Carefree #FeelingsMatter

In this episode of #FeelingsMatter, hosts Michelle Stinson Ross, Tina Schweiger, and Heather Hampton explore the emotion of feeling carefree - that state of having no cares or worries where things feel easy. The conversation examines how responsibilities and life stages affect our ability to experience carefreeness, whether this feeling can be intentionally cultivated, and how creative flow states might provide unexpected moments of being carefree. The hosts discuss practical ways to reverse-engineer carefree moments in adult life despite accumulated responsibilities. 

Episode Highlights:

• Tina reflects on not feeling truly carefree since her late teens/early twenties during a brief period after finishing college before starting work, describing carefree as "having no responsibilities, nothing to worry about, nowhere to be, nothing to do" and wondering if it's possible to craft such experiences now
• Michelle suggests that the stage of parenting significantly impacts carefreeness, noting how she couldn't feel carefree when vacationing with young children but now experiences it when traveling alone as an adult with grown children
• The hosts explore "reverse engineering" carefree moments through mindfulness techniques like 20-minute meditation, mind-mapping to dive into problems without worry, or giving yourself permission to let your mind wander freely
• Michelle observes that Tina likely experiences carefree moments during creative flow states when deeply engrossed in art or singing, even if she doesn't consciously recognize them as carefree in the moment because she's so absorbed in the creative process
• The conversation concludes with the insight that cultivating carefree might be more accessible than chasing joy directly, offering a pathway to joy's "slightly different flavor" that feels more achievable given adult responsibilities - noting that "you have to work harder to find your happy feelings when you're older, but you can still find them"

Podcast theme music by Dubush Miaw from Pixabay

This episode of the #FeelingsMatter Podcast was recorded and produced at MSR Studios in Saint Paul, MN. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.

This episode is sponsored by 
FeelWise - bridging the gap between reflection and resilience, offering practical tools to help people overcome obstacles, embrace change, and grow stronger emotionally. https://www.feel-wise.com/

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Do you have trouble talking about your feelings. You're not alone.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's a topic that can make even.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
The most powerful people somewhat squeamish.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
You're listening to Feelings Matter, where our mission is to
demystify everything about emotions so that we can all get
more comfortable in talking about them. Joining Heather, Tina and
Michelle as we unpack a new angle on emotions and
the psychology of human nature.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Feelings Matter. Welcome to Feelings Matter. I'm Michelle Stinsonderalas, I'm
Tina Schweiger, and I'm Heather Hampton.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
I've got care free. Care Free is you have no
cares or worries. Things are feeling easy. And I was
thinking about care free and our little feeling is like
a clear ball with like clear like a sky with
some clouds in it and a cloud to make up
part of the smile, and it's very light and very

(01:17):
open feeling. I don't think i've felt care free really,
and since I was probably a teen. Care Free is
like for me having no responsibilities, nothing to worry about,
nowhere to be, nothing to do, no one to see,
no one to be, and no expectations on you. And

(01:37):
I think the older that you get and the more
responsibilities that you get through work or family or life
at general relationships, the less opportunities you have to feel
care free. So if you find an opportunity to feel
care free, then take it. And also it makes me think,
is it possible to craft an experience for myself where

(02:01):
I feel carefree? Because when I reminisce on feeling carefree,
I probably was maybe nineteen years old, and it was
this feeling of I'm in my freshman year in college.
I have freedom, but I still don't have responsibilities, and
it was just a beautiful escape from the difficult challenges

(02:26):
of the household of origin, and I'm being free from
those heavier weights, but not yet being in a place
where I had any obligations or commitments or anything. And
I can remember just being able to go to Barton
Springs in Austin and just lay out on a towel
for the day and like really just not worry about

(02:49):
a thing and just enjoy what is it that I'm
doing right now and what do I want to do later.
I think I had like blitsful three months of my
life where I'd finished college and didn't start working yet
and just got to like just be for a little
bit of time, and that was lovely. But I missed

(03:09):
that feeling.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
As a parent of people who are older than your people. Yeah,
some of that, I think is due to just that
stage of parenting that you're at. That because I can
think now with my children as adults, and I have
the opportunity and I have had several times the opportunity
to travel to go on vacation when it's just me,

(03:34):
and I can feel a sense of being care free,
that I don't have any responsibilities to work, I don't
have any responsibilities of anybody else, that the only person
that has to be satisfied in this situation is me.
And I think to a degree, some of it may
just be the stage of parenting life that you're at.

(03:58):
You go on vacation with your children, so that's not good.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
To be care education always, is it.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
No, vacationing with young kids is never carefree.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
And then their young life who were vacation without them,
You just miss them.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
You never get you never step out of mom mode
until it's all you guys really are adults. Okay, it's good.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Yeah, that will be amazing, But also then I'll miss
them being kids. So there's that. I'm going to look
at the mindfulness techniques. It's in the joy area, and
if I were to get to the state of feeling
care free, then I thought maybe I could reverse engineering.
What if I took the mindfulness techniques associated with joy

(04:44):
and see if there was a way to have that
foster a sense of carefreness? Why could I go backwards
through the system?

Speaker 4 (04:52):
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Speaker 1 (05:45):
It's certainly possible. You tie so much of whether or
not you can experience being care free. It's related to
the word care right. So long as you have a
responsibility to some other than yourself, a burden of care,
then you're not going to be free of care. In

(06:07):
order enough to feel care free. And yeah, I think that, yes,
you could reverse engineer a at least a brief situation
where you could experience a little bit of that state
of being care free.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
I can find three in here on the back one
a twenty minute meditation. You certainly can if you commit
to that experience of meditating. I certainly have experienced a
sense of care freeness with I wouldn't say you don't
meditate for a long time and you sit down in
ten minutes, you're gonna feel that way. But if you

(06:49):
commit to it and do it regularly on a daily basis,
which I haven't done recently, I think you can find
care freeeness there. The other is the mind map, which
is a technique to help see the full complexity of
a problem. There is certain freedom of diving into a
problem to solve, to untangle and not to untangle, and

(07:10):
generating ideas around it can be freeing because you're not
worrying about your worries, which is carefree. And then wandering
mind is giving yourself permission to actually not care about
anything that's going on right now, and the freedom to
let your mind wander on any topic you want, and
that is an interesting way of looking at the two words,

(07:32):
the word caring and the word freedom, and how they
come together to make care free, which is freedom from caring.
I think you just said that macros of my life
don't allow for spontaneous feelings of care free. What are
the small moments that I can grab that will give

(07:54):
me a few glimpses of it?

Speaker 1 (07:56):
So I have a little bit of a challenge question
for you, and this is personal to you because you
are an artist, you are a creator in a state
of flow, would you be willing to say that you
are at least more care free than in your day
to day life because at that moment you are in

(08:18):
a state of flow. Yeah, maybe you experience more of
those moments of being care free.

Speaker 5 (08:30):
I do.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
And but you're so engrossed in whatever it was that
you were creating in that moment of flow that it
did the it's like day.

Speaker 4 (08:40):
Hey, look we're now being care free.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
Yeah, yeah, I go off good point. I think that's
an excellent observation.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah, because I've seen you in moments of deeply creative
states of flow, and you are lighter, you are lit.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
And creating something or singing or something like that.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
Yeah, and that's why we talk about this stuff because
sometimes it's just we're so engrossed that we missed those little,
as you said, micro moment of something. And it wasn't
that it didn't exist, it's this that it was hidden
under the experience of something.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
Yeah, I have to work harder to find your happy
feelings when you're older, Yep, you do. But you can
still find them care free because it is in that
joy category.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
It is something that you can build. Not I agree
with you. I think that it is something that you
could actually cultivate moments of and more experiences of, once
you become aware of what are the circumstances. What was
I doing in that moment when I when it dawned
on me that I was feeling care free? Can I
do that again and experience it again? I think it

(09:59):
could be cultivated, And I think it's a.

Speaker 3 (10:01):
Really nice thing to cultivate because a lot of times
there's this kind of happiness mantra of chasing joy or
trying to cultivate joy in your life, and joy is
this big, grandiose, like overpowering almost sensation, Whereas if you're
simply going for cultivating care free, that's maybe a little

(10:26):
bit of a more accessible way get closer to joy
that you can accomplish maybe by just doing something creative
or something where you're not I'm not getting all the
way to joy, but care free. That's good.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
That is good, And I like it that you brought
that up because immediately where my mind went I thought
about the way we feel, wise express or help people
understand what joy is as a category, and that there
are multiple especially on the wheel, it's very obvious that

(11:02):
there are multiple components of what joy is. So maybe
if you're not feeling what you would describe as or
count as joy, but you can easily access other components

(11:22):
of joy within the category, then yes, you are experiencing joy.
It's just you're experiencing a slightly different flavor of it
rather than unadulterated, uncut, very good,