Losing Yourself in Motherhood
Becoming a mom is one of the most amazing experiences in life, but it is also one of the most challenging. It’s one of those things where intellectually you understand how difficult it will be, but you don’t truly get it until you’re wiping poop off the wall at 3 a.m. while holding a baby that hasn’t stopped screaming in three hours.
Those beginning phases are all about survival. Our own needs and desires are completely tossed out the window because we’re just trying to get through the day. Slowly our kids start to get a little older, but we can’t quite figure out how to start prioritizing ourselves again. Then we get to a point where we barely even remember who we are as an individual anymore.
Why Dreams and Desires Matter
For some of us, this goes on for years. We feel restless, unsatisfied and are yearning for more, but after years of putting ourselves last, we no longer know what more is or how to get it. As a life coach, one of the first things I work with moms on is getting back in touch with their own dreams and desires.
When we follow our heart-centered desires, both big and small, it will always lead us to a life filled with more purpose and passion. Making decisions from a place of self-love is the secret to feeling more alive. Everything from the clothes you choose to wear or how you spend your free time, to bigger decisions, like where you will live or what job you choose, impact if you feel in alignment with yourself and the life you are living.
The Unmanaged Mind
The problem is, when we lose touch with our true desires, we replace them with false pleasures. When we don’t manage our minds and get in touch with our true selves, we reach for the chocolate and wine, or binge on our favorite shows to fill the void. It brings us pleasure in the moment, but our true passions and desires get pushed further and further away.
I like to think of the unmanaged mind as a computer with all our thought files randomly placed on the desktop. There is so much going on, it’s hard to tell anymore what we truly want in life. All our heart-centered desires and dreams are buried under thousands of thought files full of expectations, limiting beliefs and trying to please others.
Life coaching is like sifting through those computer files one by one and organizing them into folders of what we want to keep and what is no longer serving us. When the clutter starts to clear, we can uncover desires we didn’t even remember were there. From this place of clarity, we can make decisions from the heart, rather than because we think it’s what we’re supposed to do or because we think it will make other people like or respect us. As we learn to honor our own preferences and desires, we begin to focus on liking ourselves instead of looking for external validation. This is where the magic happens.
The Comfort Zone
A word of warning: once we start to uncover our true desires, objections start to come up. It’s just the way our brains are wired. When we even think about trying something new, our brains assess for danger to keep us safe. For most of us, this is where we give up.
When I first started managing my mind, I uncovered the desire to switch from corporate wellness to life coaching. Of course, my brain offered me all the reasons why this was a terrible idea: I would leave behind a steady paycheck, starting your own business is hard, and the biggest – where was I going to find the $18K to pay for certification? Normally, I would have immediately dismissed the idea and put this desire file back on the desktop to be buried under piles of doubt and fear.
Luckily, I was already working with a life coach who helped me address each fear and obstacle one by one. The reason most of us don’t do this is because it seems too hard to confront our doubts and fears. It’s so much easier to stay cozy and safe in your comfort zone. But ask yourself this: do you want to be comfortable, or do you want to feel fully alive?
Our true desires, no matter how deeply buried in our brains, have a sneaky way of nagging at us. This sense of yearning and restless is our heart’s way of begging us to live into our desires and dreams. Honoring our heart-centered desires is how we align with our true selves. It’s how we find our purpose.
The next time you uncover a dream or desire that seems crazy or unrealistic, I want you to open yourself to the possibility that it could happen. The regret of ignoring your desires and not going after your dreams will always be greater than the regret of it not working out. When we make decisions from a place of self-love, it will never be the wrong decision.
