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
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 m...