Hi guys! Welcome to episode 261 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! Florida in July is hot but beautiful! And we had such a fun week with our family! Spend more time with the people you love, it’s good for the soul.
This episode is geared for women but don’t worry…men you can always gain something too.
I am always fascinated by learning something new about myself and what makes me tick or what makes humans tick for that matter.
As we grow up we take on all of these roles that we play. Think about the roles you play. Mother daughter, sister, wife, aunt, friend, employee or boss
But there’s one role that matters to all the other roles you take on and that’s the role of being you. Not just you surviving. You THRIVING. This is your most important role.
Often that role gets neglected when you’re busy. It gets buried underneath the expectations of others. It gets sidelined because the kids are more important or my partner should come first. Women are especially bad at this because we are trying to manage the expectations of everyone else to the point that we forget we matter too.
Sometimes we don’t even acknowledge we are an individual with individual needs. We identify as one of the roles we’ve taken on such as mom or wife or daughter to the point to we don’t know who we are without that role.
Maybe it’s easier to avoid that role because you don’t like who you’ve become, or you don’t like the body you’re in or the life you’re in. Maybe you don’t want to face it because you’ve told yourself for twenty years you’ll take care of yourself “once the kids get older” or “once I retire” or maybe you say “as long as everyone else is happy, then I’m happy”.
I see women going along with decisions they don’t like all the time because they are afraid to say what they really want. Afraid to be judged for what they really want.
But who are you? What do you want out of life? How do you want to show up? How do you want to look and feel? What do you like to talk about, what are your personal interests?
You matter and what you want matters just as much as anyone else. But it’s not anyone else’s job to see that you thrive. That’s your job. If you’re not thriving, it’s not your partners fault or your kids fault, you’re the one who has to make that happen.
You were not put on this earth to manage expectations and make sure everyone around you is happy.
You are actually here to thrive and everything else comes second to that. If you’re thriving, your kids will benefit. Your partner will benefit and if you’re single and thriving the world is your oyster.
You’re ability to thrive should come first. If you whence when you hear that, why? Why do we think we should put our thriving on the back burner, second to everything else? The more you thrive, the better mom you are, the more you thrive, the better wife you are, the better daughter, sister, friend you are.
The problem I see is most women have no clue what thriving looks like for them. They are afraid to define it because now they have to admit that maybe they aren’t.
I was listening to Alex Hermozi on the school of greatness podcast and he said something profound. Most of us want to be happy but most of us have no clear definition of what happy is for us so we don’t ever know if we’re there.
Same thing goes for thriving. If you have no idea what thriving looks like for you, how do you ever know if your there?
If someone asked you right now if you want to be thriving in life what would you say? If you’re honest of course you want to be thriving. But my guess is that some of you listening would also say “I’m just trying to survive right now, thriving seems a little far off.” And that’s a fair answer. But my question to you would be “what would thriving look like for you?” And what’s keeping you from it?
As I was thinking about this, I defined thriving for myself and it looks like this: Im intentional. I’m eating 80% for nutrition and health, my body is healthy and fit, I’m constantly improving, I’m being consistent with my career, I’m being authentic in the roles I play with other people, I recognize that I’m responsible for my own happiness and for my own mental state and no one can make me feel a certain way unless I let them. Now of course it’s not always perfect but every day I’m working on it. When I ask myself what’s keeping me from those things that make me feel like I’m thriving…well sometimes if I have a couple drinks, I will eat things that cause my body problems, and sometimes I create problems in my head that aren’t there and this can cause a lot of problems. Our little yorkie has a puppy sitter that keeps her when we travel, she’s been keeping her for over 7 years. She is a true blessing to us because she loves Kenzie like she was her own but This last week she sent me a text that I mis read and I quickly jumped to the conclusion that Kenzie hadn’t eaten for a day and a half because the pet sitter forgot to get her food when she picked her up. That wasn’t even close to what happened. She had already stopped and got the food she knows she eats and was just double checking to make sure that was ok. I have been working on not jumping to worst case scenarios and I jumped head first into that one. But I recognized it and realized this is not me being my best self by jumping to conclusions before I have all the facts.
You see my thriving has everything to do with the things I control and nothing to do with things I don’t.
You can’t control the kids throwing a fit but you can control what you make it mean about you as a mom. You can’t control your partners moods but you can control what you make it mean about you as a wife. Your thriving is all about you and how you define it.
So what does thriving look like for you?
Are you thriving? That’s a good question to be honest about because if you’re not, what can you do about it.
Another point Alex Hermozi talked about was most of us are looking for permission to do something for ourselves when what we really need to be asking for is support.
This may look like…
I’ve decided to join this gym and I’d love your support with it. You’re an adult, you don’t need permission to join the gym, but it would be nice for your partner to support your efforts.
Stop asking for permission and start asking for support instead. How many times have you wanted to do something but stopped short for fear of what someone else might think?
Your thriving depends on your ability to go after what you want. How good are you at going after something you want and not giving up until you got it?
What personal goals do you have for yourself that don’t include other people or that nothing would get in the way of? You’d be surprised how many women have a hard time answering that because society tells us that’s selfish.
Society tells us it’s selfish to put yourself first but then also will criticize you if you’re overweight. They’ll criticize you if you have a career and a family but they’ll also criticize you if you have a family and no career or a career with no family. Point being..society will criticize you for every decision you make so why not make the ones that you want, the ones that fit in your definition of thriving whatever that is.
My challenge to you today is to define what thriving looks like to you. The title of this episode is What’s keeping you from thriving? The answer has to be YOU. Otherwise you’re giving your power to thrive away and you don’t need permission to thrive, you simply may just need support.
I love you guys I’ll talk to you in a few days.
