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.
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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 asking questions throughout the week. Sometimes we set intentions together about how we’re going to show up on the weekend or the during the week. And I’m doing these Q and A’s.
So in this q&a, I’m answering questions about putting your head in the sand. We’ve all been there, planning your day, finding the time when it feels like it’s hard to find the time and changing your thoughts and behaviours. So here is the q&a from January 20.
I’m going to answer your questions today. This is our q&a time. Let me open up some of these windows. Got your questions here.
So I’ll start with the first question. How do you deal with the what if I need this one day thought? Well, decluttering? And this question was so good. I’m going to actually record a podcast on that today. So stay tuned.
The other question, and I feel like it was a statement, just a very relatable statement, it feels easier to stick your head in the sand. And who can relate to that, of course, it’s easier. Your brain doesn’t want to stay where you are and do the hard work and feel uncomfortable and feel the pain and sticking your head in the sand. Sometimes it’s a way of avoiding experiencing negative emotion. More often, though, it’s a stress response.
Because when we are stressed, we’re going to do one of three things often. The first one is we fight. And that’s a way that we try to control the threat. We’re defensive or aggressive, we’re resisting that threat, maybe it’s a person most often, we’re going to flight we’re going to try to control the environment. And what we’re doing is we are adjusting our environment to reduce the threats presence or the threat wanting to be there. So we are in a state of stress. We’re micromanaging. Sometimes we leave, sometimes we don’t. And the other one is we freeze, we try to control ourselves. So we’re going to control the threat control the environment or control ourselves. And that is when we ignore it, we avoid it we kind of just withdraw shut down.
And just recognizing that in yourself knowing that this is my stress response. This is how I often deal with stress. The types that often withdrawal the most when it comes to the enneagram are the types nines, the type five and I think the type four, they will most often go into a freeze response.
So maybe even knowing a bit about yourself when it comes to the enneagram if you want help with that, let me know. But just knowing this is my stress response gives you so much more leverage over it because then when you’re doing it you can be like oh, I’m stressed right now. What might have put me here. What do I need right now? What kind of needs Can I meet for myself?
I really liked that question because that is my stress response as well.
How about this, or I used to think having routines or detailed a plan was too rigid and not spontaneous. And then you went on to share. And now I see that they make me feel calm.
And this is fascinating because I used to feel the same way I thought if I made some kind of like, really agenda, that that was going to be rigid. And I think the problem was, I just didn’t trust myself to follow an agenda. I first thought it had to be complicated, like by the hour and doing all the things I don’t really want to do, and I’m going to write them down. And then I know myself not going to have enough willpower and discipline to do these things written on my agenda. So there’s just more evidence that I can’t trust myself that I am not dedicated enough or disciplined enough or motivated enough.
That whole idea of a plan being used for that was not fun. not fun at all. So I decided to make planning something that worked for me something that made my life easier, instead of more daunting.
And I, I’ve shared many times I started planning when all of my kids were at home I never planned before. And I just felt like life was out of control. We were just reactive. Planning meals was a big thing that helped just knowing like, okay, have a plan for dinner, we don’t have to eat ketchup, ketchup chips over the kitchen, sink it for yelling at everybody about what we’re going to eat, and is there a vegetable.
And then I also planned an activity like an activity we could do not every day, just often just getting that on paper.
And then me and Connor started having planning meetings together. We were We were planning time for ourselves things we wanted to do in the week that he was home. And it became a way of us to protect the time for the things we wanted to happen. Like if I knew I was going to get time to go be alone, for like an hour on a Saturday, I was so much more calm when I was parenting hard on the Friday, because I knew this was coming up for me. When my kids are like what’s happening today, what’s happening are they’re bored, and they’re crazy. I can be like this is what’s happening like, this is where we’re working towards, I felt so much more in control. And then it just became this place that I would always look my planner, like I’ve got one here, got a planner up here. Every day, I check it out, what do I need to do today? What’s coming up what will make my life easier.
So planning makes your life easier, it really doesn’t make space for what’s important to you. You don’t have to write all the things that you don’t really want to do. On days, you don’t really want to do them. Like, don’t start like that. Don’t start planning like that. You can work your way up to that if you want.
There is a module if you are in the Life on Purpose Roadmap that walks you through this on planning strategies.
The next question, how do I find time to do the work I need to do in order to find purpose. I can’t even get through one of your podcasts without being interrupted or feeling like I need to get up and get work done around the house. The only time I really have to myself is before bed, and then I’m tired.
So I can see that there’s just so much mental chatter around how hard this is. So that is your cue that your brain really believes this story that it’s hard, and is looking for a lot of evidence that it’s true. Because whenever we think whatever we believe our brain is a confirmation bias to seek the evidence that we are correct.
But is this thought serving you? Is this thought of how hard it is? Is it serving you? Because when you think this is so hard, I can’t even get through one podcast? How do you feel? How does that thought make you feel it makes you feel defeated? And then how do you show up? How do you show up? When you’re defeated? What do you do? What do you not do? Because we often make hard things even harder. When we show up from a defeated place.
And you’re even letting yourself play into this. When you say I feel like I need to get up and get the work done like that is optional. So in order for you to make an adjustment, you need to believe first, it’s not going to be so hard. This won’t be so hard because then how will you feel if you’re not telling yourself how hard it is? If you’re telling yourself it’s possible, you’re going to feel more hopeful? And how do you show up when you feel hopeful?
Because we are motivated by feelings, guys. We do everything based on how we feel. We act we don’t act, we take action. We’re energized. We’re not energized. We do everything based on how we feel. And what in what triggers our feelings what we’re thinking. If I think it’s hard, I feel defeated. If I think it’s possible, I feel hopeful.
So redirecting your thoughts to more helpful things for you. Like I am going to make time. I’m going to find the time and then do those things. If you want to make time for the schedule it in. If you’re being interrupted, how do you set boundaries to protect that time? If your brain is chattering about everything that you’re doing? What do you need to remind yourself to take ownership of it rather than be a victim of it? So those are my initial ideas for you. And you can bring that back to me and tell me if you need more.
And this one wasn’t a question more of a really great statement. It takes a lot more energy to change our behaviour. to stick with what our natural patterns are remembering to take time for myself and be patient when making these changes is tough, and it’s okay to not be perfect. I love so much of this. Because this is like the long game. This is like where we get to as we start going through making change, and we have all or nothing thinking, and we’re feeling defeated. And we’re measuring success and really hard ways. And then we get to this point where it doesn’t have to be perfect. It wasn’t about doing it perfectly after all.
And when it comes to changing how we’re thinking and showing up, I often tell people, it’s like redirecting a river. And I was a big geology nerd in high school and in college. And what we learn in geology is as glaciers melt, and they’re creating new rivers, these rivers, they’re young, and they’re broad, and they just like fan over the landscape. And they’re, they’re like just broad and braiding along. And then they hit some soft sediment, and they start to kind of groove down into that. And then these new rivers, they go deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, stronger, faster, and they’re carving through the landscape, and they’ve carved this pathway. And now we want to take that river and it’s established and we want to redirect it. Well, we have to start eroding new rocket is so nerdy, right? So nerdy, but in order for us to be redirecting into showing up in new ways, learning new ways of showing up, finding more peace in our parenting, like, we need to learn how to have the persistence of redirecting and redirecting and pushing through that because our brain has learned it already. It’s on autopilot.
You know, a great example of our brain behind autopilot is I drive this path to my house, I come up the hill, and they put a new stop sign in at one of the spots. And I missed that stop signs so many times when it was brand new last year, because my brain is just like, and then we turn and then we turn and then we turn. This is like learning a new thought learning a new way of showing up deciding to live from your values. And doing that work is going like stop sign, stop sign, Okay, stop sign, and you’re not going to nail it every time. But now my new habit is to stop at the stop sign.
So that it takes a lot of energy to change behaviour. Yes, your brain doesn’t want to do the hard work. And remembering to take time for myself and be patient that making change is tough. I love that self-talk that is just so mothering, I just love it. And it’s okay to not be perfect. Guys, it was never about being perfect. After all.
Do you have questions that you want support on? Bring them over to me in the simple on purpose Facebook community, we have done recent Q and A’s on decluttering, the enneagram. I’m planning to do one on finances not because I’m a financial guru, but because I’m going to be sharing some upcoming episodes, interviewing the Adkins from the Millenial Mission on their debt-free journey. So I want to keep that discussion going in the Facebook group as well.
For the questions you heard today, one of them was on planning. And I talked a lot because it’s one of my favourite topics. You heard me outline a lot of ways that planning has helped me in my life. And I have a whole module on that in the life on purpose roadmap. We talk about your relationship to planning how to bring balance into your life. Then I give you multiple strategies on how to plan your years, your seasons, your week and your day. Can you hear that going on in the background? We’re doing bathroom meadows, so bear with us here. I have no idea how to edit that out. We’ll just roll with it guys. So I also have in the life on purpose roadmap, a bonus video where I run you through all of the planners I’ve used over the years. Yes, I saved them. Yes, I’m a minimalist, but I still save things that I enjoy looking at and going back into. So I run through how I’ve used these planners, what I liked about them what worked. What worked for different seasons of my life is just a very elaborate module all about planning one of my favorite topics. If you’re interested in the life on purpose roadmap, go check it out life on purpose academy.ca Click the life on purpose roadmap, and remember it’s never too late to start living your life on purpose.