How To Create Happiness Within- Where Do I Begin Series- Day 5

Welcome back to day 5 of the Where Do I Begin? mini-series.  I've decided not to end here and will be back next week for more!  In today's episode, let's get real about self-care. It's not a luxury; it's a lifeline.  Stick around to explore why self-care is a must, not just a luxury!

Our journey isn't just about smiling all the time; it's about peeling back the layers of our identity, revealing the authentic self, and learning to source joy from within, independent of external validation or relationships. Tune in for an adventure in self-exploration and the revelation that the keys to our happiness have been in our pockets all along.

It's not about finding yourself in life- but remembering who you really are.  The passion, the fire, the hope, and the desire to live each moment to its fullest. And to love with all of your heart. -topher kearby

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:34

Welcome back to the Pure Possibilities podcast. We are on day five of our mini series and I decided to change my mind and we are not going to end it today and we're going to go into next week. That's the really cool thing you can always change your mind. That is something that I have definitely realized over the last few years. I just finished having a taco night with a very dear girlfriend of mine. It's something we started gosh. I think it's been seven years now. We were doing it every month for a long time and then life gets life-y right, but we insistently get together and have tacos and chat and connect and it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 1: 1:20

She's actually a childhood friend and we hadn't talked a lot for several years. People just are living life and doing their thing. Then, when I was going through my really rough patch, she could see through the posts that I was making back when that was going on and she reached out and she's like are you okay? She's like no, I am not okay. Sometimes people are posting things and it can be really nice if you reach out and just check in with your people, even if it's somebody that you haven't talked to in a long time. She's one of those friends that I know that whenever I need her or she needs me, we will absolutely be there for one another. We don't talk all the time, but now we regularly get together, but even so, we don't, it's just we know, you just know, you know. Anyway, that's a form of self-care for me is connecting with my friends. I went to dinner with another friend last night and we had amazing conversation and connecting with people, connecting with your people. Whether you want to call it self-care or not, it totally is self-care. I would love to change that term because people are so resistant to it and it's okay to do things for yourself, it's okay to do things that make you feel good, and whether that is hanging out with a friend, talking, chatting, setting boundaries, that's a form of self-care that people don't often think about. That's a huge form of self-care. Once I realized that, I was like oh, this is so true, it really is your setting boundaries for yourself, for setting boundaries with others.

Speaker 1: 3:04

I think that we just overcomplicate, prioritizing ourselves, and it's not selfish, it's really not. There are things that, like I always say, it's your life, it's your life and why not enjoy it? Those are the things that make you happy. We spend so much time in our lives trying to please other people or living up to the expectations of others or what we believe their expectations are of us. Have you ever done that? Go and decide what their expectation is of you without even maybe asking? And so you're doing these things over and over and over again because you believe that that's what somebody wants from you or expects from you. But maybe it's really just a story that you made up in your head.

Speaker 1: 3:53

We work so hard to try and live up to the expectations of others and working hard in just daily life, surviving and just living in the monotony of life, and I felt that way for so many years. I just get up and take care of my kids and go to work and work all day and come home and make dinner and put the kids to bed and get up and do it all over again and I kind of forgot about me and who I was and I lost that connection for so many years and I don't even know if I had ever really made a point to get to know myself. And that's something that I have focused on a lot over the course of the last few years and it's been pretty incredible to work through a lot of beliefs that I had about myself. I'm still continuing to do that and learning to try, you know, just trying new things, like I went so many years I hated tomatoes and pickles and onions and seafood and I got to the point finally where I'm like, okay, I like diced tomatoes, but I don't like big tomatoes, like a full slab of tomato. I'm like I won't have tomato on a burger but I'll totally eat pico, diced onions and tomatoes chips. Oh my gosh, amazing. But I'm continually trying, like I still don't like seafood. I want to love seafood. I want to love seafood so badly and I just don't. I keep trying it and it's still just not happening. But I keep trying. You know things that I believe that I don't like. I continue to try.

Speaker 1: 5:44

I do things all the time to make myself uncomfortable because I grow every single time and just really taking time to get to know myself. You know, what do I love to do? I would love to take dancing lessons. I dance every day, but I'm just shaking my booty, you know, and moving my body while I'm feeling the music. But dancing out in public feels really uncomfortable for me. I've gotten better at that. But like, do you do the things that you love to do? Do you know what you know? If you don't know what you like and what you don't like, how do you even know what you want in your life? A couple months ago I spent some time I think it was November, it was the month of November I went through and was doing questions of how to get in tune with yourself.

Speaker 1: 6:34

The intuitive response that comes through is calm and peaceful and loving and usually unexpected. I've definitely had times where I've asked myself a question and I just listened to the first thought that came up. And there was one time I asked myself a question that was like whoa, where did that come from? I was not expecting that. I mean, it was a lovely response that I got, but I wasn't expecting it. It's like huh, where did that come from? Okay, let's go with that. And then I just follow my intuition and follow the little things that come up. They call them little breadcrumbs. I've been living my life that way for a couple years now and it's been guiding me on such a beautiful path. But it's about being open to seeing those things and following that guidance, that inner guidance that comes up, I feel like we live in a space of fear.

Speaker 1: 7:38

So often. We're afraid of change, we're afraid of being uncomfortable, we're afraid of failure, we're afraid of success, we're afraid of embarrassing ourselves, we're afraid of failed relationships, we're afraid of falling in love again, we're afraid of people hurting us. We're just in this constant fear of everything. Fear is really not real. It's man-made. We make these decisions about things and decide that something is scary. But is it really scary? Are we really afraid of it, or is it just uncomfortable because it's unfamiliar? I think that's probably true most of the time, unless you're in physical danger. But we just make up stories in our head.

Speaker 1: 8:28

What if there's a belief about something that you have that you could spend some time thinking the opposite of that? What if you're not really afraid? What if you take the courageous step and do the thing that you're afraid of? There's different questions of things that I do to get in tune with myself. What I do is I ask myself a question, I quiet my mind and then I listen for the answer. My mind doesn't always get really quiet, but I do what I can to ground myself. I'll put my feet on the floor and then I'll wiggle my toes to try and get out of my head. Then I take a deep breath and then I ask myself a question. So here's a couple of questions that you can ask yourself. What or who instantly makes my day better? What is something going on in my life that I may be better served if I were to let it go? Where can I step back and allow my life to flow with grace and ease? Am I honoring how I truly feel? That's a really good one.

Speaker 1: 9:37

Our bodies communicate with us, whether we want them to or not, and it's a matter of paying attention to what your body is doing. Is it tightening up? Is it getting tense? Do you feel tingles in your body? Do you light up with that Hell? Yes, that's your body communicating to you. Or the oh my gosh, I feel sick. Those are responses, and your body is trying to tell you yes or trying to tell you no. Are you listening and are you honoring that? Maybe take some time over the next couple of days to really get to know yourself.

Speaker 1: 10:24

That goes back to the feel-good list. Sometimes I talk to people about the feel-good list and they're like I have no idea. Well, if you have no idea, then try something new, try something that you've always wanted to. Try things like that that you can really get in tune with yourself and get to know who you are not who people have told you that you are, not who people expect you to be, not who you've always been just to survive, but truly, truly getting to know yourself on a deep, deep level. How would that feel? I don't know about you, but I had a lot of beliefs about myself that I'm continually uncovering and realizing. They're just not true. There might be something deeply rooted that has caused you to believe that about yourself, and that's something that we can certainly dive into. And those are things that I've been. I have things come up and I'm like, oh, where did that come from? And then I start to ask myself some questions and I dig a little bit deeper.

Speaker 1: 11:33

So none of this is to just gloss everything over and pretend like things haven't happened in our lives. It's really about being intentional with finding happiness within yourself, so that you're not dependent on other people for your happiness, because when we're dependent on other people for our happiness, what happens when they go away? I mean, at some point we all leave, right? I don't ever want to be responsible for someone else's happiness and honestly, I don't want them to be responsible for my happiness. When you can create peace and joy and fulfillment and happiness within yourself, you're not looking outside of yourself for that anymore. You're looking for people to contribute to your happiness, not be solely responsible for it, and that's pretty big. So spend some time getting to know yourself, going through your feel-good list, maybe trying the alarms, and see how you feel. It feels good to feel good and to know that you can do that for yourself. You can create that for yourself. The power is all within you and it just takes trying some new things and allowing yourself to be open to there possibly being another way to reconnect and remember who you are Actually.

Speaker 1: 13:01

Before I go, I want to read a quote that I came across Topher Kirby. I don't know if you know who he is, but he's an amazing artist and he posts quotes and things on social media all the time with beautiful, beautiful paintings, and I came across this one the other day and I just loved it. It says it's not about finding yourself in life, but remembering who you really are the passion, the fire, the hope and the desire to live each moment to its fullest and to love with all of your heart from Topher Kirby and I love that so much because we all have that fire and passion and love deep within us and when we can share that with a whole beautiful day and I will be back again for more next week.