Simple on Purpose | Intentional Living and Parenting

Dearest listeners, today is the finale episode where I share with you my experience of the podcast, answer your questions and sum up the takeaways I hope you have had from listening to the podcast. 

This a list of episodes that listeners sent to me, as being their fave episode of the Simple on Purpose podcast

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9:15

19:11

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Years ago I learned a simple tool that has improved all my relationships. This tool is about looking for the cues that others are giving us – and using those times to connect. They are called Bids For Connection, a Gottman term. I will outline what bids are, ways to respond, and how to simplify the process. 

Before we jump in, 👉🏼 remember to stay connected through the Simple Saturdays email, 📧  you can sign up here. 

Full transcript (unedited)

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8:44

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

We all make assumptions and judgments of others – but did you know there is a bias we have in our judgements?

This bias shows up in all of our relationships and it can create an opposition and divide in places we actually want empathy and compassion. 

In this episode we explore the Fundamental Attribution Bias, how it impacts our relationships and what to do about it. 

As mentioned in the episode, you can find the Spotify playlists here, and sign up for Simple Saturdays here. 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

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Hey guys, it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counselor from simple on purpose.ca Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. I want to give you a heads up right away this podcast will retire for the summer. So just a heads up. Our summer starts at the end of June. I encourage you in those months to use the archives, we have over five years of episodes on all of the topics. So if you want to be intentional about listening to them, I suggest you use the Spotify playlists and define those, you can go to simple on purpose.ca and click listen. You’ll find the links to the playlist we’ve got them on different topics like habit change mom on purpose, life on purpose, minimalism emotions, they’re all there for you check them out. And this summer also follow along with a simple Saturday’s email. If you aren’t a subscriber, I definitely encourage you to join that that is just a really like, warm and cozy place that I love to be with you guys. It comes out every two weeks, so it’s not gonna overwhelm your inbox. And I like to share some simple and purposes, purpose thoughts, some posts you might like. And that’s actually where you guys gave me this nickname, your nerdy girlfriend. So it’s a really great space to be. I’ll link that in the show notes as well. Let’s get into today’s episode this month, we’re talking about relationships. What is the purpose of a relationship? Is it to support your survival, emotional support, to entertain you to find love to find connection. This has definitely changed over the years of purpose of a relationship, especially if you look in the context of a marriage. It used to be about survival for a woman to be under the care of a man that was the world that was the culture unfortunately, it still is in some places. But even friends and communities, there was a need for support and survival, there was a need to do things together. So it is a more modern concept that our relationships are there to entertain us to make us feel loved to feel connected and seen and valued for the better and the worst, right, and that’s a whole other topic. But we all know that we are a social species. And maybe some of us feel that it is definitely true, that relationships are important to us to our to our well being.

studies have concluded this that supportive relationships are actually the number one predictor of well being in your life, it’s not money, it’s not your health or your job or how trendy your clothes are. It is people deep relationships. This is from the longest running study on the topic called that Harvard adult development study. If you have some people in your life, and it doesn’t need to be a lot that you feel like you can rely on who you support, and they support you that is the highest predictor of feeling well being in your life. Kind of crazy. So we know deep within us that we need relationships for many reasons. However, we run into obstacles just to be in the daily life of relationships with others, I want to talk about a common way that we create opposition in our relationships. And that is our assumptions. We fill in the blanks a lot. We fill in the blanks on what others are thinking we do this more often than we should probably we mind read. Have you ever mind read what your husband was thinking and decided he’s probably mad at, you know, just me, we fill in the blanks on what others are thinking, often what they’re thinking about us, they think I’m overreacting, they don’t think I’m good enough. They think I don’t know what I’m talking about. They know why I’m mad, and they just don’t want to admit it. And a lot can be said for what we’re projecting of ourselves and our own insecurities into this blank space. We also make assumptions about why they’re doing what they’re doing, what are their motives. And this is where I want to talk about the fundamental attribution bias, which is about this bias that we have when we look at what other people are doing, and what our brain makes it mean about them. Now, I don’t think this about people that don’t want to give an example, if you see somebody who doesn’t take the grocery cart back and you are someone who takes the grocery cart back, what are you thinking? Are they are they lazy? So I live in a town where the carts are free, you might live in a world where you gotta get that coin back. And you might come to different conclusions. But this can go the other way, right? So imagine you’re someone who never takes the cart back. And you see that person across the parking lot who is taking the cart back? What pops up for you? They’re probably judging me. Oh, they think they’re so great. We do this really quietly in the back of our minds. We look at other people’s actions, and we make assumptions about the type of person that they are. We’ve heard so often actions speak louder than words but we forget that any action can have a lot of circumstances, thoughts. feelings experiences conditions that express that action that lead up to that action. And I’m not talking about obvious situations where someone is causing harm or acting unethically in a morally, I’m talking more of that day to day stuff in our relationships, the things we judge in those around us. Relate relationships are one of the most common topics in counseling, because we know we need relationships. So when our close relationships feel off, our sense of stability feels off. Relationships, our deepest work, we live in relation to others, others are a mirror for us, a mirror for our own defenses, our triggers, our measuring sticks, our struggles, the things we rejected ourselves, our self judgment, perception is a projection, our experience of, well, anything but our experience of another person depends on us. So imagine we’re reading a book or watching a movie or someone said something, really anything, we all develop different meanings about the things because we are different, and we’ve had different experiences that shape, what meaning we give to things. Our perception is a projection of us of our own stories, our values, our cultural upbringing, our likes, our dislikes, our experiences, what we’re comfortable with what we’re not how we measure right and wrong. Here’s an example, if someone is very oppositional, but you grew up believing that it was noble and kind and diplomatic, to keep the peace, that oppositional person is going to trigger a lot in you, you’re going to have a lot of discomfort in judgment of the person. Or you will deny all those emotions and just wonder why it’s such a struggle to be around them. And imagine the opposite. If you grew up believing it was necessary to be oppositional that there are in justices in the world, someone has to take a stand. And if you care about something, you will say something, then they look at the person who seems to placate or seem apathetic, and that will trigger something in them. With a fundamental attribution bias, we make conclusions based on what we see in others. If a coworker is late to a meeting, we might assume that they’re disorganized. They’re disrespectful. We see the action and we make an assumption about who that person is their character, their motives. And maybe it’s true, like with most things, right, maybe sometimes they’re disorganized or disrespectful, maybe sometimes, but probably not all of the time. Like this is true for most things. But the most important part of all of this, the thing that I think can actually help us shift our perspectives on how we look at others make assumptions about them, Sidner judgments about them is the flip side. This bias has a flip side, which is when we do the thing. We attribute our actions to external circumstances, we justify it not by our character, but by what is happening to us. If we are late to a meeting, we have reasons right. Like, I had to get my kid off to school, I’m a mom, right? Or I had to print those meeting notes. The printer didn’t work. This bias is in almost every relationship from siblings to coworkers, to the lady at yoga to our kids to our partners. If my partner doesn’t want to talk about a subject, it’s because they’re scared to be vulnerable. They can’t handle their feelings like something’s wrong with them, right? Confirm this for me. But if I don’t want to talk about a subject, it’s because I’m not feeling safe. Right? Something else is the problem not perfect little me. If my partner doesn’t text me back during the day, I can assume they don’t care about me. They care more about work. They’re dismissive, how selfish of them. But if I don’t text them back during the day, I was busy. There’s so much stuff on my plate, I got distracted. Don’t you know how hard I work? There’s just so much I need to take care of how can you expect me to text you back like that? This is the contrast. How about with our kids, if our kid has a bad attitude, and we know they can have bad attitudes, we have a lot of assumptions about them. They’re moody, they’re petty, they’re dramatic. Oh my gosh, drama queen in the house. But if we have a bad attitude, we can probably list seven different external reasons that caused our bad attitude. We do this with perfect strangers to think of how you feel when someone cuts you off in traffic. I mean, sure, there’s obnoxious drivers and we just assume they’re being jerks. But if we found ourselves in that situation where we’ve had to cut someone off, we can tell you about all of the conditions out of our control that led up to that like Siri didn’t tell me I had to merge here. Soon enough, the person beside me didn’t let me in soon enough, whatever. We do this in the service industry a lot where opinions are formed on the employees or the managers based on how long the food takes or how long the line is at the cashier and you know that People who have worked in the service industry, you can see them, they are a patient, they are like a weak headed, we know what it’s like to be understaffed or someone calls in sick, or maybe the training wasn’t great, or you’re over scheduled, there’s a lot of demands on you, you can just tell the difference for the people who have been there. We make assumptions about people online, we can build up elaborate stories about the type of person it takes to make that certain type of social media post, and you fill in the blanks with whatever you notice in yourself, because we have a life online. So we do this quite often online. Whenever I learn about the way our brain filters information, and it has this bias, sometimes this bias actually doesn’t make our life better. I just wonder why. Why are we built this way? The short answer is to save energy. So our brain is always doing this. Assessing, categorizing, assessing, categorizing, it is the most efficient way, it would be too labor intensive for our brains to stop and think about all the external factors and this person’s life experience and all of the things in order to accurately know them their motives, their character. But if we can just look at the information, we have a person’s actions, we immediately categorize this person good, bad, right? Wrong, then we can know how to handle that person, and we will stay safe in that social environment. So these judgments are often too quick to perceive. And yes, they’re based on our past experiences and opinions. But ultimately, this is here to keep us safe is protective. And we do need some of this for sure we do. We need to have that intuition to help us navigate our social settings. But we also need to be aware of times where this fundamental attribution bias creates a me versus them mentality, or even in us versus them, when we applied to groups of people, which we see a lot more of, especially politically these days. So imagine you’re at work, and you have a co worker, and they always slack on this part of the job. Or we think oh, they’re entitled, they’re lazy, and probably I’m not gonna get too close to them, because that’s not who I am. That’s not in line with my values.

But what about the things that others might think that we slack on? Well, it’s probably because we’re under resourced, or we think it’s a low priority, we used our assessment, or we need training for it, or our boss won’t offer whatever. We also do it with social groups right here right around us. Imagine like as moms, you see, that group of moms over there, they are so blank, fill in the blank. And since I am not like that, I will not get close to them. The fundamental attribution bias helps us feel a sense of control, when we can read a person so to speak. This can show up a lot more for us in new settings, uncomfortable social settings, where we need to establish some safety within ourselves. We use this to quickly categorize who is safe, who is not, it gives us a sense of control. Ultimately, the bias is not based on facts, the facts will require work, curiosity, conversation, vulnerability, empathy, this bias can just bypass empathy and go right to conclusion. And that’s normal, right? Sometimes empathy can be a risk, it can cloud our intuition, it can make us vulnerable. But in a relationship where we do want safety, connection, compassion, we know empathy is like oxygen. I’m going to link some notes on that in the show notes of past episodes I’ve done on empathy and different relationships. Where we want more empathy, we need to be especially aware of this bias. If we seek more empathy, especially with the people we love. We cannot rely on our instantaneous assumptions. Again, based on our perceptions. We need to get more curious, we need to ask more questions. It reminds me of that account that I’m sure you’ve seen online called Humans of New York, where they take this portrait of someone in New York, and it’s just some person you’ve never seen before. But you look at it. And you might form a story about them in your mind. But the thing that they pair it with is someone’s deep and very personal story that they share with this post. Again, if you’re just looking at the photo, you’re going to make some conclusions. Perception is a projection but then you read their story and you look at them again, and your perception is rewritten. From all of this, I encourage you to remember there’s always a flipside, where we find ourselves taking these actions, we attribute them to our external circumstances, or maybe we even do this for our kids. We we don’t use this with just ourselves. We sometimes use it with people that we need them to be viewed a certain way. We let ourselves off the hook we let them off the hook. But when others take that action, or when another kid takes that action, we attribute it to their internal character. When I learned about this bias, I could see it by up a lot, mostly in my marriage, because that’s a place that’s really vulnerable. Marriage is really an arena of two people triggering each other all the time. So as I’ve seen my own bias come up, here’s some things I try to do. One, I try to laugh, like, I really laugh out loud at myself, sometimes with the conclusions I come to. I know I’ve shared this post before, something like my husband put the groceries away wrong, he must not care about me. And so like our brain can work. So I’m going to link that in the show notes. And then second, I stopped taking myself so seriously. And I don’t mean lowering my standards, but really about having compassion, and not making everything feel like this big, high pressure situation on who I need to be really making peace that I am messy and selfish and careless, sometimes I am all of those things to it has really brought me a lot of freedom and allowing it and others and then myself. Of course, I’ve got an episode on that. I’m going to link that in the show notes Two. And three, I get curious. If it’s a stranger, I find myself making up stories to practice different conclusions like that person is speeding, because they’re sisters in labor, like I did that, that happened to me. Or that person didn’t record and return that shopping cart, because they want to leave it handy for someone on this other side of the parking lot. Again, I don’t care about cards, like that’s kind of for me, or this person is probably having a really crappy day, and it’s hard for them to pretend they’re okay, and make a small talk at the grocery store with me, I don’t need this cashier to make me feel better. Like they can just have their own experience in view and whatever they’re in. And if it’s someone I can have a conversation with, I want to ask rather than assume, I don’t want to keep filling in the blanks. I don’t want to keep mine reading I want to ask. Ultimately, we know our judgments can become walls. So where we want to seek connection, we need to learn to dismantle our judgments and our stories of one another and man that takes humility, and hope and commitment and Jesus and hopefully some sense of humor and all of this. I’m going to put some links in the show notes, I always encourage you to go check them out. Go to simple on purpose.ca. Click Listen, you’ll find all of the episodes there. I filled them all with show notes and there also is a full transcript too if you ever want to read the episode. I really enjoy talking about relationships. I really enjoy working on them. They are one of my most favorite arenas to do this work. If you want one to one support on this, you can look into coaching with me. I’ll link that in the show notes as well. All right friends, have a great one.

When you think you need all the things and the dream home to be happy…. then you realize you need to shed the weight of ‘stuff’ and consumerism in order to find yourself and find peace. Renee Benes, of the Unstuffed Podcast, shares some of her story of downsizing, decluttering the closet and what it taught her about herself and her life. 

In this episode, we talk about:

This episode is a portion of our interview, the rest of the interview covers topics such as:

There is audio and video available for the rest of this fun interview! 

👋🏽 Find Renee at the Unstuffed Podcast and on Instagram 

☕️ Join the Simple Saturdays Email

👯‍♀️ Be part of the Life on Purpose Community 

Full Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Shawna Scafe 1:46

Renee 1:49

Shawna Scafe 1:51

Renee 1:52

Shawna Scafe 1:53

Renee 2:27

Shawna Scafe 3:11

Renee 3:30

Shawna Scafe 4:58

Renee 5:30

Shawna Scafe 7:23

Renee 7:24

Shawna Scafe 7:28

Renee 8:00

Shawna Scafe 10:59

Renee 11:12

Shawna Scafe 11:59

Renee 13:13

Shawna Scafe 13:40

Renee 13:44

Shawna Scafe 14:29

Renee 14:30

Shawna Scafe 15:03

Renee 16:16

Speaker 1 16:19

Our relationship to ‘enough’ can show up in all the areas of our life. Whether we struggle with discomfort, self-worth, setting limits, or offering ourselves more – we all can consider how the concept of ‘enough’ and ‘sufficient’ can play out in our minds, hearts and lives. 

Follow along on Instagram

Sign up for the Simple Saturdays email (twice a month!)

Join the Life on Purpose Community 

Book a session with Shawna 

Hey friends, it’s Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and counselor. Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. So we’re coming into April. And this is a weird season. It’s like an in between season for me, because summer is not here, the

Speaker 1 0:18

Speaker 1 9:47

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The most common question I get is “how do you balance motherhood, life and work?”. We are all seeking to have more balance in our daily lives and make sure we get everything done.  In this episode, I share my struggles with having a toddler and baby and looking for balance in my life. I share the common themes I hear from clients on the topic of balance. And I want to offer you different ways to define balance for yourself. 

How do you define balance? What has your culture told you about what balance looks like for a working mom?

How does the workplace support working moms, working families? 

We get the sense that others have found balance and ease in their life, we don’t see their struggles or inner critics. 

Follow along on Instagram

Sign up for the Simple Saturdays email (twice a month!)

Join the Life on Purpose Community 

Book a session with Shawna 

Full transcript (unedited)

Speaker 1 0:00

Speaker 1 8:40

Unknown Speaker 16:24

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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, I talk about the upcoming post I will be sharing in the Patreon on the topic of How to Not Lose Yourself in Motherhood.

Full Transcript (unedited)

0:06

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 mom, and all that it takes from us and all that we give it, we often find that we’ve lost ourselves part of ourselves. So we’ve lost those parts of ourselves that is not mom. Along the way. We’ve tuned out those other parts, those parts that have some inner knowing, inner passion, eagerness, curiosity of what we want, and who we are.

As I work with clients who feel stuck, we can talk about a lot of things, the patterns that we’re in, the beliefs we’re living from, we can process what’s hard, we can work on how we’re dealing with stress. And this is all really great at revealing some foundation for them.

And once they feel ready, we can start talking about moving forward. There’s a shift when someone feels ready for this, there’s a shift in their whole body when we move from addressing the stuckness like you’re in the pit. And when we get out of the pit. So to speak, we feel ready to start that journey. It’s a very exciting time because we get to shift into a new way of approaching our lives our daily life. We shift our motivation, and I’m going to tell you about two types of motivation to pay attention to.

If you’ve heard episode 177 that digs deep into these types of motivation. One is away motivation. Moving away from the things that hurt, avoiding the things that hurt and the other one is towards motivation, moving towards things that are enjoyable or pleasant. And away, motivation is very common, we naturally want to avoid pain. So we have that negativity bias scanning for potential danger. I know for me, it’s really easy to live my whole day in that away motivation. Avoid the bad avoid the danger, especially in motherhood, where I struggle with that need to control the chaos.

I also think, towards motivation in a way motivation is interesting in the context of a faith lens to where some of us grew up with a very legalistic view on our faith. And our life had to be lived in a way to avoid sin. It can become very fear based it feels like a life of just sin management. Avoid the badness avoid the bad, avoid our badness like a bracing for the fight defense mode beyond guard, even talking about that I feel in my body. What about opening up our arms and moving towards what is good? That feels like living to me that feels more like life to me.

I’m reading a book on this right now. It’s called pure pleasure. Why do Christians feel so bad about feeling good, and I hope to share thoughts about that in the Patreon in the future, shifting ourselves our approach into seeking pleasure, chasing the good, chasing the enjoyable, it is hard. Whether we find ourselves stuck in a way motivation with the difficulties of life, we also need to consider that something else that makes it hard is what our culture tells us about what we get to enjoy and pursue.

Consider what you’ve learned from your own culture, from your upbringing from society as it is right now. There are expectations on us women, especially if we are moms with kids at home, there’s criteria on what society thinks is okay to enjoy what roles we are allowed to enjoy, and which roles we shouldn’t enjoy and how much and when and how. And when I talk about living with more passion. I don’t mean this huge, big life altering thing. I don’t mean find your calling chase your dreams overhaul your whole life. You’ve heard me say I don’t want you to overhauling your whole life. When I say this is your life, you should enjoy it. I don’t mean you have to smile all day every day and pretend like hard things aren’t happening. What I am saying is you’re allowed to make choices, even the smallest choices that bring you satisfaction and pleasure and delight. Not temporary fixes not coping but choosing things that nourished you and make you feel alive.

10:03

Can you do something today that you enjoy? It might feel really uncomfortable to say I’m gonna go do some things I enjoy today, you might feel guilty, you might feel selfish, you might feel like it’s frivolous. You might feel uncomfortable or, or resistance, especially if you’ve been holding that martyr card, you can give yourself permission to enjoy things. When you’re in a state of expressing your martyrdom asked me I’ve been there. And I’m going to share more about that in that Patreon episode too.

But what helped me and what I would just offer you as an idea. Just an idea, all of this is just for ideas, is to start with the small things in the routine of daily living, we can build up the skills of listening more closely to ourselves, trying things out, getting curious, and practicing small moments of fueling that spark feeling a little bit more passionate and a little bit more alive, in ourselves in our bodies and our lives.

So I’ve got some ideas, here some ideas on how to start today. Choose the song you want to listen to on the radio, if you don’t have a playlist of main character energy, like your own soundtrack, you got to make yourself one it is so therapeutic. choose that song that just makes you feel like yourself. Watch an uplifting or funny video that you know make you smile. Set a timer though, so you don’t get lost in YouTube. But something that you know generates a really positive response for yourself. Put on clothes you love to wear clothes, it feel like you fabrics that feel good on your skin. Choose a meal that you’re excited about. You’ve been cooking for everyone else. What do you want to eat? You’re allowed to do that she was a scent, you’ll go smell it. Doodle something, sing something, move, move your body, our bodies need motion dance, golfer walk. Also, our bodies need rest. So if you need some rest, go sit in your favorite chair in your house, stare out the window at your favorite tree.

What matters here is the intention. What matters is that you show up and do this for the purpose of the pleasure, the enjoyment, it matters, that you don’t just go through the motions. And just Okay, check that off. But it matters that you do it on purpose change your posture towards this savor the experience of enjoying your life even in the smallest little doses.

I’m hoping to continue this conversation in the Patreon you’ve probably heard me mentioned Patreon like five times in this episode, so if you don’t know what it is, go back to the previous episode, hear all about it and decide if that’s the right place for you to be in community. But overall, I’m going to still be here. I want to encourage you to show up for your life, to enjoy it to own it and to live it on purpose. Alright friends, have a great week.

I am going to stop spreading myself thin across the internet, and I am launching a member community in Patreon called the Life on Purpose Community. I chose this name because I want one of the overall goals of this community to be nurturing YOUR life on purpose. I want to encourage you to have passion in your life and enjoy your life. 

If you are interested in the Patreon, learn more about it here. 

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Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Negative self-talk can our work-life balance or ability to manage parenting challenges. In this episode, Shawna Scafe, Counsellor and Coach, discusses how to identify common cognitive distortions and challenge them to help rewire your self-talk to be more empowering and motivating. 

This episode is a follow-up to the introduction on Cognitive Distortion (Episode 199). Listeners sent in examples of situations in their day where they struggle with positive self-talk. In each example, I point out what cognitive distortion might be at play and offer some questions to open up awareness of other ways to talk to yourself. 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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Guys. How is it March? How is where did February go? Okay, February felt like a blur of hockey. I’ve been setting up a new office to do some local sessions and getting that painted and all set up and I just look up and suddenly it’s March. Oh yeah, by the way, I had a kid turn 13 last month too. Isn’t that crazy? What’s also crazy is that means I’ve been sharing with you guys for almost 13 years because the very first thing I ever posted way back on a blog spot called duck tail blog was the story of my C section. And I had a lot of big feelings about it. A lot of disappointment and frustration and anger and and nurse had recommended that I write about it. That was the first blog post that really started this whole online community online relationship that we were able to develop and how it’s grown, how we’ve changed how we’ve grown together. And now we’re talking about things like cognitive distortions and motherhood and mindsets and just really keep digging in deeper and peeling off the layers and going deeper together, which I just I cherished so much, that you guys are on this journey with me and we can do it together. Alright, so this episode is a follow up to the one I did two episodes ago on cognitive distortions. The topic was brought up because I had a request to talk about positive self talk during the day, which made me think when we’re paying attention to our thoughts, we really have to notice the way that we filter our thoughts and the cognitive distortions we might have. So I’ve covered some of the main ones in that episode, like all or nothing thinking disqualifying the positive emotional reasoning, overgeneralization there were also some download wallpapers to get with that, as well. I’ll make sure to link that in the show notes. And this episode will be the follow up, I’m going to answer the scenarios the specific scenarios you submitted to me in the Facebook group. On the subject of times in your day that you feel you need some positive self talk, I’m going to give you a heads up right here that I am going to be launching a Patreon guys, I’ve thought about this for many years, actually, ever since we closed down the life on purpose Academy and 2021. I knew I wanted to bring a community back, and it’s going to be on Patreon. So I’m going to cover a handful of the sooner scenarios here and have an additional episode in the patreon to really keep digging into this. Alright, self talk, positive self talk, maybe you struggle with positive self talk, maybe you notice it in a lot of areas of your life. Maybe in certain areas where you feel a bit more shaky, or unsure. Maybe you notice you feel defeated about things. And often we struggle with negative self talk, when we’re feeling defeated when something’s not going quite right. It’s interesting, that negative self talk we use negative emotions to motivate ourselves. Specifically shame, criticism, self bullying. And the hard part is these negative emotions, they might be effective, but they’re not empowering, it is negative reinforcement. Avoid that negative feeling versus positive to seek out the positive a totally different approach, we can take totally different emotions that are driving us got an episode number 177. On that if you want to dig into, towards motivation and away motivation a little bit more. If you do struggle with negative self talk, I want you to know three things. The first one is isn’t your fault. And what I mean by that is you likely didn’t choose negative self talk on purpose with detention intention. Sorry, you didn’t decide. I would like to think poorly of myself, I would like to feel negative emotions here. As with most of our inner narratives, this was formed before you consciously knew it, our thoughts, our default thoughts, how we react, the main themes of our thoughts, they are handed down to us in a way we learn and then we adopt them. The same way we learn language, how we learn to call water, we learn how to think about ourselves, our abilities, our opportunities, who we are in the world who other people are in the world, we learn how to think we are programmed with cause effect event, meaning belief result, from our upbringing, from our culture, from our experiences. It’s like just the blueprint that we formed from observing and learning and that cause and effect that has taught us and then the more we think in a certain way, the more we think that way. Neurons that fire together wire together. And I like to think Have our thoughts as a path. When you think a thought you’re like, treading little trail through the woods, and the more you think it, the more that path gets worn down and hardened. And next thing, it’s like an eight lane freeway, and it’s your default thought you don’t even notice it happens, it happens so fast, without intention without conscious awareness even. And our brain does that to be efficient to save energy. That’s why we have habits. That’s why we have automatic thoughts to save energy. So you didn’t do it with intention on purpose likely. And the second thing I want you to know is that if you want to think positive, if you want to shift that, you have to do it on purpose. This is because our brain not only has this kind of blueprint that we’re thinking with, but it additionally has a negativity bias. I call it danger brain, our brain is looking for what could go wrong. It’s important, we need this actually, it’s a very important way that we have been kept safe over the generations. Because if we are aware of what’s negative, what’s the danger around us, that means we’re aware of the risks to our survival. So spot, the danger manage it survive. It’s very useful, right? Our brain is looking for problems, it’s looking for danger. And managing that. I often joke with my clients that we think our brain is just going to naturally make our lives better. But we have to be intentional with how we use that. It’s like having this great computer, it can do all these things. But whatever program it’s running is this result we’re going to get, and our brain really just have this program of running that is a negativity bias. It has a lot of assumptions and stories that we adopted from early on that have never been challenged. The program has never been revised to what we want it to be doing right now. I hope I’m not going all over the place and being too meta. If we seek to think more positively, we want to use positive emotion emotions to empower us to motivate us, then we need to program that in we need to revise our programming, and we need to practice it, which is the third thing. Our brains are neuro plastic, which means we can change our own minds. But it takes time and it takes effort which your brain won’t be excited to do. We can forge a new path for our thoughts, we can blaze a new path and we can keep treading down that path and hardening it and strengthening it. It will take practice but it is doable. What I would like to do for this episode is run through the scenarios that were shared with me. I want to talk about the cognitive distortions we likely have involved in this. And as we are working on changing our minds about what we think about ourselves in our lives, I don’t want to tell you what to think. You know what I might tell you, in some cases, the thoughts that I go to, but remember, I can tell you what I think about these situations, but that might not work for you. It is important to do the work of dismantling your current thoughts and finding a new thought that works well for you. Something that feels believable and helpful. The thoughts we want to shift into have to align with our values and the stage of change that we are in. And this is CBT work cognitive behavioral therapy work, which is shifting our thoughts in order to shift how we feel and act. And I want you to keep in mind that with CBT work, feelings still matter, we still need to address our feelings. We aren’t here to just change our thoughts with positive affirmations and use that as an emotional bypass. Our feelings still matter, we need to validate these emotions, they are there for good reasons. And I’ll make sure to put an episode on negative emotions in the show notes as well.

8:44

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Transcribed by https://otter.ai

As a way to celebrate 200 episodes and 5 years together, I asked listeners for their questions on any topic. In this episode, I’m answering questions on the most important question to ask when decluttering, abundance vs scarcity mindsets, motherhood stages and seasons, and more from AMA (Ask Me Anything) questions

1. What is the most important thing to consider when trying to declutter as an Enneagram type 7?

2. How to develop a positive mindset when dealing with a chronic illness or health worries of family members?

4. What has changed since starting the podcast? What is the purpose of the podcast now?

6. What’s something you’re loving about your family’s ages, stages and dynamics right now?

7. How can I best parent my middle child?

8. How do I know if our family is meant for another baby?

9. What is your favourite book?

10. What are you manifesting right now?

Working with Shawna, learn more here 

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The Simple on Purpose Community, join here

Instagram, come say hi!

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