Ep147: Three Obstacles to Happily Ever Now

Note: This is a computer-generated transcript. That means it's pretty good, but not perfect. If you read something weird or confusing, first laugh, then use the time stamp to hop into the podcast to find out what I REALLY said. 🙂

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Welcome to another episode of Finding My Way, a podcast dedicated to helping you identify and disrupt the patterns of famous to keep you living a safe but ordinary life. When you're your heart is telling you you are meant to be extraordinary, I'm going to challenge you to think about your thoughts, rework your relationships, and get a handle on your habits so that your vision of happily ever after becomes your reality of happily ever now. This is episode 147, and I'm your host, Donna Doyon. Early this morning, I couldn't sleep and I started thinking, oh, I should do a podcast episode. And then I thought, oh, I needed to update everyone on how my Tuesday Inspired Connections workshop went.

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So let's do that today. So I came downstairs, got set up at my computer, and my obese cat was breathing heavily like some insane, obscene phone caller. The furnace kept kicking on and I started thinking, okay, maybe this isn't the day for it, but I have hung in there and I'm going to share just a few things. So Tuesday's workshop, I showed up about 15 or 20 minutes early. There were a few women there talking with the owner manager of the Presence of Mind Wellness Center.

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And so I just started and joined in their conversation. Two lovely women. One was the yoga instructor and the other the other was one of the students. And at 1030, whomp, whomp, whomp, no one walked in the door. So I had no participants in my first workshop.

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But I showed up and I also recorded a video that I will be working on editing over the weekend. So, let's see, I will put a link to that in the show notes so that you may have to go back. This podcast episode will probably be released before the video is done, but you can go back and see what this studio looks like, where the meeting room will be for Inspired Connections, just to check it out so you'll be able to see that at Donnadoyon Comfort Seven. So this beautiful space and I am really excited about working with the owner. Her name is MJ.

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Allen, and she has this great vision of a studio, a place, a home for people to go to really take care of their health and allow themselves to be nurtured and taken care of. She just recently started doing foot treatments, like foot spas. I think there's a massage therapist that practices there, and I know there's a Reiki practitioner there and she's doing these great workshops. They have a sound healing class coming up this coming weekend and my Inspired Connections workshops are going to be here. And so she's reaching out to the community so that people will use this space and bring people together.

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This wellness center has been open for less than a year now, and I'm really excited to be part of making something great for my community. But for this very first class. No one showed up.

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But what I did was I recorded a video in the library, which is where we will start meeting until it's large enough group to meet and to move into the yoga studio part. And I recorded that video because MJ received a phone call. So she was in her office, and I didn't want to just leave without saying something to her. So I was hanging around, recorded this video. When she got off the call, she came back, she came into the library area, and she said, Donna, I'm sorry.

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I wish someone would have showed up. And I said, no, this is what I expected, so I'm not surprised. I'm just glad that I could be here for it. And her face just lightened, her posture relaxed, because she could tell that I didn't see this as a failure. Instead, I saw that as part of my journey.

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It was a first step, and the fact that no one was there was completely okay. I think sometimes we put obstacles in our way, and they don't need to be. So today I want to share what I see as three of the biggest obstacles that we put in our way. So the first one is limiting beliefs. This is when we tell ourselves we can't before we even really consider the possibilities of what if we can.

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This is what I talk about when I talk about mindset. And some of you know it as thinking. Thinking. It doesn't have to be Blatantly negative thinking, but sometimes it is flavored more as I'm not worthy of it, I'm not good enough. And we think we're being realistic, but instead we're really just holding ourselves back.

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We're not allowing for the possibilities. Or we're saying, well, when this happens, then I'll be happy when this happens. I'll have the confidence to do something when someone changes or is out of my life. If I had a new boss, I'd be able to fill in the blank. These are all thoughts that are holding us back, and we can change the way that we think.

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I recently read that 80% to 90% of the actions we take on a daily basis are just us living on autopilot. We're going to talk about being on autopilot in point number three, but limiting beliefs, our mindset, the stinking thinking. That's the biggest obstacle that we have to overcome. The second obstacle I see is around our relationships and our personal boundaries or our lack of them. Our relationships with our parents, with our children, with our spouses, with our coworkers, with our bosses, with our neighbors, with our friends.

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Are we honoring our own needs and desires not to the exclusion of everyone else, but in addition to everyone else? Are we putting ourselves first occasionally half the time, maybe even a little more than half of the time? Or are we carrying the burdens of everyone else when they should be taking care of their own load. I did a two or three part podcast series on our personal boundaries and I will put a link to that in the show notes. I don't remember off the top of my head what episodes they were.

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I think in the early 90s, mid 90s, but you can get links to those episodes at Donadoyon Comfort Seven. So our relationships with the people around us, we let them hold us back or we don't even try anything because we've got the limiting beliefs, the stinking thinking, the worrying about how someone else will respond. We have all of this garbage going on in our head. Rather than facing it and saying, okay, this is an obstacle, this is blocking my path to what I want and figuring out how to get over, under, around through it, we're just saying, Oh, it's there, can't do anything about it. Oops, okay, let me watch TV all night.

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That's something that we can change. And then the third obstacle I see are our daily habits, our routine, the time that we spend living on autopilot, not giving a second thought to how we're spending our time, where our energy is going, how we are showing up in our various relationships. We've always been the submissive employee, we're always going to be the submissive employee, even though we have ideas that could change the way things are going in the workplace. It's amazing how many people hold back from sharing their gifts and their talents because they were afraid someone will put them down. We'll laugh, we're afraid of failure, we're afraid of success.

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We're afraid of everything. And our society is built on fear. Everything you hear is telling you to be afraid. There's always a bad guy, there's always a bad situation, there's always harm that's going to happen. And that's part of the mindset, the limited beliefs of our country, this is just problematic.

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And if you fall into that and you get sucked into that way of thinking, you're limiting your potential, your future, your promise of happiness and fulfillment. Which reminds me as I woke up early, early in the morning and I had this thought that I wanted to do a podcast episode, it kind of flashed into my mind, my episode 100, in which I talked about five common patterns that I found as I was exploring happily ever after in my 1st 100 episodes of this podcast. And it came down to five major themes. There were some straggler themes, but a lot of episodes fell into one of these five categories. The first one was freedom of choice.

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The second one was having the courage to be yourself, to trust yourself and to believe in yourself. The third realization was the need to be playful, not take life so seriously, which is something I still find challenging because I am more serious than playful. But I will tell you, for Halloween I dressed up as a Christmas elf. When I went to work. The fourth pattern is allowing yourself to be open to new thoughts, new experiences, new perspectives.

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Instead of feeling threatened by them, be curious. Look at things that you wouldn't necessarily approve of or agree with and say, maybe there's some possibility there. Maybe I can see the way that thinking goes. And then the fifth pattern was engaging in satisfying relationships. And that goes back to the healthy relationships, means having healthy personal boundaries.

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There's always that give and that take. There's establishing that separation, even though you may be part of a couple or a team or a family. So I thought it was kind of interesting that of these five items that I found as patterns for living happily ever after that four of them fall into my categories of obstacles the limiting beliefs, having healthy relationships and personal boundaries, and being mindful of your daily routine, your habits. The only one that didn't quite fit into that mold was being playful. But I can also see playful as being part of each and every one of those categories.

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I interrupt this free flowing audio program to bring you this update. Typically, I don't do this, but yesterday, after recording this podcast episode and just kind of doing a blase statement that learning how to play more probably impacts all three of the obstacles to living happily ever now. And it didn't sit right with me yesterday. And I tried to come up with some playful ideas and I was just stuck in serious mode. But as I was driving to work yesterday, and then as I was working, I started thinking about the idea and I thought, man, it would be great if we could go back to when we were children or the perceived or the hoped for experience of childhood.

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I never really was a playful person. I don't recall that about myself. I wouldn't describe my childhood that way. But when I see children, or when I think about the perfect childhood, I think of the magic and the wonders, the fearlessness, the willingness to try everything, being curious about everything. When you're a child, there's no such thing as a limiting belief.

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You think you can be an astronaut. You think you can be Batman or Superman or Wonder Woman. You think you can do anything. You can be that prima ballerina in the New York Met. You can do anything.

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And then people start telling you that you can't or you shouldn't, or you don't have this or that quality needed to do that. And that's what starts to break down the magic. It starts to break our spirit. So if we can just a little bit reconnect with our inner child and start looking at the world with more wonder, as if it's the magical place that it really is, and start saying, what if? Let's try something new.

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Let's get rid of the expectations. We can be filled with hope, but let's let go of the expectations. When you see children playing, they're not expecting certain results. They're hoping for them. And it's only when someone in perceived authority starts saying, oh, well, maybe you could do this, maybe you could get that scholarship to whatever college you wanted if you just are a little bit better at whatever sport you're playing or whatever musical instrument you're playing.

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And they start putting these expectations on the activity and upon you so that the activity itself loses its magic. Remember, no one is the boss of you, but you start looking at your life and how you want it to be, how you imagine it could be, and become more playful as you're looking at things. Challenge your limiting beliefs, not because you have to, because I tell you to, but because you start embracing that inner child who says, yes, but what if? What if it does work out? What if it is fun?

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What if I could go to the moon? Learn how to play again in all aspects of your life. For me, that just means looking at things a little bit easier and just allowing things to happen as they happen and being okay with that, not thinking that it means anything about me. Because when we start assigning value and really attaching to the outcome, that's when it's not fun anymore. So let's learn how to be a little bit more playful, have a little bit more fun in our lives, because there is amazing funness out there.

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But I do think that being more playful will help you to overcome these three obstacles. Now we're going to return to your regularly recorded program.

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And I also realized something else as I was reviewing those happily ever after patterns. I choose not to live happily ever after. I came upon this realization a month or two ago when I was out hiking. At some point, the thought of happily ever after came to my mind, and I thought, you know, screw that. I don't want to live happily ever after.

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I want to live happily ever now in this moment today. I don't want to keep looking to the future for when something happens. Then I'll be happy. I don't want to look to the future and say, well, if this happens, then I'll be more confident, I'll be more fun, I'll feel more fulfilled, I'll have better relationships. Or when some aspect of my life changes so that something has left, my life is no longer part of my life, then finally things will change.

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No. Let the change start today, this week, I encourage you. No, I challenge you. Stop looking to the future for what you want for today. Start experiencing it today.

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This means putting your limiting beliefs on notice that you're going to start working on them. It means taking a look at your personal relationships to determine which ones serve you and which ones are holding you back. You can put boundaries in place to restore that sense of who you are and what you want out of life. And finally, I challenge you to start looking at how you are spending your time, where you are directing your energy, and start being more conscious of how you are doing things. Your habits are on autopilot, and if you want to make a change, then it's up to you to make that change happen.

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It's not going to happen on its own. Your body, your mind. It wants to take the easy route. It's going to do things the way it's always done. What's comfortable, what's familiar.

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Get ready to feel a little uncomfortable in your own skin, in your own thoughts, and in the way that you're feeling, because that's how you're going to make change happen. And that's how you're going to overcome these obstacles so that you can live happily ever now. Have an amazing week and I will talk with you again soon.

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If you enjoy listening to this podcast and are ready to create an improved version of yourself without totally disrupting your life, you have to check out my Healthier Habits Foundation program. I know it's a boring title, and that's intentional. You have to realize the magic is in the mundane, and magic can happen when you start paying closer attention to your thoughts, your relationships, and your daily routine. Learn more about Healthier Habits Foundation@donnajoyon.com HHF the music for this podcast is Drifting Up Stream by Hyson.