Welcome back to Become a Calm Mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlene Childress.

And today on the podcast, I'm gonna share with you a

text that my son sent to me, a big question that he

asked me about how to live an intentional

life. And then I'm gonna share with you his question and then my response to

that question. And I think you will really enjoy it

because, really, as moms, we are trying to figure out how to

make the most of this experience and balancing

all of the different stressors and and demands and, you know,

how to raise a good kid while also enjoying the process. So this

is an episode for you to help you kind of learn how to

embrace this stage of your life with intentionality. It's fun to

be back to share my own thoughts. The last

several episodes have been interviews, which I've loved having

so many experts and interesting conversations to share with you.

And now I'm gonna share a couple of episodes that are

just my thoughts with you like we typically do on the podcast. So

let's get into it. Okay. So I woke up by the way,

this was sent to me at 02:11AM, this

message. And it says, hey. This is a pretty random

text, but I've been really wondering how do you live every day to

its fullest without wishing you had done something? In

life, we only get to live every day once, and I can't seem to grasp

how to make each day the best it could be because regardless what I do,

there's always some alternative thing I could think of what I should have

done. And he goes on to say, I really just wanna make the most of

my college years, because they're flying by. Before I know it, I'm gonna

be 21. He says to me, as someone who's lived through

college and has a pretty fulfilling life, it seems to me,

I'd love to hear your thoughts about this. And

he says it's also just seems so hard to stay rooted living in the present

and feeling gratitude for what you have. So he sends me

this, and I had a chance to really think about his question. And

I've actually had a few moms talk to me about this,

especially after a conversation I had with Kelsey

Cook about chasing fun or, like, being more present in our

lives as moms and how challenging that can be because there's so much to do

all the time. There's There's so many things that we feel like we should do,

but yet we might be missing out on

the the richness of the moment and the living life to the

fullest. So I kinda wanted to just tell you what I share

with my son and relate it to mothering and

motherhood and see where we go from this conversation. So

I started my answer with my to my son. I said,

my answer to your question, which, quote, how to

make each day the best it could be is two parts. So

this is how I think about it. I think that when we wanna live

as best we can, we need these two ingredients. One is

living intentionally, and two is dealing with

regret respectfully. So living intentionally

to me means having really specific goals.

So when I have a goal, it gives me clarity about what I'm supposed to

be doing each day. If I don't know what I'm working on in my

life or working towards, then I kind of end up

spending time, like, in this restless no man's, no

woman's land, this mindless haze of nothingness. I've noticed

this about myself. So I like to kind of have

clarity. I talk about it in my parenting

manifesto or just sort of the type of mom I wanna

be. I like to be intentional

with my life. I like to think about what I

am chasing and how I wanna feel

while I'm chasing those things. I like to know what I want

and where I'm going. And when that's clear to me, I can make the

most of my time. Some of my goals have

been to be a really present and loving mother. I've

also wanted to have a good marriage. I've wanted to have a strong body.

I've wanted to have a beautiful home. I've wanted to create a

meaningful career. I've wanted to make money. I've wanted

to travel. I've wanted to have good friends. I wanted

to be honest with myself and others to be helpful to

others, to grow as a person, especially in feeling

less secure and to have fun. So when I think

about my intentions in my life, they might not seem

all that insane. You know? They're not, like, super

ambitious. I don't think of myself as an

incredibly ambitious person, but I do think of myself as someone

who's very intentional. So when I have a goal in mind, even

if it's not like a specific make this amount of money, I just want it,

like, to have a career. I want to be a present and loving mother.

And then I look at how I can make that happen.

What are the steps that it takes to make that happen? What

do I need to be learning? What do I need to be doing in order

to become the person I want? If there's a problem in my marriage, I

deep dive into marriage. I learn about it. I ask myself really hard

questions. If I wanna travel and I don't have money, I figure that

out. Like, right now, I'm doing the points thing with credit cards. Right? Trying to

earn points and miles and things like that because I wanna travel and I don't

necessarily have, you know, a lot of extra money for that. And so I'm

kind of trying to figure that out. So I like to have a goal, and

I like to have meaning and purpose. And then that structure helps me

structure my days. So when I was talking to my son when I

sent share this letter with him, I also will share the letter. If you

get the newsletter, we'll include a PDF of it so you can read

it. But when I share it with him, I was

really wanting him to understand that, like, if you wanna graduate from college, right, or

you wanna make a certain amount of money or you wanna have a certain physique,

if you have that goal in mind, then you know how you should

be structuring your time. So in addition to my goals, I'm

also really intentional about how I want to feel in

my life. I've talked about this on the podcast in a couple of

different episodes like summer mindset. I've talked about it in

winter break mindset. I usually talk about it in terms of

transitions or like experiences. If I'm going on a vacation or

I'm going to have a weekend with my girlfriends or I'm working out

at a gym or I'm, you know, working on on

growing the podcast or something. Whatever it is, I have the goal,

but I also am chasing the feeling. The most common

feelings that I wanna chase are joy, pretty

much fun. I really love laughter. I

love lightness. I love also seriousness too, so it's kind

of complex. But I, for a very, very long time,

was chasing calm. I had a lot of anxiety, a lot of insecurity,

a lot of overwhelm, especially with parenting. And

I really that's why this has become a calm mama. A lot of my work

is around teaching us how to be calm. And from that

calm place, I wanna feel joy. I wanna feel proud

of myself and my work. I wanna feel grateful. So I

work on my mindset a lot, practicing thoughts that make me

feel calm, practicing thoughts that make me feel joy.

It's a very simple way to understand mindset

is intentionally thinking thoughts in order to create

intentional feelings. That's what really mindset's all about. How

it works for me is I have my goals and I have the feelings I'm

chasing. And then when I'm off track, if I'm not

doing the work that is taking me

towards my goal, like, I'm not doing the actions or

I'm not feeling the way that I wanna feel, then

I catch myself and I stop and I reflect

and I ask myself, why am I sabotaging my own

goals? In the hierarchy of healing, I talk about radical self

love and radical honesty and radical listening.

Because this process, if I am not reaching my goals

or I'm not showing up as the mom I wanna be, as the wife I

wanna be, as the coach I wanna be, then I

or I'm, like, not meeting goals, like, with my

physical goals or my financial goals or any of those things. If I look at

myself and I judge myself and I beat myself up and I beat

myself with a whip, and I talk about how bad I am and

how lazy I am and how selfish I am, if I

use negative whipping tools like mindset tools,

I'm not going to actually make progress towards my goals. I need to

be loving and gentle and curious with myself.

So sometimes when I have looked at wire what's going on, darling?

I, like, literally talk to myself. I'm like, what's going on? You said you wanted

to show up this way in life. You wanted to be a calm mama,

and yet you yelled at your kids three times today.

You said you wanted to grow the podcast, but

yet you didn't do any cold pitches.

What's going on? Or you say you want to be

more honest with your husband and be more present in your marriage, and

yet you are not talking about something that's

hard and ignoring a big problem in your marriage. So

I look at my actions and I look at my results and I gently

ask myself what's going on. Sometimes, the reason why

I'm not doing what I said I'm gonna do is

because I'm bored. For me, I don't know if this is true for a lot

of people, but sometimes the answer to my why is that I'm bored. Like, I'm

bored with my life. That means I need to make some fun

up and create something fun that aligns with

my goals. So if I'm, like, not showing up as the

wife I wanna be and I keep being grumpy and I keep kind of, like,

avoiding my husband, then I'm probably gonna plan either,

like, a fun night at home or bring a little

project for us to do together or talk to him about, hey. Let's

do this or that. It doesn't have to be extravagant. Sometimes the answer

to why I'm not achieving my goals is that I'm insecure. I

can work through my self esteem through mindset, which is like finding

positive things about me or my life that are true instead

of focusing on negative things. If I don't have belief that I'm

capable of reaching my goals, then I'm not gonna

reach them. So I have to work on my mindset. So that insecurity

isn't like I'm physically insecure or something like that. It's more

like I don't have enough self trust and self love

to get me to take risks or move

forward towards my goals. I just don't believe in myself, and

then I need to really work on pumping myself up a bit.

Sometimes, I don't work on my goals because I'm jealous,

and I just feel, like, defeated. And I look and I'm like,

well, everyone else has what I want, and I can't get

it. So I love to look at my jealousy

as a cue or a clue that there's something I

want that I am not thinking I can have.

And if I decide I get to have that too,

then that means that I can create that. The

first time this ever happened to me, ironically, is

right in the beginning of, like, my healing journey.

When I decided to leave college, I was doing too many drugs

and alcohol, and I came home and I was in a really bad headspace. I

was, like, 19. And I did talk about this in the confessions

episode about getting sober. But the specific example is

I called my college roommate who lived in Northern California, and I lived in

Southern California. And I called, and I wanted to talk to her. And her

mom answered the phone because we didn't have cell phones back then. And her mom

said, oh, no. She's on a camping trip in Yosemite.

And I thought, she has all the good things in life.

Like, I don't I wanna go to Yosemite, but I don't get to go to

Yosemite, and she gets to go to Yosemite. And I was very jealous of it.

Then a couple weeks later, I was at something, and there was a group of

people going to Yosemite on a trip to hike Half Dome. It

cost $99. I didn't have $99, and I

decided I also get to have what I want. And I went and

I asked if anybody would help me pay for it. And

I hiked Half Dome. I got to go to Yosemite. So what I've learned

about myself is that if someone has something I want,

I get to create that for myself. This happened to me years later

when I went paddle boarding and I said to Tiffany, I went stand

up paddle boarding on the ocean. And I said, I kinda wanna be one of

those people who stand up paddle boards and does yoga and just, like, spend

some hiking. And she was like, why don't you be

that person? Aren't you already that person? And I was like,

wait, what? Like, I was, like, jealous of something that I didn't

realize I could create for myself. So anyway, use jealousy

as a cue or a clue. Sometimes I'm resentful or

I'm angry, and I sabotage my goals because of my own

anger. And I have learned that when I am angry or

I'm resentful towards somebody or something, that is a

clue that I have not set a good boundary or that I have not set

a good limit, that I have not figured out what I want from a relationship

or from a situation and then done what is,

you know, necessary for me. I have learned that my

anger is an invitation to me to figure

out what I want and maybe where I'm people

pleasing or going outside my boundary, pausing and going and

fixing the situation, talking to someone, getting clear about my

boundaries, and putting them in place. So I shared all this with my son in

this letter. I just said to him that I have my intention.

Right? I know my goals. I have the feelings I'm chasing. And

then when I'm off track, I get curious

very gently and I find out what is the

feeling I'm having instead. Am I bored? Am I insecure? Am

I jealous? Am I angry? And then I look at that and I say, okay.

That's because I have some negative self belief or

limiting belief, and I can overcome that through my thinking.

For me, fun is a big, big thing. Like,

I'm constantly chasing fun in my life, like I said. I love

laughing. I love feeling light. I love smiling. So I'm always

figuring out what is fun to me. And when I find that fun thing, I

try to do more of it. And the more fun I create in my life,

the more joy I have and the more peace I have, the more calm I

am, and the better I show up as a parent and as a person and

as a wife and a daughter and a coach and

a friend and a business owner and a homeowner

and all of these things. When we find that

feeling that we love the most, maybe for you it's peace.

Maybe for you it's purpose. Maybe for you, it's

achievement. Maybe for you, it's quiet. Maybe

for you, it's power. Maybe it's knowledge. It can

be whatever it is. Find out what it is that

you chase and make it happen for yourself. And when

I wrote to my son, I asked him to ask himself what he wants

out of his college experience. But for you, I'd love to

invite you to think about what do you want out of this motherhood

experience. What do you want about the season of your life?

If you have young kids at home and you're in that very

physical stage of parenting where they're on you and they're very

demanding and you're tired physically, how can you

bottle this up a little bit? Maybe you need more space from your

children. That's okay. But maybe you wanna look at this period of time

and say, you know what? This is the time that I'm gonna get cuddles. This

is the time that I'm going to get late bedtimes where I'm laying in bed

with my kids. I'm gonna try to savor this

period of physical connection with my children.

I'm gonna embrace it and enjoy it. Now,

if you decide that and you find yourself angry or resentful,

then maybe you have to set some boundaries. Maybe you

don't lay down for the whole hour or whatever, and you do start

to teach your kids to fall asleep on their own. You can set boundaries.

But noticing when you want something and then you find

yourself angry or bored or insecure or jealous or whatever, get

curious and then set some boundaries about that or make some changes.

So thinking for yourself, what do you want from this season of

life? In my family, for me, what I wanted

was I wanted stable joy. It's the best way I

could explain how I felt about parenting.

With my family, the way I grew up, it was very

unpredictable. It was very insecure. The security

wasn't there. It was scary a lot. I didn't know

when we would eat or when who would pick me up

or whether I would be safe. There wasn't a lot of predictability

in our lives. My mom, she was never, like

an angry person, but she was depressed. And so

sometimes she would be fun and have energy and we would do fun things. And

then other times it would be chaotic and messy and she

would be tired and we would be fending for ourselves. There were

unpredictable men in her life and that made my life unsafe.

So there were a lot of moments in my childhood where I did not

feel stable, and I wanted to create that predictability

for my kids. I wanted to create what I'm thinking of as roots

and routines. I wanted them to have anchor points in their life,

tethers, where they knew that they could

root back into. So, like, an evening routine or some

predictability around how people's moods

were or how patterns in terms of cleaning up

or chores. Like, I wanted to have predictability and

stability and safety, but I also really wanted it to be

joyful. As you can tell, I really like fun. And so I want there to

be silliness and fun times and lighthearted moments. And how

I thought about it was like like a beat, like a

metronome beat in our family that was just kinda boom

boom boom boom. Like a bass note that was kind of

always there. And then there was all the heart like, harmony, and I

don't know anything about music, but, like, all of the delightful,

you know, like, something going on where there was some lightness. And I

always thought about it as, like, giggly and laughter and, like, and

clapping and things like that while there was still I didn't want

chaos, but I didn't want just a metronome. Sorry to go off on

this, but I've never really talked about it on the podcast because it was really,

really important to me, and I was very intentional about it.

I wanted there to be that roots and routines and then also

those high notes of life, lighthearted and silly and not so

serious. So thinking for yourself about what

it is that you want for your family in short term

in this season, and then longer term kind of the rhythm or

routines or, like, tone of your life as a family.

Okay. I'm saying all this, and I'm also realizing you don't have to do this.

Okay? You don't have to make parenting so complicated and motherhood so meaningful.

It's just an invitation if you're feeling frustrated or, like, things aren't

really feeling great for you, you're unhappy in

motherhood or you're kind of feeling grumpy a lot. Chase a

feeling. Look at some goals. Who

did you decide you wanted to be when you became a parent?

What was it that was driving you? How do you want the home that you're

creating to be different from your childhood? Or what is it that you

wanna take in from your childhood home and bring it into your child

rearing years? So you can just kinda think about a little bit

of intentionality will help you. Now another thing about being

intentional is training your brain to look for the

good. The brain likes to look for problems. It's a

survival organ. It wants to

protect you. It's always scanning for hazards so it can keep you

safe. That's its natural default perspective

is negative bias scanning for hazards.

But that negative bias can keep us feeling scared and

stuck. That's why having an intentional

feeling is good because then you can find thoughts

that make you feel that way, that help you get into

that mindset, and it overcomes that

negative bias. Another great hack that

I find is helpful to get out of negative bias and shift

towards positive is gratitude.

So looking at what's going great in your life. The more you

focus on what you already have, the more that good grows.

The more joy I have and when I look for ways that my life is

working, then I'm able to actually look and go, oh, oh, oh, I

wanna create more of that. I loved that. I want more of

that. In general, we wanna focus on what we have

and let create more of that. And then also, if

something's not working, figure out what it is that, like, you love about your life

and create more of that. What's going well? Let's add

more. If things aren't going well? Okay.

Let's get curious about what parts of the day are hard. How can we make

them better? What do we already know is true about you

or already true about something that you like? Can you add more? Example.

Easy example. Music. So maybe every

time that post dinner or while you're prepping for dinner, it's always a

real shit show in your house. But you know you love music or you love

these certain songs, you can just turn that on for yourself. Turn

on some music. If you know that getting in your

pajamas makes a way better night or having your face

washed and your teeth brushed before you start bedtime just in case you fall

asleep, just do that then. Right? When if it's

working, if you notice things are working, add more of it. And then

looking at that positive focus, like, where do I

want to focus my energy? Do I wanna focus it on things that aren't

working or things that are working? Do I wanna focus on

where things are bad, or do I wanna focus on where things are good?

So Tony Robbins says, where your focus goes, energy

flows. So whatever you are focusing on,

that's what your energy goes towards, and that's what grows.

So you want to try to focus on areas of your life

that are going great. So my son had also asked me

about the balance between being carefree and also

taking life seriously. And I think of this as

the art of living. So my best advice

is to figure out what you want, how you wanna feel along the

way, the steps to get there, and then relax

and trust the process. It's like if

you have this belief, like I am becoming a calm

mama, I understand what needs to

happen. I need to be pausing if I get overwhelmed. I need to take excellent

care of myself. I need to be curious about how I'm thinking and

feeling, curious about how my kids are thinking and feeling, setting

boundaries. Right? The calm mama process, calm, connect,

limit set, correct. Those are the basics.

Just keep doing those. You're going to get calm. If you

can trust that you're making progress every day and that

you're moving forward, then you can relax a little bit. You don't have to

be so hard on yourself or so hard on your kids. Trusting the

process, literally, the Calm Mama process is effective and works.

So trust the process that you're learning, but also just

trusting yourself, trusting that you're going to get where you wanna

go. Will you sometimes slip and become

too carefree or go off your track a little bit?

Yes. No problem. Reset your goals. Get back on the

path. Sometimes you're gonna slip and be too serious. No

problem. Chase the feelings of fun and peace, and you'll get back on the

path. So I'm not gonna get into regret on this episode

because it's gonna get too long. But I did wanna spend time

with you today to talk about just, like, this intentional

living, this art of living, and how to

make the most of each day. And this is my best attempt

to do that. It's being intentional, chasing goals,

chasing feelings, being gentle with yourself when you get off track,

and keep going. Trust. You're gonna get to the goals

that you have. When I look back at the things that I've wanted in the

past, I have them. I wanted to be a present

and loving mother, and I did. I am. And I I was. Was I

always present? Was I always loving? No. Of course not. We

make mistakes. But in general, I have that.

I have been that. I want to have a good marriage. I've worked on

it. I've worked with Kevin. We've had to have very hard conversations. It has not

always been good, but it is good now. And I'm grateful.

I thought I I do have a strong body. I do have a beautiful home.

I do have a great career. And listen, I'm not bragging here.

I'm proud of myself and I'm also offering to you that

you have it too. Now, of course, maybe your marriage isn't

working out or you're not married at all. That's fine. That might not be

possible for you. Maybe your next relationship or maybe you wanna have a

better marriage with yourself. Maybe that's your goal, is

to fall deeper and deeper in love with you. Maybe it's to fall

deeper in love with a kid that you have that's challenging to you.

Maybe motherhood isn't your favorite and you wanna

find a bigger balance between your career or your

interests and your self development and your growth and your

children. I love that. It doesn't have to be

my version. You get to design the life that you

want that would make you feel joyful and

happy. The way that we begin that is getting very curious. If

you're jealous of something or somebody, what do they have that you

want? That's such a beautiful cue to you. Are

you angry or resentful about something? That's such a

good cue to you that maybe you need to to have better

boundaries or make changes in your life. Resentment, anger,

jealousy, boredom, insecurity, these are all clues

that maybe you wanna shift some things around. Instead of judging

yourself for feeling those ways, get curious. What am I so annoyed

about? And then believing that you have the power to change

that. You get to make whatever life that you want.

You get to make it within, of course, the boundaries of time and money

and space and children and the demands on life.

But in general, we all have access

to our own brain. We get to think how we want. We get to

change how we think. And when we do that, it changes how we feel.

And when we change how we feel, we change how we act. So there's a

lot of power and agency in your life, even within your

difficult circumstances. Okay. Mamas, I love you to

pieces and and so nice to be back chatting with you.

And I will talk to you next week. Have a great

week.