46: What You Need to Know About Unblocking Joy in Your Life

Today’s episode is a lesson taken directly from The Happy Mom Method.

I have this theory that we block the joy from our own lives, whether that’s because we feel undeserving of it or because we simply feel uncomfortable with the unknown. I believe that we are meant for joy and peace and too often we let ourselves get caught up in the mundane, day to day tasks of life. We lose sight of what’s truly important to us because we are blinded by stress and urgency. 

Here’s the thing though, you’re in control of your own life. You get to decide where your time and energy goes. You get to choose to let peace and joy into your life. You are the gatekeeper. You are the queen. It’s up to you.

Let’s get an aerial view of your life. Let’s take a look at how you think and react and spend your time from a non-judgmental perspective. Are you living the life you want to be living? It’s never too late to take charge and make a shift. Let’s align our days with the greatest intentions of our lives. I’m here for it.

Links Mentioned

• The Happy Mom Method
• The Mindset Makeover (free guide)
• Thought Inventory Worksheet

What’s blocking your joy?

This podcast was transcribed with Descript

I have this theory. I believe that joy is our soul’s craving, and I believe that we were designed to be joyful creatures. I really do. I don’t think we’re supposed to be caught up in all the simple day to day tasks. I don’t think we’re supposed to be stressed out all the time. I, I believe, I believe we’re not meant for worry.

We’re not meant to be depressed and anxious all of the time. I think that’s just a side effect of our society and maybe of not knowing how to be happy and not allowing happiness and not feeling worthy of happiness. And I believe that when we get grounded, Into who we are and who we’re meant to be. When we turn our eyes towards all the good and wonderful things about ourselves, about our lives, about those doing life with us, I think that when we do these mindset shifts, it’s my dog

She’s shaking. I believe that when we do these mindset shifts, we set ourselves up to live a joyful and fulfilled life. I don’t think our home is supposed to be a source of stress. Our home is supposed to be the place we go for rest. Didn’t mean to pull Dr. Seus there. That’s what I believe is that joy.

We are meant for joy and I think it’s inside of us and I think that with our daily habits. And our limiting beliefs and the stories we tell ourselves, I think that we block that joy. I think that we just build a wall around it, and we don’t allow ourselves to feel that deep joy for whatever reason. If it’s just that we were taught.

Not to get so happy about that, whether we were intentionally taught it or we just picked that up from things we heard all over the place. You know, TV, magazines at school, from your parents. I don’t know from your partner, and I don’t know where we learned these things, but I think a lot of things came together and conditioned us to just be miserable and to think that we need to be working hard.

I’m building something really great, working hard, but in a, I’m gonna work myself to death, kind of working hard. I think we’ve been conditioned for this lifestyle that just feels inescapable. You become a hot mess mom, and you’re like, This is just how it is, right? Like motherhood is hard.

Keeping up on dishes and laundry is hard. Maintaining the whole house is hard. Everything falls on me. I’m a victim. And I’ve been there . That’s how I got here. I was there and that’s how I’m here teaching this now because we don’t have to stay there. I think there’s a time and a place, seasons of life where survival mode for sure, you feel like a hot mess.

You feel like everything’s falling apart because there’s a lot put on you and you’re not prepared for it, and you have to let a lot of things go and I think that’s totally normal, totally fine to have survival mode times, but I don’t think it’s okay to stay. There is a point, there’s a time for everything.

Time to dance, a time to mourn. There’s a time to grow and a time to rest. There’s a time to bloom and a time to be dormant. You know, there’s a time for everything. And I think it’s when we get stuck trying to stay somewhere. You know, you try to stay in survival mode, you try to stay in depression, and you’re not meant to stay there long term.

I like to say it’s okay to not be okay temporarily. All right. It’s okay to be in survival mode temporarily. That is not a permanent place to be. That is, you know, I can’t remember who said it, but if you’re going through hell, why would you wanna stop? Why would you wanna stay there? If you’re going through hell, you keep on moving until you’re out of.

And I think that we start blocking our joy and we just stay there.

And that’s what we’re really going to dig deep and get to the bottom of. Why are you, why are you blocking your joy? How are you blocking your joy? And how can we unblock it? How can we open you up to receive joy, to love your life? You know, there’s this whole saying about, you know, mom’s not having hobbies.

Our hobby is that I like to pee alone. I’m like, Okay, so you’re surrounded by kids all day, and the best part is when your kids are gone long enough for you to pee by yourself.

I think there’s something wrong in how the wires in our brain are crossed when we come to that.  because there’s so many good and wonderful things about our kids, so many good and wonderful things about our life, that being alone cannot be the highlight of your day.

Like the day your kid said his first word, I guarantee the highlight of that day was not peeing alone, your kid says his first word, he comes in the bathroom and interrupts you to say his first word. You are ecstatic. You don’t care that you didn’t pee alone those days. It’s easy to find the good and wonderful and joyful and exciting things about being a mom

But day to day, every day we kind of forget that magical things are happening every day, and that’s what I want is for us to open our eyes. . Okay. Joy’s inside of you. When it’s waiting to be found, it wants to be released. You are meant to enjoy your life, like a lot of it. Not every single bit. Of course, you won’t be happy every moment, but you can’t be happy if you don’t allow yourself to experience the opposite.

You know? Its emotions are a spectrum and the worst thing you can do is numb yourself to them.  because it will become impossible to feel the positives when you numb yourself to the bad feelings and you ignore them. They just fester inside and they eat up all the good feelings too. So your good feelings can’t ever be felt anymore.

I’ve been there to the lowest low in the pits of depression where I felt nothing, and I wouldn’t want that for the worst feeling I’ve ever felt is far worth the best feeling I’ve ever felt.

It’s worth it to feel it all. That’s life. Life is feeling it all,

and we block our joy with our thoughts, our beliefs, our actions, and our habits. Because what that one saying, , your thoughts turn into your beliefs. Your beliefs turn into your actions. Your actions turn in your habits, and your habits make up your whole lifestyle. Like your thoughts lead to your life.

So how are you standing in your own way? The great thing here is that we get to choose how we’re going to live our life. And we’ll backtrack it all the way to the thoughts. We get to choose what thoughts we think we get to choose what beliefs we believe, but you can’t choose it if you’re unaware of it, right?

You can’t choose something different if you’re unaware of what you’re already experiencing. So our first step is to become aware all the way back to our thoughts. We’re gonna become aware of what thoughts we’re thinking, how often we’re thinking them, what they mean, where do they come from. We’re gonna become aware of what our beliefs are.

We’re gonna deconstruct our belief system about ourselves and about motherhood and about what it is to be a homemaker. We’re gonna deconstruct that so we can rebuild it on a solid foundation. We’re gonna look at our actions. So many of our actions every day are just out of their reflexes. We’ve trained ourselves to have a reflex to things.

We’ve trained ourselves to walk into a room. Just cluttered toys, every toy on the floor, we’ve trained ourselves to walk into that room and get angry. We’ve trained ourselves to walk in that room and immediately feel exhausted and overwhelmed because we have told ourselves we are exhausted and overwhelmed because there’s so much mess to keep up with.

So now when we see a mess, we think I’m exhausted and overwhelmed already. Instead of seeing that mess and thinking it’s a mess, we’ll clean it up. We always. We’re a family, let’s clean it As a family, kids, these are your toys. You take care of them, and if you’re not going to take care of them, I will clean them my way.

There’s so many birds being hit with these stones when we start this whole process in refusing to be stressed about the mess of toys. I have ended up teaching my kids how to.  for their things because I have told them those aren’t mine and I don’t care about them and in the kindest way possible, I have told them that if they leave all their toys out and they don’t pick ’em up when I ask, because this is our living room is a family.

Our living room doesn’t need to be cluttered with their toys. I have told them that if they do not take these, I will get a trash bag and clean them. Or if you want them put back properly where they belong, where you can find them again and play with them again. You need to be responsible for them and take care of them.

My kids are two, four, and six. They need constant reminders of this, but they get the process, they understand those. If those are your toys, you are taking care of them. And there’s so many gems like that that you’re gonna uncover throughout this course. Where you’re gonna realize that you fixing your own mindset affected the life of someone else.

You refuse to walk in that room, get stressed, get overwhelmed, take care of it yourself, or yell at your kids where they learn nothing. Because according to psychologists that I listen to, when you yell at your kids, they don’t actually hear what you’re saying. They might do what you’re asking, but it doesn’t lock into their brain.

You know what you’re saying is important. You’re just saying it loud. They just got that, they got yelled at and they felt, they felt like how you feel when you get yelled at. They kind of felt like garbage after that, and they don’t get why you were yelling and why you’re so upset when you have those conversations with them because you know how to be calm in the situation.

You know how to walk in that room, feel calm, you know how to tell them how you’re feeling about their toys being on the floor in a calm manner. They’re actually receptive to the meaning in your words, and they start to understand, and yes, they’re kids. You have to tell them a thousand times before they understand something before they remember it, because you’re like building a bridge every time you talk to them.

It takes a long time. It takes work, but they’ll never learn if all you do is yell. They might just learn. If I leave my toy, I get yelled at. They don’t learn. If I leave my toy, I am messing up the whole family. Or they don’t learn that if I leave my toys out, I’m not taking care of my things that are important to me.

It’s in being calm and having those conversations and that all backtracks to your thoughts and your beliefs leading into your actions, leading into your habits. You’ve trained yourself to react. You’ve trained yourself to react in the ways that you are reacting.

My kid found a tamarine the loudest thing he could possibly find right now. Cool. I know Bella M right here. Bella, right here. Stop.

So we’re gonna reflect on the question. How are you standing in your own way? Is it in your thoughts, your actions, your habits? What specifically is stopping you from being happy throughout your entire day? Are you basic every day, day to day? Because as Annie Dillard says, how you spend your days is of course how you spend your life.

If you wanna have a good happy life, you need to have good happy days. And it’s not every single day, just most of them will always have off days, especially as a woman on a hormonal cycle. You’re gonna have days where you’ll feel a little bit like garbage unless you are super proactive in, um, like cycling, really in tune with your cycle.

You’re probably gonna have days where you just don’t feel like doing much and you can allow yourself to feel like trash or you can understand I need to rest. Today is a day I need to rest and relax and recover and understand that I’m not gonna do other things. Understand that I am easily triggered today, so I need to take extra good care of myself so that I’m not a total witch to those around me.

You know? But this is how you build a better life. This is how you become the best version of you you can be, is in paying attention to who you are now.  who you are in your every day. Are you blocking yourself from joy, happiness? Are you not allowing things to be easy because you think that they have to be complicated and difficult?

Do you think your worth is tied to how much you do or the level of difficulty of the things you’re doing? Because things can be easy, especially when it comes to taking care of your house. What makes you a good mom? It’s not how well you take care of your house, how Betty Crocker you are, how Martha Stewart you are, how pin worthy your dinners are.

That’s not what makes you a good mom. And if you wanna be a better mom, you’re gonna make all those things as easy as possible. You’re going to limit the time you spend on those. You’re going to streamline them. You’re going to create a system to where things happen on a reflex to where your family’s helping out, to where your hiring help is needed, where you are just taking the easiest way possible on a lot of this home care stuff, because it doesn’t have to be complicated.

It can be easy. And when you free up your time and energy from these things, you’ve been over complicating. You have so much more time and. For the things and people that actually matter to you. You have time and energy to take your kids to the park and push ’em on the swings. Maybe not every time. I don’t push my kids on the swing every time, but I’m not sitting there exhausted every single time I’m playing with them.

I have time for them. I have energy for them because I have chosen to have time and energy for them instead of spending every ounce of time and energy on maintaining my home. Trying to keep it magazine perfect. Trying to keep it Instagram aesthetic. No, my home’s not perfect. Not all the time, not everywhere at once.

Rooms take turns being clean, but my kids know they never have to wait for me to love them. They know I love them because of how I spend my time and energy.  because I take care of myself and I’m not constantly irritable and nitpicking everything they do because I don’t walk in a room and immediately nag them or yell at them.

They understand that I love them because I care for myself so that I’m not triggered by them as easily.

We’re gonna do a habit assessment. Okay. We’re gonna look at which habits you have that are working for you and which ones are not working anymore. I want you to be paying attention to that as you go through your whole day. What is your natural reflex to different situations? What kind of habits do you have that are working and are not working?

Personally, I know whatever habit I have in the kitchen is not working for me right now, and I know my laundry habit is not working for me. I used to be in a flow folding my laundry during bath time. I wash a load in the morning, dry it in the mid-morning, afternoon, take it upstairs, and fold it while the boys take a bath, while their dad supervises.

Their dad’s been working late, which means I am the one giving them a bath, which means that habit is no longer working for me because now my laundry is not getting folded. Now I have a giant mountain of laundry that I have to take an hour or so to actually fold. That system’s not working. I don’t like that system.

I need to find a new time of day where folding my laundry works for me. I need a new pattern, a new habit, a new rhythm, . So what’s not working for? , what areas of your home are you never getting to and it’s stressing you out that you’re not getting to them? Maybe you’re running late every time you leave the house.

Is there a habit of leaving things around the house instead of returning shoes and bags to the door? Maybe you need a new system at the door. Maybe everything at your door is super cluttered and no one can find what they’re looking for because everyone has like six pairs of shoes instead of just their one go.

Maybe that needs to be revived or, you know, changed. But look at what the habits you have and what’s causing you to have those habits. What’s still working and what is not working anymore.

And then I’m gonna attach below this video, or if you’re watching this later, um, in the workbook, you will find, um, like if you printed out the full workbook in the workbook section, you will find a thought inventory. Okay, so look at your habits and look at the thoughts you’re having about your habits, yourself, your situations, all the habits, you all the um, all the thoughts you have throughout the day.

While you’re looking at these, I just want you to be observing your day to day. You don’t need to go making changes. Right now. We are observing your current situation. What thoughts are you having? What’s the trigger to these thoughts? When do you have these thoughts? You might realize that there’s a habit you have that’s leading you to have negative thoughts about yourself.

Maybe you have a habit that’s not working and it’s causing you to think that you’re not good enough. Maybe you’re looking at your, you’re walking into dirty dishes every morning. And instantly, the first thought you’re gonna have in the morning is that you suck cuz your dishes are dirty. You’re a hot mess because you can’t keep your kitchen clean.

Maybe those are the thoughts you’re having. Those aren’t true. Those aren’t true. But maybe you’re having those slots and your triggers that you walked into a dirty kitchen. So one, we’re gonna work through those negative thoughts. We’re gonna reverse ’em. We’re going to create an affirmation to tell yourself the truth, but also, two, we’re gonna look at that trigger.

And we’re gonna find a way to stop triggering you because you might find that you have triggers all throughout your day that are constantly triggering you to have negative and bad thoughts about yourself or those around you or your home.

But we can’t fix what we don’t know. We can’t address the problems we are unaware of. So this first exercise, I want you to become aware. Of your current situation. What are your thoughts? What are your beliefs? What are your habits? How are you living your day to day life? What are you believing about your day to day life right now?

We’re gonna find the problems in it and we’re gonna amplify the parts that aren’t problems. So all the good stuff, the good thoughts you’re having. We’re gonna cling onto those. We’re gonna really. Go hard on those. All right? You’re gonna take the good thoughts you’re having, you’re gonna make ’em bigger in your head, and you’re gonna take your bad thoughts.

We’re gonna make ’em smaller. We’re gonna make them tiny little pip squeaks that when they come up, you’re just like, Well, that’s a dumb thought.

Not that you’re dumb for having the thought. Thoughts don’t belong to you. The thoughts just happen in a lot of cases, especially if you struggle with, uh, intrusive thoughts. You are like, God, put this disclaimer out there. You are not a bad person for having intrusive thoughts that tell you to do bad things.

Okay? I mean, a lot of us have those intrusive thoughts of cutting your hand off when you’re cutting vegetables and dragging your car off the side of the road. Those kinds of thoughts happen. That’s an intrusive thought, and it’s very much not you thinking that thought, especially. You know, it’s not you having that thought.

When you have that resistance come up, it’s like, Wow, I’m crazy for thinking that. Or like, Whoa, that was, that was a lot. When you have that resistance coming up, you know, that’s an intrusive thought and it didn’t really come from you. It’s, I don’t quite know the science behind it, but it’s not you, it’s not yours, and it doesn’t have to stay.

You don’t have to act. You don’t have to, and by not acting on it, I mean also don’t feel guilty about it. Feeling guilty is an action. Don’t allow yourself to feel guilty for intrusive thoughts that make their way in. All right? This is a growth opportunity and it’s something you get to overcome. All right?

It’s exciting to have those kinds of thoughts and to be able to say, Well, that’s a garbage thought. Get outta here to win over those negative thoughts. It’s a big win. I’m not gonna pretend it’s not a big win to take those, uh, those bad negative thoughts and, uh, crush them. All right? So that is your homework.

Do the thought inventory, be mindful of what are your thoughts, your beliefs, your actions, your habits right now. What’s working, what’s not working? What is triggering you the most? Where is your source of stress? What is really going on in your mindset? , what do you really think about yourself and really think about the world you live in?

What do you think about your home and your loved ones? Becoming mindful, becoming aware, looking for what’s not working? How can we address that? That’s your homework for this first, uh, this first assignment. This first lesson. That’s the, uh, that’s the homework, is to just start paying attention. You don’t have to take action on doing anything to change it yet.

We’ll get to that. But for now, we’re just gonna notice, observe, and be an observer of your own life. All right.