said, like, I didn’t realize I was this out of shape. So I felt kind of motivated, I felt kind of this big realization, I’m really disconnected from my body. I can’t snowshoe and do this like hobby that I enjoy in the winter with someone that I enjoy. And so I was pretty motivated. Oh side note about the 5k run. Long story short, we all in my whole family got norovirus, the week of the 5k run, and we never, I never got to read it. But it did leave me with this realization that it wasn’t really about the goal, it was about the process. That’s what we learn. When we start working on our goals. Hey, it’s about the process. It’s about who we become in the process. And for me, I was challenging this lifelong belief about myself, I was learning how to connect to my body even when during a run, it felt like my ankles were turning to shards of glass. And then after the run, it felt like someone had beat me with a bag of rocks in my sleep. But I was challenging myself. At that time, it was really important to me to push myself out of complacency. I’m gonna go back through the archives and share some posts I wrote during this time, because running was just a big wake up call for me. And it was something that I would run while I was doing. Because as my feet pounded the pavement, all I could hear was complacency, complacency. It was really cathartic, really. But it wasn’t this simple. It wasn’t me realizing that I needed to do it. Having some friend motivate me along the way to do something together. I also needed to do a lot of research about why I should even bother with exercise beyond the reasons that we heard growing up of it being for weight loss. And as I’m going to talk about exercise, I don’t mean an hour at the gym every morning. I mean moving your body more moving your body intentionally. A lot of the research I’ve read says three times a week for 30 minutes. But there’s also research that says sit less move more often throughout the day, just doing your routines and walking across the parking lot, taking the stairs that something is better than nothing. It all has benefits. So I’m going to give you a quick run through of the list. And I’m going to link a lot in the show notes about the resources for this. On the benefits of exercise. We know the basics. We know the basics. Benefits of Exercise is strengthens our heart, our muscles or bones, it helps our lungs, our joints, it lowers the risk of health conditions, we’ve heard all of these things. Ultimately, it helps us keep using our bodies for the things we want to do with our life. And you know, that just wasn’t motivating to me, I don’t know what I think at the time, I was also exercising from a place of fear, where my mom’s dementia diagnosis was really prompting a lot of fear in me to take better care of myself. And that was a big motivator for me to start exercising because I was researching how it helps our brain health. And there is a lot of research around how it helps our brain health I’m going to link a really great TED Talk into here. And what Wendy Suzuki who is hosting this TED talk shares is that exercise actually changes the brain’s anatomy, physiology and function. Exercise actually produces brand new brain cells, new brain cells in the hippocampus that actually increase its volume as well as improve your long term memory. Isn’t that crazy new brain cells like shouldn’t our all of our brain cells be dying at this age is crazy. In the book move by Carolyn Williams that I mentioned before she outlines a molecule called osteo Kelson which is produced by the bones and as the bone tissues regenerate during and after exercise they release osteo Kelson which has an improvement on memory function so like everything’s working together even our bones like this is crazy. Okay, the next one that was really impactful for me because I was a stay at home mom with three kids is it reduces stress, it reduces cortisol. If you’ve read the book burnout, you will learn that it helps us also complete the stress cycle. Rather than letting that stress keep piling up and turning into a chronic situation. We can address it earlier on with a healthy, healthy coping mechanism that actually changes our physiology for the better. And for me, I have felt firsthand that exercise allows me to process and more motions through my body, a motion means to move. And when I am moving that emotion can complete its cycle. And there’s been times of my life where things have felt really heavy and really hard and I’ll be crying on the treadmill. And there have been times where I want to just experience some joy and I put in some great music in my headphones and I’m singing, or there’s been times where I need to unhook and need to let this all melt away. And I’m doing some yoga and letting myself melt through the poses that that is a processing of emotions. Intentional movement can also feel like a sense of control in even just moving forward, walking, moving forward. Taking intentional movement is really important, especially for those with anxiety to have a sense that we’ve accomplished something to check something off, to feel like we have done something with all of this energy in our bodies, to feel a sense of control or mastery, which is also where we get serotonin come into play. If we want to nerd out even a little bit extra year. It has been shown that exercise can provide temporary anxiety relief because exercise releases a neurochemical called neuropeptide Y. And this is known as a resiliency factor. And it essentially quiets down the amygdala, which gives you anxiety relief on a biochemical level. Exercise can also help with depression, it is one of the tools you can have in your toolbox. For one, it’s taking you out of yourself out of your thoughts out of your daily routine and into something physical. Also, there’s a lot of research showing that when muscles contract they secrete chemicals into the bloodstream. One really great episode I heard on this was on the art of manliness, and it was about inflammation caused depression and research around how exercise creates cytokines that clean up the inflammation. And along those lines, there are mio kinds, and they’ve been referred to as the hope molecules. And the small molecules are proteins that travel to the brain and act as an antidepressant. I’m going to make sure to link references to both of those in the show notes. Exercise also reliefs, releases endorphins. We’ve heard this a lot. Endorphins are the body’s natural plank painkillers. And they also are a field good transmitter. You’ve heard of the runner’s high to write I heard about it, and for years, I thought it was just a myth. Because I probably wasn’t running just that extra little bit longer for myself to experience it, which isn’t like hours and hours but more about just over 20 minutes pushing yourself past 20 minutes. And recent studies show that this prolonged exercise, it doesn’t have to be running. It can be other things where you are doing prolonged exercise for about that 20 minute mark. And in they don’t call it a runner’s high exclusively Now they call it a persistent high. That is when we have a release of Endo, cannabinoids, dopamine, endorphins and noradrenaline. And a couple other bonuses exercise can be a form of meditation for some of us, it can help us shut our brain off be in a flow state. It can also increase a person’s sense of resiliency and capability. This was really important to me, I want it to feel strong. When you feel strong, you feel more resilient and you feel more capable to handle you’ll handle your life on a very basic level. I will say though, some of us aren’t getting all of these benefits from exercise, you can be a devout gym goer and still struggle. And I noticed the struggles and people who might use exercise as a distraction, maybe even that becomes an addiction. And they’re kind of letting go of other parts of their life that need attention, maybe not addressing other sources of anxiety or stress in their life that need their attention. Or they’re still using other unhealthy coping strategies in

18:38
their life. It’s also true for people who come at exercise as just another way to work on achievement and perfection and checking off that to do list. Maybe coming at it with all or nothing thinking or a lot of rigid rules around what they will permit their bodies to ingest or do kind of using it as a way to earn other things in their day and for their bodies. And maybe there are people who are not listening to what their body needs and they’re doing more damage, when rest might be what is needed. I hope in those lists of benefits, there is something that is striking a chord for you there is something that you that you are drawn to that you feel like that is what you want more of in your life. In the past episodes, I talked about capacity and having that sense of capacity being within our window of tolerance, and feeling capacity to handle our day in our lives and our just whatever is going to come up for us. And I really think that exercise when we start to do it intentionally. And with the purpose of releasing the stress and processing emotions, and helping us feel in control then like we’ve taken care of our bodies and ourselves and therefore we are more equipped to take care of our lives that we are increasing our capacity and showing up better as mums. If we’re talking about self care for mums, we’re showing up better as a parent as a mum And I want to acknowledge that of all the aspects of self care. I think this might be the hardest one, I think exercise is hard. It is hard. It’s hard because of the cultural stigmas that we really don’t know how to unpack and let go of yet. It’s hard because it takes time, it takes effort, it’s going to be hard. We don’t want to do it. And whenever we’re faced with a situation like that, our brain is not excited about it. So we instantly counteracts the idea of exercise with a long list of excuses not to do it. And we often listen to those excuses, we often don’t challenge those excuses. Some of my favorite excuses where it has to be an hour it has to be at the gym, it has to be in the right clothes, I don’t want to get sweaty, I will I should just rest instead. And rest was actually code for scrolling on my phone for 15 minutes. It’s hard because we have so many cheap and easy sources of dopamine in our lives. And dopamine is that great motivator. It’s that neurotransmitter that motivates us to invest energy in seeking a reward. And we have reward pathways for reaching for our phone, or a favorite snack. But maybe we don’t have a reward pathway for exercise yet, we haven’t taught ourselves to get dopamine from exercise. So we have to generate that with out that dopamine pathway already been there to motivate us. And it can really be hard because it brings us face face to face with our relationship to our bodies, whether we don’t want to really think about how we have treated our own bodies, how we’ve talked to our own bodies, what we have done to our bodies, or if we’re upset at our body, if it has limited us in some way, with an autoimmune condition with a physical condition that we haven’t been able to do the things we wanted to do. So I want to talk about some strategies that have helped me incorporating movement into my life and making it a form of self care making it something that I want to do regularly that I enjoy doing. And I do want to say that I am not a weight loss coach, I am not here to hold you accountable this shedding pounds and appalling like uprooting your whole life. And I don’t think that’s bad. I think there is a place for that. And I think it can change lives. It just hasn’t been my experience or my approach. And some women even choose not to work with me, because that’s not my approach. I do things sustainably. Because over the years of working on this, I find that small things matter. I have looked for ways to integrate movement into my life. And sometimes that means, at this point blocking up 40 minutes for exercise in the shower three times a week. It’s given me also less pressure so that I can try new things. I don’t have to buy into all or nothing thinking I can really bring my mindset along for the ride and pay attention to how I’m motivating myself. And I think it was also a factor of the community I was in at the time I wanted to start this there was no consistent gym classes. There was no gym with childcare, as a stay at home mom with a husband working shift work like things happen in my living room or going for a walk with kids crawling around me at weird times and movement happened for me in ways that weren’t considered a quote unquote workout, but it was still movement. So let’s get started. Let’s start with a list of ways that you can move more. Observe what you’re already doing, and ask where you could add it in. Another strategy is to think about ways it would be fun, you don’t have to go to the gym and toil and do things you don’t think are fun, go for a hike, have a dance party. I like YouTube videos that are quick and change up a lot. Have it stuck here. I would listen to podcasts while I jog. Or if I’m on the treadmill at home, which I bought for $30 on marketplace by the way, you don’t need to spend a lot of money, I get to watch my favorite show on the iPad while I run. And don’t underestimate really good music to put music right in your ears. Something really good with a great beats per minute look up cardio or workout music because those beat beats per minute are usually aligned with you having your body move just a little bit faster and more consistently. And you don’t think about it, you’re just kind of moving to music. A great focus to start with can be sitting less. put a timer on during your day to remind you to get up to move around to I don’t know, do some squats or walk down the stairs and back up again. Get up move around, do some work standing just avoiding being sedentary can make a difference. When you are stressed What are you turning to can you add movement into this? For me, I think going for a walk is one of the like real good tools in my toolkit. It’s such a great way to help because for one you’re moving so that helps complete the stress cycle to go out for a walk. If you’re leaving your house, you’re probably leaving where all the stress is back with the people in your house. And you can really be separate from that you can calm down your nervous system. Intentional thinking can come back online. So I think a walk getting outside for a walk when you’re stressed. Whatever kind of movement you can bring into to help you complete that stress cycle. And even I just like to go for a 10 minute walk on my lunch break. We have more time than we let ourselves think we do. So if you are having to be back at your desk at 12 minutes, just get up right now and go for a walk for 10 minutes. Pay attention to the narrative you have around exercise in your body. For some women I work with, they don’t even want to go there. And they never address moving their bodies from a place of empowerment, because there’s just so much heaviness there. If it helps you write out your motivation on why you want to move more. Your reasons for wanting to do this are really going to determine the emotion you approach this from, which will change your whole experience. Remember, because we act based on how we feel, I personally find a lot of value in my Fitbit. If you’re someone who feels discouraged by seeing the data, this is not for you. But if you are someone who won’t take it personally, when their Fitbit says they’ve been very inactive in a day, then maybe this data can just be a little bit empowering. Because there are some days I can look at my data and I can say, oh, I should make time for a little bit more movement. And there are some days I can look at it and say, okay, I’m good, like, call it a day, put my feet up. It’s also really humbling if your kids have Fitbit or some kind of trackers. Because before I brought exercise into my regular week, sometimes my kids would triple me in steps and active minutes was very humbling. And finally, I want to leave you with this one, which is be consistent even with something small, whether it’s 10, counter push ups in a day 10 squats while you make dinner, or starting to park a block away and walk into work each day are the kids to school. Consistency matters. Consistency, consistency, is what helps you shift your lifestyle, develop new habits, it helps you shift your identity around who you are and what you can do. It helps you develop self trust. And it helps you just bring attention to the whole mindset you’re showing up with things with consistency matters. And you really ultimately have to believe that this is worth that it is going to make a difference in your life. That’s really important just to have that long range motivation. Oh, I’ll leave you with one extra bonus final strategy because thinking of this long term motivation. One thing that has helped me is to consider myself 20 years from now and 40 years from now, and what she would thank me for and when I’ve taken time to do that, and it wasn’t like fitness based or like exercise based at all when I’ve just taken time to think what would 60 year old Shawna or 80 year old Shawna be happy with me for? It was movement, it was getting strong, it was being stronger. So consider long term what your future self would thank you for doing today. Start small, pay attention to what you’re thinking about it, and just show up for yourself with compassion and consistency. All right, friends, I know we went a little bit longer today. I really hope there was something of value to you in this one. This was one of the more meaningful topics for me to cover because I feel like Exercise and Movement has changed my whole relationship to my body and really changed how I feel. I do it because I never regret it. I exercise because I never regret it. And I don’t say that to be like cliche and like this is the only solution for your whole life. But that’s just been my experience from someone who hated exercise who would never go to set foot in the gym who would consider yourself totally on athletic that I’ve just experienced that I feel better when I do it. Unfortunately the data is out there to say you’re gonna feel better if you keep doing it. So I hope you found some encouragement in bring any questions and ideas you have to Instagram at simple on purpose dossier, or email me anytime through the simple Saturday’s email. Alright friends, have a great week.

The post 184. Movement as self-care (exercise for wellbeing, not weight loss) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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I am a decades-long nightowl, but it doesn’t always serve me well in motherhood. Some years ago I made ‘sleep’ my health goal (not becoming a morning person, but simply heading to bed earlier). I want to share the benefits of sleep and strategies that can help you give up that nightowl life.

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I may earn a commission, at no cost to you.

In this episode I talk about:

• How sleep was handled in our upbringing
• How technology impacts our experience of motherhood
• The cultural expectations for sleep and self-care as it pertains to moms
• How moms are trying to get self-care, in ways that it impacts their sleep
• The benefits of sleep
• Being a nightowl, the benefits and the costs
• Strategies to set a sleep goal
• Addressing the things that keep us up
• Strategies to make sleep easier
• Building up self-trust with yourself
• The need for rest
• Having more rest in your day and week

All the related links:* Grave’s disease (My Thyroid, My Frenemy {Grave’s Disease to Hypothyroid} * Reading books instead of social media (4 simple habits that make my momlife better) * Studies and information on the benefits of sleep: + the Sleep Foundation + Memory consolidation (Healthy Sleep, Harvard) + The role of sleep in emotional processing * Intentional phone habits episodes + worksheets + Feeling addicted to your phone + Setting intentional phone habits * Brain dump (blog post) * Magnesium drink powder to help you relax, and this one to help you sleep * Ashwaganda * Blue light blockers (the ones I use here) * Enable red tint on your phone (instructions here) * Greyscale your phone (instructions here) * Study on blue lights and circadian rhythms * Huberman Lab Toolkit for Sleep * Exercising for better sleep (John Hopkins Medicine) * Building self-trust with yourself (podcast episode) * Getting a day of rest, as a mom (podcast episode) * Church and chill day (family rhythms)

Full transcript (unedited)0:08
Hey friends, it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counselor from simple on purpose.ca. And I’m excited for what we’re going to talk about today we’re going to talk about the topic of rest. We’re continuing on with the series on meeting your needs. In the last episode, we talked about nourishment. And I told you, I was going to continue on sharing these basic needs, we have these basic actions of self care. And I don’t want to tell you what to do. But I want to share my journey with it. And with each topic, I want to address the culture that impacts how we relate to this basic need, and how I’ve changed my own mindsets about it over the years. Additionally, the strategies that have helped me with this basic need that have helped me to take better care of myself. Today we’re going to talk about sleep and I want to share with you how I went from what I see myself as a night owl. A morning tragedy. tragedy is a good word for it. And someone who never really intentionally rested in a week. And I think I’ve really become someone now who loves an early night. I love a good tuck in. I’m not a morning tragedy, maybe I’ve downgraded but maybe a morning bumbler would be a better, I’m still not awesome in the mornings. And I think I am someone who prioritizes rest in the week. And you maybe can feel that I’m painting a picture of how I used to be this night owl. I have been a night owl since I can remember. I was a teenager with insomnia. That’s how I would have labeled myself. I just adopted that mold of being a night owl. And that reputation of just being a miserable human being upon the waking hours. If you ask my little sister, she’ll tell you, the many glares and snares that her otherwise happy sister would dish out to the whole family at seven in the morning like these innocent bystanders.

1:59
Just getting my wrath, my morning wrath. And as a teenager, I can really remember laying in my bed in the dark stressing about it. Sometimes just listening to the staticky am radio wondering what other people do to fall asleep. I at one point I even was prescribed sleeping pills, I thought, hey, maybe that could solve my problem. But instead, it just gave me nightmares. And it made sleep even harder.

2:24
I can look back on the version of me in my late teens my early adulthood. And I can clearly see the symptoms of Graves disease, Graves disease, which I would be diagnosed with around age 27. But with most people with autoimmune diseases, we’re the sum of our symptoms. And we’re going to a doctor with these individual symptoms. And they’re treating individual symptoms and setting instead of putting that puzzle together and treating the actual problem.

2:52
And the culture that I grew up in, I’m talking about how our culture influences how we’re meeting our needs. I would look around and see that my parents stayed up a lot to no one was really saying, hey, get to bed or no one was getting to bed themselves. My mom wouldn’t be on the computer or folding laundry and watching recorded episodes of all my children. Remember that soap? She had it all on those VHS and I thought Oh, it’s okay. Like people stay up late, everyone seems to figure it out. And I had evidence to say that that was true, because I feel like I really did figure it out. It wasn’t a big problem. You know, I had to stay up late in college to do homework. And as a young adult, you’re staying up late with friends. I mean, sure, the world is built for morning people, but I could just live off coffee, I could skip a day I could figure it all out. And it really wasn’t until I became a mum that how I managed to sleep was creating a problem for me. On one hand, of course, there’s a lot less sleep in general. And mums spend a lot of energy wondering how everybody can get more sleep. And then on the other hand, when you don’t sleep well, you don’t act well. And that was very evident for me in my most tired days of motherhood.

4:02
I feel like when we’re talking about culture, it’s also worth talking about technology, because it impacts our current experience of motherhood. And I had my first two kids in 2011 and 2012. And I would spend my nights nursing and scrolling Pinterest or back then what the original version of Instagram was. Remember that like that real cozy, connected version of Instagram, that raw that genuine photos in the moment. And I was also listening to podcasts on productivity and blogging because that was something that I was wanting to do. And from everything I was reading from everything I was hearing, I put together this rule that in order to maximize my personal potential as a mum, I had to become a morning person. In the concept of being a morning person, I plan to do a whole separate podcast on that. But what I think is important to consider, especially for moms, is the cultural expectation that if a mom needs some time to herself, she should get up at 530 anymore.

5:00
Honey, get in her exercise, drink this smoothie journal, her emotions or whatever, and get herself ready for the day. This is society solution to self care for moms. And I’m not going to knock it because I have friends who do this. I have clients who do this, I know women who do this, and they actually get a lot of value out of it to them. That’s a great, like a great morning a great experience for them. To them, it’s a solution for self care. But you know what my solution to self care was for years, it was staying up late, staying up watching trashy TV, eating the most delicious hits of crunchy chips of dopamine, scrolling through social media without guilt that my kids are seeing me stare at a screen, texting all my mom besties probably doing a chore we that I didn’t get around to all day. And then I hit the bed, maybe scroll some more. And in those last quiet moments, my brain would just get flooded with all of the anxiety, of all of the things all that mental load that I was just carrying around like a brain full of mental clutter all day long. And then what happens when we wake up Instant Regret should have gone to bed sooner, maybe even some shame that I haven’t figured out a better morning routine. And the promise that I’ll go to bed early tonight, a promise that I’m going to break.

6:18
It was about 2019 when I was setting goals for myself for the year. And when I got to the health category, I decided that sleep was going to be my focus. And a big part of this I’ve shared this before is how watching my mom deal with early onset dementia really brought me face to face with my own health, I was paying attention to my health. Because after all these things are hereditary. So I have that fear and that urgency driving me and I was at a place especially years ago, reading articles listening to many doctors about the risk factors for them for dementia. And all of them sounded like the basics of self care, diet, movement and sleep. And so in 2019, when I got to that health card category, I said sleep is going to be my focus. But I was going to approach this all differently.

7:03
What was different for me was I wasn’t going to make it about how early I got up, I was going to focus on the night time on the getting to sleep. Because for years, I shamed myself for not being a morning person, I felt like this sub optimal human, I lacked discipline, I lacked motivation. I was a weak human who lacked the basic skills of waking up at 630. Like all of those very productive, shiny, happy people in the world. This is a topic I would get coaching on over the years, I would try hacks, I would set goals like get up and work out at 6am when at the time, I didn’t like working out and like sure didn’t like getting up at 6am. So I had set all these goals. And now I was going to set it in a different way I was going to approach this differently, and do the work of being a well rested human instead of trying to be a morning person.

7:54
So I started to read a lot about sleep. Like I mentioned, I was listening to advice and opinions of experts. And part of it was to understand that this is something that’s going to help me mostly I wanted to really increase my motivation, this was actually very important to me to increase my motivation for going to sleep earlier. Because I really needed the benefits to outweigh the cost. Simply because of what I had to give up. Not being a night owl anymore would cost me something, it would cost me those wonderful like three hours of indulgent nonsense, where I could unwind and have the things that I looked forward to all day long. So I had to really pay attention to what the benefits of sleep are going to be for me in my life. And I will say this, that when I set this goal, I was out of the baby and toddler stage, which means my sleep could mainly be dictated by me and not semi nocturnal children who are taking turns getting up every night. I mean, it’s also still worth me saying though, that my kids still wake me up. Sometimes they have nightmares, they can’t sleep, they’re not feeling good. That hasn’t really gone away.

9:00
Anyways, let’s talk about how it feels to get more sleep. So if you are in a stage of your life where you feel like this is doable, and you want to motivate yourself to head to bed earlier, you want to move away from that mom rebellion party to come in and start tucking yourself in earlier than I’m going to tell you some of the benefits that I’ve learned about sleep that helped motivate me that feel like it’s going to be a bigger benefit than a cost for me to go to bed early. So I’m going to share some studies and research I’ve came across I’ll make sure to link this all in the show notes as well.

9:34
Getting good sleeps getting your like seven to eight hours, you know the jury’s even out on what the ideal number is really. But the amount of sleep that feels good for you. Getting sleep is good for your brain. And it kind of cleans up your brain in a way. It’s called memory consolidation. And I like to think of it because I’m a little bit nerdy this way. It’s like defragging the C drive. defragging the disk drive. If you have Windows

10:00
It takes all of these like broken up scattered files, and it sorts them in order, and it cleans out all of the junk it doesn’t need. So that’s what is happening in our brains. All the memories information from the day, it’s being consolidated, what’s being kept in, the rest is deleted. And you need sleep to do this. Crazy, right. And so when they talk about the risk factors of Alzheimer’s and dementia, this is one of the big things that they’re pointing to. So this is this information is a really big motivator for me brain health. If I want to ensure that I’m keeping my brain healthy, and sleep is a simple way to do it, kind of a portraying that. Another really interesting benefit I’ve come across is that it helps us process emotions, and recover from emotional experiences, which takes some pressure off, you don’t have to figure out all of your feelings right now. Because your brain is going to be doing some of this for you while you sleep. We know we feel better when we have a good sleep. And even the advice sleeping on it can be really actually scientifically true and beneficial.

11:02
And feeling better is just worth paying attention to look how you handle your daily life, from a little bit of sleep to a good sleep. I can remember a day a while ago now. And I felt so good. Like to the point where I was kind of getting curious that this isn’t normal to feel this good. And I open up my Fitbit data and for whatever reason, I was just looking at it. And I realized it had been a long time since I had a really good sleep. And I just had a really good sleep that night. It was that simple. I was like what hack did I come across in my life, it was sleep.

11:37
A lack of sleep slows down our reflexes, our reflexes, reflexes, our reaction time, we’re more irritable, we feel tired, in which is just an uncomfortable feeling right to feel tired. We feel under resourced, we make poor decisions. We have weaker willpower and discipline, and melatonin and cortisol. So the sleep hormone and the stress hormones, they’re interconnected. We really can’t underestimate how much sleep is impacting our mood and our stress in our daily life. And you know, I mentioned melatonin and cortisol, all of the hormones in our body are doing this dance. Sleep is also helping us regulate blood sugar levels, it’s helping us regulate our appetite. Sleep is a time for our muscles to repair to clean out those dead cells. So it’s helping our our muscles actually grow, sleep helps strengthen us, it also helps our immune system getting a lot of rest is what we’re told when we need to recover. And we often don’t listen. But our body is releasing cytokines during sleep, which help our body fight infection.

12:38
I don’t know about you, but I look at this list like muscles and feeling better and brain health and regulating things like stress hormones, and appetite hormones. And I think we’re actually trying to solve a lot of these problems in our day with protein powders, green juices, more coffee, calming strategies, the next feel good thing, when sleep could actually help solve a lot of it for us. So those are the benefits of sleep in my books in when you do it, you feel it, you feel that it’s true. Now I want to move on to strategies that I have found helpful for me if this gives you ideas, great, try them out. The first one that is underlooked. But very important is to address what you are giving up. When you go to bed earlier, what are you giving up and start to explore that a bit. You might be giving up what feels like the funnest part of your day, or the time to do chores that you’ve been putting off all day. And you want that sense of accomplishment or you just want to get it done. Or you might be giving up connection time with your partner. And maybe you don’t want to give those things up. That’s fine just on that. Or maybe you look at that list and think like I don’t want to give it all up. But maybe I could be a bit more flexible. Maybe it’s not an all or nothing situation. Look at your list of what you would be giving up if you went to bed earlier and ask yourself, what are other ways I can get what I’m looking for maybe throughout the day, maybe throughout the week. And then when you’re ready set a simple goal. I started with a very simple goal to be sleeping by 11 and up at seven. Really a lot of the science says we should try to stick to the same sleep and wake time all of the time. So making small adjustments like 15 minutes or half an hour. And gradually increasing those adjustments over time can help us lift our sleep schedules.

14:32
Some strategies for meeting your goal that have worked for me is first of all, like I said, Knowing your motivation and why is it important to you keep listening to podcasts about sleep, keep reading about sleep and I mean once you start a star gonna show up in the algorithm so it’s going to be doing the work for you but like keep up on motivation on why you want to be doing this. Learn what keeps you up at night and and start addressing those things. For many of us it can be caffeine, paying attention to how we

15:00
You are consuming caffeine, maybe reducing intake to earlier in the day. Our phones keep us up not just the blue light, but the addictive nature of scrolling. You may have heard me mention years ago, I switched to no more phones at night, I’m only going to read books and I was like reading on a Kobo or whatever. And that really helped me a ton. It helped me get to bed earlier. But there’s still times that I just kind of want to catch up on social media, I haven’t done it all day. So I do scroll at night set a limit for yourself.

15:29
I’m also going to link the phone habits episodes, there’s some worksheets that you can work through if you want to set some intentional phone habits.

15:37
If you are on your phone, and you’re like I’m scrolling way too much try to switch to something more boring. I like to do a crossword puzzle, set your phone to grayscale, set it to have a red tint. I’m going to link a link in the show notes about that about setting up a red tint on your phone. And I’ll talk about why it’s important in a second. And another thing that can keep us up is mental anxiety.

15:58
Like I mentioned, we’re finally still we’re finally quiet. And our brain steps up on the stage. And it’s like, Hey, I’ve been trying to talk to you all day long, we have all of these things we need to stress about. And this happens to us at night. So a common tool is a brain dump before bed. And this is really writing out all of that mental chatter in your head all of the To Do lists in the errands that feel like they are just cluttering up your head. This is decluttering your brain. So give yourself like three minutes, set a three minute timer, a two minute timer, and just write down some lists on paper or saved into your notes app, just give it somewhere to live. And I’ll link it some more information on brain dumps in the show notes because those are one of my most favorite tools for reducing anxiety.

16:44
And so we’re focusing on reducing the things that keep us up. And now let’s talk about the things that help us sleep better. Most of us feel like we can’t relax at the end of the night. What helps you actually relax and most of us will turn to alcohol. And that can help us fall asleep quickly. But there’s more science showing that it might help us fall asleep quickly but it’s not actually giving you a well rested sleep through the whole night. Once it wears off, you actually have a poor sleep for the rest of the night.

17:11
Something that helps me relax that I’ve started enjoying is magnesium and I was taught this by our naturopath that my family goes to the benefits of ashwagandha and magnesium. And even my kids will have magnesium at the end of the night and I’m going to link what we use in the show notes. So we just have like a little hot magnesium drink. Try to make it cozy. I mean tea who wants to drink tea and if you’re going to be up go to the bathroom all night. Tea does not taste that good. I’m sorry, guys. Unless unless it’s coffee. I don’t want it in my cup.

17:44
So biased I feel like to last so I think tea is Garbage Water. Sorry you can unfollow but can we still be friends if I don’t like tea. Another thing that can really help relax is a hot bath. I mean water therapy. One of my favorite things to do at the end of the night is a hot bath and I just put the iPad on the stool in the bathroom and I watch a show that just I like to watch it’s kind of indulgent. Another thing that can help you sleep better is to consider your light sources. And I’m talking about the type of light that we’re getting in our eyeballs.

18:18
You may have seen people around the internet’s talking about blue light blockers blue light blocking glasses. And one study that I came across a blue light is currently considered to have the strongest effect in synchronizing human circadian rhythms. Exposure to low levels of blue light as well as bright light during night or before bedtime may disrupt the circadian rhythm with severe general health implications. I’ll link that study in the show notes. So that circadian circadian rhythm is that our daily rhythm of our body where it’s secreting various hormones that control things like sleep and digestion, and light impacts that our bodies are made to sync up with the natural light of the world. So we have that morning light and that evening light where it’s more yellow or red and broad daylight is more blue and we’re very awake in broad daylight generally speaking, however, we’re living now in a world where we’re on screens all day, we move from one screen to the next constantly through our day and end our days on a screen. And that blue light is telling our bodies what to do what our circadian circadian rhythm should be. So when we are getting so much blue light in our day, without the triggers of the properly timed red and yellow hue lights, our body’s going to struggle to set circadian circadian rhythms. So blue light blocking glasses is one option. Getting natural light in the morning is another great option. I’m going to link Huberman lab with his toolkit for sleep. And Huberman Lab is a really great researcher Dr. Haberman, his podcasts are crazy long but he is just full of the most current research and tips and I’m going to make sure to link him in the show notes because he’s

20:00
been a big source of information for me as I’ve looked for all of the benefits and strategies for sleep. And finally, I hate to say, guys, but the science is out there that exercise increases the amount of deep sleep we get in the night. I mean, of course it does, right. We’re all hearing the benefits of exercise. So that’s going to be a whole other podcast. So let’s do one goal at a time. If sleep is something that you are really wanting to work on, the ultimate issue is building self trust. It means showing up for yourself, keeping your own promises to yourself, and being someone who does what they say they will do for you. I have a whole episode on this in the show notes. Of course, I’m gonna link it, the reality is we’re very good at showing up for others. If we have an obligation in the next morning with a person, we most likely will ensure we get to bed at a good time.

20:53
But what can really be most beneficial for us is doing this for ourselves as well. Over the years I’ve worked on going to bed early for me, because it’s what I want. Because I want to feel well rested, I want to feel like I’m doing this really seemingly simple thing that can impact not just tomorrow, but from what I’m reading the next decades of my life.

21:14
And as we wrap up, I wanted to quickly touch on the notion of rest, I have an episode on this that I’m going to link so I’m not going to go too much in depth. What I’ve come to understand is that we are not designed to be in a constant state of motion, and exhaustion. We are designed for periods activity and periods of rest. We need that rest to restore us for activity. I hate to hear women who are like I do all these things, and then I burn out and then I feel like I just am doing it all wrong. We often just aren’t giving ourselves enough rest within smaller doses in our life. Some of us think we need to earn rest, which is a whole other conversation, isn’t it earn rest. Many of us don’t want to rest because it means giving up that constant productivity, or the constant distractions that we are just vibing on. And some of us don’t know how to truly rest. We’re accepting cheap substitutes. Like, I’m going to just spend 20 minutes on the couch scrolling on my phone, and we’re calling it rest. We are not actually refreshed, refreshed from that that is not restful. So I do encourage you to try more periods of true rest in your day and in your week. The episode that I did in the past was on taking a day of rest as a mum.

22:28
It’s hard to do as a mom, isn’t it? Like how do we manage all the people in the chores and still feel like we’re taking a day of rest. And for me this looks like a Sunday for me. I call it church and chill. And I really ultimately try to be off my phone. The kids can watch TV, we can watch TV I am going to read that is my whole goal on a Sunday is to sit somewhere cozy, drink a coffee and read and just unhook myself from the busyness and the relentlessness of inner expectations, right. It’s almost like a personal internal thing where I am letting go of putting all that pressure on myself for the day. So go check that out, check out the show notes. They’re always full of as many links as I can think of that are related to the topic. And we’re going to carry on this conversation we’re going to keep talking about our basic needs. I’m going to talk about movement and connection. And like I mentioned that one getting dressed. It’s a really unique one that’s fulfilling some interesting needs for us. I would love to hear from you. As always guys. I love to hear back from you. I love this to be a conversation two sided. So please tag me on Instagram. If you are listening to this at simple on purpose.ca. Take me let me know what you’ve liked. or message me on Instagram at simple on purpose.ca. And if you’re part of this simple Saturday’s email, that’s the email that comes out twice a month. And it’s kind of like a behind the scenes, extra tips, extra insights, some links from the archives some fun stuff. If you’re on that email, you can also always hit reply and email me back there. Alright friends, have a great day.

The post 183. Getting more sleep as a mom (giving up the nightowl life) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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If you feel stressed out and overwhelmed, consider how you meet your basic needs – especially how you feed yourself well and often. In this episode, I share my journey to ensure I am nourishing myself, as a busy mom. Including 11 different strategies that I find help to make sure I am meeting this basic need.

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I may earn a commission, at no cost to you.

In this episode

• The culture we grow up in shapes how we feed ourselves
• The modern cultural expectations for moms and food
• Hyperfixation on health
• Going gluten and dairy free, the whole30, heartburn
• How staying nourished helps us maintain our window of tolerance
• 11 strategies that have helped me ensure I feed myself well and often

All the fun links you might enjoy

The baby who always cried (our story with esophagitis)

Mindful eating for moms (Interview with Jessica Penner)

Teaching our kids a healthy relationship with food (+ our own food guilt and body shame) with Andrea Heyman

Understanding how the window of tolerance impacts your stress in motherhood

What I ate during the whole30

11 things I learned from doing the whole30 diet challenge

A simple hack to make meal planning easy

Four simple habits that make my momlife easier (vegetables for breakfast)

Paying attention to how you feel (body and emotional awareness) – (the mind-body connection)

The almond mom (GMA article)

Sign up for the Simple Saturdays email (a fun email, twice a month)

Find me on Instagram

FULL TRANSCRIPT 0:10
Welcome to another episode of The Simple on purpose Podcast. I’m so happy you’re here. At simple on purpose, my aim is to help you simplify your home, your heart and your life so that you can show up for your life on purpose.

And today we’re going to be talking about a topic in the meeting your needs series, we’re actually going to talk about the topic that started the whole series. Because what happened was, I shared a story on Instagram about eating lunch, and how much we need to make sure that we as moms are eating real food, too. And there was a conversation on Instagram that came from that, and it made me realize there’s so much more I want to say.

So I laugh at myself, because I was going to do one simple episode on lunch. One simple podcast episode on lunch, and it turned into this series about meeting your needs, which really, it just might be a factor of the overwhelm, I feel when I come to do the podcast because I take it too far. I can’t do that, you know, seven minute quick episode, I feel like there’s just way too much to consider. I just want to talk about all the things.

So we’ve talked about in this series, meeting our needs, what we’ve learned to believe around meeting our needs. Working through the process of becoming aware, validating, and handling our approach to meeting our needs. We’ve talked about self care and self love, and looking at what our moms have taught us and what mums of other generations have experienced. And I let you know that as we were moving forward, I will be sharing my own stories with some of the basic needs that I have learned to meet in myself. So I’m going to be sharing one of those stories today. And it’s not to tell you how you should do it. This isn’t about telling you how and what to eat. But this can just be a story where there’s framework around how we can meet our needs and different approaches, and some ideas on how you might want to do that if this is a need, that you are focusing on in your own life.

So today we’re talking about feeding ourselves, or as I like to call it nourishing ourselves. And for me, food was a big crash course in realizing that I had physical needs I had to pay attention to there’s been a process as I’ve gone through the decades of motherhood, where I just realized how detached I have been from my body. And so realizing my physical needs was actually a challenge for me. And I think this is a really important subject to talk about as well, because for me, at least, it took me way too long to realize how much food impacted how I feel. And therefore how I acted. And you know, some days, I still need that reminder, like, Hey, girl, you’re hungry.

And as with any topic around meeting our needs, I think it helps to consider the culture that we grew up in, and the culture that we currently live in. And when I think about what I saw around food growing up, it was not a healthy version of feeding oneself. And part of that is just really the era that I grew up in it was the 80s and 80s baby. And convenience was really becoming this new novel thing. And as long as that label said low fat, or local people thought they were making healthy decisions.

So we had foods that came from cans and boxes and powders. They were frozen, they were fortified with fiber and nutrients they were made to make our lives easier. So our moms who are now going out into the workforce, they could have confidence that they’re feeding their families quickly and healthily.

One of the side effects of moms heading back to work in this era, which I’m not disparaging by any means is that the kids were home alone, feeding themselves and not downplaying that either. That’s a life skill. But I know for me as a kid, as a young teen in this era, I was opening up the cupboards for these convenient foods, and I was feeling up on packaged brownies, frozen pizzas. And sometimes I would get really culinary and I would heat up a tortilla with some salsa and melt cheese on top. And I felt like you know, little resident chef when I did that.

Of course, as a teenager. I didn’t realize it then. But how did I feel physically in those years of my life, I felt pretty crappy. As kids our parents are our models of living.

So when we consider how our own parents approached food, we might see the model that was handed down to us. I look at my dad and he has in still eats a diet that is mainly either fried foods or things coated in sugar. It’s just really a phenomenon. It’s a phenomenon, that he’s still upright and functioning. And and then I’ve looked at my mom and I’m pretty sure she lived off tea and toast. And I know I’ve shared some of her story in the past episodes about what our moms would say about self care and self love. And I look back at a woman who was just spread so thin with so many things that eating or at least eating what we now know are healthy foods. It wasn’t a priority, I think she really thought she was eating healthy. If there was yogurt that said lo cal and she was eating the whole wheat toast, she thought she was good. I think that was really a matter of doing the best with what you had in that in that time,

I look into how I handled food as a teen and early adult years on, I know, I didn’t eat enough again, like my mom not out of intention, for more of a lack of intention. I was eating what was easy, what was there what I liked, which wasn’t much, I also decided to be the world’s worst vegetarian. So I was also anemic, that to get iron shots, I really look back. And I see that I felt slow and tired, I was getting headaches all the time. I did not feel great, did not feel great.

I wouldn’t have ever reflected on what I learned about food growing up until I had kids on my own until I had a family to feed. And now I was face to face with everything I’d learned and adopted and was doing on autopilot into the modern culture that we live in now, where there’s a lot of judgment and rules around food and how moms should be feeding their kids.

And so as I brought my own beliefs and structures and foundations into this current culture, I was kind of angry. To contrast these two, I was kind of angry at what I had learned versus what every the science is telling us and we need to be doing. I was a little bit upset that no one all those years was making me these three healthy colorful meals a day or teaching me how to make foods or teaching me how food impacted my body. I was upset that I had lived years not eating well and was sad that it had impacted my body. And it impacted my whole approach to how I was eating now. And all of this anger, it wasn’t placed on my parents. It wasn’t really placed on anyone, I don’t think my parents were negligent. And we just really didn’t have the information we have now. But I think that that’s just a normal processing emotion to go through when you realize, oh, there is another way. And maybe the old way doesn’t actually work anymore. Maybe there’s a new way.

As I was reflecting on what I had learned, I also realized that I had developed some emotional eating. In my early years of motherhood. I found myself overwhelmed with motherhood stressed out. And when those kids went down for a nap time, it was like me my time. And I would just like to be energetically drawn to the pantry open up the door wasn’t even thinking, rummaging through it for whatever was probably chocolate. And that was just something I looked forward to it was a reward. It was something I could control. I was definitely doing it for how I would feel. And eventually it hit me oh,

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this is emotional eating. I had never understood it before because food was just something you had to do. If you want to hear more about that. Listen to the episode I did with Jessica Penner on mindful eating. I’ll link that in the show notes.

So I was holding up in my motherhood, all that I had learned about food growing up and what I had now. And what do you notice in the culture of food? Now what do you notice is the messaging that you get around food, in your own culture, whether it’s locally within your own peer groups, your own town, your own country, what do you notice? Because I think there can be a lot of shame and pressure really heaped onto moms to feed our families in a certain way. And food is something that comes up for many women that I work with, whether they want to start meal planning feel like they should start it, that it has to look a certain way, whether they want to eat healthy, or make sure their kids eat healthier, whether they want to lose weight, but they shouldn’t say they want to lose weight. And you know, none of these are inherently bad things. But they are a lot of rules that our culture has put on us that we feel pressured to adhere to.

Let’s also consider the culture that many of us grew up in as young women in in the 90s and early 2000s. The diet culture, our bodies are tied to our value as a person. So if we can control our food, we control our bodies. So in some weird way, food almost determines our value. Food is more than food to women of a certain age. And it can all just feel like a big swirl of confusion when we bring in everything we’ve learned the diet culture and this modern culture. And we’re wrestling with how to be healthy and relaxed with food with our kids without handing down all the rules and the shame and the bad habits even that we worked really hard in our own lives to avoid.

So we are wrestling this modern food culture around us. And we can see it in the Pinterest boards in the stock pictures of women smiling into their salads in the bento boxes on Instagram. None of these are inherently bad things, but I think we start to formulate the messages from all of this that moms should batch cook their lunch should be colorful salads and Mason jars like that’s what a mom should eat. Mom should eat paleo or keto or gluten free or vegan. Moms should skip breakfast and have a green juice. Moms should make sure they’re packing their kids colorful lunches, feeding their kids a variety of foods that they should brought in their kids palates. Mums should meal plans and price match and buy organic moms should make sure that the family is always having meals up fresh produce and healthy protein organic foods. And make sure to model all these healthy eating habits for your kid. So it isn’t necessarily the diet culture like we had in the 90s. But it can be this hyper focus on health, that can feel both necessary. I mean, science tells us a lot about how important food is. But it can also feel suffocating and overwhelming and confusing.

And there’s just so many different ways to make sure we’re doing the right thing. At its most extreme, I came across a term for it at its most extreme, there’s a term called almond mom, which is a term for a mom who hands down unhealthy beliefs around food or disordered eating onto their child, you know, the mom who says to eat less to just drink water, and they’re not really hungry, who’s actually not teaching their kid to listen to their body, and what their body wants, but almost to deny it and only feed it certain things at certain times in certain ways.

And it’s just so hard, right? We’re just learning how to balance everything coming at us. And then we have to think about how we’re doing it for ourselves. And we’re just so busy, that it’s really hard to give this much attention. And this is how I felt. Anyways, it was just really hard for my attention to be drawn inward to how I was feeding myself as a mom, I’m going to share a few experiences I had that really started to grow my awareness around food, because it is something that genuinely happened over years and years. I think the first intro into it was having my first baby and starting to research how to feed him. And I really wanted to do it the right way, of course. So I was reading a lot about natural homemade foods I was spending astronomical amounts on avocado was like just blowing the budget on avocados. I was from that I was researching how to actually make dinners of real foods so that we could eat together all these healthy foods.

And that gave me another realization that oh, there’s so many skills and approaches to eating and cooking for people that I never had learned about. Around that same time, I was part of a really early multilevel marketing program that actually had a good teaching around low glycemic foods that was a real core foundation of their approach was to eat low glycemic. So I started to use that approach. And that was actually a helpful framework that brought some freedom to me in how I was approaching food.

And then our second baby came along and she had reflux. So one of the solutions we tried was to go gluten and dairy free. And that was a big eye opener for me. I suddenly was struck with how we were eating so much on autopilot so much by default, and how much energy and planning and intention It was now taking me to make sure we were eating all the things that she needed to eat without the gluten and dairy being an option for us. A few years later, I would do the whole 30 Do you remember the whole 30 No one really talks about it anymore. But that was eating for 30 days, eating pretty much just vegetables, meat, fruit, oil and nuts. So eliminating gluten, dairy, I think beans were eliminated sugars sois eliminating a lot of stuff. And in that process that was a hard month, I’ll share a link about that in the show notes of them the experience I had.

But from that I was able to actually wean myself off off of my daily waffles, which had become something I was eating like two times a day, I was making all these waffles all the time. And just living off waffles Oh my gosh. And I also was able to really pay attention to the mindless snacking that I had started doing. And I was also trying new foods, which was a really interesting experience because I had realized I really narrow down my palate. And so trying new foods really pushed me out of my comfort zone. And to make those part of my routine and make them easy. That was a really helpful lesson.

And then moving on from that I had an experience where I was having chronic heartburn debilitating heartburn, I could barely eat anything. For for almost a year I was having this heartburn and what I had learned going through different doctors and trying different medications with set I had given myself an ulcer, from having so much Advil. I was taking Advil every day for headaches. And the interesting thing is once I cut out gluten from my diet up just along the process for whatever reason I don’t even remember it was probably because I read that it would help with my thyroid autoimmune condition. My headaches had stopped, but the damage was done. So now I had to suffer with healing this ulcer and bringing back foods into my life. But I also had this really big fear about everything I was eating and if it was gonna give me heartburn and how it was going to make me feel and that was a really hard time for me to be eating, I

15:01
just was skeptical of every food. And I talk more about that, in an episode I have done on the mind body connection, I’ll make sure to link that in the show notes. It’s a pretty old one. So it’s in the archives, you might not have come across it.

Ultimately, I think I was really learning the importance of feeding myself through the awareness of how food was making me feel. There were a lot of years where I was living off protein bars and coffee for a lot of the days and motherhood. I can remember one evening, and I was at the side of the tub and the kids were in the tub. And I was just so cranky, so stressed out.

And it hit me kind of like someone put a sign up in front of my space that said, You are hungry. And I was like, Oh, I’m hungry. And it hit me that I’m cranky, because I’m hungry. And I’m hungry. Because I haven’t eaten anything that really nourishes me, I had probably gone through dinner and just eaten like some random noodles and whatever, like scraps were on the kid’s plates or whatever, or didn’t even sit down to eat fully. And this is why I talk about how meeting our needs really helps us have more capacity, because this aha moment for me was pointing something out. It’s not that my kids were horrible, or that I was a bad mom who couldn’t handle bath times. There is stress in my body, but it wasn’t necessarily from them. Or for me it was from well, it is from me, I’m hungry. My body felt under resourced and was trying to get my attention. That was a big wake up call for me.

So you know, along with the other work I was doing, because what is a mom, if not a chronic self help journey in cute boots, reading all the self help books. And I’m going to add one more thing into my life. I started a practice. And this practice was checking in with myself. So I was now checking in with myself more often throughout the day.

And asking myself this question, what do I need right now. Because somewhere along the line, I stopped listening, I stopped listening to what I needed. I just ate more protein bars, had another coffee and carried on and it was not working. I was not feeling well.

I thought I could live off coffee because that’s what I see other moms on Instagram doing. They’re talking about, oh, today’s just coffee and doughnuts. Well, if it works for them, it could work for me, but I am not other moms on Instagram. And my body cannot handle that amount of caffeine, at least not without a rebellion of anxiety and stomach pain.

I thought I could just eat how I liked how I always have without thought. But then again, my body, it was asking for new ways. And I wasn’t paying attention to all the signs it was giving me along the way. And all of this impacted who I was as a mom, it impacted my capacity to feel like I could handle things. on a physical level, I felt under resourced, and like I was being given the wrong fuel for the job.

So feeling stressed out was really easy because I did not feel the capacity to deal with things. I started to think a lot about the word nourishment. And I was getting really deep in my thoughts about how for us as moms, we really have this role of nourishment of nourishing the growth of another human being in metaphorical and physical ways. But that we also have to Mother ourselves in ways that our own mothers couldn’t. This is the journey of being a woman is learning how to Mother yourself. And part of that is nourishing ourselves.

When I look over the years, I think I have really gone from one end of the spectrum to the other like eating on autopilot all the carbs, all the easy things to being hyper fixated on the healthiest options, the right options, trying to heal my body or change my thyroid autoimmune condition to the latest fad, like what’s going to solve my problem. I feel like now I’m at a point where I can land in the middle. And then you know, I probably lean more towards the hyper healthy side. Because I do believe that it is important understand that food can be a foundation, it can be a medicine, but also food can also just be fun. And sometimes it can just be convenient.

I want to wrap up with 10 shifts that have helped me make sure I nourish myself. So these are 10 ideas for you if you’re looking for ways to nourish yourself and some of them might be for you. And you know some of them you might want to try. The first one is eating vegetables for breakfast. So I grew up on the carbs, sugary breakfast kind of mentality and that’s what I craved every morning. That’s what I thought I needed this what I thought my body needed. As I went through the whole 30 though I couldn’t eat those things. So I learned how to eat vegetables for breakfast. And this is now one of those habits that I’m so grateful I have established I’m going to link a post in the show notes about I think it’s like four habits that have changed my life or four simple things, whatever but go check that out in the show notes if you want to hear more about vegetables for breakfast.

The next one is meal planning which I just started early out of convenience out of logistics. You may have heard me share that I had my two kids 16 months apart so the idea of taking them both to the grocery store. It kind of paralyzed me. I did not want to go grocery shopping all the time with the is too small kids. So if I could do it like once a week and get it done meal planning was how I was going to do that. Actually, today, me and my bestie, we were out in town. And we started joking how back in the day when the kids were that small, we used to park beside each other at the grocery store. If we like had to get something during the week, we’d meet at the grocery store parked by the parking lot, one of us would run in the other one would stand between the cars and just watch the babies. And then we’d come out and swap like the ultimate village right there. Like get yourself a mom friend who will stand at your car in the grocery store parking lot.

The other thing that kind of goes with meal planning is for me, I make myself a snack plan. So knowing what I have on hand and just can’t even mentally listing some ideas for me. Like I said, I’m gluten free. So just knowing what is there on hand, and preparing for it having these snacks that I like to go to Ready. So I can just reach for like waffles or pretzels or, you know, a bagel I would like to. I mean, I know there’s gluten free options, but they’re super expensive and not always that great for you. So having snacks on hand, whatever restrictions you need to meet.

limiting my coffee was really important for me, unfortunately, man, it’s so sad. I just love coffee so much. But I know I have to limit it or drink like half caffeinated.

Another strategy that’s helped is less nighttime snacking. So your girl really loves an old fashioned and a bowl of ketchup chips at the end of the night. Let’s let that just be said that there’s reasons why I don’t do that anymore. It was not going to be a good long term plan for my life. So less nighttime snacking, and I’m going to talk about going to bed earlier too as well. in later episodes, I’m going to talk about sleep. That’s one thing that can really help curb nighttime snacking, just go to bed, then you won’t eat.

Another thing that helped. And I felt like I had to get to a point where I didn’t have a lot of mental drama in my mind about will this food give me heartburn. But I really started to pay attention to how things make me feel when I eat or drink this. I feel this and just starting to pay attention to understand not how I expect it will make me feel but how it actually makes me feel. And then I can make the decision on how I want to adjust that because there is a cost benefit, right? Like I need to know how things are going to make me feel if ice cream makes me feel this way. Do I want to pay that cost?

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Is this worth it to me.

Another strategy is I try not to shortchange myself, if I eat something fast or insufficient in the day, I really tried to address that sooner than later. Rather than somehow telling myself it’s a good replacement, or it will actually work.

I also make lunch a priority, I try to have leftovers on hand. And in that situation where I don’t have leftovers. I know there’s some go twos that I can usually make with what I have in the house, just kind of the staples we naturally have. Usually it’s tacos in a salad, I usually have things for tacos in the south, melting cheese on things. I’m still doing it all these years later. But with salad,

I’ve really learned that approaching food from enjoyment rather than frustration can be a lot more freeing. Like I said, I part of me felt upset about the culture of food that I learned in my upbringing. And you know what, there’s always going to be a part of me that feels like, if my mom knew then what we know now about food, she might not have gotten dementia, or at least not so early in life. So for a long time, there was a bit of a rebellious side to me where I was approaching food from frustration and fear of not wanting her health legacy, which is a lot of pressure to put on food to put on yourself every day in every meal, to be making that decision out of fear and frustration. So learning to really let that go and enjoy what food has to offer me.

Finally, something that’s really helped is I sit and eat meals, and my kids are older now. So this is genuinely easier. I make it a point to sit in eat, what do they say rest and digest? It does make a difference. And they know it can be really easy when you have younger kids for moms to not really question this we get up we start running around, we’re getting people more of this or more of that we’re cleaning up the mess they just made. There are some very hands on seasons when we’re feeding kids and trying to feed ourselves as well. So I just encourage you to keep in the back of my mind that you can start taking in the back of your mind, it’s in the back of my mind that you can start taking small steps to setting the boundaries within your family, on what others can expect from you when you are eating so that you can make sure you eat too.

All of this has been a journey to nourishing myself. And I was even going back in my Instagram over the years to to just look at the pictures, food because I was sharing a lot of pictures over the years of what I was eating and what I was thinking about. And when I was learning and having these different diet restrictions. It really hit me how many years this has been in progress. So I would say take your time with food. There’s a lot to unravel. There’s a lot to bring awareness As to there’s a lot to do. And it doesn’t have to look how everyone tells you it should look, you get to pay attention to your body to how different foods make you feel. And you get to take ownership of that and decide the decisions you want to make from that information.

And also, if you want to share a picture of you nourishing yourself, share that on Instagram, tag me in it, I would love to see, in future episodes, I’m going to be talking about sleep movement, and something that just hit me that was a big factor in me starting to take care of myself. And it doesn’t seem like it should matter. But it actually did and that is getting dressed. If you have a topic related to meeting your needs, who would like to hear I would love to hear share that with me.

And actually anything if anything that I’m saying is resonating with you if you have anything to say as part of this conversation, I would really love to hear from you on that. It helps me so much to hear back from you because really, it can feel one sided sometimes to share these episodes out into the internet and wonder where they landed. It’s like dropping a pebble and not hearing the plunk. So really, really touch base with me. message me on Instagram leave a comment on the blog, leave a show rating email me through simple Saturday’s email. Reach out to me I would love to continue the conversation. All right friends, have a great day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post 182. Nourishing yourself as a mom (11 strategies to help you feed yourself well + often) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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From becoming aware, to validation, to giving ourselves permission to disrupt the system – we have some steps that can help us in our process of Becoming Someone Who Takes Care of Themselves. I want to share with you how decluttering led me to assess how I was taking care of myself, and how I worked from my basic needs, in small steps to more personal needs.

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and take action I may be compensated at no additional cost to you.

In this episode I talk more about:

• Our basic needs
• The wheel of self care
• Self-care of ourselves vs caring for others
• The cultural rules of self-care for moms
• Owning our own narrative of motherhood
• The process of becoming someone who takes care of themselves: awareness, validation, permission, approach
• All or nothing thinking

Links you might like

1. Christmas hygge ideas + understanding how the window of tolerance impacts your stress in motherhood

First episode in the series 179. What are your needs and how are you meeting them?

Second episode in the series 180. Self-care and self-love, what would our mothers say?

The Joy of Less by Francine Jay

Small things matter 78. Small things that can change your whole life (the compound effect)

When Motherhood Can Change You but You Can’t Change Motherhood

When the Body Says No by Gabor Mate

Self care assessment

Enneagram Enneagram 101 (what is it and what are the nine types)

1. Are you TOO comfortable? And what is it costing you?

2. Why you aren’t thriving in motherhood (stress and surviving)

Sign up for Simple Saturdays Email

Talk to me on Instagram

The Wheel of Self Care, by Olga Phoenix

Full Transcript (unedited)

0:09
Hey friends, it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counselor from simpleonpurpose.ca. Welcome the simple on purpose podcast, we are continuing our series about meeting our needs in today I want to talk about becoming someone who takes care of themselves. In the last episode, I talked about how we can shift our approach to the things we call self love and self care. And when we are proactive with self care, then we can become better at creating and maintaining capacity, capacity for our lives and capacity matters. Capacity, having capacity, it helps us feel like we’re just able to handle our day. If you’ve heard talk about the window of tolerance, I think that’s a good example of capacity. When we are in our window of tolerance, we feel like we have capacity, I’ll make sure to link an episode on that where I’ve talked about that in the past. So when we are not meeting our needs, we have lowered capacity. Or maybe another way to say this is that meeting our needs increases our capacity. In the very first episode of this series, we talked about our relationship to our needs and how we learn from our upbringing, what’s acceptable, what’s not, what’s a burden, who meets our needs, how do we express them, whose needs Should we meet whose needs are more important, and so on. And then we also are living in this world where we hear a lot about self care and self love. But we’ve also have some handed down notions from our own mothers and the mothers in our lives. I shared my own story around that in the last episode. And so we’re all entering into this conversation with a bit of a different framework on what’s comfortable, what’s right, what’s acceptable when it comes to our needs as a women and moms. I have been asking around what do you consider your basic needs basic needs. And I see a general consensus that our basic needs are what we need to survive, food, sleep, shelter, water. And I’m going to be honest, I know some of us are not very good at three out of four. And I will tell you my very basic list, when I entered into this mindset of becoming someone who takes care of themselves, it did start with food, sleep, water and, and physical space, my home. I’ll talk about that a little bit more later on. But addressing the complacency of how I was taking care of my home, was really the first step to me addressing the complacency of how I was taking care of myself. And I would have ended my list of basic needs right there with those four things. But I have come to see how when I take care of those, then there’s other things that become available for me to take care of as well. And additionally, as I went through training for counseling, we had to write our own self care plans on how we were going to take care of ourselves through the program. And we had to also include it in our treatment plans with our clients, where we were considering how our clients could write up these self care plans and take care of the different parts of themselves. And what I’ve learned is that many mental health practitioners will use the wheel of wellness or the wheel of self care. And there’s a popular one, I’ll make sure to link it in the show notes by Olga Phoenix, she developed it for a trauma healing workbook, but it’s widely used, and it has these categories. It has physical, and that ranges from housing, medical care, taking time for appointments, massages, taking a walk psychological, where we are doing our self reflection, our therapy, if we need it, where we’re doing self expressive things like hobbies, and gardening, emotional where we are learning how to be in tune with our emotional selves, all the way up to practicing forgiveness. There’s spiritual, whether you are connecting through nature or self reflection or joining a spiritual community. There’s personal getting to know yourself what you like what you want out of life planning goals, that kind of thing. There’s also professional and that is how we show up in our work lives, whether it is having boundaries, and taking on different challenges to how we are handling our coworkers. So that kind of feels like a lot. Maybe as a moment feels like too much because, I mean, some of us aren’t even eating or sleeping properly. And then you add all of this plus all of the people. So if you feel an inner panic, or even an inner dismissal, I get that. And I want to just say this, don’t go into self care with this all or nothing thinking. There’s lots of ideas on different things we can pay attention to. And we don’t have to do everything. We don’t have to do all of the things in fact, start where you’re at little things matter. But I think this conversation also helps us acknowledge that we can really short ourselves when it comes to what we let pass a self care for us versus self care for others. And some of us might feel it’s noble or even necessary to care. We’re better for others than ourselves. Some of us don’t question it, some of us aren’t even aware of it. And as mums, we need to consider how we are reinforcing cultural definitions on what it looks like for mums to meet their needs. Do not let your culture tell you that having a shower is a nice break for you. I mean, sure, water therapy real thing. But don’t tell me that cleaning my body and washing, like oatmeal and you know, sweat off of my body is me time? No, it’s personal hygiene. Because if a shower is me time, well then what about that long, hot bubble bath? When your partner handles bedtimes? What will we say to moms then? Oh, what a luxury? Do you deserve that? Or don’t let people tell you that go into the grocery store? Alone? Oh, it’s a nice break for you. Do we say that to dads? I mean, of course, it’s easier without kids. But we still need groceries, we still need to feed people. It’s not like we take a jet to Italy and buy some pasture and tomatoes while we’re sipping on a cappuccino on an Italian patio. And then how about moms who go on a yoga retreat or any retreat of interest to her to them, while their kids are taken care of Safe at Home? Man, what do we think we think she must not really want to be around her kids. It’s a little selfish. Like, what it is a double standard again, for fathers. And I get it, I have been a stay at home mom for all of my kids, even now I only work during school hours. So I get that for some of us. Mum is the job. And we have a lot of feelings and definitions around how that should be. But it’s also a job that has been impacted by the cultural definitions around us of what a mum should be doing, how she should be acting, how she should be looking how she should be taking care of herself, how should I be taking care of others, when what actually should happen is that we should define that job for ourselves within our own family context. Because the reality is no one else is doing this job for us in additionally, it’s a job, we had no idea what it would look like when we signed up for it. I remember feeling so surprised at how angry I was in motherhood. I remember being so surprised at how a lack of sleep made me absolutely miserable. And I’m still surprised every season that comes along in parenting, I feel like there’s hard parts that I had no clue to expect. Or like I heard about them, but then I was in them. And it just felt so overwhelming. So I’ve learned that taking care of myself and all of this helps me go to battle so to speak, it helps me to feel resourced. It helps me to feel like I can take on the hard parts and show up for the awesome parts. And it also feels a little bit countercultural sometimes to set boundaries and take care of myself as well as my people. So as we talk, what’s important is for you to own your definition of what your needs are. What is your definition right now of what your needs are? And do you like it? Does it help you ultimately you get to own your own narrative here. I found it was really interesting to start hearing back from you guys, especially moms on this topic, because there’s a little bit of a theme of, I didn’t even know I was neglecting my own needs. Almost just a lack of awareness because we’re just living on autopilot. And this whole system of how we show up for ourselves and others, how we meet the needs of those around us. It’s gradually built. And I think that’s where this whole process has to start. When it comes to all caps, becoming someone who takes care of themselves. The first step, I think it starts with awareness. I’ve shared my own awareness. Many times when I decided to declutter, I just knew I wasn’t happy with my space. And I didn’t really give myself permission to do anything about it ever. Until I read a book about decluttering, the joy of less by Francine J. And I just mentioned earlier that seeing how complacent I was in my home, started to make me realize all of the areas of my life, I had become complacent. And I was becoming aware of the accumulation of what I didn’t like I was becoming aware of the aches in my body, the anxiety, my motherhood, the resentment in my marriage, and it was a wake up call to wanting to take control of my life. So awareness, becoming aware, sometimes it can be obvious, sometimes our needs are obvious. We know we’re hungry, we know we’re tired, we know we’re overwhelmed. We can rely on the signals that we are in a deficit to make us realize that we have a need there. It’s kind of like that low fuel alarm going off in your car. But other needs can be harder to identify. We’re just living with this discomfort and we’re not even realizing that we have a need that’s being unmet or met in unhealthy ways. For example, you might not realize that you’re lonely until you look through your screentime stats and you see that you’ve just spent way too much time scrolling the lives of other people just to get that sense of connection in your day. You might not realize that you accumulate stress all day long, until you’re turning at the end of the night to some hefty coping mechanisms.

10:09
For some of us, we’re just going through the motions of life putting out fires, that we aren’t aware of the deficits that are accumulating, until we get that wake up call, like a coping mechanism that has become a problem. Or a body that is just crying out for our attention. If you want to dig into that aspect of things I recommend when the body says no, by Gabe Rometty. Or we might have a wake up call when we see our relationships that are just struggling, or our mind just feeling so messy and hard to live in. I remember a while back one of my besties was sharing this revelation she had she had that she wasn’t taking care of herself as a mom, when she had come across this assessment that asked, Do you get regular medical care that you need. And she realized that she did have some medical issues that she was constantly putting on the backburner. And she never thought of it as taking care of herself, but maybe more of a nuisance, or just something that she could power through and figure out later, that was a bit of a wake up call some awareness for her that she wasn’t taking care of herself. gaining awareness is the first step stop and ask yourself throughout the day, how are you feeling and what you might be needing? I’m going to put in that self care assessment that I mentioned, I’m going to link to that. Try it out and see what you learn about yourself and what needs you feel that you may need to be better at meeting. So once we’ve become aware that there’s a need here, the next step is to validate it. And this one can feel messy when we get hung up on the question. Is this really a need? Or is this a want? Because asking this question can make us deny our needs and keep us reinforcing and looking for evidence that we don’t actually need that we don’t need to eat three meals a day, we don’t need to go to these medical appointments. Or it can swing the other way. The other thing it can make us do is feel entitled about our wants, if we call them needs, we need this for survival. Well, that makes everyone else a villain or roadblock if they aren’t appropriately supportive of us meeting our needs. And by that I mean if they aren’t following our checklist on how we need them to support us in meeting our needs, it will default us to the victim role. I struggle with this question a lot i It might be my type nine tendencies. If you know the Enneagram type nine is alone time, my alone time a need or a want is having the kitchen clean a need or a want? Is me wanting time away to a no right or play music? It’s a hobby is that a need? Or a want? Is time a wife away for exercise and need or want? How about a new bra need or want? How about new jeans need or want. And sometimes this can start to become a relational issue, because we are in relationships, where our time and our energy is accounted for. That impacts how we can meet our needs. So what becomes What will others think, will they agree? How do I make them agree? Maybe they’re right, maybe I’m wrong, how much is too much. And at the end of the day, validating your needs is your job. So you need to think about it and you need to own it. So let’s say we’ve gotten past this step, we can officially say I validate this need, or even we can say I want this and I own that I want this. Alright, so I validate that I will have childcare two mornings a week, and I can unplug from them and into something that I get a lot of enjoyment out of now that we don’t get enjoyment out of our kids don’t. Don’t let me say it’s one or the other. Or I validate that I will make myself a meal. When I feed my kids, I’m gonna sit down and eat it instead of racing around catering to them, and then sitting alone at a messy empty table. So once we validated, the next step is permission. And we need to really assign ourselves a permission slip because it does kind of feel a little bit necessary in a way when we are disrupting the system. A system that we had had and creating as well. Some great advice I had when I was starting out in motherhood was start as you mean to go, it’s easier to add more than to take away and this helped me keep keep a long term picture in my mind. And I would try to think of things and anticipate things and it had me doing things like from a very small age with my kids. Nobody gets a water run when they are tucked in. Once they’re tucked in. That’s it because I did not want to become a beverage service every night at 8pm to three kids so I just cut it off right there. Plan your water. They do plan their water. I have made rules like when the doors closed do knock. When I’m in the bathroom you have to wait till I’m done. Though even to this day, my oldest is 12 and I am curious about this phenomenon you know how women’s bodies are cycles are like connected to the ocean or the moon or whatever I don’t even know. I feel like our kids is fighting with one another is connected to the locking of the bathroom door and a mom not being accessible for the next four minutes. Like there’s some cosmic phenomenon happening there. But there are still things I didn’t know, to start as I would mean to go. And I think as moms, we find ourselves here we didn’t know the system would work against us, when we made it out of a lot of love or a lot of desperation. So when we want to change the system, there will be resistance, even from spouses who are wonderful and loving towards us, because every one is used to the system. So it’s a learning process for everyone. Well, we, as moms learn to set boundaries, enforce those boundaries, follow through on those boundaries, even when others are uncomfortable by them. So giving ourselves permission, it also means giving ourselves permission to view ourselves worthy of this ask worthy of this boundary. Even if it’s something as simple as replacing your worn out boots, that water is leaking into all season. Or asking a girlfriend to take your kids after school so you can run some errands, or sitting at the kitchen table for five minutes to drink your coffee warm when your kids are actually used to you jumping up and meeting all of their needs. The discomfort of calling ourselves worthy will redirect us back to our old ways if we aren’t willing to endure that discomfort. The next thing to consider is our whole approach in how we meet our needs. How do you meet the need of eating through the day? Or socializing? How do you meet the need of getting exercise or movement if that’s important to you, and I like the framework of looking at it as habits. Because meeting our needs has to be a habit, it has to be a built in system where we do those crucial things often, most crucial things often and the less crucial things less less often. And what is actually going to give you freedom here and the ability to progress here. The game changer. And all of this is to let go of all or nothing thinking that it doesn’t have to be a daily one hour exercise class. It doesn’t have to be every weekend meal prep with things ready and cute little mason jars. It doesn’t have to be every afternoon off to read or to journal, it doesn’t have to be Monday brunch with your closest friends. It still has to work with your life, which if you are at the stage, when your kids are at home, it looks like putting these things in little doses in your day. Small things matter. I’ve said this over and over again, small things matter. Even more small things when done consistently and with intention matter. And it has to be consistent. One night away, after six months of not sleeping will not be a silver bullet. It won’t just magically fix you. I mean, maybe maybe it works for you to let it all pile up and tolerate it because you know, you get this one night away. I mean, that’s how I do laundry all at once one night a week. But maybe that’s also too much pressure to put on one night, maybe that’s too much pressure to have that night work at all cost may be consistent smaller amounts of time to respite can be more supportive. My wonderful in laws, they take my kids for a week at Spring Break and in the summer. And these are the two times of year when my husband and I have just time to ourselves, the house to ourselves, maybe we go away for a couple of nights. I look forward to it more than anything, really. In my year. Well, I had drafted up the show notes, spring break break came and guess what our kids had a stomach bug over spring break. So we did not take them to our in laws to share those germs around. And I laughed at myself because it just reminded me that I need to find smaller, more consistent ways to ensure that I have that time that I’m craving with Connor. And I have to remember my approach that it can look, it can look so many different ways it doesn’t have to look a certain way. Which brings me really to the final point of the process of all caps becoming someone who takes care of themselves, which is being flexible. And we can be more flexible. When we are consistent. When you have a routine, you can miss days, you can allow days off because you know you’re gonna get back to it. And because you feel you have that history of maintaining it. To me, it’s a lot like brushing your teeth, you brush them at least twice a day. So if you happen to miss a night or miss a morning, it’s fine because it’s going to happen again within the next, you know, six to 12 hours. The other part about being flexible is going to plan B sometimes. And I’m going to link a post in the show notes about that where Connor texted me one night at dinner that he was going to be late when I had plans to go to an exercise class which like never happens in my life. So I’ll make sure to put that in the show notes as well.

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As we go through the steps of learning to meet our needs. It’s important that we keep an open mind And about the different needs, we have, understand what we want to feel from that need, and the various ways that we can meet that feeling. And that need, I hope you’re seeing that with all of this, that there’s a mindset that needs to be shifted every step of the way, we need to be able to let go of our own stories and our favorite excuses, we need to let go of the rules that we’ve given ourselves about our own rules, our own worthiness, our own value. And of course, as we challenge these stories, there’s a cost to giving up these stories. But there’s also a benefit to giving up the stories. And if any of this starts to feel messy or confusing, or you want support with it, reach out for support. Get a counselor or a coach that is nearby or one that you feel connected to, to walk you through this. Alright, in the following episodes, I’m going to start telling you about my own experiences with learning to meet my basic needs. And I’m going to start with food feeding myself that basic need. I want to share each of these episodes from my own point of view. So I don’t want to give you suggestions and advice for your life. I just want to share my own journey and the insights I had for myself and if something works for you. Great, try it on. I’m going to cover a few of these basic needs. And if there’s one you would really love to hear about. If there’s one you feel like you struggle with meeting, make sure to reach out to me message me and let me know I want to try to incorporate that into the series. And as I said in the last episode, I love it when these podcasts generate conversation with you. So if you have thoughts, I would love to hear them. You can always hit reply on the simple Saturday’s email or you can find me on Instagram at simple on purpose.ca. If you are able to share a story of you listening to the episode your insights, or you can message me on Instagram. I’d love to hear you there. Alright friends, happy gravy.

The post 181. Becoming A Mom Who Takes Care of Themself first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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Sometimes we can find ourselves reaching for a bowl of chocolate, scrolling through social media, or checking out for the night, and call that self-care. But that is really self-comfort and only serves to numb the discomfort instead of fixing it. Self-care is tuning into ourselves and finding out what we need to do to care for ourselves. Listen in as I discuss self-care and self-love, and how that has changed over the years since our mothers were young.

Main topics:* The difference between self-care and self-comfort * Meeting our needs and our capacity (window of tolerance) * Accepting cheap substitutes to meet our needs * What we think it means when our needs are going unmet * The culture of moms meeting their needs, is it intuitive? * What we learn from our mothers about self-care and self-love * Why the term self-love feels challenging.

Related links:* Self-care assessment * Is self care the answer when motherhood sucks? (blog post) * Understanding how the window of tolerance impacts your stress in motherhood (episode) * How to find confidence in being the mom you are (episode) * Being a mom on purpose (it is not about happy, obedient kids) (episode) * 67. Making motherhood harder than it needs to be (Mom Martyr) * The highlight reel of moms talking about self-care and meeting their needs

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FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited)We’re gonna continue on with our series about meeting your needs. And I want to talk more about self care and self love and how this is about it. But it’s also not about it. The whole series, meeting your needs, I don’t think that is one that I would listen to if I saw that title sounds kind of weird to say, but I think many mums might feel this way you see something on meeting your needs, and you might think, I don’t need that things are fine. Or there might be some resistance, because you’re kind of worried is this another pitch for that self care, self love, do face masks in the bath, treat yourself, you deserve it love yourself, you’re amazing. We are a little bit worried about where this is going to take us. Because I think some of us know that. That self care, self love cannot be an entire approach to living. There’s parts that are so helpful, for sure. But the approach needs more to it, it kind of feels like thin ice over water. But we need that iceberg. Underneath we need that iceberg of values and beliefs. We need awareness, validation, radical acceptance before we move into self care and self love. So as I move forward with this topic of meeting your needs, I want to approach this topic from the work I’ve done with moms of all ages and stages all over the world. And that’s the approach of addressing the overwhelm the stress, the expectations, the mental load that moms are under. Because this overwhelm it feels like a threat to us on a base level. And when we add in a reduced capacity to deal with that threat, you have yourself a chronic stress response. And that’s what we’re commonly operating from. That’s why we need self care and self love. But at the at the core of it capacity is what’s important. Capacity is one I want to talk about. For someone to feel capacity, they feel like they can do they feel capable, they have met their basic needs, so that they can move forward with dealing with things and feeling capable. Think of how capacity impacts you in your daily life. Think of how you show up in motherhood, when you have slept well, or have had a nourishing meal or when you’ve just gone out for a walk on your own and it felt really restorative. Or you’ve just met up with your besties and had some great laughs. But how often are we really giving ourselves the resources to restore and maintain our capacity, I would say the opposite often happens that we spend more energy scrambling to deal with our lack of capacity rather than we spend building it. And what I mean by that is, first of all, we don’t stop and acknowledge our needs. So by default, we’re just not meeting them proactively. And I’m going to talk about this more in the next episode. So we’re often in this state where we don’t realize we have a need until it’s too late. And then how do we act when our needs are not being met? What do you notice when you are at the end of your capacity, you might notice things like feeling enraged, really easy, burnt out overwhelmed. Maybe you shut down, maybe you go into that hyperactive mode, maybe you’ve kind of kind of become that mum, martyr, these can all be symptoms of having our needs go unmet for a while. And when you’re feeling this way, we start paying attention. And we start to assume things about us in our lives. And one of three things is what we often assume we might assume something is wrong with me, something is wrong with them or something is wrong with my life. So we focus on addressing these now we focus on maybe something’s wrong with me, and I just need to try better and do better, because other moms figure it out. And I should just figure it out. And I just need to hack it and be more disciplined. Or we focus on trying to control them. We tie our emotions to what other people around us are doing and it creates this whole like fragile governance of having to control them. In order for us to feel good or happier, calm. I call this emotional outsourcing. Or we try to change our life what would just make me feel better right now? Or what would just help me to not feel the gross feelings I’m feeling a cupcake, researching new bathroom towel, getting a new cute coat scrolling social media. I mean, I’ve done all of these. And we develop by doing this we develop smaller and smaller tolerance for just feeling discomfort. We spend a lot of energy trying to feel better, we blame others, we shame ourselves. We accept cheap substitutes to help us just feel good again. And these cheap substitutes they can look like self care but what they often are is self comfort. This is a differentiation that I did not make up I’d heard it on a podcast years ago and I think that podcast was sort of awesome. I’m not sure. So self care versus self comfort. Self comfort is a checking out or a numbing or a distraction more Then self care is checking in and listening and responding. And I would even offer that if we’re getting to self comfort, it’s almost always a response, that we haven’t met our needs along the way. And it’s reactive, it’s meeting the deficit, self care can be really active, but it should really be proactive a shift for us, is to be proactive with meeting our needs, and protecting our capacity, which just leads into the whole conversation that this is easier said than done. Because first of all, we just don’t know what we don’t know. When I was a mom with two toddlers and a baby at home, getting very little sleep, living off of protein bars and coffee, I was in survival mode for sure. And even if there was a day where I wasn’t a total stress case, I didn’t really have that awareness that me myself needed to be paid attention to and needed to be cared for. I mean, I could do that for my kids, I could monitor them anticipate when they’re hungry, when they’re tired, what activities they’re going to enjoy, help them with their sibling relationships, help them process feelings and cope, like I can do all of that for

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them. But what about doing that for myself? And then when we realize we do have needs, we know how messy this can get. And just like we talked about in the last episode, we’re going into this with a lifetime of belief and rules about what it looks like for us to have needs. Are they acceptable? Are they a burden? whose needs are more important? whose needs are we expected to meet? Who do we expect to meet our needs? How does it look for us to express our needs, and then maybe we even go through the process of trying to meet our needs. And we might get that, you know, afternoon off or that little bit of time away. And it didn’t feel like it helped that much. And there’s so many reasons why one of the big things is that we may have done something to respond to our bodies and our health and what we need. But we haven’t really done something to respond to what our minds and our hearts need. We’ve gone through the motions, but our brain stayed plugged in to everything going on at home, that stress response still active. And we’re still really operating from the same stories that got us here in the first place. So meeting our needs, it’s hard, because it’s also a commitment to the messy business of addressing what’s in our minds in our hearts. And it’s also the messy business of addressing our lives. Sometimes self care can be a distraction from our lives. And focusing on self care when what we really need to do is address the hurdles in our lives, it can just keep us in the state of bearable suffering. I shared a post on this a few years ago is self care the answer when motherhood sucks, I’ll link that in the show notes. But what I’ve learned in that process is that self care could help me feel better, but I still wasn’t addressing the issues underneath that were really impacting the stress in my life. So meeting our needs is more than just a checklist of things we physically need, you could have all your quote unquote, needs met. And you might still have that helpless or victim mindset, you could be approaching this with some martyrdom or some entitlement, you could still have things in your life that need to be addressed. And you’re just going through the motions, and you will never feel that increasing capacity. At the end of it, you won’t truly feel like your needs were met. In the next episode, I want to talk about this process we can go through from becoming aware of our needs, accepting them, and then learning how to meet our own needs. Because it isn’t easy. And I would say in our culture, it’s also not intuitive. It’s not intuitive for mothers to proactively meet their own needs. I asked for some feedback in the simple Saturday’s email about your experiences with meeting your needs. What’s a struggle for you? What is a win for you? What have you learned, and an interesting thing happened. I heard from some women in their 70s, who reflected on how this awareness and permission would have helped them when they were young moms. Side note, if you’re not aware, there are a lot of women in their 50s 60s and 70s, who are simple podcast listeners and readers. And they share just the most genuine wisdom and insight and encouragement with me. Because they really grew up in an era that made motherhood kind of really, you know, like in a box kind of experience. So in hearing what these women had to write and share with me, they reflected on how they made their kids and their spouse, their whole world. And they’re learning how to become a person separated from that as their kids have grown up and moved out. It’s such a hard thing for moms who were told we need to make her kids her whole world. And then the kids grow up and leave and then what I feel like my mom was in this era as well. And I really feel for the daughters of mothers who had to comply with the culture of the 50s Because from what I observe, and you can tell me if I’m wrong what I observe about the culture of motherhood in the 50s was there was a real pressure to present everything is perfect everything and every one and the whole Home had to be perfect. And nobody ever really told them differently. Nobody ever showed these moms that they could pursue careers and ambitions and create family systems where everyone contributes, in many ways and not singular ways. I’ve been reflecting a lot about what my parents taught me about meeting my own needs. And there’s what I observed growing up. And then there’s what they tell me now, years later down the road. So I’m going to share something with you. I don’t think I’ve shared it before. And it was an experience that my younger sister and I had when we were talking with my mom recently. So a background our journey as a family has included my mom having early onset dementia. A couple of years ago, she entered into a care home, she needed that she needs that level of care. And my siblings and my dad, we’ve done some work going through my parents house and their boxes of stuff and trying to clear some of the clutter because you’ve probably heard that part of my story as well growing up, there’s just clutter in boxes of stuff. So they’re still there, they’ve just shifted around. And we, a couple of years ago, we had an experience where we were sorting through a lot of my mom’s writings, and she was a writer. And there were a lot of just personal writings that she had in all of these boxes. And I would really love to one day just compile them all into kind of the story of her life. Because what I learned as I was reading them, what I was seeing is a story I hear so often, it’s a story of mums who are burnt out, overwhelmed, feeling unheard seeking validation, seeking a break or buying the self help books scared of the anger that they hide under a smile for their whole life. Buying all the low fat yogurt, drinking the tea, baking the birthday cakes, managing the emotions of everyone in the house at the expense of their own. The story of mums who were told they could have it all, but they weren’t told that they would have to do all the work to get it, maintain it and validate it. So my mum later in life experienced burnout. And I don’t know if that was part of the early onset dementia. But she for years would have this dream of writing a book for other women on burnout. Kind of sharing her tale as a cautionary tale of what not to do. This same woman who drove us to all the events stayed up till midnight folding laundry, working full time and then bringing home burgers to feed her family dinner, typing up our essays, putting on her lipstick in the rearview mirror, inviting people in for tea, always giving a belated birthday cards, buying the gifts for all of the people and all of the events, blowing the budget, trying to make Sunday family dinners a thing when nobody was agreeable to it. She was doing all the things that she was raised to do all the things that made her a good mum, a good wife and a good woman. And in her opinion, it led to burnout. As we went through her writings, I could see this hidden world of her that I never got to see. I just saw what was on the surface, happy woman who was maybe staying up too late doing laundry. But I felt like I got to see the real her. And I’m so grateful that she wrote those things down and kept them. Because I get to understand her in a way that I just don’t get a chance to now I get to understand her better than ever now. Part of me wishes I could go back and tell her let go of all those rules and managing all the people and trying to do things the right way. I wish I could tell her to be that wild and loving and free part of herself to get angry to be reckless to be bratty to be messy. But instead, she told me and my sister something that we needed to hear. So I think it was maybe a year and a half ago. We zoom my mom every week. And there’s been times on the call where she’s more aware and more present, especially back a year or two ago. And my little sister and I were talking with her and she was reflecting on her life, how she got here, she kind of had that moment where she realized where she was and why. And she kind of reflected that she spent so many years trying to take care of everyone. And she realized that she never took care of herself and to her that was the reason she is here now. And she said in a moment of presence and awareness. She said girls don’t do what I did. Take care of yourselves in it is permission. It’s wisdom you don’t even know you need. And we don’t need this permission. In fact, some of us might never get it. Some of us have these mothers in our lives, who were there, exhaustion and their mothering is a badge of honor for all at all that they’ve sacrificed. We might never get permission from those women in our lives. But we get to decide what we’re going to do about it. We get to decide what it’s going to look like to be mothers in this time. And we also don’t need to approach all of this from that culture, that modern culture of self care and self love because I think we need to redefine what that means. I mean, look at what our culture teaches us. About Love, especially what it looks like for mothers to love, that we should exhaust ourselves that we should make them happy, give them the best and neglect ourselves in the process. What happens is our love becomes conditional to ourselves into them because it is focused on the outcome of others, which I’m aware of that sentence doesn’t even make sense, because Aren’t we supposed to be invested in the outcomes of our kids.

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But I think we need to switch this around. Our motherhood can’t be determined by this alone. Motherhood is more empowering and purposeful. When we determine our success as moms by how we decide to show up, regardless of our children’s outcomes. This is going to rub some people I respect that there’s going to be some resistance here. But just think about this culture of love this conditional love. It’s focused so much on others, that it doesn’t really feel like love to us, because it means abandoning ourselves in consistent and subtle ways, coded with the sense of nobility that we’ve learned that love means abandoning ourselves, abandoning ourselves in order to correctly perform the duties of motherly love. What have we been taught about loving others and meeting their needs versus loving ourselves in meeting our needs? So self love is confusing. No wonder we have a weird relationship with this term. Because what does it even mean? So this series, it is about self love and self care, but in a different way. It’s about taking care of yourself and having a love for yourself as a person who was worthy of being cared for and loved. It’s about tending to listening to honoring and responding to yourself, and not creating a conditional outcome based or vague or conflicting approach to self love. In the next episodes, I’m going to outline what this process has looked like for me over the years, because I’m not someone who’s done this. Well, I don’t think I had to learn the steps that it takes, starting from awareness all the way to being really flexible with my approach and bringing it into my daily life on how I meet my own needs. But I also want to hear from you. I want you to email me back in the same Saturday’s email if you’re a part of that. Or if you’re on Instagram, send me a message there. I’m at simple on purpose.ca. I’d like to continue this conversation. I’d like to hear what you are taking away from this if there’s something helping you if there’s something that you have resistance to if there’s something you’re curious about, I want to generate a conversation about this. So I need you to do that because the conversation goes two ways. So reach out to me through the simple Saturday’s email or on Instagram and I would love to keep this conversation going. Alright friends, have a great week.

The post 180. Self-care and self-love, what would our mothers say? first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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What are needs? At a basic level, they are simple things like food, water, shelter, sleep. They can also be more complicated, like friendship, personal accomplishment, and sense of purpose. Sometimes it can be difficult to meet these needs, or to even know what they are. Join me today while I discuss needs and how to meet them in all aspects of your life.

In this episode I discuss:

• What are your needs and how to figure that out
• Understanding your relationship to ‘your needs’ and ‘the needs of others’
• Communal vs Individual cultures
• What we learn about needs from our culture, our family, and how gender bias impacts our view on meeting our needs
• Addressing needs in a relationship, expressing needs
• Meeting the needs of others, how do we show up for this

All the fun links you might enjoy

• Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs (wikipedia)
• Podcast playlist
• Think the best of me: Hard and awesome
• Capable or controlling
• My husband put the groceries away wrong, he doesn’t love me
• Instagram
• Simple Saturdays Email (sign up here)
• Email me here

Sign up for the the Simple Saturdays email (a fun email, twice a month)

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FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited)

Hey friends, it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counselor from simple on purpose.ca. Welcome, welcome back to the podcast. Or maybe Welcome back to me, because it seemed that I was on a hiatus from sharing new episodes. And what happened is I had an episode ready to go. And I didn’t post it. The other week, I shared this in the simple Saturdays email that I had just decided the content wasn’t right. And sometimes this happens, sometimes, I’ll go through the whole process of drafting up an episode, maybe even recording it and just deciding it’s not the right content, not the right time, too much too little, that kind of thing. So now I’m back in the recording chair, which just a normal chair. But what I found is that I had to really listen to myself and give myself permission to not post that and take the risk that there wouldn’t be this consistent content, which is always what we’re told, we need to be doing sharing consistent content. And the reality is that it took me a while to get back to because my days are pretty full. And I was also sick for a while. As I was trying to get a new episode done, I was observing the sense of overwhelming me. And I was taking stock of what I’m doing with my days, versus what I’m expecting myself to do with my days. And I’m realizing that I am taking on more and more clients, and spending so much more time in those one on one sessions and in research for the sessions. That is time that in the past, I would easily spend researching and recording podcast episodes, I had time to do draft episodes and episodes that just never made the cut. Because that’s the amount of time I have for that. This is a season for me, where those one to one sessions are really taking priority. But I do want to try my best to still show up here with new ideas new discussion, mainly because of the feedback you guys give me the messages you send me the Instagram DMS, you send me sharing that this podcast is of high value to you. And I want to keep offering that in ways that are sustainable for me. So if you’re ever feeling like you want to hear a new episode, and I haven’t brought one out, I do encourage you to scroll through past episodes because there’s like, well over 100 there. I’m going to put links in the show notes of all the playlists that I have made. They’re on Spotify, they’re also on my website. And you can look up by topic of interest what you want to hear more about. There’s habit change, slow living, emotional intelligence, minimalism, parenting on purpose. So I encourage you, if you ever like oh, I just want to hear more, go and listen to those. Funny enough here I was saying, Okay, I’m gonna have some time this morning, I’m going to draft up an episode, I was going to talk about one simple little thing, but it’s turning into a series. And this series is going to be on meeting our needs meeting our needs. This is going to be a whole conversation because I think we all have different definitions on what that word even means what our needs. On one hand, we have those basic needs shelter, food, water rest, and we’ve probably all seen that pyramid the Hierarchy of Needs Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And Maslow moves up this hierarchy with these basic needs shelter, food, water, rest, and then safety and security, which I don’t know, I feel like those would be on the same level. But there’s these basic needs. Then there’s the psychological needs belonging, love, friends, sense of accomplishment. And then at the very top, there’s self actualization needs, which is reaching your potential. It’s worth considering that Maslow drafted up these needs almost 100 years ago, and it isn’t so much about what ranks were. But to understand that for most people, it can be a process of meeting that need before we can move up to the next one. And you know what, I even think we’re living in an era where some people skip these stages. So what I take from this, ultimately, is that there are a set of needs, or at least to acknowledge that we as human have needs beyond the things that keep us merely alive. So when you think about what your own needs are, it’s probably easy to say food, rest coffee, but anytime you hear yourself saying the sentence, I need a blank. I need a day off. I need time alone, I need help. We call those needs to don’t we opening up this conversation. I think one of the most powerful insights you can give yourself is to explore what you have been raised with and assumed along the way about needs. What have you been taught about your needs? What assumptions have you created about your needs that are now playing out in adulthood? One part of this is considering the culture that you were raised in if your needs are considered communal, or individual and in most North American white culture, we are individualistic, and our individual needs take precedent over our communal needs and that is not a cultural experience that everyone has is worth considering that. It also depends on your home your family. If your needs were a burden a priority, whose more needs were more important, whose needs were less important. I’m going to give you a handful of examples to see how this might play out. Consider a situation where dad needs quiet when he gets home. So your needs for connection with him or even adventure or fun or loudness. Not acceptable, at least not when an authority figure is present. Or you had a lot of siblings or one particular sibling who needed a lot of support and attention. Your needs were put on the backburner you learned to help out instead of getting help, your needs mattered less other’s needs mattered more. Perhaps you had a lot of emotions as a kid and your parent had really low tolerance or time or skill for this. So you learned your emotions are not in need. They’re a burden, take them somewhere else or turn them off. What if you had siblings or even parents who were always in your stuff, and there was no enforcement of privacy or boundaries, you learned that you aren’t entitled to those those aren’t your needs to have privacy or boundary. And boundaries will ultimately become blurry people can cross them. What if you had the experience that you had a lot of desires and ideas and you wanted to try things or hobbies or dress a certain way or express yourself a certain way and you told that wasn’t acceptable? You start to feel bad for who you are or for even launching that in the first place. You’re told that’s not acceptable. So you just shut off that desire. Consider the faith background you grew up with? And if you grew up as a Christian, what did you learn about needs? God provides everything you need. It makes you really question what needs even our this is a whole other conversation, right? And how about gender stereotypes? What did you learn about being a girl? And what are we taught about our needs, and meeting the needs of other what is the role of a girl of a woman? Often we’re told, it means meeting the needs of others, especially in the family setting to be the mom and the wife. And all of that role should quote unquote, look like? I want to talk more about that in a later episode. Maybe you watched your own mom, and you watched how she met her needs. Maybe she was staying up all night doing the laundry working long hours, you learn a framework of what a mums needs are and are not. And maybe you’ve watched your parents and how they handled their needs. And you want to be counterintuitive to that. And maybe you felt a problem with that. So you’ve almost rebelled against that. Our upbringing greatly shapes our view on our needs. What needs are actual needs? What needs are a burden? What needs are more important? What are the needs we should be meeting for others? What needs do we expect others to meet for us? How should we ask for what we need so on? The next question that we are faced with from this is now what do we do with our needs as adults? Maybe we ignore them, bury them, don’t express them don’t address them. Maybe we even disparage our needs, calling them selfish or childish. Often, if we’re in this state, we ignore them so much. It takes some really big emotions like resentment to help us see that we have these needs that are going unmet. We could be on the other end of the spectrum where everything feels like a need. We are really good at rationalizing them. Well, I need this because and we’re very hyper focused on all the thing we perceive as needs, that it almost becomes a daily discussion, what we need and how to get it. And what about that internal wrestling that we meet in the middle? As a culture, we’re talking about needs and mental health and more and more. It can feel like our wants and needs are getting blurred? And maybe even in our heads, we’re debating Is this a need? Is this a want? Am I being selfish? Do I really need this? But I think I need this I feel like I need this. Other moms probably need this. What do other partners do? So we’re kind of in this internal wrestling as well. And ultimately for moms, I think the hardest part is that we could really use other people’s help in order to get what we need or perceive as our needs. We could use someone to take the kids so we can shower and eat. We could use someone to give us time to sleep in when we’ve been up all night. There’s no argument the life is easier when we have support to meet our own needs. Really, I think this all makes needs very confusing. Especially when you bring together two partners into a family into a relationship, who have different ideas. They have different upbringings different cultural views, different assumptions on what our needs, what are acceptable needs, what our needs versus wants, how to get needs met who’s responsible. How do you even ask for it?

Notice about yourself, how do you handle your needs within your relationship? How do you look to your partner to meet your needs? Or support you? Or don’t at all? How do you communicate this hour? Are you at expressing your needs? Are you clear within yourself on exactly what you need? Are you clear and communicating exactly what you need? And beyond this, are you open to having your needs met in different ways? If we’re asking someone else to do something, are we open to the way that they’re up to doing it? And ultimately, a question that we can ask ourselves too, is how are we acting and feeling when we aren’t getting what we think we need? There is a place that we get stuck in relationship, when we’re asking others to meet our needs. And we kind of think they should do it happily and willingly that there is no conflict. And if there is conflict in his conversation, something is wrong with them or with us or the situation. But the reality is our needs, we’ll bring up conflict, not just because we both have a different framework on what our needs are, and all that. But because generally, other people don’t really want the job of meeting all of our needs. Like they don’t want that. And they might not even agree with it, what we perceive as needs. And they’re living in their own heads. They’re not thinking actively about what our needs. They don’t know how to do what we want them to do, they just generally aren’t very good at that job. And I’m not saying this, to say don’t even ask, it’s not their job. I think we should ask for help, I think we should learn ways to communicate our needs. But at the end of the day, know that there’s always a chance that other people as much as they love you, they might not meet your needs, how you want them with a time you want them to do it with the attitude you want them to do it. And then what? Well, then you call me, we unpack it all. But really, then what you might not like the answer, because what is the option then, when other people don’t meet your needs? Well, then you you’re the option, you can look to you to meet your own needs. And I honor any resistance that this might bring it up in you because I get it. I think a part of this resistance is cultural, a cultural expectation about what marriage should be that we kind of think our partners should be some magical mind readers with boundless selfless love, longing to meet our needs as a human. We also might look to a framework of a relationship we see and think, Well, they’re doing it so nicely. That’s how it should look. And sometimes we do sometimes we do that for one another, right? Like, this is a really great experience. Sometimes I reach out to my husband and I show him some love in a way that I know matters to him. Sometimes I put leftovers aside for him and his lunches. Sometimes I bring him vitamins, when I know he’s not feeling great. Sometimes I bring him a coffee. But also sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I even say no to him when he asks for something. Because at the end of the day, we’re just humans stuck in our own business and our agendas and our thoughts. And we often can’t get to that place. Ironically, unless a we feel like our own needs are being met. Because then it’s so much easier to generously give and serve from that place when we feel like our needs are being met. And serving from that place where it’s kind of from this heart stance of we want to do it not the chip on the shoulder, like I always have to do everything. This is what I’m left with. It all gets left to me, this is my lot in life. What energy are you meeting the needs of other people from? Have you ever helped your kid clean their room, or maybe you’re even someone who does it for your kids, I don’t clean my kids rooms, unless it’s an extreme situation, or they’ve asked for my support, like, bring in the big guns, mom. But pay attention to what you do, what energy you’re doing that from, I have one kid in particular Whose room is a pig pen, actually, I’ve seen pig pens, I think they’re clean. And there have been times where I’m so frustrated seeing their room. And I’m like, I’m not going to be shutting the door every day, I’m going to go and clean it or we have company coming and we use that room as like the guest bed. So there I am reached cleaning muttering, they come home and I’m like, I cleaned your room. It was so much work. And this was here. And that was there. I found this thing that was lost. And you told me you never. Sometimes I do that. But then there are times where I know my kid is feeling overwhelmed. And I think their room is definitely not helping their overwhelm. In fact, it’s probably making it worse. So I’m gonna go and tidy it for them. I do it from love and a genuine desire to help them and I care about it. I don’t need them to validate my work. I just want to help them and I do it for that moment when they’re like thank you for your help

and I’m sharing this with you guys knowing that you might judge me but the reality is sometimes I’m awesome sometimes I’m not gonna listen to that. Episode on heart and awesome, you want to unpack that a little bit more. At the end of the day being in a family is going to bring up the situation of meeting needs. And it should be a conversation. And it should be a conversation that we know is gonna be hard, there’s going to be some conflict, it’s going to be inevitable because we have different opinions. And it’s the ultimately it’s going to trigger some fear in us about having this conversation. And having this conversation with ourselves is really important. Considering our own needs is very important, mainly because of how we feel when our needs are going unmet. We get frustrated, resentful, and worn out we become a martyr. So doing our own work, take time to consider these things, what we believe about our needs, how we’re trying to meet them, what’s working, what’s not, we can take power over this area of our lives, we can empower ourselves, we can feel more capable to get what we need in life. And remember, feeling capable is always better than striving for control. I’ll put an episode on that in the show notes. So this has turned into a series like I said, I want to talk about different needs that we have in motherhood, how we are relating to them some ideas on how I’ve handled them over the years. I also want to talk about those basic needs and the emotional needs, which are those more subtle ones that we have trouble with identifying and if this conversation is bringing up something in you if you’re thinking about something that you have been needing and having trouble meeting that need or likewise if you’ve gone through this process and learned something about yourself and your own needs, please let me know I want to try and incorporate that or share that here as well over the series. To do that you can message me on Instagram at simple on purpose.ca you can reply to me through this info Saturday’s email or you can just email me I’ll put my email in the show notes as well and you can message me there I would love to hear from you. Alright friends, have a great week.

The post 179. What are your needs and how are you meeting them? first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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Giving your child extra attention might seem like a great idea, but if it’s the wrong type of attention it could do more harm than good. Let’s learn what it means to parent intentionally and make proactive connections with your family.

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I may earn a commission, at no cost to you.

In this episode I discuss: * Why we get stuck in the negative * Our negativity bias as parents * Your experience of motherhood * The Nurtured Heart approach * How to use this approach on ‘difficult’ kids

All the fun links you might enjoy: * Is momlife unfun? How to be a more fun mom, to stop withholding fun from yourself + More on the negativity bias * When I stopped enjoying my kids + Change your motherhood experience by changing how you make memories * Why you aren’t thriving in motherhood (stress and surviving) * Conscious parenting through the struggles, and letting go of perfectionism in motherhood * Transforming the Difficult Child: the Nurtured Heart Approach * Article on Nurtured Heart Approach * Do you typecast your kids? (Labels and how they impact our parenting and our kids) * Check out the episode playlists for your topic of interest right here

Simple pleasure links* The wordle (also search wordle unlimited for more) * The heardle (also search heardle unlimited) * Spot the difference site (click explorer games for more variety and levels) * Highlights hidden pictures book * Spot the difference brain games book

Sign up for the the Simple Saturdays email (a fun email, twice a month)

Full transcript (unedited)

0:18
So friends around here, I like to talk about all the ways that we can turn off the autopilot living, just living reactively by default for me, it looked like a lot of complacency and step into doing things on purpose with intention, getting clear and focused on where we want to go and taking steps to get there. Today we’re going to talk about intentional parenting, just parenting in general, but doing it with intention. And the topic of focus can come up in parenting, when we start thinking, what are we focusing on? What gets the most attention, what gets our most attention in a single day, what gets our attention as a parent. And I don’t know if you’re like me, but it can go to demands and the urgency who needs to be aware what needs to happen, what needs to be cooked, who’s eating one of the eating, where the eating, and it’s like, we’re just directors of all of this. And of course, as our kids get older, we can start to give them ownership of this and they can start self directing. But our attention in a given day, it can really be given mostly to the problems at hand, stop shouting Sydney, clean up your mess, put that away. And I know that there are seasons of my own motherhood, where I don’t even want to talk anymore, because I’m just sick of hearing myself talk. And then I start to think, man, my kids aren’t really listening to me, I don’t really want to listen to me either.

1:38
They don’t have such a bad idea about this, after all. Anyways, this is a really common place that we can find ourselves in as parents, a season of no a season of constant correction, a season of constant discipline. And then instead of motherhood, feeling like this enjoyable experience, it feels like a perpetual power struggle. And there’s this urgency and every day is just full of problems that we feel we cannot solve. So if you are here, welcome. Yeah, we are all here. Sometimes, some of us get stuck here. And we get stuck here for a few good reasons. Actually, we get stuck here, we start to live in this story. And this becomes the emotional habit we operate from. And I’ll tell you why it kind of makes sense. We get stuck here because on one hand, the more we’re thinking this the stories, the more we’re feeling these emotions, we get some very strong neural connections that are being formed. But the more we do it, the more we do it, this becomes our new default. And this is what they mean when they say neuroplasticity, we’re rewiring the brain, from the state we’re operating from consistently. So if we are in this state all day long of seeing problems and coming at our day from frustration, that’s going to become a very strong neural connection in our brain, it’s going to become our new emotional habit. And the other reason why this kind of makes sense that we get stuck here is our brain has a negativity bias. It is biased, our brain is biased, in lots of ways, like just look up brain bias. And you’re gonna see lots of different brain biases that we have their filters, their filters we put on things. And the negativity bias means that we pay more intention, more attention to what could go wrong and negative experiences because that is filed under important things in our brains. That just harkens back crickets back.

3:26
It’s like we’re singing Christmas carols that goes back to our primal need of needing to stay safe. So if we are, you know, generations ago, we were focused on the dangers ahead of us and what could go wrong. And learning from those dangers and paying attention to those dangers, we’re more likely going to stay alive. And over the generations this has kept us safe. This negativity bias has kept us safe in the world. But now we live in a world that is full of perceived threats instead of real ones. And that negativity bias sister like No, everything’s important. We need to pay attention to what could go wrong and the negative things. So all this to say it makes sense when we get stuck here.

4:06
And we get stuck here. Sometimes motherhood feels like all we are doing is shuffling people places and making food and folding laundry and reprimanding and disciplining.

4:16
And to me, this becomes a problem for me, because it starts to ruin my experience of motherhood.

4:24
Your experience of motherhood matters, the memories you’re making the emotions you’re feeling the stories that you have about your own motherhood that matters. I’ll make sure to link some episodes about this where I’ve talked in the past on these kinds of concepts. So one of them being when I stopped enjoying my kids, which is the most searched for post on my site. By the way. I want to talk about all this today because I stumbled across something that’s been helping me a lot and I want to share it with you if you also feel a little bit stuck in this type of season of motherhood. So I was listening to a therapy podcast and a therapist was sharing something called the nurtured heart approach.

5:00
which led me to their website, which led me to their book. And the book is called Transforming the difficult child. And I have, by definition of the bucket, a difficult child. So I was like, Yeah, I think I really need this, this whole approach, I need this book. The nurtured heart approach is something that they teach not just to parents, but to anybody who who’s working with kids. So maybe you work with kids, and it’s like a youth leader, maybe you’re a school counselor, maybe you’re a teacher, maybe you’re a coach. And this book can be really helpful. They’ve shared lots of examples on their website about how it’s helped in these kinds of communal kids settings. But it’s also really helpful for parents of kids with a DD and ADHD. And the general sense of the approach is to give more attention to the positive and less attention to the negative. I titled this episode, don’t water the weeds, and that’s the concept that the book offers, don’t wander the weeds.

5:55
However, we find ourselves naturally in this stages parenting, right? This can be a natural stance for us to water, the weeds.

6:05
Pay more attention to the negative and less attention to the positive. Right? That’s what we’re doing. Because addressing the negative feels really important to our brains, to our survival to our peace. Are we giving a lot of attention to the positive? What do we do when our kids are being good?

6:22
I think my gut reaction is to go and take a break for myself. Because I have just spent so much emotional energy correcting and threatening and prompting, well, I don’t really use threats anymore. But I do feel like there’s a lot of emotional exhaustion that gets expended on just focusing on those negative things. And so now, if my kids are doing something that I would view as positive, they’re like, maybe being nice together, and change, I think, finally, I’m gonna go do something that makes me feel nice, which I mean, that’s a whole other discussion we can have, right? Like what we’re doing to give ourselves a break. So think about where your energy is going. As a parent, where’s your focus going as a parent, I think a lot of us give a lot of energy to the negative. And the nurtured heart approach explains that our kids, especially those who are considered intense kids, they crave our connection, they crave our attention. And that connection is felt in the energy we expend towards them. So the more energy, the more connection and it would go to follow that if our kids want our attention in our connection, we are kind of teaching them that the best way to get our energy and our attention is to be doing something negative. They kind of learned that it’s not that they’re being outright manipulative, it’s that they genuinely want our attention and connection. And they’ve learned Now the easiest way to get it, the most intense energy comes from that negative reaction, the warnings, the lectures, the reprimands a watching them like a hawk, when we tell them not to do something just to see if they’ll do it. The bigger the power struggle, the higher the energy, we are watering weeds all day. And then what’s happening, what happens to our kids, when they have this experience. They’re acting in ways to get that reaction from us. And as that dance continues of them doing something that generates negative attention, they’re also hearing from us the feedback about ways that they are constantly failing, they’re doing it wrong, they’re thinking about it wrong. They’re not thinking about it at all. They’re exhausting us or upsetting us. And they’re developing a negative self reference. They’re not viewing themselves as good when all they hear is how wrong they are. And generally, this is the label that we have given our kids inadvertently. And both of us are going to now work together to perpetuate that label. And I talked about this on the episode of Do you typecast your kids, it’s something that we are both going to have eyes for now. And they are going to grow into that. So the nurtured heart approach is about changing where you give your energy, stop watering the weeds and start watering those flowers. I really like this metaphor, because I think our life and our experience is a lot like a garden. In one thing to just acknowledge right off the bat is weeds are inevitable, we should address them. But we should also be nourishing what we want to grow, stop looking at your neighbor’s garden, the grass is not greener over there, the grass is greener where you water it. So in this book, transforming the difficult child, there’s some really great information on how it can look to water the flowers, because it’s not as simple as saying Good job or noticing the best things like the great goal or the good marks it’s about the daily little things. I have been reading this book and I finished it the past month and I decided this is going to be my parenting approach this year especially with a kid that I would consider difficult because I think I found myself in in a season with this particular kid where we are constantly in the negative into

10:00
reactions. And it saddens me to know that I’m not enjoying motherhood or nurturing this child in those positive ways that I crave to. So I’m starting to look for ways to water the flowers and stop watering the weeds. So about a month ago, I started this approach, and I noticed resistance from my kid, I would say positive things, and they would tell me to stop because in their words, they aren’t good. So I know we have some healing to do here. And I think that really means starting small, being genuine and being consistent. And on my end, it also means paying a lot of attention, attention, like, proactively putting the energy in to notice the good things in the moment to mark it, to stop and acknowledge it. I think this has so much power in it just right here, because it lets them know I’m paying attention, they have my attention, they don’t have to act out for it. It lets them know I see them. I see their goodness, I see their effort I see them. It lets them know that it can also feel rewarding to follow the rules or act in ways that support the rest of our whole family. And I want to tell you what I’ve noticed, I’ve noticed that it’s not a night and day change. But change is happening. I’ve noticed that they’re trying to get my attention in new ways in different ways. Of course, they still struggle with the weeds that are there with the tantrums and negativity, the huge emotions. But I noticed they’re also trying to be more playful with me and make more conversation with me being kinder to their siblings. And I see them kind of settling in to the family, finding their place within the family, instead of feeling like it’s always me versus the world. I know we’re in the early stages, but this feels in line with how I want to be as a mom. And what I really like is it feels like a shift for me and how I spend my energy. Because if I’m spending energy in my day regardless, I would rather use it proactively on purpose in empowering ways that nurture my relationships, rather than in exhausting ways like power struggles and overwhelm.

12:07
And this is why I wanted to share this approach with you. Because I think if there’s any kids in your life, if you have kids, if you work with kids, that this approach can really help rewrite a new story of connection, and potential. Imagine if someone saw you through these eyes through your childhood, of nurturing, watering those flowers, and not really getting crazy upset about the weeds. Spending more time acknowledging the good seeing the good and less on the negative. I’ll link to an article that the nurtured heart approach has shared on these kinds of concepts. And I also recommend that book if you’re interested in digging deeper into it. The book outlines more detail on how to give less attention to the negative, which I think is an important concept to consider how do you approach your negative situations currently, because it can be done in a way that is less inflamed, and heavy. We often think discipline has to be heavy, and it has to be fueled by righteous anger, and it has to hurt to be effective. But I have found it really doesn’t. And I actually don’t like it. When it does, I actually find it more relieving and more useful. When I can just be a bit more neutral about discipline. When it doesn’t have to come from anger, maybe it can even come from compassion. But it sure doesn’t have to be so heavy.

13:29
The book also goes in more detail on how to be proactive with how you give your attention different types of recognition and handling consequences.

13:38
This is my encouragement to you don’t water the weeds. And not just in parenting but in your life. Maybe there’s other areas of your life too, that you can see. You’re watering the weeds more than the flowers. Maybe it’s in your marriage. Maybe it’s in your job, maybe it’s in how you talk to yourself. Don’t wander the weeds.

13:55
Okay, friends, I want to wrap up with a simple pleasure. I haven’t done this in so long. I used to take this on the ends of my episodes a lot last year in the year before and I just forgot about it. But I’m going to tell you one simple pleasure that we have in the nightly cuddles we have with our kids. And we call them cuddles. Our 11 year old recently asked us, can we stop calling them cuddles and instead can we call them night meats.

14:20
Because we meet together at nighttime.

14:24
I think that’s really adorable. We hang out with each kid at night about I know like 10 or 15 minutes a kid and we play Uno or we read or we do a wordle or hurdle. I’ll link some of those sites that we use. But I want to tell you about one website that we have really enjoyed together and that’s a spot the difference website. And they’re Spot the Difference games that you can play together and there’s different types and there’s different levels. And it’s just nice, easy way to end the night. It’s something fun. The kids just love the novelty of us passing around the iPad. We have one iPad for our whole family. So we’re passing it around

15:00
from room to room, and we’re playing these different games. And sometimes people are peeking over and giving their input on where the difference is. It’s just an easy way to have fun. And that nightly, cuddled at night meet. It’s something that I really highly value as a parent. And it’s something that I also try to never take away from them as a punishment. Because I want that consistency for us. I want that nightly ritual to say, even if it wasn’t a great day, and things were not great, I still show up for this. That’s important to me. So simple pleasure, fun, simple game to play. They also make it in book form. I’ve we’ve had Spot the Difference books before. I’ll link a couple of those that we’ve used in the past in the shownotes. Go check out the show notes. I tried to put as many relevant links as I can in there so that you can kind of take this episode and explore it in many different ways and dive a little bit deeper. If you can’t find the show notes in your podcast player, head on over to simple on purpose.ca. Click Listen, all of the episodes are there. There’s always also a full transcript at the bottom of each post if you want to check that out as well. All right, friends, have a great

The post 178. Don’t water the weeds (intentional parenting for proactive connection) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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Motivation. It is something we all want more of. However, every day we take little actions and make little choices that are coming from motivation. A motivation to avoid something or a motivation to move towards something. And why does it matter what is motivating us?

In this episode:

• Motivation vs lack of motivation
• How to know when you are operating from AWAY motviation
• Spotting the victim mindset or scarcity mindset
• How to know when you are operating from TOWARDS motivation
• Motivation and abundance mindset

Mentioned in this episode:

The group coaching call, Feb 2 2023

The Making Change Challenge, sign up here for the four lessons and worksheets

Send me a message on Instagram

Share your thoughts with the Facebook group

The Enneagram and Motherhood series

Making motherhood harder than it needs to be (Mom Martyr)

The not-enough mindset (scarcity and abundance)

Full Transcript (unedited)

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Hey friends, welcome back is Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counsellor from simple on purpose.ca. So you might have figured out that this podcast is a biweekly podcast. But last week, I dropped a bonus episode about not knowing what you want in life. And I talked about six reasons why dreaming or thinking of your life on purpose might actually be hard. I wanted to share that episode early so that you could have time to sign up for the group coaching call on February 2, if that’s something you’re interested in, I’ll link info on that in the show notes. And essentially, that call is a time where you can bring the work you want to do with intentional living this year. And I’ll answer any of your questions and also bring people on live for coaching. In the past, I’ve run group programs, I used to run the life on purpose Academy, back in 2020, and then ran a couple group programs in 2021, I took a little bit of a break. And now I’m thinking of unique and different ways to bring that group coaching aspect back into things. Because in my own experience of being part of group programs is just listening to other people just hearing their questions answered, you get so much value, even though it might not be the exact same issue. Just the themes are relevant, and the approaches can be applied in so many different ways. So I find a lot of value in those. Also, I just really love hanging out with you guys. I love that community aspect. I’m always looking for ways to encourage community amongst you, listeners and blog readers. So I’ll link that in the show notes. If you’re interested. I wanted to follow that up with one more episode of ideas and approaches to help you be really mindful about the future that you’re creating. So I wanted to share on the topic of motivation, because motivation is kind of like how do you feel with that word? How does your body feel? Motivation is something we’re always trying to get. Because we know how we act when we feel motivated. When we feel motivated, we get things done. So our approach to getting things done is to find motivation, manufacture motivation, harness motivation. But as the wonderful Mel Robbins has taught us, you won’t always feel like it. And if you listen to how you feel when it comes to what you want, you will not get it, because you won’t always feel like it. So I’m going to share today a portion of some training that I’ve done on two types of motivation that is towards motivation and away motivation. And this is from the making change challenge that I released this time three years ago. And it is a series of four audio lessons and worksheets that I walk you through. It’s a free challenge. So I’ll link that in the show notes if that’s something you’re interested in signing up for and using. So we’re gonna listen to this brief training on motivation. And I really want you to pay attention as you’re listening to understanding what is motivating you right now. What is motivating how you show up and the things you chase in your life. Knowing this can help you know where you’re ready to make a shift. All right, here it is.

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Hey, friends, I’m glad you’re back for Lesson four of the making change challenge. So this is the final lesson. And in this challenge, we have covered Getting Started how a fixed mindset can hold you back. And then we’ve talked about taking the next step and knowing where you actually have the ability to change things. What are you actually in control of changing the last lesson we talked about breaking down your goals and habits into doable chunks. And now I want to talk about the feeling that you are in action, you are making change things are happening. And you might feel really ready from all of this information to take action. You’re looking at your life in a new way you’re looking at yourself in a new way. And whenever we feel motivated, it is a fantastic feeling. But often are motivated feelings don’t come at the most convenient time like Is anyone else a genius in the shower. I usually have this quiet moment where I solve my problems or have this like a ha moment. And I have to run out of the shower dripping wet and just like start typing into my computer to unload it from my brain. And as we’ve covered in the first lessons, our actions are prompted by our feelings. And when we feel motivated, then we take action in line with these feelings. When we don’t feel motivated. We take action in line with this lack of motivation which usually means no action or ineffective action. unless we are willing to use willpower to override this but we all know how far willpower gets us not very far. And then remember that our thoughts produce our feelings. So the thoughts we think are actually what truly motivate us or demotivate us. But how often do we stop and investigate our thoughts to see if we are being motivated in really healthy and life giving ways? Maybe this is the first time that you We’re considering the possibility that you can be motivated in an unhealthy way. So, I want to let you know about these two main types of motivation which motivation is actually that internal dialogue we have that is prompting us to act. So the two types of motivation are away and towards, also called avoidant and approach and sometimes even called negative and positive, the avoidant or away motivation is when you are motivated by the desire to avoid to move away from pain or conflict or discomfort, you are taking action as a way to avoid, prevent or repair, conflict and discomfort. It can take a lot of forms, and it can also be very subtle to over the years, I have experienced this type of motivation a lot in my parenting, where I am motivated by the anxiety of things going wrong, or the desire to just make the noise stop or to just get a break. My actions had constantly been an effort to fix the chaos or to prevent the chaos. And if you are familiar with the Enneagram, and I’ll link it in the lesson plan. This is very common to the type nine which I am. The thing is I’m not usually very much fun when I’m in this mode. And often I’ll look to my husband Connor to talk me down and step in. Because I don’t want to be motivated by anxiety, it doesn’t feel good. I want to be motivated by enjoyment and presence. That’s the way I want to parent. When we are operating from away motivation. It doesn’t feel good. It feels like putting out fires or hustling it feels exhausting. And we often burn out from it. This is because we are operating from the stress response part of our brain, the part of our brain, the amygdala that sends as possible danger, and it wants us to fight flight or freeze. It is taking over operation and releasing stress hormones to prompt us into action. To know if you are operating in the away motivation. Pay attention to how you feel when you are in action. Is there a victim mentality? Do you feel stressed? Do you feel like everyone is getting in your way or like nobody is supporting you? This is because we are operating with the mindset that says we have to do these things or we should carry out these tasks. And it takes away our ownership and control of the situation. It puts us in the victim mode, negative self talk, listen to yourself talk. Are you shaming yourself or berating yourself, your inner dialogue can be really detrimental to you ever making lasting change when you are using guilt, shame or fear to motivate you. And the hard part here is that those are powerful motivators. And sometimes they are even necessary or useful. Like when we have actually wronged someone and want to fix it. Or when there is like real actual danger, we should address that. But when we misuse them, then they are a trap of perpetual crappy feelings, poor self image, and they keep us in a state of being reactive to our life instead of being proactive with our life. And the third marker is the scarcity mindset. If you sit back and watch your thoughts, do you have a scarcity mindset? And to recap, if you haven’t heard this before, the scarcity mindset says that there isn’t enough time there isn’t enough friends, there is enough energy there isn’t enough. I am not enough, I don’t have enough, I don’t know enough, etc, etc. and I’ll link in the lesson notes, a podcast episode that explains this with more detail. On the flip side, there is towards motivation. This is the motivation that allows you to move closer to the things you value, enjoy and desire. You are moving towards the positive things you crave. This is why I always encourage women to outline their values and their vision, because they need to know where they want to go and how they want to show up in order to use the positive motivation that will move us towards this. And if you want help with that I’ll link the life on purpose workbook. Or the free worksheets you can use either one to help you with this towards motivation is empowering. Because it is tied to thoughts like I get to do this, I want to do this, you aren’t in victim mode, the opposite in fact, you have autonomy and freewill over this. This is one reason why this type of motivation can actually be tricky for us to develop, because it means tapping into our own dreams, our own grid our own resolve our own effort. And another reason that this can be tough to develop is that it comes from a different part of our brain. If we have relied on stressful situations to prompt us into action, then we will need to learn new ways to get motivated from our prefrontal cortex of calm and logical part of our brain. The reason why this part of our brain helps us with towards motivation is because we are being worked on motivating ourselves with our values by showing up as our true selves towards the life that we crave. And this requires problem solving creative planning, long term visioning which is all part of the prefrontal cortex is job. So how to know if you are working from a place of towards motivation. First, you feel empowered. You are operating from a place of have to ensure you are operating from a place of one two and get to it’s more energizing instead of exhausting and experience that I had with this was parenting with a chip on my shoulder because I felt like a victim of it all. And I’ll link the blog post Montmartre in the lesson notes. If you want to read a little bit more about that. The thing is, I wasn’t owning the things I wanted to do, because I was so busy grumbling about all of the things that I told myself I had to do. But as I started to find ways to parent from my values, and enjoy the process, I felt more empowered in parenting from a place of fun and presence. And yeah, I still grumble sometimes, but it’s a lot less. And I look to me choosing to be the mom, I want to be to really lead the majority of my day, a mindset of grace and growth. When we are tapping into motivation of what moves us towards positive outcomes, we feel more satisfied with our work. Even if it’s hard, we feel energized by getting it done, we feel proud about it. And it doesn’t mean it’s always easy. It can be very hard to keep redirecting yourself on this intentional path of showing up and working on these things you really want. It will require giving yourself Grace giving others grace, keeping an open mind and a growth mindset. But encouragement to you, the more you do it, the more it will become a habit. And finally, an abundance mindset where you are operating from a place of scarcity and not enoughness in the away motivation. Here we are operating from an abundance mindset. We aren’t hurting our resources or trying to hustle faster, because we trust that there is enough of what we will need. We can show up and feel like we have enough enough time enough love enough patience enough support, we will develop eyes to see it all around us. And we will practice this mindset. Overall, when we are using the towards motivation, we are more likely to be resilient with our change, we are more likely to stick to change. Because every step moves us closer to the life we want. And that energy it draws us in. It’s like pulling up to your vacation destination like you’re just so excited to get there, we are more likely to problem solve as we go instead of throwing in the towel. And studies show that we are more likely to report a higher sense of well being in our lives. But let’s talk about the situations where we are actually motivated to make changes. And that is waiting until things are so bad. Often we make changes from the basis of things needing to change, because they’ve gotten so bad and intolerable. And we are almost forced to address them. I had this experience with my health this last year. I had debilitating heartburn for months. And the medication wasn’t helping I was in constant discomfort. I was waiting for a specialist appointment. It wasn’t happening. So I started reading about it listening to podcasts about it. And I decided to just try this thing of going off gluten, and things got better. But along the way, it felt hard like I was depriving myself, but it made the pain stop. So I stuck with it. And as I went along over the months, I noticed that other symptoms like migraines and join tanks were being resolved. And eventually my thyroid condition, which if you haven’t heard, I have Graves disease that turned to hypothyroid. It made an improvement after years of being on the decline. So suddenly, I felt towards motivation to stick with this new regime. Because I actually did have this long term vision to improve my thyroid. And now this was something that was moving me closer to that. So even though I started it from a place of desperation, now I felt energized by it. I felt agency over my health I do I feel empowered by this choice, and I want to stick with it. I can also say that this was true for us in making changes in our marriage. And if you listen to the podcast episode with Connor about life on purpose, I’ll make sure to link it in the lesson. He actually said the same thing. It really surprised me. Things had gotten so bad, it seemed like our only option was to make a change. And our efforts from this place. Yeah, they felt desperate, but it got the ball rolling and we got to a better place. But now we try to be proactive with it and watch things and catch them before they get there. Because now we are in a place of towards motivation. So often we are using our way motivation, things have gotten so bad that we just want to make the pain stop, we just want the noise to stop. We just want the conflict to resolve. And that’s okay, if we are making changes that get us out of the pit and keep moving forward. But also, when we are in the seasons of using away motivation, we can stop and think about what is happening. We can look for new ways to lean in deeper to our own vision and values and start using towards the motivation to motivate us rather than the need to just make the pain go away. Because what happens is that when we use away motivation to take action, we take coping actions and we run the risk of setting up habits and mindsets and relationships that were a way to cope. But if we are using towards motivations or actions look very different. They are proactive and they are more beneficial to us in the long run. When we use towards motivation we are setting up habits and mindsets and relationships that are empowered and rooted in our own good I’ll use a vision. So what is true for me might also be true for you. And I want to offer you a new way of looking at this. We don’t just want to cope, we want to move forward. So what I want you to take away from all of this is to pay attention. Always what I say the first step, recognize the way that you are motivating yourself. Is it empowering you or exhausting you recognize the times that you are using away motivation and consider how you would act differently if you tapped into using your towards motivation. So the worksheets are there, they will help you with this. It’s been a pleasure to be part of this making change challenge with you. Keep in touch. If intentional living is something you want to be working on, you need to understand your motivation for what you want and how you get it. If you’re hoping to attend that live coaching call, I encourage you to spend some time thinking about what you’re currently chasing in your life. What are you being motivated by get to know what is happening for you right

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now? What drives you? Is this thing that’s driving you this type of motivation? Is it leaving you feeling energized or exhausted? And we ask this question so that we can further than ask, What do you want to be motivated by? And how are we going to get that? How are we going to manufacture that? So if this brought up questions for you, if you want some more support on this again, sign up for that live coaching call February 2 9:30am. Pacific Standard Time, yes, it will be recorded and the replay will be available for a limited time. If you have questions about any of this, feel free to reach out to me. I’m on Instagram at simple on purpose.ca. And if you’re in the Facebook group, feel free to put a note in there a post in there about anything you heard any questions you had. All right friends, have a great week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post 177. Understanding what is motivating you (chasing vs avoiding) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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I want to talk to you about listening more deeply to yourself and asking, “what do I want?”. For some of us, we are out of touch with our dreams or our life vision. We might feel overwhelmed, or like it is impractical, or like we have failed too much in the past. This episode is to help you see some of the ways you might be stuck with listening to your own dreams and ideas, and some tips on moving through that.

“A ship is safe in the harbour but that is not what ships are for” – source unknown, probably John A Shedd

“You have to show up before inspiration will.” – James Clear

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I may earn a commission, at no cost to you.

In this episode I discuss:

• Listening to yourself on a deep level and on a surface level
• Six reasons why it might be hard to know your dreams and goals
• Giving yourself permission to have dreams and ideas and goals
• Being a mom who struggles to dream and feels selfish to have goals
• Learning to inspire yourself

All the fun links you might enjoy

• Six signs you are living on autopilot
• Are you too comfortable? And what is it costing you?
• Are you trading in peace for relief?
• The joy of being mediocre
• Redefine the life you want and what success looks like
• Hurdles to being a mom who has dreams and hobbies
• What you can learn from imposter syndrome
• For the mom waiting for life to happen
• Dreaming for the non-dreamer, from A Little Light
• Join me on Instagram

Sign up for the Feb 2nd Group Coaching Call – open to anyone who has questions or would like coaching on this topic and the topic of creating your future

Sign up for Simple Saturdays email (a fun email, twice a month)

Full transcript (unedited)

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Hey friends, it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counselor from simpleonpurpose.ca

If you are joining us for the new year, if you just started searching like intentional living or living life on purpose or goals or something, and you found this podcast, welcome, I’m so glad you’re here. Just to give you the quick and fast context, I am a mom of three kids who are now 1110, and eight. And around here we talk about ways to simplify your home, your heart and your life. So that so that you can show up for your life and live your life on purpose, live it intentionally live it with peace and purpose and presence and enjoy it. This episode is a follow up to the last one on creating your future and how we actually have the power to create our future when we turn off the autopilot. And some of the main points to notice in that episode were that we’re really conditioned on how we show up in the world. And we really live from that condition. So everything we learned from our upbringing, from our past informs what we believe is possible, what is acceptable, what is safe, what to pursue. And so essentially, really, our past everything we learned in our past how we’ve shown up in our past, it dictates how we show up for our future, our past dictates our future, when we’re living on autopilot that is, but we have this part of our brain, when we are in a calm state we can access it is that part that allows us to think logically long term, big picture ideas. It’s that part that says, Wait a minute, if I have ketchup, chips, and whiskey each night, where will that get me in five years? Is that where I want to be? Or sit? Is that part of our brain that says, I usually go through the day in a fog? I don’t feel like I’m present with my kids. Is that what I want? And then what do I want? How do I want to show up as a mom, that’s kind of the part of our brain that we get to tap into when we shut off the autopilot, we shut off the stress, the anxiety, and we just be still for a minute, I do have an episode from the past called Signs, you might be on autopilot, living on autopilot. And I’ll make sure to link that in the show notes. But really, it’s all about shutting off the autopilot for a second in opening the door to intentional living living on purpose, where we start to consider what life could be what we want it to be. And over the years for myself doing this work, I’ve used this analogy of me being a ship. And I really think it’s because I heard this quote, when I started doing this work, and the quote is a ship is safe in the harbor. But that’s not what ships are for. I would like to tell you who said that quote, but I’ve searched it up. And there’s like four different people that it is attributed to. So I’m not too sure. But that quote, It really came to me at a time where I was becoming aware that I had built up my life on desire to just have comfort and ease and maybe not always in the peaceful sense, but definitely in the relief sense, where I just don’t have to deal with the conflict or doing the hard thing, which of course, in the long run does not really result in a life of comfort and ease. But a life of things swept under the rug and a life of avoiding the hard thing and then being faced with the harder thing in the long run. I’ll put a couple episodes in the show notes that kind of dig more into comfort, peace and relief, those kinds of concepts. And as I was becoming aware, I think and for most of all of us that we are living in a way that just helps us through cope much of life. And I think around 30 is when we become painfully aware that our coping habits that helped us to survive the earlier parts of life and kind of get through and manage and feel okay, and feel acceptable. They’re now the source of much of our suffering, and we need a new way. So we have this gap where we start to consider what the new way could be. And so today, I want to talk about this new way, I want to talk to you about listening more deeply to yourself and asking, What do I want? And I think there’s two approaches we can take to this on one. Considering that big draw you feel deep down inside? What do your bones ache for? What does your heart grown for? This can be a hard one to name to put a label to it. But I think you can sense it, I think it has a sense. You can sense how it feels or what color it is or the sound of it or the sight of it, you can almost feel that inner sense. And I would just encourage you don’t be in a rush to figure this one out. Just acknowledge that there is something there some inner draw inner desire, that is a longing in you and I think let yourself stop and feel that from time to time remember what it feels like to feel that inner longing for something. The other way to think about it, which is what we mostly think about when we think about our life on purpose or a dreams or goals is what we can name what we can pursue what we know we would enjoy in our life what we know we need more of in our life. and over my years of pursuing goals and habits and vision, I see it shifting over the years, even my career has shifted over the years. And I would encourage you with this approach to learning what you want and dream about, is to keep in mind, you don’t have to have it all figured out. Because things will shift seasons shift, you shift, you get to learn a little bit more, you get to try something different, the work isn’t so much about seeing a clear path. And taking all the right steps to get there. The work is to become someone who takes the next step on the path and gives yourself permission to sometimes try other paths. But we do need to start somewhere we are a ship, we need the destination, we’re going to allow for detours and hurdles. But we do need to get out of the harbor, knowing what we want can sometimes just be the hurdle. And I’ve mentioned the life on purpose workbook. And I’ve got free worksheets as well, that will walk you through the nine areas of your life, and help you set up for some vision that you want in those areas. And I’ve heard women over the years share that they’ve uncovered ideas and dreams and values that they weren’t consciously aware of for themselves. So this can really be an exciting time, where you give yourself permission to dream, you carve away some time, some space to actually do that work. And when I say dream, I want to, I want you to know, I mean, the whole range from that feeling of big idea for what you want in life, like build a house or travel this place with my kids or start a business. But I also mean the simplest things, the little goals, the little habits, you want to build the hobbies that bring you joy, the people that you want to surround yourself with and build friendships with. So I do want to kind of come into this conversation about taking the pressure off yourself, you don’t have to get it all figured out. And to also take the pressure on yourself on just thinking about the simplest little things that you desire in your life, and allowing space for the big things you desire in your life. Because ultimately, who I’m talking to today is for those of you who aren’t excited or who feel overwhelmed, or who feel lost, or who feel like you don’t have dreams, or maybe you don’t even want to have dreams. And I want to talk about the reasons why you might feel like this and what you could try to do about it. So the first one we kind of mentioned is we make this huge, big thing, and then it becomes overwhelming. You might think sure I have a dream, I’m going to quit my life here, I’m going to move my family to a hot Beach, I’m going to spend my life swimming with my kids and running a little Etsy store. Some dreams just feel so big. And it can feel overwhelming. And when we’re overwhelmed, we shut down and we don’t really think about how we can break things into steps. The other way we make our dreaming way too big and overwhelming is expecting perfection. I encourage you to dial everything back. Start with the simple things, things that aren’t heavy. Start with doing the work of becoming somebody who is working towards something bigger, you can have dreams without making them overwhelming, huge or serious, you can also enjoy being mediocre things. I’m gonna link an episode on that in the show notes. Another reason you might not even want to consider dreams or let yourself is because you’ve either been burned in the past, or you don’t want to be disappointed. I grew up personally with an overly practical father who encouraged us to have interest in hobbies, but to always seek out the safety thing, safety before dreams. And he’s in his 70s. And at this stage in the game, we joke about what we joke about with him that don’t have dreams, dreams will disappoint you so you better not have any, because he inadvertently raised us with this mentality in an effort to really provide safety and security for his kids. He also raised us to work for me, I don’t know, my siblings really felt this way. I took it as this way. For me it meant pick the safe thing, pick the easy thing. It took me a lot to really decide that I wanted to redefine what life success would look like for me. And I’ll Lincoln post on that in the show notes. So this can be a hard mentality to bust out of if dreaming doesn’t even really feel like an option. And you might have this belief that big dreams lead to big disappointment. Or you might have that kind of lingering impact of what you’ve experienced, where I’ve learned that dreams don’t succeed. I’ve I’ve tried them and it didn’t work. You might label yourself as a failure or to label your dreams as a failure. Or you even took a simple no as a failure as a rejection. So there’s a lot that could be said on this because I feel like so many of my own pursuits over the years didn’t quote unquote work. But I will say that I’ve learned that when dreams don’t succeed, at least not easily, that doing the work. It’s still let me learn how to become someone who builds who plans who chases and those skills allow me more options in my life. If you feel like dreaming is childish or impractical or lead to disappointment. Just consider your resistance here. Look for the times in your life that you’ve shut your own ideas down, you

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shut down your own hopes. Or maybe you feel like other people have shut them down. Just consider those moments what was happening and what you made it mean and how you’ve shown up from that place. A really common reason we don’t allow ourselves to consider what we want in life, or ideas or hobbies, or goals or dreams is, maybe we feel like it’s selfish, and many women I work with, and women I know feel this dreaming is selfish. That’s a very common one, mainly because we’re moms. And mom guilt can feel necessary to knowing you’re a good mom. So our beliefs, our cultural beliefs. So what we’ve been told about motherhood with a good mom is it can be at odds with being a woman who has interests and dreams and goals she wants to work on. This has been a big hurdle for me over the years and something I’ve written about that I’ll make sure to link in the show notes, obviously, check out the show notes, guys. If you can’t find them where you are, go to simple and purpose.ca. Click Listen, all the episodes are there with all the show notes, and full transcripts of the episodes. Okay, so I will say that, for me, this has been a hurdle for me really holding up the cultural expectations on what motherhood should look like. And then holding up my own heart that was wanting something wanting to do things wanting to feel energetic and excited and passionate about things. Ultimately, for me, I, I turned to how my faith informs this part of my life. Because I believe that we are made for longing and passionate living and dreaming as a way we do that if we don’t have any of this, we’re just lukewarm. And I believe that we’re made like this on purpose. God gives us hearts that have unique talents and interests and skills, because he wants us to live a rich and passionate life and not a life of apathy. A few other reasons that I think dreaming can feel really hard. One is we don’t feel qualified, we feel like our dreams are out of reach, we don’t have the ability to achieve them. And two things could be happening here. One is our dream is in the panic zone. So we have three zones, we can really live in the comfort zone, we’re safe, we’re not really challenged, then just beyond that, where most of us struggle to just move into this next zone, the adventure zone. That’s where things are challenging. But we also enjoy the challenge. Like it’s kind of exciting, it’s kind of motivating. And then beyond the adventure zone, there’s the panic zone. That’s where alarm bells go off. We’ve gone too far we’re out to sea, we’re in the storm, we have no idea to navigate. I think a big reason why it’s hard for us to move from the comfort zone into adventure zone is because most of us think we have to go right to the panic zone. And we spend less time getting to know what’s in our adventure zone. And work on making that bigger and and work on exploring it and learning how it feels. The other part here is obviously doubting our own abilities. I’ve talked about this on the imposter syndrome episode. For me, I’ll say, I don’t know if I’ve ever felt qualified. Feeling qualified competence is something that you get from doing the work. Another reason this all might be hard as you might not have any clue, no inspiration, just a blank space. So when someone asks you even where you want to eat dinner, you’re like, I don’t know, you might just feel out of touch with the things that bring you joy, or your interests. Maybe you even just shut this part of you down over the years. So your job here is to learn how to inspire yourself. It means giving yourself to do this, some space to do this without pressure and just start so simple. What do I want to listen to on Spotify right now? What do I feel like eating right now? What do I want to wear today. And don’t be surprised if I recommend starting a Pinterest board for it. Because that can just be a really helpful tool at visually starting to put some ideas together. So pick an area of your life that you want to get started. Like, I want to get passionate about cooking, and start pinning things or I want to get passionate about I don’t know plants. It’s one of my passions and just start pinning things. James clear has an email list. And he had a recent quote in one of his emails that said, you have to show up before inspiration will so be willing to learn how to inspire yourself. And a final reason I want to share with you we all know there’s more is that we have put ourselves in a waiting stage in the waiting room of life. And yes, there are some seasons that really demand that we wait some seasons of our life Collison, we need to do some hard work, we need to turn inward. But for some of us we stay in the waiting. It’s easy to not have to do anything to not take responsibility when you’re quote unquote waiting. So some work here is to pay attention yourself. Am I putting myself in a waiting room? Am I ready to open the door? Am I ready to kind of take a step out of here. Maybe in one of these you can see you’re in one of these points. You can see yourself you can see a reason why dreaming might be hard for you. This is something I’ve talked on for many years. It’s something that I’ve also shared on over at a little light if you want to read Both of these points with a little bit more of a faith based point of view, I’ll make sure to link on an old post, I have over it a little light. But ultimately, wherever you find yourself at, all you need to do is acknowledge that there is something different that I wished for. And it doesn’t mean it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean you have to dismiss your current life, it doesn’t mean you have to find problems with your current life, you can just want something different for the sake of wanting something different. You can make change when things feel great. Or you can wait for it to feel really hard. And that will drive you to make a change. But all you need to do here is get curious, what else could you want in your day, your week? What do you want to do with your time with your energy? Because ultimately, all of this is for you. Nobody will give you permission, or make your goals happen or change your future, or help you see your hopes come true. No one will do this. But you go back to being that ship in the harbor playing it safe. Where does it get you to stay safe to stay in the harbor. For me, in my experience, I felt like it kept me where I was not moving, ultimately, apathetic apathy. If this is something you feel like you want to dig into, then I encourage you to spend a few minutes because we do need to make space for this, we need to invest a little bit amount of time right now. So that we can plan out how to spend our time over the coming days, weeks, months years. I encourage you to spend a few minutes writing out some ideas, whatever has come into your mind from the notion of doing something different, or even continuing and leaning does something you’re already doing that you want to do it really intentionally and really start to show up in that area of your life. I would love to wrap up this episode and last episode, the power to create your future with a coaching call. So I’m going to offer a group coaching call on Thursday, February 2, I say that we’re the next Thursday, February 2 at 9:30am, PST Pacific Standard Time. And that will be a group coaching call one hour of your questions and live coaching for $7. That’s February 2, Thursday at 9:30am. Make sure to stop by the show notes. If you want to sign up for that. This is a really great time to watch coaching to have any questions answered that have even really just come up over your mind over these this past month of coming into January and creating your future turning off that autopilot. Stop living from your past in deciding what you want your future to look like. We can talk strategy, we can talk mindsets, we can talk hurdles. And this can just also be a place to listen if you just want to listen and garner the experience that other women are sharing those brave women who put themselves out there with questions and willingness to be coached live. When you’re watching that and listening to that you always find a little nugget for yourself. So I encourage you to try that out if that’s something you’ve been interested in for a while. And as always, you can find me on Instagram at simple on purpose.ca or leave a comment in the Facebook group for the community there. Alright friends, have a great week.

The post 176. When you don’t know what you want in life. Life on purpose for the non-dreamer first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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With 2023 finally here, it is time to start looking forward to the future and improve our health, relationships, and life. But sometimes it might be a good idea to look inwards as well and see if we intend to succeed in those goals passively, or actively. Kickstart the year by turning off the autopilot and living life intentionally.

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I may earn a commission, at no cost to you.

In this episode I discuss:

• Taking charge of your own future
• Advice to live life intentionally
• How our past affects our future, and how to use that in the present
• The compound effect of our habits
• Three things you can do to help shape your future

All the fun links you might enjoy

• Throw Throw Burrito (on Amazon)
• Change your experience by how you make memories in motherhood (episode link)
• Think the best of me, or not (embracing our hard and awesome)
• Making motherhood harder than it needs to be (mom martyr post)
• Our marriage was struggling, here are 12 things that helped (blog post)
• I’ve been living on autopilot (a post from 2015 on working through the frustration of waking up to a complacent life)
• For the mom who is waiting for life to happen (how waiting keeps us from taking action)
• Six things nobody told me about Intentional Living (when it is hard work to be intentional, but it is worth it)
• What will change cost you? Paying the status quo or investing in change (episode link)
• What we say about ourselves, and why it matters (self-limiting identity)
• Small things that can change your whole life (how I applied the compound effect to my life)
• Life on Purpose Workbook
• Live your vision worksheets
• Live your values worksheets

Sign up for Simple Saturdays email (a fun email, twice a month)

FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited)

0:11
Hello friends, happy 2023 Welcome back to the simple on purpose podcast. I am Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counselor, here to walk with you through all things about simplifying your home, your heart, your life, and living it on purpose. For us here in Canada, in my house, we celebrated Christmas over the holiday. My husband had time off, I had time off, like for real time off. And in the like, 11 years of motherhood. This was one of the few Christmases where I felt like I had a truly great time. So weird. I mean, of course, plans got cancelled. I got sick kids complained siblings thought the house was a mess. There was tears, there was feelings, mine included. But I don’t know, maybe it’s because I was really trying to have eyes for those really great moments. And you know, maybe because we also spent so much time with friends. I think that was really important. We spent a lot of time with our friends and our kids friends. We played games as a family mostly throw throw burrito, have you played that it’s a card game. But then you like stopped to take these dodgeball battles. And I have a friend who said they eventually gave that game away because it was traumatic for her household. And I get it because just last night, I had a tantrum. I think all of us have rotated, taking turns having tantrums playing Throw, throw burrito. But it is so fun. I’ll link that in the show notes. So for me, as a mom, this Christmas had a lot of just simple, great memories, time that we spent together time we spent with friends. And this is a Christmas I’m going to definitely write about in my memory book. So I have a memory book I keep where I write down the really great things that I want to kind of make up my experience of motherhood. I’ll link an episode I’ve done on that in the past two years, about making memories and motherhood if you want to check that out. So we’re coming into the new year, maybe you celebrated Christmas maybe celebrated something else, maybe you didn’t don’t celebrate anything over the winter break. But you probably aren’t free from the new year new me culture that seems to seep into most continents, I think, to some extent, in the simple Saturday’s email that I shared. winter holiday is often a time where we try to do three things we try to rest, we try to reflect on the year past. And we try to set intention for the new year ahead. And I really want to encourage you that you can do all three of those without making them feel like a chore and obligation or a performance. And you can do them in simple and really gentle ways. In the simple Saturdays email, I also shared that I think we are edging into a new approach as a society with how we approach resolutions and change. And I think it’s a little bit more humane, a little bit more gentle. If you saw my little rant in there, it’s probably not written from the perspective of a white middle to upper class and men who don’t have the same life demands or life dreams that many of us do. I think, for us, especially a stay at home moms, we really try to smash our life and who we should be and how we should be living into this checklist of productivity hacks that have been sold to us over the years by such prominent men, and they worked for them, but I don’t think they work for everyone. And so I do see this shift that takes into account that we as a person, if we’re wanting to pursue change, and or even the change, we want to be like who we want to become that we don’t have to be this perfected checklist of an ideal, ideal human that we don’t have to be, nor can we be it. I’m going to link the heart and awesome episode. And that’s more on embracing your heart and not letting your ego trick you into thinking that we need to be perceived as awesome all the time. So those links will be in the show notes. There’s going to be a lot of links in the show notes as we go along. I have like many pages of notes for this episode. So you’re on a bit of a ride with me, I might try to break it up into smaller episodes. So come along for the journey. See what happens. I don’t even know. Ultimately, you can also sign up for the simple Sadler Saturday’s email in the show notes as well. That is our original coffee date. It goes out twice a month. And it’s a place where I give a lot of prompts a lot of thoughts, a lot of ideas, and a lot of links of things that I’ve just written over like the decade where I’ve been blogging and podcasting and sharing all of this stuff. So I definitely recommend it. It is a it’s a fun email.

4:39
So today I want to talk about what your future will be. What do you want your future to be? What do you if you imagine does it feel different? Does it feel slightly different? If you imagine your future do you maybe have no clue? Or maybe you just kind of say I’ll just see I’ll wait and see and that’s what it will be. What it is is what it will be

5:00
I don’t know it yet. And they shared a little bit in the November episode about how decluttering led me to see my complacency, just complacent in so many areas of my life, not just how I was managing and feeling in my home, my health was struggling, I was really out of touch with my body, especially what childbirth had done to it. I was eating protein bars, drinking coffee, and wine, of course, had my emotional support waffles, all the waffles all of the time. My motherhood was really on a reactive autopilot mode, I wasn’t intentional at all, I felt overwhelmed. That turned me into a mom, martyr, I really had a story that I wasn’t a capable mom. And if my kids were unhappy, or they were upset about something, I really made it mean that I was doing things wrong. As a mom, you can see how I really set myself up for a lot of suffering a lot of sense of failure, which you can imagine had an impact on my marriage, because every marriage has a dance. And at that time, ours was me being anxious, which made me controlling, and him withdrawing. So it really created a very unproductive atmosphere of resentment. Ultimately, my world felt small, it felt stuck. And like I said, as I was decluttering, and seeing where I was complacent, it led me to this realization that I wasn’t in charge of my life. This was me. I wasn’t in the driver’s seat, I wasn’t going anywhere I wanted to go. And that sense that like, Oh, this is this is me, like, I’m doing this. I felt like I was stepping into this strange and scary and exciting place of ownership over my, over my life. And so off, I went to wander through the wilderness desert of intentional living.

6:51
Here we go, living life on purpose.

6:55
I recently had a conversation with a woman who I think is older than me. And she relayed to me her recent awareness that we are, in fact, in charge of our own futures. And I was kind of taken aback at how floored she was to realize this. And then I remember, like I was there, I was just there not too long ago. And I wanted to tell everyone, hence simple on purpose coming into existence.

7:20
I was watching love his blind before Christmas. And if you haven’t seen it, it’s on Netflix. It is where a set of women and a set of men live in this compound for 10 solid days, they go on blind dates with one another, with the whole goal of finding someone to marry. And it is blind in the sense that they are separated by a wall. So they can only talk to one another, they cannot see each other.

7:41
So they spend hours just talking to each other. And the days go on, they spend more and more time with that one or two people they feel really connected with because their whole job is to find a spouse. So they’re going to start talking about really deep conversations around compatibility, marriage, all of those things. And at the end of these 10 days, they decide have I found my soulmate? Do I want to get engaged. And if they say, yes, they want to get engaged, they meet for the first time, and they go live together for four weeks and plan their wedding. And then they decide at the altar, if they will marry this person, if they will follow through on this marriage. You can imagine this show has a lot of flaws with it, but the relationship dynamics really fascinate me. And it fascinates me even more to contrast, this US version of the show, with the Brazil version and the Japanese version. They’re all on opposite ends of this social and cultural spectrum. Okay, but stick with me, we’re not going to stay on love is blind. There were two little nuggets that I heard on the season of love is blind that I thought were just so fascinating, so interesting. The first one was, don’t let roommate issues become marriage issues. And you got to get to the reunion episode to earn that one, I’m giving it to you for free. The other one is a woman, a mom telling her potential future daughter in law, life is about the goals you set. This is kind of her summing up of what she learned in her life and the message she wanted to give younger generations, life is about the goals you set. I think maybe we heard that when we were younger. But to really hear it, I imagine really hearing that when you’re young, and kind of accepting that you get to shape your whole experience in a bigger way than you give yourself credit for. I mean, we don’t always need goals in our life. Sometimes we have goals, sometimes we don’t. But what I do believe is that we need to know where we want to be going, what direction we want our life to take. We need intention, we need visions, and sometimes that comes in the form of goals. Sometimes it’s in the form of habits. Sometimes it’s in the form of setting intentions or vision and values. So what will your future life be? If you ask yourself that? I’m going to tell you what the answer is, for all of us, for most of us, because for most of us, unless something major happens, we can often assume our future will be more of the same. The status quo

10:00
Whatever you are doing with your days in your life right now, whatever habits and routines you have, how you eat, how you move, how you approach people how you cope, you will likely keep this cycle going. So we can often look at where we are now and assume things will carry on as they are. When I heard this, it felt like a light switch had switched on, I think I lived with this notion that things will work out how I want them to. But it kept me in this kind of proverbial waiting room of life, where I just had to endure the dissatisfaction, and live with the illusion that I’m going to stumble into everything I want in life. I think many of us have this hope this, this hope that our future self is going to figure it out for us.

10:46
But we don’t see that our future self only has what we start to give them now. So how do you change your future, you change what you are doing right now. And that will change the results you have later today. Tomorrow down the road. It sounds simple. But here’s the thing, it’s not simple. Because we need to understand that by default, our past determines our future, our past determines our future. Because our past has taught us what works and what doesn’t. Often without us knowing we’re operating from these deep, deep associations we have made on how to keep ourselves safe and acceptable. Just like we learn a language as a child, and we inherently use it. We also spend our lives learning from our world, how to act and think and feel, we use all of this information we’ve acquired, we use it subconsciously, automatically. So we’re conditioned. We’re conditioned over time by our culture, our experiences, our communities, and our own interpretations. So we formed these beliefs around who we are and who we’re not. There’s an episode I’m going to link on limiting beliefs on how we live and to what we are told we are we grow into that, and how we also make assumptions about who we are. And we start to align with that. So over the years, we have learned how to act in order to stay safe and be accepted. We learn who is safe, who’s a safe person who to avoid, we learn to stick with what feels good, we learn to avoid what’s uncomfortable, and we create this structure of rules on what is success, what is failure, we lock into those and we live by those, maybe we have rules on what it means to be a good mom, or a good wife. Maybe we avoid certain types of people because we felt ostracized by them in the past, maybe we avoid a task or hobby or a project because it was hard in the past. Or we told ourselves we failed in the past. And we let that mean, we’re not good enough. We’re not creative enough, we’re not disciplined enough. And now to give it another go, it would come with doubt and probably shame to things that definitely don’t feel safe or good to our brain. So they’re probably not even real options. When we get down to it. Everything we’ve been through. Everything we’ve been taught has informed how we show up. Now this is the programming, we have been programmed. And it’s not a bad thing. It’s a it’s a purposeful thing. This is how our brain stays efficient by learning the environment, learning the input and the output, and creating a program that runs in the environment. We’re, we’re amazingly adaptable, like this is an adaptation strategy, to conserve energy to operate on habits in these learned conditioning. But because this is how we operate on this habit based autopilot, when we think about our future, when we’re kind of living into our future, we’re going to look to the past to dictate what we’re capable of what works, what doesn’t work. And every day we act from those beliefs, thought programming that we’ve picked up over time, we look to our past to decide what’s possible in our future. It’s like an AI like an artificial intelligence in a computer. If you were playing a game against a computer, the computer is going to compute its next move, based on what’s happening in the game right now, what were the past moves and what it’s learned about how to play the game. So our brain programming is the same. It’s built on our past experiences. It uses our past to inform how to operate in the present. Maybe this isn’t really a new concept. Maybe it’s one that you’ve heard over the years. But I just really want you to stop and kind of think about how it applies to your life. Because unless we’re prompted by unique circumstances, to really change how we think and act and feel in the world. We’re going to keep operating from that same programming and get more and more of the same results, which is fine. If you like what’s happening if you like your current results, but think about how you’re showing up right now. How do you show up in relationships if we keep showing up the same in our relationships, maybe with a spouse, a friend, a parent, sibling, our kids, if we keep showing up the same way, things keep staying the same? Actually, they probably worsen right because of the compound effect. If we keep treating our body in the same way, maybe we’re not sleeping, moving, not drinking water, then we don’t actively improve our health. If we keep paying

15:00
Getting our job going into it with a chip on our shoulder. We don’t ever get career satisfaction. This whole idea of creating my own future really hit home for me when I thought about like these little habits, this, these ways I’m showing up every day in my life, I’m going to also link to Episode 78 on that small things can change your whole life. And this is the concept of compound effect by Darren Hardy. That is, what we are doing every day consistently adds up one way or another, it could add up into a positive outcome, if it’s habits we really like. And it could add up to a negative income, outcome if they are habits we that are not really helping us. So consider where you are right now, staying where you are right now doing the same, talking to people in the same way talking to yourself in the same way, taking care of your home or your health the same way, as time goes on. What will the compound effect of that be? You can even look on a short scale think of yesterday, what were the habits you had yesterday? What were the things that you do that you probably always do? What do you think the compound effects of those habits would be? So we’ve got the compound effects of our habits, we’ve got our past programming that has taught us how to show up in the world in order to stay safe. But I think for many of us, we eventually start to feel stuck. We feel stuck by this programming that we’ve lived by, we feel stuck with the habits that we have. And so we often with that stuckness, we start to feel frustrated by ourselves by our lives, or maybe we externalize it to the people around us, we don’t often stop and give ourselves permission to pursue another way. But here is where our brain is even more amazing. Because our brain allows us to pause and assess and decide we want something different. When we turn off the autopilot, living, thinking, acting feeling, we tap into a really logical long term planning, thinking part of our brain that gets to decide another way. Sometimes our frustration brings us to this fork in the road where we decide like I was, you know, years ago in my basement, oh my gosh, everything I’ve done brought me here. And I actually want something different. I don’t want to keep doing what I’m doing. So what is that different? Where do I want to go? You can have agency over your life. We have the ability to rewire our programming our brain can be rewired. This is called neuroplasticity. You have the ability to practice new stories you believe new thoughts you want to go into something with. This allows you to practice also new emotions and develop new emotional habits. And when you change how you feel, and you think you naturally change how you act. And it doesn’t have to be drastic, it can be sustainable and intentional. But it doesn’t mean turning off that autopilot you you’re living by today. And of course, as we’re making changes, we need to have a why we need to have a vision we need to have a goal. This prompted me years ago to develop the life on purpose workbook. And that’s been on Amazon for a number of years. Many of you have used the paper copy or the digital copy. I’ll link them in the show notes. There’s also the live your vision and values worksheets that are just like a little snippet of that, that I’ve talked about before, I’ll link those in the show notes as well. But we can’t just start taking action without intention, our productivity needs purpose. Otherwise, it’s busy work. It’s busy work that eventually feels unfulfilling and causes us to taper out, which only causes us to criticize our shortcomings. And not really acknowledge the fact that we were probably we’re being intentional with how we spent our energy and time, we probably weren’t steering the ship to the destination, we really want it to go. And we need to move towards something that feels like a very worthy destination, something that is actually worthy of all of this time and energy. We really need to tap into our inner desires for our life, we need to start taking ownership seeing where we have agency, letting go of that past programming. To me, this work has changed my life. I feel like I have changed who I am as a mum, as a friend, definitely as a partner, as a wife. And most importantly, in a way I didn’t realize it was going to impact me at the time. It changed how I feel as a woman living in my body in my life and finding passion in all of it. Which I think is why I’m still here almost a decade later. Still you’re talking about it and coaching on in counseling on it. So let’s wrap this up with three simple things you can do if you want to take some action from this notion that you have the power to create a future life that you really love that you want. First thing where we always start, before we decide where we want to go. Let’s understand where we are now. What’s happening for you right now. What is your autopilot? Where is this autopilot taking you day after day after day. Like I mentioned consider your daily habits your daily thoughts your daily emotions, and ask where they get you in the long run. What do you predict the compound effect will be of these? Maybe even consider a part of your life

20:00
doesn’t feel that great. And take a minute, a moment of humility to ask how am I responsible, even in a small way? How do I contribute to this circumstance. And the next thing is to have some compassion for yourself. Remember, you are just living from the programming. And even if you are frustrated by how you show up, understand that it comes from a very deep conditioned place that has served a purpose for you over the years. And then we can jump to the fun part. And I encourage you to just open up the idea that you can imagine a different future for yourself than the one that’s going to happen on autopilot. Ask yourself one question, what do I want, even if it doesn’t feel possible right now? And I encourage you to just live with that question for a while. When you give yourself permission to not look to the past anymore to decide your future. You get to imagine things you might not even know you want. Those are the three steps I would recommend as a starting point. And if you have questions along the way, insights along the way, feel free to reach out to me message me on Instagram, email me from the newsletter or stop by the Facebook group and share a post in there. I would love to see where this episode landed for you so that I know kind of what to talk about in the future because I have lots of ideas, but I really want to talk about the next thing to move forward. That will really help meet you where you’re at. Alright friends, Happy 2023 Happy January. Let’s do simple on purpose together this year. Have a great week.

The post 175. What will your future be? More of the same? Or will you turn off the autopilot? first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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With all the planning, gift wrapping, baking, and decorating, this time of year can get crazy, and life seems to just stop until the 25th is well behind us. Today I wanted to talk about the concept of Hygge and how to make Christmas feel a little simpler, a little more manageable, and a little more enjoyable. And put this all against the backdrop of the stress response we can find ourselves in as mothers. Understanding the concept of the Window of Tolerance can give you more awareness over times when you feel little capacity for daily life and seem to run on overwhelm and stress.

In this episode I discuss:

• The three components of Hygge
• Holiday activities and how to get the family involved
• Decluttering Christmas
• Our Window of Tolerance

All the fun links you might enjoy

• All posts and episodes about Simple Christmas
• Posts and episodes on hygge
• 30 days of hygge free calendar
• Enneagram + Motherhood series
• Enneagram 101 post and episode
• CBC Gem
• Why you aren’t thriving in motherhood (stress and surviving)
• Episode playlist on emotional intelligence for moms
• An intro to polyvagal theory (window of tolerance)
• Infographic on the window of tolerance
• Reactive vs proactive approach to the day
• Simple Christmas Planner
• Simple Saturdays email

Sign up for Simple Saturdays email (a fun email, twice a month)

FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited)

0:15
Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. Around here we talk about ways that you can simplify your home, your heart and your life. So that you can remove all the distractions, all of the clutter, all of the excess, and just show up for the stuff that really matters the most to you the stuff that is really important to you. So as I was preparing for the podcast this week, I was drafting up a podcast on goals and visions and creating a future you love. And then I was like, if I heard this right now in the middle of Christmas, I don’t think I would even be listening to it. Because like kind of just stops around Christmas, right? Which I don’t mind. I really love the idea of hibernating a little. I think it really honors this season that we’re in we when we can step back from that pace of summer and spring and kind of pay attention to what nature is doing and model it a little bit flow with it and let ourselves hibernate a little bit more. So there’s my soapbox moment, let’s all hibernate a little bit more this winter.

Which brings me to the notion of Hygge I’m probably going to use the word ‘hoo-ga’ nd ‘hyg’ interchangeably, but it is pronounced hygge. You guys are asking me about it right now you want me to talk about this. So here we go. In December, I often talk about simplifying your Christmas. But all of that content is out there. I am going to link to the simple Christmas series in the show notes, where I talk about simplifying gift giving traditions, giving kids toys without feeling overrun with clutter, how to make your gifts more thoughtful, all those basics, they’re covered. So I thought I would just expand into a different direction on things that help you feel like your Christmas is simpler and cozier and maybe more manageable, more enjoyable.

So the first thing we’ll talk about is hygge, which is a Danish word that doesn’t have any direct English translation and it just embodies this atmosphere of simplicity, of being cozy of being with others togetherness and of contentment.

I think we’ve all seen especially on Pinterest, the stock images of a woman she’s like draped on her white couch or her white bed. She’s got a long white knit sweater on cozy Christmas socks. I don’t know, do her legs get cold, I don’t know. Mind read. She’s holding a mug of tea and there’s a fluffy blanket like draped around her.

And that’s what they tell us who got is we might not think of a mum in her like old decade old house code and slippers, drinking her magnesium water at the end of the night, sitting on the couch, watching a Netflix show with subtitles on it listening to the dryer in the basement. It’s not as trendy right. And that’s the thing is, hygge isn’t decor trend. It’s more of an approach and approach to living. And I think it’s an approach we naturally gravitate towards in winter. When we kind of want to nest inside we want to slow down we want to recharge we want to, I don’t know, enjoy some simple indulgences and just be with our people.

And hygge can be a really great filter to help you do that. So let’s talk about kind of the three components. One is getting cozy, slowing down, getting cozy, making your space cozy, making yourself cozy. The second one is connectedness, making time to connect with the people around you. Maybe even doing activities that make you feel connected and contentment. Doing simple things. Don’t overcomplicate it don’t feel like you have to do every craft on your Pinterest Christmas craft board.

This is an approach that I heard about, I don’t know, eight or nine years ago, and I decided I’m doing like that way. That’s how I want to do life, which I think appeals to most type nines and I’m a type nine on the Enneagram if that feels relatable to you. Welcome fellow Type nines. Over the years I’ve written just a few posts on hygge because I don’t think it needs to be expanded on a ton. I think the core concepts are there for us. But I do also have a printable list of ways that you can hook up in the cold months. And I’ll link that in the show notes.

But I thought it might be fun just to talk about some of the ways I noticed that we bring hygge into our Christmas even specifically this year, because it’s always nice to hear ideas. And then if you’re looking for ideas, and maybe you’ll like one, maybe you’ll even spark some of your own your own spin on it.

The first one is a little bonfire, a little bonfire so cozy any fire really cozy. The other week my husband was cleaning up some stuff around the yards and the carports and he was burning some old wood and had this fire going and it’s dark around like fourth four o’clock here. So we can see the fire glowing, it’s in the back of our yard. And he sends out my daughter and her friend to go put more wood in and so they’re just tossing it out there and we’re watching them from the kitchen window and we noticed they’re just hanging out there they’re not coming back in. So kind of when it got them chairs and blankets and they just hung out there and we We thought it was just the sweetest we were like taking videos of them, sending them to her mom. And we just thought it was the cutest, most cozy little moment. And I think anytime you have a fire pit or fireplace or can go out of town to a friend’s or the lake have a winter bonfire, I think they’re just such a simple way of slowing you down, you just slow down around a fire. And it’s just such a nice place to connect. You don’t feel pressured to like, do anything or be entertained, you can just hang out. Plus bonus, if you bring wieners it counts as dinner.

The other thing that I noticed, and I think most people who are into hygge will notice this about themselves is bringing in lots of lighting. And Christmas is just an easy time to rely on mood lighting, especially as it gets darker earlier. And I’ve spent the last number of years really just acquiring decorations that light up. I think that’s what I’m drawn to when it comes to Christmas decor, string lights, electric candles, little light up houses. And every afternoon, I put those lights on and it just feels cozy. It creates a nice glow in the house. It’s one of my most favorite visually calming scenarios for myself. Another one is Advent activities. And I think a lot of us try to bring in some sort of countdown.

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I think it can be something that you overdo or something that feels more manageable with the family. So pay attention to how you’re feeling about your Advent activities.

One thing that happened here is we pulled out the Christmas decorations this year. And I realized at the end of last year, on sale, I bought an Advent house. So it’s this cute little really thick cardboard house. And each day has a drawer that you pull out. So you can put something in this little drawer and this little box. And it was like the third of December, something when we unpacked all this and I realized, oh, I don’t have anything, I haven’t even thought of what I’m going to put in these. I’m sure when I bought it, I had some great brainstorm. But here I was. So I put some jelly beans in the day, thought about putting the kids vitamins in there. But that would be really disappointed with it. So I asked around on Instagram for ideas on how we could use this Advent like box system. And what we ended up doing was each person in the house, took some boxes off of it, looked at the calendar and then wrote on a little post it note an idea of an activity or some trivia or a song that we would do in there just really simple ideas. They’re so simple.

But what I noticed about them is it creates gathering for us where we read it together, or we do the event together. And I think it’s also important with any kind of holiday in your family to get your kids ideas on what they want to do more on what would be fun for them. And so having them write their own ideas on there, I think it’s really great way to make them feel included. Of course, we always have that additional conversation when winter break comes, what do you want to do? What should we go do like skating sledding, get their input, which is also a really hygge approach to have this egalitarian sense of family structure.

The other one is side by side activities. One of the best ways to just be together with no pressure to have a conversation. You’re not face to face. You can have some music on you can just be beside one another is side by side activities. Puzzles are my favorite way to do this. We just always have one going on the table. I’m part of like a puzzle trading ring. You know how moms are swapping gift bags, we’re also swapping puzzles. The other side by side activities I like are going on walks always trying to get my kids to do that. Coloring Legos. crafts, even if it’s just so simple cutting out snowflakes like we don’t need to overcomplicate it.

One thing I find myself looking forward to at Christmas is the TV will watch together. We are a family that likes watching TV together. And to me, it is important to have it be a social experience for as long as possible. So we have one TV in the house. We watch it together we kind of all decide together what we’re going to watch last year or was it the year before now I can’t remember the Mandalorian was out. So that was series we watched together. I think this year we’ll try and watch around the world in 80 days I saw that on the CBC gem App if you’re in Canada, CBC has an app that has so much content on it. But if you guys are watching a series together as a family, let me know I’d love to hear about it.

And the other way that helps you have a more hygge Christmas and one thing that I’m noticing is to declutter Christmas, because part of feeling like you can slow down is by having less to do so this year our only travel is an overnight trip less than two hours away and it just feels nice to have that off the plate. Not that we wouldn’t have traveled or made that happen. But we just are going to travel in January now instead of December. So just having that off the plate it just feels calmer. So you’ve permission don’t travel yet.

You also have permission to not bake you don’t have to bake Have You Ever Wanted permission to not do Christmas baking, I’ll give it to you every day. I think in my motherhood journey of 11 Quick years, I’ve baked once, and that was for a baking exchange, my daughter bakes, I’ll help her. But I would rather buy a dozen box of chocolates before I spend an afternoon baking. That’s just me, not a baker.

You don’t have to send Christmas cards. If that helps you declutter your Christmas, you don’t have to do that. Either. You get to decide what traditions you keep and keep the ones you love the most, the ones that you are excited to do. So those are some ways that I think we keep our Christmas feeling hyggelig who like I don’t know if I’m saying that right, hygge.

Now another part that I want to talk about is something I had recently shared in a simple Saturday’s email. And many of you thanked me for it. So I thought it’s worth bringing here and even expanding on a little bit more. This is the concept of the window of tolerance, which if you ever feel like you can’t relax, slow down, or you’re constantly irritated by everyone and everything, or you feel like you’ve just completely shut down. This is this can be really helpful to learn.

And I think the more we understand about our own nervous system and our stress states, the more compassion and resilience we can develop for ourselves.

So the window of tolerance, I’ll make sure to put a graphic in the show notes, but I’m gonna try and describe it here. It’s all about our capacity, our capacity to feel like we are showing up well, and calm. And we’re just like, in a good place. You know, you know how something happens in the home, that could happen often. But depending on how much capacity you have, you respond totally different, right? If your kid spills a drink, all over the table, if you have unlimited capacity, you’re probably going to get upset, you’re probably going to snap, you can’t even stop yourself from snapping. But if you are feeling like you are in a good place, you have your in your window of tolerance, you have more capacity, you’ll probably stay calm, go grab a towel, ask them to grab a towel, not that big of a deal, right? We can all imagine ourselves in both of those situations.

So imagine three boxes stacked on top of one another and the middle box, that’s our window of tolerance. That’s, that’s a peak place to operate from. If we go above it out of it to that top box, we’re in hyper arousal, we’re mobilized, we are anxious, there’s panic, frustration, maybe we get controlling, maybe we have a short temper, or we’re reactive. I think a lot of us can relate to just the general stresses of motherhood putting us into hyper arousal.

If we go below that middle box below that window of tolerance. Now we’re in the bottom box, we’re in hypo arousal, where we are immobilized. This is when we shut down, we numb out, we disconnect. And it’s interesting as I reflect on the state, because for years, I told myself, I was just a calm person, and people would be like, Oh, you’re so calm. I think I was confusing calmness for being an hypo arousal. So don’t confuse this. Don’t confuse the state for being super calm, because you’re still dysregulated.

So putting all this together this window of tolerance. What this tells you is, we all have a threshold, we all have a threshold for what feels like we can tolerate. And it’s really normal and healthy and natural and automatic that we go through these states that we go through hyper and hypo and into the middle. That’s normal, the goal is really to just be coming back to that calm state.

One of the most impactful points about understanding this the window of arousal is to understand that when we were when we’re out of it, we are offline so to speak, we are using the stress part of our brain, we are not able to show up for connection, your whole social engagement system is not online, you are not open for connection, nothing feels safe. So if you are stressed out and you wonder why it is hard to feel present, and connected with your loved ones, even though you want to this is normal. This is your autonomic nervous system trying to keep you safe and a cue that you can step back for a minute and find some ways to come back into that calmer state.

The other thing to keep in mind is that our window of tolerance can be smaller or bigger, it can adjust. And there are things that shorten our window of tolerance or less than our window of tolerance.

I think huge one we can all relate to is not enough sleep, especially when we got those toddlers and those babies. Another one that we need to acknowledge is when we’re dealing with grief. And I don’t mean imminent loss, but the loss that is always with us. And around this time of year grief does come up. Dealing with conflict can reduce our window of tolerance. And we know family conflict can come to the forefront at that at this time of year. When we’re perceiving a threat and past traumas really informed as someone who has experienced traumas in the past, we are going to have a reduced window of tolerance, mental health conditions they can reduce our window of tolerance if we experience or know someone Is neurodivergent ADHD anxiety. And if we even pay attention, we can start to see that our mental narrative, our cognitive thoughts are something that can reduce our window of tolerance. These thoughts that we’re stuck in, I call them thought traps. If you pay attention to the story, you’re telling yourself, you might see that that story makes you feel stressed. Stories like there’s not enough time, nobody’s helping me, I have to do all these Christmas things. For my kids to have a good Christmas. I also like to refer to the acronym halt. This is a mental health acronym that’s usually associated with the stressors one experiences during recovery. But I think they’re just stressors that we need to pay attention to more overall, I think they are stressors that reduce our window of tolerance. And help stands for times that you are hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. The window of tolerance is a helpful concept to learn because now you can pay attention to where you might be inside note, also pay attention to the fact that everyone else around you in your house is moving up and down in their window of tolerance is shifting throughout the day, as well. As you’re paying attention, this is what I want to call you into to start paying attention. This is where we can start doing the work. Pay attention. Check in with yourself throughout the day.

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I know I’ve said it before, check in throughout the day. Have a little check in meeting with yourself. Hey, how are you feeling today? How are you doing? Check in with yourself? How are you feeling? If you notice a specific feeling, try and name it. Ask if you notice your window of tolerance getting smaller is how do you feel like there’s some stuff that’s reducing it, ask yourself what you need. What do you need right now, sometimes you need to increase your energy and come out of that hypo arousal. And sometimes you need to reduce your energy and come down from that hyper arousal, arousal. There are countless ideas on the internet on how to do this. Some ideas that I personally bring into my life are breathing using breathing techniques, you can watch lots of YouTube videos on it. But for me, it’s like big deep breaths, where the exhale is longer than the inhale, water, drink water, have a hot bath and water, have a cold shower. Those are all things I like to do. Putting on music, put them right into your ear holes and sing it out. So there’s lots of ideas, but find something that’s going to work for you.

As you’re doing this, you can start to notice your triggers, what are things that move you out of your window of tolerance? One trigger for me as a mom is noise. Specifically, if there’s noise coming from different sources, like two kids are asking me questions at the same time, I’m kind of like, Oh, my brain can’t compute, take a number. Just take a number and get in line. And I think one day there’s gonna, you’re gonna come home and there’s gonna be a ticket dispenser in the house. And I’ll be like now serving number three, you can just keep pulling those numbers, oh, in a complaints box that I might add that to my house as well. The other day, I was at the arena with my youngest son, and he kept telling me all these complaints. And finally, I was like, I will now officially take complaints in writing only at business hours. And he just smiled at me and said, So what are your business hours. That’s how I’m dealing with it.

So learning the signals, learning the signals that you’re moving out of your window of tolerance, learning your triggers, start to pay attention to yourself, you can start to catch it sooner. And over time, the goal of all of this is increasing your window of tolerance and becoming more fluid with moving in and out of that window.

As I was talking about hygge I thought the window of tolerance would be helpful to share. Because I think this is a season that most of us, we really just want to show up and enjoy. Especially if our kids are still at home. We want to feel like oh Christmas was such a special time of year for us. It was meaningful. It was a time of togetherness. And if we’re out of our window of tolerance, just understanding that can help make so much sense for the times when you feel like you can’t relax, you can’t connect you can’t slow down.

One practical tip that I would wrap this all up with is to take a minute and write some ideas down plan your hygge Christmas on purpose. Take a minute What do you still want to be doing? What activities do you want to do? What supplies do you need for those activities? what still needs to get done? Make yourself a list so you can feel proactive instead of reactive towards Christmas. I have a whole link on planning from a reactive versus proactive state. I’ll link that in the show notes as well.

And wrap those presents Do not wait until the end though like it’s Christmas Eve. No. As you get them wrap them because you’re going to think it’s not going to take you long. But it takes a long time to wrap those presents. So check out the show notes go to simple and purpose.ca click listen. I’m going to load up the show notes with as many as I can think of on who got on stress. And on the window of tolerance. There’s a really great article that I read. I want to link in there as well.

I’m going to see you guys after the new year I’ll be back with that really fun episode on setting goals and vision and creating the future that you want. for yourself. In the meantime, stop by the Facebook group. Share your thoughts on this episode share ways that you are finding who this who got this Christmas. Share your observations on the window of tolerance. Just share anything the Facebook group is your community for you listeners to touch base with one another. All right friends, have a great Christmas and I’ll see you in the simple Saturday’s email on Instagram On Facebook. In the meantime

The post 174. Christmas hygge ideas + understanding how the window of tolerance impacts your stress in motherhood first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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Hello friends,

It has been a while since I last wrote a whole blog post, though I suppose I do that with every Simple Saturdays email (if you want that in your inbox, sign up here).

In the last email, I shared some pictures of our recent kitchen renovation and wanted to give you a more thorough run down of the process of us minimizing and decluttering our kitchen over the years, to doing a three-month reno of it in the present day.

I want to share some of the mindsets I approached my kitchen storage with, and how they have been challenged by minimalism, and shaped by becoming a minimalist.

In a nutshell, this is a story about how we expanded our kitchen wall to wall in our home, and then over the years, pared it back down again.The basic split-level home kitchenLet’s start with our kitchen, 11 years ago when we moved in. We bought your typical split-level entry home, also called the bi-level. In British Columbia, we call it the BC Box. You can find them on most every street in every small town in BC.

Many of them were built with a closed-off kitchen and dining room that has a sliding door to the back yard.

Trending: the open floor planAs was also the trend, a decade ago, we wanted to tear down all the walls and release the kitchen from its cage. Being a new mom, I also thought it was necessary to have open lines of sight to wherever kids could be.

Mostly though, we had to tear down this wall so our dining table would fit in the space.

This is a table we made with my talented and wonderful father-in-law, when we were first married. The table is about 9×5 and so it gets to dictate where everything else in the space can live.

Trending: all the storageAs was also the trend, I felt the primal need to nest and nesting meant all the storage units.

We filled a wall with pantry units and a hutch desk. This was before I learned about minimalism, the notion of not having to have a wall filled with storage would have been very counter-intuitive to me.

Here is the pantry wall and desk, pre-declutteringOne hurdle these pantries presented me was that they became a catch-all. They functioned as office storage, cleaning, storage, craft supplies, paper storage, etc. Over the years I would eventually see that giving things a more suitable home helped me keep my kitchen more organized and less cluttered (but this would mean decluttering rooms and making a legit office space)

Real actual life in the kitchen As we added to to our family, this kitchen was the spot we spent all our time in. With two toddlers and a baby, it was a landing pad for snacks, birthdays, crafts, legos, paint easels, play kitchens, and kid shenanigans.

The kitchen planning stationAs with almost everyone else’s kitchen, I’ve ever seen, we all have that spot where things get dumped. The mail, the papers, the planners, the pens. Every kitchen seems to need a planning station of some sort.

With these cupboards to darn full, the planning station exploded all over my counters. It took me a while to catch onto the clutter hot spot and one strategy I used then was to declutter and set up a better planning station for myself (you can read about that here)

Imagining life with less storage spaceAs we settled into this kitchen space, and I started to declutter our home, I decided that maybe we could live with less and let myself imagine my home with fewer pantries.

This led to removing the hutch and pantries and replacing them with a dresser which would become the Craft Drawers.

A kitchen in line with my personal valuesNow, I think it is worth pointing out that having Crafts in my kitchen was a personal value of mine. As minimalism helped me uncover what I valued most in my life, it showed me I have a deep value of allowing creativity and mess in order for my kids to create things and make things and try things.

Overall, the kitchen was one of the first places where my preconceived notions of minimalism were challenged by the fact that minimalism isn’t about having less stuff but having less of what doesn’t matter to you. Removing the excess and the clutter leaves what you love and value and use.

Even though these craft drawers demanded routine decluttering and maintenance, I remained motivated by the times the table was full of creations and kids were occupied with their imaginations and the hot glue gun.

Falling out of love with my kitchen, and then falling back in love with itOver the years, Instagram came onto the scene and with that, a flood of stunning and aspirational visuals started to show up in my feed each day. Day after day.

I loved looking at these beautiful homes and cute bespoke kitchens.

But then I would look at my kitchen, and betray all the effort we had put into making it functional for our family.

I have struggled over the years to love my home and spent more time wishing it were different. This was at odds with my desire to live simply and contentedly and not spend more money than I had to spend to make a space different when we had already spent time and energy and money doing this.

This discontent in my home really took away from my enjoyment of my space, and therefore the current life available to me.

For years I pined over a kitchen reno, but as I did the work on loving my home even when I wanted to change it (episode right here) I grew more and more attached to my kitchen.

Some things that I grew to adore about this old, laminate, run-down kitchen…

It was a gathering space for countless people over the years.

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It was a home for our beloved table, which held the marks and stains of gathering and use.

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It had these laminate pink countertops that were impermeable to damage by hot glue guns and chopping cucumbers and holding hot pans right out of the oven. It was bright and white and the sun streamed through the windows each morning. We weren’t precious about it, so I could do things like write all my favourite recipes inside the cupboard doors

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I grew to really love my kitchen and how it served our family over the years. I didn’t feel this overwhelming sense of urgency to ‘renovate it’ and ‘make it better’.

I realized we had made it better, slowly over time, and it just didn’t look like what I thought it ‘should’ look like.

So, why even renovate? Good question and I think I will give the only answer that really makes the most sense. Because we wanted to and because we could.

We knew our home needed some renovations, like painting the fences and the wood siding, fixing the fireplace, as well as renovating the upstairs bathroom (to make it *not-a-health-hazard). So in order to do this, we talked to the bank and we were able to acquire home credit against our mortgage. This provided the financial opportunity to do some renovations and we decided, the kitchen is something we have talked about doing and let’s do it.

Planning the kitchen renoThis led to me spending a lot of hours plotting the different ideas of what I really wanted in a kitchen. I knew this would be a once-in-a-lifetime kind of reno and wanted to be so intentional about it.

Between Pinterest and working with a designer, we were able to put together a vision for what I would call a mid-century modern inspired kitchen.

Design what you love, not what is trendyI will say, I don’t think it was easy at all to pick out and consider every single design decision of our kitchen. I loved all the current kitchen trends, the white and the gold, but I also felt drawn to something a little darker and different.

This kitchen helped me give myself permission to really design and change a space with what I LOVE more than what is hot right now. I know this kitchen design isn’t something that everyone will love (including my kids, they have complaints) but I love looking at it, and I live in it. So that is what matters!

One thing I mentioned on Instagram, is that my husband gave me total authority over every single design decision. This was new for us, almost every room we have renovated (and we have renovated most every room in every house we have lived in), we collaborated and compromised on the design and function of the space. (You can read how this went down right here)

The before and afters of our renovationI knew I wanted yellow in my kitchen, and went through ideas of a yellow island, or yellow backsplash. We ended up opting to bring yellow in with the stools.

I know most split-level home kitchen remodels bring in an island. I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal to have an island, but now I don’t know how I lived so long with such limited prep space in our old kitchen.

(In this picture this is green around the window, that is painters tape from touching up the windowsill paint)

The feature tile behind the oven was a decision we made later down the road. I knew I wanted a kitchen that felt very seamless and didn’t have ‘visual busyness’, so I wrestled with how bold to go with the feature tile. I looked at hundreds of tiles online, and bought many samples. When I saw this tile in the store, I felt so drawn to its rustic unpredictability.

It took us three months to complete the reno, and we are still hoping to do a feature wall behind the banquette area. You can see a peek of the chairs we have around the table. There are four of them, and they were my grandparents. I love to see them every day and it makes me think of all the times I visited them and saw these chairs at their home.

What I have learned over the years from my kitchen1. You don’t need all the storage.We gave up that wall of pantry units and I don’t miss the storage. Now, I try to buy less of ALL THE FOOD, and because we have decluttered other areas of the home, we were able to move stuff that was kept in the pantries into those areas (most craft supplies, cleaning supplies). I also decluttered a lot when we emptied our kitchen for the reno.

1. Declutter your kitchen to understand the purpose of the spaceDecluttering my kitchen allowed me to see what I DID want to use my space for. This gave me permission to keep things in there that allowed me to have people gathering often and kids getting messy

2. Do the work, and appreciate itI know it sounds naive, but as you DO THE WORK of decluttering and creating a space that works for your family, don’t lose sight of that. Look at your space through eyes of gratitude for the hard and intentional work you have done. Look for the ways this space serves you and your family. (Related, the episode on loving your home)

If you spend time, energy, and intention on decluttering and creating a space that can be used for the life you want, you won’t need to spend a lot of money ‘making over’ your space.

1. Make it a space you love to look atIt is easy to just do what everyone else is doing, but make sure you bring things into your home and make changes to your space that make you feel joyful. One of the best compliments I’ve had is that my house feels ‘like me’. I love to look at unique spaces where I can see someone’s personality shining through, even if it isn’t ‘typical minimalist’. (Something yellow always makes me happy).

2. Always make room to sit and gatherOur table was the gathering spot in our home. And as we did our renos, I knew I wanted to bring in space to gather. My husband teases me because I have been talking about a ‘dining nook’ since our very first home. I am obsessed with dining nooks, and now I think we have a pretty cozy, hygge one. (I talk more about gathering spots and kids hanging out at home with you in this episode)

And for those of you who are wondering what we did with our beloved table, we kept it in the family. I passed it on to my older sister, her house is the default gathering place. So we all get to gather around it for special holidays.

The post Kitchen reno before and afters (split-level home kitchen to mid-century modern inspired kitchen) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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Everyone has doubts and fears, but sometimes these doubts can manifest into something stronger and more potent, Imposter Syndrome. Today I go through a list of questions to help you inquire about the Imposter Syndrome within you, and how to act on what you find.

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I may earn a commission, at no cost to you.

Questions on how to inquire into the Imposter Syndrome within. Use these questions for self-inquiry, journalling is a great option. * + How does imposter syndrome impact me? - When I doubt, what changes? How do I act? - When I have fear, what changes? How do I act from this place of fear? + Where in my life does imposter syndrome show up? + How long have I felt imposter syndrome? Is it long-standing? What seems to bring it on? + How do I try to manage the part of me that feels imposter syndrome? How do I respond to that part of me? + How does the ‘part of me that doubts’ think it is helping me? Protecting me? + What does that ‘part of me that doubts’ need to feel safe + When confidence is not available to me, what other feelings can help me with the doubt? + How does the ‘part of me that is afraid of being found out’ think it is helping me? + Who specifically am I afraid of ‘finding me out?’

All the fun links you might enjoy

• Byron Katie, recommend her books, specifically Loving What Is
• Episode 162. Think the best of me (Hard and Awesome)
• Hayley Morris, comedian (one of my fave bits that she does)
• Episode 76. Why it matters what you think
• Simple Christmas Planner (find it with the On Purpose Workbooks)

Sign up for Simple Saturdays email (a fun email, twice a month)

FULL TRANSCRIPT

0:00
Hey friends, it’s Shawna here at girlfriend counselor from simple on purpose.ca.

So I am a mom of three I live in a small town in Canada, I have three kids, they are 11,10, and eight. And about eight years ago, seven or eight years ago, I was reading a book about decluttering. It’s called The Joy of less by Francine J. And it was around Christmas time, and I was reading this book, and it suddenly hit me that I didn’t need to keep all of the stuff I had in my house. So I went down to the basement, the basement of shame, there was like a walkway amongst some boxes that I could get from one door to another. And I started decluttering.

And I was really hit with this awareness that I had been living my life, very complacently on autopilot. And going through that physical clutter of complacency. It really brought me to a place where I didn’t want that in my life. I didn’t want that in all areas of my life, I could just see suddenly, all of the ways I had been complacent in my life, living on autopilot. And that really prompted me to say, No, I’m going to put myself in the driver’s seat, I’m going to take some action, I’m going to be intentional. And that was really what founded simple on purpose. It started with simplifying and it moved into living intentionally living on purpose.

So around here, we keep this conversation going. Of course, I’ve gone through life coach training, I’ve gone through counselor training. And so I am bringing in all of these different aspects of the approaches that I’ve taken the conversations I’ve had over the years with women, with moms with clients. And I want to just this be a place where you can stop for a minute. And really start to think about ways you can simplify your home, your heart, your life in ways that you want to start showing up on purpose, living with more purpose, with more peace with more presence and more passion. I really believe we can all have a little bit more passion and enjoy our lives a little bit more. That’s a whole other episode though.

Let’s talk about today’s episode. So in the summer, I asked for episode topic requests, and I’m still working through those. And today I’m going to talk about the topic of imposter syndrome.

So the person who requested this, this mama, she is a PhD graduate. And in the email that she sent me, she shared about how much hard work she had to put into even getting her doctorate. Well, having a new baby, this is no joke guys. She’s got a new baby, and she’s working on her doctorate. But despite all of that research, and that work and effort and years of learning years of becoming a doctor, an expert in the field, she still struggles with impostor syndrome, she shares I know I can do hard things. And I know I can do them well, but I still have this sense that I will get found out as an impostor. I particularly feel these in academics feel this in academic settings, but it does carry over to other areas of life and motherhood.

And first of all, I just have so much compassion for this mom, because for all of those achievements that she has, it must be really hard to still be doubting and living with that impostor syndrome. And impostor syndrome is something that there’s so much information on the web about this. So I’m going to just take this from a different angle, I want to take it from the angle of how to inquire into the imposter syndrome within. So hang on with me here. We’re not going to get super meta, of course, we’re gonna get meta, but it’s gonna be fun, you’ll like it.

So let’s open up with the word inquiry. Inquiry is something that Byron Katie teaches, I’ve learned a lot from her about inquiry, and I’ll link her in the show notes because her work has really changed my life. And her whole notion behind this approach to inquiry to this questioning, is to be opening up to what is true, stepping back from our biases of it, stepping out of your head, and just noticing your thoughts.

So I’m going to be giving you questions throughout this episode. And these are questions to inquire with, to sit with over the days and the weeks to have a slow, thoughtful exploration to uncover new layers to consider the question from different angles, all well, keeping in mind, it’s about removing the judgments and the arguments and the biases and the intensity of the feeling, and just listening to the different answers. Byron Katie says when the mind asks sincerely, the heart will respond.

Another big reason that I like inquiry is because it’s a form of paying attention to your inner narrative, and our inner narrative, the story we tell ourselves the story we operate from. This is what dictates how we feel, and how we feel dictates how we show up. So you’re going to kind of see this mapped out as we go through these questions.

So like I said, this episode will have a lot of questions that are good to sit with and pay attention to maybe journal them all. Don’t worry about writing them down or grabbing them as you’re listening to this episode. I’m going to put them all in the show notes as well. So you can just go take a screenshot or copy them from there.

impostor syndrome is a fairly new concept. It was coined in the late 70s. But it seems to include two things. One is a doubt a doubt of your skills or accomplishments, usually in the form of dismissing them or downplaying them. Which sidenote, I think for women, we are conditioned to operate from doubt, be humble, don’t break have some confidence, but not too much. Don’t think highly of yourself. Bla bla, bla bla be meek be mild. So I think that’s a natural cultural expectation we as women have.

The other part of impostor syndrome is the fear the fear of being exposed, like people will find out we don’t actually know as much as they think we do. Or we really aren’t that great. Or maybe they shouldn’t really trust us with this big project. I mean, it’s one thing to struggle with doubt, and constantly defeat or dismiss your own achievements. It’s another thing to add on this chronic fear that someone’s going to find a flaw in your armor.

So this leads me to the first question that we can ask ourselves, How does impostor syndrome affect me? When I doubt myself? What changes? Do I withhold? Do I devalue myself? Do I avoid speaking up or being brave? A note about this self doubt narrative? Is it really isn’t that nice to ourselves, the way we talk to ourselves, sometimes, we would never say to a best friend. So working on self doubt is also working on your relationship with yourself.

The other part of the question is the fear. How does this fear make you act when you’re afraid of being found out? What do you notice? Perfectionism? Probably right, make sure things are perfect. Or do you avoid people? Do you avoid getting too close? Do you avoid asking questions, so you won’t look incompetent? are you so concerned with hiding your flaws, that you actually start to believe it’s not okay to have any, I cover this a little bit more in the episode about hard and awesome, where it talks about not trying to always put on the front that we’re all awesome all the time. I’ll make sure to link that in the show notes.

Often when we look into how we are acting, how this doubt makes us stay quiet. How this fear makes us set even higher standards for ourselves. We find that in ways we keep the cycle spinning. It’s kind of like a self fulfilling prophecy. The solution to doubt and fear is not to motivate ourselves with even more doubt and set higher standards.

I think with all emotions we have I’ve said this before, there’s no bad emotions, they’re not entirely bad emotions are there for a reason. And on a whole, I think that impostor syndrome isn’t really a bad thing. It can be healthy to have some level of worry about your skills and worry about people seeing through you. Because I think that keeps us accountable to one another in society. Could you imagine if nobody ever had any impostor syndrome, and I’m sure we can all think of a few people who should have a little bit more impostor syndrome, you know, like there is one end of the spectrum where someone grossly overestimate their abilities and skills, not worried at all what people think about them, I’d say that end of the spectrum is not healthy. And neither is the other end where someone is chronically doubtful and fearful, despite it not really being helpful or necessary in their lives.

So a little bit of impostor syndrome can be a little bit helpful in keeping us accountable to one another, and maybe even to ourselves.

The next layer of inquiry here is exploring where impostor syndrome shows up for you. Ask yourself, Where do I feel impostor syndrome, in your relationships in your job and your parenting in your looks? I’ve been trying to think of the places that I might feel impostor syndrome and one that I’ve noticed, it’s kind of silly, but I feel like imposter syndrome when I go somewhere fancy. Like I didn’t grow up this way. I don’t deserve to be here. I don’t deserve to operate at this level of socio economic status. Someone’s going to see the duct tape patch hole on my suitcase and kick me out, someone’s going to find me or to actually be here.

And it’s also good to know if impostor syndrome shows up in one area more than others. So as you’re noticing the places where you feel impostor syndrome, do you feel it most in motherhood or most in your job? start to notice that as well. A

nother good thing to notice about times you feel imposter syndrome is if it’s recent or long standing, how long have I felt this what seems to bring it on? Because I think we also need to normalize the natural doubt and fear that we are going to have a little bit of imposter syndrome. When we are doing something we haven’t done before, or with people we haven’t dealt before. We’ve dealt with before. Or in a situation that maybe we have some new respect and all like Oh, this is kind of like leveling me up. And I’m noticing some impostor syndrome here. Let’s expect it there.

But as you’re inquiring Do you notice it’s been a struggle all of your life in many areas? Does it quiet down with time and experience? Then it might be something that’s just generally holding you back in your life instead of the normal ebbs and flows of being new with things and being a nuisance. equations. The next question that I think is really helpful and understanding the feeling and action, kind of link with impostor syndrome is, how do I try to manage my imposter syndrome? What do you do when you feel it start to come up? Do you tough talk yourself? Do you ignore it? Do you let it take over? How are you treating this part of you that has doubts and fears, this is important because this part of you that worries and is afraid, it’s a real genuine part of who you are.

So instead of avoiding this part of you, instead of being mad, it’s there instead of maybe even agreeing with it, believing in it, and operating from it. Instead of all of these tactics. What if you simply acknowledged it, acknowledge that there is a part of me that doubts, I don’t deserve this, it was luck, it isn’t that big of a deal. There’s a part of me that stays small, there’s a part of me dismisses, there’s a part of me that resets this whole baseline, once I achieve something and starts me back at zero. Like if I’m constantly at zero, it will keep me constantly working on the next thing. Or maybe this is the culture I am operating in, where doubt is considered necessary.

Make space for that part of you, that part of you that doubts and fears, it’s been there in a way to protect you, there is a reason we do everything. Whether we like it or not, it often comes down to safety and approval. So get to know that part of you. It’s there for a reason. And we can dig deeper here, if you are ready, consider what does the part of you that worries you aren’t good enough? Or that someone will find out and you live in that fear of being found out? What does this part of you protect you from? An extreme way to say this is how does it keep you in line? Or how does it keep you safe or good or acceptable.

And this might be weird language to hear me talk about the parts of you, if you haven’t heard these concepts before. But there are different parts of us. This is rooted in internal family systems theory, where we acknowledge that there are different parts of us and how they interact. Because we do have different parts of us, you might even be talking with your friends in here yourself, you might catch yourself saying something like, I want to go out tonight, I want to meet everyone for dinner. But I also just kind of want to stay home alone. Or I want to put up my hand for that project. That opportunity. But also I really don’t want to, or a part of me is so angry with motherhood. And another part of me is just like, oh, I want to enjoy so much I want to be here I want to be in it. It’s really kind of normal, right?

There’s a comedian on Instagram, I think I’ve talked about her before. Her name is Hayley Morris. And she does the skits where she plays different body parts like the stomach, the brain, the heart, the liver, and they’re all like talking to one another and having these conversations and they’re all like trying to get their own needs met. And it’s really clever. I’m gonna link a couple of my favorite ones in the show notes. But it’s kind of like that we have these different parts of us with these different emotions and opinions. And a problem that we might have is that we just think we shouldn’t we shouldn’t have these conflicting parts or opinionated parts. But we do. And each of these parts of us has this mode of of keeping us safe protecting us, whether it’s safe from within from our own pain, our own emotions, or safe out there with other people.

As you get to know more about the parts of you that has doubts in the parts of you that has fears, the more you will know what you need to do about it. You can ask what does this part need to feel safe? What does doubt need to feel safe? And I think most of us will just flip that coin right over and say, well, the other part of this is confidence. Like, if we have doubt we need competence, confidence will solve this. But I think that many of us with time can say we’ve learned that confidence is actually the byproduct of the work, you aren’t confident going into it you grow confidence. As you learn the skills as you do the work like skating I am not confident in skating I’m I’m holding on to the board’s I’m going really slow. But I know if I practice it like I’ve watched my kids do over the years, I’d become confident. So we really set ourselves up to be in a tough spot. When we tell ourselves, we should have confidence going into it. We want to operate from competence. That feels good, right? I feel like I know what I’m doing. I feel all good here.

So maybe a mind shift that might help you hear that one that’s worked for me is being willing to operate without confidence without turning to confidence. Because I’ve learned I can’t rely on competence. It isn’t always easy, it isn’t readily available. So consider when confidence isn’t available to you. What else can you do with that doubt what other feeling can help you with that? Doubt? Your some ideas. Compassion. That’s a secret weapon. I have compassion for that part of me. I’m going to acknowledge it just have compassion, right? sounds so simple, but it does make a big difference to just validating yourself and being able to move forward. Another one is strength, determination. I’m determined to work on this thing. Another one is efficacy. I’m going to show up for myself when it’s tough. I’m going to figure this out. I’m going to have my own back I will tell you every podcast episode I release, I don’t really have confidence there is a part of me that’s like, oh, I don’t know, some doubt. And this is what I operate from. I’m going to just show up, I’m going to show up for the women who say, there is something helpful in here, I’m going to show up for them, I’m going to just believe that I can offer one little nugget that is going to help one person do one thing differently with more intention in their life.

And then how about the fear? What does that fear need? I think it’s even more helpful to understand what the fear is specifically afraid of when you are afraid that someone’s going to find you out. Imposter syndrome, they’re going to find out that I’m not this great and blah, blah, blah. Who are you afraid of finding out? Who comes to mind when you are afraid of being found out who comes to mind, someone will come to mind eventually, one specific person to specific people try to really get specific as you can, because then you will see there, there is some work for you to do.

So on a whole this is where I would start with inquiry when it comes to impostor syndrome. And it might sound not worth your time, it might sound ineffective. But I want to bring you back to this idea that the first step to change is awareness. We can just try to do ignore this all and take opposite actions and kind of read or try to redirect it all by forcing on these changes before our heart and mind really believe that before heart and mind have felt heard. And before we actually know, like the lay of the land. What’s the lay of the land here? What are we working with? What specifically needs to change? Where are the landmines? Where is the pain? How do we manage the pain? So really, the first step to change is awareness. It’s not just taking action, that’s going to feel like it solves a problem, we need to know the problem first.

I know this episode was a bit of a different approach than usual, usual and I hope this episode has been helpful. I hope that it gives you some powerful questions that help you inquire within and gain more insight, specifically insight into that personal inner narrative you have. Because that inner narrative is shaping how you approach life.

Remember, it matters what you think, what you think dictates how you feel, and how you feel dictates how you act and that cycle continues. I dig into this a little bit more in Episode 76. Why it matters what you think I’ll link that in the show notes as well.

As always, I’m going to say this until like 10 people are doing it. I’m going to say this every episode, I would love to hear any takeaways thoughts or ideas that you have on this episode, I would love if you are part of that Facebook group to go and share it there. Just pick up your phone and just go share one post in that Facebook group, that Facebook group is there for you. It’s a place for you to find community and just continue the conversation with other like minded women.

And as a reminder, I don’t know if you got it for the snow like we did this past week. But hey, Christmas is coming. It turns out, you can get the simple Christmas planner, it is a PDF planner for nine Canadian dollars. And it’s a planner that helps you work through setting intentions, understanding your values, having family conversations, for what you want, as a family going into Christmas. A lot of ideas are in there on traditions and gift giving and simplifying the gift giving. So it’s kind of like a whole bunch of ideas and then space to plan which ideas are going to work for you and uncover the Christmas that you want to have on purpose instead of just being really reactive and Christmas feels like it sweeps you away. I think a lot of moms can relate to this feeling like I did all the things I planned all the things I set up all the food and all the presents and then I didn’t even get to enjoy it. So this planner is to help you be really intentional about what you’re doing and why and making space and time for you to enjoy the Christmas you want to have.

Alright friends always head over to simple on purpose.ca to find the show notes for this episode. Click Listen, you’ll find everything there. Have a great week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post 173. What you can learn from imposter syndrome (inquiring into the doubt and fears with these journalling questions) first appeared on Simple on Purpose.

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As much as we might want it to exist, there just isn’t a magical list or routine we can implement to make it an easy transition to have a second or third kid. And once they are here, it can quickly become overwhelming and seem impossible. Today I share some tips and advice to help make parenting more than one kid a little easier 

In this episode I discuss: 

Prepping your first-born for a new introduction in the family Some of my own tips and ideas, as a mother of three Managing sibling dynamics and conflict

Lessons from the Playroom: Sibling Rivalry

My commentary on some crowd-sourced advice

All the fun links you might enjoy 

Emotional Intelligence (and improving relationships with your kids through emotion coaching) What moms of toddlers need to hear How to deal with the emotional struggles of being a mom of babies and toddlers Real-life advice on having two kids under two years old (blog post) Planning the day (reactive vs proactive) Four steps to manage overwhelm in motherhood When motherhood can change you but you can’t change motherhood Settling in motherhood Is a third baby harder than the second? Enneagram + Motherhood Series 11 things that make my mom life simpler More posts on motherhood

Sign up for Simple Saturdays email (a fun email, twice a month)

FULL TRANSCRIPT

0:00 Hey friends, it's Shawna, your Nerdy Girlfriend and counselor from simpleonpurpose.ca. Welcome to another episode of The Simple on Purpose podcast.

0:18 If you are following me on Instagram, you know that this past week I went away for a work retreat. Do you remember back in the day, if you've been around for a while I used to go on work retreats quite often, I used to also go on work retreats with a community that I had started with one of my besties called a little late. And we used to do them with a great group of women, we'd rent an Airbnb, we'd get food brought in. And we would just all hunker down and do work and kind of brainstorm together. Some of my favorite memories are those work retreats. And then in this, since then I've gone on my own, I've gone with a bestie. And I haven't done it for a few years. So I thought, I have this big deadline coming up to move my email service. So I'm just going to send myself away for a couple of nights, you might have read about it in the sublime purpose, or the simple Saturday's email.

1:04 So I went away to work on my email, my email service, and then sent out that week's simple Saturday's and the email was broken, the email program is not working. So I'm still working with tech support to get that back up and running. And either way, I spent a lot of my time prepping for this, you know, this email to be moved over.

1:26 So whew, all right, the work retreat was still a really valuable experience. Because I could just be selfish with my time, which I think it's a bad thing. I think we need to do that sometimes, if I'm working from home, which I always do, and the kids come home from school, and even though I say I'm gonna keep working till like maybe four or five, they're coming in, they're asking questions, I can hear everybody out there in the hall, talking about things and I'm like, oh, I should go like, tell them this or tell them that. And it's just it doesn't work, right. And then I don't feel like I can ever come back into work once I've gone out and you know, been with the fam. But when I'm alone in this hotel room, and I go from my computer, to the bathtub, back to my computer, again, to a snack platter of cheese and crackers, back to my computer. It's just a time where I don't have to be accountable to anyone but me. And I can just be all in on whatever I need to get done. So it was a really like, I didn't just hang out and watch Netflix the whole time. I was getting my work done. And then watching some Netflix for fun. I'm all caught up on love is blind if anyone wants to tal...

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Whether your vision is to be the hangout spot on the block, or a place your kids still come to visit after moving out, small changes can be made to create a cozy, comfortable, and welcoming home for the quickly growing and ever-changing family.

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I may earn a commission, at no cost to you. 

In this episode I discuss: 

Having a vision for the kind of home you want to have Creating a peaceful house is not just simplifying and decluttering 

Ep 69. Will a Simpler Home Bring Me Peace?

Creating spaces in your home to foster certain activities and atmospheres for your family and friends  What makes kids think that a house is a good place to hang out at  Getting your kids to still hang out with you as they grow up and creating spaces that foster that connection Hygge and how to add this to your home 

Three ways to bring hygge into your daily life 30 ways to hygge when it is cold outside Hygge vs minimalism 

All the fun links you might enjoy 

The Simple Christmas Planner Simple pleasures: Puzzles (side-by-side activities) Mom on Purpose

Be the mom you are: how this one list can empower you to be the mom you are

Ep 166. How to find confidence in being the mom you are Setting your Values and Vision

The Life on Purpose Workbook The Live your Vision worksheets The Live your Values worksheets 

The Perfect Moments Project Emotional Intelligence, for Moms (the podcast playlist) Ep 162. Hard and Awesome

FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited) 0:09 Hey friends, welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. Around here we talk about all the ways all the ideas, all the mindsets and approaches that you can take to simplify your life, your home and your heart, kind of the inner experience as well, and show up for your life on purpose. So I am Shawna, if you are new here, and I am a mom of three kids, my kids are 11,10 and eight. And over the years, you guys have termed me to be your nerdy girlfriend. That's a nickname given to me in the simple Saturdays, email. So I proudly wear that name as a badge of honor. I am your nerdy girlfriend, your counselor and your life coach. And hey, I'm in small town, Canada. So here we are preparing for the winter, as fall is going to be wrapping up soon. And winter, hey, I did some Christmas shopping on my lunch break today, ordered some things and I want to make sure they get here in time. So I'm gonna put that out there. It's kind of like those reminders, go pull me out of the freezer for dinner, go order some things that you need for Christmas. And if you want to really get intentional about your Christmas this year, I have something called the simple and Christmas planner. I'll link that in the show notes if you're interested in that. So today I'm going to be sharing another question that was sent in through the simple Saturday's email. Let me toggle over to the right window to read it to you. All right, I would love to hear another episode on making small changes in our home to make it more of a haven for the quickly growing and ever changing kids, and how to keep it a safe and cozy place that they want to be in. Oh, I just love that idea. All right. So before I get into this, sometimes I get a stuckness with getting the podcast recorded. And I know there's a lot of different factors that go into that. But sometimes that stuckness is about me, really second guessing what I'm sharing. So something that just helps me to say upfront is all of this is just my, my opinion. These are my ideas. I don't believe that motherhood is prescriptive that life, how it should look for you should look the copy of someone else. Like I believe that you need to tap into your own values, your own strengths, your own passions, your own quirks, and live into motherhood from that place be a mum on purpose.

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Planning the day can be an overwhelming chore that you are constantly behind in. Sticking to that plan can be frustrating and seem impossible. I want to share a few ways that I keep myself on track and having a proactive day, rather than a reactive day. 

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I may earn a commission, at no cost to you. 

In this episode I discuss: 

The crafty form of planning, bullet journaling 

How to get started bullet journalling 

The three planners that I found worked the best 

Moleskin Weekly Planner Passion Planner Ban.Do Planner 

The crown jewel of planning apps, Google Calendar, and how I use it to plan effectively  How to organize and use your To-Do list to check things off How I prioritize my To-Do list, shiting from a should-do to a could-do mindset  Planning a proactive day rather than having a reactive day, especially with chores Cognitive distortions and how to get out of that All-or-nothing thinking  Meal prepping 

All the fun links you might enjoy 

How to get started bullet journalling 

Planning the day for moms

The freedom you can gain from planning your day

Procrastination tips for moms

Does your to-do list overwhelm you?

Do you trust yourself to show up for you? 

How to move from ambivalent to ambitious 

Sign up for Simple Saturdays email (a fun email, twice a month)

TRANSCRIPT (unedited)

0:09 Hello friends welcome back to the simple on purpose podcast. My name is Shawna, you guys know me as your nerdy girlfriend and life coach and counselor. And if you are new here, if you found the podcast over the summer, welcome, I'm so glad you are here. At simple on purpose, we talk about ways to simplify, simplify your home, your heart, your life, and do things on purpose, do life on purpose, turn off the autopilot, turn off the default mode, that we're just living in life reactively to life and letting things happen, like letting life happen at us and moving into an intentional space, being really proactive with who we are, how we want to show up our lives and what we want to get out of our life. So that's the premise of what we talk about here. I'm really glad you're here. I let you know earlier that I had taken the summer off, I was finishing up my schooling to become a registered professional counselor. And now I'm on the other side of that I've gone through certification, I am working on my supervision hours with my supervisor. And I just really had no idea what I would come back to in terms of what simple on purpose was going to look like. I think I still don't know, people are asking me am I going to open up and like on purpose Academy again, am I going to keep the podcast going like all these plans, and I'm just like, I don't know, I don't know what I'm doing. But I am really enjoying the connection that I have with you guys over podcast, I love getting messages from you on Instagram over email letting me know that it's something that's part of your life part of your day. And it's something that's helping you, which is really my whole goal, right. And my whole goal is to empower moms to empower women to empower you guys to live simple on purpose. So I don't know what the future holds. I'm really open to it to where my life will take me and where these career plans take me. But let's keep digging into the podcast, I asked for suggestions on podcast topics I've asked in the simple on purpose, email, what you guys would like to hear about. And so today I'm going to talk about one of those suggested topics. And by the way, if you guys are not on the simple Saturdays email, that's an email that comes out twice a month. So it's not overwhelming. And I try to make that a place that's just fun and connected. And I share pictures, I share pictures of what I'm decluttering I share links to things I'm loving,

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Answering decluttering, simplifying and momlife questions that were sent in through the Simple on Purpose community group. Covering topics including organization, procrastination, decluttering kids' clothes, showing up well for momlife. 

Make sure to check out the show notes for more related links on these questions

Questions that were sent in:

I'm reworking a room in our house soon to be an office/media room and trying to figure out a system for office supplies, books, devices, charging cables etc. It wants to turn into a catch-all space... If you have any thoughts on that? Thanks!

What Pinterest Doesn’t Tell You About Home Organization 5 common mistakes moms make when organizing their homes, and what to do about it (+ cheatsheet of 5 more) 157. How I tackled decluttering my office and kids craft drawers + how I handle the resistance to decluttering The old basement home office Adding a desk to my (upstairs) home office

Tips for vehicle/trunk organization

Considering a bin/bag system

Simplifying kid's shoes

A question to start with to know what next steps you need Seasonal declutter:

Keeping track of what is in storage

Do you have any on simplifying kids' clothes? (big, wearing, grew out of)

Decluttering with Kids Guide

I’m moving in the next few months and have been working on all the decluttering and packing etc. I have 2 kids under 5. What I notice is that I have a hard time getting started on the jobs involved until the last minute when there is a big push and looming deadline. I’d love to work on a more peaceful and gradual approach to get it all done

How I found myself procrastinating this morning Questions to ask yourself when doing self-inquiry into your own procrastination 153. How to move from ambivalent to ambitious (making change takes more than just willpower) 154. What to do now that you are motivated (simplify getting started) 135. Procrastination tips for moms 15 Practical Tips for Moms to GET STUFF DONE 164. How I am finding balance in my life this year How To Plan Your Day As a Mom (3 Simple Steps)

More on mom life - especially toddler mom life, being purposeful and present, enjoying it.

The frustration of attaining freedom and independence, for parents and toddlers   Good enough mother (parent)  If I could go back and talk to myself about 7 years ago when I had two toddlers and a baby:

Happiness is still available to me  Allowing every day to be hard and awesome 87. Why it is hard to be a present parent, and what to do about it 138. Is momlife UNFUN? How to be a more FUN MOM, stop withholding fun from yourself 156. 3 things to know about feeling negative emotions What Moms of Toddlers Need to Hear 73. How to deal with the emotional struggles of being a mom of babies and toddlers 74. Show up for momlife with these empowering mindsets 163. Have fun with your kids, on purpose + reasons we don’t have fun When Did I Stop Enjoying My Kids? (and my journey back to enjoying them) Finding Joy In Your Every Day (#theperfectmomentsproject)

Summer wrap-up! Thank you for all the reviews and messages and emails you have sent, I am here for the COMMUNITY! Please do keep in touch!

Expect an Instagram hiatus this summer, but please do make sure to USE the Facebook group  - and declutter it if you aren't going to use it. 

Make sure you are on the Simple Saturdays email to get the bi-weekly newsletter to keep getting Simple on Purpose inspiration through the summer. 

Save your favourite Simple on Purpose podcast playlist on Spotify to listen to this summer

FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited)

0:00 Yes, I'm taking a summer break kind of at least a break from the podcast, which I'm sad about, I really enjoy the podcast. It's a place for me to just bring up what are the what other topics are on my brain are being discussed.

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How do we teach our kids contentment? I want to unpack this question from all angles. From why it is hard for us as parents, how we teach them reactively vs on purpose, where the emotion of contentment comes from, the purpose of discontentment and growing our tolerance of discontentment. 

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I may earn a commission, at no cost to you. 

Topics covered in this episode:

The difference between being happy vs being content Happiness as a parenting goal can be very defeating and maybe even counterproductive

Should happy kids be our parenting goal

Recognizing that we live in a culture that is obsessed with happiness

The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris  66. Are you stuck in the hustle for happiness? Finding contentment in momlife

Teaching our kids contentment, how we do it reactively and without intention

Pretending you're happy

Parenting Book: Review for Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child 120. Teaching our kids emotional intelligence

Guilt and deprivation

The ‘not-enough’ mindset (how to spot a scarcity mindset and shift it to an abundance mindset)

Consider how we learn contentment in our own lives 

How to really start showing up for your life How To Find Your Enneagram Type (and how it has changed my life) Hard and awesome (from Think The Best of Me) 140. Give your discomfort a purpose #uncomfortableonpurpose 115. A Controlling mom, or a capable mom? Finding Joy In Your Every Day (#theperfectmomentsproject) How to get that feeling (why values matter + free LIVE YOUR VALUES worksheet) How Simplifying Your Home Can Teach You Who You Are

Comparing where your kids are to where other kids are. The pitfalls of using what you see, socially, to determine where you and your kids should be Understanding your own motivation on why you want your kids to be content

How we measure success as parents

The Baby That Always Cried (Our Story With Esophagitis) God’s Grace Through Difficult Parenting 166. How to find confidence in being the mom you are, intentional motherhood

What is hard about seeing your kids feel discontent

1. Tolerating tough emotions in our kids (and ourselves)

The CBT framework: our emotions come from our thinking 

1. Why it matters what you think (limiting mindsets in motherhood) What We Say About Ourselves (and why it matters) I Think, I Am! By Louise Hay Big Life Podcast (growth mindset for kids) Making Change: Do you have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset? (growth mindset for adults)

Our natural discontentment

Enjoying the simple pleasures (why it is hard and how to do it) The purpose of the emotion

1. 3 things to know about feeling negative emotions
2. Myths about emotion coaching our kids [LIVE]

Seeing the good, intentionally

Contentment and knowing our values

Happiness that is marketed to us, versus what we crave for contentment

Addressing how our kids use comparison and how we can teach them about comparison in the context of contentment 

Teaching our kids to look internally rather than externally

Showing, rather than telling, our kids about the different life experiences in the world The role we have as parents to model contentment and honour the times our kids feel discontent  Room to make mistakes while we learn 

Stop by the Facebook group to share your thoughts and ideas or tag or message me on Instagram

FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited)

0:00 Hey friends, it's Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend from simpler purpose.ca. Welcome to Simple on Purpose podcast. So today I am doing one of the last posts until I wrap up the podcast for the summer. I'm going to spend my summer just balancing the two jobs that I have on the go. Finishing up school,

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Being a mom on purpose means stepping into your strengths as well as stepping into your struggles.  This means letting go of perfectionism and the chase to be the ideal mom and have the ideal kids. 

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I may earn a commission, at no cost to you. 

This episode covers:

What is conscious parenting Parenting on auto-pilot, why we do it and how it is different from mindful parenting When our kids are difficult we try to 'out-difficult' them, and what we can do instead How conscious parenting challenges our western parenting culture and how many of us were raised Quote from Dr. Sheflai

Unless we address why we can’t embrace our children for precisely who they are, we will forever either seek to mold, control, and dominate them—or we will allow ourselves to be dominated by them.Tsabary, Dr. Shefali. The Conscious Parent (p. 54). Namaste Publishing Inc.. Kindle Edition.

How our kid's struggles bring us face to face with our own struggles When our kids aren't easy, they are challenging the things we have conditioned ourselves to be uncomfortable with Letting go of the notion that we are meant to be perfect parents The messy relationships and the struggle matter as much as the peace we crave Hard doesn't mean you are doing it wrong, it often simply means you are doing it

Related links and episodes mentioned 53. Change your motherhood experience by changing how you make memories

The Conscious Parent by Dr. Shefali

The key elements of Conscious Parenting

Never Say No by Jan and Mark Foreman

Three Books That Changed My Mothering

Sign up for Simple Saturdays email (a fun email, twice a month)

Join me on Instagram 

Full transcript (unedited)

0:07 Hey friends welcome to simple purpose. I'm here to girlfriend Shawna. And this is a follow up episode to episode 166. So I encourage you to stop by and listen to that one versus 13 minutes pretty quick. In that one, we talked about understanding that you can be a mom on purpose because you were made on purpose. It's not a checklist you have to make. It's something that's already inside of you everything you bring into motherhood, your strengths, your struggles, they all matter. They all help your family and you learn and grow together. And I think we can hyper focus on giving our kids this idyllic childhood, I think we can get caught up in all of the Pinterest requirements on how childhood has to look. But the motherhood experience matters just as much it matters. Motherhood matters as much to us as childhood matters to our kids. So our experience matters. This is important. If you want to dig in a little bit into that, check out episode 53 Change your motherhood experience by changing how you make memories. I'll link that in the show notes. So as we talk about being a mom on purpose, having confidence in the mom you are made to be. I want to also match that with the topic of conscious parenting because this is another layer that I brought into my own parenting over my parenting journey. And I'm aware, I'm a newbie in terms of my parenting career. But this is what I've learned along the way. And this is what I want to share. So conscious parenting Dr. Shefali, literally wrote the book on it. And I'll link that book in the show notes. I've read it, I have lots of highlights in it. It's really, really great. conscious parenting in general is a philosophy that says, our kids are reflecting things to us that we need to be conscious of that we need to be aware of. Because we spend our days living and parenting on autopilot from that subconscious, automatic programming that's running the show. Because how often are you really mindful? How often are you thinking about every decision, every thought, every reaction, every emotion that you're having? How often are you consciously in that rarely, right?

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Motherhood is a journey and there are stepping stones along the way of things we learn. I want to share a few of my stepping stones with you. They are around parenting from our own strengths, rather than focussing on what we are doing wrong. I want to share a few ways you can find confidence within yourself rather than from comparison and external validation. 

In this episode I talk about:

the Perfect Mom Checklist Making your own list for motherhood Where to start when you want to do motherhood, on purpose Parenting from checklists and comparison and how can create pride or shame Where we try to find shortcuts to confidence Where we can truly find confidence Finding connection and fun in motherhood

Related links and episodes mentioned: 162. Think the best of me, or not. Allowing the hard and awesome in ourselves and in our lives.

How this one list can empower you to be the mom you are

The ‘not-enough’ mindset (how to spot a scarcity mindset and shift it to an abundance mindset)

1. Why it matters what you think (limiting mindsets in motherhood)

2. Have fun with your kids, on purpose + reasons we don’t have fun

The Mom, on Purpose podcast playlist

Full transcript (unedited)

0:00  This is a place where we just stop for a minute we slow down and we talk about the ways that we can simplify our lives, remove the distractions, remove the clutter, and start living on purpose with intention shutting off that autopilot. Today I want to talk about doing this in motherhood being a mom on purpose, something that's helped me is to think about motherhood as a journey. So I have three kids, they are 11. One's going to be 10 Soon, and one's going to be eight soon. And so I like to think about the journey I've been on over the past 11 years. For me, it really has been a journey where I started off clueless, I mean, my son, my firstborn son, was the first newborn I ever held. I also started off worried, which was my nature, but that I think that's something you bring into motherhood, you're worried about everything you don't know up against everything you're dealing with. And along the way, you learn. You listen, you try, you adjust, you wait, you learn, you learn what the different color poops mean, you learn how to set schedules and rules. You learn how to find peace, when everything is making you anxious. And you learn how to sit through the hard parts. Rather, rather than just scrambling to fix everything all the time you learn your way you learn the journey. And it really is a journey nobody can take for you. I think we're all looking to other people for the solution for the path. And I think there's a lot of mentorship available, we can support one another. But it really is your own personal journey. If I look back on things that I had wrote, during my earliest years of motherhood, and on the journals that I kept, at that time, I can see the path that I was on, I can see the things that I was learning, I can see little insights, little nuggets, little, not even little, but sometimes they were huge things that I learned that got me from here to there. And then again, from here to there again, and from here to there, again, just like stepping from one step to the next. So today, I want to share one of those things that felt very impactful at moving me along this journey. This is something that has brought me so much peace and empowerment in motherhood. And I want to share it because I think we don't hear it enough. And I think we're looking for it. What we're looking for is confidence in motherhood and confidence in being the mom we are in parenting from the strength of who we are meant to be, rather than focusing on what we're doing wrong. This was a message I heard early on in motherhood, and it was really impactful for me. And so as I coach other moms, and they share this message with them, and I hear them take it in and start to think maybe that could be ...

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Spring cleaning had me feeling a mental urgency at ALL THE THINGS I needed to get cleaned in my home. I am sharing how I am approaching that overwhelm. Also sharing how organization and inventory of your stuff can save you money and reduce clutter (starting with the freezer!)

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I may earn a commission, at no cost to you. 

The main points covered in this episode

My cleaning goals for last weekend and how I was derailed by spring cleaning mental drama My spring cleaning list and closet jenga Operating from a sense of urgency and how it can lead to shame/resent Paying attention to our thoughts and which thoughts we will 'hop on and run off with' Cleaning out the freezer The hidden costs of stockpiling and having all of the options on hand, scarcity  minset  How to do a food inventory (and save money on groceries!) Organizing things in a way that makes them accessible and visible  Doing an inventory of things to prevent you from doubling up by buying more because you don't realize you have it at home

All the fun links you might like 61. How we introduced chores to our kids (Saturday Morning Chores)

1. Doing Chores You Want to Avoid (how I life coached myself to do the dishes)

@GOCLEANCO on Instagram

A quick video about thought trains by Russ Harris 

1. What to do now that you are motivated (simplify getting started)

15 Practical Tips for Moms to GET STUFF DONE

1. Small things that can change your whole life (the compound effect)

A post I shared on IG, four years go, about using the notes app to do storage inventory

Bitters, I like this peach one by Dillons, the next one I want to try is the Alcohol-Free digestive bitters by Flora

FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited)

Welcome to the simple purpose podcast. Around here, we talk about ways that you can simplify your home, your heaart your life. So you can show up right now in whatever season you're in and show up for it on purpose with intention about what you want, and how you want to act and what you want more of and what you want less of. Today, I want to talk about some recent decluttering and cleaning that I was doing the other weekend. And some realizations I came to while I was doing it. And I share this stuff not because I think it's something you've never heard, or maybe don't even know because often, I think I share things that we do know deep down inside, but I share it because it's a good reminder, it was a good reminder to me and so I want to share it with here here with you. And maybe you will find something from it. So Spring is here, spring is here in Canada. And I don't know about you, but I've noticed as my kids are getting older, and we're like in this family home, that wshen spring comes along, I kind of lose my blinders. I've got blinders on either side of my head, of all of the areas of my home that have built up with grime and clutter over the winter months. And I started also thinking that maybe spring cleaning was invented by Canadian parents who had paid very little attention to their homes for the hockey season. And now they're just faced with realities of unmapped floors and chaotic mushrooms. So Saturday is our joy morning here. It's a routine that we have so that rooms are just getting picked up for the most part on a regular basis. I'm going to link an episode where I talk about Saturday morning chores, how we started our kids doing it and also an episode about me, life coaching myself to doing the dishes. It's a very underrated episode. So I think it's worth sharing. So I was rolling into the Saturday and I felt this freedom that you have when you don't have any plans, no hockey, no plans, I put on my sneakers, I put on a good playlist and I was ready to get some cleaning done. The other weekend I intended to break up them up and also help at least one kid dredge under ...

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I was asked to cover this topic in the recent feedback survey. I think it is a great question to ask, and it is one I've ruthlessly searched to the ends of Pinterest to answer, 'how to find balance in motherhood' 

In this episode, I will share about the extra demands in my life right now and the ways I am finding balance in a very busy season of life of motherhood, school and work. 

Topics covered in this episode:

What we think 'balance' means culturally for women and moms What I have decided to make it mean for myself  The power of prioritizing and all the reasons it is hard to prioritize What I am saying yes to this year What I am saying no to this year How I plan out my weeks  How I protect my priorities and the reality that it doesn't always look or feel lovely Adjusting things as I go versus having an all or nothing mindset Owning it and not feeling like a victim of my life

Links you might like: Simplify your life series

What I Learned While Searching for Balance in Motherhood

The Eisenhower Matrix

Opportunity costs, talk about this a bit more in How to Define Simple Living for Your Family

The Life on Purpose Roadmap

How To Plan Your Day As a Mom (3 Simple Steps)

@themanwhohasitall

1. 4 simple habits that make my momlife better

2. Back to school routines that we have in our house

Family Rhythms

1. How to lighten the mental load of DECISION FATIGUE

2. A new approach to habit change: routine and habit refinement

3. Will a simpler home bring me peace?

Working through a bad mood with one simple question

GET CONNECTED Make sure to share your thoughts with us in the Facebook group, or on Instagram!

Full Transcript (unedited) 0:00 Hey friends, welcome to the simple minimalist podcast, I am sure that many of you know me as your nerdy girlfriend. I am the mom of three kids. And I am passionate about us simplifying our home, our hearts our lives. So we can clear those distractions, clear the clutter and show up for what really matters to us in the lives that with intention with purpose, you may have noticed my tagline change to intentional living and parenting. And I think that really gets to the heart of where we're all headed towards where we're all wanting to work towards doing things in our day that help us feel intentional towards that bigger picture of what we want in our life.

0:45 On today's episode, I'm talking about a question that was brought up in the reader feedback survey. And it came up a few times and a few different ways. And that's the general question of how do I balance it? Also, it was a question directed towards me. And I'm going to talk about how I have found a balance in this really busy year of life, hoping that what I share with you will help you you find balance in whatever busy season you find yourself in.

1:10 I know I've spent a lot of years, especially in the early years when I had all of my kids at home, the toddlers and the baby. And I remember searching like balancing motherhood balancing kids balancing babies, toddlers, I was really drawn into this notion that if I could just find the right steps, then this would all be easy, that it would all flow effortlessly, that things would feel balanced. And I think a lot of us crave that, that balance that sense of balance.

1:44 But maybe we don't really sit and think about what balance is like, what do we think it is? I think on one hand, we kind of look around and look at all the things everyone's doing, for their health, for their parenting, for their jobs, for their personal development. And we think that's just a general list of all the things I need to be doing to be a healthy human. And I should just be doing the all of those things and feel that sense of inner peace that's going to come from finding balance.

2:11 In my experience of going through the years of, you know, raising small children, having them at home,

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How to have more fun with our kids. It is OK if you feel like you aren't enjoying your kids and if having fun with them is not happening or is hard to do. 

There are a lot of reasons why we aren't having fun and I want to talk about those and then share ways to bring fun into your family, on purpose

In this episode we talk about:

The cultural image that makes parenting look fun will be easy and natural. And part of us holds onto this stock photo dream of family fun. 

Is Motherhood What You Envisioned It To Be?

The culture of fun in your family and where people in your family are getting their 'fun'

9 Simple Ways to Cultivate Your Family Culture

Letting the day build up into a stress mountain vs having small redirects in our day

When Did I Stop Enjoying My Kids? (and my journey back to enjoying them) 55. Tips to move out of the stress response and into resilience

Distractions from harder emotions vs honouring our emotions and doing something to help us move on

1. Teaching our kids emotional intelligence Parenting Book: Review for Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child

Reasons why we aren't having fun with our kids

1. Think the best of me, or not. Allowing the hard and awesome in ourselves and in our lives.
2. Why it matters what you think (limiting mindsets in motherhood) Four steps to manage overwhelm in motherhood
3. Working through unhappiness in motherhood, life coaching steps for handling a bad day. Bonus Q+A Episode

Making fun when things feel heavy Making fun happen, on purpose

Making a list

Simple and Easy Kid Activities (mega list of ideas) some family fun suggestions 

tips on planning it

How To Plan Your Day As a Mom (3 Simple Steps) Family Rhythms + free worksheet 148. Why even make family Christmas traditions? (+ ones that didn’t work, ones that did)

three ways we can bring fun into our family

How to bring fun into the harder times of your day Handing sibling rivalry and competition while doing fun things

following through on our plans for fun, even when we don't feel like it showing up well for the fun

COMPANION EPISODE: 138. Is momlife UNFUN? How to be a more FUN MOM, stop withholding fun from yourself

All of the things that take away your presence and attention from doing fun things with your kids

Things that feel more important and how to reframe them

The ‘not-enough’ mindset (how to spot a scarcity mindset and shift it to an abundance mindset) What memories are you making in motherhood (and how it can change your motherhood experience)

Connect and let me know how you are having fun, on purpose

Post about it in the Facebook group (make sure to answer the entry questions) Tag me on Instagram

Simple Pleasure This delightful new email newsletter by my friend Taco Katie who is sharing her great reads at This Librarian is Reading. Sign up for her newsletter here!  Follow her on Instagram 

Full Transcript (unedited)

HI friends, it's Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend from simple purpose.ca. Welcome to the Simple on purpose podcast. If you're new here, welcome. I started simple on purpose about eight years ago, I think. And the whole premise is to simplify like I learned about decluttering. I started decluttering my home, it helped me declutter my life. My mind, it helped me to just realize all the ways I was living on autopilot. So I thought I want to simplify things. I want to simplify my life, my home, and I want to start showing up for my life on purpose. I want to do things on purpose. So that's what I'm here for, for helping you do that to helping you turn off the autopilot. Because I know what it's like to get to the end of your day, and feel like you are constantly busy, but also totally unproductive. I want to help you stop just reacting to life and start being really proactive with what ...

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When we want others to think well of us, what is happening is we are buying into the cultural myth that WE are all good, all the time. And then our EGO steps in to defend this truth and make us look good all the time. But this comes at a cost, it disconnects us from others.

What if we can allow the not so good parts of ourselves to be seen and accepted?

What if people don't HAVE TO to think the best of us?

Quieting our ego in our relationships, especially in our marriage. 

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I may earn a commission, at no cost to you. 

In this episode I discuss:

Assumed judgement versus concrete judgement.  Assuming what others think about us reflects what we think about ourselves Differing between the cultural term of EGO from how Freud uses the term EGO Wanting to believe we are all good, all the time How the EGO shows up when we feel we are being judged or feel inferior Should we be happy all of the time? 

1. Are you stuck in the hustle for happiness? Finding contentment in momlife

The cultural message that we are all awesome, all the time! Acknowledging that we are not good all the time and how that can free us and improve our relationships The problem with teaching our kids there are 'good guys and bad guys' The role of serotonin in feeling superior and special 

Tame your Anxiety by Loretta Breuning, PhD Habits of a Happy Brain by Loretta Breuning, PhD

Differentiating between wanting our friends to think well of us or wanting to be socially superior Making change from a place of shame/inferiority What does it mean if we are NOT 100% good or 100% bad

How it can improve our relationships  Acknowledging our good without minimizing it and taking ourselves off the hook to perform Validating ourselves rather than looking for validation from others. 

Acknowledging what is 'good' and 'bad' in our partner and allowing it to bring ease rather than a fight The Hard and Awesome Game we play with our kids and how it de-stigmatizes 'hard things' and also celebrates 'awesome things'. Letting go of the expectation that the whole day has to be good and awesome and allowing the hard parts of our day to not take over

Stop by Instagram for some fun conversations there 

Full transcript (unedited) 0:00 Hey friends, I'm Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend. Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. This is the podcast where I remind you to stop, slow down,

0:14 breathe. Like really take a deep breath. Let's just slow down. Because I want you to stop where you are. So you can pay attention. what's working, what's not?

0:28 What will bring you a sense of purpose today. So I'm Shanna, you know, me as your nerdy girlfriend. I have been coaching women since 2018. And I am a counselor in training working on my certification. I'm also a mom of three kids, my kids, how old are they now, my oldest just turned 11. My middle is nine and my youngest is seven. So I am just here going through the motions of motherhood and marriage and life alongside you guys, and just trying to share on the topics that come up for me. And this, this is a topic that has been in my drafts for a while. And then this morning, Connor was home. And he gave me a suggestion for how I could handle some of our banking that we're working on, I do all of the finances. And man did my defenses go up over that. So I went to this notes file. And I just started self reflecting and adding more to this episode. So I want to open up with a story. And it was a few years back, my husband came home from work and he said, How was your day? And I was like, Oh, it's good. And he was quiet. And he said, You haven't said that it was good for a really long time. I'm not sure if I've shared this story before I might have. But when he said that I felt so embarrassed.

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Ever wonder if decluttering will be worth your time? Does minimalism really matter much?

This question was asked in a recent survey I held and I thought it was so valuable. Because we all want to know that going through the work of decluttering will be worth it. Sometimes we need to hear about the benefits to help motivate us to start and move forward with the work of simplifying. 

I'll share my own decluttering story as well as the benefits I see from in, after being 7-8 years in. 

Why having less matters, is a topic that was suggested in the 2022 Feedback Survey. Make sure you give your feedback if you haven't done so yet.  Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I may earn a commission, at no cost to you.    Collect memories, not things  Starting out with my pitch to celebrate with your people, and make memories together when the opportunity comes your way. Take the chance!

Why You Should Date Your Friends Giving Experiences Instead of Gifts

A bit about my decluttering journey.  It started with the book The Joy of Less, by Francine Jay. This book prompted me to start decluttering the Basement of Shame. 

This was the big declutter I started with and since then, decluttering has been a routine in my life

The benefits of having less

Clearer space

We know there is a scientific correlation between your mental state and clutter

What Clutter Do You Tolerate? (Bust Your Tolerations Workbook)

Being able to USE your space for what you want

The 16 ways minimalism has changed my life

How it makes our space easier to clean, but also #welivehere

More mindful

More mindful of how I shop

1. When shopping isn’t making your life better (mindful and minimalist tips for shopping) Five Ways We Justify Needless Shopping

The mindset is not about consumption anymore

The Habit of Consumption

More clarity

Decluttering means making constant decisions, so you need to self-reflect as you make these decisions. This helps you know more about who you are what you want to do with your space and your life. As you make more decisions, you become a more confident decision-maker

How to Define Simple Living for Your Family Can A Minimalist Have a Full Kitchen? 143. How to let go of IDENTITY CLUTTER How Simplifying Your Home Can Teach You Who You Are

Enough is enough

Having less means knowing when to say ENOUGH

BEMA episode on ENOUGH I have sweaters at home, I don't need more

Fewer decisions are required when you don't have the excess distracting you 

1. How to lighten the mental load of DECISION FATIGUE The Quickest Way to Simplify Your Life (and nine areas to try it out)

When you have less, you have what you want and that becomes 'enough'

The ‘not-enough’ mindset (how to spot a scarcity mindset and shift it to an abundance mindset)

Intentionality seeps into your life

This whole process of removing the distractions, the entertainment, the overconsumption really makes you aware of what is left.  Decluttering over the years puts you in a mindset of asking WHY and constantly evaluating things you are bringing into your home and life

Six mindsets that help you become a minimalist

REMEMBER

Declutter is simple but not easy. It is a lot of uncomfortable work. But the short-term discomfort of decluttering is better than the long-term discomfort of living with clutter. 

1. Are you TOO comfortable? And what is it costing you?

Stop by Instagram for the basement before and after

This is what our basement looked like for many years, with the DIY fort - Our Minimalist Family Home: Basement Before and After

View this post on Instagram

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This is a continuation of the insights we had in the #moms30for30 challenge, where we wore 30 items of clothes for 30 days.  

This challenge was a way for us to shop our closets, wear clothing items we never wear (cause we always stick with familiar, right!?), put together outfits, and get dressed each day. 

In this episode we cover:

The power of visual data aka taking dorky outfit selfies How getting dressed can be a keystone habit that has a ripple effect in other areas of your life Paying attention to how you FEEL when you get dressed   The personal goal I gave myself for this challenge versus the goal I have had in past challenges Can comfort and style co-exist (for the under 60 crowd?) How taking the time to observe and edit your wardrobe can make getting dressed simple and easy Same clothes but different looks, using accessories and the rule of three The breakdown of my numbers in doing this challenge 

22 items for 26 days 7 Pairs of pants (3 jeans, 1 black jean, 1 jogger) 17 Tops

7 blouses 3 sweaters 3 tees  4 cardigans

(Head over to the previous episode post to see the photos of my outfits)

Building a capsule wardrobe is not about having all of the options. It is more about having a handful of great items that you love My encouragement to empower you in dressing how YOU want

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I may earn a commission, at no cost to you.    Simple Pleasure Is a handheld fabric steamer.  

I bought mine last year and have used it for things like drapes and curtains, thrifted items, and most of my shirts. 

It is easy and fast to use and the satisfaction of seeing those wrinkles and creases steamed out is making this my simple pleasure!

This is the one I use. 

Mentioned and related links:

Join the Facebook group, if you are ready to participate in the community!  The realization I had when I saw the Instagram feed of me instead of being pics of my kids When I Instagrammed My Own Life, and Not My Kids

The emotional shopping I was doing last fall 141. When shopping isn’t making your life better (mindful and minimalist tips for shopping)  The rule of three Simple Style Tips for Moms The 2022 Feedback Survey! I wonder about what you think, so I am going to ask you here and hope you will share your thoughts. 

Full transcript  (unedited)

This episode is part two of the insights that I am sharing on the moms 30 for 30 to 3430 Challenge, where we were wearing 30 items of clothes for mostly 30 days of the month of February. So I have been sharing my own insights as well as those insights of the women who joined along in the challenge and shared their experience in the Facebook group. Okay, side note about the Facebook group, the simple on purpose community Facebook group, I want to tell you two things. The first is that if you have applied to enter, you need to answer all of the entry questions. So if you haven't been approved yet, go back and do that. If you're interested in joining, be mindful of that. Don't close that window right away, answer all those questions. And the second point I want to make is, I really encourage you to be a minimalist with your Facebook groups, and only join this one if you want to be an active member, because this group is a place for community discussion. And that means participation. So if you feel like participating isn't something that you're going to be doing, then just keep listening along here. Keep reading through the email, don't worry about joining that group. And I don't want it to come off as harsh. But for any of you who have ever run an online community or an in person community, you know what I mean? It takes engagement to succeed and to create a community. And that is what I want to challenge the members of that Facebook group to be doing to become a community.

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In this episode, we are recapping the moms30for30 capsule wardrobe challenge. I will be sharing the insights I have learned and the ones shared by the ladies who joined in this round. 

Listen to this if you are curious about a capsule wardrobe, simplifying your closet, being more intentional with clothes shopping, being mindful about how trends impact you and finding your personal style, and if you have struggled with the notion of being a mom who gets dressed each day. 

What is the moms30for30? This is a 30for30 challenge in which we wear 30 items of clothes for 30 days (or pretty darn close!)

Why I love to do the 30for30 challenge: It has helped me do things like learn to put outfits together, get to know my style better, interview my closet so I can declutter things that don’t belong, and get dressed each day. 

If you want to read about the past challenges I have done over the year head to this page. 

This challenge has helped me really challenge a lot of discomfort I have had about being 'too much' and having a limiting identity of 'who I am/who I am not'.

Challenges put us in a situation where we are challenging ourselves....getting uncomfortable! And also, getting some consistent data and increasing our awareness of what the experience is like for us.  We have so much to learn from doing a challenge vs trying a behaviour or action for a day or two. 

Insights we (myself and those ladies who joined in!) had around wearing 30 items of clothes for 30 days! Listen to hear more about each of these points:

Getting dressed in our favourite items vs always wearing the familiar items

Some questions to ask yourself to help you understand if you are going for favourite or familiar  The benefits of wearing your favourites The burden of keeping 'backups' A simple exercise to help you determine your favourites

Understanding why we shop

How fast fashion impacts our ability to determine our own personal style Noticing feelings of insecurity and scarcity we have when we think about buying more clothes How we handle these feelings of insecurity and the two outcomes it can give us My new shopping mantra that I have adopted that has helped me shop very mindfully

Taking pride in ourselves vs the vanity of focussing on our outward appearance

There is a common sentiment that being a mom who focusses on her own appearance can be a self-focussed or vain situation The filter through which we make assumptions about others being vain or being empowered How to determine what is acceptable for you and understanding healthy pride vs vanity

Related and Mentioned Links

Thanks to those who have filled out the 2022 Feedback survey, if you are up for sharing your feedback please do so here The intro episode into this year's 30for30 and my aha moment around what was in my closet 151. Capsule wardrobe closet remix challenge, the #moms30for30 Decision fatigue (for those who feel overwhelmed by all the options of fashion) 144. How to lighten the mental load of DECISION FATIGUE Noticing a scarcity mindset 40. Does the ‘not-enough’ mindset show up in your momlife? (Scarcity/Abundance) Getting dressed day episode 128. Getting dressed every day, with less guilt & more confidence (with Jaime McLaughlin) Being moms who support other moms regardless of what we wear The Instagram Post

Photos from my 303for30 challenge this month

FULL TRANSCRIPT Welcome back to the simple on purpose podcast.

0:12 This is a place where I encourage you to slow down and start paying attention to your life. Start removing the distractions, really decide what matters most to you and show up well for that living on purpose.

0:26 So to start out, thank you to those of you who have filled out the feedback survey, that is something that I do each year and I ask questions about how you like to follow simple on purpose,

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Hi friends, welcome to an MVP episode.

These are episodes I have shared over the years that I have had feedback on that they have been particularly helpful. I am sharing these for those who missed them the first time around and for those who want a refresher. 

This MVP episode is all about the labels we give our kids and how it changes us and them. 

In this episode we talk about:

What is a typecast How we are labelling our kids, and might not even realize it How we parent according to this label and enforce our own confirmation bias How it changes our child's self-concept and can become a self-fulfilling prophecy What to do about labelling our kids 

Links mentioned in this episode:

the 2022 Feedback Survey 

book a free mini-session

Personality isn’t Permanent by Benjamin Hardy

episode 49 on having a growth mindset vs a fixed mindset

Episode 76: Why it matters what you think

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This past week I decluttered a few spaces in the home, the kitchen craft drawers and the office closet. 

These are areas that had become unruly with stuff and clutter. They have been on my list to declutter as we need to start clearing out our kitchen and dining area to prepare for an upcoming kitchen reno. 

In this episode I share:

How decluttering one space can require decluttering of another space where storage is interrelated How I have been slowly reducing the storage in my kitchen over the years The craft drawers in the kitchen and the maintenance they have required of me What junk I am finding in my office and my craft drawers How I declutter these areas (steps I take to tackle it) What I have learned over years of decluttering my spaces How I have resistance to decluttering and how I pep talk myself into getting the decluttering done

Photos of the spaces and decluttering process Before we moved in, this was the wall between the kitchen area and the living area

The kitchen, before decluttering (2014/2015)

The wall of pantry storage in the kitchen, before decluttering

Our current kitchen (2021/2022)

Decluttering the craft drawers (and sorting into piles as I go)

Emptied the craft dresser in the kitchen! Only the top supplies made the cut, to be stored in the office closet

The required humble brag memes to let my husband know I will be buying myself a tiny trophy for my efforts (probably in the form of aged white cheddar)

How the office closet was holding up.... (and if you spy that White Jesus art there, it is a completed puzzle that someone framed- I know, I have questions too. But I brought it home so I could use the frame)

Totally emptied out the closet so my husband could build the shelves. It is amazing how much was crammed into that space!

Real-life organization that doesn't look cute, but works for us

Related links on decluttering and managing 'stuff' in your family

Episode 11. Are we TOO comfortable? + Do we need so much pantry space?

Episode 2. Decluttering the kitchen, meal planning book, capsule wardrobes and the currently list.

Decluttering our home (on instagram stories)

Setting a vision for our kitchen helped me to declutter it over the years

Episode 65. When your kids don’t play with their toys anymore

5 common mistakes moms make when organizing their homes, and what to do about it (+ cheatsheet of 5 more)

Hygge vs Minimalism

Full transcript (unedited) 0:12 I am recording this on my Friday, Friday, it is finally a free day for me a free day where I didn't have any work scheduled any school that I had to do. It didn't have to be recovering from COVID, all of that kind of stuff. And the reason why it's a free day is I had finished my coursework a couple days early for this session that I'm in, I do a course every three weeks. And so every three weeks, I turned in that package of assignments for the course. And I tell you every three weeks it feels like I'm delivering a child like I'm birthing something, it's like a labor and delivery every three weeks and then start again on Monday.

0:53 So I had a day to day where I knew I was going to have time to tackle a big decluttering project in my house. And it was one of those projects, that involves a couple areas of the house. And I know you guys have shared this with me about your own hurdles, and decluttering. It's like, well, if I do the bathroom, and then I have to do the whole cloth. And if I do the hall closet, then I need to do the linen closet. Like it just all starts connecting room to room space to space, right.

1:22 I call it the decluttering series. And so I had a decluttering series in my life, so to speak, because here's what's happening in the spring, hopefully this spring, we are planning to do a kitchen renovation. And part of this kitchen renovation involves us needing to clear ...

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We spend much of our days avoiding the emotions we don't want to feel and panicking when we do feel those negative emotions. But then what happens is we give control over to the emotions and build up our lives hustling away the 'bad'. 

Over the years I have learned a lot about emotions that has personally brought me freedom from fearing emotions. This is something I have also coached many women on over the years. A big hurdle we have is knowing what we feel, and then struggling with the fact that we don't WANT to feel that emotion. 

In this episode I cover:

The three big insights that have changed my relationship to my feelings What the work of Dr. Candace Pert reveals about what emotions ARE How we learn what we are feeling How we are conditioned to view feelings  What makes an emotion 'negative' or 'unacceptable' Being aware of our tolerance of emotions The real problems with emotions  Understanding the role of emotions How to tap into the intuition emotions can offer us rather than running from the emotions Collaborating with our emotions rather than competing with them 

Related links you might like: The Spotify playlist for all episodes on Emotional Intelligence 

1. Are you TOO comfortable? And what is it costing you?

2. Are you stuck in the hustle for happiness? Finding contentment in momlife

How to really start showing up for your life

Four steps to manage overwhelm in motherhood

The Enneagram and Motherhood Series

Book: The Molecules of Emotion by Dr. Candace Pert

Aritcle: The Physics of Emotion 

Simple Pleasure of the Week: Benefit cheek and lip stain

Full transcript (unedited) 0:06 Hey friends is Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and life coach from simple on purpose. Welcome to the Simple on Purpose podcast. My aim here is to share with you thoughts, ideas, stories that will help you let go of the old ways, the useless stuff, the heavy stuff, the unnecessary stuff in your life in your space in your brain, so that you can get into the driver's seat of your life, and steer that car, steer that ship to where you want it to go.

0:36 What do you want more of more fun, more passion, more purpose, more presence, because that's what I signed up for. And that's what I'm here to share with you.

0:48 But it doesn't all come without the shedding part, right without the letting go. Letting go of what doesn't work, what doesn't help you live on purpose. And this is the part that needs to be addressed. Because life on purpose is not just like Instagrammable, magical confetti and balloons. Life on purpose comes with friction and discomfort.

1:11 And so today, I want to dig into that a little bit and talk about the F word, feelings. And a lot of this content is some I had drafted up back in the fall. And I came across it when I was doing a school project this week.

1:25 And let me tell you school was my only focus this week, because your girl was home sick on the couch with COVID. And I know many of you have had it, it finally hit us here it finally hit our home, I was the only one that had it though. Everyone else thoroughly avoided me and seemed to skirt it.

1:44 But I was sick in I see a lot of different people on social media sharing their experiences with COVID. And I was comforted by those who told me that they were really sick too. Like I was exhausted just making toast. I needed to nap a couple times a day. And I am not a Napper.

2:03 But I had also gotten to this place where I was kind of comparing my experience with others because I had heard that there were others who had only a cough or a scratchy throat. And here I was just like rolling from the couch to the bed to the couch day after day. And it was definitely getting into my head, feeling like I should be tougher. I should get over this sooner. Like they say five days, but it's been more than five days. And it's just ironic, really,

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How do we talk about hard things? For some of us, our emotions seem overwhelming and we find ourselves dumping them out onto those around us. For some, our emotions seem unacceptable and we find ourselves bottling them up. Neither of these strategies really helps us process our emotions and make progress with them.

I think we all find ourselves either emotional dumping to bottling at different times to different people, and I want to support you with how to address both of these situations

In this episode:

What emotional dumping looks like How it causes a disconnect and drain in relationships Why we emotion dump What venting looks like How it can create connection and support in relationships Why it is hard to vent How to grow in self-awareness if you are someone who emotion dumps What to do if you are someone who emotion dumps What to do if you are someone who bottles up their emotions  The difference between clean pain and dirty pain Giving yourself permission to vent How to vent to someone you trust, in a way that creates safety and connection

Related links mentioned: The #moms30for30

The episode from Hidden Brain, Where Happiness Hides

Full transcript (unedited)

0:12 For those of you who are new, you're welcome. I'm Shawna. I'm a mom of three. I live in small town BC, Canada. I am a life coach to moms who want to live with more purpose, peace, presence and passion. And I think passions really important part because I think that we should be enjoying our lives a lot more than we let ourselves sometimes.

0:31 So I am just squeezing this recording in my kids are going to be home in about 27 minutes, I'm going to record this. And today I want to talk about something called Emotional dumping.

0:42 And let's Twilight music back to a time when my kids were much smaller babies and toddlers. And this was about seven years ago, I had all my babies and three and a half years. Now they're 10, nine and seven.

0:56 So let's flashback, and I'm home with them. And you know, no matter how many kids you have, if you're at home with a kid, one or two or three, it can feel wild. And when there's more than one and they take turns napping, and then they have tantrums, and their snacks lying around the kitchen. Like it's just, it's just crazy times.

1:15 And there's good times too right? like dance parties and dress up and cute little giggles. But when you are in it, day after day, it wears you down. And I know there were a lot of days where Connor would walk through the door at the end of the day. And I would unload narration of everything that went wrong that day. And I've reflected a lot on this. And it's something that I still do sometimes.

1:40 And when I'm doing it when I've done it, I think that I really want someone to acknowledge how hard it is and how hard I was trying. And I know that I didn't validate myself a lot, especially in early motherhood, and I was looking to him to do it. I still sometimes do this, like I said, it's a process.

1:57 But I think this is a pretty common pattern that we moms can fall into. Because our world is really shrunken down to the toddlers in our home. Some close friends or two and the stream of moms quote unquote, doing it right on Instagram. So when that person who's out in the world walks into the door, we do it I call emotional dumping.

2:19 Even if you're like me, emotional dumping is not a term you want to give it because you want to know that you can come to the people you love with the hard things that you're going through and talk to them about it. And that's not quite what I'm talking about.

2:33 I'm going to spend this episode really differentiating the two, I'm talking about those times where it goes past, venting into that land of complaining and nagging and blaming.

2:46 This is a topic that I've covered in the month of gratitude challenge that I've done in the past.

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We are feeling ready! We have stocked our motivation with books and podcasts and tedtalks, and we have our sneakers on and we are READY

So what do we do??  It is normal to start making a list of all the changes we want to make and pursue a massive overhaul of all the things we want to see changed. 

This is NOT the sustainable way to make change. It feels so necessary to do all the things while this window of motivation is open! But this approach will leave us fizzling out and believing we just aren't disciplined enough and that we don't have enough willpower. 

In this episode we talk about:

What happens when we take on a lot of change all at once What happens when the motivation tapers out Myths we believe about willpower and how it impacts our view of ourselves How we can set ourselves up for success by simplifying the whole approach How to make change that fits into the life we already have Why our brain is not excited about making a lot of changes all at once Why simplifying change is important in developing our skills for change My approach to simplifying a change I want to make with my coffee intake 

Resources and episodes mentioned 105. Do you TRUST yourself to show up for YOU?

1. How to move from ambivalent to ambitious (making change takes more than just willpower)

2. Small things that can change your whole life (the compound effect)

3. 4 simple habits that make my momlife better

Podcast Playlists: Simple on Purpose on Spotify

The Life on Purpose Workbook

Homemaker, on Purpose (the guidebook)

Full transcript (unedited)

0:04 Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. This is a podcast for women, moms, whoever, whoever wants to do this work, who wants to do the work of living their life with more purpose, more peace and more presence. And I think more passion, because this is your life, and you should enjoy it.

0:26 This is a follow up episode to the last one about moving from ambivalent to ambitious. And I want to talk about that moment, when you are finally motivated. What should you be doing? How should you handle this motivation that has been bestowed upon you? By all of the work you have to do? Because there are a lot of steps that had to get you here to feel ready to make a change? Do you remember some of those from the last episode, acknowledging the dissatisfaction acknowledging the desires? Asking yourself honestly, if you're willing, and asking where you're capable? And where do you need to work on some skills?

1:02 So let's say we've acknowledged all of these components, it has taken a lot to get here, right? We had to move ourselves from ambivalent to ambitious. It's like pushing a boulder up hill. All right, so we are feeling ready. What are we doing? We're feeling ready, we listen to some podcasts, we read the books, we watch the TED talks, this is everything that I have done to get myself even more motivated. Just to keep stoking those motivation fires. This is going to happen we are going to make some change. Watch out family Mom's got her sneakers on copies on Bruno Mars, singing perm. Watch out, okay, we are here, we're ready.

1:40 What are we gonna do? What will we do? How will we handle this energy that we have that we're just ready to get started. And this is what I see happen all the time. What I did to was think I have to change all of it. Everything, Pinterest boards for all of it, the kids will be on a schedule. Every room will be decluttered vegetarian meals all week, family meditation, or let's try that morning exercise. That is how I felt when I finally woke up to my life, all of the things need to be changed.

2:09 Now your Enneagram type might start to shine through right here. How will you handle this idea of making all this change. And if you're a type nine, like me, you would turn around, crawl back into bed and just put your blankets over your head but for most people,

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How do you go from sitting on the couch staring at your phone to DOING the THING you said you WANTED to be doing? I want to teach you how to spot AMBIVALENCE and how to address it, so you can go through the steps of moving from ambivalent to ambitious and feel ready and motivated to make the changes you want in your life. 

I reference the 'last episode' and since I recorded this episode earlier, this is the 'last episode' on Habit Refinement that I am referring to.  What is ambivalence?  Ambivalence is being of two minds, you want it and you don't. Ambivalence distances us from making change - sometimes this distance is helpful and sometimes it just keeps us stuck  The steps of moving from ambivalent to ambitious 

Waking up to your life and becoming aware of our dissatisfaction and/or our desires. This can be a very uncomfortable stage that requires humility and bravery to address. Ambivalence shows up here with a defense for the status quo Willingness to make a change, and the most important thing required here is honesty on if you are in fact WILLING to make the change and go through the change process A sense of capability. We expect ourselves to be innately capable of making changes and overlook the fact that making change takes layers of skills we need to develop and hone. 

Change takes more than just discipline and motivation I wanted to lay all of this foundation out because it is worth acknowledging what it actually takes to be ready to make a change. We often think we just need motivation and discipline and then change will be innate. But it takes so much more, particularly paying attention to the stories we are telling ourselves and what we really truly want and are willing to do. 

Help yourself move from ambivalent to ambitious

What am I dissatisfied with here? What is my part in it? What is in MY control? What do I want, what do I desire? What doubts come up for me here? Am I willing to make this change, and go through this process? What skills do I have that will help me? What skills do I think I will need to work on developing? Am I willing to do that?

Episodes mentioned 150. A new approach to habit change: routine and habit refinement

1. Are you TOO comfortable? And what is it costing you?

2. Give your discomfort a purpose #uncomfortableonpurpose

FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited) 0:06 Hey friends, it's Shawn, your nerdy girlfriend life coach from simple on purpose.ca Welcome to the simple purpose podcast. If you are a simple on purpose podcast listener returning again, Welcome, friend. So glad that you were here coming back time and time again, I love spending this time with you. And if you're new here, welcome around here around simple on purpose. And we're all about finding ways to make your life more simple and more purposeful, so you can show up for the things that really matter to you.

0:32 In this new year, we're talking about things like intentions and personal values and habits. And I want to keep building on this topic because I don't want you to lose momentum. If you are feeling like this is on your brain making some changes looking at your habits, then I want to help keep stoking that fire so to speak. In the last episode, we talked about going through your daily habits that you already have and starting to refine them.

0:58 And that was a really powerful exercise for me, I did that as I was writing those notes for the show. And I've kept my notes in my notes app on my phone. And I'm going back to them. And I'm still looking at like my daily habits and how I want to be altering them a little bit. I found it really helpful. For instance, I'm already spending less time on my phone in the morning and a little bit more time with my planner, kind of figuring out what I want my life to look like instead of looking at what other people's lives looks like. There are worksheets with that last episode.

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In order to do my capsule wardrobe challenge (#moms30for30) I decided to do a big closet declutter. I'm sharing my takeaways and tips to help you do that big clothes declutter, make refined decisions about what stays, and have a strategy to build up a capsule wardrobe that WORKS FOR YOU! Cause, you need a wardrobe that works for your lifestyle,  your taste and your body!

The steps of my recent big closet declutter:

Precontemplation: motivation, conviction, paying attention to what is there, considering the style vision you have for yourself  The total closet clear-out: considering do I NEED more clothes? Approach to choosing what would stay in my closet: what stays vs what goes,  refining my closet, choosing items I love Questions to ask to decide what stays: versatility, fit, personal style How to consider your lifestyle when choosing what clothes to keep: hobbies, activities, weather, job, your seasonal lifestyle, how you want to feel in your current life, etc. 

Approaches to building a capsule wardrobe:

Focus less on numbers and meet yourself where you are at Seasonal rotations  Creating uniforms (owning it and making ones that work for your lifestyle)  How to handle the clothes you are decluttering (the safe option vs the one that is hard for us) Consider how you like to interact with fashion (room to play vs sticking to simple and timeless)

The steps to build a capsule wardrobe that works for your life

Keep what you LOVE Keep what you feel good in (fit, style, shape, colour) Keep clothes that work for your lifestyle Spend the time getting to know your closet and learning how to put outfits together Make some uniforms you can have as go-to outfits Consider the 'gaps' items that you want to bring in.  Shop with a list, shop mindfully  Don't buy into the urgency to have a perfect capsule wardrobe tomorrow 

How to join in the #moms30for capsule wardrobe challenge (Feb 1st!)

Share in the Facebook group Tag me on Instagram

Episodes mentioned: Episode 151. Capsule wardrobe challenge #moms3for30

Saturday morning chores

Waves of decluttering, How I Started Decluttering (+ tips and insights)

Episode 90. Declutter ‘what if I need it one day?’ items from your home with THIS shift

Episode 104. Dress like you are 30

read all about the past #moms30for30 here

Full transcript

0:08 my aim is to help you simplify. And that really means removing those distractions, those thoughts, those stories that distract you those habits that distract you those things that distract you. And to start to fill your space and your life and your mind with the things you want to keep.

0:34 And we're talking about clothes, shopping, I mean, we can get deep. And you know, it is kind of a deep experience to really start analyzing your relationship to your closet, how you're dressing yourself each day. But I want to continue on the theme of the capsule wardrobe challenge.

0:50 So last week, I recorded an episode that I would be doing the capsule wardrobe challenge the mom's 30for30. This is the challenge that I've been doing since 2014. This will be I think, time number seven that I'm going to do it. And we call it the mom's 30 for 30. Because it is for kind of just that regular old mom life that we're living. And we're gonna wear 30 items of clothes for 30 days. So go back and check out last episode, if you're interested in more info on that more encouragement around that.

1:18 But I did let you know that as part of this process for me, I was going to be doing a big declutter of my closet. And I shared it on Instagram. I shared it in the Facebook group. I did it this past weekend. So I'm going to follow up with an episode on how I did my Declutter. And you guys had some questions around how I made my decisions. So I want to tell you all about that. And then end it all with some real practical tips that I've learned over th...

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The 30for30 is a popular closet remix challenge. This February 1st I will be hosting a #moms30for30, which is a challenge we have been doing since 2014, where we wear 30 items for 30 days. 

You can learn so much about your relationship to your clothes and how to make your closet WORK FOR YOU! 

The build-up to the big closet declutter:

Packing outfits for a trip How do you feel when you see your fave outfits hung up in a tidy closet How do you feel about your cluttered closet full of all the things

What can help you do an effective closet declutter?  If you are gearing up to declutter your closet then consider getting to know your clothes, putting them through an interview of what will stay. I like to do this with a closet remix challenge, like the #moms30for30, wearing 30 items for 30 days and putting together different outfits. 

Start paying attention to the clothes you reach for the most, try on clothes you rarely wear and ask how you feel in them (are they uncomfortable for you?). 

What we need to know about doing a closet remix challenge This isn't about looking the most instagrammable for a full month. This is about getting dressed, putting outfits together and making some decisions about what will earn a spot in your closet.  This comes down to the big question we often face when we declutter our clothes: Can I still be enough if I don't keep a closet full of options? Decluttering your closet may challenge your sense of security and you might not a scarcity mindset coming in (check out the episode on that right here). 

Will you join the challenge and do a 30for30 with us? This is about learning more about your relationship to your clothes and how you are dressing yourself each day. 

I am doing this challenge for the seventh time (started them in 2014) and I learn (relearn) something valuable about my relationship to my clothes and how I am getting dressed. 

This is meant to be fun and helpful. It can help you put together outfits that you feel great in. 

The challenge isn't about being the cutest and trendiest, the challenge is more about getting dressed each day. 

Ways to let me know you will join in the challenge: Share it in the Facebook group

Let me know on Instagram

Let me know by responding to the Simple Saturdays email

Full transcript

0:09 Welcome to this podcast. I'm here to help you think about the ways that you have been showing up for your life on autopilot. Letting life just happen at you letting things just build up. You might notice this if you have some frustrations and overwhelmed some resentment, you might be living on autopilot. And I want to help you look at the ways that you can simplify. Remove the distractions, remove the clutter, from your home, your heart and your life, so that you can show up for things on purpose with intention.

0:38 So this, it's been a while. It's been a while since I've been back on the podcast, I took a week off again, this winter is slowing me down. I feel like maybe I should just hibernate, like maybe I should just call it what it is and go hibernate, like compare and see all in the spring. But I just love the podcast so much. So I'm back again. I was sick this past week, I had a kid home for some of the week. And I really it's been a while since I've been sick, not COVID. But it's been a while since I've been sick.

1:06 And I just had to laugh at myself. Because I was dreaming over the fall. I'm having this real sick day where I would like you know, before you had kids where you would just stay home and you would watch TV in your pajamas and just check out. And then it turned out I got one. And I really struggled with giving myself a sick day. Which is weird because of all the advice I give my friends and my clients to listen to their bodies and honor their seasons. It's another thing to do it right. I mean, I can call in sick to work. I can put the podcast off for a week,

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The new year brings a lot of thought to the goals and habits we want to have.  I have a new tool for you to try if you are feeling overwhelmed and frustrated with all the work that goes into creating new habits and stopping 'bad habits'. This is called habit refinement. 

A new tool to try for making habit change With this tool, we do a habit audit to get awareness around what. is already happening and then we use our vision/goals to help us determine how we can refine our current habits and routines to better serve us.  Get the worksheets Throughout this episode, I am sharing examples of how I use this tool and I have some worksheets for you to put it into practice in your own life too. 

Try a new approach to habit change I know this approach might feel counter-intuitive but I encourage you to give it a try as you approach making changes in your life this year. 

I think you will find this is a gentle yet still challenging way to approach habit change that might help you be more sustainable in your efforts.  Posts and resources mentioned in this episode:

Find all the shows and the show notes (and transcripts) right here How to make a daily routine that works for you and your family (especially for those of you at home with your kids home from school right now) Four simple habits that make my momlife better (for ideas on simple habit refinement you can add to your routine) The Live your Vision worksheets (the free worksheets to help you set a vision for the nine areas of your life) The Life on Purpose workbook (discover, organize and plan the life you want to live) Habit & Routine Refinement (the worksheets that go with this episode) How to hygge when you're a busy mom (for that cozy, connected, contented vibe of HYGGE that I mentioned in the Simple Pleasure) Hygge vs minimalism (how these two trends stack up to one another)

Get connected:

Simple Saturdays email (sign up here) The Facebook group (make sure to answer the entry questions) Tag me on Instagram 

FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited) 0:06 Around here, I am sharing ways that you can declutter your home, your heart, and your life. So that you can get rid of those distractions, those frustrations, those sources of overwhelm that are slowing you down, and keeping you from showing up well, for the things that you do want, keeping you from showing up with purpose and intention every single day in the little things that are going to move you closer to that life that you want to be building into.

0:38 So first of all, I want to give a shout out to my fellow moms who have their kids home from school right now. I'm in BC, so our kids were kept home for an extra week, from the winter break. I think in Ontario, you guys have your kids home two extra weeks. So I just want to give a shout out to you guys. And my heart goes out to all the parents who are managing this and making it work. And I know it's not always pretty, it's not always easy. Everyone's in the space, everyone's sharing the space, people are restless, the routines that you've relied on are not happening.

1:10 And so I just I feel for you, because I know what that's like, I was so grateful to my husband that he could take two days off to get me through that week that my kids have been home. But one thing that I always have to come back to and I have to remind myself after not doing it for a couple days, and realizing like oh, I actually need this is a plan a little bit of a plan, a little bit of a routine in place. And I've got some episodes on that. I'll link in the show notes if they help you make a plan that works for you guys and your family.

1:40 But moving ahead, thinking about this time where we're going to get back to school, we're going to kind of get back to our routine, a lot of us in the New Year naturally start to think about our routines and our habits. And habits is a topic that is really popular around this time of year.

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How do you want to spend your time? Your energy? Your space and money? When you decide in line with your values you will feel intentional and purposeful with all your little and big decisions.  Knowing your personal values helps you learn more about what matters to you, how you want to show up and how to make confident choices in your day and life. 

But many of us are out of touch with our values, or we have lost touch with them when we entered into motherhood. I want to help you uncover what matters to you, what your personal values are - and I want to do that without the overwhelm that comes from looking at a blank slate. 

Knowing your values helps you with:

Handling the world of 'too much' and decision fatigue (episode on that here) Saying your BEST YES, owning your decisions Feeling like you are living with integrity, purpose and contentment 

In this episode, we talk about

Times when we aren't in touch with our values, how we lose touch with them, how we adopt other people's values instead of uncovering our own Three simple exercises to find your personal values A simple conversation you can have with your loved ones to talk about your values in the season ahead How to approach setting values for this season ahead How to determine if it is your personal value or just one you think you 'should' have

Related posts:

Blog post: Can A Minimalist Have a Full Kitchen? Blog post: I've been living on auto-pilot and I'm changing my ways Blog post: How to define simple living for your family

Resources mentioned:

The Live your Values worksheets The Live your Vision worksheets The Life on Purpose Workbook (discover, organize and plan the life you want to live) The Life on Purpose Roadmap (self-paced course, a life coach in your pocket!)

Get connected:

Simple Saturdays email (sign up here) The Facebook group (make sure to answer the entry questions) Tag me on Instagram 

Episode Transcript (unedited)

0:00 Hey friends, it's Shawna, you're here to go in life coach from simple on purpose.ca Welcome back. Welcome to 2022. Welcome back to the podcast, you might know that I have taken a break from the podcast this past month, it was a much needed break. For me, I think, actually my first ever break from the podcast since I started in 2018. And I was sharing with you guys over the past couple of episodes. And in the email that I was in a really demanding season this past month demanding of my time and demanding of my emotions. And a big factor in all of that is that I had all three kids home and you know, I've kind of built up my life to align with my kids being in school and doing things during their school hours. But they had all been home since the flooding we experienced in British Columbia. Our Town was really affected by that. So since the middle of November, I think they had about 12 hours total of school time, since the middle of November that they've actually gone to school. So it's been really hands on here. And, and it's been, you know, a month of some hard things. But there's also been some awesome things too. One of the most awesome things was thanks to grandma and grandpa. We went away on New Year's Eve for the night, we went to the city spent a night in the hotel ate some great food. And that was something that I had been looking forward to this entire month, just counting down those days. Because I knew I needed that rest. I knew I needed that reset. I'd been operating in stress mode, really for the better part of the month. And I was just really feeling quite worn out. I knew I wanted to be showing up better. I knew I wasn't showing up. As a mom, I want it to be specifically like all of the other things on my plate, I pushed to the backburner. And I was just being a mom. But I felt like I wasn't even doing that very well. And that brings me to the topic of this episode. Anytime I talk about quote unquote, showing up,

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Family traditions are something we often think about as we start having kids. Many of us are looking for traditions to bring into our holidays that help us make memories with our kids. Sometimes we even feel an urgency to find the 'right ones, right now'.  

As we start to incorporate these new tradition ideas, sometimes they don't always work. But here is why I think it is worth spending the effort doing some trial and error with traditions. . . . 

In this episode we cover:

the ways that traditions help us express our values as a family the role of traditions in family heritage finding stability in the routine of traditions the urgency we have to establish our new family traditions traditions we tried that DIDN'T work traditions that DO work for us  what I've learned about having Christmas traditions as a young family 

The Christmas Pajama Stockings

The blog post with all the Christmas tradition ideas is right here Simple Christmas Series Simple Christmas Podcast Episodes

Episode 42. How to simplify the Christmas stress & gift giving (your Q+As) Episode 43. Tips to Simplify Your Christmas (kids, clutter, traditions, hosting, festivities).

Simple Christmas Series Blog Posts

Five Tips to Make Your Christmas Simpler and More Enjoyable 11 Ways to Simplify the Gift Giving Our Fave Minimalist and Clutter-Free Kid Gift Ideas Easy Toddler Christmas and Advent Activities Five Tips to Make Your Christmas Simpler and More Enjoyable Nine Ways to Make Your Gifts More Thoughtful How to Shop Your Closet for Great Holiday Outfits Bust These ‘Good Hostess’ Myths and Open Up Your Home this Holiday Season 42 Simple Ways to Spread the Love this Christmas Finding Your Simple Christmas How to Transition to a Minimalist Family Christmas  

The Simple Christmas Planner can be found right here. 

The simple pleasure of the week: filling out the NEW planner/calendar

Planning your day as a mom How to Get Started Bullet Journalling (easy tips for busy moms)

Share in the Facebook group (make sure to answer the entry questions)

Tag me or message me on Instagram

Join the Simple Saturdays email (it is FUN! email)

FULL TRANSCRIPT

0:06 Welcome to the support purpose podcast. Here I like to share with you all the ideas, all of the tips, all of the encouragement that will help you simplify your home, your heart, your life and show up for the things that are really important to you. I want you to make space, make time and make energy for those things that you really deeply value and want more of in your life.

0:32 As we are coming up to Christmas, something that a lot of us do is think about traditions, we think about the Christmas traditions we had as children, the ones we want. And sometimes we're just carrying along traditions that we've had just adopting them into our future without really even thinking about it.

0:49 I remember back when I had my first my first son, this was 10 years ago. And I was really excited by this notion that I got to build a family, I got to be an active designer in the culture of my family. Back then I also had a ton of anxiety along for the ride. So that derailed a bit of my attempts. But I remember coming into the Christmas season and just building up a lot of buzz around, what are our traditions going to be? I wanted some like memories, I wanted to create some flippin memories. As a family. I wanted my kids to talk about these traditions that we had, I wanted them to carry them on in their own lives.

1:28 And it hit me in that process of really thinking about what are we going to do as a young family? And how are we going to bring traditions into our culture and our Christmas, that traditions are something that are quite important, maybe even sacred. And I think there are three major roles that traditions play in a family.

1:47

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Would you like to be more intentional with how you use your phone? Do you want to set boundaries and take back control of what your relationship with your phone looks like?

In this episode, I have tips on how to do all of this, and I share my own personal phone boundaries that you might like to try too. Make sure to get the worksheets to help you create your own plan for creating intentional phone habits. 

Follow up to the last episode on the phone habits and addictions that are made on autopilot. 

Do you have a motivation for changing your current phone habits? What do you want more of? Less of?  If you want to understand your current phone habits, get the worksheets from the last episode right here. 

In this episode we cover:

What we are trying to GET from our phones, what we turn to them for.  Getting our needs met in REAL LIFE and not just by our phones How to be intentional with your phone Setting boundaries with how you use your phone I share my own personal phone limits and challenges that help me be intentional and accountable with my phone habits Being intentional with your time OFF of your phone as well Challenging the autopilot habits you have created with your phone Challenging the cultural phone habits we accept as the status quo  Changing your mind about what you think about your phone Challenging the sense of urgency you get from your phone Being uncomfortable as you learn not to rely on your phone Doing the work of practising new and more intentional phone habits

Get the worksheets to help you set intentional phone habits for yourself  This episode has worksheets to help you explore this topic and make an action plan for yourself. Get the worksheets right here. 

Links mentioned in this episode: Episode 146 Understanding your autopilot phone habits

Episode 77. Why you need a day of BEING, and take rest from the DOING

When I Instagrammed My Own Life, and Not My Kids

The Moms30for30 challenge

The next episode will come out in two weeks. 

In the meantime, make sure to stay connected through:

The Simple Saturdays email (sign up here) Simple on Purpose on Instagram Share something in the closed Facebook group (join here, make sure to answer the entry questions) 

FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited) 0:11 Today we are following up on the last episode. And in the last episode we talked about, maybe if you feel like you have a bit of a phone addiction or some unhealthy phone habits, understanding how those habits are made, and they're really made on autopilot. And now we have this relationship to our phone and how we use it and the habits we have, that are just reflexes. They're just on autopilot, and really stepping back to challenge them and understand them and decide what we want to do about it.

0:38 So today, we're going to talk about what you want your relationship with your phone to be like, what kind of phone habits do you want? What kind of boundaries Do you want to set.

0:46 And it is kind of funny to be recording this today, because I have been on my phone almost double my usual amount lately. And that is because of what's happening around me right now I live in Southern BC, we were hit by massive floods. And these floods just come in and they do all this damage. And we're left with roads that are washed out. So groceries can't come in with gas lines that are out. So we're out of heat, we're out of hot water, the water isn't safe to drink, it's contaminated. sewer systems are struggling, power's out kids are home. And this is just the state that we're in.

1:22 And so for me being on my phone and being connected and reading updates, reading, what's what's happening, can I use the water, all of these little details, it shows us how valuable technology is, it's so valuable.

1:36 But still, even in times like this even in emergencies in crisis situations.

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I get messages from moms, and coach women who feel like they are addicted to their phones.

They share how it pulls them out of their presence with their kids and their lives.

It sucks up their time and they feel like they never have enough time.

It draws in their attention and they are scrolling social media that does NOT make them feel any better about themselves.  It seems that our phone usage isn't getting us what we want.

I want to unpack this relationship we have formed with our phones, by letting it be on autopilot.   Make sure to get the worksheets that help you assess your relationship to your phone and better understand the exact impact it is having on you and your life. 

The goal with all of this is not to villainize our phones (I like my phone!), and not to bring more judgment and shame onto ourselves (lasting positive change does not happen from a place of negative judgment) - the goal with this is AWARENESS - what is going on and is it working?

In this episode you will hear:

the good things about phones and technology the term 'phone addiction'  how are phone habits developed the surprising find about habit-reward and how we use our phones the negative impacts we might have from our phone habits

time, energy, relationships, work, attention, distractions, physical impacts, coping mechanism, mental health, sleep

the worksheets to help you understand how you are using your phone and how it is impacting you. We need to be aware of the costs before we choose to give up the benefit in some way. 

GET THE FREE WORKSHEETS RIGHT HERE  

Make sure to send in your QUESTIONS/TOPICS for an upcoming Q+A Episode. You can send them to me through Instagram, or share in the Facebook group. 

LINKS

The study on dopamine, rewards and phones

Distracted phone users don't see the gorilla

Text neck, how staring at your phone impacts your body

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT (unedited) 0:00 Hey friends at Shawna your nerdy girlfriend and life coach from simple on purpose.ca Welcome to the Simple on Purpose Podcast, episode 146 Your relationship with your phone on autopilot.

0:16 And I know we hear a lot of negativity around the impacts of phones on us as a society on us in our daily lives. But before we kind of talk about that and unpack that, I want to talk about the good things because I think they really are good things. I am someone who likes my phone, I like to use it. I like the technology.

0:38 I got my first smartphone when I was like 27 or 28. So it's like 2009/ 2010. Before that it was the Flip Phone era in my life, there was a bit of texting, definitely not photos, surely no internet connection. And you know, back when I did get my phone, that there was this big catchy saying out there. There's an app for that. So everything was really about using these different types of apps for productivity and games. And you know, it was just really a place to check emails and play some games for the most part, I think.

1:10 But that quickly advanced and by the time I was having babies, I was using my phone often I would scroll Pinterest a lot. While I was up at night nursing, I would watch some Netflix Well, I was nursing or pumping things like that.

1:26 So as my babies were growing, so was my phone usage. And as they moved a little bit into toddlerhood, Instagram became a really important part of my daily life. It truly felt like a community. It was my community. I followed other moms on their in their day, we would check in with each other. There was no scheduled posts, no algorithms messing your feed, no stories just in the moment sharing.

1:50 So I'm not going to shame another mum who's using her phone because to me it it has been a place where I found community I found entertainment, I found information, I found answers to my questions. And I think that this is a really useful tool in our lives.

2:06

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I knew I had to share this episode as I heard more and more coaching clients tell me how much they appreciated hearing me say that I don't always enjoy my kids, that I was a mom martyr, that pregnancy was hard.  I keep hearing how much it matters to hear that they aren't alone in these struggles of motherhood. 

In this episode I am talking about:

Feeling like you aren't 'normal' Welcoming the resistance you might feel to the idea that you aren't alone What I have seen in coaching groups of women and moms The struggles I have in my own home, maybe you have them too  Sibling rivalry Having compassion for ourselves allows us to have it for others Being honest about our struggles Allowing people in, and offering support to others

Stop by the Facebook community group or send me a message through Instagram. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by kristen bell (@kristenanniebell)

The list of links you might like/mentioned in this post: Permission to grieve (having a parent with dementia)

Dear friend, you are not alone

My C-Section and the feelings I was ashamed to admit I had

The Baby That Always Cried (Our Story With Esophagitis)

A Mom No Matter What (For the mom who had a hard labour and delivery)

God's grace in difficult parenting 

Marriage posts

When they tell me I'm lucky to have him 12 ways to heal and strengthen your marriage

Mom martyr (making motherhood harder than it needs to be)

When I realized I didn't enjoy my kids

The Sibling Rivalry podcast episode that changed my whole mindset around parenting 

Full Episode Transcript (unedited) 0:06 Hey friends, it's Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and life coach from simple purpose.ca. Welcome to the salon purpose podcast. If you are a regular listener, you may have noticed I did not have an episode out last week. And I just thank you for your graciousness in me taking that break.

0:22 If you are in the simple on purpose Facebook community group, you know why that I took that break, I had spent the weekend before at my parents house. And we were decluttering, this room in that house that was just stuffed full of boxes, and scrapbooking supplies and pictures and writings. And this isn't unusual for my childhood home to have boxes of stuff, particularly a room of boxes of stuff. And this was just a process that we as a family had been planning on doing. Since my mother went into care in December with dementia, we knew that we wanted to start addressing these areas in the house that were built up that we could just kind of sort through it, see what's there, start honoring what's there and just makes use of the space a little bit better.

1:08 So I went with my siblings and my dad and we went through things box by box item by item, it was a lot of sorting, I would definitely put an emphasis on the ability to sort is key to good decluttering. But it was also hard. It was also healing, it was hard it brought us together, I think. And you know, that's just something that I felt like I had a lot in my head a lot in my heart. And I just wanted to take last week off and give myself the space to unpack that on my own. Without adding more to my plate.

1:42 You might also know that I work a couple of days a week with the local health authority. And then I have coaching in school on top of that, that I also do. So my weeks do feel very full. I do feel like my simple slow life has definitely been up ended a little bit this year for a lot of very purposeful things that I want to be working on.

2:05 Anyways, if you want to message me privately, if you are wondering about decluttering if you're wondering also about having a parent with dementia, and you have specific questions on that, I'm thinking about maybe doing an episode on that if people have questions.

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We hear a lot about the mental burden that moms carry. We have so many things on our minds about all the people and all the things that need to happen PLUS all the things we want to be doing for ourselves too. It is a weighty mental load that we are carrying around. 

I want to talk about a concept that will help you see some ways you can lighten this mental load. The concept is decision fatigue, which is the overwhelm we feel from having to make so many decisions in our day. 

And if you pay attention, you will notice how almost every moment we have another decision to make about what to eat, how to respond, how to spend our time, how to act, what to do next. And by the end of the day, we are exhausted by it. 

I want to talk about practical ways to manage decision fatigue, so it is one less contributor to your mental load as a mom. 

In this episode we cover:

Three ways that having too many choices impacts us and our satisfaction

The three ways we respond to too many choices How struggling with making decisions impacts our view of ourselves and our capabilities One guiding principle to deal with decision fatigue Practical ways to put that into action Helping our kids with decision fatigue Why deciding ahead of time is more proactive 

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I may earn a commission, at no cost to you. 

Links The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwarz

The Paradox of Choice TEDTalk

The Life on Purpose Workbook

Homemaker, on Purpose

Family rhythms

A Simple Hack to Make Meal Planning Easy

Moms 30for30 (wearing 30 items of clothes for 30 days)

How having fewer clothes makes my life easier

Tips for putting outfits together

Planning your day (for moms)

What Happened When I Took Away Half of My Kids’ Toys

Practical Advice For Purging Kids’ Toys

Decluttering with kids FREE MINIGUIDE

The Live Your Values FREE WORKSHEETS

The Live Your Vision FREE WORKSHEETS

SIMPLE PLEASURE OF THE WEEK The very funny Instagram account I like to follow is Hayley Morris. Her skits of Me vs My Brain are so simple and clever and show so many great examples of our mental drama

A fave skit from her: Calling to book a haircut

FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited) 0:06 Hey Friends Welcome to simple and purpose podcast I am Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and life coach. And I am a mom of three, practical minimalist, a life coach helping women live their lives on purpose. I'm also the author because I don't say this often enough, you guys are like what you have a book, I have the like on purpose workbook, and the homemaker on purpose book. And that homemaker on purpose book, it isn't about baking bread, and embroidering tea towels, neither of which I have skills to do. But it is about taking the mental drama out of housework, and learning to create simple habits that help you take care of your home.

0:43 So here we talk a lot about mental drama, because we are just walking around with our mind full swirling with thoughts and ideas and errands and tasks and feelings and avoidance of feelings. So our mental life is happening and our mental life matters. Because what's happening up there in our mental life, it seeps into how we feel and how we act. And there's a lot of our mental life that does run under the radar, this is called the subconscious or I just call it the autopilot. We might not even realize I didn't have that mental load, we're carrying that stress and anxiety until something happens. And we just snap, it's just gone too far. Or we just burst into tears. And we realize, oh, I've been carrying that all day.

1:32 And I know we've heard a lot lately about the mental load the mental burden for moms, we think about all of the things that we need to remember and pay attention to and do and the things that aren't being done. And it's just a lot to be carrying in our minds th...

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There is a type of clutter we ALL have in our home. It is identity clutter - you know those items that for someone we are not - but rather for different versions of ourselves: our past self, our aspirational self, our socially-compliant self, and our test self. 

I walk you through these four types of identity clutter, how they challenge our sense of self and what we can learn from them. 

Make sure to get the download worksheet of the four types and clutter questions you can ask to help you decide what to do with the identity clutter. 

What is identity clutter? Identity clutter are things in our home that are 

Who we used to be (past self) Who we wish we could be (aspirational self) Who others think we should be (socially-compliant self) Who we think we are, but we aren’t sure, probably just following a trend (test self)

How do trends contribute to identity clutter? A lot of our identity clutter comes from trying out trends. And it makes sense that we, as humans, would follow trends. There is safety in being part of the community, there is a sense of status we can display, and we are looking to others to inform us on what is socially acceptable. 

However, the more we move from trend to trend, the less we actually take time to get to know who we are and what we like BEYOND the trends.    The physical burden of identity clutter The more obvious problem that identity clutter causes us is the use of space. The more space we give to storing these items, the less space we have for living our life. 

The important question to consider here is: how do I WANT to use my space? This should also be an intentional and purposeful decision. 

The emotional burden of identity clutter Whenever we see these items stored in our home, we are constantly reminded of who we AREN'T being. It can cause feelings like shame, or loss, or guilt, or frustration. 

It can also cause overwhelm because it adds to the list of options of how we should spend our time and the person we should be. It can cause decision fatigue if a very subtle way. 

When to declutter the identity clutter? In my experience with decluttering, it happens in waves. We start with the low hanging fruit, the hard 'no's. As we come back to these spaces from time to time, we keep refining and editing down from the bad/good to the ok/good then to the good/great. 

The identity clutter, sentimental items and items we think are valuable are ones we often leave until a later stage as they require more examination and thought. 

Episode 90 covers the items that have us asking 'what if I need this one day?'

Why is identity clutter hard to get rid of? Each of these versions of 'us' can be hard to let go of. From mourning our past selves, to honouring our upbringing and all the 'stuff' that comes with that, to acknowledging the parts of our aspirational selves we are ready to let go of. You can listen to the When Shopping Isn't Making Your Life Better episode for more on the motivation behind our 'trend' self. 

Each of these types of Identity Clutter brings along its own need to learn from, accept and integrate the lessons this item of clutter has taught us. 

Make sure to get the free download to help you walk through questions for each type of identity clutter, and decide what to do about it. 

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I may earn a commission, at no cost to you. 

SIMPLE PLEASURE OF THE WEEK This simple pleasure is a shout out to all the cold Canadians who are on their first days of Fall. This heated shawl gets me through the colder months. 

It is also my go-to when I have a migraine or when my kids want a little extra comfort while sick. 

Full Transcript (unedited)

0:07 Welcome to the podcast, where I aim to keep all of the episodes 20 minutes or less, so that we can squeeze in these virtual coffee dates,

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We all feel this sense of  'ideal self' that we want to be moving towards. It is safe to assume a lot of us desire some change on some level in some area of our lives. But we need to consider what change will cost us.

We can't ever change if we aren't willing to make some kind of investment in it. 

Seeing where we need to make an INVESTMENT in the change we want This episode started out with me wanting to share on INBOX ZERO, but the issue became about the TIME it would take to accomplish inbox zero

This brings up the issue of making an upfront investment in the change we want for later in our life. 

We want to make changes As I have worked to live my life 'on purpose' (intentional living), it meant making a lot of change in my life. 

And in almost every coaching session I have, I am working with someone on a change they want to make: change in relationships, in approach, in time management, in how they handle their health, etc. 

But we need to be mindful of how easy we expect it to be. 

DO WE WANT CHANGE? YES

WHEN DO WE WANT IT? WHEN IT IS EASY!

Maintaining the status quo gets us more of the same Our daily lives are being run to maintain what we are already doing. So, we can almost predict what our future will be like based on what our status quo is right now. We will get more of the same. 

Changing your life doesn't have to be a huge overhaul There is a famous Mel Robbins quote "the cost of your new life is your old one" and that always averted me from change. Sounds too big, no thank you. 

My approach to change has been making small changes over time. And I really believe that making small investments over time can change your whole life (I share all about this right here)

What will change cost us? How will we pay for it? When I talk about investing in change, the cost of change, I am talking about using your AVAILABLE resources. These are the resources we all have available to us in some way: our time, our physical energy, our emotional energy, our space, our money. I talk about managing these resources in the Simplify Your Life Series

Remeber, this is hard because we have to learn the skill of showing up for ourselves. When we invest in changing our life, it becomes 'you working for you'. I talk more about this skill in this episode: Do you trust yourself to show up for you

When we want an easy life I wanted an easy life, so I always did the 'easy things'. Turns out I had that wrong. If I wanted an easy life later, I had to do the hard thing now. I had to make some upfront investments and pay the cost now. 

Discomfort either way, which one will you choose It can be freeing and humbling to realize: You are uncomfortable where you are, in the status quo

Change will be uncomfortable, and maybe unfamiliar

But the choice of which discomfort you choose is up to you.  Over these past few episodes, I have been challenging you to get  #uncomfortableonpurpose. I hope you keep tagging me on Instagram to share this and come share it in the Facebook community group.  Quote by Dean Koontz: “Change isn't easy... changing the way you live means changing what you believe about life. That's hard... When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable.”  

If you want to sign up for the Making Change Challenge, you can do that right here. 

SIMPLE PLEASURE OF THE WEEK The library apps to get books, audiobooks and magazines. 

The Overdrive App

The Libby App

IG accounts I like for book ideas are @thislibrarianisreading and @read.write.janis

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I may earn a commission, at no cost to you. 

Books Referenced Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

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Feel like you are shopping too much? Want to bring a minimalist approach and mindset into how you shop?

Every season we seem to be bombarded with the latest fashion trends - a marketing strategy that fast fashion uses to get us to keep buying all the latest colours and patterns.  I know I feel like I need to buy a new wardrobe each season and need to remind myself of everything I already DO have in my closet. 

In this episode, I will talk about WHY we shop, how to know when it is causing a problem for you and how to bring a mindful and minimal approach into your shopping. 

Make sure to get the free downloads that go with this episode, right here

Why it feels good to shop The neurochemical payoff

In her great book Tame Your Anxiety by Loretta Breuning outlines the neurochemicals we like to get (serotonin, oxytocin, and dopamine). I share my view on how I think we get each of these neurochemicals from shopping. 

Control and choice

Shopping is also something we can turn to feel in control, which is a desirable feeling for many of us. 

Avoidance strategy

Many of us can turn to shopping when we want to 'feel better', or also to say when we don't want to feel the negative or uncomfortable things we are facing. This is like emotional eating, we can emotion shop. Many coaches call  this a buffer (a term coined by Brooke Castillo), the things we turn to for distraction from feeling poor. 

When shopping isn't making our lives better Years ago I started decluttering my home and it hit me how much my shopping habits had contributed to the state of my home. 

I could see that I had spent a lot of my 20s buying things that I thought I needed to be a credible adult. I had accumulated so much by using shopping as entertainment and by shopping by reaction more than intention. 

It caused a problem for me because I could see that I had a home full of stuff that was 

a substitute for what I really wanted  things I 'thought' I needed things I thought we 'me' but turned out to be identity clutter

How to know when you are shopping too much Shopping in itself isn't a bad thing or a negative activity. Shopping can be fun! Often it is how we meet a lot of our needs and create the life we want. 

Something things to consider to know if you are shopping too much is its impact on the different areas of your life. Shopping may be a problem for you if you notice a negative impact on your relationship, your finances, your space, your ability to be present, or your own sense of integrity. 

Bringing a minimalist approach to shopping The work starts before you even go shopping or load up the online store. To bring a minimalist mindset into shopping, you will want to only buy what you need and love. 

A strategy that is really helpful here is to start with an inventory of what is already in your home. You can avoid bringing in a lot of unnecessary items when you 'shop your home' and see all the inventory you already have. 

Being mindful about how you shop It is important to shop with intention rather than reaction. Having a plan when you shop can keep you on task here, make a list of the items you are specifically looking for. 

I unpack some powerful, mindful questions you can ask yourself WHILE shopping. You can get a download of these questions to keep on your phone right here. 

Get in touch You can find the Simple Squad (our community on Facebook) right here. 

Send me a message or tag me on Instagram @simpleonpurpose.ca 

Full Episode Transcript 

(Unedited)

0:18 And on this podcast, I share ways that you can simplify your home, simplify your heart and simplify your life. And I want to talk about getting rid of distractions and clutter in those areas, helping you identify what you're keeping what's important what you value, and show up for that. Simplify and show up. So today we're going to talk about shopping. So how did you for me right now,

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I challenged you to get uncomfortable this week. Now I want to dig into doing simple things that serve a bigger purpose. Giving your discomfort a purpose to work towards the vision and goals you have for your life. I want to break it down, keep it simple, and encourage you to drop your all-or-nothing mindset. 

This past weekend  I did another Abundance Day  (aka Yes Day) with my kids. 

Last year I did this and shared my takeaways in this episode "I let my kids do whatever they wanted all day"   Discomfort on purpose Last week I shared how we are building lives of comfort but discomfort can serve a purpose. In the episode, I shared my own experiences with this and challenged you to do something uncomfortable ON PURPOSE (#uncomfortableonpurpose)

I love to hear what you are working on (on Instagram and in the Facebook group)

Let's build on the purpose we can give our discomfort There is value in going out of your comfort zone, practicing that, and growing your tolerance for feeling uncomfortable

There is also value in the empowerment and drive we get when we are working towards something we really want.

If we call it a goal, does that have a stigma for you? Do you feel like 'goal' is corporate and stuffy? Or maybe you feel like a goal will uphaul your whole life and bring failure and disappointment with it. 

The truth is that we have good reasons to NOT set a goal There are benefits that we get by staying where we are and not doing the work of setting a goal. 

Some of them include never challenging what we believe about ourselves, never needing to face discomfort, never having to figure it out, or do the work of showing up!

Remember that a goal won't make you a 'better' person We do have this invisible hierarchy of what makes people superior. We kinda secretly think that someone who sets goals and follows through (or looks a certain way or has certain things) is somehow a 'better person'.  Let's throw these measuring sticks into the bonfire. You don't need a goal to be a worthy person. 

Maybe goals feel like an emotional burdern, so how about the idea of 'giving your brain a job' Our brain is running in the background solving the negative problems we have told it to focus on (problem-minded). We have trained our brains to do this. 

How about we give our brain the job of solving some positive problems (solution-minded). 

Give your brain a job, call it a goal if you want Either way, consider what the bigger purpose is for what you want to work towards.  If you feel like you don't really know what you want in your life, use these free worksheets Live your vision worksheets

Live your values worksheets

Or use the Life on Purpose Workbook

In this episode I cover:

The good reasons we have to NOT set a goal How we train our brain to be problem minded Examples of simple goals you can set this week How to get started with a simple purpose this week (even if you never download the worksheets or get the workbook) Practicing the ART OF goals and discomfort Showing up for one, simple thing

Small things can change your whole life

How to address all or nothing thinking  How starting small makes us more successful in the long-run

Join in with us Share your #uncomfortableonpurpose achievements with us

Tag me on Instagram, use the hashtag,  share in the Facebook group (make sure to answer those entry Qs!)

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and take action I will be compensated at no additional cost to you. 

The simple pleasure of the week I do love skincare and makeup and have tried a ton of moisturizers. I have found a face oil that is super affordable, has basic ingredients, simple packaging and it WORKS on my oilier skin too. 

If you have oilier skin, you might like to use the Oil Cleansing Method (I've been doing it for about 8 years now)

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I love comfort (#typeninevibes) and I know that a lot of my comfort-seeking is more the AVOIDANCE of discomfort.  I don't want to be uncomfortable. 

What things make you uncomfortable? For me they have been things like: 

Taking my small kids out in public Working on the conflicts in my marriage Exercise Getting up in the mornings Doing dishes Decluttering and organizing my home  Seeing my kid struggle or be upset Go to a social event I was nervous about Sitting with all the stress and anxiety I felt about motherhood and life Paying attention to how my body was feeling

No matter how simple these may seem, they were things I was avoiding because they were uncomfortable.  But staying in what felt COMFORTABLE was coming at a cost.  What does 'staying where we are' cost us? It has a cost to our relationships, to our health, to the state of our home. This complacency costs us something.  When we realize what we have traded for comfort, it can make us feel shame.  When my eyes were opened to what my comfort was costing me I felt like something was wrong with me. I needed to 'do better' and 'be better'. The first step was letting go of the shame I felt about this. Then I had to make a plan what I wanted to do about it. 

I decided I needed to TAKE ACTION. 

Then I realized there were myths I believed about being Someone Who Takes Action. Myths like: it is easy, it comes naturally, it feels good, it feels motivating.  I realized that taking action felt very UNcomfortable Listen in to this episode to hear:

Why do we seek comfort The cost of seeking comfort A mindset shift to help you take action The purpose of discomfort Building your tolerance for discomfort Ways I made myself uncomfortable, on purpose A CHALLENGE to join in this month

Links mentioned in this episode: Making motherhood harder than it needs to be

Live your values worksheets

Live your vision worksheets

The Life on Purpose Workbook

Small things can change your whole life

The Simple on Purpose Facebook group  (make sure to answer the entry questions)

Tag me on Instagram    Use the hashtag #uncomfortableonpurpose

SIMPLE PLEASURE OF THE WEEK Is FIKA - the Swedish tradition of taking a coffee break, emphasis on the break part. At the heart of it is a slowing down and truly breaking. FIKA often includes coffee, a sweet treat, and a good conversation. But it can also be done solo as well. 

I love to FIKA at my home with coffee, a treat, and staring out the window at trees. 

We live in a culture of BUSY and it can be a badge of honour to never stop and rest. But we know that we do BETTER WORK when we are rested. 

Even as a mom you can FIKA. Over the years I have told my kids 'mom is on a coffee break' and I sit down to pause and slow down for a minute. 

Full episode transript (unedited)

Hey friends, it's Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and life coach from sublime purpose.ca. place for you if you feel like clutter, motherhood, relationships, life, like it seems so overwhelming. And if you are finding that you go about your day to day with some kind of resentment or frustration, this is a sign you've been living on autopilot, just letting life happen at you, instead of living it on purpose with your own purpose.

So thank you for being here. I am a certified coach practitioner, transformational life coach, and I use the enneagram faith if you want that included, and the cognitive behavioral therapy model as tools that I bring into my life coaching approach. I teach moms all around the world, the tools they need to set out the life they want their life on purpose. And that means knowing your vision, where do you want to go? What you want to be building, and knowing your values, what matters a long way. And whether you're doing this with me through coaching through the life on purpose workbook listening to these podcasts. I'm so happy you're here.

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Looking for ways to have more fun in motherhood and BE more fun as a mom? I have asked myself this question too. 

Inside of our FB Group - Simple on Purpose Community, there comes a great question. The question was in essence, I can DO fun things with my kids, take them to swim, skate,  and stuff, but how do I HAVE fun with my kids? 

How do I BE fun?

In this episode, I’m going to elaborate on how I responded to that question.

When motherhood becomes too serious and the fun mom you once were disappears into the background, it’s time to take an honest look at the things that are stealing the fun.  These days, there’s a lot of pressure on us to be both extremely involved and the perfect amount of detached. And while we were thinking about how to manage everything, there is one thing we seem to be missing — FUN.

We are all different types of moms, we all have different values we want to bring into motherhood. And let’s be real — sometimes we are in no mood for fun. 

If fun is one of those values you want to be working on, don’t miss this opportunity to learn some tips and ideas on how to make things more fun as a mom.

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

What are the things that make life UNFUN [ 02:18 ] The TOP TWO hurdles to having FUN [ 04:27 ] Some ways and ideas on how to become a FUN mom [ 07:17 ] Why FUN is a personal value [ 14:00 ]

Feature In this Episode:

Join our Facebook Group  When Did I Stop Enjoying My Kids? (and my journey back to enjoying them) 47. My husband’s take on setting vision and goals together 67. Making motherhood harder than it needs to be (Mom Martyr) 129. Does your ‘to-do list’ overwhelm you? Expectation overwhelm and how to handle it. 112. Are you parenting the wrong issue? (Power struggles and problem-solving) Mothering Through Anxiety 46. Listening to your life (part 3 of SHOW UP FOR YOUR LIFE) Spotify playlist: Kitchen Dance Party

Stay Connected with Shawna: Instagram / Facebook  Get in touch:  shawna@simpleonpurpose.ca / Get Coached   

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT (unedited)

Hey friends it's Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and life coach from simple on purpose.ca and welcome to the Simepl on Purpose podcast. For those of you who are new here, welcome. I'm so glad that you're joining us. I'm Shawna, I'm a mom of three kids right now they are 10, nine and seven. Living in small town, Canada. I am a minimalist, who discovered intentional living, that's living life on purpose, and is also something that I've been life coaching women or women all over the world who want to live with more purpose, peace, presence, and passion.

Let's talk about the passion today, let's talk about having fun with our life. Specifically, being a more fun mom enjoying motherhood enjoying your kids. And this is funny, because I had a whole bunch of different episodes half drafted, I keep this running list of all the ideas that there's never a shortage of them. But I didn't really feel like I wanted to talk much about anything in particular. And then this question came into the Facebook group, the simple on purpose community group. And I thought that is what I want to talk about.

The question was, in essence, I can do fun things with my kids, like, take them fun places, swimming, that kind of stuff. But how do I have fun with my kids? How do I be fun? And if you've heard over the years, I've shared that there was a time where it hit me, I don't enjoy my kids anymore. I'm not enjoying them. And it kind of hit me with this huge conviction that I want to change this, I don't like how this feels. And I spent the year actively enjoying my kids. I'll link to that post in the show notes if you want to go read it.

And since that time, I have made fun one of my parenting values over the years. So every year, we set out mostly may not always Connor. But sometimes we set out our vision and values for the different areas of our life.

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It’s back to school time! Are you ready? I know we have been enjoying the slow pace of summer and will need to put ourselves back on schedule to make back to school run more smoothly.  Over the years we have developed routines that we rely on in our school and workweek. I want to share our three favourites with you as you think about how you want to start out this new school year as a family. 

How routines help our kids and us for school days

We can rely on routines to get stuff done.  It gives us the momentum and predictability and these habits set for us. I know what’s going to happen, and the kids know what to expect. There's less drama over making transitions or how the kids are spending their time. If you have a kid who struggles with anxiety, knowing their part of the routine helps relieve a lot of that anxiety.

How to make routines more effective

Introduce this system to your family, and coach them by creating that as a habit, reminding them repeatedly. Give our kids reminders that are gentle and not heavy, hard and serious. Do not be a bear about it.

I shared some more about how routines help in the episode on family Saturday morning chores  

Our routines in the morning

We make our lunches the night before school. The kids pack their lunch with a template we gave them. We give enough time in the morning knowing how much time everything needs to be done. The kids dress themselves and pack their bags. Start leaving 10 minutes before we think we have to go. This gives buffer, so you don’t feel rushed or panicky in case something unexpected comes up.

After school routine

Before the kids come home, I give myself a pep talk about what kind of mom I want to show up. As the mom, that is a safe landing place for big feelings and frustrations accumulated throughout the day. For the kids, it’s to hang up their backpacks, put their papers on the counter, put their lunch dishes in the sink, wash their hands. Give them a snack or have them finish their lunch if they didn’t.

Things to remember when you build routines

Routines take time to build like any habit, so you want to be gentle with you and gentle with the kids. Keep showing up consistently for what feels important. Start as you mean to go. Start treating them how you want to be treating them in the long term.

Want to bring in some routines to your week? Try the Family Rhythms worksheets   

SIMPLE PLEASURE OF THE WEEK This month I went on a getaway with three of my mombesties. For some years now we try to get away for a couple of nights, or at least a nice dinner. This time we went to a cheap motel, walked around, ate good food, had a little shopping and a little wine. My fave part was going to an afternoon movie the second day and then being in bed with us all reading by 930pm 

But really I think the pleasure is just being with your friends, especially without kids. It is so special to spend time with your friends (date your friends) and I think it helps you fall in love with them even more/again.     

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today, I want to talk about routines. We are getting back into school. And it's got me thinking about the routines that we pick up when school starts, I know that summer feels like our mornings, I've just been getting slower and longer and more drawn out. It's harder for me to get actually getting going in the morning because there's just kind of this wide open space that summer offers us. So I'm gearing up myself to start waking up a little bit earlier in giving myself a little mental pep talks about getting into action earlier in the morning

routines. routines are very important. I think someone like me, like a type nine, we can rely on routines to actually get stuff done, we need that momentum, and that predictability and those habits set for us. I know I also like routines with my kids, because I know what's going to happen.

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How did your summer go? Anything you wish you that you did more of or less of?

Today I have a PROMPT episode for you - where I will prompt you through some helpful questions that I hope will help you live more intentionally.  Specifically, having a summer on PURPOSE. So let's take a minute to stop and reflect on the ways you want to improve next summer by noting what you learned from THIS summer. 

I share a bit of my story about

having my kids close together in age learning I had the CHOICE to declutter and facing the basement of shame.  wanting to live ON PURPOSE and let go of complacency becoming a life coach who walks other women through living with more peace, purpose, and presence in their lives

THIS IS A PROMPT EPISODE The power of a prompt

You take the time to slow down and access your PFC (prefrontal cortex), the part of your brain associated with long term planning and rational decision making You ask your brain a really good question You tap into the answers that are there within you, rather than looking for external solutions and ideas 

The power of an evaluation 

You use what you have learned recently to make your life better (before you forget all the good things you learned!) You give this information a home, so you can come back to it later when you need it You are improving things little by little

How to use an evaluation I use evaluations for special trips and holidays. This is why I added it to the Simple Christmas Planner. 

I keep notes on what worked and what improvements can be made. I save them all in a google doc so I can search for them when the holiday season is back again. 

You can also put reminders in your calendar that pop up before the season and link them to your evaluation notes (whether in a doc, notes app, or right in the calendar reminder) The summer evaluation Let's reflect on this summer and consider what you have learned from it that you can bring into next summer. 

What was great about this summer? (What do you want to do again, what did you love, what was helpful, what mindsets were empowering?) What do you want to do differently next year? (What do you want more of/less of, what to plan/prepare, what do you want to try that you didn't this year, mindsets to remember)

Make sure to set a reminder in your calendar to check your evaluation before break starts again next year! And there you go >> You used your past to make your future better

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Procrastination is an avoidant strategy and there are so many layers to it, why we do it, how to redirect it, how to accept it, and so on.  It is also something almost everyone does and something that can cause a lot of shame, especially for moms 

What is procrastination? It is putting something off for later. 

We all do it, everday. We put off phone calls and chores and errands. 

So how do we know if we simply PRIORITIZING our time and energy of it we are procrastinating?

Why we procrastinate There is a reason that deep down it is preferable to us to put off the task. Some reasons might include overwhelm, avoidance, all or nothing perfectionism, or we deep down don't want to do it. 

How the brain responds to pending tasks The brain has three jobs: seek pleasure, avoid pain, stay efficient. 

When we have the thought about a task we 'should' do the brain responds inline with this criteria - will it produce pleasure or pain? does it require a lot of energy?

Procrastination is not always a bad thing Sometimes procrastinating tasks can be a benefit. There are situations where it allows us to do better work, use the sense of urgency for energy, discover our true priorities, uncover some identity clutter we might have, and have less anxiety in the present. 

Three ways procrastination can be a problem: 1. Because of what we do instead of the 'task'.  We most likley turn to non-essential, short-term gratification activities. These often become our 'bad habits'. 

1. Because of what is NOT getting done. Whether we feel like this moves us further away from our 'ideal' self (and make sure you know what that is!), piles up the chores, or becomes a way we do our life. 

Episode 129 on Expectation Overwhelm Get the Live you VISION worksheets Get the Live your VALUES worksheets Get the Life on Purpose Workbook

1. Because of what we think it means about us. As we procrastinate we start to identify as a procrastinator (and usually this is loaded with shame and judgement). Then we start to live into this limiting identiy we have of ourselves. 

Three questions to help you deal with procrastination in your day

Why do I want to avoid this task? Is this task important to my personal values and vision? Is this task a prioritiy TODAY?

If yes, ask: what is one small step I can do to get started? If no, schedule it on the calendar and listen to episode 150 called Do You Trust Yourself to Show Up For You. 

Full transcript of the episode (unedited) Hey friends, it's Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and life coach from simple on purpose.ca Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. This is a place where I share ideas that I hope will inspire you to slow down, think about what matters to you your personal values, and do the work of showing up well for that. Today, I wanted to talk about a topic that I have struggled with. I know a lot of us this is something I've googled myself on Pinterest over the years. And I think it's also a topic we can have a lot of shame around. And I'm I know, we're just going to scratch the surface on this on procrastination, because procrastination is an avoidance strategy. And there's so many layers to it, why we do it, how to redirect it, and accept it, and so on. So I hope that this episode will give you more understanding of what's happening mentally give you some more awareness, some more grace around it. And then I have at the end, some questions that are going to help you in the moment to deal with procrastination.

What is procrastination, it is putting things off, I'll do it later. Or more accurately, it's a form of saying I won't do it right now. It's not gonna happen right now.

And this is an issue that comes up in coaching because we have a stigma attached to it. Like somehow, if we are a person who procrastinates we're less of a quality person, we're less of an adult, we're less together.

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When an actor is typecast, they are locked into being cast for a certain TYPE of character, always a version of the same thing. And as parents, we can typecast our own kids. We give them labels on what they are - difficult, athletic, flighty, dramatic. 

We can also give them seemingly positive labels - like smart, pretty, nice - and those can have impacts on them as well. 

I want to empower you with:

awareness around the labels you might give your kids, how it can impact your parenting experience, how it can impact them, and what to do about it 

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and take action I will be compensated at no additional cost to you. 

Do you typecast your kids? Do you give them labels on who they are? We all do it, we label each kid. Especially when there are sets of siblings, we somehow have a need to categorize each of them like they are gang in a sitcom.  Our labels are not facts We feel like our labels about our kids are true, but they are our opinions.

We base these opinions on our experiences of them in the past. Then we have a judgement of them and our brain looks for evidence to build this into a belief

We look for more proof of our label This is the confirmation bias (aka the Post-it note). Our brain is always looking for evidence it is true. In fact, our brain filters out information to the contrary.   

We build up more evidence and this belief gets very cemented. 

It is important to keep in mind that this label might be sometimes true, but also sometimes it is not true.  We need to be open to seeing both. 

The impacts that labelling our kids might have on our parenting 1. We treat them differently based on this label  How we do treat a kid we think is 'messy'? Do we step in and clean for them? Do we give up on trying to teach them how to clean up?

It is important to get honest with ourselves about how we react to our kids from the expectations we have of them, according to the labels we have for them 2. We shape their self-concept  Kids look to us to help them shape their self-concept. The more they hear it, the more they live into it, the more they believe it, the more they perpetuate it.

Our labels will put them into a box of who they are and who they are not.  3. Positive labels can put a lot of pressure on our kids as well I coach women who also struggle with failing at the seemingly positive 'labels' they've been given over the years. It can cause a lot of pressure to sustain them, and shame when 'failed'.

It can impact their growth mindset (see episode 49 on having a growth mindset vs a fixed mindset)

How to handle the labels we give our kids 1. Recognize the labels you have been typecasting your kids with  Acknowledge that they are hard to give up for them and us.   2. Separate your kids from the label Your kid is not their behaviour.  Rather, everything they do is a decision and they are doing the work of getting good at making choices in their daily life. 3. Let them surprise you   When we expect a pattern of behaviour from our kids, we perpetuate that.   4. Encourage and acknowledge without the limitations of labels

Give them acknowledgement more than praise (focus on specific efforts) Encourage them with what they are struggling with Call them up with what you see in them, but leave it open for them to figure out how to apply it to their lives Trying lots of new things. Vary the social roles that our kids are exposed to (as noted in the book Personality isn't Permanent by Benjamin Hardy)

1. Leave room for error  We have a lot of 'ideal human' standards that we want our kids to constantly (100%) meet. Give them space to make mistakes and not meet the standards, without the threat of discipline or shame.  

Because people (adults and children) are not 100% awesome, 100% of the time.  6. Leave room for change

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I have been researching goals and habits since we started setting them in 2015. You can hear Conor share his take on doing this work as a couple in this episode. 

Over the years I have searched to the ends of Pinterest and tried a lot of strategies to create habits for myself.

I was doing this work fueled by the notion that I had to become a morning person now that I was a mom. I was thinking that habits would make me the optimal human, efficient and productive. 

I have since learned to bring grace into it. Chase habits that make me feel purposeful rather than productive, and to set goals and habits in line with my personal vision for the areas of my life. 

Four simple habits that make my momlife better 1. Having vegetables for breakfast.  This is part of my 'food uniform' that I try to have for breakfasts and lunches. 

What I used to eat was sweet and carby and I was feeling crappy and shaky after breakfast. Then I did the Whole30 (here are 11 things I learned doing the Whole30) and weaned myself off this type of breakfast. 

I've been gluten-free for a few years and had to put in the effort and planning to create new food habits I could have on autopilot. 

The difference I notice in having vegetables for breakfast with how I feel about myself and my approach towards my health.  I used to go days without eating vegetables, now I get it done first thing every day.  Why I love this habit: I feel proud about taking care of my health because of what I do first thing in the day.    2. Reading books instead of scrolling social media Years back I swapped this habit in a personal challenge I called One Small Habit. I swapped scrolling social media for reading on the library app. 

I have read so many books over the years since I did this. 

There are nights I still find myself on social media, but I can give myself a little bit of time and then redirect it to a good book.  Why I love this habit: I want to be someone who reads a lot of books, this is the action that supports that   3. Pre-dinner clean up each day When my husband is working his week on, I follow this routine almost every afternoon: I do the dishes, clear tables, sweep floors, and make dinner. 

I used to be someone who avoided dishes and coached myself to become someone who can do the dishes without all the mental drama

Having clear spaces in my home is something I aspire to. It helps me feel empowered and peaceful.  However, we live here and use this space so I need to do the work of clearing the table a ROUTINE. 

This table clearing routine is something I ask the kids to do their part with too, so I don't become a martyr about it. 

I also have started looking forward to this time of day because I will put in headphones and listen to a podcast that I enjoy.  Why I love this habit: Fewer dishes for me later, and I get to listen to a podcast     4. Taking a day of rest (and social media break) Sundays are our church and chill days. I have been working intentionally at taking a day of rest, as a mom I think this is so important (as I unpacked on this episode). 

Taking a day of rest is something I crave but is also something that challenges me to sacrifice the need to be productive. 

I make a point to choose activities that make me feel filled up (you know, hobbies!)

Screen time is something I limit on this day as well. I  go off social media on Sundays.  I have been noticing how automatic I can find myself jumping on social media, and taking this day of rest has helped me with becoming more mindful about my relationship with social media Why I love this habit:  I am making time for my hobbies, I am learning more about my relationship to my phone, I give myself the grace to rest and feel better about the week ahead.    Doing a check-in on my vision, goals, and habits This process of making this episode allowed me to refresh myself on the habits I had written down for myself this year.

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Andrea is a Registered Dietician who is here to talk with me about our relationship to food and teaching our kids a healthy relationship with food

I also had a secret motive in asking her on because I had questions about how to handle food with my kids. I know I’m undoing a lot of cultured rules, how I was raised, my own biases, and I want to be mindful about how I teach my kids, especially my daughter, about the health of food without the food guilt or body shame.  

In this conversation we will cover: Common struggles that women have when it comes to their relationship with food

Emotional eating can be a common situation that happens in motherhood The ‘diet culture’ pressure that moms have to ‘drop the weight’ can lead to restrictive and unsustainable approaches to food Using food to manage our emotions (my own experience with emotional eating in motherhood) Using food as a way to control our bodies

Healing a heritage of food guilt and body shame

We know enough about attachment to know that our sense of worth and self is shaped by our caregivers Unpacking the decades of guilt and shame we have adopted Starting with some basic food plans and dropping all the food rules and restrictions Seeing the cycle where the more restrictions we give ourselves, the bigger the struggle of cravings and willpower, the stronger the guilt we feel when we eat what we ‘shouldn’t’ Building up trust in your body again

The role of being a mom who is managing food for herself and for everyone else

The positive side of emotional eating vs the coping side of emotional eating Being a role model for our kids when it comes to a healthy relationship with food Feeding your family a variety of foods and letting go of all or nothing thinking

Taking the drama out of feeding our kids

Consider the role you want to have in feeding your kids and the role you want them to learn and become confident in Anxiety and stress at the dinner table can become counterproductive to the whole dinner experience for the whole family How we can let our kids branch out on their own when it comes to food preferences The pitfalls of cooking different people different food items each dinner, becoming a short order cook 

Going through the discomfort of changing the culture of cooking each kid their own foods for each meal 

Using dessert as bribery (food as a reward) and what we might be teaching our kids about the ‘preferred’ foods

Getting kids involved in the food preparation and planning

Conversations around balancing meals Letting each kid design a balanced meal 

Parents using food as a reward

Using food as a treat, reward, bond, make the day more ‘fun’ Phasing out the treats and bringing in alternate rewards and treats Planning out the other things you can turn to that are fun for your family

Teaching our kids about a healthy relationship with food

How to have conversations with our kids about food without inducing food shame Shifting the focus on the functionality of health and food Using treat restrictions vs no restrictions  Owning our own relationship with food to create a positive food culture in our family

Getting started with shifting your family’s food culture

Start small Make a plan Don’t overcomplicate meal prep (use the shortcuts!) Offer healthy options and let your kids decide how much they eat Phase-out using food as rewards

Find Andrea and Adventures in Feeding my Fam Andrea’s blueberry and corn salad

Find Andrea on Instagram, listen to her podcast, join her Facebook group (it is a very fun and valuable one!)

Other posts you might like

What I learned from doing the Whole30 Mindful eating for moms

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This is a Q+A episode featuring questions from the Simple Squad (the Simple on Purpose Facebook Community). We are talking about feelings, marriage, seasons of life, parenting and family chores.

These answers are coming at you from my life coaching point of view. I am a mom of three kids, trained Life Coach, practical minimalist, and I help moms with intentional living.  

Questions covered in this episode: 1. Can you talk about the seasons of life and how we can't do certain things at certain seasons? Related posts with more information on this topic

Simplify your life series All posts about Mom Life Expectation overwhelm

2. How do I change my parenting style when my husband is not on board or how can I get him on board...? Related posts with more information on this topic:

When your spouse doesn't want to declutter Teaching our kids emotional intelligence Emotional Intelligence 101 (and by Enneagram Type) Book review: Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child

3. Meeting adult friends when you have little kids Related posts with more information on this topic:

Being a good mom friend Why you should date your friends

4. How to choose your feelings (eg. when you are annoyed at your husband but want to feel kind)? Related posts with more information on this topic:

Being mindful in marriage Working through a bad mood with one question My husband put the groceries away wrong, he doesn't care about me Myths about emotion coaching Tolerating tough emotions in ourselves and our kids

5. What is a good system for taking turns with family chores and duties? Related posts with more information on this topic:

Saturday morning chores Doing chores you don't want to do  A Year of Family meetings 

6. How to handle bullying in school?   

FULL TRANSCRIPT For those of you who are new here I am Shawna, I am a mom of three kids, they are 10, nine and going to be seven soon. I am a practical minimalist. So we have stuff in our house, but it's the stuff we like the best. I talk about intentional living, which means turning off that autopilot, and planning and doing things on purpose, to build the life you want on purpose. I also talk about simple living, which means managing our resources or time or space, or energy or money working on that one in ways that are in line with our values instead of trying to do all of the things do the important things, and you get to decide what's important. Today, I'm going to be answering some questions. So I often make myself a calendar of all the episodes I want to record over the next few months and share. And sometimes I look at a topic and I'm like I don't really feel like talking about. So this is one of those weeks, and I asked with a Facebook group, the simple on purpose community there. I call them the simple squad. I asked them for some topics that they would like to hear about, and they just had some really great topics that I thought I'm going to try and just answer them all in one episode. So I'm going to give my best nerdy girlfriend and life coach answer to these questions. And if at the end, you feel like you have more questions or thoughts or want more clarity, bring it over to the Facebook group.

The first topic is to reflect on the seasons of life, and how sometimes you're not able to do certain things in certain times, I really like to consider my life as being a series of seasons, because that helps ease up the pressure of feeling like it's gonna be like this forever. I remember when I had my first baby, and I'm like, in my house code on the couch, and I thought, I'm just gonna live on my couch forever, I'm going to become my coach, the coach is going to swallow me, I'll be like another coach. This is my life now. So I really like to step back from all of that mental drama, and remind myself like, it's not gonna be like this forever. I think of some of the seasons I had have had in...

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Expectation overwhelm is when you have a to-do list that is so long that it overwhelms you. This starts a defeating cycle of hustling, beating ourselves up for not doing 'enough', and not really feeling empowered to live a life of purpose. 

Feeling productive and the beliefs we have about how we spend our time Coach women a lot on productivity and procrastination

They feel like they can’t get things done in the day

They want to be better at getting things done. 

And it is the same issue on both ends of the spectrum - they are about how we FEEL about how we spend our time.  Did we FEEL we were productive? did we FEEL they procrastinated?

Remember our FEELINGS come from our thoughts. So the story we tell ourselves about how we have used our time is going to matter. It will change our experience of how we use our time. 

What is expectation overwhelm? Expectation overwhelm is when we have such a long 'should do' list that it constantly overwhelms us. We walk around thinking something is wrong with us that we can't tackle. We think we need more willpower and discipline. 

We also get frustrated with everyone around us and might even blame them (check out the mom martyr episode) 

Some signs that you might have expectation overwhelm:

you find it hard to relax for a minute in your day you feel like everything is rushed you feel overwhelmed even though you generally get things done you check things off your list but still feel like it’s never enough

What do we do with the overwhelm we feel? In my experience in coaching, and personal experience. WE do one of two things. We try harder or we tune it out. Both of these make us feel even worse about our skills and discipline. Both of these move us further away from the simple and purposeful life we are craving. 

The options should be optional We make a mental 'should' do list with all the expectations we have ourselves in a day. But we tell ourselves this list is mandatory and then we tell ourselves we are inadequate for not fulfilling them all

We are meant to make choices This is something that minimalism has taught me. I don't have ROOM for all these things. I also don't have time and energy for all these things. I need to choose. 

But making choices can be very intimidating for a lot of us. We think it means a long-term commitment. We also still secretly hold out for that secret we need to unlock our ability to do ALL THE THINGS!

Trade-in productivity for purpose I think most of us want to feel productive, but we live in a society that tells us we need to do DO IT ALL AND LOOK GOOD DOING IT. 

I would argue that most of us do not want to be productivity robots - but that we actually want to slow down and live the life that we crave. We want to let go of never feeling like we are enough, and make more time and energy for the things that fill us up. 

Know what you want in your life

The Live your Vision worksheets The Live your Values worksheets The Life on Purpose Workbook 

Get life coaching  If you want coaching support with letting go of expectations and getting focussed on what you DO want to make time and energy for, then sign up for a consult call to see if you are interested. 

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I may earn a commission. 

SIMPLE PLEASURE OF THE WEEK I will tell you it is about kiddie pools and water blasters, but it is about more than that. It is about tradition and having fun, and being a kid with your kids. 

This is the XL doggie pool that we use as a kiddie pool

And these are the type of water blasters that we are loving in our home.

Here is the grad shirt idea. 

Make sure to join the Simple on Purpose Facebook community group to share your thoughts, questions, and ideas with the Simple Squad there. 

FULL TRANSCRIPT Hey friends,

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Do you struggle in your relationship to getting dressed each day? Do you feel guilty for it, or lack confidence in it? 

Jaime McLaughlin is a hair and make-up artist who is helping moms take care of themselves without the mom guilt. 

In this episode we talk about the internal shifts we can make, the judgments we might have of ourselves and other moms based on what they wear, busting myths around how much money and time it takes to get ready each day, and tips to build a capsule wardrobe

Using the ‘tool’ of getting dressed every day Contesting the views that this is vanity vs a tool to help our personal motivation in our day

Considering the areas of our life that we try to sacrifice on the altar of motherhood

Challenging our self-perception and the ‘rules’ we give ourselves on what we wear or don’t wear Making your outcome whatever you want it to be and working backward

Aligning with your personal values as you work on getting ready each day

Reasons many stay at home moms have that we don’t get ready each day I don’t have the time

I never leave the house

I just don’t do it, I don’t get ready

Finding our value and worth as a stay at home mom Making a mental shift before we try to make an outward shift

We don’t just want to get dressed to ‘look good’ but we want to FEEL good

Empowering one another to NOT use how we dress as a reason to judge ourselves and other moms There can be separations and assumptions we make on how moms dress, and we can categorize moms based on what they wear vs what we wear. 

Considering the image we want to present to the world with what we wear

Moving from judgment into curiosity about what other moms could be going through

Watching where you might be judging moms who are a hot mess vs judging moms who are NOT a hot mess

Society tells us what a mom ‘should’ look like Mom does not have to equal hot mess, crappy clothes, etc. We get to decide what it looks like to be ‘a mom’

We don’t need to be a victim to our days and motherhood

Taking ownership of wearing what we WANT to wear and letting go of the myth that we are 'too much'

Letting go of the myth that in order to look good we need to spend a lot of money Fast fashion tells us that we need to spend all the money, every season, to have the trendy clothes of the season. Consider if fashion is something you value and want to spend money on and then making that happen

It is important to have the perspective that the online influencers sharing 'style' we follow are not buying their own clothes but are given them by stores

Building a capsule wardrobe A capsule wardrobe is a great way to be mindful of the money we spend on clothes and 'how much' we need to have in our closet

Starting with core pieces, knowing your colours, and building a wardrobe you can mix and match and put outfits together

Key points on being a mom who gets dressed every day When you wear what makes you feel good this shifts your mental state and motivation

Getting dressed doesn't have to take long, or be expensive

Learn the techniques to dress and don't worry so much about the trends

There is NOTHING WRONG with saying 'I want to look good'

When we spend the time and energy on ourselves we actually think about ourselves a lot less during the day

Links to Jaime and her resources UNFRUMP YOURSELF a free masterclass to take care of yourself each day without the mom guilt

MACHOUSECO.COM the 7 Day Hair Care Routine

The Unfiltered Motherhood Podcast

other links on style and getting dressed Practice getting dressed

A recovering fashion wallflower

The moms30for30

Tips for a capsule wardrobe

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When we think about being home with the kids for the summer there can be a lot to dread AND be excited about in this season.  I have found my way out of that mental overwhelm is to make a plan on what what I DO want my summer to be. 

Over the years of planning our seasons as a family, we have developed an approach that helps us stay flexible, work around the hurdles and show up even on hard days.  I want to share the main points with you here. 

This episode has a companion workbook that takes you step by step through planning out the summer that you and your family want to have. 

Get your Summer on Purpose Workbook here.

Planning your days, as a mom I have found so much value in having a plan on what we will do. I started planning when I was home with my babies and have been loving the benefits ever since. 

My kids even asked me to schedule their days for them during isolation, and I shared how that went here. 

Why should a mom make a plan?

To feel in control, rather than scramble for it last minute To make room for the important things to happen - balance - proactive To have some stability - for us and our kids - we know what is happening and what we need to expect and prepare for To take ownership - don’t let summer just happen AT you To have FUN!  We want to ENJOY summer

So often we hear the countdown of 'how many summers we have left with our kids'. And this can make us a little panicky inside. I want to approach summer with intention and abundance. 

Declutter the mental overwhelm of summer

Ask what you feel EXPECTED to do, by culture, society, Instagram Ask what feels hard about summer as a mom?

I have a list:

The mornings where they get stir crazy but I’m not ready to head out Feeding everyone healthy snacks Getting work done Sibling spats - those have broken my brain in the past The energy I tell myself I will need to give them activities and adventures How will I handle screentime

I need to really brain dump all the things cluttering my brain and then address them point by point. 

Planning out the summer you WANT to have Ask your family - what summer do you want to have? What activities do you want to do? What vibes/feelings do you want summer to have?

Some years we were like road trips and camping Some we were like backyard BBQs and beaches Actually, we seem to rotate back and forth between the two

Some other visions for a summer:

Mocktails and gardening Books and suntans Fishing and hiking Popsicles, parks and kiddie pools Bike parks, bike paths and exploring Neighbourhood water fights

Having a vision is so important. It lets you get clear on what you want so you can make the decisions that will get you there. 

Making a family bucket list for summer We involve our kids in sharing their ideas on every season and holiday - we want to know what they hope for and see where it we can make it happen. You can also read more about our approach to family meetings right here. 

Some of the things on our bucket list this year:

Buy a pool Bubble wars Giant walk day Movie day Pajama day Beach day Candy day Taste test (one of their faves)

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A post shared by Shawna | Life Coach for Moms (@simpleonpurpose.ca)

Other family summer bucket list ideas:

Backyard campout Back yard movie night Cabin stay  Kayaking or canoeing trip Waterslide day Camping trip

Also see this post for a MEGA LIST of simple things to do with your kids, and get the free download to print off. 

Setting daily routines for summer days I love rhythms of the week - listen to episode 28 to hear some of the ones we often have during the school year. 

Keep it flexible by time blocking.

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As moms who want to have hobbies and do things they love we get bogged down with notions that we have to monetize our hobby, or that we have to be exceptional at it. We almost use these as measurements to determine if this hobby is 'worth it' in the time, energy, and money it could involve. 

I want to pitch the Joy of Being Mediocre and how it can unhook the hustle from the hobby and allow enjoyment to come into the hobby rather than expectation. 

Full episode transcript is available at the end of this post

Monetizing hobbies We are living in an age where we are constantly consuming images, captions, and videos of people creating amazing things. 

We are also connecting the dots that it is their industry as well

Modern career advice tells us to follow our passions and turn our hobbies in jobs. 

But there a flip-side to this industrialization of our hobbies:  our hobbies don't NEED to be monetized, and (gasp) we don't even need to be that great at them. 

How we have lost touch with our passions and our hobbies Over the years we see a trend of learning that The Best being the ones who get the praise and we need to fade back into the shadows.  Then we pour ourselves into our jobs where we find 'success'. 

Then we turn to hobbies to find some satisfaction in our lives - and we set ourselves up for frustration because we just want to be GREAT at it, NOW.  When we are great at it, then we tell ourselves it is 'worth it'

What is 'worth the effort' when it comes to pursuing hobbies as a mom? This is especially tricky for moms. What is 'worth it' as a mom who wants to spend time, money, and energy on her hobbies.  We measure 'worth it' by how WONDERFUL we are at it and how likely it is we could monetize it. 

Letting go of the pressure to hustle our hobbies Enjoyment is available of pretty much anything when we give ourselves the freedom 'hobby without the hustle'. 

When we let go of that hustle, we welcome in relaxed enjoyment. 

Being mediocre is the cost of getting skilled at something, so we might as well enjoy it

Being a mom who 'tries things' that she is not 'good' at My kids have witnessed me, over the years, being very mediocre at various pursuits. And, most importantly, not being mad about it or deciding to quit trying new things. 

Reasons why someone might be out of touch with their hobbies/interests/passions:

They want to be good at it They need a lot of instruction on how it has to look so they can check the boxes that they are ‘doing it right’ They don’t feel confident to try They don’t want to commit, out loud, cause then they might feel pressured to actually do it They aren’t sure if it will be ‘worth it’ - for whatever kind of outcome they are using to measure what make it ‘worth it’ And they have lost touch with what would be interesting to them, they stopped listening to themselves and the weird and wonderful way they are made to experience their life

Ways to get in touch with what is interesting to you:

What did you love to do as a kid? What do you always say you want to try? (what supplies have you bought over the years and never used them?) What looks interesting this season? What are you pinning on pinterest?

A side note about secretly hoping you can monetize your hobby If you have the secret motive that 'maybe I could monetize this' I encourage you not to sit on the fence and actually decide if you want to go ALL IN and build it a business - or if you want to let go of the motives and simply enjoy your hobby.

In this episode, I share a bit more of how that looked for me when I decided to start a blog ten years ago and how I wrestled with it being a 'hobby' vs a business. 

The Joy of Being Mediocre We are here for the PROCESS of doing/creating/sorting/digging/moving and EXPERIENCING  

This isn't about escaping your life or seeking pleasure at the cost of your values but rather it is abou...

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Do you wish you made time for the things you enjoy? Maybe you aren't sure what hobbies you would like, or you think you aren't 'creative enough' to have hobbies. 

I have encouragement for the mom who feels guilty that she doesn't enjoy her time, but also feels guilty when she isn't 'productive enough' 

Siobhan Johnes from the Unlocked Creative is sharing her insights and tips to help moms make more time for the things they love to do. 

For the woman who says 'I'm just not 'creative''

What it means to be creative Where creativity comes from    How we are made to be creative and use our creativity in the world

For the mom who says 'what do I even enjoy? how should I spend my 'creative time'?'

Following the breadcrumbs and trying new things The hurdle to exploring the hobbies and routines that you will enjoy Steps you can take to learn what you enjoy in life

For the woman who feels like 'creativity' is frivolous or childish

Permission to enjoy something just because it is enjoyable Planning in time to be creative, open, and messy Having time to be creative in a way that doesn't need praise or validation 

For the mom who feels like there is no time to do hobbies or be creative

How to open up to the ways you can bring it into your daily life The thought 'there is not enough time' always shuts down our openness to finding how to make it work The scarcity mindset keeping you from taking action   Being open to how we determine the time, purpose, and the values we want to bring into our life Steps to find more time for the things you want to make the time for 

time audit, looking for 'time sucks', finding the in-between times, delegating

For the mom who wants ideas on hobbies

Start with what is around you - what you have available Turning to your everyday surroundings for inspiration See some ideas on this

For the mom who feels guilty when she's not 'productive'

The inner critic that comes up when are playing rather than being productive Acknowledging the societal influences on how we view the value of our activities Looking for when we feel guilt, or lack of value when we aren't 'producing' Listening to the times you feel guilt or shame or unworthiness when you spend time on a creative outlet Modelling creativity and hobbies and doing things we enjoy for our kids Putting guilt outside the door so creativity can come in Feeling guilty for creativity AND feeling guilty you aren't spending your time in ways that you enjoy

To find Siobhan Jones head over to the Unlocked Creative Podcast, and find her on Instagram

Find my episode on Siobhan's show where we talk about exhaustion, simplifying, prioritizing, and purpose in creativity.

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This is not the house I would have chosen to be my forever home, but over the years I have come to terms with us staying here - but how to reconcile with the dissatisfaction of this home not being exactly what I want. 

Acknowledging our home dissatisfaction

Recognizing that deep desire to create a space that FEELS like home Addressing the longing we have to change our homes How we handle our dissatisfaction

Working with a partner to build a home together

Having different ideas on what a home should be Looking for the ways we both want to create a great place  Owning where we think the grass is greener

Are we entitled when it comes to having an upgraded/ideal home?

Addressing the concept of what is 'normal' for how our homes should look Getting overwhelmed to just 'get there already' Asking about what we want, why we want it  Can we consider the costs of having this 'ideal' home  

Appreciating the home you have

The one question that helped me see the resent I was looking at my home with  Looking at my space with appreciation over the days/weeks/months and the things that I have put on my list that I didn't expect Old decks, small closets, dated kitchens, lack of storage cul-de-sacs

Why do we want to change our home?

We think when our home is 'ideal' then we can feel different Seeing how you don't have to wait for the perfect home in order to feel that Getting stuck in the either/or mentality

Stop waiting for the perfect home 

Your home should be a place that reflects YOU and is a space you love to be and nobody else will do this work for you  Do the work of removing what you don't want in your home and letting the things you love shine and be used Know what you LOVE and focus on those things more than the latest trends Make a point to USE your space for the way you want your home to be used (gather, create, make, relax) Creating spaces you use and enjoy

Loving your home and wishing it were different

This is not an either/or situation,  hold space for both of these

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I will be compensated at no cost to you.    Mentioned: Love The House Your Are In by Page Rein

No Demo Reno on HGTV

Table Topics Question cards to start dinner conversation 

How to Hygge When You Are a Busy Mom (Episode 75)

Join the Facebook Simple on Purpose Community

Be the mom you are (blog post)

Simple Pleasure of the week: Warm blankets out of the dryer. 

Full transcript

Hey friends it's Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend life coach from simple and purpose.ca Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. For those of you who are new welcome. I am Shawna, I am a mom of three kids. I'm a trained life coach, a retired health inspector and your nerdy girlfriend, I am here to talk to you each week about the things that we moms we women face in our lives. And how do we approach the different aspects of our lives by first reducing all of the distractions, the noise, whether it's in the form of busyness, comparison clutter, so we want to simplify these areas of our life. And we want to get clear on what we want here, how to be purposeful and intentional in each of the areas of our life. So welcome to the podcast. For the past few episodes, we've been talking about emotional intelligence. So I wanted to bring in another topic and change it up. And what I love to do is talk to you guys about something that I talk with my girlfriends on. And this is a conversation I've had over the years, with my girlfriends, the topic of loving your home, how do you feel about your home? Do you wish it were different? I recently was looking through some old notebooks I haven't I came across a couple lists I had made about what I love about my home. And what I don't love about my home,

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This is the LIVE recording from a Facebook Live held earlier today in the Simple on Purpose Community group

I am answering FAQs and addressing the myths we might have about emotional intelligence and emotion coaching our kids. 

I have been emotion coaching my kids for years now and I have noticed such a huge difference in my own relationship to my emotions and how I handle theirs and help them problem solve.

Here are some of the myths and FAQs on emotional intelligence that I am addressing:

Why do emotions even matter?!  If I pay attention to their emotions, we can’t have fun anymore cause we’re busy working through upset emotions If I give them empathy, they will think their misbehaviour is ok I don’t have time for more ‘parenting tool’ in my life When they have done something wrong, they should be punished - no need for all this emotion stuff I was never raised to consider my emotions, and I turned out fine

If you want the tools, approach, and support to emotion coach yourself and your kids, then don’t miss the limited time workshop

Emotions, on Purpose

The doors close tomorrow (TUESDAY, June 1st) - so if you are interested, sitting on the fence, then I hope you sign up today.

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Health class may of taught us about anatomy, maybe our moms taught us about how to manage a period (but if you are like me, you just figured it out on your own reading the pamphlets in confusion and piecing together crumbs from Seventeen magazine).

And then we start going through life, having babies, experiencing postpartum, living momlife and we realize that this whole 'WOMAN' thing is more than just knowing what products to use and how to use them. We learn that there is a whole-body wisdom that we need to develop around what our bodies are going through and how to support our bodies. 

This is episode is for the woman who is wondering what more she can do to support her whole body with hormone health.   Today I am talking with Dana Irvine from Wise Divine Women

Dana is a Canadian teacher, Clinical Thermographer, and podcaster - supporting women with hormone health and wellness.  Looking at life four-fold: mindy, body, soul, nutrition Thermography is an infrared study of the body looking at the heat patterns in the body, to spot inflammation and congestion.  Find Dana on Instagram, on her Podcast and on her website

Some basics of hormone health for women

The 101 on hormone health - what are they and how do they impact our health. The main ones are estrogen, progesterone, cortisol, serotonin, melatonin How your digestion is related to your mental health

Paying attention to our cycles and supporting our hormones

How our cycle affects our mood and energy through the month. Eating to support your hormones throughout your cycle (seed cycling) The myths we believe that periods should be hard and suck and paying attention to our periods and addressing issues earlier in life Paying attention to your bowels and getting enough fibre in your diet can help with hormone health How food sensitivities can impact your body inflammation and your hormone health

Self-care and detoxing to support hormone health

Dana’s course Touch Your Tatas, teaches lymphatic drainage Being comfortable with our femininity, embracing your cycle and your body Some ways to practice self-care (dry brushing) Setting up reminders in your calendar to do regular breast exams, and lymphatic drainage for breast health

Being out of tune with our bodies

Challenging our view on taking care of our personal health Taking care of our bodies and mental health now to set us up for health in our older years Advice from the other side of motherhood that the time is NOW to take care of our health and self-care

Recapping the main points of detox

It isn’t just about drinking weird tea, it is also physical and nutritional. Also paying attention to your mind (stinking thinking), energy, boundaries, foods, emotional health, emotional stress in the body

Being in stress mode

How we digest food when we are in stress mode (more info on this in episode 113 on stress and thriving) If you are doing all the ‘right things’ and eat great foods, exercise, maintain your home but you are stressed then these things are not as effective

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I will be compensated at no cost to you. 

The Red Tent  

This is a book that really opened up my eyes to the value of female mentorship and sisterhood. It has prompted me to start approaching and building into relationships that bring elements of sisterhood into my life. 

If you have liked this episode, I do hope you go share your thoughts in the closed Facebook group, the Simple on Purpose Community.

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As we talked a lot about emotional intelligence, I want to move over to the physical side of emotional awareness. So often we just ignore our bodies and treat them as something that slows us down - but I've learned through experience, health problems, and researching the SCIENCE that listening to our bodies is vital. It helps us have a better awareness of ways we need to respond, more emotional freedom and it brings us out of living on the surface of our thoughts and into the experience of our lives. 

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I will be compensated at no cost to you.

What is your relationship to your body? Do you ignore it, do you mistreat it, do you appreciate it, do you have anger towards it?

Many of us women experience a range of these sentiments over the decades. 

I really realized how I resented my body when I learned I had an autoimmune disease called Graves Disease. You can read about that thyroid condition here, and you can read about my faith and healing journey here. 

Ignoring our bodies is culturally acceptable We power through, we push ourselves, we ignore our bodies. It is culturally acceptable. But why? Is it fear of wallowing and worsening? Is it fear of admitting our weaknesses? Is it because we are moms and we don't need ONE MORE THING to fix??

We ignore our bodies through food, drink, keeping busy and then we hit a wall and think we aren't strong enough, or we are doing it all wrong. 

Our bodies are WHERE we experience emotion Our bodies are where we FEEL our feelings. When we have a thought about something (often a subconscious and automatic judgment about if we are safe/in danger, good/bad, etc). When we have this thought our brain tells our bodies to release chemicals (peptides/hormones) to prompt us to respond accordingly. 

So the emotions we feel from those chemicals flooding our bodies aren't actually to make life hard, but to indicate something is needed to address this situation. 

Our bodies learn this thought-emotion response and then we call it a 'trigger'. It isn't just for BIG T trauma, our bodies remember how to respond from our past experiences. 

We often ignore symptoms in our bodies up to the point they cause us problems If we don't address what our body is telling us - and we keep having the same thoughts and emotions on something - our body will keep telling us this.

For instance, over the years I have noticed that stress makes me hold my breath and breathe shallowly. It makes me tense up my stomach and clench my teeth. But I learned this backward, from addressing the health outcomes of doing these things repeatedly over time. 

What about the science of mind and body? I have read Heal Your Body by Louise Hay and it is a fascinating read as she connects ailments to emotional conflicts. I have started to view symptoms in a similar way because, as I have paid attention, I have seen connections to my own emotions and physical experience. 

But I am interested most in the science. Some great books on this are the Molecules of Emotion by Dr. Candace Pert and Cure by Jo Marchant. Some popular names for this field are 'mindbody medicine and 'psychoneuroimmunology'.

If you feel like this is a stretch - just think about the fascination of placebos - where our brain believes something and the body responds in accordance. And now they are researching nocebos - where, when a patient predicts a negative outcome their symptoms worsen from the placebo. 

Answering your questions about: 

Noticing the signs of stress (dig deeper with episode 113 on stress, surviving and thriving) Using visualization to improve your health outcomes, particularly where you have experienced an eating disorder and worry you won't be healthy in the future (dig deeper with episode 37 on the science of visualization)

The simple pleasure of the week

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I have had some great questions on how to teach our kids emotional intelligence - and I will answer them in this episode. I will also run through the 5 steps I use (and learned from John Gottman) on how to walk our kids through their emotions and misbehaviours - also called emotion coaching. 

This episode follows up on 119, about tolerating the emotions in ourselves and in our kids.  The 5 steps to teaching our kids emotional intelligence, as I have learned through the work of John Gottman (my summary of his book is right here)  1. Awareness It takes time and practice to observe how our kids might be feeling. Each of our kids will act a little differently depending on how they are feeling. Boredom looks different in each of our kids. 

Emotional awareness is the foundation for understanding what is happening for us internally - because all of this will have an external result in our lives. 

2. Emotions are a chance for connection This feels really tough at the moment when our kids are pouting or blaming or having an emotion that is tough for us as moms to tolerate. 

I see these times as a situation where my kid has a GAP in their skills and they need to know I'm here to walk them through it. 

It is important to consider that our kids are at different skills and needs depending on their age. 

How I use bedtime as the time of time day to connect with my kids on their emotions. 

3. Label the emotions Awareness of a specific emotion is important because it helps us narrow down the thoughts and situations that are causing it. Even the moms I coach are a bit unaware of what emotion they could be feeling.

This can be done with a 'check-in' in lots of fun and easy ways. This is a great habit to teach your kids in becoming more emotionally aware. 

There is a science behind the process of labelling our emotions - affect labelling and 'name it to tame it'.

4. Empathy I think empathy can transform your parent-child relationship, episode 84

We think that empathy might coddle or kids or keep them wallowing in it - but it is the opposite. It helps them feel seen, helps them allow the emotion in order to move through it. 

Empathy is not a form of reward or punishment and it does not excuse misbehaviour. 

A very sweet TedTalk to have empathy in listening to our kids. 

5. Set limits and problem solve This is often where we START to deal with the issue. But all the other 4 steps can make this job so much easier for our kids and for us as moms. 

It means we address HOW the situation was handled, what happened from the feelings our kids had. 

Remember:

You don't have to deal with it in the moment, come back to it when you are no longer in a stress response and when they are no longer in a stress response (because stress highjacks our intentions, episode 113) This can be a conversation you bring your kid into problem-solving. It helps teach them the skills of solving their own problems

Answering the questions that were sent to me on teaching kids emotional intelligence. 

When you as a parent are practicing EI and you ignore/don’t acknowledge bad behaviour for the purpose of disengaging or de-escalating a situation, can that be perceived by your child as approval to act that way? How can you acknowledge negative feelings without reinforcing a negative mindset? Like if your child is complaining about something how do you validate their feelings of disappointment/etc without encouraging more complaining and negativity? How do you empathize authentically when you really don’t care that “the pink spoon is dirty”?

Getting more support on being an emotionally intelligent mom teaching her kids emotional intelligence I will be teaching a workshop for moms on June 3rd 2021. Make sure you are on the Simple Saturdays email to get notification on that. 

PS. Simple Saturdays isn't like other email! It is FUN email - it comes out twice a month and has...

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I want to run through the steps of teaching your kids emotional intelligence. And to lay the groundwork for that, let's take a minute to explore our relationship to uncomfortable emotions. We are conditioned to view certain emotions as acceptable and unacceptable - and this causes us to have a low tolerance for these emotions that show up in ourselves and in our kids. 

Emotional intelligence is important for moms because it helps us to walk them through their own emotions from a more tolerant, accepting, and capable place

Emotional intelligence in our kids

We underrate their emotional capacity to observe and internalize the world around them Sometimes we parent the surface level of 'keeping them happy' - aka the Hustle for Happiness, Episode 66 Happy kids cannot be our parenting goal, it is short-sighted and defeating

Raising kids will emotional intelligence is important because it allows our kids to be:

more mindful of how their emotions are impacting them less fearful of 'negative' emotions better skilled in healthy coping habits to help them with their tough emotions better skilled in developing healthy relationships

Emotional intelligence is a whole family experience  Emotional intelligence is good for the whole family, and it is never too late to get started

We worry that if we allow our kids their emotions that they will act entitled and poorly. Remember, all emotions are acceptable but not all behaviors are acceptable

What emotions are 'acceptable'?

We are conditioned to view certain emotions as acceptable or unacceptable  As moms, we have emotions we view as 'unacceptable' for us to feel. But emotions have a purpose, all of them. They have a role to prompt us to take an action. We often take unhealthy actions and reinforce our belief that this emotion is unhealthy.

Tolerating tough emotions in our kids As moms, we have a low tolerance for certain emotions in our kids. Here are some common ones that the moms I coach struggle to tolerate our kids feeling:

Ungratefulness, entitlement,  Anger Disagreement  Overwhelm Sadness, pouting Scared Shy, nervous Boredom

Watch out for the negative emotions we allow our kids to feel, even encourage, because we think they can be used as a form of consequence or punishment: shame, guilt, regret. 

We are teaching our kids which emotions they should turn to in order to motivate their own behaviour changes, and it becomes our inner dialogue in our adult life. 

Answering some of the questions that were sent to me:

Is EI similar to emotional resilience? If emotional resilience is a value of mine how can I incorporate that into everyday life in hopes to help my children to be emotionally resilient? Can minimalism help our kids have better emotional intelligence? 

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I will be compensated at no cost to you. 

SIMPLE PLEASURE OF THE WEEK A meal planning pad

See my meal planning video in the Facebook community group How I use a meal plan to have ideas and ingredients on hand throughout the week

Full transcript Welcome to the podcast. We are here, spend some time together every week, and simplify your home, your heart and your life. So you can show up for your life with more peace, purpose, presence, and I'm going to throw passion in there because this is your life, and you should enjoy it.

This past week, we've been getting outside a lot. I love that the weather is turning. I love the idea of getting outside every day. But I mean, sunshine makes it way easier, right? So we've been getting outside the balsamroot flowers are blooming in BC they look like little sunflowers. They're just my favorite. If you knew I was a bird nerd. You also might know I'm a plant nerd. Not the kind of plants that I kill in my garden. I'm not a gardener.

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There is an emotional experience of motherhood that can feel dark, angry, exhausting, hopeless. Some of us even experience postpartum depression or other hormonal imbalances that impact our emotional experience. 

Is joy still available to us in these really tough times? Does joy mean I'm always happy? Does joy mean it comes easy? Can I find joy in things OUTSIDE of motherhood?

This is my conversation with Jenna about these topics.

Jenna is a mom of two (with one on the way) and she hosts The Joy Filled Podcast. She started a podcast to give her a gathering place and build community as she shares her real-time story of walking in joy amongst her struggles with PPD after her firstborn.

Joy filled motherhood Topics we covered in this episode:

Postpartum depression in motherhood

looking back and recognizing postpartum depression in yourself seeing when something is 'off' and 'not me'  learning from PPD and deciding what you want to do differently  doing the work of keeping your peace and joy

The damage of the cultural message that "motherhood is bliss"

struggling to connect with our new babies this creates a stigma around the other end of the spectrum that motherhood is hard and we do get angry

Joy filled motherhood vs happy motherhood

feeling like joy is unavailable to us in motherhood "joy isn't feeling happy, it isn't the absence of hard" having hope and relying on God to find joy in motherhood joyful vs joy-filled not buying into the myth of being happy all the time, and that if you are happy you are doing it right

Getting rooted in joy amongst daily life of motherhood

not putting Jesus in a box of how it looks like to connect with him and rely on him separating the feelings from the lies and getting recentered on what is true having imperfect days setting boundaries around our connection to our phones  being present in parenting 

Struggling with hormonal imbalances and depression 

navigating a diagnosis and handling of depression, as a Christian woman using resources and a community to support the journey of treating depression the power of speaking our experience and having someone point out the lies we are stuck in

Doing things that light us up and make us feel joyful

the big things and the small things we could be doing that feel like an outlet listening to who God made us to be so we still do things we are passionate about and don't lose our identity to motherhood we are all creative in our own ways, it isn't just about art being passionate gives us a sense of purpose and energizes us what MLM has taught us about the desire to put our hand to something in addition to motherhood motherhood being an important calling, but not the only one in our life

Practical ways to set boundaries between motherhood and work (and other pursuits)

setting boundaries around social media  getting family/friend support what it means to be a 'present mom' setting a routine of independent play and work time for parents spending proactive time with our kids  using our time wisely and efficiently when we have time allocated for work 

WHERE TO FIND JENNA GRIFFITH The Joy Filled Podcast

Jenna on Instagram

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What does it mean to be 'Emotionally Intelligent'? How can this help you in motherhood and your life?

I'm sharing the basics of Emotional Intelligence (aka EQ) and giving you my take on where each Enneagram Type can develop and round out their EQ

The basics of emotional intelligence In a nutshell, EQ is being aware of feelings and managing those feelings in yourself and in your relationships (socially).

I'm looking at the info out there on this topic and summing it up into four major themes of what Emotional Intelligence includes:

Emotional Awareness Emotional Self Control Motivation Social Skills

1. Emotional Awareness This is being aware of WHAT you are feeling, WHY you are feeling it, and HOW it affects you and your life. 

This is foundational in coaching because it brings in a piece of the puzzle to the thought-feel-act cycle (as per the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy model). 

We aren't often paying attention to the low-level emotions we feel through the day, but there is a lot of leverage and power we can gain from practicing emotional awareness of all our emotions. 

2. Emotional Self Control This is how we cope with our emotions, what we do about them. 

When we feel big emotions we can fight, flight or freeze. This might help us in the short term but they are not ideal ways to cope and move through the emotion. 

It also keeps the stigma of this emotion being a negative experience and something we 'shouldn't' feel and don't really know how to tame.

3. Motivation This is the main theme in 'how we move forward'.  

We are often looking for motivation (how to get more of it, how to harness it) from somewhere outside of us. We are looking for the 'thing' that will make us naturally motivated and therefore disciplined and crushing our goals. 

We don't see that motivation is an inside job. Rather than wait to feel it, we need to learn HOW to generate it in ourselves. 

Don't use shame as a shortcut to learning the skills of developing internal motivation. 

4. Social Skills I am most focused on personal emotional intelligence, but there is a big emphasis on how we relate to others in the field of emotional intelligence. 

Social skills include empathy, communication, conflict resolution, influence and good leadership. 

Why does emotional intelligence matter?  Which also implies the question, why do emotions matter?

EQ matters because our emotions matter because we DO what we FEEL like. 

As the CBT model outlines, our feelings inform our actions. We act based on how we feel. And how we act is what gives us a correlated outcome in our life. 

So if we want a different outcome, we need to take different actions. Emotional intelligence allows us to manage our emotions in a way that supports the actions we want to take.    The benefits of high emotional intelligence

You can tolerate emotions in your kids/partner, you don’t need them to be happy for you to be happy You can grow in conflict resolution than stay in conflict avoidance You have healthy coping skills  You have healthier relationships, you can navigate your own emotions and others You can do the inner work of self- motivation and use EQ to move towards the things you want in life

Welcome to the No Shame Club If you are feeling some grief or upset over where your EQ is at, I want to welcome you to the No Shame Club. This is a place where we see WHERE we are and choose to not shame ourselves for it. 

EQ is not a moral issue, it does not make you better or worse, good or bad, right or wrong. It is just another tool available to us. 

So, if you want to grow your EQ, let's do it from a positive and self-honouring place. No shame allowed. 

Emotionally Intelligence by Enneagram Type Our emotional intelligence can vary in how we relate to ourselves and others. Some enneagram types are very 'others focussed' and can have high social skills.

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This is a bit different of an episode - it is a FUN episode!

It is OUR episode - the one where I tell you what is happening behind the scenes and tell you what the reader/listener feedback survey revealed.

What I heard from you:

Episodes that have helped you

Identity Clutter Being a Mom Martyr

Who is listening The topics you love to hear about  Yes, we are friends IRL

Why you are here hanging out with me, the podcast, the Facebook Group, and the Simple Saturdays:

To remember to slow down To remember it doesn't have to be perfect To remember that small things matter To remember to be purposeful

What you didn't know about Simple on Purpose:

The Homemaker on Purpose Workbook The Life on Purpose Roadmap Course The free coaching mini-sessions, the strategy sessions can be booked here and the coaching program info is here. 

Answering some of your questions:

How to get work down and run a business? Having a hard time completing the Life on Purpose Workbook  Sharing thoughts on a great comment about letting go of some of your expectations built up around minimalism. 

Connect with Shawna in the Facebook group, on Instagram, or in the Simple Saturdays email. 

Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I will be compensated at no cost to you. 

SIMPLE PLEASURE OF THE WEEK Is this simple Shampoo Brush. 

And here is the lovely Cara Brook I mentioned (well, I called her Cara Brooks, got the last name incorrect). I couldn't find her old makeup tutorials that taught me how to put on makeup - but I will share my Pinterest board with some of the tips and ideas I have liked for hair and makeup.

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I was a controlling mom. I turned on the NO switch and said no to my kids, to my husband, to myself. But this need to control everything came from one very specific belief I had about myself: that I was not a capable mom (or a capable person, for the most part)

We all like the feeling of being in control, but it can lead us to act in ways we don't like and it cuts us off from developing the skills of feeling capable. 

Because the more we fight for control, the more reduce the practice and sense of capability in ourselves. 

A Self-Professed Controlling Mom In this episode, I shared how, two kids in, I was becoming very reliant on CONTROL. I found myself controlling all the people and all the situations because I really didn't feel capable as a mother. 

I said no to my kids, to my husband, and to myself. And I had everything wound up so tight. 

For me, the solution to move out of this was turning to my village to help me pull out of my comfort zone, get out of my house and DO stuff with my kids. 

However, I still noticed that as I said YES more and did more, that I was still looking to control the what and the how and the little details. 

I really had to unhook myself from the deep belief that "IF I HAVE CONTROL, things will go well and easy - and if I don't have control then I am doing it wrong"

Being proactive vs being controlling  Making plans and being prepared is so proactive and important. 

In my home, we have lots of preparation and structure. We have meal plans (see the video in the Facebook group on meal planning tips), weekly rhythms, daily routines, daily plans etc. 

We rely on these preparations and plans to make our life easier. 

It is important to be proactive but watch for when it crosses over to being controlling - when we NEED things to go to plan for our sanity. 

Building up capability We want to feel like we are in control because it makes us FEEL capable. But it doesn’t always actually make us more capable of HANDLING life.

This can be the middle ground where plans and control support our lives and help us stay proactive - but we also start building up the skills of feeling and being capable of 'figuring it out'. 

How we act when we are trying to control When we are in a constant need of control, we start to act in ways we don't really love to be. We are hovering, stressing, nagging, worrying. It becomes really unfun and we are develop a controlling persona 

What we don't feel capable of handling Something we might not feel capable of handling daily things. Like, broken strollers, kid tantrums, making meals with missing ingredients, etc. 

But for many of us, it goes deeper. We don't feel capable of handling the discomfort of things like a messy home, conflict with others, relying on others, other people's negative emotions. 

Letting go of what we CANNOT control So much of this involves turning our attention and stance towards what IS in control. Which is always ourselves. 

We cannot control others and the climate and the economy and the situations we encounter in life. But we can control how we think about them and how we show up. 

Feeling more capable When we work on feeling more capable we acknowledge that:

we are not in total control of all the circumstances and people we let go of all or nothing thinking and start to see other options on dealing with things we can step into quiet confidence that we can deal with it, whatever it looks like we make room for life to happen we quiet down the stress response in our daily life (as Episode 113 explains, feeling incapable can trigger the stress response)

Seeing control and capability through a faith lens This isn't about US being the answer and the plan being The Thing that saves us. It is about having TRUST in something bigger. Where is your trust?

For me, that is trust in God that he has got this.

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What it means to be a mom on purpose - and it is not about having happy, obedient kids. It is actually about being a mom on purpose when our kids are NOT happy or obedient, or when life feels hard and we aren't feeling happy. 

Dealing with Automatic Negative Thoughts Coming off a couple of weeks of feeling like I was hitting a wall and spiralling to all the things that are wrong in my life 

Our brain is wired to find problems so we can keep ourselves safe and protect ourselves from 'problems'

We are the ones that need to talk back to our brains and tell ourselves what is true

Mindfulness as a mother Mindfulness isn't always beautiful and lovely. We need to be mindful of the things that feel not so lovely in our lives.

It is important to be mindful of the stories we tell ourselves because we act out, show up from those thoughts and how they make us feel

When we show up from frustration, resent, victimhood and then our outcome is always disconnection and more helplessness and frustration. 

Our two selves We have the self that we ARE (what we are doing) vs the self we want to be (our ideal self)

Our work is to love us for where we ARE while moving towards our ideal with compassion and love. 

Led by emotions or led by intention Often we let our emotions run the show - rather than being led by stress and frustration and anxiety, we need to be led by our personal values. 

Knowing our personal values means we know WHO we want to be and what is important to our core - in this season of life. 

It is also about bringing the work back to what we DO have total control of - ourselves. 

Obedient Happy Kids We ask for obedience and happiness in our kids

It makes it easier when our kids are happy and well-behaved, but is it what we should be fighting for?

We want obedience, plus gratitude, plus happiness, plus agreeability, etc. 

Consider how reasonable it is to expect all of these things from our kids, and see how we might not be good models of all we tell them we need to be. 

Kids learn by seeing what we DO more than they will ever listen to what we SAY

We need to be parents who DO the work on ourselves so they can learn by watching us tackle emotional intelligence, coping and contentment. 

We want our family to be happy (all the time) What are we seeking when we want everyone to be happy all the time? 

When people around us are happy, it is easy. It is comfortable (a Type 9 mode for sure)

I have been the Manager of Happy, trying to make sure everyone was following the happy plan. It caused a lot of anxiety and strife in my life. 

What is really happening is that we scramble for control when we don't feel capable. When we don't feel capable, we focus on CONTROL instead BUT we don't have control over all these peoples. We only have control over US

Being a mom on purpose means

we turn off the autopilot we stop showing up from negative emotions (stress, frustration, low key anger) we stop beating ourselves up for how we struggle (no more shame!) we step into INTENTION, even when it is hard we stop making hard things harder (and being a mom martyr) we look for ways to enjoy this and be the MOM WE ARE

Step into the empowerment of being a MOM ON PURPOSE even when your kids don't listen, even if you feel overwhelmed, even if you feel like every day is groundhog day. 

Let's do the work of being a Mom on Purpose (MOM ON PURPOSE BOOTCAMP) Products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something I will be compensated at no cost to you.     Simple Pleasure of the Week  (as inspired by Red Light/Green Light from the Popcast with Knox and Jaime)

This week my simple pleasure is the author Isabel Allende - who I consider to be part poet and part researcher

I have read and loved 

Long Petal of the Sea

and

Daughter of Fortune

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There is a quote 'don't just survive in motherhood, thrive in it'

When I first heard this quote I really hated it.  I was home with three kids under four and very aware of how I was NOT thriving and felt like I wasn't even surviving. 

I resented this notion I had to be thriving. 

What I thought thriving in motherhood had to look like

cute home, always clean healthy home-cooked meals, everyone likes them  well dressed, kids are happy, I'm training for a marathon I also have a successful side hustle

It felt very far away from where I was

Over the years I have learned that there are some very important hurdles to 'thriving in motherhood'

I will be sharing the four reasons we aren't thriving in motherhood in the upcoming Mom on Purpose Bootcamp. If you want to do the work with me and set a great foundation for going from surviving to thriving then save your spot right here. 

One big reason we aren't thriving in motherhood You cannot thrive when you feel like you are not surviving. That is to say, when you are in a stress response you cannot thrive and live mindfully and into your higher values

This is a reason I really had to learn the science of and pay attention to its truth in my own life. 

What causes us to stress? A stress response occurs when your brain when you 1. perceive a threat and 2. feel incapable of dealing with it. 

You don't have to consciously and actively view something as a threat - as long as your brain subconsciously registers it, it will activate a stress response. 

The reason why we experience overwhelm In this episode, I'm sharing a recent week I had in parenting that became very overwhelming. Overwhelm happens when we don't deal with the little things and they pile up to something that feels too big. 

Often when we are doing this, we also start to see a lot of overwhelm in all the areas of our life. It spirals. 

The stress response highjacks our intentional living Science tells us that when we are in a stress state we are flooded with stress hormones and using a different part of our brain (the amygdala) that makes decisions to deal with the stress at the moment. We are not using our more logical, long-term planning part of the brain (pre-frontal cortex). 

We get stressed about being stressed A problem a lot of us face, especially moms is that we stigmatize stress. We think it means we are wrong and so we get stressed about experiencing stress. 

It is important to pay attention to what we really perceive as a threat and what makes us feel incapable of dealing with the problem. 

If you want to work on SURVIVING, so you can move towards THRIVING. Here are some steps you can take. 

Challenge what it looks like to 'THRIVE' in motherhood  Pay attention to your relationship to stress right now Sit and ask yourself these questions

What feels a threat to you, what triggers your stress? What feels like your needs aren't being met? What feels like you are capable? What feels like your needs are being met?

If you want support on addressing the stress in your life, check out my coaching packages or join me for two days at the Mom on Purpose Bootcamp. 

You can find me on Instagram and in the Simple on Purpose Facebook community group. 

Full transcript 

Welcome to the Simple on Purpose Podcast.

I am here to help you simplify your home, your heart and your life. Because for many of us, our lives are busy, our brains are heavy, our hearts are weary, our homes feel cluttered, our relationships feel strained, and things just feel overwhelming.

So I want to help you declutter the things that don't belong, that don't serve you. So you can make space for what you crave, and what's going to bring you passion and purpose in your life.

So friends, you got to remember the decluttering process means getting messy, going through the clutter,

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Today I a sharing a shift I have made in my parenting that has made such a big difference - when I teach it to my coaching clients they have an 'aha moment' too - because we might not see that we are often parenting the wrong issue. 

(Books or products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and take action I will be compensated at no additional cost to you.)

This is especially evident when we find ourselves in power struggles. We are taken out of the original problem and into all of the mental chatter and drama around the power struggle.  The power struggle of getting kids to sit down for the meal  In this episode, I'm explaining how I apply this to a real-life example that moms experience: wanting the kids to sit down at the table for dinner. 

Focussing on just wanting our kids to LISTEN. We just want compliance - and we spend a lot of effort trying to just get them to listen to us - and now we have a power struggle

This is turning the simple issues of parenting into bigger, harder issues    What happens when we are in a power struggle with our kids? When we have a power struggle over our kid's 'obedience' we sink into a story about how they don't listen to us and don't respect us. 

This narrative can make us feel unconfident in parenting, it is exhausting and it makes the relationship feel hard and heavy. 

Problem-solving the real issue Come back to the real issue we are dealing with. And start to problem solve from there. 

I'm offering the questions I ask myself and my kids to handle this issue of getting up often during mealtime. 

Related: Episode 84 How parenting with empathy can transform your relationship   The value of family mealtime I want to come back to the root of why this matters to me. Why do I want family mealtime? How much work am I willing to do to make it happen in the long term as we all grow the skills of getting better at it?

Making mealtime more engaging

Hard and Awesome - asking each kid what was hard today? what was awesome today? Trivia questions - we make them up or have alexa ask some Q+A a day book - from this great book we got from my SIL

Join in the Simple Saturdays email (biweekly newsletter)

Learn more about the Mom on Purpose Bootcamp

Message Shawna on Instagram

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Hey friends, it's Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and my coach from simple on purpose.ca Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. This is the place where we talk about slowing down, and living life on purpose, living it with intention, instead of on autopilot, and autopilot used to be my speciality. So I know both very well - life on purpose and autopilot.

Many of you who listen are moms and I love to hear where you're listening, some of you are listening while doing chores. Hey, Melissa, some of you are listening while driving to work. Hi Jisha some of you are listening went on a walk. Hi, Julia. And I just really love hearing from you real people who are listening. So whether you email me, tag me on Instagram, or leave a review in iTunes, I just really love to hear from you, the person, the woman with this in her ears right now. So I'm really glad you're here.

It is spring break here in Canada. And I just took a week off of work to be with the kids while my husband was at work. And I just really wanted to do things with them to not just sit around because I mean, we've been doing that for a year where downtime is usually TV time. So I've been trying to embrace any sunshine, we get, you know, go skating, go to the park, go on mini hikes, go to the library, and playing way too much monopoly, they're getting very good, and they're beating me. And I've just really been trying to sink into being present with them. And I'm going to talk all about that in this week's simple Saturday's email, if you are signed up for that, you can read that there. And if you're not super easy,

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Making decisions on what to declutter can be exhausting and often bring up emotions like guilt. I am offering my life coaching and decluttering advice on these topics as well as organizing and cleaning kid's toys. 

Listen to the previous Q+A here Questions I am answering on decluttering:

How to know what to get rid of? With each thing I'm asking why I am I keeping this? what should I consider getting rid of and will I regret getting rid of it (mementoes from kids school days, some of their special clothing items, my dressy clothes from over the years, kids trophies, certificates, extra furniture in the basement ...)

Recognizing decision fatigue How to create a decluttering decision framework How to handle the potential of regretting what you get rid of Listen to Episode 90 on 'What If I Need it One Day?' 

What are good ways to handle kid stuff so that it's easy to get into when we need it but keeps things neat when we don't?

Organization is the second part of decluttering  Episode 36 on the mistakes we can make when it comes to home organization Get the cheatsheet on the Top 10 Organization Mistakes we Make Bring your storage/organization questions to the Facebook group

How to handle the cleaning routine and storage of kid's toys? My kids don’t have much stuff in total but they love little toys that spread far and wide

Toy tidy up strategies we use in our home

The emotions around decluttering— my constant struggle! Feeling overwhelmed, feeling wasteful by trashing stuff that’s still “good”, feeling guilty about getting rid of a gift, an inherited item, and so on…

How to handle decluttering and not wanting to be wasteful The guilt of getting rid of something  Honouring the relationship vs keeping the items The guilt of decluttering gifts

If you are interested in life coaching contact Shawna at shawna@simpleonpurpose.ca

Full Transcript (unedited)

Hey friends I'm Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and life coach from simple on purpose.ca. Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. This is part two of the decluttering q&a, but you don't have to listen to the other one. First. It's fine. If you are showing up here. I'm glad you're here. I hope that this q&a answers some questions that you might have in your own life around what to get rid of, and how to deal with the emotions that come up. In the previous q&a, we talked more about really just liking stuff like liking stuff and wanting to create a home that feels like us, while still clearing out our home on just getting started knowing where to get started, and we wrapped it up with the age old question of no one else is putting things away like they should. And that is such a relatable question. So I hope you also go check that out. Let's continue on with the questions. And the first one that I'll be sharing today is how to know what to get rid of. And she has some examples of I'm asking myself with each thing, why am I keeping this? What should I consider getting rid of will I regret getting rid of it mementos from the kids school days, my dressy clothes from the years kids trophies, all of these things? So what I'm hearing you ask for is a framework, a framework you want for decision making. And I think this is incredibly powerful. When we have a framework on what we're going to keep almost like a flowchart. Imagine that, like imagine a flowchart that you could just refer to, in the moment when you are looking at an item, and you start going through all these questions in your mind, should I let this go? Do I use it? How often do I use it? Do I like it? Should I keep it for the kids? What if I don't want to keep it? Can you feel how many decisions you've just had to make in your brain? And what happens is we get decision fatigue our brain expending all that energy making these decisions will get fatigued it takes a lot of mental energy. And then eventually,

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A popular topic I life coach moms on is their relationship to their stuff and decluttering their home.  I wanted to share a Q+A time for more questions about decluttering.  I asked for your decluttering questions in the Simple on Purpose FB group and on Instagram. Here is my life coaching advice on these topics.

Here are the decluttering questions I am answering today:

How do we begin when it all just feels so overwhelming? For instance: if I start decluttering A, I first have to do B, but to do B and I have to do C, but to do C...and the spiral continues until I give up and sit on the couch.

Related: Episode 105 Do you trust yourself

I like things. But I love how I feel in more empty spaces. However, my stuff also brings me joy and represents me. How do I keep myself in my space but not the clutter?

Exploring your relationship with stuff Related: Read the post on Identity Clutter

What do I do about the little spaces of clutter - like drawers small countertops and anywhere I can cram crap for a moment to do other things?

The hot spots in our spaces and the gift of done

Keeping most members of the household interested in maintaining a decluttering space... I try to have homes for everything and things still get put away in the wrong home or left somewhere completely random.

Removing the first layer of frustration We have different standards....AND THAT IS OK How to meet your standards while meeting others where they are at Related: Episode 69 Will a simpler home bring me peace?

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Hey friends, it's Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and life coach from simple on purpose.ca Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. The quick and easy and I hope fun podcast for you busy moms on the go. You want to just take a hot minute, slow it down, get re centered on the things that matter to you. So you can make space and time and energy for the life that you want instead of the life that's just happening on autopilot.

Welcome to spring friends, I just went for a walk with my bestie we walked her along the river, it was blue skies and sunshine. And it was just so nice to see her face. And I think we're all experiencing this past year has really put our relationships into a whole new spin. And we see each other so much less, and I just miss her so much. I'm texting, it just cannot beat talking to your friends faces. So I hope that you find a way to see your friends faces this week, lined it up, go for a walk, meet somewhere outside, just go see your friends faces it makes such a big difference.

Alright, let's get into today's q&a on decluttering. I asked in the Facebook group, the simple on purpose community group, which if you aren't part of you should totally join by the way. And I also asked on Instagram, what your questions were for me around decluttering. So I'm going to jump into those. The first one is how do we begin when it all just feels overwhelming. For instance, if I start decluttering a, I have to do B and then to do b i have to do see. And this, this spiral continues until I give up and sit on the couch.

relatable, right? I totally understand this. Like, I want to declutter the kitchen, but I need space in the hall closet for those extra dishes. And if I need to make space in the hall closet, I need to move towels in the bathroom, which means I need to declutter the bathroom. Right?

So to me, the obvious dancer is to follow the spiral all the way down. If I follow this all the way down, where does it tell me that I should logically begin? And I think most of us know that on the surface like okay, maybe I'll start with the bathroom. But the problem is now that we've gone through all of that mental energy, figuring out what we need to do, that actually feels like real action to our brain. As we're visualizing it and thinking about what else needs to get done. Our brain thinks that work is actually getting done...

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Elyse is a mom of three in Australia and she has a heart for helping moms make things simpler in their lives.  I asked her to come and share with us what her decluttering experience was like. 

In this conversation, you will hear Elyse unpack what prompted her to declutter her home, what she has learned from it and the encouragement and practical tips she has for you to get started. 

Finding peace in motherhood Myth: If you were struggling then you are doing motherhood well

On a journey to find peace and purpose away from this mindset

Getting started with decluttering  Decided to declutter her home at a time when she felt really unhappy in her space. “I didn’t like my home, I didn’t like being home” 

Staying motivated with decluttering  Paying attention to how it feels to have less stuff to take care of and manage and clean

Asking, is this really adding value to my life

Appreciating how good it feels to have the space feel clear and more manageable 

The impact of decluttering on motherhood Having a vision for home and life 

The physical clutter impacting the mental clutter

Recognizing how our home contributes to stress

Myths we believe about decluttering  It is a one and done thing 

One size fits all

Other points we cover How to decide what minimalism looks like for you

Advice for the women struggling get started with minimalism 

Does she regret getting rid of anything?

You can hear her advice, stories and sweet mumma encouragement on her podcast the Wholesome Mumma and on Instagram at Wholesome Mumma 

Related posts:

Declutter the 'what if I need it one day?' items

How I started decluttering

Full transcript (unedited)

Welcome to the Simple on Purpose podcast. I'm so glad you're here. These episodes are often all under 20 minutes, I aim to keep them jam packed with just enough insight tips, advice, encouragement, stories that will help you get re centered and refocused on the things that really matter to you in your life, simplifying, and getting rid of the distractions so that you can show up for the things that matter the most on purpose.

Today, I'm talking with my friend Elise, who is a mom of three, she's got a new baby named Lola, Isn't that adorable? So I've gotten to know at least the group that we're in, and I just really admire her I'm really drawn to her. She has this warmth about her. She's so encouraging. And she really has a heart for moms to feel peace in motherhood real piece, and actually talks about a bit in our chat. It's something that she craved because she shared she was living with this mindset that if I'm struggling with motherhood, then I'm doing motherhood well, and who wants freedom from that? I know I do.

And we look at social media and the culture and there seems to be these two ends of the spectrum on what motherhood is. It's either total hot mess, like rolling to the bus stop chucking frozen waffles out of your kids from the door. And then there's the Pinterest perfect mom.

But I say most moms are actually in the middle.

I know that's where I am. I know some days my kids are like eating noodles out of a Ziploc bag. And I realized that somewhere along the day, my underwear had ripped and it's just like floating around on my body loosely with no function. And I'm like, What is my life.

And then some days, dishes are done, the counters are clear. I'm eating vegetables, I'm being active, my kids are feeling kind and we're playing this like family game and it feels so warm and wonderful.

Like somewhere in the middle is where my actual life is. And I love to make space for that. I love to make room for that and have grace for that.

But okay, this isn't what we're going to talk about.

We're talking about decluttering and Elise shares a lot on decluttering. She has a podcast called the wholesome mama podcast, and she shares a lot about motherhood,

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This is the final part of the coaching session with Laura, the mom of a 4-year-old and 1.5 year old .

In this part of the coaching call, we wrap up with how to take ACTION that moves her in the direction she wants to go as a mom. She is getting anchored in what she wants out of motherhood (joy), and making a plan on how she wants to get it. 

If you haven't yet, make sure you listen to part 1 here, and part 2 here 

Enjoying the early days of motherhood When you are at home with small kids it can feel monotonous and boring.

There is a lot of pressure to 'enjoy these days'. 

A crucial part here is not aiming for 100% enjoyment - but rather allowing for the full range of experience that comes with motherhood. 

Loneliness in motherhood When we start to think about how lonely we are, we can snowball into all the ways we feel it and keep our mind spinning about how it might always be this way and wonder what is wrong with our friendships, etc. 

Part of stopping this cycle is to take an ACTION that pulls us out of it. 

Gratitude practice Laura mentioned that gratitude is something that naturally leads to joy for her. She wants SEEK JOY in motherhood and will use a gratitude practice as an intentional way of doing this. 

You will find what you are looking for Our brain has a confirmation bias to prove what it believes is true. It is constantly seeking evidence to line up with what we are believing. This is important to pay attention to the narrative we are spinning in (this is hard, I'm rejected, I am lonely, whatever it may be) because our brain will make it ITS JOB to find evidence.

Often we are in a narrative that was set on auto-pilot - so if we want to be intentional about showing up from a new narrative, then we need to also tell our brain something NEW and HELPFUL to be searching for. 

Thank you so much to LAURA for volunteering and being vulnerable!  This is the real honest truth of motherhood - sometimes it is messy and hard and lonely and the best thing we can do is share that with other moms. So we can live in a culture of motherhood that is supportive, truthful and encouraging. 

Also mentioned:

The Life on Purpose Workbook

The Life on Purpose Roadmap Course

Email shawna@simpleonpurpose.ca for any questions

Book a coaching consult here, if you want to learn more about Life on Purpose coaching with Shawna

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This is part 2 of my life coaching call with Laura. We are continuing the conversation with an exploration of what values she wants to bring into her parenting. 

This portion of the coaching session was getting clarity on WHERE Laura wants to go as a mom, what it looks like for her to be a mom on purpose. 

Head on over and catch part 1 right here.    Values-based parenting  When we are living in line with our values we feel more fulfilled, purposeful and at peace with how we are acting and behaving. 

This is why it is so important to know your values - they inform you of what is important to you and where you want to direct your energies.

What you are in control of as a mom  So many of us moms want to control the outcome of our children. We want to control how they feel about things, what they do/don't do, how they think about us or others. But all of this is NOT in our control. 

What is in our control is how we decide to show up (think, feel, act) - and our values are our compass on that. 

Loving the mom you are Part of loving WHO you are as a mom is recognizing what makes you unique. I love to do this with a list of all the things I think my kids will remember about me as their mom. 

Self-recognition of ourselves helps us step out of comparison with others. 

We wrap up with part 3 of this session.

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This is a Coaching Session I had with Laura, who is looking for coaching support on dealing with jealousy of when her kids prefer her husband to her - and with setting up a motherhood mantra for herself to anchor herself in motherhood. 

I have divided this coaching session into three episodes. 

In this first one, we cover awareness. We work on identifying the problem, seeing how it impacts her life and how we can shift away from judgement and fear of it. 

In part two we will talk about being a Mom on Purpose and in part three we will talk about ways to bring joy into motherhood. 

Life coaching session on intentional parenting and uncomfortable emotions:

Starting with awareness. Paying attention to how you are feeling, what you are thinking and how you are showing up.  Laura mentions she is a Type 4 on the Enneagram to learn more about that check out this episode on the Type 4 Mom  Understanding how we are perpetuating negative experiences in our life Self-judgement layers on the problem  Dealing with uncomfortable or negative emotions Experiencing emotions rather than identifying with emotions. 

Head on over to part 2 of this call. 

Join the Simple on Purpose Community Facebook group

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There have been a lot of changes I wanted to make in my life, but I didn't trust myself to follow through and do them. So I stopped setting goals and making promises to myself. 

This is something I have bee through and coach many women on - the issue of not trusting yourself creates a situation where you don't believe you CAN do it, you stop looking for ways to learn, you look to others for the solution and validation and you spin where you are - in indecisiveness, anxiety and maybe apathy. 

Showing up for others but not ourselves Often this situation shows up in women who still 'get things done' - but they are doing things FOR other people, whether held by accountability or expectation or role. But they don't 'get things done' for THEMSELVES, they don't show up for themselves and do what they said they would do.  Can you relate to the situation of not trusting yourself?

We might have an idea of what we want, but we waver on it, we doubt it.  We might try something new,  but we are insecure about it the whole time, we half show up. We might want to address an issue but we shrink away from it We might want to make a big change, but don’t believe it is possible We aren’t sure we are capable, that we know enough, that we are strong enough We don’t trust ourselves to do the thing we set out to do

What do you use as evidence that you can't trust yourself?

how you have failed you did it wrong you didn't feel confident or motivated enough you've never done it before other people do it better/easier/faster

I used to not trust myself, and I'm sharing that in this episode:

How I went through most of my adult life, not trusting muself. In fact, angry at who I was and what I wasn't doing with my life.  The promises I made to myself that I would break How I am learning to become someone I can trust with my life

What happens when you trust yourself? What happens when you FOLLOW THROUGH on what you say you want to do? I feel like I have been experiencing this over the past few years. I have taken back my power. I feel in control of my life. It feels possible to me that I can really do whatever I WANT to do in my life. 

ACTION:  I'm giving you a couple of simple questions to get yourself started with building back the trust in yourself. 

More resources mentioned in this episode: My C-Section and the Feelings I was Ashamed to Admit

Mom No Matter What

The Annual Simple on Purpose Survey

The Life on Purpose ROADMAP COURSE

Book a consult call to learn about 1:1 coaching with Shawna

Let's be Instagram friends

Bring your questions to the closed Facebook Group

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Hey, friends. Welcome to the Simple on Purpose Podcast, episode 105.

This is the podcast for moms who want to simplify their home, their heart and their life and slow down to show up and enjoy their actual life, the actual life you have without overhauling it.

In the Facebook group, the simple on purpose community Facebook group, we were talking about our plans for the week. And I shared that I'm spending it mostly on coaching calls, but then it's also my son's 10th. Birthday 10. My oldest is going to be 10.

So it just takes me immediately back, as it always does. When you think about a birthday, you think about the birth day. And with him, he was a C section, it was an emergency c section. And at that time, I was so disappointed in my birthing experience it disappointed in my body, I felt disconnected from my son. And I was just so sad and confused about what was supposed to be this heart exploding experience.

So I'm a new mom and I reached out to other moms who had babies and tried to talk to them about it. Many of them didn't have an emergency c section. And they they were just like, yeah, I didn't really have that experience. And I looked up on online forums, to see that I wasn't alone just for an echo that you're not alone,

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How should a 30 something-year-old dress? I have asked this question for some years as I decluttered my closet and focussed on creating a closet of clothes I love to wear. I don’t want it to be the latest trends, but the clothes I enjoy and feel like ‘me’.

I’m not a fashion blogger but when the memes went around this month making fun of millennial moms who wear skinny jeans and side parts I felt like I wanted to encourage other millennial moms to focus on building up a closet of clothes they LOVE to wear and not what Gen Z tells us is ‘in’ right now. 

Millennial Mom vs Trendy Youth

What being a ‘trendy’ youth is all about.  Playing with clothes to see what you like and learn more about yourself What being a millennial mom is all about. Knowing more of who you are and making choices in line with that

How to declutter and create a closet of clothes you love

Declutter the items you don’t love to wear, torn, unused, etc.  Then start a pinboard of looks you love Look for a theme in what you are pinning Name your style (bring it to the Simple on Purpose Group if you want help with that) Use this style as your guide for what you buy/bring into your closet Don’t focus on trends, focus on what your style is and what you feel great in

Mentioned in this episode

The Instagram of me being a totally unfun anxious mom on a family walk

Bring your ideas and conversation to the Facebook group

FULL TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE

This is the podcast for anyone who wants to simplify their homes, feel overwhelmed by clutter? - their heart. Do you feel like you're just kind of angry and resentful all the time? And their life - Do you feel like you're busy, you're on the go, you're just reacting to things. This is a place where I want to help you simplify those things so that you can have the time and space and energy to show up well for the things that matter the most to you in your life.

So this past weekend, we've had a four day weekend as a family, it was a pro D day Valentine's Day family day here in BC, British Columbia. So I take I took four days off work It was so it was weird. But it also felt really good. And we just took our time playing games and puzzles, and going skating and going for walks. And maybe you caught my recent Instagram post about the walk that broke my brain, you can go check that out there. If you want to see just a lovely ball of anxiety that I can sometimes be with my family. And it was a great time. It was great overall, I mean, there's good parts and there's hard parts every single day. So we just keep going, we keep rolling with it.

Alright, so one thing I want to remind you guys of is to leave a review, leave a review in your podcast player, because the podcast player loves them gives us authority in the podcast player. And I really love to read them. I love it when I come across one and especially if I recognize the name, but I didn't recognize this name from Australia. HealwithmeAIP. I loved your thoughtful review. So thank you so much. I read it over breakfast and I told my husband this morning, someone called me quirky. And he's like, What? That's not weird. Like, hasn't that happened before? Like you are quirky and I was like, Oh, okay. And I kind of laughed as I reflected on it because I used to want to define my personal style as quirky French girl. So you totally call me out on this secret byline I'm trying to promote. And I'm going to talk about naming your style later because I want to talk about style and dressing like you're 30 Okay, I'm 38 but come on - this is for everyone in their 30s or whatever dressing like you're 30

So I had other episodes planned, but this meme has taken over the internet conversation. And it applies to most of the women born in the 80s. So a discussion broke out on tik tok about which hair part looks best. Okay, first of all, not on Tik Tok. I just rely on on my Instagram friends to share...

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We all can think of some financial goals we want to meet (debt-repayment, emergency savings) and maybe we know what habits could get us there - but DOING it is the hard work. And I find it so helpful to hear what other people are doing and what it looks like in action in real life. 

Today I'm sharing the rest of my conversation with Bethany and Corey from the Millenial Mission Podcast about what their debt-free journey has been and in this part, they are sharing a lot about the habits they have formed and mindsets that have supported them in persisting and making an impact.  Developing habits to pay off debt as a family

Three changes that have made a big impact on lowering the debt Knowing what money is coming in and what is going out The debt snowball (coined by Dave Ramsey) The financial freedom a budget can bring you Weekly budget check-ins and monthly budget reviews Addressing the problem before it becomes a problem Spouses supporting one another in budget accountability What to do when you have a spouse who is not on the same page as you with the finances How debt repayment has impacted their marriage and parenting Not doing it perfectly  Trusting God with finances, especially during the pandemic Making sacrifices as a family When you aren’t able to pay off debt and not giving up Surrendering your life and money to God Being intentional and faithful with finances and how that shows up in the other areas of your life Encouragement to just get started and get a system in place to know what you are doing with your money

More resources Listen to the first part one: Starting the Debt-Free Journey

How to Own Your Finances So They Don't Own You

Download the free budget worksheet

Find Bethany and Corey on Instagram 

Full transcript 0:08 Hey friends, it's Shawna, your nerdy girl and life coach from simple on purpose.ca. So welcome for those of you who are new to simple on purpose. This is a place that I just want to share tips and stories and encouragement for you to simplify your home, your heart and your life. And part of life is finances right, we would all like our finances to be simpler. And in the life on purpose workbook and the life on purpose roadmap, there's a section on finances, where you can set the goals and habits you want to have there. And I think all of us probably can think of the goals we want when it comes to our finances. We want debt repayment, we want emergency savings, we want retirement savings, and so on. And maybe some of us even have an idea on what habits will get us there. We know logically, we need to make a budget we need to cut expenses. But doing it putting it into action is a whole other situation. And I don't know about you, but when I am trying to create a new habit or make a change in my life, I find it so helpful to hear the experiences of other people. And that's why I wanted to interview Bethany and Corey from the millennial mission podcast. This is the second part of my conversation with Bethany and Corey. In the first episode, the first part of this interview, they share their story about making a big lifestyle change, they moved to a place where it was cheaper to live. And they started to take actions to pay off their debt. And in this episode, they're sharing more practical tips about budgeting about working together. Because that is really helpful information we want to see like what does it look like in action as a couple as a family. But as we all know, this isn't just about numbers. This is about so much more. And Bethany and Corey they also share how it seeped into all of the rest of their life. How trusting God with their finances, turned into trusting God with their life and being intentional with their money, created an atmosphere where they really wanted to be intentional with their life. When we recorded this episode in December,

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Wonder what it would be like to make a BIG CHANGE that starts your debt-free journey? 

Today we are hearing from Bethany and Corey on their story of what that looked like in their life. When they decide to give up the 'good life' for the 'better life' and by better I mean hard and uncomfortable but moving towards financial freedom. 

I love hearing real-life stories from real people who are making the hard decisions that allow them to TAKE CONTROL and start steering their life in a new direction - one that is in line with their values and the call they feel on their life. 

Bethany and Corey share a lot about what it looked like to bring God into the decision to make a move and get serious about changing their lifestyle.

This episode is part one of two.  Bethany and Corey's story about staring their debt-free journey

How they were raised to view finances and debt “Even though you know all the right things you can be very easily deceived” “It was little things that added up” How they handled the debt conversation between them Decreasing the budget to account for leaving a job to become a stay at home mom Using credits cards for regular spending versus paying in cash Wanting to give your kids everything and buying them things Making a big location move to support the debt-free journey Feeling a calling on their lives to make the big move When life seems to be good but you aren’t living fully inline with your faith When life is uncomfortable but also very uncomfortable Giving up your ‘good’ life as you know it for something ‘better’ Starting a new job in a new town and taking time to build it up Acting like you don’t have any extra money and putting extra dollars towards debt Myths we believe about finances that can get us into trouble Playing the ‘credit card game’ The comparison game  “You have to find happiness in the pits. You have to find happiness in the crappy two-bedroom apartment and the junky car you have to try and start four times, if you can be happy there - you can be happy anywhere. But so often we get it backwards” Keeping up with the Joneses  The cultural assumption ‘you deserve nice things’

Find the Adkins at the Millenial Mission Podcast and on Instagram @bethanyandcorey. 

In the next episode, we talk about more practical budgeting tips, how debt repayment as impacted their family and that season of life where they weren’t making progress. So go check that out too. 

FULL TRANSCRIPT 0:08 Welcome to Episode 102. There's kind of this line you cross as a podcaster. Once you've done 100 episodes you like I, I powered to do, I held out, I did the thing. So it feels so great to be in the triple digits.

And it feels even better. When I hear from you guys hear the episodes you're liking you bring it into the Facebook community, and ask for more topics. So I just love this podcast. And I love the community and the conversation that it is creating. And like I said in the other episodes, we are doing bathroom rentals. So there is some drilling and hammering going on. Just bear with us.

All right, I'm also sharing something today that I don't do often. And that is interviews. Today I'm sharing two episodes, I've broken them up into two from my talk with the Atkins, Bethany and Corey Atkins, the having podcast called the millennial mission. And I was on their podcast in the fall, I met Bethany through a podcast mastermind group that I was a part of. And I really loved what their podcast did for about being a millennial, but still being on a mission being really purposeful in their life. And so I recorded with them back in fall. And we recorded this in December, because I just really loved their story. And I thought it would be encouraging to many of you who are interested in less debt, going debt free moving towards financial freedom.

Because Bethany and Corey have story. They had debt, and it was growing.

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Today I'm sharing some of a LIVE Q+A I did in FB community last month

A few times each month I ask for questions and sometimes on a certain topic, then I come on and answer them live

In this Q+A I am answering questions about putting your head in the sand, planning your day, finding the time when you feel like it is hard to find the time, and how much work it is to change your thoughts and behaviours. 

I also mention the Life on Purpose Roadmap - which is the condensed and simple course that takes you from reactive and feeling stressed about your life, to setting a direction for the nine areas of your life and taking control of your time, energy and space. 

Topics covered in this Q+A episode:

Putting your head in the sand Knowing your stress responses What are you doing when you fight, flight or freeze Recognizing when you are in a stress response Planning your day, finding freedom in a plan Things that have helped me to plan over the years Setting plans with your spouse through a calendar meeting When you feel like there isn't enough time Making hard things even harder Choosing thoughts that empower you rather than demotivate you Our thoughts create our feelings and we are motivated by how we feel It takes a lot of energy to change behaviours and thoughts, here is why

Listen to the episode on decluttering What if I Need This One Day? items

Learn more about the Life on Purpose Roadmap course

Bring your own questions to the Simple on Purpose Community group

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. This is your place and your time mama to just slow down - let's just slow down. Let's simplify things. I want to help you simplify your home, your heart and your life. So that you can have more time, less distractions, more energy and space to show up for what's really important to you, what really matters to you, what is in line with who you want to be your personal values, and how you want to show up.

So before we jump in today, I want to remind you that I have this self-paced course you have been asking for over the years, the Life on Purpose Roadmap, this is the course you need if you want to get started with intentional living, and I mean, intentional living, like feeling like you have a purpose in your big whole life, but also acting that out on a daily level.

So this course guides you through knowing what you want in the nine areas of your life, setting out your personal values, planning your day, and relying on more than just willpower because willpower is a myth, guys. And I bust that myth in this course, and putting it all into action.

As with these podcasts and everything I do, I'm on the go like you guys - so I make it small and condensed, jam-packed. All of the lessons are about 20 minutes. And you can just stream the audio like a podcast. One of my students just emailed me the other day to let me know she listens in her car with her kids or at skating lessons, she brings in a workbook and she does a bit in there. And I just love it. Because finding these pockets of time to do the work can be possible. It can even be easy, I dare say.

So if you want more direction, clarity and motivation, and living your life with more purpose and feeling in control of your life, rather than feeling like your life controls you then head on over to the life on purpose academy.ca and click the life on purpose roadmap.

Today, I'm sharing a live q&a that I have done in the Facebook community group last month. So a few times each month I asked the members for questions, and sometimes it's on a certain topic, then I come on and answer them live.

Because I want this Facebook community to be a place for you to go a little bit deeper get deeper support. This is a place where you can share your wins sharing what works. It's a place where you can get ideas from other moms. So I'm often trying to generate that conversation ask...

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We did it friends! I am proud of us! We finished the Enneagram and Motherhood series featuring moms from all over the continent sharing what it is like to parent through the lens of their Enneagram type. 

Today we wrap up with the Type 9, which we all know they don't mind being left to the last ("it's fine, whatever works for you!") I say that because I am a Type 9 too. 

But this is also my 100th podcast episode so it feels like a nice way to wrap up this endeavour I have been on to grow this podcast into a place that serves and empowers women to strip away the distractions and show up well for their lives. 

And I think the Enneagram gives us tools to do this because it gives us awareness and language around how we show up in stress and growth - this is great information to help us redirect ourselves in times of stress - and to really pour into our strengths with mindfulness, truth and love.

In this episode, we hear from two moms sharing their Type 9 Mom experience. Thank you to Lindsey and Angelica for sharing!

The Type 9, we discuss:

What motivates the type 9 How they act when in a place of growth (integration) How they respond when stressed (disintegration) Their approach to dealing with things that don't go their way (harmonic group)

I also share about my own experience as a Type 9 mom. Ways I look for a connection with my kids, struggling to say YES when it means I'll be getting uncomfortable, reconciling with the anger I feel in motherhood and my desire to deny or rationalize away the negative emotions, and so on. 

I mention an episode and post on When Did I Stop Enjoying My Kids? you can read that post here and you can listen to the podcast version of it Episode 16 When Did I Stop Enjoying My Kids

You can bring any of your questions to the Simple on Purpose Community Group

Drop me a line on Instagram to let me know you are listening!

And if you are interested in life coaching with me, book a free consult call here to learn about it and see if it is a fit for you. 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

I'm so excited to round out our episodes on the enneagram with the type nine and I know the tight nines hate waiting to be last. But also we're okay with it. Because we're a type nine, it's fine, it's okay. Being a type nine and always coming at the end of the list is like when your last name starts with a Zed, and you're always called on last in school. But here's my special little treat for you type nines. You're Episode 100, you're the 100th episode of the simple on purpose podcast. I know this is usually a celebratory episode for lots of podcasters. And maybe I'll do something for 101. But I'm just glad to make this one about my type the type nine and just make a space for us type nines. This is such a type nine thing to say.

So the type nine is also called the peacemaker, or the mediator, the type nine is motivated by the need to avoid conflict. So that's why they're called peacemakers because they want to avoid the opposite of what they feel as peace which would be conflict to them. And they want to maintain peace and harmony and really avoid disconnection from others.

I also want to give you a heads up as you're listening to the the audio here, there is some background noise, we are doing renovations in our home. So there are some noises you are going to hear. So you're not wondering if it's happening on your end just a heads up.

In times of stress, they move towards the type six, the loyalist or skeptic, they become more anxious, they're looking to others for guidance, they become more passive, and inactive.

When they are in a place of growth. The type three is what they move towards the achiever, they become more focused, action oriented, not looking to others to merge two buttons and putting themselves out there as they step into the truth that they are worth their own time and energy.

The type nine has a reputation for being very sloth l...

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The Type 8 is also known as the Maverick - they are confident, assertive and make natural leaders.  Today I have three Type 8 moms sharing how their Enneagram type empowers them in their motherhood and how it shows up in stress.

To open up I share some details on the Type 8:

What motivates them How they move towards The Helper in times of growth How they move towards The Observer in times of stress The two other sides to the type 8 (the wings) What the Gut Triad is, how the Type 8 shows up in line with their intuition/gut

Thank you to the moms who shared what their experience is as Type 8 moms - Stacie, Ellen and Melissa. 

You can find Melissa at Live with Audacity

Join the Simple on Purpose Community to ask your questions around the enneagram and livng simple, on purpose. 

If you can't click links in these show notes then head to www.simpleonpurpose.ca and click LISTEN, you can find all the show notes and episode transcripts there. 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

For those who are new welcome, I am Shawna, mom of three in small town Canada. I am a trained life coach, a certified transformational life coach, a certified bird nerd. And I wear that with a badge of honour even though my kids make fun of me. But I am proud to be the Lady Nerd that I am.

So simple on purpose is a place where I want to help you simplify your home, your heart, your life, to slow down and show up for the things that really matter the most to you the things that you want to place the highest value on in your life.

We've been covering a series on the enneagram, which is a self-discovery tool that looks at our inner motives. So lots of personality profiling will look at your outer behaviours and other qualities and other actions. But the enneagram takes us deeper, and it's looking at the things that are driving us. So we've been covering all of the types of the enneagram and hearing from mums, who are sharing a couple minutes on their experience of what it's like to be that type how their type empowers them, and how their type shows up under stress.

Today we're hearing from three type eight mums. The type eight is also called the challenger or the maverick I really like that name, the maverick, the type eight is motivated by the need to feel strong and in control. And they want to avoid the feeling of being weak or powerless.

You've heard me mentioned over these episodes about the wings, and we can take on qualities of the type right beside us. So the type A, it can take on the wing of the seven right beside at the adventure and be more spontaneous. It can also take on the wing of the peacemaker, the number nine right beside it and be more warm.

When the type eight is in a place of growth and health. They move towards the qualities of a type to the helper. So they shift their energy towards caring, they become more tender-hearted, which can really feel vulnerable and scary to a type eight. But it allows them to show up to support to connect with others from a place of generosity and respect.

When they are in a place of stress. They move towards the type five, the observer, things get overwhelming. They retreat, they strategize. They're collecting information and just trying to sort things out on how they can come back into the situation. If they stay in this place, they can probably become high strung and stop taking good care of themselves and their needs.

I've also been sharing harmonic groups, and this is categorizing each of the enneagram types into different ways that they handle things when they don't go their way. The type eight is part of the reactive group, they want to express how they are feeling and measure the response of others. The type eight will want to express their powerful energy as a way to say that they're angry, something's wrong and also as a way of keeping their guard up, keeping a distance and avoid relying or becoming dependent on other people.

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The Type 7 on the Enneagram is also called the Enthusiast, or Fun Ninjas (as my friend Julia coined them)

They are spontaneous and open to new experiences.

In this episode, two Type 7 moms share how their Enneagram type empowers them in motherhood and how it shows up in times of stress. 

I also discuss:

What motivates the Type 7 What growth looks like as the move towards Type 5 What stress looks like as the move towards Type 1 How they handle it when things don't go their way through a positive reframing How noticing other Enneagram Types and learning about them helps us have more appreciation for the inner experience of other moms in our lives

Ask Shawna questions about living simple, on purpose in the Simple on Purpose Facebook community 

Find Shawna on Instagram

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Hey friends, it's Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend.ca. Welcome to simplify this podcast. This is a place for you to come if you want to simplify your home, your heart, your life, slow down, pay attention to what matters to you, what's important to you, what's in line with your personal values, and show up well for that.

Today, we are covering the enneagram type seven, and I have some fun mom's sharing about being a type seven mum. The type seven is also called the adventure or the enthusiast, or fun ninjas, as my friend Julia has coined them, and I just love that name, hey, Julia, they are motivated by the need to be happy, have great experiences. And underneath that is a need to avoid pain or suffering. This is why they're always on the go to the next best thing. They're spontaneous.

And for me as a type nine, who is very comfort bound, I have found so much freedom in learning about the type seven and seeing that there are people in the world who are comfortable with risk and excitement, even people like my own sister, it has made me love them more. And I just look to them to kind of be my fun Ninjas in my life.

In stress, the type seven will move towards the qualities of a type one, they'll become critical, impatient, imposing limits on their own behaviors. When they are in a place of growth, they move towards the type five, the observer, they get more quiet and introspective, they can ride that anxiety that they often push away and start to make clear choices about what they want.

For their harmonic groups, how they deal with things when things don't go their way. They take a positive outlook like the type two and the type nine, they are going to reframe the situation. And the type seven specifically wants to avoid seeing the problems around them in within them and instead focus on staying positive and happy and meeting their own needs. They're overwhelmed by the idea of meeting the needs of others. So they reframe things, and can have the stance to issues like there may be a problem, but I'm fine.

So months ago, when I put out the call asking mums of different enneagram types to share their experience, you know who sent me one that night, a type seven, they are just ready to go. So let's hear from these two wonderful type sevens. Jacqueline and Sarah.

Hi, I'm Jacqueline and I am a type seven on the enneagram. I am a mom to four daughters who range in age from seven to almost 13. Knowing my type on the enneagram has been really helpful for understanding myself. And I see being a seven having lots of positives and negatives. As a parent. For the positive, I'm very good at coming up with creative solutions and being flexible. My kids trade bedrooms frequently based on what happens to be working at the time and what people need. I don't feel particularly worried about changing my mind later. So I'm quick to try different solutions and thinking creatively. And I don't feel too committed to anything being long term. So if two kids are getting along great and feel lonely at bedtime, I'm don't have any trouble setting up a mattress on the floor so they can be together longer withou...

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Welcome to the Simple on Purpose Podcast! For moms on the go who want nuggets of information and encouragement that helps them live with more peace, purpose and presence in their daily lives. 

We are continuing with our series on the Enneagram and Motherhood where we hear from moms on what their motherhood experience is like through the lens of the Enneagram

This episode is about the Type 6 Mom, also called the Loyalist or the Skeptic. 

In this episode, I explain:

The common traits of the Type 6 Their need for support and guidance Their need for independence  Being a skeptic and slow to trust Being a loyalist and putting your faith in the others who have the answers Type 6 living in their own head, with the worst-case scenario and projected fears How the Type 6 reacts when things don't go their way Their stress response (fight, flight and freeze) when faced with FEAR Growth for the Type 6, and stress for the Type 6

We hear from two wonderful moms sharing their experience, thank you to Tiffany and Kristin!

Links:

Listen to the Intro Episode, rundown of the 9 types of the Enneagram

Ask any Enneagram questions in the Simple on Purpose Community Group

Book a consult call to learn about life coaching with the Enneagram

See all the episodes in this Enneagram and Motherhood Series

See all the Show Notes for the podcast episodes 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Hey friends it's Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and life coach from simple and purpose.ca Welcome to this simple on purpose podcast.

For those of you who are new here, welcome. I am Shawna, I am a mom of three in small-town Canada. And I am a trained life coach who is passionate about helping moms show up for their lives show up Well. It is always my mission on every coaching call I have on every episode on everything I share, to help you look at your life in a little bit of a different way that brings you more peace, more purpose and more presence into your daily life. That is what I'm passionate about you showing up for your life and enjoying it because this is your life, you should enjoy it.

So we are continuing on with the enneagram series. And if you're not sure what the enneagram is head back a few episodes to the run through of the nine basic types. It's called What are your motives or something like that? what's motivating you I forget. So I have shared each type in their own episode. And on each episode, we have moms sharing what their motherhood experiences like through the lens of the enneagram.

So today, we are talking about the type six, the type six is known to be fearful. They're always thinking of the worst case scenario, they really live in their head with a lot of their fears and planning how to avoid them. And I think it can really be exhausting. When they're in their head like that some sixes also failed to see their real dangers of life, the real worst case scenarios, versus these mentally manufactured fears that kind of a runaway train that their brain can take them on.

They are called the loyalist or the skeptic because of their relationship to others. They question and doubt themselves and often look to external sources for answers and guidance. But with skepticism, can I trust them? Can I trust what they're saying. And when they decide they can trust them, they are loyal to that person that authority that system.

Something that is interesting is what the six does with fear, they fight flight or freeze so they might flight they might try to control their environment that's very typical of a six and planning and stressing and doing, they might fight they might go against fear head on, and this is called a counter phobic six, they're just gonna go right into it, just jump right in and address it just get it over with and then they might freeze they might just comply with the rules of the system, they can be very compliant when there is a culture or a system in place that t...

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The Type 5 on the Enneagram is also called the Investigator. They are someone who is watching and observing and analyzing how everything works.  They gather knowledge on how things work and how to navigate the world with their competence. 

They do have a focus on managing their own needs well so that they aren't reliant on others. Let's hear from Liz and Melissa on how being an Enneagram Type 5 empowers their motherhood and how it shows up in stress. 

When the Type 5 is in stress they move towards the Type 7 (adventurer) and become more restless and agitated.

When they are in a place of growth they move towards the full body empowerment of a Type 8 (maverick).

I also discuss the Harmonic Groups, this is how the Enneagram Types handle problems. 

The Type 5 belongs to the Competency Group, meaning they rely on logic (rather than emotion) to handle their problems. 

In this episode we will hear from Liz Squires, you can find her here at Fearless Birth Project And Melissa, from Enneagram Paths. 

Thank you, ladies, for sharing your motherhood journey with us and giving a voice to the Type 5 experience. 

Make sure to tag me in your Instagram and show some love to the ladies who have been coming on to share their stories!

If you want to listen to the LIVE Q+A where I answer the difference between the Type 4 and Type 5 then head over to the Simple on Purpose Community group to watch it. 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

I'm really excited to continue on this series that we're doing enneagram. And for those of you who haven't heard of the enneagram, and you want to go back and listen to it, head on back a few episodes to what are your motives. The enneagram looks at our motives, more than it looks at our outward behavior. Like being an introverted extrovert, it looks at why we're doing it instead of just what we're doing.

It's a really fascinating tool that I love to use in my coaching, that has just helped me so much in my life, in my relationships in my parenting, I just have a lot of passion for it. I think it is very powerful and brings a lot of awareness to us in our showing up in our life. And you know, me, I'm all about showing up for life showing up well for your actual life.

So today, we're covering the type five, also known as the observer, or the investigator. And I have a couple of great type fives sharing with me. One is one of my online friends, Liz Squires, and the other one is an enneagram coach herself, Melissa. So thank you to both of those ladies for being the type fives who will come out of the shell, and share with us today.

So the type five, the observer, there's someone who are always watching, they're always observing and analyzing how the world works, they really want to figure it out. So that they can use this knowledge as a way of making themselves capable and competent in the world. They long to be capable and competent. And they are also someone who has a skill of reducing their own needs, so that they are not reliant on other people, they keep their needs very minimal and meet them themselves.

So when the type five is in a place of stress, they move towards the type seven, they become restless, agitated, distracted, scattered. When they are in a place of growth and strength, they move towards the type eight, and more so in that they take on the confidence in the empowered stands of a type eight, as they kind of fill up their whole body full of empowerment, because the type five lives in their head a lot. They want to be capable, they want to figure things out, they rely a lot on thinking about it, figuring it out, finding a way, and they spend a lot of time in their mind. So when they are in a place of strength, they're going to occupy their entire body and their mind as well.

As I've explained in the past episodes, we're talking about the harmonic groups. And these are categorized in the enneagram types by how they solve their problems.

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The Type 4 on the Enneagram is also called the Individualist, or the Romantic. They have a reputation of being artistic, expressive and willing to feel a range of emotions. 

Which I think makes them very brave and they hold a lot of space for those in suffering and those who long to express themselves. 

The Type 4 is part of the reactive group when it comes to dealing with problems. This means they respond/express themselves and look for an emotional response from those around them. A Type 4 craves been seen and supported in these times. 

Which makes them so adept at expression and emotional attunement. 

When in a place of growth the Type 4 will move towards the Type 1 and become more objective and practical. When in stress they will move towards the Type 2 and become clingy and look for reassurance from others. 

Thank you to the two moms sharing their experience with us today. 

Thank you Shawna and Laura. You can find Laura at Fjord Creative. 

In the Simple on Purpose Community group, I did a LIVE Q+A on the Enneagram and one of the questions I answered was how to tell the difference between the Type 4 and the Type 5. Head here if you want to see it (and other lives)

And to join the Simple Saturdays email (it is FUN email that comes out twice a month!) sign up for that right here

FULL TRANSCRIPT

At simple on purpose, I am all about helping you simplify your life, whether it is your home, your heart, your general life, so that you can slow down, pay attention to the things that matter most to you, and show up well for them. I want you to enjoy your life, I want you to enjoy motherhood, enjoy your job, enjoy your home, I want you to enjoy the life you actually have.

We are continuing on this week with our series on the enneagram and motherhood. And today I have a couple of type fours sharing. The type fours are also called the individualist or the romantic, they are very expressive, they are known as artistic types, they are known as people who can just hold a lot of emotional space, they're very open to experiencing and feeling and making space for their whole emotional range, which I think makes them very brave.

When a type four is under stress, and they're not feeling very healthy, they're going to move towards the qualities of a type two, they are going to be clingy and look for reassurance look to a lot of the people around them for reassurance and validation.

When they are in a healthier place, they move towards the qualities of the type one not so much the perfectionist and critical qualities, but the qualities of the type one that allow them to step out of that fantasy world in their mind, and come in and engage in the real life world to be more objective, and to apply themselves to whatever they want to do with a more practical approach rather than an emotional repro approach.

So I've been explaining the harmonic groups through these episodes. And that is how each type deals with problems when things don't go their way. And the type fours are part of the reactive group, which means they are the enneagram types, who will react strongly and look for a response from others. So they're very expressive. When a type four is handling problems, and things aren't going their way they seek being seen, they seek someone who can understand them and support them, because they really fear that no one is going to support them and care for them. So they have different strategies depending on how healthy they're feeling with how they will do that. But Hudson and Riso again, I'm referencing The Wisdom of the Enneagram book, they have this motto that the type four adopts with how they deal with problems, and it is I feel really hurt and I need to express myself.

So expressing themselves is a way that they are seen in the world. And the type fours are known for a lot of amazing artistic achievements in our world. And like I said,

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The Type 3 on the Enneagram is also known as the Achiever or the Performer. 

They are motivated by a need to be successful and they are natural checklist-makers and goal getters. 

What is it like to be a Type 3 Mom?

I have three Type 3 moms sharing their experience on how their type empowers them and how it shows up in times of stress. 

When a Type 3 is in stress they take on the qualities of the Type 9 and become more detached and apathetic and stubborn. 

When they are in a place of growth they move towards the qualities of the Type 6 and become more cooperative and a team player focussed on the greater good rather than the personal goal. 

When a Type three faces a challenge they apply logic to solve the problem. They are part of the Competency Group. They detach from their feelings by staying in an active role to work on the goal and "figure it out". 

I think the Type 3s offer us a lot of encouragement to 'raise the bar' and I know that myself, as a Type 9, looks to the energy and drive of the Type 3 in my life to encourage me with that. 

If you want coaching by your Enneagram type, book a consult call to learn more. 

Thank you to these three wonderful moms who shared today!

Thank you, Veronica, Shannon and Stef (You can find Stef Gass at the Mompreneur Mastermind Podcast)

Full transcript 

Hey friends, it's Shawna,your nerdy girlfriend and Life Coach from simple on purpose.ca.

This is the podcast for the busy mom on the go, I aim to keep all of the episodes under 20 minutes. And I want to just jam-packed them with ideas and stories and information on how you can simplify your life, slow down and show up for your life on purpose being very purposeful, very, very intentional with the life you want to build into and how you want to show up in it every single day.

So we're continuing on with the enneagram series and we're covering enneagram threes. Today I have three mums sharing about a bit about their motherhood experience as being in an enneagram three. The Enneagram Type 3 is also called the achiever, they get things done, they like goals, they have their checklists, and I love the threes my husband's a three. And since we learned each other's enneagram types over the years, I have so much more appreciation for the qualities that he brings into our life, our family, our marriage as a three that I don't just naturally have on my own.

So when a three is in stress, when they're feeling stressed out, they're not at their healthiest, they move towards a type nine, which is called the peacemaker. But at the nine at their more unhealthy qualities, they are very disengaged, they're stubborn, they're apathetic, they're very withdrawn. When a type three is in a place of health, they're feeling like they're showing up with healthy motives from a healthy place, they move towards the type six, the loyalist, they become more of a team player, they're more cooperative, they're more committed to the goal of the good of the group rather than their own personal self image and having to meet a goal that will satisfy that

The type three is part of the competency group. And I've been explaining that there's our harmonic groups, which is the way that we deal with things when they don't go our way. And then each of the enneagram types are grouped into one of these three groups, these harmonic groups, and the type three belongs to the competency group. I know I'm saying group a lot in my confusing, but the competency group are the enneagram types that will solve their problems using logic more than feelings. And a type three is well known to be really out of touch with their feelings, they use staying busy and achievement as a way of kind of not paying attention to it kind of repressing it.

So when a type three is faced with a problem, they're going to focus on being efficient, being capable taking action, just focus on the goals.

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The Type 2 on the Enneagram is also known as The Helper. For this reason, a lot of us can identify as a possible Type 2 - especially in North America where this is a cultural expectation that women are 'helpers'. 

This can lead to people-pleasing, but not all people-pleasers are Type 2s. 

Some things that set the Enneagram Type 2 apart:

They cope with problems by focussing on the needs of others rather than themselves Their relationships are built with a culture of 'helping' They find their value in helping others

I explain what the Type 2 can look like in times of growth and in times of stress. 

I also outline how to differentiate a common mistype with Type 9s. 

Three moms are sharing their experience of being a Type 2 mom and outlining what feels like a struggle and what feels like a strength for them when it comes to motherhood. 

Thank you to Louise, Aimee and Jessica for sharing with us!

You can find Louise here. 

You can find Jessica right here.  Books recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and make a purchase I will be compensated at no additional cost to you.  Links:

The Wisdom of the Enneagram book

Get answers to your questions about the Enneagram in the Simple on Purpose Community Facebook Group

Book a consult call to learn about life coaching with the Enneagram

Share your Enneagram + Motherhood Experience, looking to hear from types 5,6,7,8 and 9 - message me if you are up for it

Episode Transcript 

Hey friends, it's Shawna, your Nerdy Girlfriend and Life Coach from Simple on Purpose.

This is the podcast for the mom on the go, I aim to keep all of the episodes short to the point and filled with tips and advice and insight to help you simplify slow down and show up for your life because this is your life, you should enjoy it. Today we're continuing on with the type twos of the enneagram the type two mamas who are sharing their experience of what it is like to be a type two. And if the enneagram is new to you head back a couple of episodes I do a run through on all of the nine types of the enneagram. So the type two also known as the helper, as I mentioned before, there are directions we take when we are in growth and directions we take when we are in stress, and the type two will move towards the type for when they are in a healthy place in their growing and they will become more self nurturing, more sensitive, more recognizing of their own needs their own desires, in a way more self actualizing and self aware. When they are under stress, they move towards a type eight, the rebel the maverick and they become more aggressive and more argumentative. As you listen to these three moms. Today you're going to hear Louise mentioned that she takes on the type three traits. Since type three is right beside the type two, you can pick up qualities of the type right beside you this these are called the wings. So she takes on type three traits and the type three is the achiever. Now the type two is a type that many of us can identify with naturally, because it's called the helper and in North America, we have this culture that women are helpers. In fact, many of us even want to be viewed as a helper and we will become people pleasers. Now I coach a lot of people pleasers, but not all of them are type twos, there is a little bit of digging, we have to do underneath all of that underneath the behavior of being a people pleaser. One really common mistake because this is my own is that a type nine can mistyped themselves as a type two. And on the surface type nine in type two can look very similar. They tend to merge with what others want. They come across as very supportive of others. But what sets the type two apart is that you're helping others as a way to secure their value with them. A type nine will help others in order to avoid conflict or disconnect. I like to think of it as a type nine will offer support.

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I have three moms sharing a few minutes each about their experience of motherhood as being a Type 1 on the Enneagram. As part of a series I am doing on all the nine enneagram types called Enneagram + Motherhood

Type 1s are also called the Perfectionist or Reformer.  I am explaining a bit more details about Type 1s and taking referencing information taught in the Wisdom of the Enneagram by Riso and Hudson Books recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and take action I will be compensated at no additional cost to you.  When it comes to dealing with problems or not getting their way, they rely on COMPETENCY. 

In Enneagram talk: they are part of the Competency Group when it comes to their Harmonic Style. 

I briefly explain with this means and what it looks like for the Type 1. 

I also explain what growth and stress look like for an Enneagram Type 1.

These are called the Line of Integration (what you do when you are emotionally healthy) and Line of Disintegration (what you do when you are unhealthy and stressed).

Then we hear from three moms who are so kind to share their own self-awareness and insights into the struggles and strengths of being a Type 1. I love that they also share how they manage the hurdles and I have helpful takeaways from what they share. 

Thank you, Louise, Jacquie and Liz for sharing your experience with us! You can find Louise at Talk Nerdy to Me

and you can find Liz at Glow

Are you a type 5,6,7,8 or 9 who wants to share their motherhood experience? If so, then message me on Instagram and let me know!

Ask your Enneagram questions in the Facebook community

Get coached by your Enneagram Type with Shawna Scafe, Certified Coach Practitioner and Transformational Life Coach

Full transcript (unedited)

Hey, friends, it's Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and life coach from simple on purpose.ca. And I'm just gonna dive right in because we are talking about the enneagram. And I have three amazing moms who have recorded and shared with me with their experience in motherhood is like as being a type one. type one also called the perfectionist, the reformer. So if you've listened to the last episode, if not, I encourage you to go do that I run through the nine types. And now moving forward, I'm going to share these voices of these moms by enneagram type on what their motherhood experience is like. So first of all, thank you mamas, thank you for sharing. Thank you for giving a voice to this, I found this whole experience so enlightening, to listen to each type and just sit with it. And, and I love that these moms are also offering how they deal with the stressors in their life by their type. So you're going to hear in from these three moms, Jackie is going to mention that she moves in growth to a type seven as a type one, when they're in growth, they move towards a type seven. So I mentioned in the last episode, that whatever type you are, when you are in a place of growth, and emotionally healthy, you will move to another type on the enneagram, you'll pick up the positive qualities of that type. And when you are in a place of stress, you're going to move to another number on the enneagram. These are called the lines, the lines of disintegration and the lines of integration. But I'll just call them stress and growth. So the type one, when it is in a place of growth, it moves towards a type seven, it becomes more impulsive, more joyful, more spontaneous. When it isn't a place of stress, it moves towards type four, it becomes irrational, a little bit more Moody, I'm also going to share with each of these episodes, something you don't hear often. And that is the harmonic groups, also called the coping groups. And this is how each of the types deal with problems deal with not getting their way. And the type one is part of the competency groups. So when they have a problem, they are going to deal with it by being correct and organ...

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One tool I use in my life coaching is the Enneagram. It is a self-discovery tool that brings more awareness to your stress habits, your strengths, your behaviour patterns and it is all based on your MOTIVES - why you are doing something, what you are avoiding or moving towards. 

Books recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and take action I will be compensated at no additional cost to you.  I have been working on a series of episodes that feature moms sharing their motherhood experience through the lens of the Enneagram. To introduce this series I wanted to give you a brief rundown of the Enneagram types - as it pertains to their motives.  What their desires and fears for all of the nine enneagram types. 

If you want a more thorough explanation of all the 9 Enneagram Types then head to episode 17:  Enneagram 101 (what is it and what are the nine types)

In this episode, I reference Richard Rohr, an OG Enneagram Teacher whose book I am citing. You can find his book right here.  To get support: Ask me questions about the Enneagram or finding your type in the Simple on Purpose Facebook Community

Get life coaching from Shawna using the Enneagram as a tool for personal growth

Message me on Instagram to share your Enneagram + Motherhood Experience

Full episode transcript: Hello friends and welcome I am Shawna your nerdy girlfriend and life coach from simple on purpose. 

And this is the place for you if the clutter feels like too much if life feels too busy if motherhood is overwhelming if your marriage feels like it's slipping, these are all signs to us that we've been living on autopilot, just letting life happen at us, rather than us being in the driver's seat, being proactive, being intentional, and I know, because I've been there. Three and a half years into motherhood. I was three kids in and I learned about minimalism and decided to declutter my home. As I did that, I realized I've been living my whole life on autopilot, just letting it pile up, just letting it happen. And I wanted to take control, I wanted to live on purpose. I wanted to take action and build a life, the home the relationships and mindsets that I craved, the one that God made me for, I wanted to set a vision for my life, I wanted to show up for my life, based on my personal values who I want it to be. So if you are on this journey, then let me come alongside you. I am a mom of three, I am a trained life coach, and your nerdy girlfriend who believes that this is our life, we should enjoy it. Let's dig in. Today, I'm going to open up a series I'm going to do on parenting through the enneagram the enneagram if you haven't heard it, and I'm sure you have because it's having a day, the enneagram is a self-discovery tool. So it's kind of like Myers brigg, or disk. But the enneagram looks a lot at our inner motives. What is driving us and what we desire. What we are motivated by that is powerful stuff. So it's not just like you're an introvert extrovert, it's like, what is driving you underneath that? Are you driven by success, or by needing to help people or by needing to keep the peace, there's different motivations we have. Although our outward actions might look very similar, we're doing one thing, but driven towards it for a different reason. So on this episode, I'm going to run through very quickly the nine types. And then the following episodes I'm going to share with you other moms sharing their experience on what it's like to be that enneagram type and how it shows up in their parenting. And I will say for types 123. And maybe four, I have about three moms each, each of those types. The other ones, I just have one mom. So if you are a type 56789 and I think even a four, and you would like to share a couple minutes of your experience as parenting through that enneagram type, please get in touch with me, you can find me on Instagram at simple on purpose.ca.

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What if I need it one day? Ask this question can leave you holding onto a lot of items that you really don't 'need' in your life. 

From old magazines, to old chargers, to clothes, to kitchen gadgets. 

This is a fear-based question that gives us some anxiety and then we make our decisions from this anxious place rather than from a place of abundance and the desire to fill our home with LIFE-GIVING things. 

In this episode, I will walk you through how this question has held me back and how I have coached myself to new questions that bring me more freedom and peace in decluttering. 

Links to topics mentioned on this episode:

The Finnish Way (great book on the art of SISU - on my list of Cozy Faves)

The Simple on Purpose Facebook Community Group (see past Q+A Lives *make sure to answer the entry questions)

Identity Clutter (read the post here)

Scarcity vs Abundance (the not-enough mindset, on this episode)

The Simple Saturdays Email (sign up for the FUN bi-weekly email!)

Renae's Great Clutter Clear Out Challenge (sign up for the free 5-day challenge)

Full episode transcript (unedited)

Hey friends at Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and life coach. From Simple on Purpose.ca This is our time where we stop, slow down, simplify, remove the drams and distractions on our lives so that we can show up for what matters the most to us show up with more peace, more purpose and presence for our actual lives. I'm so glad you're here. If it's your first time here, welcome. I'm Shawna I am a mom of three who decided that I would try out minimalism years ago, and it just sent me on this to jet trajectory. It's hard to declutter my home, which turned me into decluttering my life and my heart. And I am a trained life coach helping other women do the same show up for their lives with more purpose, peace and presence. So how have you been this January, where I live in British Columbia, where I live, it's icy. And you might know I walk my kids to the school bus every morning. It's a few blocks away, but we have to go down this hill. And I'm just like, submitted to it, I sit on my butt, I got my snow pants on and I slide down that hill, like I get speed, I end up like bumping into my daughter and pushing her down to. So I'm going to wear out the butt on my snow bands. It's fine. I'm still having fun. I'm showing up for that. I just love sledding, it is so much fun. Even if it's my only way of protecting my body from fall I just go with it, I'm going to fall in advance. So that's life here where I live in BC, we still have a little bit of a winter hanging on. And that's fine. I don't mind it. I really love getting out in the morning and walking the kids to school. Sometimes I even get my active minutes that way. But it's just such a nice way to start the day, I have a personal goal to get outside every single day. And a book that really inspired me to do this is a book called The Finnish way. The Finnish art of C Su and si su is that term for just real grit and persistence and not taking the easy way out. And that book just changed my whole view on how of lightweight I am. One other thing that I started doing since I read that book is I will zap myself with cold water in the shower. Just try and build up my tolerance to cold water. There's so many good endorphins that are released in your body when you are dunked in cold water. So I just want to hit it that I want to hit those good old endorphins. So that's my own personal challenge. I'm totally going off topic. Here's the topic I want to talk about today. decluttering things in your home when you think what if I need that one day? This was a question that was asked in the Facebook group recently because I said, Bring me all your questions I want to do a live. And that question is when I have too much to say on like I have a whole post on it. But I wanted to bring it back here, elaborate on it and share an episode with you here. By the way,

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Welcome to the New Year friends! This is the time we feel this resolution to make things new, as we flip over the calendar. There is a lot of thought given to resolutions, goals and habits to make. And all of that is good - when it is in line with your LIFE ON PURPOSE

Life on Purpose is turning off the autopilot - being reactive, just living on default. When we do the things we have always done, thing what we have always thought we will keep getting more of the same. Do you like where you autopilot life is taking you? Or do you want to redirect it? Life on Purpose is living with INTENTION, and it needs two things:

knowing who you want to be, how you want to show up (values) knowing where you want to go (vision)

I will share with you my strategy for setting out my yearly goals and habits. And remember, all of this work is NOT about overhauling your whole life and getting to 100% in all nine areas of your life, it is about being someone who does simple meaningful things, consistently, towards their vision and values. 

Steps to plan out your yearly goals and habits 

Values - take time to get clear on your personal values Vision - write out what you want and long for and aspire to in the nine areas of your life

Home, family, love, friendships, health, work, inner expression, outer expression, finances

Take stock, evaluate where you are right now. This helps you set a path on the direction to take forward. Ask: What is working? What is not? What do I want more of? What do I want less of? Combine these (values, vision, evaluation) to identify the goals and habits that will move you towards your vision and values in this area of your life. 

Some of my goals and habits I want to do in 2021 We have been doing this work for the past five years and continue to modify and refine where we want to go and how we want to get there.  In this episode, I am sharing some of the goals and habits I am setting for this year ahead:

Home: filing papers, digitizing kid's artwork, routine deep cleanings Kids: family meetings, hikes (with friends! Which combines my family vision and friend vision for the year) Health: last year I worked a lot of sleep and vegetables. This year I am working on movement and nourishing lunches Outer: get outside (daily), make music easier (piano project) Inner: devotion goals, reading a book a month, memorizing scripture Finances: making more debt-free purchases, more detailed tracking of expenses

I also answered some of the questions sent in to me about planning life on purpose:

How to pick the values and vision God has for my life? How do I get my husband more involved in setting goals and habits together? What planner do you use? I feel overwhelmed about planning my life on purpose, where do I even start?

Ways to get support with intentional living this year The Life on Purpose Roadmap. A self-guided course that addresses the hurdles, excuses and distractions that keep you from knowing what you want, planning it and taking action on it. 

The Life on Purpose Academy. Weekly group coaching calls for the next ten weeks. This gives you support, accountability, consistency and so much insight into what holds you back and how to keep moving forward. 

Remember that doing all of this is about SHOWING UP for yourself, not about overhauling your life.  Small things matter the most, so choose the small things that will move you closer to your vision and values. 

Planning your life on purpose, more resources mentioned in the episode Permission to grieve blog post

Are you stuck on autopilot? episode

Live your values free worksheets

Live your vision free worksheets

The Life on Purpose Workbook 

The GO CLEAN Instagram account

How empathy can transform your parenting episode

Family meetings blog post and mentioned on this episode

The Life on Purpose Roadmap self-paced course

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One thing I hear moms tell me they want is to be MORE PRESENT. We know that in our daily life we have a lot of distractions pulling our attention away. And this is a problem when we are being pulled away from the tasks and people that are meaningful to us. 

Being a present parent allows us to engage, pour into and ENJOY our kids - and this has been a struggle of mine over the years - and a struggle I coach other moms through 

I polled my Facebook community on what keeps them from slowing down and being present - and the feedback was a resounding 'the mental to-do list!'.  That streaming list in the back of our minds of 'what we SHOULD be doing RIGHT NOW!'. I call this the mental chatter.  I also call this a thought trap - an autopilot thought keeping us stuck in a pattern that isn't serving us and making our lives better.  Why do we want to be more present in our parenting and life?

To nurture/improve our relationships To become more aware of what is available for us to enjoy in the here and now To be more relaxed rather than ruminating on the past or spinning with anxiety about the future To be more mindful and proactive rather than on autopilot and reactive

You might want more presence if you feel like:

Your phone gets more attention than the people in your life You feel disconnected from others or your life You are often mentally distracted You really aren't enjoying what is happening, you kinda just numb and coast right through it 

The number on reason being present is hard is because of the MENTAL CHATTER. I want you to harness the power of the CBT model to see that your thoughts create your feelings and your feeling create your behaviour. 

I have an example of how I made a MINDSET shift that changed how I showed up during quarantine in a way that made me feel OPEN rather than made me feel constant rushed.  Tips for slowing down and showing up to be more present as a mom, and in your life:

Brain dump - declutter your brain Prioritize - this is a list of OPTIONS, now it is time to MAKE CHOICES Scheduling what NEEDS to be done - scheduling it in brings you freedom because you know there is time for what needs to get done Removing the distractions - from the phone to your time to your space Be proactive with what you will show up for - plan out specific activities/time frames that you will commit to showing up for

Helpful links

Listen to Are you stuck in the hustle for happiness

Listen to Why you are too busy (by enneagram type) 

Blog post on Do Life Better with a Brain Dump

Join the  Simple on Purpose Community Facebook group 

Sign up for the Simple Saturdays bi-weekly (FUN/HELPFUL) email

Full episode transcript 

Welcome to the Simple on Purpose podcast. This is a place for you, Mama, to come and feel refreshed. Because if you are going through your life, feeling resentful, feeling frustration, this is a sign you've been on autopilot letting life just happen to you instead of living it on purpose. And I say that because I've been there. I have been there - when I realized I was living my life on autopilot just building up this life of stuff and reactions and relationships that I didn't really want.

I wanted something different.

I wanted a life of action and purpose. I wanted to parent with presence and peace.

I wanted to enjoy my husband, my kids myself.

This all took me on a journey to simplify, slow down and show up for my life on purpose.

So today we're going to talk about presence. And do you ever have those weekends where you kind of like solo parenting? For me, my husband works a week on a week off. So for that one week, I am just all in momming so hard. And the weekends feel extra long. This past weekend, my daughter and my son, my oldest son, both had the opportunity to be what we call king or queen for the day. So we've been doing this sticker chart thing for over a year. And they really like it.

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'How are things going?' 'Oh, they are busy'. How often are you talking about how BUSY you are?  How often do you find yourself thinking you wish you had more time for other things. How often do you end your day feeling drained and worn and maybe resentful. 

Busyness might be a cycle you are spinning in. And it is a common cycle for moms to be on - because we have a culture that tells how busy is a badge of honour while simultaneously throwing memes of frazzled moms in our face. 

In this episode we unpack BEING TOO BUSY, all of this is a primer to the next episode on being more present.  Main points on why you are too busy

Our culture glorifies busy, and there are some signs that we have bought into it. One of them being that feel like we never have enough time Busy is that feeling when we get when we feel our life demands are more than the energy we have Being busy isn't so much a problem with how we manage our time, but also a problem with how we manage what is purposeful. We aren't using our time and energy purposefully Yet we are still busy because somehow, it serves us. Being busy allows us to chase a feeling or avoid a feeling Each enneagram type can be busy for different reasons.  We respond to 'busy' with 'productivity' but we are often missing the 'purpose'  Simple solutions for moms to manage the busy feeling

braindump, prioritize,  make time for what matters

Long term management of busy means knowing who you are and what you want in life, and setting your time and energy in line with that. 

LINKS

The enneagram 101

Download the 'Busy By Enneagram Type' PDF

Join the Simple on Purpose community

Sign up for the Simple Saturdays bi-weekly email

Full episode transcript 

Hey, friends,

This is the simple on purpose podcast. And if you're new here, welcome. This is a podcast, I aim to keep short to the point and full of motivation and ideas on new ways to approach your everyday life. So that you can show up for your whole life without overhauling IT shop for your whole life where it is right now, and feel like you're showing up on purpose.

Today, I want to talk about busy and I was about to record an episode on being present. And I just had so much to say on the opposite of present, which is busyness that I thought it deserved an intro of its own. Why are we so busy? 

There is such thing as the glorification of busy, where we have a culture around us that glorifies busy.

Some things to look out for yourself, if you are buying into the glorification of busy are:

you talk about how busy you are, you feel like you do a lot, but you don't get a lot done after an active day you feel drained, maybe even resentful, instead of invigorated and purposeful. you feel like you never have enough time.

And that's the thing is busy is something that we feel we feel busy when our life demands more than the energy we have.

So the problem is more how we manage our energy, and how we manage our life demands.

But we don't really get to that place where we're questioning, oh, how am I managing my life and my energy we don't, we're just busy. This culture of busy this badge of honor, and even busy in our leisure time where we spend it on our phone instagramming texting emails.

If you feel like you are too busy, the first thing I want to encourage you to do is stop saying you're busy. It really makes you the victim, it perpetuates the helpless feeling of it. And if anything, that's a great reason to stop saying because it makes you feel helpless when you talk about how busy you are.

Because being busy. what's underneath that is that we haven't been very mindful about what we choose to do we do more and more. And often, they're not the things that we truly crave that that are leading us to the life that feels freeing and full. We haven't been mindful about what's important to say yes to and what we shouldn't say no to,

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Empathy with other adults can feel differently than it does between us and kids. This is often because our emotions are used as currency, as power. And also because we are raised to stigmatize negative and uncomfortable emotions. 

So why should we make an effort to master empathy? How can it really improve our connections in our marriage and friendships?

The full transcript is at the end of this post. In this podcast episode I'm sharing:

Why empathy is hard in a marriage When both partners are in a stressed state because they are dealing with frustrations and negative emotions Assuming the worst case scenario vs getting curious from a place of love Empathy's role at bringing us back to the same team rather  Giving and receiving empathy The difference between empathy and sympathy Empathy fatigue and holding space for others  The scale of an empathetic reaction: too much, not enough  When you constantly want to change someone else, how can empathy help?

Join the Simple Squad in the Simple on Purpose Facebook Community

Learn more about life coaching with Shawna, Certified Coach Practitioner and certified in Transformational Life Coaching 

Full episode transcript This is the Simple on Purpose Podcast, where I'm here encouraging you mamas to love what matters -  to make time for what matters - make space for what matters - make energy for what matters.

In the last episode, we talked about empathy, the two types of empathy, emotional empathy, and cognitive empathy, having empathy in our relationships, specifically in parenting. Being empathetic parents how it's not a form of enabling bad behaviour, but a form of creating a connection point and a way of changing the relationship dynamic where it's the one that handles tough emotions together, rather than punishing them, avoiding them, resisting them or reacting to them.

Today, I want to continue on with empathy, as we can use it in our marriage and in our friendships. Empathy is having an appreciation, almost feeling the feelings of someone else.

Empathy is saying, I know what you're feeling, I can see that I can understand that. It can go even further into compassion, where I have compassion for how you're feeling, but empathy in a marriage, what does that look like? Because often, we have feelings for what we think their feelings are, do you know what I mean? Like we assume the worst so that they're acting this way. And it means all these horrible things. And, and they're just doing this because they're selfish and, and all that matters to them is work and all of these other things, we fill in the blank with the worst-case scenario.

So when it comes to marriage, having empathy means, often asking, asking them, what's happening for them, asking ourselves what's happening for us, because we need empathy for us too. And when it comes to two adults, having empathy in a relationship where emotions are almost power, that emotions can be used as a currency.

And this generation that we're in many of us adults, now we're raised to stigmatize negative emotions, to be uncomfortable with them. So if my partner is uncomfortable with something, he's in his own mind, fighting that discomfort, that stress, and I am uncomfortable by his discomfort and my own discomfort that I've caused by my own thoughts about the whole thing, we're both in a stress mode, we are ready to fight, we're defensive or offensive. Empathy is really hard in the situation.

In marriage, empathy can look like a lot of things. But for me, it often looks like me asking, why would this be hard for him? There was a lot of years where I thought he's overworking. He's working too much 'All that matters is work'. And I can ask myself why and I come up with these negative assumptions. Or I could ask him, 'why is it so important to you?', I might learn he feels pressure to provide for us and at a certain level,

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I have been coaching women who shy away from empathy in their motherhood and relationships. 

Sometimes this is because they can't see it as a part of a solution, maybe it doesn't come naturally to them. Most often we don't bring empathy into parenting because we don't want to enable our kids or express any permissiveness of their poor behaviour. 

I want to unpack what empathy is, the two types of it, and how to bring it into your parenting without using it as a way to enable poor behaviour. Empathy can increase our connection and relationship - which helps us work on conflict resolution together. 

Find the full transcript at the end of this post

(Books or products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and take action I will be compensated at no additional cost to you.)

This is part one. In this episode we cover:

The two types of empathy How empathy helps make our lives better The phenomenon of having empathy for 'the bad guy'  Empathy is not enabling Empathy is not the silver bullet solution to conflict with our kids How empathy teaches our kids emotional intelligence  How expressing empathy to our children helps them offer it to others Empathy helps us both deal with the discomfort of their negative emotions

The book I mention in this episode is Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child by John Gottman I have a thorough book summary on that book right here

I also mentioned SISU, which is a Finnish concept of grit and resilience. It is from a great book I read a couple of years ago called The Finnish Way. 

Sign up for information about one-on-one life coaching with Shawna Scafe - Certified Coach Practitioner & Certified in Transformational Life Coaching. 

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

If you're new here a little bit about me, I am a mom of three kids in small-town, Canada. I am a life coach, a minimalist mom. And I started out my career as a health inspector, very underwhelming job. And I gave that up once my second child was born, to stay at home with them, which evolved into me being here, somehow just taking step after step, idea after idea down the road, to where now I am life coaching women and helping them show up for their lives.

That's my whole goal for you, is to give you some freedom and power to show up for your life to enjoy your life. No matter where you are, even if you're knee-deep with toddlers, or you're balancing work life and mom life. I want to help you show up well for your life.

As I mentioned, I am in small town Canada and our province is going into another wave of COVID restrictions, we're entering into another time of somewhat isolation, but not as extreme as last March. So we're really relying again on what we can do outside even though it's cold, and there's snow around. Getting outside for walks is a huge thing.

Last week, I took my daughter for a walk and we walked an hour right across town, the sun was shining, it was beautiful. And I don't know about you, but I feel like with my kids, if I pour into them one on one, just being with them just I had to just walk with her and listen to her, it was easy, that she is so much more receptive to me so much more warm with me that it just, it makes us such a stronger connection.

And I think that's so important when your kid is maybe pulling away like she'll sometimes do that pulling them a bit closer, is going to keep them closer, and I'm going to talk about something today that's really going to help with this.

I'm going to talk about empathy.

And it's something that I've been coaching on and I'm hearing more and more moms and women are shying away from using empathy in their relationships. And maybe because it doesn't seem like a possible step towards a solution. Maybe it feels like empathy would make things permissible, and it's almost accepting of people's poor behaviour. Maybe empathy doesn't come natural,

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Hey friends! Let's have a momfriend coffee date - grab a warm drink and sit with me, Your Nerdy Girlfriend and Life Coach. 

Well this, is a coffee date for all friends really - mom or not. Because I want to have some lady chat about things I am trying, loving, watching and enjoying. 

Plus I have some special encouragement for you on feeling like you are behind, or you are not where you should be. 

The full episode transcript is at the end of this post.  THE CURRENTLY LIST! This list has a lot of fun links! Some of these links will be affiliate links through Amazon. As an amazon associate, I make a small commission from your purchase at NO cost to you.  My current planner for this year I was using the Pipsticks + Workman planner and really liked it (it is cute, fun, and has lots of habit tracking spots). Especially the monthly recap page in each monthly section. This year I am trying out the Happy Planner. It always takes some time to get used to a new planner.  Watching Back In Time For Dinner is a show we have found on the GEM app, through CBC. 

It follows a family as they spend a week living in a past decade, from the 1940s-2000. 

Reading

Educated by Tara Westover Wearing I am at the age where I splurge on clothes at Costco and am feeling pretty happy with my recent sock purchase. If this isn't screaming middle aged mid-class woman I don't know what else will!

Also, I'm loving the simplicity of a long sleeve black tee - it can pair with most anything. 

I have made a challenge for myself to not buy any more clothes for the winter (until spring).  Preparing I'm prepping an advent activity calendar. In the past, I had done this when the kids were toddlers. Here's a post of toddler advent activity ideas to make your own little advent calendar of fun things to look forward to. 

The Jesus Storybook Bible and their advent guide for reading the stories in December  Eating Roasted Squash with bacon (pin the recipe right here)

The cookbook for all that has some of the best gluten free baking I've ever had! Canelle et Vanille by Aran Goyoaga. Our family fave are the Buckwheat Crepes.  Doing I've been doing a lot of sitting - work is a sedentary activity for me. So I am challenging myself to do the the seven minute workout on Alexa (say 'Alexa, start seven minute workout'). Here is a very similar one on Youtube.  

Don't get stuck in all or nothing thinking when it comes to moving your body each day. Every little bit counts! This week's encouragement to you  You are never behind. You are exactly where you need to be, because that is where you are. Stop looking at all you 'could' do and turning those 'coulds' into 'shoulds' it takes away your power. 

Here is what is available to you. Opportunities, growth, connection, is available to you right here. Don't rush it or avoid it. Stay with it. 

Full episode transcript Hey friends I'm Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and life coach from simpleonpurpose.ca. Welcome to the podcast for the mom who wants to slow down, simplify and show up for her life on purpose.

So I've been kind of sitting on this podcast episode idea for a while to share what I call the currently list. And the currently list is that what I'm currently doing and enjoying and eating and making. It's something that I would share in the simple Saturdays newsletter from time to time. And then I just kind of sat on it, I thought, nobody's really interested in the random things I'm doing with my life.

And then I had a phone call this morning with one of my best friends who I talked to like every six months, you know, those best friends who have just been part of your life for so long, that you can just pick up every six months and run through an hour of everything. And we talked about everything we talked about our parents, period, underwear, the books, we're reading what our cats are doing, like our mom life experience.

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This Christmas won't be like the ones you have curated and cherished. This is a holiday during a pandemic and we are having a universal experience of learning what that can look like. 

As moms, we do most of the Christmas planning. We have gifts lists, treats, parties planned, gatherings set up. This job is often an exhausting one but one that we go through every year because we are always longing for those special moments of joy, hope and connectedness that are possible. 

Christmas during covid means the plans we make, the gatherings, the parties are all going to look different. 

That is hard to accept. We long for what we know and what feels like Christmas to us.  This year means teaching ourselves new ways to feel Christmas. 

If you are like most moms, and myself, it is a hard task to think outside the box, beyond our expectations and get excited about something different when we have this idea in our mind of what Christmas SHOULD be. 

The first step here is to acknowledge your expectations. Because here is the issue - we have a lot of expectations - about who does what and how they act and how they feel, and what we will get to do, and all the ideals we have in the back of our mind. We might not be fully aware of them.  But trying to be proactive by noticing them before they go unmet (=resentment) the more we can manage them ahead of time. This includes letting unrealistic ones go, AND taking responsibility for making them happen. 

In this episode:

Handling your Christmas expectations  Where 'all or nothing thinking' can keep you stuck and blocked off Two things that can bring more intentionality into your Christmas: values and the bucket list How to use these two things in a way that works for you and your family Letting yourself feel disappointed about the Christmas you had hoped for Finding ways to take your power back and plan a Christmas you can get excited about

All of this is unpacked in the Simple Christmas Planner. Which is designed to walk you through designing, planning and DOING your Christmas with intention and in a way that works for you and your family. Because the goal is to have a Christmas season that you can SHOW UP for, one that you can feel present for, one that you can actively enjoy in the moment! This doesn't JUST HAPPEN, you need to do it with intention. 

Full transcript at the bottom of this post. 

Links mentioned: The Live your VALUES worksheets

The Facebook community group

Say hi on Instagram

The ON PURPOSE workbooks (Simple Christmas Planner)

Episode Transcript Episode main topics: Christmas, expectations, planner, kids, plan, values, Christmases, year, excited, happen, podcast, family, simple, talk, list, intentional, feel, purposeful, bucket list, purpose Welcome to the Simple on Purpose Podcast! This podcast is your check-in your regular reminder, your regular coffee date with me, where I remind you to bring it all back to simplify, slow down and show up for your life, the life right in front of you, you are allowed to enjoy it. Today I want to talk about an issue that we're all edging into. And that's Christmas. I'm in Canada. So we've had snow for a while where I live. We're all thinking about Christmas, I see Christmas trees in the windows around the neighbourhood. Christmas music is popping up on the playlist. My kids are trying to play it - everyone's just getting ready for Christmas. But without really knowing what to expect, right? And I know each province, each state, each country is going through something a little bit differently. I will say though I am done my Christmas shopping, I'm so proud of that I didn't want to rely on a lot of shipping. So I went to the stores. In early November, I had a list I stuck to the list and made a budget I stuck to the budget I'm really proud of myself. One thing that we have adopted here is to do the for gifts for our kids where it's something you want so...

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I see a theme in the women I life coach. When I ask them what they want in their life, their homes, their motherhood, their relationships, peace (calm, serenity, harmony) is a common answer. 

Peace is something we crave, but we often trade it in for relief. 

The problem is that peace and relief can look similar. Because the pain lessens for a bit. 

But relief is not peace. Relief is a temporary reduction/removal of the pain. Peace is finding calm amongst the pain and stressors. 

*this is an affiliate link, which means when you purchase this item I get a nominal commission at no cost to you 

FULL TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE AT THE END OF THIS POST

This week my 6-year-old son was having an 'off day' - a few of them. Eventually, I kept him home from school with me. I could see he was having a soul fever (a concept from Simplicity Parenting*) and that day allowed him to rest and recenter. 

As an adult, I can relate to how he was feeling. So often I have this strange stressor that is highjacking how I show up - I'm not present and I'm not having any fun or feeling like I am in control of my life. It feels overwhelming. 

What do we want relief from? So often when we have some kind of discomfort, pain or urge we just want relief. We just want it to stop. We treat it like a hot coal in our hands.

We are acting from a stress response and looking for a quick way to make the pain stop. 

The more seek relief, the more fearful we get of the pain/discomfort So we lash out, we withdraw, we try to control everyone and everything. This is how we learn to cope with the discomfort of feeling pain. 

The more we do this, the more afraid we become of experiencing this 'pain', this 'hot coal'. We develop coping mechanisms that help us find relief from this perceived pain. 

But when we don't immediately seek relief, then we can start to sit with this hot coal a little longer. Learn that it won't hurt us, that we can handle it. 

We need to get through the discomfort in order to move into peace This is where peace lives. In going through the discomfort of not giving ourselves immediate relief. 

It can show up in motherhood, in marriage, in our life, in our relationships. 

What I am learning is that when I let myself be uncomfortable and get past the need for immediate relief, I move into a space where there is an OPPORTUNITY to experience peace and practice peace - the peace God gives me, the peace I find within, the peace I can offer those around me. 

Peace also requires trust - of ourselves, others and of God I shared an example of a fight I was about to have with my husband over butter, honey butter to be specific.

In the past, I would dump a conflict onto him and shame him into fixing it. But I decided to sit with the discomfort I was feeling and let myself work to a calmer place -  so I could address this issue with kindness and understanding of myself - rather than blowing it up, in the moment, from a stress response.

I call this the Circle Back. And it isn't about never addressing the issue, it is about circling back to it from a place of calm. 

But I can do this BECAUSE I trust us. I trust that this is something we can work through. I've learned to trust him and myself with conflict resolution.

Peace also requires us to trust ourselves and to put trust in God that he's got us, his hand is in it, he has the long game. 

Mindful questions:

What feels like pain to me? What are my 'hot coals'? How do I deal with them? What are the responses I have to them? What are the decisions I am making today? Are they bringing me relief or peace? Where can I practice peace today? Where do I often seek relief? How has that impacted my life? How can I have compassion for myself for the relief I had needed in the past?

Fun links mentioned in this episode 

Simplicity Parenting* Instagram - the highlight reel on books

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When we decide we want to turn off the autopilot and take control of our lives, we might be really excited. It is fun to think about the goals and dreams we have, where we want to go with our lives. But the hard work of showing up for it every day isn't something people really talk about. 

Intentional living is a journey I started about six years ago and I thought it would be so much easier, and come naturally, and everything would 'click'. When it wasn't quite like that I realized that there is a really messy part of intentional living that we might gloss over. 

So, I want to share some of the things I experienced and learned and encourage you with them. So that as you go on this journey in your own life, you can feel motivated to see it through when it feels hard. Because hard doesn't always mean you are doing it wrong, it often simply means you are doing it. 

Full transcript is at the bottom of this post.  Some things to remember WHEN INTENTIONAL LIVING IS HARD

It doesn't come naturally. We started with ‘intentional parenting’ and made a list of what we hoped to teach our kids, and things to do with our kids. It included road trips - because that’s what I thought it should include. But I do not like road trips with my kids, and I hate that I hate them so much but they are not a preferable experience for me.  It doesn’t come naturally - and this can encourage you that your hard work is moving you down the road. Read more about the road trip that made me cry right here. What we want changes over time. This is encouraging because it means we are allowed to change our minds, try new things, and keep refining it along the way.  It shines a light on your blind spots. For me, a big one was my victim mentality - of being the victim of my life, motherhood and marriage. Listen to the episode on being a mom martyr right here.  It is the daily practice. We should be motivated by this big vision we have and remember that intentional living is showing up for the daily work of moving in that direction It is empowering. This is the reason I still do it. It has grown me and shown me a lot I can let go of. It has brought me more in tune with myself and made me feel empowered that I can do hard things and take steps towards the life I want. 

To get started with intentional living, use the LIVE YOUR VISION, and LIVE YOUR VALUES worksheets, the LIFE ON PURPOSE WORKBOOK

The get some support in getting started schedule a 1-hour strategy session or apply for the Life on Purpose 1:1 Coaching Program with Shawna. 

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the Simple on Purpose podcast. This is a place where I want you to take some time to slow down. Think about ways you want to simplify your life. And think about the ways you want to show up well for your actual life.

So this is what we talked about here intentional living, simplifying your home heart and mind. So that you can show up and enjoy your life, enjoy motherhood, enjoy all of the things that are right in front of you, I want to help you do that.

So today we're going to pick up on intentional living. In the last episode, we talked about some signs that you could be living on autopilot. And maybe you saw some in yourself, maybe you want to take control, maybe you want to step up and get more intentional in how you're spending your days in what you're building up in your life. So in that last episode, I also give you a few tips on how to get started. And I want to give you some encouragement, some real talk on intentional living. I shared this thinking like Episode 15. And a couple of years ago, about the things that nobody talks about in intentional living, the things that nobody told me the things I wish I would have known. And I'm going to kind of go through that list again and elaborate a bit on a few of the points that I think are really important.

Because intentional living, it sounds great, doesn't it sounds shiny,

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Feeling rushed, overwhelmed, unproductive can all be signs you are living your life on autopilot. That is, living life by default, without intention. 

The outcome is an inner sense of lack, but we might not notice it. BECAUSE Our life might look 'nice' enough on the surface, and we have done all the things that people told us would make us successful and happy - but we really don't feel it. So we think something is wrong with us, and with our lives. 

Autopilot living leaves you feeling ineffective and like you aren't stepping into your purpose and passions for your life. 

I have six ways that auto-pilot living can be showing up in your life and give you some direction on what you can do about it. 

I write this all to you as someone who lived on autopilot for about 30 years before waking up to it and deciding to take control of my life.

I had let complacency seep through my whole life. My health, my motherhood, my marriage, my home, my relationships. They were all operating without any intention or direction from me and what I truly craved in those areas of my life. 

(full episode transcript is at the bottom of this post) SIX SIGNS YOU ARE LIVING YOUR LIFE ON AUTOPILOT

You are putting out fires all-day You are feeling overwhelmed You feel restless....or apathetic You feel unproductive at the end of the day You feel like something is missing You are distracted

And in motherhood, we can see we are on autopilot when

We've turned on the 'no switch' and not turned it off We are short with our kids (then shame ourselves for it) We are just 'trying to get through the day'

LINKS MENTIONED

What is subconscious thinking  and how it impacts your life (episode 76)

Productivity needs purpose (blog post)

I stopped enjoying my kids (episode 16) (blog post)

My husband's take on setting goals and LIFE ON PURPOSE together (episode 47)

Small things that can change your whole life (episode 78)

The Live Your Vision worksheets (get them here)

The Live your Values worksheets (get them here)

The Life on Purpose Workbook (find it here)

A one on one Strategy Session (book it here)

The Simple Christmas Planner (get yours here)

The Facebook Simple on Purpose community group (join it here)

Want to be part of the Simple Saturdays email? (sign up here)

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Welcome to this podcast. If you are new here, I'm so glad you're joining us to let you know a bit about me. I am living in small town Canada, and I am here every week to help you think of ways that you can simplify,slow down and show up for your actual life.

So I hope you guys have all had a good Halloween holiday, if that's something you celebrate, if you were in the simple Saturday's email, then you saw a picture I sent out of my kids costumes. And I think it's so fascinating to have more than one kid and see how different they are. 

My oldest was kind of true to himself in wearing a costume that he loved. It's a black panther costume, but no mask because that's how he rolls. It's just not practical. 

My second I got her draft from the thrift store, she jazzed it up, she put on a vest, she colored the hair, she put on earmuffs, and she called herself a DJ giraffe. 

And my third was just like, I'm gonna be a ninja, I got this Mom, don't worry about me. I'm going to tie a shirt on my head wear all black, I got it. And they're just all totally themselves shining through those Halloween costumes. 

Also, I was just so super relieved. I didn't have to deal with making or creating or helping with costumes in any way this year. They just all kind of took control of it and made it happen for themselves. We did a candy hunt in our yards for the kids. And then we watched a movie we watched on the moon above on Netflix. And it was cute. 

But now we're listening to the soundtrack multiple times a day. My kids know all the words they're singing.

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Do small things has changed my whole life. 

Today I'm sharing how motherhood really brought me face to face with my own neediness and limiting beliefs that everything and everyone else was causing me problems. 

Becoming self-aware of how I had brought myself to this point in my own life made me realize I can't be my own solution. 

I needed God. I met God in my neediness and he showed me some hard truths on what needed changing. 

Because I didn't want to stay where I was, on autopilot. There was a lot of victimhood and resent and anxiety and poor health where I was - if I stayed there and kept the status quo I could see that my life in 2 . . . 5 . . . 10 years was not the life I wanted. 

But this isn't all a big bummer. I have something that can help you, something I learned on the way in TAKING ACTION to shift my life. 

This is the COMPOUND EFFECT

A concept from Darren Hardy that tells us the little things we do, consistently, have a cumulative impact on our lives. Both the good habits the bad habits - they accumulate as the days pass. 

I will share with you about 10 SMALL THINGS I have worked on over the past 5 years that I feel have made my life so much better, and some of the things I'm working on this year. 

And if you are feeling like you are ready to pick one small thing and start it, I have some question to help you identify what that could be. 

Because our life is like a ship, we need to adjust it's course a little bit each day so we can end up pretty darn close to our destination. AND REMEMBER, you can only steer a ship that is moving - we need to take ACTION!

(Full episode transcript is at the bottom) All the fun links to help you learn more . . .  Homemaker, on Purpose (available from Amazon, or as an eBook)

Are you making motherhood harder than it needs to be (Episode 67 )

What are limiting beliefs and how they impact you (Episode 76)

Showing up for your future self (Episode 21)

Want to make a change, here are three tips to help you get good at it (Episode 70)

The Life on Purpose Workbook (available as a digital copy or from Amazon)

The Live Your Values + Live Your Vision worksheets (you can find both right here)

Apply here to learn more about the Life on Purpose 1:1 Coaching Program 

Spending the month on GRATITUDE in the Facebook Community Group (join here, make sure to answer the entry questions)

FULL TRANSCRIPT Hi Friends, it's Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and Life coach from simple purpose.ca. Welcome to The Simple on Purpose podcast. This is a place for you. If you are a mum and it just all feels like too much. The clutter, the life, the motherhood, the relationships I've been there. These are all signs that we're living on autopilot. That life is just happening at us rather than us being in our driver's seat, being proactive. Like I said, I've been there. And when I realized that I had living my life on autopilot, I wanted to take control. I wanted to live on purpose. I wanted to take action and build up the life, the home, the relationships, the mindsets that I craved, the one that God made me for, because you are made for more than anxiety and reactivity and victimhood, you are made for more than that. So this podcast is your place. I aim to keep all these podcasts short and to the point, and to give you tips and ideas and encouragement and insights into simplifying, slowing down and showing up for your life on purpose. So I'm recording this podcast right now in an empty house. What, what my husband took our three kids to his parents' farm for the weekend. And he had all these chores he wanted to do there. And he said, you can come with me if you want, or you can just stay home. And I was like, let me think about that. Thank you. I'm going to be home. And I've been eating poutine in my PJ's watching TV in the tub at night. I've used like five dishes. It's glorious. I mean, I see the pictures of everyone there together.

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We all hear about the Sabbath and as moms, we are like, "Sure! When will we find this magical day of rest from our lives??"  Because rest sounds good, but there are still kids here asking me for snacks and to play with them!

This past weekend I had one of the most restful days I've ever had. It inspired me to share this episode (as I hit record planning to talk about something totally different) and tell you the ways that rest has refreshed me and why I encourage you to do it too!

To me, this day of rest came about from the overwhelming need to address some emotions that were piling up for me (I needed to feel my feelings!). I needed a day to listen to my body and listen to God. 

So I put everything on the back burner and had a day of BEING STILL, rather than DOING ALL THE THINGS!

THE IMPORTANCE OF FAMILY RHYTHMS

In our home we fall into natural FAMILY RHYTHMS, it is how things get done. And one of our rhythms for a few years has been Church and Chill on Sundays. 

This gives us the framework to make space in our week for the things we value - even if we are still learning to appreciate them and do them well. 

A day of rest has been one of those things. 

WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO REST

When we spend a day of rest, we get a chance to listen closer to our life, our bodies, to God

It also helps us to come out of the constant stress response we have been operating in. When we are stressed we are flooded with stress hormones and even using a different part of our brain. We need to find ways to come down from that stress response by letting our body feel like it is safe, so it can cue the brain to chill out. 

A day of rest lets your body move out of operating in a stress mode. 

It also gives you energy for the week ahead. I felt like I rested until I felt restless (which is rare of a Type 9). 

TEACHING OUR KIDS TO REST

Resting is a skill and it is one we can teach our kids too. 

This doesn't mean we roll into a Sunday telling our kids they are on their own - but to walk alongside them in learning how to do it. 

BECAUSE IT ISN'T COMFORTABLE

Just BEING for a day won't feel comfortable. It might even feel boring. But God calls us to it and it is worth making it a practice for your soul to be refreshed. 

CHOOSE THINGS THAT REFRESH YOU

Pay attention to how you get rest. Avoid things that actually drain you even though they don't require a lot of energy (ahem, social media!). 

The full transcript is available at the end of this post.  FUN LINKS FROM THE EPISODE Sign up for Simple Saturdays (the virtual coffee date with me that comes out twice a month)

Check out Stef Gass (Mompreneur Mastermind podcast)

Saturday morning chores (the episode on how we started them in our home)

Family Rhythms (what ours are, and worksheets to make your own)

The Enneagram (I talk about it a lot, here are the basics)

Two episodes on mindset shifts that can help moms of babies and toddlers (episode 73  and episode 74)

The free printable of mindset shifts to empower your motherhood (get them right here)

Say HAAAAY on Instagram

Join the Simple Squad in the FB Community Group

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Hey friends! It's Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend, and life coach from simple purpose.ca. Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast here for moms like you, who want to have the reminder, and the encouragement that it is okay to simplify- it is okay to slow down and it is important to show up for your life on purpose. That's what we are here to talk about. Welcome. I'm glad you're here. I am Shawna. I am a mom of three, a life coach, and you might know me from the simple on purpose dot ca blog. That's where I've been for about six or seven years before that if you were like an OG blog reader, remember dovetail blog, that was way back in the day. And there was also that period of time where I was at home with three kids. I had all three kids within three and a half years,

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I used to be a big skeptic of limiting mindsets. I mean, how would I have a thought I'm not even aware of? And how would this thought somehow keep me stuck?

Since I have learned more about the science behind it and how our thought life is really running the show I can see this everywhere. I can see how our mindsets limit our motherhood experience, our relationships, our drive, really - everything. 

FULL TRANSCRIPT IS AVAILABLE AT THE END OF THIS POST Here are the main things I have learned that have really opened my eyes to the reality and practical application of limiting mindsets. We have conscious thoughts and subconscious thoughts. This is the iceberg with our conscious thoughts on the surface.  The majority of our daily reactions, habits, routines are coming from our subconscious thoughts - they don't require our attention and energy.

Creating a whole network of subconscious thoughts is one of the three jobs of our brain - it keeps it efficient. If you stop and think, you can see a lot of areas of your life where you can notice the subconscious thoughts have taken over operation

The subconscious thoughts are like the program running on a computer. The program is developed through personal experience and exposure - our upbringing, our culture and our past really form a lot of subconscious thought patterns. 

The limiting mindsets are those mindsets that are subconscious - running in the background and they are disempowering you. They aren't serving you to grow in the life you want.

It is not our brain's job to filter out limiting mindsets from empowering mindsets - that is something we have to do on purpose. 

These mindsets matter because we SHOW UP from them. I use the CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) model in coaching and it informs us that our thoughts create our emotion and we behave differently depending on how we feel. So the reason it matters is our experience of life matters. And our experience of life (feelings and actions, and their outcomes) come from our thoughts (conscious and subconscious). 

In this episode I have some examples for you around money scarcity, kids should always obey, people don't care about what I have to say, I'm a victim of motherhood, etc.  Links Mentioned  Episode 71: I let my kids do whatever they wanted for a day (abundance day)

Simplify for fall [sign up here]

The Simple on Purpose FB group [make sure to answer the entry questions]

Episode 40 : The not-enough mindset [scarcity and abundance mindset]

Enneagram 101

The Life on Purpose Academy [closed until December, sign up here to be on the waitlist]

Episode 67: Making motherhood harder than it needs to be [mom martyr]

Find Shawna on Instagram 

Episode Transcript Hey friends, it's me, Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend, and Life Coach from simpleonpurpose.ca Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. This podcast is for the mom on the go. I aim to keep every episode under 20 minutes. And this podcast is your space. Your time to help you simplify slow down and show up for your life on purpose. So it's full blown fall here in BC, Canada. My husband went on another hunting trip. That's what they're doing up here. They're filling up the freezers in Canada. So he went out for a hunting trip. And when he went last month as well, I did something called abundance day with my kids. You can catch that a few episodes ago where I just said yes to whatever they wanted. They called it, do whatever you want day. So I had another one for them and eat included an entire box of Halloween candy and an accessible amount of hours on the iPad playing video games. So at the end of the day, I was like, this is kind of their go to cause we're at home. And it's like everything I usually have restrictions around and I encourage them next time. Like think of something bigger, like think outside the box, you can do anything. Like what would you want to do? And I know it's kind of hard to think of when yo...

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Have you heard of hygge? It is the Danish word that embodies the sentiments of being cozy, connected and content. If you look it up on Pinterest you will see a lot of cozy spaces full of things like flickering candles, a lovely throw, some fuzzy socks. 

These all make a space feel cozier, but it takes more than that to experience hygge. 

I want to share three mindsets that will help you shift right into hygge and have that cozy, connected and content experience in your daily life. 

You may have heard me talk about hygge before in this episode where I compared it with minimalism and how the two were different and similar. If I lean one way, it is probably towards hygge. But perhaps that is because I have done all the decluttering already and my home feels simpler. 

But this Enneagram Type 9 especially loves hygge because of its focus on equality, balance, simplicity and contentment. 

If you want to add more hygge into your life this fall and winter then get yourself the FREE calendar on 30 days of hygge (get it here).  If you love to look at hygge inspiration check out my Pinterest board

And since we are entering fall and we love to have cozy spaces in our home, let's get out homes ready with the Simplify for Fall Challenge (sign up here). 

It is so helpful to clear out your space and reset your home before Thanksgiving and Christmas take over our living space. And if you are prepping for Christmas already, check out the Simple Christmas Planner right here. This is the 2020 updated version! 

FULL TRANSCRIPT AT THE END OF THIS POST  

Full transcript of this episode Friends at Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend, and life coach from simple on purpose.ca. I am a Canadian mom in small town, Canada. I'm a mom of three cool kids. I am a life coach at the Life on Purpose Academy, and I also do one on one life coaching. And you probably know me if you've hung around the Simple on Purpose blog at all. So welcome. I'm so glad you're here. The whole goal around this show is to give you just a quick check in with yourself on the things that matter to you and the things you want in your life. So we're going to remove the distractions that we're going to simplify, and we're going to show up on purpose. That's our mission. And one of my favorite ways to show up in my home in my life is hygge and hygge is that Danish word? It's spelled H Y G G E I needed. It's the Danish word that embodies that sense of connectedness and coziness. And you've probably seen pictures of fuzzy socks and candles and tea with steam coming out of it. It's so cozy. It's so darn cozy. So I heard about this a few years ago, and I just love pinning pins about it. And if you've been on Pinterest, you probably seen the trend, the coffee mugs, the cozy blankets, a lot of Scandinavian inspired touches, but I want to encourage you that hygge is not a decor trend or a shopping list of cozy things to bring into your home, those help, but at his core, hygge v is a mindset. So over the centuries, the Danish people have embraced hygge as a way of life. They've brought these values into their daily life. And since they focus on making their long dark winter, an especially hygge time they've incorporated these things, quote unquote, things, stuff that we see as a representation of what hygge is, but it's not about the stuff who God is about. Sitting with your friends around a candle at the table sharing a simple snack before it's ever about the candles. And what's on the table. It's about cuddling in a cozy blanket with a fan with the family for a movie before it's ever about the texture and textiles and a couch scape. That just looks so inviting. It's about sitting alone in the morning, enjoying the view out the window with a warm cup of coffee before it's ever about the cute mug and the fuzzy socks and the steam coming off the mug. So it's not a decor trend. It's a mindset you bring into your daily life.

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When you are at home with a baby, or a toddler and a baby your whole world can feel boring and relentless. There are countless demands on your time, energy and body and it can be so overwhelming to show up every day in motherhood when you just want a hot minute alone!

You aren't alone. I have been there (hello three kids under four!). And I get how exhausting and draining motherhood can be.  Like how are people even making dinner!?! And what is life like without Paw Patrol??

As my kids have gotten older I have been seeing things from a new point of view. I can see my new mom self with more objectivity. I can see that there were some mindset shifts that really helped me between 1-3 kids and mindsets that have really helped me over the years of parenting. 

Your mindset can have a big impact on your motherhood experience and this isn't something to brush off. 

I say that as someone who did brush 'mindsets' off as woo woo and weak. But now that I am aware that my thoughts dictate my emotions, and I ACT from how I feel has changed my mind. 

I can see the connections with mindsets to my experience, my reality, everywhere. Especially in motherhood because momlife is an emotional struggle. 

There is overwhelm, resentment, frustration and exhaustion! And when I tell myself the worst-case scenario about me as a mom, and my kids, and my support system them I am showing up from all those feelings. 

I have some mindsets that I learned the long way in motherhood, and some I am still learning. I hope they empower you to mother on purpose, with more peace and presence!

PART 2 of2

EMPOWERING MINDSETS WE DISCUSS IN THIS EPISODE:

It's ok to be tired It's ok to lose myself in motherhood It's ok to NOT be awesome today It takes a village What matters most is how I show up

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As the kids get older I find myself watching moms with babies and toddlers and remember what a hot mess it felt like.

I can look back on those early years with all of their demands on my time, my body, my energy and notice how I really fought it and how I probably made it harder than it needed to be. 

Hindsight is easier from the plateau than it is in the thick of the valley. 

I can see a lot of mindset shifts that would have helped me to show up better. 

I want to share them with you if you are a mama with small ones around and feel like you need a refresher for your heart and soul. 

Because our mindsets matter. The story we tell ourselves about our life, about motherhood, about our kids, that all matters.

It matters because we SHOW UP from this story. 

If this story makes us feel helpless, that is how we show up. If this story makes us feel frustrated, that is how we show up. 

I want to help you become aware of the stories you might be telling yourself here and offer you some new ways to look at things.

THIS IS PART ONE OF TWO

Emotional struggles and mindset shifts that we talk about in this episode:

It's ok to feel my tough feelings It's ok to mourn my old life Motherhood is hard, but I don't have to make it harder  I can trust myself in motherhood (and move away from rules and perfectionism) I am the mom meant for my kids Have a plan and plan to change 

THE FULL TRANSCRIPTION IS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE  Get the printable PDF that goes with this episode and the following episode.   

Mindsets to empower your momlife

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One question I get so often is "how to get my husband to get rid of all his crap?"

I don't have a magical formula to convince him to give up the ill-fitting company leather jacket from twenty years ago, or the questionable 'comedy' VHS from the 1990s - but I do have seven tips to help you navigate the conversations and process of decluttering with someone else in your home. 

When most of us decide to become a minimalist we have laser eyes for everything that has got to go - and a lot of it is OTHER PEOPLE'S STUFF. Whether it is teens, grown kids, or your spouse these people like their things and do have some say over what happens to it. 

We often find that the issue moves away from the STUFF in your home and becomes a RELATIONSHIP issue.

So, these are tips on decluttering when your spouse isn't on board, but really, it's marriage advice too. Because the goal is to declutter our home while preserving the relationships of those in our home. We don't want to become minimalist at the cost of peace in our relationships.  Seven Tips for When Your Spouse Doesn't Want to Declutter 1. Talk about the common vision Sounds too simple right? But the more you can talk about the vision you each have for your space, the more you can find places where your vision overlaps and get excited about what you do agree on. 

Having a vision is always more motivating because you are doing tasks for the sake of moving towards your vision rather than doing tasks for the sake of chores. 

Use this free worksheet to set some vision for your home

2. Quit trying to change them  If ex-boyfriends have taught us nothing it is that you cannot change people. 

And really, when you feel like the person you love wishes you were different it feels crappy. It lays the foundation for resentment. 

There is a difference in encouraging them to be their best, vs manipulating and shaming them for who they are 

3. Declutter your own stuff first The most common piece of advice, for a good reason. 

Actions speak louder than words.

And you really don't need a lot of words when your partner can see you feel lighter and have more space and mental clarity in your home. 

4. Let communal items have communal input I would pile up the 'communal items' that I thought we should get rid of and offered my husband a chance to go through them and grab what he wanted. 

Because really, this is his home too and his stuff too. And we would all want someone to give us say about the things we wish to keep in our home. 

5. Learn their why You may not agree that your husband needs to keep the Pottie Tang VHS, but you can still ask why he wishes to..... like really, why???

Because we all keep things for a reason and that reason doesn't need to make sense to us - just knowing they know their reason and they like it can let you off the hook of making this the issue you have conflict over. 

6. Offer support  It is a hard step, but if you are willing to offer your support in helping them organize things it can be a game-changer. 

It shows you are willing to let them figure things out, it shows you are empowering them to create the space they want too, and it gets things more organized which just feels like less clutter. 

7. Let it be ok to disagree Marriage is so weird right!? It is putting two different people, with different opinions, different tastes, different views on the world into ONE HOME. It is not easy and it is not without differences, which can feel like conflict.

It is ok to not see eye to eye. It is normal to disagree with your spouse. 

As I mentioned in this episode, peace at all costs is not peace. At the end of the day, WHAT is in your home matters less than WHO is in there with you making it feel like home. 

If this has helped you.... If you have like this episode, please share it with someone else who can use it. 

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The other day I let my kids do whatever they wanted for a whole day. I called it Abundance Day. It was a day of me saying yes instead of no.  . .  because I am a mom who is saying NO a lot. 

I was solo parenting for a week and spent the first day being a parent who says yes, a step towards more abundant parenting.  Parenting from a place of abundance rather than withholding. Not that there is anything wrong with limits and withholding in the sake of teaching them skills and growing them into people who can manage frustrations and life - but sometimes I just want to shower them with YES and abundance with them earning it -  because God does not make us earn His abundance.  God gives us blessings and abundance in a variety of ways and I want them to experience the reality of that in a tangible way so they can also see it is true in how God provides for us. 

Abundance Day was very eye-opening in terms of how my kids chose to spend their time, the decisions they made and the lessons they told me they learned at the end of it.   It was a good lesson for me too, to see where I can give them more freedom to make their own choices and to see where I can teach them some more skills to make better decisions. 

We did Abundance Day on the first day of my husband's hunting trip, he was gone for a week.  I think it was a fun intro into my week of solo parenting. Also, over the years of him going on this trip, I've learned a few things that make this week a lot easier. Four tips to prep for a week of solo parenting

Plan what makes my life easier, especially meals.  Keep checking in with their feelings, because they have lots of em Have proactive conversations ahead of time Have fun with them

When I turned 38 last month I quietly told myself that I wanted to actively seek an abundance mindset in my life. I made this a birthday resolution for myself.  I want to focus on abundant parenting and I know that I will also be working on it in these areas too: Areas of my life to practice an abundance mindset:

In my work - taking my time with things I wish happened sooner and putting limits on how much I do, knowing what I do is enough In my time - taking time to slow down and enjoy my life and my people instead of saying ‘there isn’t enough time’ In my relationships - focussing on nurturing the close relationships I have instead of feeling like all relationships need to be close - and just showing up in those relationships remembering that my friend’s love is abundant and I don’t have to earn it In my food - I’m the kitchen warden and I can see a ton of scarcity mindset around food and preparing it and conserving it. 

WIN A FREE LIFE COACHING SESSION FOR MOMS TAG ME ON INSTAGRAM to be entered to win a free FULL ONE HOUR coaching session on ANY TOPIC you want support on: parenting, setting goals, identifying your personal values, homeschooling during a pandemic, any of these issues are ones I can help you find more peace, presence and purpose on. 

Links mentioned Simplify For Fall (sign up here for the free 5-day challenge that starts October 19th)

Join the Simple on Purpose Community Facebook Group (make sure to answer the three entry questions)

Sign up for the Simple Saturdays email

Find me on Instagram 

Abundance vs Scarcity Mindset (the blog post) (the podcast episode)

Family Meetings (the blog post)

When I stopped enjoying my kids (the blog post) (the podcast episode)

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Whenever we know where we WANT to go, but getting there, doing the work can meet a lot of hurdles. 

One big hurdle is this desire we have to ‘get good’ at the thing. 

What do you want to get good at? Meal planning, parenting, waking up early, a hobby, building a business . . . 

What will it take for you to get good at it?  It isn’t just about mastering the skill/the thing itself  - it is about the things we can do that help us master the skill itself - the stepping stones that get us there. 

Here are three tips I have for you if you want to DO THE WORK of getting good at something:

Consider how you are measuring success - are you stuck in all or nothing thinking? How does that keep you from making progress? Ask yourself how you handle failure - could it be true that you cannot fail? I know it sounds naive, but there can be a lot of peace in looking for the truth in this Look at how you are motivating yourself - do you rely on negative motivation to slog your way through it? What would it look like to move into positive motivation? BONUS: Are you WILLING to be bad at something in order to get good at something?

Links Mentioned The Making Change Challenge (sign up for it right here, it will come to your inbox)

All podcast episodes from Simple on Purpose

Growth mindset podcast episode

Tracking your habits blog post

One small habit blog post

The Life on Purpose Workbook

Simple Saturdays emails (sign up here)

The Simple on Purpose Community Facebook Group (make sure to answer the entry questions)

Simple on Purpose on Instagram

The enneagram, what it is and why I love it blog post

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Will a clear and simple house bring me peace?

There is a lot of evidence out there that decluttered, clutter-free home is a peaceful home. There are a lot of studies about the mental burden of clutter. There’s research to tell us that an ordered home helps us to FEEL calmer. 

And I believe this is true.   

A clear home CAN bring you peace. 

But will it?

I coach moms on this. Especially moms who label themselves as perfectionists. They have standards and expectations about how their home should be. They want it clear and tidy because of how they think it will make them feel. 

They want this, and in order to get it it can come at a cost, the cost is peace in their home.

Over the years of decluttering, organizing, doing chores, teaching my kids to do chores I have learned that it can make my space feel peaceful but it is UP TO ME how I show up every step of the way. I have to bring the peace into it. 

Have you ever been to a beautiful place but the atmosphere in it stinks? It isn't as simple as how organized and pretty the home it. It is so much more. 

And it takes work to create a beautiful experience in your home. It takes intention, vision, work, and being very mindful. 

To me, this is the difference in someone who is a HOMEMAKER - a lost art of our generation. But homemaker isn't a bad word. It it is an empowering word. 

If you are ready to reclaim you role as homemaker and move from thinking about things and doing a little here and there to taking ACTION, then join in the Fall Series at the Life on Purpose Academy. 

Each monthly topic will help you take action to live your life on purpose all while getting teaching and coaching all along the way. 

The fall series topics include: September - Reclaim Your Home October - Mom on Purpose November - Show Up for Love December - Connections + Friendships   LINKS MENTIONED How minimalism changed my motherhood (Episode 51)

How minimalism changed my marriage, homemaking and life (Episode 52)

Doing chores you want to avoid (Episode 60)

Saturday morning chores (Episode 61)

The Life on Purpose Workbook (learn more)

The Simple Saturdays email (it comes out every two weeks) (Subscribe here)

Fall Series in the Life on Purpose Academy (learn more)

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We all have a relationship with food. 

It can go from one extreme of food is simply fuel we need to survive, all the way to food is a constant way to experience a pleasure. 

In my life, I think I have swung to both sides of this spectrum.

I have been paying attention to my relationship with food. What I eat, why I eat, how I feel when I eat and how I feel after. I am learning a lot, and I know I have more to learn. 

Paying attention leads us to the subject of MINDFUL EATING. This is something I've been interested in because I don't think it came naturally to me. It is also something I've been wanting to teach my kids more about. 

I asked Jessica Penner to come and teach us more about this topic.  Jessica is a Registered Dietitian from Smart Nutrition and the creator of the I Quit Overeating program. We covered so many great issues on mindful eating that mamas can relate to:

Regaining control and being confident in what we are eating Food freedom in making choices around food. Let me say it again: FOOD FREEDOM! Overeating - restrictions vs permission Evening eating (anyone else going for those bedtime snacks?) Emotional eating  Comfort eating, is it always bad? Food as coping with hard days/emotions The diet mentality, food management for weight loss Being mindful 

listening to your eating instincts enjoying food 'clearing your plate' the grace we need to listen to ourselves removing food restrictions

Being scared to be hungry Food chatter in the brain

Get started with Smart Nutrition: THE HEALTHY EATING PUZZLE QUIZ

Other Links Mentioned:

Eating gluten-free, dairy-free while nursing a baby with esophagitis 

What I learned from the Whole30

The Life on Purpose Academy  -monthly lessons and coaching for moms who want to live with more peace, purpose and presence

Simple on Purpose on Instagram

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Motherhood is hard, but sometimes we make it harder than it needs to be by becoming a Mom Martyr. 

I would know, I was one. 

I was knee-deep in the work and struggles of motherhood and I needed everyone to know it. However, the way I was showing up and handling life and motherhood was actually making my life harder (cue the marriage counselling!)

Reflecting back on where I was at, what I see I actually needed was to address my own personal doubts and fears and lack of enjoyment in motherhood.  I am sharing 15 ways that mom martyrdom can show up for you. As you are listening keep in mind that these are extreme examples and I don't think everyone will be doing all these things - though I felt like I sure way. These points may be hard to hear and that is ok, I felt the same way when these things were pointed out to me. 

But, I want to encourage you that there are steps you can take if you want to try something new. 

Read the related blog post: How to know if you are a Mom Martyr and what you can do about it.  What to do about being a mom martyr?

Ask yourself what you do want in motherhood, what do you want it to look like?

How do you want to show up (live your values) What do you want to move towards (live your vision)

Focus on relationships that help you thrive in motherhood 

12 ways to strengthen and heal your marriage How to be a good Mom Friend

Practice self- awareness to see how you are showing up. I love to use the Enneagram for this Get proactive - plan your day to make more peace and purpose for yourself.  Get some support - counselling or life coaching (the Life on Purpose Academy is a great and affordable option for this)

Other links mentioned

Sign up for Simple Saturdays

The Moms30for30 wardrobe challenge

When Did I Stop Enjoying Motherhood

Life on Purpose Academy

Connect with me on Instagram

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Should we be happy all the time? What does it mean if you aren’t happy? What are you doing in an effort to get happy and stay happy?

This podcast episode has been on my heart for a while.  I knew I wanted to talk about what I call THE HUSTLE FOR HAPPINESS.

This has been one of my harder lessons in life - a lesson that came to me through parenting and feeling like I was losing the race for happiness way too often. 

It is also a lesson I have the pleasure of teaching other women in life coaching. 

I call the episode ‘How to Be Happy’ but as you will hear, it is about something so much better than happiness. 

One of the biggest parenting myths I’ve had to unlearn is that if your kids are happy it means you are doing it right. Other related myths include - ‘happiness is what we should feel’ or ‘when we aren’t happy we are doing it wrong.’ On today’s episode, I want to unpack these happiness myths and share some of the things I’ve learned about happiness along my years of motherhood and womanhood. 

Here are the topics covered in this episode:

How my crying infant taught me a hard parenting lesson  Why we need to stop hustling for hyper happiness Why it’s okay if your kids (or you or your husband) aren’t happy  The unrealistic demands of happiness Three ways to be happier while enjoying the life you have  Something even better than happiness  How we are biologically driven towards happiness  How to look for Perfect Moments  Watching the stories we tell ourselves about being happy 

The relentless pursuit of happiness can be exhausting, especially for us as wives and mothers. But it doesn’t have to be that way! I hope these insights and simple tips will release you from the pressures of being happy and chasing happy and allow you to embrace your whole life - even all the messy, not-so-happy parts. 

If you would like to learn how to have more peace, purpose and presence in your life, I invite you to join The Life on Purpose Academy, my monthly group coaching program. This month, I've been teaching and coaching on the topic of coping with negative emotion. And I can't tell you how much freedom I see the ladies experiencing as they learn that they don't have to hustle for happiness. This coming month, I'm teaching on enjoying your life on purpose because I believe we can all experience enjoyment of our lives, even if they don't always feel good. Check out The Life on Purpose Academy. 

Links mentioned: 

How to Live Your Actual Life // blogpost

Simple on Purpose Community // Facebook Group

The Perfect Moments Project // blogpost // #theperfectmomentsproject

Quotes: One of the biggest lessons I've learned is the myth that if your kids are happy, it means you're doing it right.  Contentment is being able to find the joy despite the discomfort while happiness demands comfort. FULL TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE

The SIMPLE ON PURPOSE PODCAST Episode 66 // How to Be Happy By Shawna Scafe

0:06 Hey friends! Welcome to Simple on Purpose. I'm Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and life coach from SimpleonPurpose.ca. If you are new here, welcome! And if you are a subscriber, I'm so glad to see you again on another Saturday, where we can stop and think about things that make our life more simple and more purposeful. 0:23 To let you know a little bit about me, if you're new here, I am a mom of three in small town Canada. And my whole mission is to help women simplify their home heart and life. So as we wrap up July, we're wrapping up the July on Purpose Challenge. Many of you have been a part of it. It's been in the Facebook group. I shared a little bit on Instagram. And what we did is we spent four weeks working on one area of our life each week. So the first area was home. And a project that I completed in my home during that week was cleaning my dresser off. I think that bedroom dresser is just like the dumping grounds of the most random crap that we th...

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Why have toys if your kids aren't playing with them? Sure an option is to declutter the toys they don't enjoy or seem to use. We can declutter the excess. But still, our kids aren't always interested in playing with their toys. At least not as interested as they are in following us around the house whining that they are bored. 

Do you feel like your kids have a lot of toys but don’t seem to be interested in them like they used to? To a kid, the logical option is to buy a new toy - but we all know how excited they get when they find their old toy under the couch and how they suddenly never want to part with it when we talk about decluttering.

July On Purpose

This month we're doing July On Purpose. It's a free challenge where we're focusing on four areas of your life. And each week, we are working on a way to kind of simplify and clear space and get really purposeful in this area of our life. This week in the first week of July when I'm recording this, we're doing something around the home, something to freshen up our space. I'm probably going to be painting my bathroom or cleaning out my bedroom dresser.

Sign up the July On Purpose Challenge here. 

Join the Simple On Purpose Facebook Community here. 

DECLUTTERING AND MANAGING KID'S TOYS Today, we're going to talk about how to get your kids to play with their toys. There was a time where I bagged up almost all of my kids’ toys and kept them in the basement. And they never asked for their toys back. They didn't even notice they were gone. They just continued on playing with whatever was around, and I was like, our kids have too many toys! What?! They're not even sad! They don't even notice! This prompted me to declutter their toys.

On this episode, I’m going to talk to you about:

The benefits of fewer toys Our system for manage toys in the home that you could totally adapt How we declutter toys  What causes kids to lose interest in their toys Seven strategies that you can use to get your kids to actually play with the toys they have Why I think kids should have fewer toys How to determine how many toys are too many

Also, don’t forget to get your FREE mini-guide on how to get your kids to declutter their toys [get the miniguide] and check out my blog on how to declutter your kids’ toys without them! [read the post]

Get life coaching  If you are a mom looking for life coaching, and you think I could be the coach for you then I want to let you know that I am opening up private coaching spots for the fall. Book now if you want to get started. 

And if you are interested in life coaching but prefer a more laid back approach, and more affordable option then consider the monthly group coaching program I run called The Life on Purpose Academy. My whole goal with this program is to help moms show up for the actual lives with peace, purpose and presence. 

If the Life on Purpose Academy is something you are interested in, then head here to join.

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Restlessness, we all have felt it in our lives and especially motherhood. Because it is this weird mix of waiting, mundane chores, and mental chatter around relaxing.

I asked the Facebook community what we should work on as a challenge for the month of July and there were great ideas around this general uplifting in our lives. As I talked with my besties, Sophie and Rae, about it they told me they were feeling restless lately.

Restless! Exactly! That is what I was feeling too and when I looked back on all the suggestions I thought we could all use a general uplifting whether from restlessness or just the desire to get more intentional with how we are showing up in our homes, for ourselves and for our families this summer. 

Restless: “the inability to rest or relax as a result of anxiety or boredom.”

Doesn't that feel too accurate of a description of motherhood? 

There are three components I want to touch on when it comes to restlessness:

Permission to rest Why we have anxiety in our day, what to do about it What to do about the boredom

Links Mentioned: Summer on purpose (episode // blog post)

The Pause Podcast (website)

The Simple on Purpose Community (facebook group)

I stopped calling myself a lazy mom (blog post) 

Brain dumps (episode // blog post)

The Life on Purpose Academy (monthly life coaching for moms)

Live your values (free worksheets)

The Life on Purpose Workbook (in print or digital)

How to make a daily routine that works for you and your family (episode)

What is the Enneagram (post with audio and video)

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We know there is power in enjoying the simple components that make up our day to day life. When we can enjoy these simple things, we have so much more ability to enjoy our actual life.

But often the 'shine wears off' and the things/people/experiences we wanted and enjoyed fall flat. That happiness we experienced is gone.

From a life coaching point of view, it is because we still bring our brain with us wherever we go. Our brain, and all it’s thoughts and stories and autopilot and subconscious thinking. That brain is still there thinking it’s thoughts and those thoughts create our emotional experience. 

However, when we feel like this isn't normal. We tell ourselves, 'I thought this would make me happy, why am I not happy?' It can cause us to think something is wrong with us, or our lives, or the people in our lives. But now it's time to lay that story to rest. 

The hurdle to enjoying the simple pleasures of life is that we all return to this baseline, emotionally speaking.

The shine does wear off. But it is normal and sometimes even useful. 

We have the ability to enjoy the simple pleasures of our life, we have felt it happen. Mostly when we didn't concoct it or plan it.  It happens more easily when we practice hygge, coziness, connectedness and contentment. 

But, there can be some thought traps that prevent us from GIVING OURSELVES PERMISSION to enjoy the simple pleasures in our life. 

A big thought trap feeling like you can't approve of your life. This is the situation where you say ‘if I enjoy this, then I am basically saying I approve of it, but how can I approve of something I want to change?”

However, acceptance is the first step to contentment. 

The steps to shift back into enjoyment when the shine wears off:

variety, do the same thing in a new way appreciation, Oprah and science agree

A problem we have with showing appreciation is it can sometimes be misconstrued as naivety. But finding appreciation is still seeing the VALUE in things/people/experiences

We have this underlying program that says 'if my enjoyment is gone, the value is gone' and then we treat it as so. 

Side note: if you are decluttering your home, I encourage you to keep doing this. Simplifying your space is a way of honouring the value of things and your space. 

It all started with a bar of soap, making a conscious effort to appreciate this soap every single time I used it. 

If we can do this with soap, imagine how much enjoyment we can savour from our actual lives. 

LINKS Read the blog post version of this episode (right here)

The study on variety and appreciation (read it)

Hygge Episode 38 (listen to it)

Life on Purpose Academy (learn more)

The all or nothing webinar (RSVP here)

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Today’s bonus episode comes after I showed pictures of my pantry on Instagram and mentioned love languages and got a lot of comments about it. 

While we're in isolation, my wonderful husband, when he's home from work for the week, has been doing the grocery shopping and the meal prep while I work. But when he puts away the groceries, he does not appreciate my pantry system at all. There's onions and potatoes together. There's nuts in the grain section. It's just madness!

I could get upset or I could choose to see it another way. 

Prefer to read this episode? See the blog post for it right here.  There are five main ways that we like to receive love and that we like to express love. The way you receive and express love can be different. Same thing goes for your spouse. Having different love languages means having different expectations of love. 

So often we tie our emotions to our expectations of our spouses. When we're outsourcing that job of meeting our emotional needs to others, it sets us up for disappointment. It also sets us up for not learning the skills to do it ourselves, for not taking responsibility for doing it ourselves. 

We can start showing up with a new frame of mind with new thoughts. We can start showing up from a place where we're meeting our own emotional needs already and it's not our spouse’s responsibility to do it. 

We can look at how our spouse is loving us and our family and not how we think they need to show us love or meet our criteria of love.  In marriage every single day, we need to look for the ways that someone is expressing their love to us. 

Links mentioned: Instagram post of the pantry (in this highlight reel)

The Five Love Languages for Children by Gary Chapman 

Life on Purpose Academy 

Learn more about life coaching one on one with Shawna

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I was asked to share some of our experience with kids doing chores.  I think it is a great subject because a lot of us want to raise kids who know the discipline and skill of chores, but we don't want it to be this big huge fight that ends up creating a tense and stressful situation for us and our kids. 

In this episode, I'm sharing our strategies, tips and mindset for how we handle kid chores in our home. It doesn't mean it is always happy, or easy - but we are focussing on the process more than the outcome and it makes a difference.

Some main points we covered:

we need to let go of the need to make our kids constantly happy  know you why - why do you want your kids to do chores? how we got started with Saturday Morning Chores how we have built on starting with one task introducing chores, delivery matters helping kids through the overwhelm motivating kids to do chores that fulfill their vision teaching the attitude and culture of chores in the home  enjoying it thought traps you might get stuck in (expecting perfect/obedience/happiness) falling into the comparison trap

You can read the full post right here.  Ways to connect The Facebook Community Instagram The Simple Saturdays Email    Get life coaching, from one mom to another! One on One coaching The Life on Purpose Academy    NOW AVAILABLE The Stress Lessons The Hard Things Lessons

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Raise your hand if you think dishes are dumb. And maybe you've googled 'disposable clothing for kids' in a desperate hope you could avoid the constant laundry. I know that there are women out there who are rocking chores, and there are women who aren't', and there are a lot of us between. 

We know that a clean house makes us FEEL peaceful and happy. But we also know that we have more motivation to click 'keep watching' than we do to get on the third load of dishes for the day. 

If this has been you, then this episode is for you. 

I've always been tidy, but I would definitely be someone to put off chores for far longer than necessary.  About a year ago I decided I wanted to become a 'CHORE DOER' and I life coached myself through the mindset and strategy to become someone who does chores without the emotional negativity I had attached to it over the years Life coaching myself to become a chore doer Here are the topics covered in this episode:

my scientific analysis of what Pinterest says will give you a clean home the mindsets that were holding me back  some real talk with myself about how I was spending my time (*cough, screen time) the strategies I used to build up the habit of chores in my daily life the stereotypes of motherhood that can hold us back with how we show up in our homes the importance of reclaiming the art of homemaking

If you find that doing chores is something does matter to you and you want to get UNSTUCK with something as simple as chores then get yourself a life coach to help you pay attention to the mindsets that hold you back and the strategy that will help you move forward and get the outcome you want!

-- CLICK HERE IF YOU PREFER TO READ THIS AS A BLOG POST -- Fun and helpful links Housewife Hacks (Pinterest board)

(Type 9) The Enneagram (blog post)

Mom Martyr (blog post)

Live your values (blog post and free worksheets)

Live your vision (blog post and free worksheets)

(one small habit) Strategies to put your goals into action (blog post)

Minimum baseline (episode 3)

15 practical tips to get stuff done (blog post)

Ways to connect The Facebook Community Instagram The Simple Saturdays Email    Get life coaching, from one mom to another! One on One coaching The Life on Purpose Academy    NOW AVAILABLE The Stress Lessons The Hard Things Lessons

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What would make your life better right now? 

It is a wonderful thing to long for change, we can listen closely to that part of us that sees room to explore another way, maybe a better way. 

We all have change in our lives - some of it is a change we don't want, some change we do want, some changes we want but we don't know how to accomplish. 

Our relationship to change can look a lot of ways but it will always be met by this hurdle: knowing and accepting what is in our POWER to change? 

THE MAKING CHANGE CHALLENGE

Today’s bonus episode is part of the free Making Change Challenge that I started in February. You can still join in at any time and get those lessons emailed right out to you. There’s a lesson emailed each week for four weeks.

This lesson is on what you can control, what you can influence and what is your concern. It's really important that we pay attention to the things we're trying to change, but we actually don’t have control over.

A huge hurdle many women have every single day is that we want to change things we really don't have control over. So I want to talk about this more today - how to come alongside things that we want to change. It's so important for us to know what we have control over and what we don't. 

And if we want to be proactive about making changes, we need to interrupt our brain.   Stephen Covey’s circles of concern and influence from his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People plus one more circle  - the circle of control, can help us distinguish what areas of our lives to focus on when it comes to change we can actually control.   Concern - Everything that concerns you or worries you goes into your circle of concern. Things like the education system, your nation’s laws, traffic, the health of your family, etc. The key is to become proactive, instead of reactive (expending lots of emotional energy in worry and anxiety). Redirect your energy into practical actions you could take to improve your situation. You then get these areas into your circle of influence. 

Influence - We cannot control what other people think, feel or do. But we can influence those things. If we are nagging, steamrolling, stonewalling or complaining, these are a very poor use of our influence.

If we want to influence change over things we can't control, all we have at our disposal is how we show up:

Ask how you can be supportive Praise efforts and reinforce positives rather than grumble on the negative Listen more in order to learn about their side Pick your battles Stay in your own lane and do my own work Change the subject Set boundaries Step back

Control -  We can come from a belief that everything is out of our control which makes it really hard to take responsibility for what is actually in our control - our mindsets and behaviours. Both our mindsets and habits can be stuck on autopilot. It’s hard to see where we can change because we don’t question our thoughts and our behaviours have become habits. However, you have the responsibility and right to take control of your thoughts and your actions.    On the flip side, you can feel stressed about managing all the things and all the people in all the situations and feeling like nothing you do works. In this case, you have to work on separating what you can control from what you can influence. And again, the only things you can control are YOUR thoughts and actions.    In the worksheets for this week, you're going to be led through listing the things that are in your circles of control, influence and concern. And there will be some places for you to reflect on how you've been showing up and acting when it comes to these different areas, and then setting a new direction on how you want to show up and act.    I hope that was helpful to you guys.   The Life on Purpose Academy is my monthly group coaching program for moms who want to show up for their actual lives.

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We have all been taking stock of what isolation life looks like in comparison on how our life used to look. Sometimes this experience can be painful and disempower us as we move through these days of staying at home. 

Going through a lot of things we 'don't want to' can really highlight the things that we DO want and crave. 

This episode is part two about the things I'm learning while in isolation and how I'm contrasting my current experience with what I want to move into in my post-pandemic life. 

This conversation will help you see some different mindsets and habits you might be having as a mom in isolation and give you some space to consider what it tells you about what you want your simple on purpose life to look like. 

In the last episode, we talked about this topic in the beauty, wellness, shopping, friendships, routines parts of life.  In this episode we cover:

Working from home, remember the days when we could spend part of our workday online window shopping kitchen appliances and creeping on the local MLS listings? Marriage in isolation, can your combined stress behaviours possibly level each other out? And why is my husband baking all this bread?? Motherhood in isolation, all I can say is Jesus Take The Wheel Mental health, denial is a good form of dealing with stress, until it's not 

FUN LINKS MENTIONED  The Enneagram - what it is and how it has helped my marriage How to have a weekly calendar meeting with your spouse Sibling Rivalry from Lessons From the Playroom - the episode that transformed how I view and handle the sibling spats amongst my kids Parenting books that changed my parenting (including How to Raise an Emotionally Intelligent Child) Episode 55 - Tips to move out of the stress response and into resilience   Ways to connect The Facebook Community Instagram The Simple Saturdays Email    Get life coaching, from one mom to another! One on One coaching The Life on Purpose Academy    NOW AVAILABLE The Stress Lessons The Hard Things Lessons

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I've been hearing this sentiment a lot lately: when we all get back to normal, decide what you want your 'normal' to be. 

Even if you are someone who pays attention to your life and tries to make it intentional and simple, this time in isolation has changed our routines and patterns enough that we are able to learn new things about how we had been showing up for our lives. 

In these next two episodes, I am going to run through the different areas of my life that I am paying attention to right now. In terms of how I am showing up during COVID isolation and what I mindsets/learnings I want to bring with me into my post-pandemic life. In this episode, I talk about

Routines, is it worth keeping Saturday morning chores and Friday Night Treats? Beauty, is anyone else still wearing the good eyeliner with their sweats? Wellness, the truth as told by my FitBit Shopping, is isolation a good time to buy a bra to replace the one you have been wearing almost daily for the past five years? Homemaking, if a mom cleans a bathroom while in isolation and her kid pees on the floor five minutes later, did she even clean the bathroom? Friends, are you sitting around wondering why nobody is texting you? Or are you part of all the group chats and zoom calls?

The FUN LINKS! Scheduling your day with kids at home (read it here, listen to it here)

Dirty Hair, Don't Care (if you are interested in weaning your hair off daily shampoos)

My favourite dry shampoo (see My Faves, under 'Lady Stuff')

The Ordinary Retinol Serum (the price point is so great!), (also in My Faves under Lady Stuff) Scarcity Mentality (read it here, listen to it here)   Tips on getting things done (read it here)   Ways to connect The Facebook Community Instagram The Simple Saturdays Email    Get life coaching, from one mom to another! One on One coaching The Life on Purpose Academy    NOW AVAILABLE The Stress Lessons The Hard Things Lessons

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What day is it anymore? We don't know. But we know we are hungry.....probably...I'm pretty sure. Or bored. Maybe. What day is it again?

Imagine this conversation being had by every person in your home. Cause our brain is melting a little bit without some sort of schedule and agenda. 

Rather than stay in this fog of wiping chip crumbs off our devices and smelling which sweats are clean enough to wear, perhaps it might help to give your day some framework that works for you and your kids at home.

After all, isolation has created this blank space that is being filled with homeschooling (crisis schooling), meals on repeat and tiger king memes. Let's take command of things we CAN control, like when snacks happen and when we binge-watch tv.  controlling the things you CAN!, like Olaf said, and maybe Jesus, definitely Steven Covey. 

Here are some tips on how to schedule out your daily routine in a way that works for you and your family. 

Make the mega list Theme your days Apply a framework, as vague or specific as you like Leave wiggle room Pay attention to what isn't working, trial and error Include your kids The boredom busters Make your own plans too Mom!

You can read this all as a full blog post right here. 

Links mentioned Dude Perfect on Youtube

Mega list of simple easy fun to have with your kids (that are learning opportunities and games)

Family rhythms

The Life on Purpose Academy - My monthly group life coaching program for moms who want to show up for their lives with more peace, presence and purpose. 

Want to message me? Find me on Instagram or respond to a Simple Saturdays email (sign up for those right here).

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I've had requests to talk about resilience and endurance during this time where moms are home with their kids in isolation. 

ENDURANCE Endurance is responding to stress for a duration of time. We can endure a certain amount of stress but eventually we burn out.  RESILIENCE Then we turn to resilience: the ability to bounce back from stress.

I think this is the place a lot of us moms are in right now. 

We have endured the first two weeks of isolation and now we realize that this is how things will stay for a while. Now we need to move out of stress mode and into a more intentional mode.  Resilience has three steps: Recover How can you take care of yourself rather than comfort yourself? (self-care vs self-comfort) Recenter What are your values and how can you make a plan for yourself?

The importance of compassion and acceptance

Gifts in Disguise from The Usable Life by Leslie Broseh

Family Culture (blog post and worksheets)

Live your Values (blog post and worksheets)

Tips to schedule a daily plan for your family during isolation Re-enter With awareness and support

Be a team with yourself, with your partner, with your family, with your community

The episode on Family meetings   (blog post)

NEXT STEPS The Making Change Challenge

The Life Evaluation Quiz

The Life on Purpose Academy

GET CONNECTED Instagram

Facebook Group

Simple Saturdays Email

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Stepping back to look at your anxiety from a life coaching point of view and tools to help you accept and work through it. Advice from a life coach and mom of three.

What is anxiety? What causes it? The way we react to it, and how it makes the struggle even harder How can we react to it instead:

acknowledge it is there  accept that it is with you, without running off with it calm the nervous system unpack the mental narration unburden the mental clutter decide how you want to show up (with your own values) start paying attention to what is in your control and what is not

Mentioned in this episode Colleen from Lemon Thistle

A Minute to Be Mindful (free pdf of mindfulness questions)

Episode on being mindful in marriage

Brain Dump

Live your Values (free worksheets)

Live your Vision (free worksheets)

The Making Change Challenge

The Freebies Library

John Mayer IGTV, The Gentle Hours (the first 15 minutes and last 5 minutes are packed full of great insight on anxiety)

The Life on Purpose Academy (read more and sign up for the quick information session on March 27th)

Find me on Instagram  Join the Simple Saturdays email (bi-weekly email of encouragement, tips and ideas)

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Think back on this past week, what kind of memories do you have from your motherhood experience?

I recently listened to Meik Wiking talk about the Art of Making Memories and it got me thinking about how we treat our memories and how they can impact our motherhood experience in positive or negative ways. 

Full transcript at the bottom of this post. 

RELATED LINKS Read this episode as a blog post

When did I stop enjoying my kids (podcast episode) (blog post)

Life on Purpose Workbook

The Perfect Moments Project

Posts on hygge

The Art of Making Memories

Meik Wiking on the Ultimate Health Podcast Episode 330

How we view ourselves

Mom Martyr

Mom on Purpose Posts

the Life on Purpose Academy (monthly life coaching membership)

Sign up for Simple Saturdays

The Simple on Purpose Facebook community

Simple on Purpose on Instagram

Studies related to this episode:

https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/remember-bad-times-better-than-good1.htm

https://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/m_blog/we-change-our-memories-each-time-we-recall-them-but-that-doesnt-mean-were-l

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4254527/

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. This is your weekly podcast where I remind you that you have enough who are not that you do enough to just show up for the life you have and just enjoy the life before you.

For those of you who are new here, welcome. I am a mom of three living in small town Canada. I am a minimalist, a life coach. And I've been writing at simple on purpose.ca for a number of years now, talking all about simplifying your home and simplifying your life and showing up for your life.

As many of you have experienced, it's just been a weird week, hasn't it? Like, we are also at Spring Break here. So the kids are home, we are doing renovations. So my office is kind of spread out throughout the house. I'm recording in my bedroom right now with some different equipment. And we're all kind of watching to see what happens with the Coronavirus and watching the news, watching the world around us and staying home.

And for some of us like our family. Staying home comes naturally. We do it often, we live really simply. But for some that can feel really uncomfortable. You want to get out there you want to do stuff that's kind of the way you've lived. So if this is the opposite, I can really appreciate how panicky that must feel and how stressful that must feel. And I don't want to turn this podcast episode into another narration on how we're dealing with it and how the world should deal with it. Because we're hearing enough of that. What I really want to talk about today is memories, making memories and the kind of memories that we're making in motherhood. And I think it still fits with the changes that we're going through and the way that we have to show up right now in these difficult days that we have this unique experience that will be a memory at the end, it will be something we look back on and remember, and how do we want to remember that.

So as many of us moms know, we have had seasons of parenting that have been hard and maybe even painful. Like I can think about just being at home with three kids under four and the hard days, the stressful days managing babies and toddlers, and maybe going on a road trip and being emotionally scarred for life by that. And now that the kids are older, they're five, seven, and my oldest just turned nine.

There are still days where I am just so overwhelmed. Like they're fighting with one another. There's always toothpaste in the sink, always like what kind of people are we raising. And for some reason, out of all the Winter Gloves we bought this year, and we bought many, there's only the right hand the left, I've set up a box of right hand gloves, and touques. This is life though.

But throughout my parenting years,

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A look at the before and after of how minimalism changed my marriage, my homemaking and my life. 

In the last episode (#51) I shared specifically how minimalism changed my motherhood. 

IN THIS EPISODE

How minimalism has changed my marriage: respect + responsibility, shared vision for our home, being at home

How minimalism has changed my homemaking: more manageable, better 'flow' for homemaking, calmer, reclaimed my role as Homemaker

How minimalism has changed my life: more proactive. doing things I enjoy, more mindful, more secure, becoming the editor of my life. 

READ THE FULL POST HERE

THE STEPS THAT GOT ME HERE (relevant links)

(type nine reference) What is the Enneagram 

Life on Purpose with Conor

Bring hygge into your everyday life

Organization mistakes I made 

the Life on Purpose Page

Identity Clutter

the Simplify Your Home Page

I stopped calling myself a lazy mom

The quickest way to simplify your life

The perfect moments project

Why minimalism works at changing your life

OTHER LINKS  Instagram 

the community Facebook Group

Sign up for Simple Saturdays here

Sign up for the Making Change Challenge here

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What is different in my mothering since I have decluttered my home.  A reader (Hi Melissa!) asked me to share on this topic. In this episode I'll share FOUR WAYS minimalism has changed my motherhood. 

(In the next one I'll share how it has changed my marriage, homemaking and life). 

IN THIS EPISODE

Weird things I am googling: fancy coffees, hot 90s country, celebrity family trees, the contestants from extreme makeover and currency inflation

How minimalism has changed my mothering: a family culture of creativity vs consumption, being a mom who does stuff, creating their childhood home, having space to DO LIFe together, making memories instead of buying more stuff. 

READ THE FULL POST HERE

THE STEPS THAT GOT ME HERE (relevant links)

The habit of consumption

Family culture

On being a mom who tries new things

Restless in motherhood

Basement playroom BEFORE + AFTER

Fun family stuff

Giving experiences instead of gifts

What happened when I took half my kids' toys away

OTHER LINKS  Vitamin water (on my faves page)

The Joy of Less (linked in this post on mindsets to shift for decluttering)

Instagram 

the community Facebook Group

Sign up for Simple Saturdays here

Sign up for the Making Change Challenge here

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This is a super FUN episode! 

I asked the FB group and Instagram friends for the topics they want to hear me talk about on the 50th episode. I have a couple of great topics I'll be sharing on today. 

The first, and major one, is the topic of things I have done as a mom that I never expected to do.

I think we all have those 'WHAT IS MY ACTUAL LIFE??? moments' as moms where we are wiping up pee with our sock and rolling out to the grocery store with a head full of kid barrettes.  So, I rolled through a lot of these moments in my own years of mothering smaller kids. 

I was also asked to talk about CHEESE, so I share a few of my fave ways to eat my fave cheeses. 

Here are the links I've mentioned in the episode: Style for the reluctant mom

That time I took away half of my kids' toys

What moms of toddlers need to hear

God's grace through difficult parenting 

Mom on purpose

My c-section and the feelings I was ashamed to admit

A mom no matter what (for the mom who has had a hard labour, delivery and early years in motherhood)

Fun stuff to do with kids

My fave cheesy biscuit recipe

The Simple on Purpose Community Facebook Group

Instagram

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Change will always be part of our lives. Whether we want it, don't want, know what to do with it, or how to make the next step - we are always faced with change in and around us. 

So how can we move from feeling like a victim, or stuck, or confused - to being proactive with how we show up and handle change in our lives?

The growth mindset is something that can really impact our ability to embrace and learn from the change in our lives.  When we can spot where we might have the opposite (fixed mindset) we can start to see the ways our MINDSET is limiting our ability to move forward. 

Read the blog post version of this episode right here. 

THE MAKING CHANGE CHALLENGE

This episode is part of a lesson from the Making Change Challenge.

If you want to join and get the 4 weekly lessons and worksheets, then simply sign up here. 

THE FACEBOOK GROUP

If you want to join the Simple on Purpose community, click here - and make sure to answer the entry questions. 

INSTAGRAM

Want to send me a message? Or see my laundry piles and thoughts on hospitality and Netflix shows? Then find me on Instagram 

THE LIFE EVALUATION QUIZ

Use this quiz to help you find the ONE AREA of your life to start paying more attention to and focus your energy on being a #changemaker in this area.

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How to be brave with your life when you a mom who sometimes goes a whole day before realizing your shirt is on inside out. 

Welcome to the Simple Saturdays Podcast.

I’m Shawna, mom of three living in small-town Canada. I have been blogging for about seven years on my journey to simplify my home and life - and to live my life on purpose.  I have been writing about the journey and life coaching other women who want to show up for their lives with more purpose, passion and peace. 

Today we are talking about how to show up for your life, and we are in Part 4, Being brave with your life

BE BRAVE WITH YOUR LIFE This is step THREE in showing up for your life (see the entire series here)

LIFE WITHOUT BRAVERY When we aren’t living with bravery we feel this discomfort of not living a life that is inline with our values, with who we want to be. 

To know your personal values, use these free worksheets

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE BRAVE? Social media may have given us a shinier image of what bravery is. But there is as real quiet, messier grit to it. 

DEFINITION OF BRAVERY The consistent forward motion in doing what is right, against resistance. 

HOW TO BE BRAVE You can’t just give yourself affirmations, you need new tools that allow your heart and mind to show up with bravery. 

You need: Direction 

Commitment/Ownership

Challenge the autopilot

Support 

Humility

Integrity

Compassion

Hope/Faith/Trust

Willingness

WHAT ARE SIMPLE WAYS YOU CAN BE BRAVE TODAY?   LINKS MENTIONED Show up for your life STEP ONE (Pay Attention)

Show up for your life STEP TWO (Listen Closer)

‘Do the opposite’ Instagram post

Life on Purpose Workbook 

Live your values free worksheet

Live your vision free worksheet

Future Self  episode 21 (time stamp 8:45)

Mindful Marriage episode 29 (time stamp 7:38)

Wear lipstick today (on Fashion and Feeling Like You Are Too Much)

Simple Saturdays Email Newsletter SIGN UP HERE

The Simple on Purpose Community Facebook Group (please answer the entry questions)

The Reader Feedback Survey

HEADS UP In the next couple weeks, the Simple Saturdays podcast will be renamed to Simple on Purpose - in order to differentiate it from the Simple Saturdays email newsletter

Email Shawna here

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Want to live life with more purpose? 5 years ago we stumbled upon our first 'life on purpose' conversation and since then we spend time each New Year to talk about how the year went and what we want in the year to come.  

I asked Conor if we could have some of this conversation in front of the microphone and share it on the podcast. . . . 

Things we covered on this episode: How Life on Purpose has changed for us over the years

Reflecting on the goals we have had over the years

The experience of using the Life on Purpose workbook last January 

Reviewed our home and family vision mottos from the past year

Discussed a few priorities we are setting for the year ahead for our home and family life

HOME Our home vision for 2019 was 'less piles, more renoing'

How decluttering has changed our space and home

His decluttering process with the kids' toys (as requested by our 8 year old)

FAMILY Our family motto for 2019 was 'be a family that is present and proactive'

Our plans for our family this summer

Being a 'yes' parent

PLANNING TOGETHER The power of planning together

Who is the natural action-taker in the relationship (hint, not the type nine!)

The surprising reason Conor agreed to start this process with me five years ago

How to take a simple step to get started with planning life on purpose together with your partner

Helpful Links That first time we sat down for Life on Purpose conversations on NYE 2015

Our basement decluttering before and after

Enjoying our kids 

More on the hard times of marriage

Live your vision worksheets and live your values worksheets

Life on Purpose workbook (amazon.ca | amazon.com)

Join the Simple on Purpose community Facebook Group

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Do you long to be more present, more mindful, more intentional in your life? A major step in this is listening to your life, to your heart and to others in your life.

This is the third part of the SHOW UP FOR YOUR LIFE SERIES

Step one: Pay attention

Step two: Listen closer

Step three: Be brave

Today we are talking about:

what it means to LISTEN to your life, to those around you, to your heart how to assess the listening landscape of your home and family seek first to understand, then to understand when you feel like nobody listens to you things that keep us from listening well

See the full post here. 

DO THE LIFE EVALUATION HERE

Books or products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and take action I will be compensated at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products I love or feel would benefit your simple, on purpose life. LINKS MENTIONED The Untethered Soul

7 Habits of Highly Effective Families

Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child

John Gottman's 'bids for connection'

Enneagram 101

The Life on Purpose workbook

The Life Evaluation 

Instagram 

Join the Simple Saturdays email newsletter

Life Coaching with Shawna

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Dear mama, do you feel like you are on autopilot, overwhelmed, and losing passion for your life? How would it change things if you decided to SHOW UP FOR YOUR LIFE? You know, the life you DO have. 

I want to give you some guidance and strategies to help you do this. 

This is PART TWO to the Show Up For Your Life Series. 

In the first part, we talked about what it means to show up for your life, how to know if you are doing it and what it looks like.  There are three steps to showing up for your life:

pay attention

listen closer

be brave

Today we are talking about paying attention.

To read the full post transcript, go here. 

LINKS MENTIONED The Life on Purpose workbook

The Life Evaluation 

Instagram 

Join the Simple Saturdays email newsletter

Life Coaching with Shawna

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From one mom to another, showing up for our life is the hard work of being present, proactive and purposeful. 

I'm sharing my journey in showing up for my own life and giving you steps and insights to use that will help you SHOW UP FOR YOUR LIFE. 

Read the full post here on Showing Up For Your Life

What does it mean to show up for your life? It means being responsible

It means being active and not passive

It is more than just 'productivity'

It is about living in line with who you are and what you want

Where can you show up for your life?

Showing up for yourself Showing up for your partner Showing up for your kids/family Showing up for your friends Showing up for your world

Why is Showing Up Hard?

it calls us to engage it calls us to step up it calls us to be seen it calls us to challenge how we love it takes practice

LINKS MENTIONED Subscribe to Simple Saturdays

Marriage [When they tell me I'm lucky to have him] 

I stopped enjoying my kids [blog post] [podcast episode]

Plan your day

Workbook bonuses (sign up if you have purchased a Life on Purpose workbook)

My Faves List

Find me on Instagram @simpleonpurpose.ca

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Do you want to simplify your Christmas?  We're talking about strategies to both simplify Christmas and make it a special season for you and your family. This is part two of a two-part episode on this topic.

Missed part one? Listen to Simplify Christmas (gifts, decor, mindsets). Episode 42 Simplify Your Christmas (kids, clutter, traditions, hosting, festivities) Kids We feel this tension of longing to make a magical Christmas and spoil our kids, while being mindful of the money, the excess and the culture of entitlement we might be contributing to. We try to consider the type of culture we want to create in our family when it comes to gifts. The excess from others We worry about the influx of gifts from friends and family. On the other side of this, is a gift-giver who longs to express their love and their love language might be gifts. They are still trying to show up and love you and your family and we can always be more open to the different ways people are expressing love to us. Focus on quality gifts over quantity I like the four gift rule (something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read). It is also satisfying to buy them toys that encourage engagement rather than just entertainment. Hosting Make hosting more about sharing life together and focussing on what is happening for them rather than all your own anxieties. Plan for the things that will be stressful for you (meals, activities, cleaning). Festivities We don’t have all the time, money and energy, so we have to choose how we spend it. Bring it back to your values and vision for the season and choose the things that are most in line with that. You can’t do everything, so choose what is the best for this year. All of these topics are covered in the Simple Christmas Planner After all, this is why I made it. To be a roadmap through how to simplify your Christmas, and how to identify and make Christmas a season that you and your family long to have. I know many of you have got your copy already—and some of you have printed off the pages that will best serve you. Whether you use it all, or the parts you need, I think the biggest benefit is having one space to walk through it all—and come back to it next year. Links mentioned:

Why and How to Make Unique Christmas Traditions for your Family The 'Not-Enough' Mindset. Episode 40 Our Minimalist Family Home: Basement Before and After The Simple Christmas Planner

Simple on Purpose Community Since there has been interested in starting a community group for the Simple on Purpose readers I’ve set up our community Facebook group. BUT, ONLY JOIN IF you want to be engaged in the conversations. In the spirit of keeping your life simple, don’t add another Facebook group to your digital life if you are just going to sit on the sidelines and not take part. If you are ready to join in, then we would love to chat with you there! TO SEND IN YOUR QUESTION/TOUCH BASE WITH ME Simply reply to the Simple Saturdays email, message me on Instagram, message me on Facebook, or email me here.

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What issues do you have when you attempt to simplify Christmas? I asked this question in the Facebook group and on Instagram and was sent so many thoughtful questions—which tells me that I have the best readers, women who can feel the changes they want to make and see it right there and will take steps to get there! This is part one of a two-part episode addressing these issues.

Simplify Your Christmas (Mindsets, Gifts, Decor) Christmas stress + expectations Christmas may have been magical as a child, but now we are adults and we feel the stress of all the activities, gifts, budgets, travel, etc. Just like we work at living our LIFE ON PURPOSE, we can get mindful and make a plan to have our CHRISTMAS ON PURPOSE. Planning is so important because it lets you make mindful decision ahead of time, so all that mental and prep work is done and you can just show up and enjoy the special days ahead. Gifts What sorts of expectations do you have when it comes to gift-giving? VS What are your values with gifts, what do gifts mean to you? When you are looking at your gift lists and thinking of what to buy people, it can help to consider how you want to express your love to them. How can you make them feel seen? Decor Christmas decor should be whatever you like. If you don’t know what you like, make a vision board on Pinterest and look for themes. Have/keep/buy decor that you LOVE and have room for.

Listen to part two of Simplify Your Christmas. Links mentioned:

My Faves The Simple Christmas Planner

TO SEND IN YOUR QUESTION/TOUCH BASE WITH ME Simply reply to the Simple Saturdays email, message me on Instagram, message me on Facebook, or email me here.

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Overwhelm in motherhood is often part of the role. There is so much to keep track of, manage, plan for, do. 

When we feel overwhelmed we often think we are doing something wrong, or we need to try harder, or our life is just too hard. 

Often the overwhelm causes us to stress and act from this stress response which gives us a negative outcome in our lives and homes. 

But overwhelm is a FEELING we have about the mental clutter in our brain. So, what do we do about the mental clutter?

We need to lay it out, sort through it and make decisions on what to do next. 

FOUR STEPS TO DEAL WITH OVERWHELM

Calm your nervous system Unpack and inventory 

• link- How to do a brain dump

Prioritize like you mean it

• links - Knowing Your Values free worksheet Knowing Your Vision free worksheet When you don't know what you want out of life (podcast episode 32)

Take Action

SIMPLE CHRISTMAS PLANNER

Over the past few years, I have shared the Simple Christmas Series to help you prepare for Christmas (everything from gift-giving, to advent, to party food). I am taking this information and giving it legs so you can put it INTO ACTION. 

The Simple Christmas Planner will be released in the next two weeks. It will take you through the mindsets, expectations, simplifying, gift lists, planning and preparing the Christmas that YOU WANT for you and your family! Stay tuned to the Simple Saturdays email for more info!

Subscribe to the Simple Saturdays email

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In this episode we're talking about the 'not-enough' mindset. AKA how to spot a scarcity mindset and shift it to an abundance mindset.

The 'not-enough' mindset believes there is not enough to go around Not enough...

Money Time Food Energy Attention Readers Friends Spotlight Praise Etcetera

'Not-enough' mindset says if they have some, there must be less in the world for me Scarcity mindset also believes things need to be 'right' to be acceptable and it puts us in a victim mentality. In contrast to the scarcity mindset is the abundance mindset Here are some ways to see when a scarcity mindset is taking place of an abundance mindset.

Feeling jealousy/comparison vs celebrating others and yourself Feeling worry/fixation vs being present and peaceful Getting overwhelmed/burnt out vs managing your energy and making time for rest Hustling/Hoarding vs setting healthy boundaries and limits for yourself Complaining/Gossiping vs having an open mind and speaking positively Feeling discontented/frustrated vs acknowledging where you are growing and moving forward

What an abundance mindset offers I am enough.

There is enough.

If I don't get this—it wasn't for me.

Life happens for me not against me. Abundance mindset allows us to see our present life with gratitude, to trust in ourselves, and to bring peace into our relationships. If scarcity mindset is something you struggle with and you would like more guidance on it, schedule a free 30-minute life coaching session with me and I will help you walk through it. Learn more about life coaching with me. Links mentioned:

Simple Saturdays newsletter sign up The Perfect Moments Project The 'Not-Enough' Mindset (How to Spot a Scarcity Mindset and Shift it Into an Abundance Mindset) [blog post]

Simple on Purpose Community Since there has been interested in starting a community group for the Simple on Purpose readers I’ve set up our community Facebook group. BUT, ONLY JOIN IF you want to be engaged in the conversations. In the spirit of keeping your life simple, don’t add another Facebook group to your digital life if you are just going to sit on the sidelines and not take part. If you are ready to join in, then we would love to chat with you there! TO SEND IN YOUR QUESTION/TOUCH BASE WITH ME Simply reply to the Simple Saturdays email, message me on Instagram, message me on Facebook, or email me here.

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Hygge is a Danish word describing the atmosphere of connection, contentment and coziness. 

Once I had decluttered my house, I felt really drawn to bringing hygge into my home and life. 

In reading about it, I learned that there are some differences between hygge and minimalism. Knowing the difference helps me see where I am directing my intentions on how I set up my space and life. 

In this podcast I'm covering:

How hygge compares with minimalism (read the full post here) Three mindsets to bring hygge into your everyday life (read the full post here) Thirty ways you can hygge in the colder months (see the list here)

I am basing a lot of my discussion on hygge from these books:

Any books or products recommended here may include referral links to Amazon. If you click through and take action I will be compensated at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products I love or feel would benefit your simple, on purpose life.

The Book of Hygge by Louisa Thomsen Brits

The Little Book of Hygge by Miek Wiking

To get connected:

Join the facebook community group

Share your thoughts on Instagram

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Today on the podcast we're talking about visualization (it's really wild) and three mindset shifts to help you declutter your home. I'm also giving you a sneak peek of my upcoming masterclass!

Simple Life Visualization. The practice of sitting there, thinking about what you want, imagining how it feels and smells and looks, getting very detailed, running yourself through the space and process of being there. All of these things are wiring new thought patterns in your brain and your brain thinks they are legit! VISUALIZATION WORKS AT CHANGING OUR BRAIN’S THOUGHT PATTERNS SO when you are preparing to DO THE THING whether it is run a race, or have turkey with your crazy family, or declutter your basement—you get more success at figuring out HOW to do and more success achieving your vision BECAUSE your brain has started laying the groundwork. Action for today Science is telling us that visualization is your mental dress rehearsal that increases your likelihood of achieving the outcome you visualize. The main reason it works is because we FIND WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR. When we are preparing for the worst, that is all we will see. When we are preparing for the best then our brain looks for evidence that it is true.

So often we go about our day getting anxiety over the worst possible outcomes that COULD HAPPEN. We are still using visualization but in a negative way. So, take something in your future and consider the best possible outcome you want from it. Then start to use visualization to imagine and practice it. THREE MINDSETS TO SHIFT BEFORE DECLUTTERING YOUR HOME I think what we miss when we look at checklists of things to remove from our home is the MINDSET that is required to make it effective.

We need to investigate what we think about getting started, why we want to do it, how much believe we have in ourselves to accomplish it and so on.

In my experience with life coaching women on this topic and decluttering my own home—I think there are three mindsets that can be very common hurdles to getting started with decluttering. I want to break down some of them here and offer you a mindset shift you can try for each one. 1. Decluttering is a chore I don't have time for In the past, I had always viewed decluttering as a chore. It was work to go through all those boxes in the basement, and there was other ‘more important’ work I could do instead. So it wasn’t getting done. I had no motivation to declutter until I had a vision and a ‘why’ for myself.

My ‘why’ was this drive to rehaul how I was living in my home with my ‘stuff’. My ‘why’ was to create an atmosphere in my home where my kids had SPACE to play, create, imagine. My ‘why’ was to create a place that was inviting to anyone who came to our door. mindset shift: decluttering is an action i take to create the space i want to live in 2. I already have enough of everything, I don’t really need to declutter. When I started decluttering and was face to face with how much stuff I had bought that I didn’t like or didn’t need or never have used – I got this achy knot in my stomach. All that money that I spent, all the time I spent shopping, all those things I thought I needed.

I have more than enough. I have enough clothes (that I never wear), and kitchen gadgets (I never use), and books (I never read), and why do I have like seven half-used conditioners and four curling irons in the bathroom??…you get the idea. mindset shift: decluttering will help me determine what i do have enough of and where there is excess i can let go of 3. I'm a victim of my home When I started decluttering, my big goal was to clear space, and then once that space was clear it felt like a clean slate to create the home we wanted. We have invested in the long game of decluttering and creating spaces that we love and our kids love. I will say now, that I truly love my home (the same home I was so eager to move out of so many times).

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Do you tell yourself that you suck at organizing? And you will never get organized?

Being mindful of the story we tell about ourselves of the story we tell ourselves about how we suck at organizing - and being mindful of the mistakes we might be making that trip us up. 

I have decluttered my home and worked on finding systems, routines and ways to organize our home that doesn't require me to buy one of everything from IKEA and have hourly training sessions with my family on how to use the pantry. 

Get the TOP TEN MISTAKES CHEATSHEETS     LINKS Five Common Mistakes We Might Make When Organizing Our Home View the full blog post here (with pictures I talked about of our closet, the hutch)

Instagram Stories (MomOffice Stories)

The Simple on Purpose Community Facebook Group

Instagram

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Ways to simplify momlife is part two of the wrap up for the You Can Simplify Your Life series.

Did you miss part one? Listen to 5 things that make my life simpler. Simple Life There are so many demands on our resources (time, space, energy, money)—this makes it feel like our life is not simple. But how do we do that as moms? How do we manage our own resources when everyone is demanding them 25 hours a day? The best way to simplify your life is to find what feels simple TO YOU. BUT, I know that as part of that process it is helpful to get ideas on how other moms are simplifying.

So I will share some of the things I've done to simplify momlife and maybe some of them will work in your own life. 6 Ways to Simplify MomLife

Taking time to slow down and be at home We will always think our lives are too busy when we feel like there isn’t enough time. If we fill our days going from place to place or chore to chore then we will feel the tension of living a life that has no time for the things we want and need. And we all need time to rest, and that time isn’t just given to us by some time fairy. We need to schedule in time to rest and recharge. Operating the household with a calendar and planner Planning is a game changer in motherhood! When I have a plan I feel in control, more relaxed and things get done that are supposed to get done. Knowing what needs to happen, preparing for it, and making sure everyone knows the plan makes my life a lot easier. Using technology to keep me on task I set calendar alarms for almost everything. From signing school forms at night to stops I need to make on the way to school pick up tomorrow, to a text message I want to make in a week. I put it all in my phone calendar and set two alarms to go off at different intervals so I don’t miss it. Limiting the number of extracurricular activities we have as a family I know this is a very personal issue so I am not saying that our way is right. This is what works for us, right now. I appreciate being at home with the kids after school and giving them downtime to play with the neighbourhood kids, and play lego, and read, and whatever. I know these days won’t always be here and they will be teenagers and we will be signing them up for ALL the activities. Keeping celebrations simple, but meaningful There are so many birthdays and holidays in a year that it can drain our resources fast to keep up a high level with each of them. But if we can keep them simple and thoughtful it feels much more manageable and purposeful. We can pay attention to what the best activity or experience or gift might be for someone and make them feel seen and special in so many ways. We don’t have to do what everyone else is doing. Here is your permission slip! Planning out the upcoming year/season I love doing this because it lets us get clear on where to focus our efforts, time and money. We can work together (“teamwork makes the dream work”) and because I know we will do it again next time, I don’t feel the pressure to DO ALL THE THINGS in one summer, or one holiday.

You can see all of these things are about planning how we will use our resources—they help me get very intentional about where I allocate my time, money, energy and space.

Simplifying your life and planning how to use your resources is also a way of being intentional with the years you have with your kids at home. It means asking what kind of family culture you want to have, what things you want to make sure are top priority for the years your kids are in your house, and still making space for you to live your life too. Simple on Purpose Community Since there has been interest in starting a community group for the Simple on Purpose readers I’ve set up our community Facebook group. BUT, ONLY JOIN IF you want to be engaged in the conversations. In the spirit of keeping your life simple, don’t add another Facebook group to your digital life if you are just going to sit on the sid...

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I wanted to wrap up my You Can Simplify Your Life series with things that make my life simpler.

Simple Life Living simple and on purpose is a very personalized thing. It means taking the time to find out what simple looks and feels like to you. It means setting your own vision and values and prioritizing your life/time/home/energy/money according to your vision and values.

When life is simpler we can SHOW UP AND ENJOY IT! These are things that make my life simpler and I hope there are some tips and strategies in there for you to try. 5 things that make my life simpler

Decluttering my space Clearing the clutter from my home allowed me see I could have control over how I use my space. I saw the benefits of creating space for the home life I wanted. Decluttering helped me learn where and how to take control and make space in my life too. Meal planning for me and my people Feeding myself well hasn’t come naturally and I’ve had to learn how to feed myself and my people, everyday, many times a day. I’m a big fan of planning what makes your life easier and meal planning makes my life easier. Creating a capsule wardrobe Mornings are easier when I have fewer clothes, because they are the clothes I love to wear and feel like myself in. Having buffer time in the mornings Mornings matter. I want to give everyone space and time to have a smooth morning where they have found the one sweater they are willing to wear, ate food, and where they feel emotionally ready for the day. Having a weekly rhythm for my family I really love family rhythms because they give me peace of mind that there is time and space for everything to happen this week. Also, it gives the kids a lot of security to know what is routinely expected of them and what to expect from us.

SIMPLIFYING IS WORTH THE WORK Simplifying is worth it because when our life feels simple, we feel in control. We don’t scramble around putting out fires, we feel like there is time and space for what we need and want in life. The Facebook group is live! If you are part of any Facebook groups you know they are a great place to ask questions, find support, share your wins and get accountability with your goals.

Since there has been interest in starting a community group for the Simple on Purpose readers I’ve set up our community Facebook group.

BUT, ONLY JOIN IF you want to be engaged in the conversations. In the spirit of keeping your life simple, don’t add another Facebook group to your digital life if you are just going to sit on the sidelines and not take part.

If you are ready to join in, then we would love to chat with you there! Links mentioned:

You Can Simplify Your Life Series Why Minimalism Works at Changing Your Life A Simple Hack to Make Meal Planning Easy 6 Unexpected Ways That Having Less Clothes Has Made Life Easier Family Rhythms + Free Worksheet Simple on Purpose Community

TO SEND IN YOUR QUESTION/TOUCH BASE WITH ME Simply reply to the Simple Saturdays email, message me on Instagram, message me on Facebook, or email me here.

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We're into part four of the You Can Simplify Your Life Series. Let’s take all this work and oozing self-awareness and make a plan on how to move forward.

Part Four of the YOU CAN SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE SERIES​

Read part one here Listen to part one here Read part two here Listen to part two here Read part three here Listen to part three here

Simple life Today we are also wrapping up the YOU CAN SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE series! I want to tell you what has worked for me and offer it to you as a way you might simplify your own life. You can include as many/as little waffles, ugly cries in the tub, and outlander episodes as you see fit! How to simplify your life, step by step 1. Clear the clutter Once I decluttered my home I started decluttering my life. I could do this BECAUSE space was now created for the home and life I wanted. What distractions and clutter need to be cleared out to make space for the life you want? 2. Prioritize how you will use your resources Use your life vision and values to be a compass and a filter for you in the choices you want to make about how to use your resources. Commit to those choices even when they are against the grain. 3. Plan things that make your life easier Becoming a mom made me see how much more in control I am when I have a plan for my day or week. When there is a framework of what is happening and how, then I can have more freedom to fill my time and energy with fun things. What can you plan that will make your life easier? 4. Set rhythms to get things done We are actually in control of how our day and our week flows, so make sure to put some intention into the rhythms you DO want in your life. 5. Small steps, on purpose I’ve learned that it is more effective and lasting to focus on the little steps you can make. Through minimum baseline (give yourself a small task you can’t say no to), and to doing one thing a day your future self will thank you for—you can slowly and consistently readjust your life course to your new destination. Start small and move along, on purpose. 6. Enjoy it. I will say this point until the day the good Lord calls me home to where streets are lined with waffles: It is not WHAT you do, it is HOW you do it! What matters most is HOW YOU SHOW UP!

If you simplify your life, declutter your home, print all the printables and check all the boxes but you are still complaining about your husband, grumbling about your life and stressed to the max by your kids, then what is this all even for? It is FOR YOU, so show up for it! I say this with love and understanding for what it is like to feel exhausted and frustrated and lost and messy. It is hard work to show up, with contentment and mindfulness. It takes a lot of work and practice. But it is always available to you!

If you want some guidance through showing up for your life in better ways that reach out for a quick life coaching consult call to see if we would be a good fit together. I have some spaces opening up for the fall.

Get the worksheets for PART FOUR of YOU CAN SIMPLIFY YOUR HOME

Links mentioned:

You Can Simplify Your Life Series Part One (blog post) You Can Simplify Your Life Series Part One (podcast episode 30) You Can Simplify Your Life Series Part Two (blog post) You Can Simplify Your Life Series Part Two (podcast episode 31) You Can Simplify Your Life Series Part Three (blog post) You Can Simplify Your Life Series Part Three (podcast episode 32) Identity Clutter Plan Your Day, Change Your Life A Simple Hack to Make Meal Planning Easier How to Plan Your Summer on Purpose Brain Dump, Kid’s Clothes Storage, Minimum Baseline to Change Babits. Episode 3 parenting books that changed my mothering, your future self, #mayonpurpose instagram challenge. episode 21 Pre-Coaching Consult

TO SEND IN YOUR QUESTION/TOUCH BASE WITH ME Simply reply to the Simple Saturdays email, message me on Instagram, message me on Facebook,

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When you don't know how you want to show up in your daily life you won’t ever feel like you are being the person you WANT to be. You live with this tension like things aren’t right—like you aren’t enough.

In part 3 of the You Can Simplify Your Life series we're pursuing life on purpose by working through what we want and deciding what kind of person we want to be along the way.

Part Three of the YOU CAN SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE SERIES​

Read part one here Listen to part one here Read part two here Listen to part two here

Simple style Follow #moms30for30 I am really enjoying the 30for30 style challenge this summer. I needed it to give me some reminders that 30 items is A LOT OF CLOTHES! I don't think I've worn all 30 yet and we are halfway through. I have been sharing my outfits on Instagram if you want to follow along. Simple life When you don't know what you want in life This portion is my favourite because this is what really propelled me and Conor to really start setting out a vision for the life we wanted. This is the process of setting out your vision and values.

I’ve been in this process for over five years, I life coach women on it, I think about it, I preach it, I wrote a book about it (the Life on Purpose workbook). WOMEN! FRIENDS! It is time to stop and ask yourself two things that will allow you to really start living the simpler, more purposeful life you crave. Question 1 WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE? Question 2 WHAT DO YOU WANT YOUR LIFE TO FEEL LIKE? When we don’t know these things then we are at the mercy of our autopilot life. Autopilot is that rut we are in of the same thoughts, actions, reactions, and feelings we have each day.

We aren’t working towards any bigger, empowering vision of the life we want to build into. We are just bobbing about in our daily life, hoping that our future self will somehow have it all figured out by then.

I know when I started to ask these questions about what I wanted and who I wanted to be, with three small kids all at home, it felt daunting. But I had come to this point where I felt restless with my life, I felt like I was just surviving, I was tired, and just overwhelmed by looking at all the amazing things other women were doing with their lives. Over my years of pursuing life on purpose, I feel it has three steps:

knowing what you want deciding what kind of person you want to be along the way making steps (from micro-steps to big goals) in that direction (we will cover this in PART FOUR!)

So let's get started today with the first two This past spring I launched a workshop to guide you through this process of KNOWING YOUR VISION AND VALUES. Many of you had asked me to bring it back, so I'm happy to relaunch the replay as a freebie to help you with this portion of the YOU CAN SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE SERIES.

This workshop is 45 minutes and it takes you through the entire vision and value setting process There are worksheets to follow along with or you can use the Life on Purpose Workbook This workshop is for those of you who are ready to TAKE THE TIME TO LISTEN TO YOURSELF The workshop includes time to actually put pen to paper so you will get the most out of it and end the session with your own values and vision laid out for you!

To get access to the workshop and the worksheets, ​simply fill in the form below.

Links mentioned:

#moms30for30 You Can Simplify Your Life Series Part One (blog post) You Can Simplify Your Life Series Part One (podcast episode 30) You Can Simplify Your Life Series Part Two (blog post) You Can Simplify Your Life Series Part Two (podcast episode 31) Getting Started with Intentional Living The Life on Purpose Workbook Parenting Books that Changed My Mothering, Your Future Self, #MayonPurpose Instagram Challenge, Episode 21 Choose Your Discomfort (Life Coach Advice on Making Uncomfortable Change in Your Life)

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What hurdles are we up against that make having a simpler life difficult? In my years of pursuing LIFE ON PURPOSE, and in my experience life coaching women, I know that there can be a lot of "WHY NOTs" that pop up for us. They tell us a lot about our own limiting mindsets and obstacles that hold us back.

Follow #moms30for30 I am so excited that over 30 women have joined the challenge to wear 30 items for 30 days and learn about their style and their clothes and mindsets in it all. Some of these women are just posting pictures in our message group, some are sharing on Instagram. Catch my Instagram stories to see my epic Mid-30s Canadian Mom Outfit Selfies (almost always featuring a basket of laundry in the background).

Today we will focus on PART TWO of the You CAN Simplify Your Life series with the 10 Reasons Why Your Life is Not Simpler

Read part one here Listen to part one here

Simple Life Many of us want to have a simpler life, but we don't. What hurdles are we up against that make this change hard? REMEMBER, whatever is sticking out for you as a possible reason, that you aren't doing anything 'wrong'. You are just doing what you have always done and that is your brain's goal: Efficiency! Think what you've always thought, do what you've always done, live on auto-pilot and conserve energy.

10 Reasons Why Your Life is Not Simpler 1. We are buying into the glorification of "busy" We live in a culture of busy that tells us (moms!) that if you aren't busy you are "lazy." I think it all comes down to our motives for "being busy." I love to turn to a tool like the Enneagram for this because the Enneagram is so focused on our inner motives. 2. We don’t know what we want The day I realized I didn’t want this hand-me-down pre-fabricated template of what a successful life looks like, it felt like my life was a blank canvas. How many of us know what we REALLY want from our lives? (We will talk about this more next part of this series!) 3. We don’t know how to start If you have thought a lot about simplifying your life, you have probably also met a lot of internal resistance. What reasons are popping up for you about why it’s not the "right time"? In order to start something you need to feel willing, ready and able. 4. We don’t know how to maintain it I am the first one to advocate for making list and plans, but maintaining ANYTHING also needs motivation and strategy to maintain. (We will dig into this more in the final part of this series.) 5. We aren’t showing up well Our life will never ever feel simple or be simple until we can show up well for it: with feelings that are proactive, positive, and present. In all my experience as an adult woman, wife, life coach, friend, and mom I feel that everything comes down to this one thing: how we show up. (I will talk about this more in Part Three.) 6. We are making a statement If we say we want to make a change, but we almost live in a way that is the opposite we are probably making a statement to our own inner beliefs or to the expectations of others. 7. We don’t think our resources are important or precious We look at all our resources through a lens of how "renewable" or "precious" they are to us. Every resource is yours to be a good steward of, which resource feels most neglected? 8. We can’t say no to others Things feel noble when we are someone who "puts others first," but all this serving can still be a form of striving for security and acceptance. 9. We can’t say no to ourselves I’m not talking about "putting ourselves first." I am talking about having self-control and showing up for ourselves to actually follow through on the actions we know we want—the ones that give us life instead of distracting us from life. 10. We don’t see that we DO have control When we become aware that we actually DO have control, we also become aware that nobody else will ever do this for us. It is our responsibility,

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Today's episode is part one of four about what simple living comes down to. It's a series about why we don’t have a simple life, how to determine what simple looks like to you and how to get started. By the way, I'm summarizing my post What Simple Living Really Comes Down To so if you want to dig into the details make sure to head over there once you're finished listening.

Do you want to join in a #moms30for30? Read more about them here, see the Instagram hashtag, and message me on Instagram if you want to join in!

What Simple Living Comes Down To When you hear the term "a simple life," what springs to mind?

I want to dig into WHAT IS simple living and how to know where your life is simple and where it isn’t. And, by the way, this isn’t all about moving the country, homeschooling and raising chickens. When you hear the term "a simple life" do you imagine a mom hanging laundry on the line and making homemade dinners foraged from her garden while her children read to each other in their screen-free home?

This might be an ideal simple life to some, but let’s just bust that myth right now. That's not simple for everyone and YOU get to decide what simple is. What Would Make Your Life Simpler? Pay attention to how you answer this. Simple living comes down to is this one thing: How we manage our resources. Resources

Time (your daily schedule, your family calendar, extracurricular activities, commitments, downtime, how do you TRULY spend your time?) Space (in your home, in your yard, in your cupboards, how is your space used?) Money (your regular household budget) Emotional energy (stressors, coping skills, mindfulness, self-awareness, relationships with others, relationship with yourself) Physical energy (running errands, driving people around, exercise, chores, social engagements, how do you fuel your body and how do you use your body?)

Resources are those things we only have so much of. They are those things that are also the currency of our daily lives. They allow us to show up, and be, and do. What we crave is called "simple" but really it means we get to USE OUR RESOURCES in the ways we DESIRE TO LIVE.

Simple living means removing the distractions and drains of our resources so we apply our resources to the life we truly want. why are we mismanaging our resources? So we can probably all see ways we that we are mismanaging our resources and left with not enough to live the life we want to live. I think there are a few reasons that lead up to this:

We don't see we ARE in control of our lives and our resources We aren't listening to ourselves about what we want in life We don't really know how to get what we want

In the coming weeks, we will dig into each of these points and walk through them together and hold hands and I'll whisper motivational messages to you. Yes, it will be meaningful and magical and hopefully, it will help you simplify your life. If you want to get deeper and journal about this (you are my people!), then download the freebie journaling exercise to help you unpack some of this and reflect on how you are using your own resources.

Links mentioned:

What Simple Living Really Comes Down To Til We Have Just Enough Stuff Identity Clutter (How Clutter Prevents Our Personal Growth) Our Minimalist Family Home: Basement Before and After Real Reasons Why You Can't Finish Decluttering The Life on Purpose Workbook What is the Life You Want? How to Get that Feeling (Why Values Matter + Free Live Your Values Worksheet)

TO SEND IN YOUR QUESTION/TOUCH BASE WITH ME Simply reply to the Simple Saturdays email, message me on Instagram, message me on Facebook, or email me here.

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Thanks for joining me for another Simple Saturday. In this episode, I'm talking about how we approach birthdays on purpose, the time my husband and I forgot our anniversary (we were camping), how to be mindful about what's happening in your heart and mind and strategies to implement when you want to go buy all new clothes.

Simple Family | How we approach birthdays on purpose This past week was my daughter, Lenayah’s 7th birthday.

I admire a mom who embraces the birthday theme, rents a space, and invites the whole class to come. I also have to respect the mom I am and know that this will turn me into a stress ball. But that is okay, we don't all have to do the same thing and I KNOW there are many ways I can make my kids feel celebrated and have a memorable birthday.

We aim to give our kids gifts that are experiences, something homemade or something simple and exactly what they are interested in. For my daughter this year, we are sending her to horse camp. And since we KNOW that gifts and crafts are her love language, we made her a wooden horse (#notacraftblogger) and bought her some Spirit play horses. She loved it all. It's how we approach birthdays on purpose. I know we are a bit against the norm when it comes to birthdays, and it is not to say our way is correct and others are wrong. This is the way that is right for our family and I want to give all moms freedom to birthday from a place of peace and purpose because that allows you to show up and truly celebrate your loved one more freely and passionately.

bethemomyouare

Simple Heart | Showing up in marriage means a truck load of mindfulness June is a very special month. It is the birth and marriage month of many friends. It is the birth month of Conor and Lenayah (birthdays on purpose). Also, it is our dating anniversary (15 years!) and our marriage anniversary (11 years). And it is when the peonies are blooming and we are contemplating if we will ever save up for air conditioning. How to be mindful about what is happening in your heart and mind This past week of us being on the road, camping and travelling with the kids have given me such underlying anxiety that it has been hard to enjoy the life in front of me. I could feel myself getting annoyed. This was me this week and I needed MINDFULNESS (I know it is a buzzword, but it is powerful) I had to take time alone and really drill down into what was happening in my brain. In fact, I had to coach myself. I asked things like:

What am I feeling? When did I start feeling it? What am I making it mean? Is it true? (Very helpful on a bad day) What am I trying to get out of this situation? (Our motives are sneaky!) How is it making me act? (Probably not in a way that serves you well) What do I really want the most? (What do I value in my marriage—use the vision setting prompts to help you with this) How can I shift my thinking to empower myself and how I show up right now?

If you are scared by this autopilot part of your brain that feels dark and musty and requiring some cleaning and restoration, know that you don’t need to run to therapy right now and fix it all. You just need to START WITH MINDFULNESS. Marriage is a topic that comes up with every single mom I coach, regardless of the other issues we are coaching on. If you want a free mini-session to work through a marriage struggle you are facing then book your call right here. Simple Style | How to love your summer wardrobe when you want to go buy all new clothes This past week I was packing for five days away. I put outfits in piles and put them into my bag. Then added a bit more, probably enough for double that now. I looked into my closet and realized I still lots left. I was taken back to the times I have done a #moms30for30 (30 items for 30 days) and how EVERY. SINGLE. TIME I re-learn that I do have so much already, I just need to get more creative with it. If you are feeling like your summer wardrobe needs t...

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Part of the reason I'm planning my summer on purpose is I'm working on my efforts to ENJOY MY KIDS. And when there is a season change I know I need to take a hot minute and plan out a structure that makes sure fun is happening without me feeling overwhelmed or behind the ball.

Ready to plan your summer on purpose? In this episode I'm sharing about the family rhythms we have in our house on a daily and weekly basis. I also have a worksheet for you! It will help you set rhythms for your family that are effective, fun and working towards the values and vision you have for your family. Simple Life | How to Plan Your Summer on Purpose My summer master plan is titled: “How To Summer With Kids and Enjoy This Time So You Aren’t Googling ‘How to petition for year-round school‘ After Two Weeks of Picking Up Popsicle Wrappers and Refereeing Sprinkler Fights.” Here's how I will put it into action without feeling like an understaffed kid’s camp director.

Get my kids' input.If it was up to me we would sit on the deck eating nachos and reading novels all summer—but I want them to have a summer they are excited about too. So we have been talking lots about what they want to do and I’ve been adding it to a big list of ideas. Then I’m gonna plan out the big things I know are happening.This includes: swim lessons, the time at Grandmas, and the big events and outings we have planned with my bestie or with Conor when he’s off work. Then I have random chunks of days left.What I’m going to try is to theme my days. I’m gonna probably have a craft day, library day, science day, hike day, a nothing day, and a food day where they get to think of something to make and we buy the stuff for it. So if I’m looking at my calendar, I know we are gonna do maybe 5-8 science experiments. I’ll pick some and the kids will pick some and I’ll get the stuff for it.

Simple Family | Family Rhythm Family rhythm is in the things you find yourselves doing each week; the routines, the activities, the rituals—all those things that now happen out of habit as a way of getting things done, or having fun, or unwinding.

They are actually quite important to a family and to your kids. They provide consistency, comfort, belonging, expectations and a flow of getting things done. The things we do most often are what matter the most. (Side note: did you know this is how you spell rhythm? I've been spelling it rhythym my whole adult life!) Free Coaching on Decluttering I am working on a course to take you through the evaluation, planning and doing to RECLAIM YOUR HOME.

I thought it would be so beneficial to add in some real coaching calls from people who are struggling with simplifying their space. So, I want to ask for volunteers of people who are willing to do a (free) 45 minute coaching call on these topics:

Someone who HASN'T STARTED decluttering yet, but they are ready to get serious about it and need some motivation/clarity to get started Someone who is IN the process of decluttering and is feeling stuck/need motivation/facing hurdles And someone who is DONE decluttering and ready for the next steps to simplify their life

I will accept a couple volunteers for each of these categories. The calls will be over SKYPE and will be recorded as part of course training material. You can remain anonymous and use a fake and fabulous made up name if you like. APPLY HERE FOR COACHING ON RECLAIMING YOUR HOME Links mentioned:

When did I stop enjoying my kids? (blog post) When did I stop enjoying my kids? (podcast episode) Awesome Summer List: 2019 Sorta Awesome podcast about theming your days A year of family meetings How to build the culture of your family Plan your day, change your life Family Rhythms worksheet

TO SEND IN YOUR QUESTION/TOUCH BASE WITH ME Simply reply to the Simple Saturdays email, message me on Instagram, message me on Facebook, or email me here.

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Have you spent time decluttering your home? Decluttering WILL be an emotional process because it means separating the life you want from the life you are building by default. Moreover, decluttering is emotional because your eyes are opened to where you have been living on default and also what it has cost you or cost the world around you. In this episode of Simple Saturdays I share how I reframed my view on decluttering's role as well as some great freebies from the Life on Purpose workbook.

Simple Home | Decluttering Here are 8 things I realized/learned/relearned from spending the year decluttering my family home:

The line between ‘enough’ and ‘excess’ is easily crossed I’ve wasted so much money I’m filling space for the sake of filling space I’ve made so much waste This is all just a distraction Life is still messy It is a mindset, not an end goal It leads to more

Simple Life | Life on Purpose Workbook I have some really great freebies I’m excited to share with you. To help you get started with setting out your LIFE ON PURPOSE, I took some of the content from the Life on Purpose workbook and condensed it into two starter worksheets. Links below. Links mentioned:

Harlem Globetrotters People Are Awesome 5-Minute Crafts I Decluttered My Home for a Year, Here is What I Learned Identity Clutter Life on Purpose workbook Why Values Matter (free worksheet) Why Vision Setting Matters (free worksheet) Working Through Unhappiness in Motherhood, Life Coaching Steps for Handling a Bad Day. Bonus Q+A Episode 25 Having Personal Goals and Dreams While Mothering Small Kids. Bonus Q+A Episode 26

TO SEND IN YOUR QUESTION/TOUCH BASE WITH ME Simply reply to the Simple Saturdays email, message me on Instagram, message me on Facebook, or email me here.

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In the last episode, I answered a reader question on feeling unhappiness in motherhood and gave life coaching advice on working through a bad day. (Find that here) In this episode, I will answer this great question: Right now I am struggling with motivation - for bigger goals for myself (and motivation in general). After I became a mom I had to shut down the BIG dreamer in me because it was taking away from me being able to be present and content with where I am now. So...it’s this conundrum...don’t want more than you can accomplish but want just enough that challenges you to stay motivated to grow and move towards those goals. If you had any input on this balancing act, I would sure appreciate it.   Links mentioned: Push and Pull of Motherhood (featured in Huffington Post) Swinging too far away from motherhood when you are trying to reclaim yourself 33 and Restless in Motherhood The first time we ever sat down and set out some vision for our life and family That time I decided to bring out the sewing machine Embroidering with my kids Enneagram 101 Facebook Instagram Email

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Answering a reader question: What you do when you feel like you want to cry, feel you're not doing what you plan to do? All your plans are a disaster? Your children are not listening or following the rules?

In this episode I will answer this question and discuss the following points:

How our judgements on feeling 'unhappiness' makes moving through it difficult Doubling down on the stress How we handle our 'negative emotions' Managing stress in motherhood Assessing your day to see what needs to shift Resetting with our kids while taking our own emotional responsibility Keeping a bad day bad or letting everyone move on Center in on the mom you want to be. 

Links mentioned:

Mom Martyr

Life Coaching with Shawna

In the next episode, I will answer Question 2 all about shutting down that big dreamer in your when you become a mom.

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WHY does everyone say that minimalism changed their lives?

A reader's story with decluttering and making space for the life that matters

Eyebrows matter and simple makeup tips to help you

Life coaching advice on uncomfortable change in our lives (health, decluttering, marriage, etc). 

MENTIONED My pep talk on Instagram Stories “HAPPINESS IS AVAILABLE TO ME TODAY”-- look under the Mom on Purpose Highlights

Catch up with the May On Purpose posts (even if you don’t participate, they are interesting to read through)

SIMPLE LIFE Why minimalism works at changing your life For all the talk we give to minimalism, it must make you wonder what the big deal is. Why do people rave about it and want to start blogs and podcasts all about? The reason you will often hear that it has changed their lives.

I couldn’t agree more.

But (in true over-thinker fashion) I started to ask WHY.

Why does minimalism change our lives?

LINKS MENTIONED:

Six Types of Minimalists

Read the blog post for WHY minimalism works at changing your life.

Reader's story on making space for the life that matters (by Leisell)

(And if you have a story you want to share, email me and let’s talk!)

SIMPLE STYLE Eyebrows matter  LINKS MENTIONED:

moms30for30

Style Tips for the reluctant mom

Grave’s disease (autoimmune thyroid condition)

Brow School (by Maskcara)

Natural filler (a simple way to fill with brown powder)

The IT eyebrow pencil (my fave, it lasts forever - unless you drop it - and it stays on when you swim)

The Sephora brow powder (it’s a good price and gives you a natural look)

LIFE COACHING Choose your discomfort  (read the transcribed post here)

LINKS MENTIONED:

How to really show up for your life

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When we have so much stuff we lose track of ourselves. We have built up a false identity in THINGS. 

SIMPLE HOME IDENTITY CLUTTER These things take up our space and cause us a lot of emotional, mental and physical burden.  We need to shift our mindsets from SCARCITY TO ABUNDANCE (there will always be enough for you) READ MORE HERE

Also mentioned: the workbook on tolerations and the blog post about decision fatigue and choices

SIMPLE TIP We can't always spend a weekend decluttering. But we can declutter on the go. Keep a bag or box in your home to collect things you are ready to let go to the thrift. 

SIMPLE WELLNESS OIL CLEANSING For almost 7 years I have not used face wash. Instead, I do the oil cleansing method.

My sis in law told me about when I told her my skin was oily. The oil ABSORBS the oil without stripping moisture off your skin! READ MORE HERE

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How I handled the lack of sleep with three kids under 4, a quick way to simplify your life, and a fun list of current things I'm loving and trying. 

++ simple family ++ When I was two babies in, sleep became such a focus for me. Of course, we were dealing with marriage issues and I was struggling to find value in my motherhood - so sleep seemed like the most appropriate thing to fixate on. I was tired all the time, I felt like I was failing at parenting, and I didn’t know how to solve these negative feelings

There was something I learned by the time Dawson came along, three babies in, that I want to share to any mom in this stage. links mentioned: Mom Martyr

The Sweet Sleep Facebook Live

Mindsets for Tired Moms

(and if you are very tired, seriously check out the Sweet Sleep Parenting Facebook group by my Sierra of Sweet Sleep Consulting).

++ simple life ++ One of the quickest ways you can simplify ANY AREA of your life is to give yourself fewer choices.

Related book: The Paradox of Choice

So take any area of your life and give yourself fewer choices to make. Here are a few ways to try it out: Less clothes Read more: 6 Unexpected Ways That Having Less Clothes Has Made My Life Easier Less food Less toys Read more: What happened when I took away half of my kids’ toys

Read more: Practical advice for purging kids’ toys Less activity Read the full post on areas of your life you can simplify with fewer choices, click here   ++ the currently list ++ EATING

This Quinoa Thai Peanut Salad for lunch. I was having a few gluten free weeks to see if it helped some health issues, so I made this to have on hand for lunches

USING

The jumping juniper shampoo bar by LUSH. It was discontinued and brought back again.

I love it because it is zero waste AND it helps me stretch my hair washing (I wash my hair about twice a week, read more here)

READING

Run Hide Repeat. A bestie recommended this book. Then I heard this authour on CBC talk about how her mom was really secretive and they moved around a lot. Then as an adult her mom and her childhood Pastor told her they were being hunted by the Mafia all these years. As she gets brought into this new secret she realizes it could all be a lie. It is GOOD (and Canadian!)

DISCUSSING

The Q&A A Day book. My SIL gave this to us, just in time for us to finish our 5 year One Line A Day book. We bring it out and ask a question at dinner. The kids love it and it brings up some interesting conversation.

LISTENING TO

the Abide App. This is a Christian meditation app. I am confused by what meditation means, but I’m seeing it means quieting your mind and just being open to what God wants to share with you. This app guides you through some really great questions to meditate on and it really helps keep you in the moment.

RECONNECTING WITH

My love of being outside. I went to college for Environmental Planning and we were outside EVERY DAY! I forgot how much I loved it all and hope to do more hikes with my bestie and the kids.

++ May on Purpose ++ MAY 1st! Be on Instagram and join in for the Instagram photo a day #MayOnPurpose. The prompts are right here.

It is such a great way to get real purposeful about how you use social media, and it gives me a chance to see what my Simple Saturday friends are up to and have these conversations with you on Instagram.

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Three parenting books and why I loved them, how to support your "future self" (a lesson from your nerdy life coach (me!)), connect with me on Instagram in the Photo a Day challenge

++ simple family ++ My parenting has been all over the map in my humble 8 years of doing it. I have failed and learned and when I got the hang of something, things would change.

I am far from a parenting expert, but as I have relied on other moms to do with me, I will take the opportunity to share what has worked for me in my mothering journey. I'm sharing THREE BOOKS THAT CHANGED MY MOTHERING right here. 

My highlights: NEVER SAY NO Raising Big-Picture Kids (see it here)

This book helps me say yes to the opportunities my kids have to practice who they are and how they show up in the world. 

We all have that little creative and curious voice inside - we all have probably shut it down over time. I know I shut it down in childhood and then in high school looked to others to be that voice. Then I became and adult and worked hard to unearth that voice and tune my ears to listen closer to my own heart.  RAISING AN EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT CHILD (by John Gottman! Find it here)

This one was so impactful for me that I wrote a whole blog post about it. It transformed a relationship with one of my kids - You can read it here.

This book showed me how I was disciplining, dismissing or avoiding my kid's negative emotions and ways I could actually get closer to them and help coach them through these emotions and process them in healthier ways.   -- read three books that changed my mothering right here   ++ simple life ++ I told my life coaching client the same thing I needed to hear, “your future self has whatever you give her today”. She doesn’t have some magical wisdom or quick fix or grand inheritance that suddenly made life what you dreamed of. She has the hard work you put in now.

Listen to how I approached this in motherhood with three small kids. 

++ simple community ++ I will be hosting a photo a day challenge on Instagram for the month of MAY. Will you join me? Click here to view and get a copy of the photo prompts.

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How to 'create space' when you are a mom with side hustle, decluttering kids' stuff, how to start family meetings, how to be more creative without it feeling like a chore. 

Welcome to a bonus Q+A episode of Simple Saturdays . I am sharing the As to some of your Qs.

LIFE ON PURPOSE: My current dilemma is how do I fit it all in? I work 40+ hours a week, love on my three boys, try to get to the gym three times a week. I am up at 4:30 every morning to work on my side hustle and fall into bed every night. Where/how do I "create space"?

Yes, I would be asking you the same question, where do you fit it all in? One thing that I am seeing is that you have a side hustle going. Which many people start as a way to eventually become a full-time job. If this is the case for you then it seems like this is a very intense season for you where you are trying to build up a business as well as still doing your day job. Side hustles actually suck when you have kids and a day job. It takes a lot of boundaries to protect these different areas of your life. There are a lot of people telling you to build up your side hustle but they don’t often tell you that the rest of your life can suffer from it if we don’t get really intentional about it. BUT when the side hustle is helping us build up the life we want to be living they are something that needs our time and attention. Think about the other really demanding seasons of your life (new job, school, new baby) and the areas of your life that you had to put on the back burner for a bit. When we have these really intense times, we do have to make sacrifices. So my advice to you is to firstly, become aware about what you are sacrificing and take ownership of that I know, it isn’t fun. But there is a saying: we can do anything but we can’t do everything. You are in a season where you have to make choices about where you will spend your time. And if you want to create more space, something else has to go. If your schedule is too much, you have to give yourself permission to make sacrifices. maybe you don’t go to the gym one morning, or you are making everyone frozen pizzas for a week, or you hire a babysitter to come over for a Saturday morning. But own it. During this time, stay present and own your decisions that are helping you build up the life you want. An approach you might want to take is from the book Pick Three by Randi Zuckerberg. She divides life into five categories: work, sleep, family, friends and fitness. She says, in a perfect world, we would all do every one of those things every day. But her book is the encouragement to pick three things to focus on each day and rotate them so your week has some of everything in it. There is no secret I can offer you to create space, because it really sounds like there is no space. There is no trick to it, it is just the number of hours in the day and how we fill them. We must choose, we must make choices. We must own those choices.  Which brings me to my last point. Keep the end in mind. Get really clear about what you are doing and why it matters to you, and to the world. When we lose sight of our mission, we lose steam and we start getting restless. Keep your mission in the front of your mind. Get back to why this all matters to you and what the benefits of this hard season will be.

SIMPLE HOME: How do I declutter kids’ stuff?

I have so much to say here,  but the major thing I have learned is to model it for them. They need to see us doing it and see the benefits. They need to see it is a way of managing stuff.  It depends on their age if you do it for them or let them do it.  About age 5 and under you can probably do it for them.  When they get older you want to start giving them the responsibility to manage their own stuff.  This is a skill they need to learn, with guidance and opportunities to practice.  If you do it with them it will be like trainin...

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Productivity and practical tips for moms, decluttering with kids, when goals and habits don't work

++ what do you think? ++ Before we jump in, I want to remind you guys about the Reader Feedback Survey. I want to thank the handful of you that have already done this - and remind the other (thousands) of you that I would relish in your feedback! (See what I did there, that is a mama-jedi-mind trick - but I know you guys are out there and I really value your input!)

Your feedback helps me know how best to plan out my year ahead and show up with the content you need! Plus, it is always nice to hear some feedback.

++ recently decluttered ++ Continual decluttering is part of our life around here.  We may not always purge a lot, but we do get rid of what isn’t needed, take an inventory of what is there and organize things (which means we put them back in their proper homes.)

These past couple weeks I decluttered . . . My daughter’s room. Usually the kids clean their rooms on Saturdays. But her room felt like it needed extra help, which she always asks for. So helped her work through a mountain of stuff in her bedroom. 

I view it as practice for her to learn how to declutter. She wants to keep everything, but with practice she is able to let go of more things each time we do this.

My bathroom ensuite Anyone who has a private ensuite off their bedroom knows that this is the inner sanctum. You don’t enter another woman’s ensuite unless you have been present while she gave birth or are on the same cycle. Cause what happens in an ensuite? Everything and nothing. It is where everything happens to get ready for the day and then it is forgotten about. Covered in a layer of hair products and q-tips.

I understand I might be alone on having an ensuite I never get around to cleaning. But I did this week!

And I added a tray to hold all the little lotions that I think will delay wrinkles (they don’t). It feels more put together with a simple tray here. And it keeps me from bringing more stuff onto the counter. It won’t fit in the tray.   ++ simple home ++ Let’s talk about all the chores, errands, tasks that we moms want to get done in our day. . . . Now let’s talk about how it feels when we sit on our favourite dent in the couch and turn on the Food Network right after lunch.

Yeah, getting stuff done is hard! BUT we know it is so important for us to feel like we have been productive. As moms we want to know we are effective at the job before us. We also know it is important to have the results of errands that are completed and home that feels clear and clean.

I’ve tried tricks to getting stuff done: calendar alerts, detailed time table, mega to-do lists. They didn’t work for me, but these tips I’m sharing have worked for me.

There are 15 practical tips I have in this new blog post . On the podcast I'm sharing my favourites and how it works with kids around.

++ simple life ++ Knowing your life vision is something I am so passionate about. If you watched the Values and Vision workshop, or have the Life on Purpose workbook - you know that the power in knowing your vision is that you have a destination, something you are working towards.

So often we want to take some action in our life so set some goals and try to change habits, and they don’t work. We weren’t really invested in them, or we fizzle out, or we finish them and still feel unsatisfied about our life. We have been really productive, on the wrong things or in the wrong ways.

Check out this recent post where I talk about how our productivity needs a purpose.

AND IF YOU DO HAVE A LIFE ON PURPOSE WORKBOOK - make sure to sign up for the free email bonuses right here!   ++ stay tuned ++ Here are a couple of fun things I’ve been working on: The Q&A podcast episode I asked you to send me your questions and I will start working through them. Stay tuned for a bonus podcast episode (on April 6th) where I will ...

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Routine decluttering, get started with your life on purpose, styling an outfit, the enneagram workbook bonuses

++ recently decluttered ++ The initial decluttering of our house five years ago was sure dramatic. Now we are in the routine cleaning of places (decluttering, putting things back to their proper homes, recycling broken and useless stuff) It is important because it helps us maintain the hard work we put in. It also helps reacquaint ourselves with our things and take an inventory of what we do have.  PHOTOS INCLUDED IN THE SIMPLE SATURDAYS EMAIL - to join in the email, subscribe at the bottom of this page.  My medicine cabinet. There were expired ones and ones I didn’t really use that I am returning to the pharmacist for disposal. There were also things that didn’t belong in the cupboard (spices, candy stashes, etc.) 

My closet. I’m obviously not here to impress you with the most Pinterest-worthy closet. I store clothes to let go of in the closet (purging as I get dressed in the mornings), as well as all the laundry baskets and apparently a broken guitar…...So I needed to clear out the mess on the floor. 

The kitchen shelf. This shelf in the kitchen becomes this weird holding pen for random items (much like our bedroom dresser). It is so easy to spend 10 minutes here taking things away that don’t belong and putting them in their right home.

++ simple life ++ This past week I hosted my first online workshop called KNOWING YOUR VISION AND VALUES. This is based on the Life on Purpose workbook. It is, in my opinion, the first step in living your life on purpose.

Life on Purpose is what I have been digging into for the past five years and I have found that SETTING GOALS will not be enough. If you want to really live your life on purpose, you need to start with your vision and values.  Then you can set goals that have longevity and effectiveness and are naturally motivating. 

You can access the workshop replay right here:

IF YOU BOUGHT A LIFE ON PURPOSE WORKBOOK and you haven’t cracked it open yet - this workshop will help you put a pen to paper in that workbook. You can follow along the workshop using the workbook or the FREE WORKSHEETS provided to you. 

++ simple style ++ Fashion was something that was daunting to me. Then when I had my second baby, I found myself spending a lot of midnight nursing session scrolling Pinterest. I was pinning cute outfits, reading fashion blogs, just enjoying the virtual experience.

So, I started to get dressed each day. I started doing the 

I started to try new things and I found that I was enjoying it. Maybe at the time it felt like the one thing I could possibly control and enjoy in my rocky life.

moms30for30 (blog posts) (instagram hashtag)

Style for the Reluctant Mom series Wearing Clothes vs Wearing an Outfit (read the post here)   ++ simple heart ++ The Enneagram isn’t about personality, it is about the story we tell ourselves, and our motives, and how we navigate the world because of these two things.

There are nine Enneagram types and knowing your type can give you so much insight into yourself - your stress habits and your strengths.  I recommend EVERYONE learn their type!

You can listen to the podcast or watch the video right here.

++ what would you like more of? ++ It has been a year since the last Reader Feedback Survey and they are so valuable to me. They help me understand what is helping you and what you need more of/less of. They help me direct my energy and time in planning out the year ahead and how I can best serve you!

So please take a moment right now and fill out this (anonymous) survey.

++ do you have the life on purpose workbook? ++ Did you purchase a LIFE on PURPOSE orkbook? Click here to sign up for your free bonus goodies.

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Over the years I have talked (and talked and talked) about the Enneagram. It has been a personal growth tool that has helped me make such positive changes in my own life! I love it so much that I also use it with my life coaching clients.

I've been asked by different people to share some info on the basics to help people get started with learning their own Enneagram type.

So I shared this video on Facebook and wanted to give it a place on my site where you could listen to it in podcast form, watch the video, or read through it. Whatever you prefer, it is a content smorgasbord!  LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

WATCH THE VIDEO  

READ THE POST Type 1 - The Reformer/Perfectionist Concerned with good wholesome, right and wrong. Motivated by the desire to ‘be good’, the need to live life ‘the right way’

At their best: Ethical, reliable, standards, self-controlled

At their worst: Judgmental, dogmatic, critical

They may not be a perfectionist in the traditional sense of lining up their environment,  but struggle with this internal critic causing anxiety of things they 'should do'

They are probably unaware that they push people away with judgements about what the world should look like and how they or others should behave.

When they are healthy they move to the traits of a Type 7 (this is called the direction of integration). When they are stressed they move to the traits of a Type 4Healthy 7 (the direction of disintegration) We need 1s because they are our moral compass and remind us to maintain healthy standards in our lives   Type 2 - The Helper Motivated by the need to be needed, need to feel they are lovable and valuable

At their best:  loving, generous, enthusiastic, warm, giving

At their worst: martyr, over-accommodating, indirect

A two may not realize that they are putting themselves in a service role to others as a way to feel valuable. They may not even realize that through all of their serving they are creating a relationship where they are needed and hoping to also be served in return. When they feel taken advantage of they can feel a lot of anger and resentment which shows up as martyrdom. 

Because they are so busy helping and supporting others, they often put themselves on the back burner.

Healthy move towards type 4

Stress move towards type 8 We need 2s because they remind us that those around us are in need and we can serve them and show up for them in many different ways   Type 3 - The Achiever/The Performer Motivated by the need to be successful, believe that their value lies in their achievements

At their best: optimistic, practical, efficient, they get things done

At their worst: narcissistic, workaholic, deceptive in times where their ability to succeed is at risk or to maintain their image

A struggle the three will have is identifying who they are from what they do. They have difficulties getting in touch with their own thoughts and feelings - success comes at the expense of your feelings.

In Stress move to type 9

In health move to type 6 We need 3s because they remind us that setting and accomplishing our goals is a rewarding and worthwhile thing   Type Four – The Individualist/The Romantic/The Creative Motivated by the need to be themselves, to understand their feelings and be understood

At their best: warm and heart-centred, introspective, they want to contribute something unique to the world, they are willing to deal with the hard stuff to find the deeper purpose

At their worst: depressed, self-conscious, they find it hard to separate the feelings from the facts, because they are focussed on this higher meaning in life they can sometimes let them be a gap between themselves and others and can silo themselves

Fours may not realize how they get wrapped up in themselves and their own thoughts.

When healthy they move to type 1

When in stress they move to type 2 We need 4s because they can walk us through suf...

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++ simple heart ++ Over a year ago I realized that I had come to a place in my daily life where I constantly thought about getting a break for my kids. I was struck with this shameful realization that I stopped enjoying my kids and being a mother. This past year I had one goal in parenting, to focus on enjoying my kids. 

I shared my story with what that looked like and what I learned from it.

It is a long post (read it here), so I can't cover it all in the podcast episode. Three big takeaways are 

1/ We find what we are looking for. When all I looked for was a break, that was the problem my brain wanted to solve. I needed to give my brain a new problem to solve, one that empowered me. 

2/ I am more fun than I thought. Through enjoying my kids, I am enjoying my life more because I am having more fun in my daily life

3/ This is a daily practice. I still struggle with and new problems come up that I need to work through, but I am practicing the only thing I can. The only thing I actually do have control over -  how I show up.

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What I have learned about intentional living, why moms need office hours and how a mom's retreat can help, eating the same food every day - the Food Uniform - and a great dinner idea.  

++ simple heart ++ What is intentional living? Simply put, it is living your life ON PURPOSE.  I break it down like this:

Knowing what is important to you (your values, your vision, your priorities) Making choices inline with what is important to you (how you spend your money, your time, your resources, how you use your space) And beyond knowing what you want and making choices in how you live, it also means making choices in how you show up.  (the hard work)

We started out with Intentional Parenting (it was hard) and it grew into Intentional Living (LIFE ON PURPOSE). 

I am sharing FIVE THINGS I HAVE LEARNED ABOUT INTENTIONAL LIVING

I am not a victim of my life It doesn't come naturally It changes and grows It is a daily practice It is empowering

Read the full blog post here

++ simple life ++ I propose that running a home is also like running a business. There is an 'admin' side to home management (the people, the supplies, the errands, the appointments, the bills, etc.) When do you have Mom Office Hours? 

Maybe a mom retreat is a great time for you to take care of the to-do list. Read more about my recent mom/work retreat and some tips for planning yours. 

++ simple food ++ We have turned to using the 'Food Uniform' - the same thing every meal. Breakfast and Lunch are brainless for me because they are always the same. 

Dinner recently: yam, kale and sausage hash with THESE mega easy sourcream chocolate chip scones! 

Have a great weekend! Don't forget to subscribe (BELOW) to the email newsletter and get Simple Saturdays in your inbox every two weeks (with bonuses!)

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Spaces I decluttered this week, tips to plan your day, plan a friend date, decluttering our bedroom to work towards our home vision

DECLUTTERING In the email newsletter, I shared some pics of my decluttered sweater collection. Anytime you think you don't have enough of something - take an inventory (says the woman who thought she didn't have 'enough' sweaters).

SIMPLE LIFE If you are an Enneagram Type 9, like me, you probably just planned along with whatever everyone else had planned.  Then I had two small kids at home and found if I could plan my day it would make my life easier.

Planning your day can help you feel more proactive and relaxed. Plan your day, change your life. 

And this is how we plan together when Conor has the week off work.

A list of fun things to do with your kiddos.

Enjoying your downtime without feeling like you are a lazy mom  Tips to plan your day: Brain dump

Putting goals into action (setting a weekly focus)

Have running lists (meal planning book)

SIMPLE HEART I feel that friendship is like a marriage, you fall in and out of love and you need to put the work in it to keep that love alive! My case for dating your friends.

SIMPLE HOME What are things in your home that are a toleration? (blog post and worksheets here)

We used the Life on Purpose workbook and set out some vision for our home.  Our bedroom is a space we have a vision for and we can take steps to work towards that!

In the email newsletter, you will see photos of the decluttered dresser. It can be very empowering to make progress towards the vision you have for a space.

FACEBOOK Q+A I'd love to take this great conversation over to Facebook. Email me or message me on social media and let me know what questions you'd like to see addressed on Facebook and any stories you'd like to share.

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++simple family++ It started with a pivotal NEW YEAR's Eve vision setting session. We started by asking ourselves what we want our kids to grow up to be, and what we wanted to do with our kids.

Since then, we have been working on 'intentional parenting' or as I call it 'mom on purpose'.

The day to day living out of your vision for your family will show itself in your Family Culture. That unique way you do life as a family.

I've written about it here Build Up Your Family Culture and loved this article by Kindred Grace on Building a Home Your Kids Want to Come Home To

++ simple home ++ My thoughts on Tidying Up on Netflix, the reverence we have for our stuff, and how we approach decluttering.

Marie Kondo's Book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (I'm sure I botched this title in the episode) Decluttering in waves Reasons why we can't let go of stuff

++ the currently list++ READING: North of Normal.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I am reading it as part of a Book Club with A Little Light.

The Last Letter from Your Lover. 

LOVING: My electric pencil sharpener.

WEARING: This outfit (but with boots not heels #obvi). I just want to formally thank all the fellow moms who don’t call me out for wearing what are basically Fancy Pajamas.

DOING: Working through the Life on Purpose Workbook with Conor. So far we have set a vision for four areas of our life and have five left to go. We have had some really great conversations and have gotten on the same page about a lot of things.

LISTENING TO: Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel. My bestie told me about this marriage therapist who has a podcast of her actual sessions. It is so interesting

LEARNING: That playing Jenga with my kids really stresses me out. It is probably the Type 9 in me.  My kids are actually here to PLAY the game and I am learning from them how to really do that.

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Are you feeling MEH about the New Year? The top strategy we found to help us prevent overspending. The top ten posts of 2018. An update on the Life on Purpose Workbook

++ simple life ++ Are you starting the New Year feeling totally MEH? There can be a lot of pressure to have your resolutions and goals all sorted before Jan 1st is over, but I want to remind you that you can start slow!

If you are like me, and starting your New Year with a fizzle, I encourage you to take it slow, and I have a tip for you to prepare for when you are ready to put a plan into place for living your LIFE ON PURPOSE

++ simple finances ++ We have tried apps, mottos, strategies to be better at managing our money. Not that we are frivolous or reckless with our money, but the little things add up and we find ourselves regularly overspending.

Two things that have helped us the most:

1. Tracking our spending, and

2. This approach from Fun Cheap or Free  (her video is below). In the podcast, I tell you exactly why it works so well for us!

++ top ten of 2018 ++ I love to reflect on what guys read the most this past year. Here is the top ten post of the year!

The top three were (3) How a Minimalist Thinks (2) Hygge vs Minimalism and (1) I Decluttered My Home For A Year, This Is What I Learned

++ the life on purpose workbook ++ Stay tuned to the email list (subscribe below) for sneak peeks and updates on when this bad boy will be available! It is jam-packed with a lot of big ideas to tackle and help you identify, organize and plan the life you want to live!

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Did you know you can DIY microwave popcorn? The Finnish art of Sisu. My Pantry epiphany.

++ simple food ++ Did you know you can DIY microwave popcorn!? I saw it on Instagram stories and started searching Pinterest. Here is a pin to get you started.  Also, check out my Easy Entertaining Pinterest Board   ++ simple home ++ I shared photos in the email newsletter of the pantries we moved from the kitchen to the basement. What have I learned by reducing my kitchen pantry storage in half? (Subscribe to the newsletter below so you don't miss the special email content)   ++ simple life ++ The Finnish Way by Katja Pantzar is about the people of Finland and the quality of sisu, a certain inner resilience and grit, that they have. This book has made me think about my daily life and inspired me to make some changes.    ++ the life on purpose workbook ++ This planner will guide you through setting a life vision and putting it into action. It is a compilation of my own experience, my life coaching lessons, the Year on Purpose booklet, and the Whole Life Vision exercise I do with my clients. This book is being formatted and designed as we speak and should be available in January!

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How to move towards a more minimalist Christmas, a great resource for time management advice and decluttering to prepare for Christmas

simple family I was recently interviewed for info on having a minimalist Christmas with my fave station: the CBC. Click here to listen, go to 1 hour and 49 minutes.

I have so much more to say on what is a minimalist Christmas and you can get started. You can read the full blog post about a minimalist Christmas right here [What is a Minimalist Christmas and how to get started]

GET THE SIMPLE CHRISTMAS PLANNER << simple life In Life Coaching, we often touch on time management in the lives of moms. I loved everything that Alison had to say in this episode of Awesome with Alison simple home I've been decluttering some places to prepare for Christmas. In the last Simple Saturday, I told you about the baking cupboard (and how I link it to 'identity clutter'). I've also shared some photos of the pantry with you in the Simple Saturday email.

Decluttering for Christmas is helping me do an inventory of what we DO have and make better shopping lists for food, crafts, gifts, etc.  Decluttering the decorations is also helping me learn more about what I want my Christmas aesthetic to be.

To catch up on the Simple Christmas bonus episodes check them out here:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

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I used to be a stress ball hostess, now I have an open door policy. Here are myths I had to bust through about being a 'good hostess'.

Links in this episode: Simple Advent Activities for Toddlers (older kids like them too)

42 Ways to Spread the Love This Christmas (random acts of kindness and ways to love on others this season)

Myths I Had to Bust About Being A 'Good Hostess'

Bread and Wine by Shauna Niequist

The Simple Christmas Series

GET YOUR SIMPLE CHRISTMAS PLANNER <<

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Why family traditions are important and ideas on simple ones to try. How to shop your closet to get dressed for that holiday party!

Welcome to Part 3 of the podcast series on A Simple Christmas. Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here. All the Simple Christmas posts can be found here.  In this podcast I'm sharing a bit from these two posts: Why and how to make unique Christmas traditions for your family

How to shop your closet for great holiday outfits

Other links mentioned in this episode Moving from frump to fashion 

Know your colours

Take photos of your outfits 

Rule of three for putting outfits together 

GET THE SIMPLE CHRISTMAS PLANNER  Make sure to subscribe to Simple Saturdays (below) to stay up to date and get all the insider content for the Simple Saturdays podcast!

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Hello Simple Saturday Friends! Welcome to another bi-weekly email and podcast where I share some ideas and updates to encourage you to declutter your life, your home and your mind.

Since the last email, there have been a couple bonus episodes on the podcast. I’m unpacking my Simple Christmas series for you there.   Check out Episode 5 on how to mentally prepare to have a simpler and enjoyable Christmas. Also,  Episode 6 is on simplifying the gift giving and giving thoughtful gifts. --> Make sure to subscribe to the podcast to get those bonus episodes.  ++ simple home ++ I'm sharing something I recently decluttered. I had to have a real talk with myself on why I was holding onto it and never making use of it.  I had to have a real talk with myself about letting go this 'identity' I wanted to have by owning this item. I need to USE it to have the identity.

And it is hard, it is hard to get real with yourself. But it is also freeing.

It frees up physical space and it frees up the mental burden that you ‘still haven’t done that craft’ ‘still haven’t worn that dress’ ‘still haven't found a spot for that art you don’t really love’.

So, if you are sitting quietly having a real lady chat with yourself, what is something you have been holding on to but never use/wear/do? What are you ready to let go of?

Email me and let me know!

++ simple heart ++ I laid out some heavy stuff on the blog this week. . . . getting comfortable with discomfort.

I’ve been spending the past year leaning into this and it has been life changing. The biggest change is how it lets me show up as a parent. Because parenting is one of the most frustrating and overwhelming roles I’ve ever been in. And it is every day. And I wasn’t coping well.  Read the post here [Getting Comfortable with Discomfort]

If you are interested in life coaching on this, stop by here and click apply.  ++ simple family ++ We brought team meetings/family meetings into our life over a year ago. I'm sharing how we run them and what the outcomes have been. (Read more here)

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Tips to simplify the gift-giving and ways to give more thoughtful gifts

Today I'm sharing two posts on gift giving:

Simplify the gift giving (make sure to read the post as I don't cover all the tips in the podcast)

Gift giving is such a focal point of the holidays but it doesn't have to overwhelm us. We don't have to buy for everyone and we don't have to stick to convention.

Nine Ways to Make Your Gifts More Thoughtful

I KNOW that Jesus is the reason for the season, but it is also a chance for us to spoil and love on our people. I've had some gifts in my life that made me feel like my family or friends really had no clue about me. It stings, and it has pushed me away from making gifts a 'thing'. Then I have had some very amazing gifts that were spot on. They made me reclaim that gifts can be an amazing thing we share at the holidays. I love gifts, they make me feel seen. It can be quite powerful to give something meaningful to someone that fills a gap in their life or lets them know you know them well.

Also mentioned: 

How to Bullet Journal 

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a simple Christmas series part 1: finding your simple Christmas and 5 tips to help you make it simpler

Welcome to a special episode of Simple Saturdays, part 1 in the Simple Christmas series

A Simple Christmas is a series I have had on the blog for a few years and I wanted to offer it in podcast form as well.

It is about a dozen posts all about ways to make your Christmas more simple, from the practical to the mental preparations.

In this episode I share:

Finding Your Simple Christmas - writing these two lists, paying attention to what they tell you and building it into a personal Christmas motto

5 Tips to Make Christmas Simpler - tips to make any event more simple in terms of mentally preparing for what you want to happen, how to show up and how to just enjoy the Christmas that IS instead of stressing over the Christmas ideals that aren't happening.

GET YOUR SIMPLE CHRISTMAS PLANNER HERE

-- Make sure to subscribe to Simple Saturdays below!

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We declutter our kids' toys a few times a year, getting prepped to have a Simple Christmas, easy ham sliders for a crowd and a reminder that you are enough, you have enough, you do enough!

Welcome to another bi-weekly Simple Saturday, an email newsletter also available in podcast form. Be sure to subscribe to the newsletter (at the end of this post) so you can get Simple Saturday, full notes and photos in your inbox!

++ links++ Optimal Living Daily Relationships Episode 394 " I Stopped Calling Myself a Lazy Mom"

See all Optimal Living Daily Episodes 

++ simple home ++ In the emails, I like to share with you what we are working on decluttering (because you know it is an ongoing process!). This past week we decluttered our kids' toys. What are strategy was for decluttering, and why we prefer to declutter their toys without them. [Why We Declutter Our Kids' Toys Without Them]

++ simple life ++ I have started Christmas shopping, I'm not an over-achiever, I just want my future self to have a more peaceful and organized entrance into the season.

The Simple Christmas series has been around for a couple years and this year I will also release some of the top posts in podcast form. Look out for those bonus episodes coming shortly!

++ simple food ++ There is a simple dish that I have made for a crowd and now include it in our family meals. Also, can anyone really say Worcestershire sauce? Sometimes I am just better in the written form, please have mercy on my word-fails.

Ham Sliders

Pizza Sliders

Zucchini Sliders

GET THE SIMPLE CHRISTMAS PLANNER <<  

Thanks for joining in this week!

If you liked this podcast please make sure to subscribe and leave a rating in your podcast player!

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Declutter your mind and time with a brain dump, keep track of all the seasonal kid's clothes and handmedowns, change your habits using minimum baseline.

Welcome to another Simple Saturday!

This is a bi-weekly email newsletter that has been running for 2 years! HAPPY ANNIVERSARY FRIENDS!! Thank you for being along with me on this journey and giving me a space in your inbox!

In this Simple Saturday we are talking about: ++ simple life ++ If you’ve been around Simple Saturdays for a while you know that I will often recommend doing a brain dump.  A brain dump is a list of all the stuff in your brain. It helps you to get all those thoughts and tasks swirling in your mind out onto paper. Then you can use this list to set yourself some priorities for the day. Check out the post here for how I use Brain Dumps and how they help you do life better

++ simple family ++ If you have kids you know that there are parts of your home designated as holding pens for stuff coming and going.  I thought I was solving this problem by labelling the bags and bins in the closet, but then I would never go in there and check. Mostly because all the bins and bags are in a huge pile that has to be all pulled out to get to the bottom (yes, we need shelves in there!).

So, I realized I needed a better way to track what is in there.  I can’t believe it took me over 7 years to figure this out. Keeping track of the inventory in my notes app! Check out my solution here

++ simple wellness ++ You guys know I’m a big habit nerd. I think habits are what change your life more than anything (for good or for bad).

[This Simple Hack Will Help You Change Your Habits]

A couple of years back I decided to challenge myself to change some habits. I called it #onesmallhabit and made the habits so simple that they wouldn’t take a lot of energy or thought to do them. I share with you a couple of the habits I worked on shifting.

As I continually look for ways to shift to healthier habits I am finding success with something called MINIMUM BASELINE.

I think I was missing this when I tried the #onesmallhabit. Because this is even simpler than that - it is the bare minimum. It is so dang low impact that you can’t NOT do it when you are challenged with it. How I used minimum baseline Here’s an example from my life:  I wanted to start getting the dishes tackled twice a day but I had a lot of more fun things to do instead. So I set a minimum baseline for myself: one dish. I can do one dish.

I would put a cup away.

Then I would laugh at myself and put another dish away.

Then I would do the dishes.

As I went through this process I was learning that I had some limiting mindsets that actually stopped me from getting my dishes done (that’s a whole other post!). Starting with this minimum baseline helped me to capture these thoughts that I subconsciously had that were keeping me from doing this simple daily chore.

Now I do the dishes twice a day, for the most part. If I don’t feel like it then I challenge myself with a minimum baseline. How you can start with minimum baseline The minimum baseline can apply to anything you want to bring into your life.

Want to eat more vegetables? Eat 1 carrot stick.

Want to try exercise at home? Do one push up. One.  

Want to declutter your closet? Get rid of one thing.

Want to read more books? Pick up any book in your house and read one page.

And if you are like me and are learning you have a lot of negative thought patterns in this process, then check out my life coaching, I can help you get unstuck! 

++ blog posts ++ Shut Up and Dance With Me - a story about meeting my husband and dancing and singing with him - and how this atmosphere has grown in our family

How a Minimalist Thinks - if you think it is just a physical decluttering then you might miss out on the mindsets that make minimalism come naturally

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In this Simple Saturday we are talking about:

SIMPLE HOME

decluttering the kitchen to make space for a planning station

SIMPLE FOOD

how to make a DIY meal planning book that will save you effort planning what to eat for the week

SIMPLE STYLE

a fabulous episode from Sorta Awesome about setting up your capsule wardrobe

THE CURRENTLY LIST

heated socks (by Flambeau) By the Book podcast, decluttering old clothes, and Daughter of Fortune

Simple Saturdays is a bi-weekly email newsletter full of tips, insights, and encouragement to help you declutter and live your life on purpose.  The podcast is another way to get your dose of Simple Saturday. Subscribe for Simple Saturdays below to make sure you don't miss it and get all the links discussed.

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Simple Saturdays is a bi-weekly email newsletter that many of you lovely readers subscribe to. It is full of little tips, encouragement and insights into making minimalism and purposeful living work for you.

Now I am offering the Simple Saturday newsletter in podcast form as well because I'm nerdy like that.

In this first episode, I share with you how I got started blogging, my journey into minimalism, how it brought me to 'life on purpose' and what that looks like on a daily basis for me.

Things mentioned in this episode:

My C-Section story

The Joy of Less by Francine Jay

Growing up with clutter

Things that hold us back from letting go of our stuff

On realizing how complacent I've been, living on auto-pilot

Tricking my husband into a vision setting session

The email with the values worksheet

If you want to stick around the podcast, I suggest you subscribe to the podcast (so the podcast player knows I exist for people) Simple Saturdays newsletter below so you don't miss any episodes and keep all the show links handy