August 3, 2025 • 37 mins
Do you ever get the feeling like everybody else is thriving and you’re the only one struggling?
Maybe you’re scrolling social media and see a hundred smiling faces. Or maybe you bump into a friend at the grocery story who says they’re doing great! Everything is going great! All is well with their world!
You might start to wonder if maybe it’s just you that is struggling financially or stuck in a dead-end job or circling the same block in your relationships again and again and again.
Self-help (and all of culture) seems to say, “you can fix this!” “You can change this!” “Just three easy steps!” but can you… really? What if you’ve tried to “fix this” and not been successful? What does that say about you? We’re unpacking off of this on today’s episode.
If you need a permission slip to be imperfect, this one is for you.
Sign up for a yoga class taught by Ally for free on the MindBody app.
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write, all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down on cold It's all about and write
(00:22):
your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon. I'm
your host, and I want to open today's episode by
just asking your question because I was having this conversation
with my husband this week and I asked him the
same question and we got into a really great dialogue
(00:44):
about it, and I've been thinking about it NonStop ever since,
and so I wanted to just extend this question to you,
and I would really love to hear your feedback. I'd
love to hear your response, whether that's in my DMS
or via email. I would love to hear just how
are you doing? Like the word that has been coming
to my mind is this idea of thriving, Like are
(01:04):
you thriving right now? In what areas of your life
are you thriving? And then what areas of your life
are you really not thriving? And I also want to
give this caveat that I'm not coming from a place
of well hold on. This is the what the whole
episode is about. The whole episode is about this idea
that I think we've bought into a lie that we're
(01:25):
supposed to be thriving in every area of our life
at all times. And I want to unpack this a
little bit. There's a possibility that maybe we just need
to reframe the word thriving, Like maybe the meaning that
we've given thriving is not a helpful meaning, and we
could offer it a new meaning, and we really could say, yes,
like I'm digging and I'm thriving in every area of
(01:46):
my life at all times. Maybe that is a helpful objective.
But actually, the way that I've been thinking about it
since the conversation with my husband came up a week
ago is more like what a croc Like what a
lie we've been sold that we're supposed to be thriving
every area of our lives at all times, And like
what an unhelpful expectation to set up for ourselves that
nobody could ever meet. And so if that's the expectation
(02:09):
that you're supposed to be thriving in every area at
all times, then of course you're never going to reach that,
and so of course you're going to feel like somehow
you're falling short or failing in some kind of a
way pretty much always like in perpetuity forever. And that's
also no kind of life to live. And so I
really want to tease this out. I want to talk
(02:30):
about it a little bit more. I want to share
the conversation that I had with Matt and kind of
how this came to be, and ask your opinion, ask
your thoughts. I'm curious, first of all, are you thriving?
Is that a word that you would use for yourself?
How are you doing? If thriving isn't a word that
you would use for yourself, how would you describe how
you're doing in the various areas of your life? Like finances?
(02:53):
Are you thriving? Career? Are you thriving you know, relationships, romance?
Are you thriving as a with your children, with the
people in your life? As a friend, are you thriving?
Are you thriving in your creativity? Are you thriving in
your physical health? We have all these different kind of
sectors of our lives that intersect with one another and
(03:15):
impact one another. And yeah, I just feel like we're
pitched to this idea that we're supposed to be thriving,
and if we're not thriving, it's because we haven't optimized
and dialed in these different areas and all we need
is just a little hack or a new habit or
a new thing to do or whatever, and we can, someday, eventually,
when we even achieved enlightenment, get to this place of thriving,
(03:38):
and speaking of enlightenment, get to this place of thriving
in our spirituality, in our faith, as you know, a
person of faith. I don't know, maybe it's just me,
and I'm open to discovering that it's just me. But
I just kind of feel like, maybe, maybe maybe that
the idea we're supposed to be thriving in every ear
of our lives is just completely false, and that life
(04:00):
isn't really about thriving. That life is about being present
to what is in front of us and to being
willing and maybe along the way like more and more
capable of taking in what's taking place around us. So
let me back up a little bit, because if you've
been listening for a while you know the broader narrative
(04:20):
that this smaller narrative is happening inside of, which is
that twenty twenty four was an extremely difficult year for me, emotionally, mentally, financially, otherwise.
I made a lot of really hard decisions. I lost
my dad. My husband's business that we had invested our
entire life savings in went under. We lost a baby,
we lost that business venture. We made a bunch of
(04:42):
really hard decisions, all in rapid succession. It was a
year of a lot of loss. It was a year
of a lot of hardship and challenge. I was feeling exhausted.
I was totally burned out. I took a step back
from coaching. That was such an important decision that I
made that set me up for success in twenty twenty five.
And in twenty twenty five I really began to enjoy
a little bit of a slower pace of life that
(05:03):
felt like, ah, exhale, I can do this. I also
started my yoga teacher training, which was busy, but busy
was something that was really nourishing me and nurturing me
every day. And so I moved into a season in
twenty twenty five that just felt really different than twenty
twenty four. There was still some grieving to do. It
hasn't been all sunshines and roses the whole time, but
(05:27):
there's been so much nourishment and so much nurturing and
so much of a slowing down of the pace of
life that has felt so good on my nervous system
and has helped me to feel much less overwhelmed and
helped me to, yeah, to stay present in my life
and just take it in really slowly, and to integrate
the really big, difficult changes that took place in twenty
(05:50):
twenty four. So the first five months of twenty twenty five,
from January until May were kind of like that. I mean,
they had this really beautiful slow pace. They weren't always easy,
but there was a lot of rest and relaxation and
integration and surrender and letting go and just slowly moving
through my days. And then June and July hit and
(06:14):
the pace picked up pretty significantly for a handful of reasons.
Number one was I went away for a week for
teacher training in June, and that was the first time
I've ever done this since I've had kids. I have
been away from my kids for maybe a night or
two at a time, and rarely ever with my husband.
I think we've done that maybe once or possibly twice,
(06:36):
but probably just once since Charlie was born. Otherwise, it's
usually traveling with the family, or if I travel alone,
then matter says home with the kids and I'm gone
for like a night or two. And yet in this
particular instance, I left for eight days, seven nights on
my own without the kids. And this was a big
mile marker for me, and it emotionally was a lot
leading up to the trip. I felt like there was
(06:58):
a lot of prep work to do to get ready
to go, to make sure that you know there was
coverage when there needed to be coverage childcare wise, and
that everybody knew what they were supposed to do when
pickups and drop offs were a mom. By the way,
total side note, but a mom holds so much in
her brain, and I see this talked about a lot
on social media, and it's a real thing, the mental
load of a mother. There is so much that's in
(07:20):
my brain that isn't in anyone else's brain. And so
to try to get my brain on paper before I
left for Montana for teacher training was a major effort
and it was totally worth it. Teacher training was incredible.
I had the most amazing time. It was transformative for me.
It was really healing for me to get away for
(07:43):
a week without my kids, as much as I love
them and as hard as it was to leave, and
I had many moments of just sadness and anxiety about
being away from them, and yet it was such an
important milestone and mile marker for me to have that
space to do something that was just for me and
to not have it be a about my kids for
eight days was like a big mental and emotional shift.
(08:04):
So that happened in June. There was a bunch of
travel that my husband had for work in June. My
mom came to visit at the end of May. Beginning
of June. We had Matt's dad and his stepmom here visiting,
so we had family in and out of town. We
had all kinds of trips happening. Oh. We also flew
to Portland and saw my family in July. So June
and July were both really busy months, and it felt
(08:26):
like the pace picked up pretty significantly, and so June
and July just started to feel a little bit like
drinking from a fire hose. It wasn't that anything that
happened was bad. It wasn't that anything that happened was
hard necessarily. In fact, most of what we did was
really great and uplifting and fun. And yet there was
so much of it that happened all at once, and
so much movement from place to place, and so much
(08:47):
change and so much transformation. It was just like so
much all at once for my sweet body to integrate.
If you're a highly sensitive person like me, then you
probably need lots of downtime, lots of like over your
environment in terms of like not as much sound, low lighting,
just a setting that allows you to integrate all of
(09:09):
the input that comes on any given day. And so
June and July didn't have a lot of space, it
didn't have a lot of white space for integrating all
that was happening. And because of that, I've gotten to
the end of July just feeling like a little frantic,
a little frenetic, very excited for the school year to start,
excited to get back into a routine, but also like
I cannot believe that we are at the end of
(09:29):
July and that August is next week and We're starting
the school year and summer's over, Like when did that happen?
It just feels like it blew by. And so that's
how June and July has felt for me. Is just
like a little bit of drinking from a fire hose,
a little bit chaotic, a little bit insane, but in
the best way. It's been such fun chaos, and so
(09:50):
many beautiful memories have been made. All that to say,
last week, to top off our crazy like back to
back activity for the ones of June and July, Matt
and I have been planning to go to the Coldplay
concert since the beginning of the year. Okay, so fast
forward to last week. Matt and I have been planning
on going to the Coldplay show together since the beginning
(10:12):
of the year. My husband is a Coldplay superfan, and
I am definitely a big fan of Coldplay, but not
as big as Matt is, but he has indoctrinated me
over the years with all kinds of Coldplay music. That's
like deep tracks on every single album and talking about
the chord changes and talking My husband as a musician
and led worship for many many years and so plays
(10:34):
the guitar and is much more musically talented than I
am or will ever be, and so likes to talk
about like the various chord changes and things about the
music that I don't understand. All that to say, he
was super excited to go to this show. He saw
that Coldplay was coming to Nashville and bought the tickets
a long time ago, earlier this year. We've had it
on the calendar forever, and by the time Tuesday world
around when Coldplay was in Nashville, I was a little
(10:56):
bit like, oh my gosh, this feels like so much
to go to a show tonight, especially thinking you know,
highly sensitive person, it's a lot to integrate. Going to
a massive stadium show is not something I've even done
a lot in my life because it just feels really
overstimulating for someone like me. And so Matt was asking me,
He's like, you know, have you ever been to a
big stadium show like this that has seventy sixty seventy
(11:19):
thousand people there? And I was like, no, I don't
think I have. I don't think i've ever. I've been
to a lot of smaller shows and then maybe one
or two or three shows that are in an arena,
But I don't think I had ever been to a
stadium show before, so this was my first stadium show.
(11:45):
I think, unless there's something that I'm forgetting about, and
we're gearing up to go to this stadium show, that's
going to be extremely overstimulating. And I had a little
thought in my brain like, maybe this is too much,
maybe we should skip it, But I was also really
excited about it. And this is the theme of my summer.
And this is all leading up to what I want
to talk about today, which is that the theme of
my summer is so many great, wonderful things that are
(12:06):
all coming at me so fast that I haven't quite
had time to fully digest any of them and to
fully integrate them and to fully take them in. And
so when Matt and I were sitting at dinner before
the Coldplay concert, we're just catching up because you know,
we're parents of young kids. We never get to actually
talk to each other. We like yell over the top
of screaming children essentially, so we were getting to actually
(12:28):
catch up and say like, how are you how, how's
your summer been, How are you feeling about things? And
I was asking him, like, do you feel like you're thriving.
When you think of that word thriving, do do you
feel like you're thriving in your finances? Do you feel
like you're thriving in your work? What areas of your
life do you feel like you're thriving in? And what
areas of your life would you not at all use
(12:49):
that word for scale of one to ten, ten being thriving,
one being absolutely not thriving. How would you rate each
area kind of a thing? So we sat at dinner
and we had this long conversation about what does that
even mean to thrive? And I don't know, am I thriving?
And I started to realize as we were having this conversation,
and as the whole thing unfolded, I was like, I
(13:11):
don't think most people are thriving in every area of there.
I don't think anybody is thriving in every area of
their life. I don't think we're supposed to thrive. I
don't think that's like an expectation we should set for
ourselves that we're supposed to thrive in every area of
our life all the time. Like, imagine if that's what
(13:32):
life was about, thriving in every area of your life
all the time. And maybe this is only a me thing,
Like maybe other people don't sit around feeling like they're
falling short of some expectation because you're scrolling on social
media or because you talk to your friends who you know,
I have a really positive mindset and positive outlook on life,
and they're telling you like things are going great. Life
(13:53):
is great, this is going great. That's going great. Maybe
other people don't feel the weight of that, Like you
don't move through your life and think like, oh God,
like everyone else is thriving and I'm not thriving. But
I realized as I was talking to Matt that I
have been feeling some of that. I've been feeling like
I think I'm supposed to be thriving. And this is
all happening unconsciously. By the way, It's not like I'm
(14:14):
sitting around thinking about this before the conversation, but unconsciously,
in my brain, I think I had put this story
together that was like everyone else is thriving. Most people
are thriving most of the time in most areas of
their life. If they're not thriving in a certain area
of their life, they're just kind of dialing it in.
They're really trying to adjust their habits so they can
really start thriving in that area of their life too.
(14:37):
And the fact that I'm not thriving in a handful
of areas in my life means I'm doing something wrong.
You know, I've missed the boat. I've gotten it wrong.
There's something that I should be doing that I'm not doing.
And you can hear the twisted mindset here and the shame.
But I wonder if I'm not the only one who
has this unconscious narrative playing out, and which is why
(14:57):
I'm bringing it up in the first place, because maybe
I'm not the only one who When I scroll on Instagram,
I see people who look like they're thriving in every
area of their life, and I recognize and realize that
there are many areas of my life where I'm not thriving.
And so then my response to that is, Okay, I
(15:18):
got to get thriving in these other areas of my life.
I got to really shore it up here, you know,
I got to get my life on track. I got
to get my life in order. Does anyone else do this?
Do you do this where you're like, Okay, we got
to get the house clean, we got to get the
attic cleared out, like we have to organize the crawl
space there are, and maybe physically cleaning my space is
(15:38):
one of the ways that I kind of move through
that feeling of feeling like I'm, you know, falling short
of some expectation. Physically cleaning my space is one of
the ways that I do that. It's kind of like
a not a trauma response, that's too strong of a word,
but it's like a response to the feeling that I'm
falling behind. Is like, Okay, let's get things cleaned up.
We're gonna spring clean, We're gonna get rid of all
(15:59):
the excess, We're gonna finally replace that light bulb that
needs to be replaced. We're going to get everything spick
and span. We're going to finally, you know, get through
the laundry today. And then also narrowing in all those
areas of your life where you feel like you're not thriving,
Like one area for me is my physical health. I
have been in and out of having some autoimmune issues
(16:20):
throughout my entire life, and when right before I got
pregnant with Nella, I had what felt like a big breakthrough.
And it's hard to know now looking back whether or
not the breakthrough was about getting pregnant, because I've talked
to other women who have had a letup in their
autoimmune symptoms while pregnant, So it's possible that the pregnancy
(16:40):
was actually what shifted my symptoms back to normal, meaning
like I was able to eat all the foods that
I wasn't able to eat before. I was able to
go back to eating gluten too, eating dairy, et cetera,
et cetera. And then at the end of twenty twenty four,
I found myself getting sick all the time. This was,
you know, at that point what Charlie would have been
almost three So almost three years after my second pregnancy,
(17:04):
enough time for my body to kind of readjust back
to being not pregnant. I know that sounds like a
long time. That is how long it takes after breastfeeding
and everything for your body to readjust after having a pregnancy.
And so I've felt some of these autoimmune symptoms pop
back up, and it's not overwhelming, it's not chronically painful,
it's not horrific. And when I started the teacher training
(17:26):
at the beginning of twenty twenty five, I felt a
huge improvement in the way that my body was functioning
and acting and being in the world. But but this
is my point, I am not thriving in my physical health.
I am not at one hundred percent in my physical health.
There are still things that need to be dealt with
and addressed that I don't have the answers to. And
(17:46):
so that's one of those areas that pops up for
me that's like, oh, we got to get this, we
got to get this sorted out, we got to get
this back on track. Like we got to get our
habits in check. Maybe I need to do xyz cleanse.
Maybe I need to do you know, intermittent fasting. Maybe
I need to go see a certain practitioner. Maybe I
need to whatever, book an appointment. So all these things,
(18:09):
Like in my mind, it's like the list is growing
of things that I need to do in order to
get my physical health in a place of thriving. And
that's just one area of ten that we could list.
Then you have your financial life, which you know, if
you've been listening to the show for a while, we
had a huge financial setback in twenty twenty four that
(18:31):
really like dates pre dates back to like twenty twenty
because we were making these massive investments in this new
business that Matt was starting that eventually fell apart. And
so we're trying to get back on track in our
financial life. And that is not a small thing, and
it is like a daily practice of making choices that
(18:51):
are digging us out of this hole that we've been in.
And so then you have this conflict of I should
book an appointment with such and such specialist because I
want to get my health to a point of thriving,
but I also want to get my finances to a
point of thriving, and such and such specialists costs two
hundred and fifty dollars per appointment, and I don't really
have the extra two hundred and fifty dollars to spend
right now, And so I guess I'm just going to
(19:12):
kind of manage the situation with my health until we
get our finances thriving, and then maybe my health can
be thriving. And again, like this is a complicated web
that is only this is only one tiny scenario from
just one little life my life, And I'm sure you
could think of one in your life, or ten in
your life, or fifty in your life that are kind
of like this where everything's interconnected. There are parts of
(19:35):
your life that maybe are thriving, and then parts of
your life that maybe aren't thriving. And do you ever
kind of wonder are other people thriving? And are they
thriving in every area of their life, really like every
area of their life? And if that's true, then what
am I doing wrong? That I'm not thriving in every
area of my life? And not only am I not
just thriving in every air of my life, but like
(19:57):
you know, it's going to be a lifetime of work
to get to the place where I'm thriving in every
area of my life. And is that something that I
even want to dedicate my life to, Like? Is that
a ladder that I want to climb to the very
top of to make sure that I personally am thriving
in every single area of my life. So this is
the question that Matt and I spent about two hours
(20:19):
talking about at dinner the other night, and we both
admitted to each other that there are many areas of
our life where we are not thriving right now, and
that there are some areas of our life where we're
doing better than other areas. There are some areas of
our life where we're really thriving and some areas where
we're like moderately thriving in some areas of our life
where we're really not thriving. And we both agreed, and
(20:39):
this is what I want to put forth in this
episode today, this suggestion that nobody is thriving, like nobody
is thriving in every single area of their life. If
they're telling you that they're thriving in every area of
their life, they're lying or only telling you part of
the story. And when we get on social media or
when we only have these brief encounters with people, even
(20:59):
if it's like bumping into them at the grocery store
or whatever, and when people tell you life is great,
things are good, Yeah, everything's going great, it can be
easy to think, Okay, so they're thriving and I'm not thriving,
So what am I doing wrong? But here's the thing.
I've lived on this Earth, on planet Earth for forty
two years now, and I know that there are some
years that are easier and better than others. There are
(21:20):
some years where if you had bumped into me in
the grocery store, I would have told you, honestly, things
are going great, and I would have been telling you
the truth. There are other years where if I would
have told you the truth, I don't know if I
would have, but if I would have, I would have
told you it's been a really shitty year. And then
there are other years where it's like, yeah, some things
are going well, some things are not going as well,
(21:41):
and that's just life. That's just part of life. And
part of life is not optimizing your daily practices or whatever,
or your health or your whatever, every single area of
your life until it's thriving. Part of life is not
just that. Part of life is learning to accept that
life is full of many different experiences, and some of
(22:02):
them will be easier to stomach than others. Some of
them will be easier to digest than others, some of
them will be easier to metabolize than others. And you
can have a really challenging experience like losing a baby,
losing my dad last year, that's really challenging to stomach.
And you can also have an experience like going to
Coldplay that was incredible, like mind blowing, you know, so
(22:27):
inspiring and life giving, that's also challenging to metabolize, or
an experience like going to Montana and becoming a yoga
teacher that is once in a lifetime top ten amazing experience,
you know, core memory. Put it on my list of
(22:47):
things that I will talk about until I die. That
is also challenging to metabolize. And I think this is
what I want to point my attention to and maybe
invite you to point your attention to. Life is less
about dialing it it all in perfectly so that every
area is thriving and you're just crushing it in your finances,
(23:07):
and you're crushing it in your romantic life, and you
are the perfect parent, and your health is like better
than it's ever been, and you're in excellent shape and
you have no health issue whatever. It's less about that
and more about learning how to stay open enough to
take in what life has to offer you. And I
(23:27):
want to balance this, I really want to balance this
with the concept of agency, because I've talked a lot
about this, and I do believe that we have agency
to improve areas of our life that are bothering us,
or that don't live up to our expectation, or that
aren't the way we want them to be. I am
(23:48):
a product of this ten years ago. So in twenty fifteen,
my life this time in twenty fifteen, July of twenty fifteen,
my life was a total mess. My marriage at the
(24:10):
time was extremely overwhelming and abusive, and I knew I
needed to leave. Sort of, I unconsciously knew I needed
to leave, But in July of twenty fifteen, I don't
think I really really knew that I needed to leave.
It wasn't until ironically, September of twenty fifteen that I
started going to yoga for the first time and really
started to become more embodied. That was when it began
(24:32):
to occur to me, this needs to change. This part
of my life is the bottom of the barrel. It
is not thriving. It is the opposite of thriving. And
I need to make a change. I need to do
something different because otherwise I'm going to suffer and struggle
through every single day the rest of my life, and
this one area of my life is going to color
every other part of my life, like my finances are
(24:54):
colored by this, my friendships are colored by this, my
creativity is colored by this, my work is color this,
my self esteem, my style of physical health like every
aspect of my life is colored by this relationship that
I'm in, and I need to do something to fix it,
to change it, do something different tomorrow than I've done today.
(25:16):
So that is a perfectly realistic scenario where there's an
aspect of your life that you realize is dragging down
every other aspect of your life. You are not thriving
in that aspect, and you realize this has got a change.
Maybe for you, it's like the job, the job you're in.
You're just like, I can't I cannot show up another day.
(25:37):
It's not working for me. It is killing my mental health,
it's killing me emotionally, it's killing me physically. It's dragging
down every other part of my life. I can't have friendships,
I can't have relationships, I can't go on dates because
of this stupid job. Maybe it is time to make
a change with the job, or maybe it's finances, or
maybe whatever it is. Maybe it's a relationship that you're in,
(26:00):
and maybe it's a friendship that's toxic that's dragging you down.
Sometimes we have those areas of our lives that are
like at the bottom of the barrel, and a change
does need to be made, and then other times this
is what I'm getting at with this episode. Other times
I think there are areas of our life where we're
just not thriving right now, and it is not your
(26:20):
job to fix it right this minute, And I just
want to take that in for a minute, because that
is a paradigm shift for me. I think coming out
of a situation where it was like I needed to
realize I have the agency to fix this and change this,
and it was really ten years of me making hard
decisions to set my life on a new trajectory and
then watching my life unfreaking fold in front of my
(26:42):
eyes and drastically change because of choices that I had made.
And now in my life there's this paradigm shift happening
where sometimes there are areas of your life that are
not thriving and you've tried everything you can to fix them,
and it is no longer your job to fix them,
and now it is your job to open enough to
(27:03):
take in what this scenario is trying to show you,
to take in what this experience is trying to teach
you to metabolize, to digest what this set of circumstances
is here to awaken you too, So it can be both.
Both can be true. Sometimes we have a situation where
(27:24):
we're not thriving and we need to make a change.
Other times it's like, listen, let me just be honest
with myself. I'm not thriving in my physical health. I'm
like a six out of ten on a good day.
Some days it's more like a four out of ten.
So that's true, that's real. Maybe today there's nothing I
(27:45):
can do about that except just admit that it's true.
And admitting that it's true is a lot. So maybe
that's all you do is just admit that it's true.
Maybe you admit to yourself, maybe you admit to a friend.
Maybe you see an acquaintance at the grocery store and
they say, how are you doing, and you say, you
know what, I'm okay, but I'm not thriving. Because telling
the truth can also be contagious, and you have no
(28:06):
idea the liberation that you might give to someone else
when you are brave enough to tell the truth about
how you're actually doing, because think about how bad it
makes you feel when you're not thriving and someone else
is like, things are great, life is great, it's going great.
Everything is great for me, and you're like, awesome, cool,
So it can be liberating to have someone else here.
You say, you know what, I'm grateful. There are some
(28:27):
things that are going well, but I am not thriving today,
and that's just me being honest about where I'm at.
And you don't even need to give more details than that.
It can just be that that can be enough. Maybe
you practice by telling the truth to yourself. Maybe you
practice by telling the truth to someone else. And maybe
there's nothing for you to do to fix it. Maybe
there's no new habit. Maybe you don't need to power
clean your entire house. Maybe today is not the day
(28:51):
that you clean out the crawl space. Maybe today is
the day that you rest during your kid's rest time.
This is something I've been practicing recently, like during rest
time while the kids are resting and I get an
hour to myself. I used to make sure the house
was perfectly in order while they were in rest time,
and now I'm like, you know what, when my kids
are in rest time, that's my rest time too. So
(29:11):
I'm gonna chill, I'm gonna listen to a podcast, I'm
gonna read a book, I'm gonna turn on a show.
I'm gonna lay my head down and shut my eyes.
That's what I'm gonna do during rest time, because hey,
mommy's rest time too, And maybe that's what you need
to do. Maybe you don't need to clean out the
cross space today. Maybe today is the day that you
lay your head down and close your eyes and take
a rest. What I want this episode to be is
(29:34):
an offering for you that maybe you don't have to
be thriving in every area of your life. Maybe it
is an unrealistic expectation for you to be thriving in
every area of your life. Maybe all the self help books,
all the podcasts, all the therapists, all the doctors, all the
everything in the world, all the money, all the whatever.
Maybe everything in the world couldn't help you be thriving
(29:57):
in every area of your life because maybe that was
not the purpose anyway. Maybe thriving in every area of
your life is an unrealistic expectation, and the expectation can
shift to I choose to be honest about how I
feel in each area of my life. Yes, there are
some areas of my life where I absolutely am thriving.
One area where I'm personally thriving in my life right
now is my relationship with my husband. We have such
(30:20):
a lovely dynamic. And I attribute some of this to,
you know, my experience in my last relationship and how
intentional I was about building the type of relationship that
I wanted. But it's not fair to attribute all of
it to that because a lot of it is just
dumb luck. You know, Matt and I are incredibly compatible.
(30:40):
My husband is the type of person who really likes
to make me happy, and I always worry like one
day he's going to wake up and be like feeling resentful,
like yikes, like I went way out of my way
day after day to make my wife happy. And you know,
he says that he doesn't feel that way. I ask
him that fairly regularly, but who knows. I mean, we
could wake up in three year from now, or in
(31:00):
a year from now, or in ten days from now,
and he could have hidden resentments or unspoken resentments that
we will work through and resolve at the time that
that happens. This is my point is like, your job
is not to be thriving in every single area of
your life all the time, forever and ever. Amen. Your
job is to show up to what is present and
true for you today and for me today. What's true
(31:21):
for me is I am thriving. I am a ten
out of ten thriving in my relationship with Matt. We
have a crazy, chaotic life. There are a lot of
hard things that have happened to me in the last year.
But one thing I am so grateful for every single
day that I wake up is my husband and my partner.
He's my partner, you know, he meets me halfway. He's
fifty to fifty with me in every single thing that
(31:42):
we do, or like Brene Brown says, one hundred one hundred,
it's not fifty fifty, it's one hundred one hundred. And
I really do feel like he gives one hundred percent
to me and to our family and to our life,
the life that we're trying to build every single day.
So that's for me, the truth, I mean, that's real.
I feel that way about my relationship with him. And
yet the truth also is that in our finances, we
(32:03):
are not thriving right now. We are digging out of
a hole. We're you know, rebuilding and recovering from the
choices that we have made the last couple of years,
and in my health, I'm not perfectly thriving. I'm not
like you know, in the bottom of the barrel. I'm
not miserable every single day, but I definitely still have
some symptoms that are confusing to me. And I have
(32:24):
taken myself off of the obsessive mission to fix this
because I think I think it might actually be healthier
for me to surrender, relax, admit that I'm not one
hundred percent in my health, take small, simple steps that
(32:45):
I that are easy and that are right in front
of me for me to take, Like you know, going
to yoga every day. I know that's helping. So let's
do that and not obsessively research, you know, like what
could be causing these symptoms, and allow for those inside
to come to me, to trust that I'm not the
only one responsible for fixing this problem, that like, I'm
(33:07):
co creating this life with something else, with the energy
of the universe, of God, of Love, however you want
to define that, I'm co creating this life not just
by myself, but with the essence that brought us all here.
And so I can rely on that, I can lean into,
(33:29):
that I can ask and I can get answers, and
I can feel into it, and I can trust that
the answers will come when I'm ready for them, and
the teacher will come when the student is ready. You've
heard that that phrase before too. It's like, well, maybe
I don't need to like seek out the best doctor
in the state for X, Y or Z. Maybe I
can just energetically ask the question what needs to come
(33:51):
next for me in my health? And maybe as I
energetically asked that question, the answers will present themselves. I
do believe that, I really believe that with every fiber
of my being. So are you thriving in your life?
Are you thriving in every area of your life? If
you're not, hey, you're normal. Nobody's thriving in every area
of their life all the time, forever and ever. Amen.
That's impossible. It is an unrealistic expectation. It's setting you
(34:16):
up for failure, it's setting you up to feel bad
about yourself. I feel like so much of the self
help industry is just profiting off of us feeling like
we should be thriving in every single area of our life.
And I'm just coming to believe that's not the case.
So the self help is wonderful. The podcast, the books,
the doctors, the therapists, the coaches, the all of it.
(34:37):
Like I've done all of it, all of it. I
have spent so much money in my life, probably most
of my money has gone to that. It's so helpful,
it's so good. Coaches out there, therapists out there, Thank
God for you. You are the best. We need you.
And keep charging what you charge. You deserve every penny
of it. And also, if you're not thriving in every
area of your life, maybe you don't need to fix
(34:58):
it right now. Maybe you don't need to hire a
coach right the second. Maybe you don't need to hire
a therapist. Maybe you don't need to seek out the
best doctor in the state. Maybe you can just let
it be okay that you're not thriving in a few
areas of your life right now, or maybe you're not
thriving in a handful of areas of your life right now,
and maybe that's okay. And by the way, by the
freaking way, how are we supposed to be thriving in
(35:20):
a world? I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with thriving.
By the way, if you're thriving, then more power to you.
I'm so happy that you're thriving. If you're thriving in
like most or many areas of your life, like yes,
like keep on doing that and shine your lights so
bright because we can like feed off of your energy.
And one person liberated is the start of everyone liberated.
(35:40):
And at the same time, how can anyone really thrive
in a world where so many people are suffering and hurting?
Meaning look around you, you don't have to look too far.
You just open your phone, like open any app on
your phone, and it's like people are dying and starving
to death and suffering greatly. And so with that happening,
(36:03):
I'm not saying what I'm not saying. Don't hear me wrong.
I'm not saying you shouldn't thrive because they're not thriving.
I'm saying, how could any of us thrive while so
many people are suffering? Because we are all connected. So
you feel even if you don't ever get on Instagram,
you who is an intuitive, empathetic, highly sensitive, feeling person,
(36:26):
You are feeling energetically the weight of the suffering around
the world, So no wonder you're not emotionally thriving. How
could you be thriving when there are so many people
who are suffering. I'm not saying it's your job to
fix that. This is the whole point. It's not your
job to fix that. The weight of that cannot be
on your shoulders, But maybe the weight of it is.
(36:48):
Can I even keep my eyes open? Can I even
take in and metabolize what is happening? Can I be
present to what this is here to show me and
teach me? The more of us who can do that,
I believe the quicker this will all show shift and
I think that's the most powerful energy that we can
bring to this world right now. So I wish you
all the thriving in the world, and yet if you're
(37:09):
not thriving, I also celebrate you. I am right there
with you. I am not thriving in every area of
my life and solid solidarity, sister, I will see you
back here next week on The Writer Story podcast
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write, all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down on cold It's all about and write
(00:22):
your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon. I'm
your host, and I want to open today's episode by
just asking your question because I was having this conversation
with my husband this week and I asked him the
same question and we got into a really great dialogue
(00:44):
about it, and I've been thinking about it NonStop ever since,
and so I wanted to just extend this question to you,
and I would really love to hear your feedback. I'd
love to hear your response, whether that's in my DMS
or via email. I would love to hear just how
are you doing? Like the word that has been coming
to my mind is this idea of thriving, Like are
(01:04):
you thriving right now? In what areas of your life
are you thriving? And then what areas of your life
are you really not thriving? And I also want to
give this caveat that I'm not coming from a place
of well hold on. This is the what the whole
episode is about. The whole episode is about this idea
that I think we've bought into a lie that we're
(01:25):
supposed to be thriving in every area of our life
at all times. And I want to unpack this a
little bit. There's a possibility that maybe we just need
to reframe the word thriving, Like maybe the meaning that
we've given thriving is not a helpful meaning, and we
could offer it a new meaning, and we really could say, yes,
like I'm digging and I'm thriving in every area of
(01:46):
my life at all times. Maybe that is a helpful objective.
But actually, the way that I've been thinking about it
since the conversation with my husband came up a week
ago is more like what a croc Like what a
lie we've been sold that we're supposed to be thriving
every area of our lives at all times, And like
what an unhelpful expectation to set up for ourselves that
nobody could ever meet. And so if that's the expectation
(02:09):
that you're supposed to be thriving in every area at
all times, then of course you're never going to reach that,
and so of course you're going to feel like somehow
you're falling short or failing in some kind of a
way pretty much always like in perpetuity forever. And that's
also no kind of life to live. And so I
really want to tease this out. I want to talk
(02:30):
about it a little bit more. I want to share
the conversation that I had with Matt and kind of
how this came to be, and ask your opinion, ask
your thoughts. I'm curious, first of all, are you thriving?
Is that a word that you would use for yourself?
How are you doing? If thriving isn't a word that
you would use for yourself, how would you describe how
you're doing in the various areas of your life? Like finances?
(02:53):
Are you thriving? Career? Are you thriving you know, relationships, romance?
Are you thriving as a with your children, with the
people in your life? As a friend, are you thriving?
Are you thriving in your creativity? Are you thriving in
your physical health? We have all these different kind of
sectors of our lives that intersect with one another and
(03:15):
impact one another. And yeah, I just feel like we're
pitched to this idea that we're supposed to be thriving,
and if we're not thriving, it's because we haven't optimized
and dialed in these different areas and all we need
is just a little hack or a new habit or
a new thing to do or whatever, and we can, someday, eventually,
when we even achieved enlightenment, get to this place of thriving,
(03:38):
and speaking of enlightenment, get to this place of thriving
in our spirituality, in our faith, as you know, a
person of faith. I don't know, maybe it's just me,
and I'm open to discovering that it's just me. But
I just kind of feel like, maybe, maybe maybe that
the idea we're supposed to be thriving in every ear
of our lives is just completely false, and that life
(04:00):
isn't really about thriving. That life is about being present
to what is in front of us and to being
willing and maybe along the way like more and more
capable of taking in what's taking place around us. So
let me back up a little bit, because if you've
been listening for a while you know the broader narrative
(04:20):
that this smaller narrative is happening inside of, which is
that twenty twenty four was an extremely difficult year for me, emotionally, mentally, financially, otherwise.
I made a lot of really hard decisions. I lost
my dad. My husband's business that we had invested our
entire life savings in went under. We lost a baby,
we lost that business venture. We made a bunch of
(04:42):
really hard decisions, all in rapid succession. It was a
year of a lot of loss. It was a year
of a lot of hardship and challenge. I was feeling exhausted.
I was totally burned out. I took a step back
from coaching. That was such an important decision that I
made that set me up for success in twenty twenty five.
And in twenty twenty five I really began to enjoy
a little bit of a slower pace of life that
(05:03):
felt like, ah, exhale, I can do this. I also
started my yoga teacher training, which was busy, but busy
was something that was really nourishing me and nurturing me
every day. And so I moved into a season in
twenty twenty five that just felt really different than twenty
twenty four. There was still some grieving to do. It
hasn't been all sunshines and roses the whole time, but
(05:27):
there's been so much nourishment and so much nurturing and
so much of a slowing down of the pace of
life that has felt so good on my nervous system
and has helped me to feel much less overwhelmed and
helped me to, yeah, to stay present in my life
and just take it in really slowly, and to integrate
the really big, difficult changes that took place in twenty
(05:50):
twenty four. So the first five months of twenty twenty five,
from January until May were kind of like that. I mean,
they had this really beautiful slow pace. They weren't always easy,
but there was a lot of rest and relaxation and
integration and surrender and letting go and just slowly moving
through my days. And then June and July hit and
(06:14):
the pace picked up pretty significantly for a handful of reasons.
Number one was I went away for a week for
teacher training in June, and that was the first time
I've ever done this since I've had kids. I have
been away from my kids for maybe a night or
two at a time, and rarely ever with my husband.
I think we've done that maybe once or possibly twice,
(06:36):
but probably just once since Charlie was born. Otherwise, it's
usually traveling with the family, or if I travel alone,
then matter says home with the kids and I'm gone
for like a night or two. And yet in this
particular instance, I left for eight days, seven nights on
my own without the kids. And this was a big
mile marker for me, and it emotionally was a lot
leading up to the trip. I felt like there was
(06:58):
a lot of prep work to do to get ready
to go, to make sure that you know there was
coverage when there needed to be coverage childcare wise, and
that everybody knew what they were supposed to do when
pickups and drop offs were a mom. By the way,
total side note, but a mom holds so much in
her brain, and I see this talked about a lot
on social media, and it's a real thing, the mental
load of a mother. There is so much that's in
(07:20):
my brain that isn't in anyone else's brain. And so
to try to get my brain on paper before I
left for Montana for teacher training was a major effort
and it was totally worth it. Teacher training was incredible.
I had the most amazing time. It was transformative for me.
It was really healing for me to get away for
(07:43):
a week without my kids, as much as I love
them and as hard as it was to leave, and
I had many moments of just sadness and anxiety about
being away from them, and yet it was such an
important milestone and mile marker for me to have that
space to do something that was just for me and
to not have it be a about my kids for
eight days was like a big mental and emotional shift.
(08:04):
So that happened in June. There was a bunch of
travel that my husband had for work in June. My
mom came to visit at the end of May. Beginning
of June. We had Matt's dad and his stepmom here visiting,
so we had family in and out of town. We
had all kinds of trips happening. Oh. We also flew
to Portland and saw my family in July. So June
and July were both really busy months, and it felt
(08:26):
like the pace picked up pretty significantly, and so June
and July just started to feel a little bit like
drinking from a fire hose. It wasn't that anything that
happened was bad. It wasn't that anything that happened was
hard necessarily. In fact, most of what we did was
really great and uplifting and fun. And yet there was
so much of it that happened all at once, and
so much movement from place to place, and so much
(08:47):
change and so much transformation. It was just like so
much all at once for my sweet body to integrate.
If you're a highly sensitive person like me, then you
probably need lots of downtime, lots of like over your
environment in terms of like not as much sound, low lighting,
just a setting that allows you to integrate all of
(09:09):
the input that comes on any given day. And so
June and July didn't have a lot of space, it
didn't have a lot of white space for integrating all
that was happening. And because of that, I've gotten to
the end of July just feeling like a little frantic,
a little frenetic, very excited for the school year to start,
excited to get back into a routine, but also like
I cannot believe that we are at the end of
(09:29):
July and that August is next week and We're starting
the school year and summer's over, Like when did that happen?
It just feels like it blew by. And so that's
how June and July has felt for me. Is just
like a little bit of drinking from a fire hose,
a little bit chaotic, a little bit insane, but in
the best way. It's been such fun chaos, and so
(09:50):
many beautiful memories have been made. All that to say,
last week, to top off our crazy like back to
back activity for the ones of June and July, Matt
and I have been planning to go to the Coldplay
concert since the beginning of the year. Okay, so fast
forward to last week. Matt and I have been planning
on going to the Coldplay show together since the beginning
(10:12):
of the year. My husband is a Coldplay superfan, and
I am definitely a big fan of Coldplay, but not
as big as Matt is, but he has indoctrinated me
over the years with all kinds of Coldplay music. That's
like deep tracks on every single album and talking about
the chord changes and talking My husband as a musician
and led worship for many many years and so plays
(10:34):
the guitar and is much more musically talented than I
am or will ever be, and so likes to talk
about like the various chord changes and things about the
music that I don't understand. All that to say, he
was super excited to go to this show. He saw
that Coldplay was coming to Nashville and bought the tickets
a long time ago, earlier this year. We've had it
on the calendar forever, and by the time Tuesday world
around when Coldplay was in Nashville, I was a little
(10:56):
bit like, oh my gosh, this feels like so much
to go to a show tonight, especially thinking you know,
highly sensitive person, it's a lot to integrate. Going to
a massive stadium show is not something I've even done
a lot in my life because it just feels really
overstimulating for someone like me. And so Matt was asking me,
He's like, you know, have you ever been to a
big stadium show like this that has seventy sixty seventy
(11:19):
thousand people there? And I was like, no, I don't
think I have. I don't think i've ever. I've been
to a lot of smaller shows and then maybe one
or two or three shows that are in an arena,
But I don't think I had ever been to a
stadium show before, so this was my first stadium show.
(11:45):
I think, unless there's something that I'm forgetting about, and
we're gearing up to go to this stadium show, that's
going to be extremely overstimulating. And I had a little
thought in my brain like, maybe this is too much,
maybe we should skip it, But I was also really
excited about it. And this is the theme of my summer.
And this is all leading up to what I want
to talk about today, which is that the theme of
my summer is so many great, wonderful things that are
(12:06):
all coming at me so fast that I haven't quite
had time to fully digest any of them and to
fully integrate them and to fully take them in. And
so when Matt and I were sitting at dinner before
the Coldplay concert, we're just catching up because you know,
we're parents of young kids. We never get to actually
talk to each other. We like yell over the top
of screaming children essentially, so we were getting to actually
(12:28):
catch up and say like, how are you how, how's
your summer been, How are you feeling about things? And
I was asking him, like, do you feel like you're thriving.
When you think of that word thriving, do do you
feel like you're thriving in your finances? Do you feel
like you're thriving in your work? What areas of your
life do you feel like you're thriving in? And what
areas of your life would you not at all use
(12:49):
that word for scale of one to ten, ten being thriving,
one being absolutely not thriving. How would you rate each
area kind of a thing? So we sat at dinner
and we had this long conversation about what does that
even mean to thrive? And I don't know, am I thriving?
And I started to realize as we were having this conversation,
and as the whole thing unfolded, I was like, I
(13:11):
don't think most people are thriving in every area of there.
I don't think anybody is thriving in every area of
their life. I don't think we're supposed to thrive. I
don't think that's like an expectation we should set for
ourselves that we're supposed to thrive in every area of
our life all the time. Like, imagine if that's what
(13:32):
life was about, thriving in every area of your life
all the time. And maybe this is only a me thing,
Like maybe other people don't sit around feeling like they're
falling short of some expectation because you're scrolling on social
media or because you talk to your friends who you know,
I have a really positive mindset and positive outlook on life,
and they're telling you like things are going great. Life
(13:53):
is great, this is going great. That's going great. Maybe
other people don't feel the weight of that, Like you
don't move through your life and think like, oh God,
like everyone else is thriving and I'm not thriving. But
I realized as I was talking to Matt that I
have been feeling some of that. I've been feeling like
I think I'm supposed to be thriving. And this is
all happening unconsciously. By the way, It's not like I'm
(14:14):
sitting around thinking about this before the conversation, but unconsciously,
in my brain, I think I had put this story
together that was like everyone else is thriving. Most people
are thriving most of the time in most areas of
their life. If they're not thriving in a certain area
of their life, they're just kind of dialing it in.
They're really trying to adjust their habits so they can
really start thriving in that area of their life too.
(14:37):
And the fact that I'm not thriving in a handful
of areas in my life means I'm doing something wrong.
You know, I've missed the boat. I've gotten it wrong.
There's something that I should be doing that I'm not doing.
And you can hear the twisted mindset here and the shame.
But I wonder if I'm not the only one who
has this unconscious narrative playing out, and which is why
(14:57):
I'm bringing it up in the first place, because maybe
I'm not the only one who When I scroll on Instagram,
I see people who look like they're thriving in every
area of their life, and I recognize and realize that
there are many areas of my life where I'm not thriving.
And so then my response to that is, Okay, I
(15:18):
got to get thriving in these other areas of my life.
I got to really shore it up here, you know,
I got to get my life on track. I got
to get my life in order. Does anyone else do this?
Do you do this where you're like, Okay, we got
to get the house clean, we got to get the
attic cleared out, like we have to organize the crawl
space there are, and maybe physically cleaning my space is
(15:38):
one of the ways that I kind of move through
that feeling of feeling like I'm, you know, falling short
of some expectation. Physically cleaning my space is one of
the ways that I do that. It's kind of like
a not a trauma response, that's too strong of a word,
but it's like a response to the feeling that I'm
falling behind. Is like, Okay, let's get things cleaned up.
We're gonna spring clean, We're gonna get rid of all
(15:59):
the excess, We're gonna finally replace that light bulb that
needs to be replaced. We're going to get everything spick
and span. We're going to finally, you know, get through
the laundry today. And then also narrowing in all those
areas of your life where you feel like you're not thriving,
Like one area for me is my physical health. I
have been in and out of having some autoimmune issues
(16:20):
throughout my entire life, and when right before I got
pregnant with Nella, I had what felt like a big breakthrough.
And it's hard to know now looking back whether or
not the breakthrough was about getting pregnant, because I've talked
to other women who have had a letup in their
autoimmune symptoms while pregnant, So it's possible that the pregnancy
(16:40):
was actually what shifted my symptoms back to normal, meaning
like I was able to eat all the foods that
I wasn't able to eat before. I was able to
go back to eating gluten too, eating dairy, et cetera,
et cetera. And then at the end of twenty twenty four,
I found myself getting sick all the time. This was,
you know, at that point what Charlie would have been
almost three So almost three years after my second pregnancy,
(17:04):
enough time for my body to kind of readjust back
to being not pregnant. I know that sounds like a
long time. That is how long it takes after breastfeeding
and everything for your body to readjust after having a pregnancy.
And so I've felt some of these autoimmune symptoms pop
back up, and it's not overwhelming, it's not chronically painful,
it's not horrific. And when I started the teacher training
(17:26):
at the beginning of twenty twenty five, I felt a
huge improvement in the way that my body was functioning
and acting and being in the world. But but this
is my point, I am not thriving in my physical health.
I am not at one hundred percent in my physical health.
There are still things that need to be dealt with
and addressed that I don't have the answers to. And
(17:46):
so that's one of those areas that pops up for
me that's like, oh, we got to get this, we
got to get this sorted out, we got to get
this back on track. Like we got to get our
habits in check. Maybe I need to do xyz cleanse.
Maybe I need to do you know, intermittent fasting. Maybe
I need to go see a certain practitioner. Maybe I
need to whatever, book an appointment. So all these things,
(18:09):
Like in my mind, it's like the list is growing
of things that I need to do in order to
get my physical health in a place of thriving. And
that's just one area of ten that we could list.
Then you have your financial life, which you know, if
you've been listening to the show for a while, we
had a huge financial setback in twenty twenty four that
(18:31):
really like dates pre dates back to like twenty twenty
because we were making these massive investments in this new
business that Matt was starting that eventually fell apart. And
so we're trying to get back on track in our
financial life. And that is not a small thing, and
it is like a daily practice of making choices that
(18:51):
are digging us out of this hole that we've been in.
And so then you have this conflict of I should
book an appointment with such and such specialist because I
want to get my health to a point of thriving,
but I also want to get my finances to a
point of thriving, and such and such specialists costs two
hundred and fifty dollars per appointment, and I don't really
have the extra two hundred and fifty dollars to spend
right now, And so I guess I'm just going to
(19:12):
kind of manage the situation with my health until we
get our finances thriving, and then maybe my health can
be thriving. And again, like this is a complicated web
that is only this is only one tiny scenario from
just one little life my life, And I'm sure you
could think of one in your life, or ten in
your life, or fifty in your life that are kind
of like this where everything's interconnected. There are parts of
(19:35):
your life that maybe are thriving, and then parts of
your life that maybe aren't thriving. And do you ever
kind of wonder are other people thriving? And are they
thriving in every area of their life, really like every
area of their life? And if that's true, then what
am I doing wrong? That I'm not thriving in every
area of my life? And not only am I not
just thriving in every air of my life, but like
(19:57):
you know, it's going to be a lifetime of work
to get to the place where I'm thriving in every
area of my life. And is that something that I
even want to dedicate my life to, Like? Is that
a ladder that I want to climb to the very
top of to make sure that I personally am thriving
in every single area of my life. So this is
the question that Matt and I spent about two hours
(20:19):
talking about at dinner the other night, and we both
admitted to each other that there are many areas of
our life where we are not thriving right now, and
that there are some areas of our life where we're
doing better than other areas. There are some areas of
our life where we're really thriving and some areas where
we're like moderately thriving in some areas of our life
where we're really not thriving. And we both agreed, and
(20:39):
this is what I want to put forth in this
episode today, this suggestion that nobody is thriving, like nobody
is thriving in every single area of their life. If
they're telling you that they're thriving in every area of
their life, they're lying or only telling you part of
the story. And when we get on social media or
when we only have these brief encounters with people, even
(20:59):
if it's like bumping into them at the grocery store
or whatever, and when people tell you life is great,
things are good, Yeah, everything's going great, it can be
easy to think, Okay, so they're thriving and I'm not thriving,
So what am I doing wrong? But here's the thing.
I've lived on this Earth, on planet Earth for forty
two years now, and I know that there are some
years that are easier and better than others. There are
(21:20):
some years where if you had bumped into me in
the grocery store, I would have told you, honestly, things
are going great, and I would have been telling you
the truth. There are other years where if I would
have told you the truth, I don't know if I
would have, but if I would have, I would have
told you it's been a really shitty year. And then
there are other years where it's like, yeah, some things
are going well, some things are not going as well,
(21:41):
and that's just life. That's just part of life. And
part of life is not optimizing your daily practices or whatever,
or your health or your whatever, every single area of
your life until it's thriving. Part of life is not
just that. Part of life is learning to accept that
life is full of many different experiences, and some of
(22:02):
them will be easier to stomach than others. Some of
them will be easier to digest than others, some of
them will be easier to metabolize than others. And you
can have a really challenging experience like losing a baby,
losing my dad last year, that's really challenging to stomach.
And you can also have an experience like going to
Coldplay that was incredible, like mind blowing, you know, so
(22:27):
inspiring and life giving, that's also challenging to metabolize, or
an experience like going to Montana and becoming a yoga
teacher that is once in a lifetime top ten amazing experience,
you know, core memory. Put it on my list of
(22:47):
things that I will talk about until I die. That
is also challenging to metabolize. And I think this is
what I want to point my attention to and maybe
invite you to point your attention to. Life is less
about dialing it it all in perfectly so that every
area is thriving and you're just crushing it in your finances,
(23:07):
and you're crushing it in your romantic life, and you
are the perfect parent, and your health is like better
than it's ever been, and you're in excellent shape and
you have no health issue whatever. It's less about that
and more about learning how to stay open enough to
take in what life has to offer you. And I
(23:27):
want to balance this, I really want to balance this
with the concept of agency, because I've talked a lot
about this, and I do believe that we have agency
to improve areas of our life that are bothering us,
or that don't live up to our expectation, or that
aren't the way we want them to be. I am
(23:48):
a product of this ten years ago. So in twenty fifteen,
my life this time in twenty fifteen, July of twenty fifteen,
my life was a total mess. My marriage at the
(24:10):
time was extremely overwhelming and abusive, and I knew I
needed to leave. Sort of, I unconsciously knew I needed
to leave, But in July of twenty fifteen, I don't
think I really really knew that I needed to leave.
It wasn't until ironically, September of twenty fifteen that I
started going to yoga for the first time and really
started to become more embodied. That was when it began
(24:32):
to occur to me, this needs to change. This part
of my life is the bottom of the barrel. It
is not thriving. It is the opposite of thriving. And
I need to make a change. I need to do
something different because otherwise I'm going to suffer and struggle
through every single day the rest of my life, and
this one area of my life is going to color
every other part of my life, like my finances are
(24:54):
colored by this, my friendships are colored by this, my
creativity is colored by this, my work is color this,
my self esteem, my style of physical health like every
aspect of my life is colored by this relationship that
I'm in, and I need to do something to fix it,
to change it, do something different tomorrow than I've done today.
(25:16):
So that is a perfectly realistic scenario where there's an
aspect of your life that you realize is dragging down
every other aspect of your life. You are not thriving
in that aspect, and you realize this has got a change.
Maybe for you, it's like the job, the job you're in.
You're just like, I can't I cannot show up another day.
(25:37):
It's not working for me. It is killing my mental health,
it's killing me emotionally, it's killing me physically. It's dragging
down every other part of my life. I can't have friendships,
I can't have relationships, I can't go on dates because
of this stupid job. Maybe it is time to make
a change with the job, or maybe it's finances, or
maybe whatever it is. Maybe it's a relationship that you're in,
(26:00):
and maybe it's a friendship that's toxic that's dragging you down.
Sometimes we have those areas of our lives that are
like at the bottom of the barrel, and a change
does need to be made, and then other times this
is what I'm getting at with this episode. Other times
I think there are areas of our life where we're
just not thriving right now, and it is not your
(26:20):
job to fix it right this minute, And I just
want to take that in for a minute, because that
is a paradigm shift for me. I think coming out
of a situation where it was like I needed to
realize I have the agency to fix this and change this,
and it was really ten years of me making hard
decisions to set my life on a new trajectory and
then watching my life unfreaking fold in front of my
(26:42):
eyes and drastically change because of choices that I had made.
And now in my life there's this paradigm shift happening
where sometimes there are areas of your life that are
not thriving and you've tried everything you can to fix them,
and it is no longer your job to fix them,
and now it is your job to open enough to
(27:03):
take in what this scenario is trying to show you,
to take in what this experience is trying to teach
you to metabolize, to digest what this set of circumstances
is here to awaken you too, So it can be both.
Both can be true. Sometimes we have a situation where
(27:24):
we're not thriving and we need to make a change.
Other times it's like, listen, let me just be honest
with myself. I'm not thriving in my physical health. I'm
like a six out of ten on a good day.
Some days it's more like a four out of ten.
So that's true, that's real. Maybe today there's nothing I
(27:45):
can do about that except just admit that it's true.
And admitting that it's true is a lot. So maybe
that's all you do is just admit that it's true.
Maybe you admit to yourself, maybe you admit to a friend.
Maybe you see an acquaintance at the grocery store and
they say, how are you doing, and you say, you
know what, I'm okay, but I'm not thriving. Because telling
the truth can also be contagious, and you have no
(28:06):
idea the liberation that you might give to someone else
when you are brave enough to tell the truth about
how you're actually doing, because think about how bad it
makes you feel when you're not thriving and someone else
is like, things are great, life is great, it's going great.
Everything is great for me, and you're like, awesome, cool,
So it can be liberating to have someone else here.
You say, you know what, I'm grateful. There are some
(28:27):
things that are going well, but I am not thriving today,
and that's just me being honest about where I'm at.
And you don't even need to give more details than that.
It can just be that that can be enough. Maybe
you practice by telling the truth to yourself. Maybe you
practice by telling the truth to someone else. And maybe
there's nothing for you to do to fix it. Maybe
there's no new habit. Maybe you don't need to power
clean your entire house. Maybe today is not the day
(28:51):
that you clean out the crawl space. Maybe today is
the day that you rest during your kid's rest time.
This is something I've been practicing recently, like during rest
time while the kids are resting and I get an
hour to myself. I used to make sure the house
was perfectly in order while they were in rest time,
and now I'm like, you know what, when my kids
are in rest time, that's my rest time too. So
(29:11):
I'm gonna chill, I'm gonna listen to a podcast, I'm
gonna read a book, I'm gonna turn on a show.
I'm gonna lay my head down and shut my eyes.
That's what I'm gonna do during rest time, because hey,
mommy's rest time too, And maybe that's what you need
to do. Maybe you don't need to clean out the
cross space today. Maybe today is the day that you
lay your head down and close your eyes and take
a rest. What I want this episode to be is
(29:34):
an offering for you that maybe you don't have to
be thriving in every area of your life. Maybe it
is an unrealistic expectation for you to be thriving in
every area of your life. Maybe all the self help books,
all the podcasts, all the therapists, all the doctors, all the
everything in the world, all the money, all the whatever.
Maybe everything in the world couldn't help you be thriving
(29:57):
in every area of your life because maybe that was
not the purpose anyway. Maybe thriving in every area of
your life is an unrealistic expectation, and the expectation can
shift to I choose to be honest about how I
feel in each area of my life. Yes, there are
some areas of my life where I absolutely am thriving.
One area where I'm personally thriving in my life right
now is my relationship with my husband. We have such
(30:20):
a lovely dynamic. And I attribute some of this to,
you know, my experience in my last relationship and how
intentional I was about building the type of relationship that
I wanted. But it's not fair to attribute all of
it to that because a lot of it is just
dumb luck. You know, Matt and I are incredibly compatible.
(30:40):
My husband is the type of person who really likes
to make me happy, and I always worry like one
day he's going to wake up and be like feeling resentful,
like yikes, like I went way out of my way
day after day to make my wife happy. And you know,
he says that he doesn't feel that way. I ask
him that fairly regularly, but who knows. I mean, we
could wake up in three year from now, or in
(31:00):
a year from now, or in ten days from now,
and he could have hidden resentments or unspoken resentments that
we will work through and resolve at the time that
that happens. This is my point is like, your job
is not to be thriving in every single area of
your life all the time, forever and ever. Amen. Your
job is to show up to what is present and
true for you today and for me today. What's true
(31:21):
for me is I am thriving. I am a ten
out of ten thriving in my relationship with Matt. We
have a crazy, chaotic life. There are a lot of
hard things that have happened to me in the last year.
But one thing I am so grateful for every single
day that I wake up is my husband and my partner.
He's my partner, you know, he meets me halfway. He's
fifty to fifty with me in every single thing that
(31:42):
we do, or like Brene Brown says, one hundred one hundred,
it's not fifty fifty, it's one hundred one hundred. And
I really do feel like he gives one hundred percent
to me and to our family and to our life,
the life that we're trying to build every single day.
So that's for me, the truth, I mean, that's real.
I feel that way about my relationship with him. And
yet the truth also is that in our finances, we
(32:03):
are not thriving right now. We are digging out of
a hole. We're you know, rebuilding and recovering from the
choices that we have made the last couple of years,
and in my health, I'm not perfectly thriving. I'm not
like you know, in the bottom of the barrel. I'm
not miserable every single day, but I definitely still have
some symptoms that are confusing to me. And I have
(32:24):
taken myself off of the obsessive mission to fix this
because I think I think it might actually be healthier
for me to surrender, relax, admit that I'm not one
hundred percent in my health, take small, simple steps that
(32:45):
I that are easy and that are right in front
of me for me to take, Like you know, going
to yoga every day. I know that's helping. So let's
do that and not obsessively research, you know, like what
could be causing these symptoms, and allow for those inside
to come to me, to trust that I'm not the
only one responsible for fixing this problem, that like, I'm
(33:07):
co creating this life with something else, with the energy
of the universe, of God, of Love, however you want
to define that, I'm co creating this life not just
by myself, but with the essence that brought us all here.
And so I can rely on that, I can lean into,
(33:29):
that I can ask and I can get answers, and
I can feel into it, and I can trust that
the answers will come when I'm ready for them, and
the teacher will come when the student is ready. You've
heard that that phrase before too. It's like, well, maybe
I don't need to like seek out the best doctor
in the state for X, Y or Z. Maybe I
can just energetically ask the question what needs to come
(33:51):
next for me in my health? And maybe as I
energetically asked that question, the answers will present themselves. I
do believe that, I really believe that with every fiber
of my being. So are you thriving in your life?
Are you thriving in every area of your life? If
you're not, hey, you're normal. Nobody's thriving in every area
of their life all the time, forever and ever. Amen.
That's impossible. It is an unrealistic expectation. It's setting you
(34:16):
up for failure, it's setting you up to feel bad
about yourself. I feel like so much of the self
help industry is just profiting off of us feeling like
we should be thriving in every single area of our life.
And I'm just coming to believe that's not the case.
So the self help is wonderful. The podcast, the books,
the doctors, the therapists, the coaches, the all of it.
(34:37):
Like I've done all of it, all of it. I
have spent so much money in my life, probably most
of my money has gone to that. It's so helpful,
it's so good. Coaches out there, therapists out there, Thank
God for you. You are the best. We need you.
And keep charging what you charge. You deserve every penny
of it. And also, if you're not thriving in every
area of your life, maybe you don't need to fix
(34:58):
it right now. Maybe you don't need to hire a
coach right the second. Maybe you don't need to hire
a therapist. Maybe you don't need to seek out the
best doctor in the state. Maybe you can just let
it be okay that you're not thriving in a few
areas of your life right now, or maybe you're not
thriving in a handful of areas of your life right now,
and maybe that's okay. And by the way, by the
freaking way, how are we supposed to be thriving in
(35:20):
a world? I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with thriving.
By the way, if you're thriving, then more power to you.
I'm so happy that you're thriving. If you're thriving in
like most or many areas of your life, like yes,
like keep on doing that and shine your lights so
bright because we can like feed off of your energy.
And one person liberated is the start of everyone liberated.
(35:40):
And at the same time, how can anyone really thrive
in a world where so many people are suffering and hurting?
Meaning look around you, you don't have to look too far.
You just open your phone, like open any app on
your phone, and it's like people are dying and starving
to death and suffering greatly. And so with that happening,
(36:03):
I'm not saying what I'm not saying. Don't hear me wrong.
I'm not saying you shouldn't thrive because they're not thriving.
I'm saying, how could any of us thrive while so
many people are suffering? Because we are all connected. So
you feel even if you don't ever get on Instagram,
you who is an intuitive, empathetic, highly sensitive, feeling person,
(36:26):
You are feeling energetically the weight of the suffering around
the world, So no wonder you're not emotionally thriving. How
could you be thriving when there are so many people
who are suffering. I'm not saying it's your job to
fix that. This is the whole point. It's not your
job to fix that. The weight of that cannot be
on your shoulders, But maybe the weight of it is.
(36:48):
Can I even keep my eyes open? Can I even
take in and metabolize what is happening? Can I be
present to what this is here to show me and
teach me? The more of us who can do that,
I believe the quicker this will all show shift and
I think that's the most powerful energy that we can
bring to this world right now. So I wish you
all the thriving in the world, and yet if you're
(37:09):
not thriving, I also celebrate you. I am right there
with you. I am not thriving in every area of
my life and solid solidarity, sister, I will see you
back here next week on The Writer Story podcast
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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