Becoming A Happier Wife And Mom

Hi there. Welcome to the Design Your Dream Life podcast. My name is Natalie Bacon and I’m an Advanced Certified Mindfulness Life coach as well as a wife and mom, if you’re here to do the inner work and grow, I can help. Let’s get started.

What’s happening my friend? Welcome to the podcast. I am so happy to be here with you today talking about becoming a happier wife and mom. I think that this is something we all aspire to and we want to be in our roles as wife and mom and any other roles that we have. So how do you do it? What does it even mean and how do we measure whether what we’re doing is even working. Before we dive into all of that? Goodness, I would love it if you haven’t yet, could you leave me a review? This would mean so much to me.

I read all of the reviews that you leave and not only is it just nice to read them and connect with you in that way and kind of hear what’s resonating with you, it’s also incredibly helpful for the podcast algorithm to get this work out to more women and moms who can really benefit from it. So iTunes will see that you left a review. It will say, oh, let’s show this podcast to other similar people who might also like it. The more reviews, the better the podcast does. So I really, uh, appreciate it and thank you so much in advance. Now let’s dive back into the topic, becoming a happier wife and mom, are you happy? How do you answer that question when someone asks you? Are you happy? When you ask yourself, am I happy when you think I’m just not happy or I am happy?

What are you referring to? I think it’s hard to answer this question without knowing what happiness is, what we’re even talking about. I love to define things, but happiness is such a broad category that I don’t wanna get too bogged down in the philosophy of it. Although I am someone who would love to talk all day long just about the philosophy of it. And yet I try to balance the philosophical thinking with the practical application. So for purposes of today and for coming up with what I want to be a really helpful way to approach this topic that you haven’t heard of before and that maybe will provide some nuances in a way that is really useful. I am defining happiness in my own way. I am defining happiness as satisfaction or contentment about your life. And more specifically about any area. So if someone says, are you happily married?

That would be you answering the question, am I satisfied or content with my marriage? Not necessarily am I feeling happy in this exact moment, but am I satisfied and content with the overall relationship that I have with my spouse? Or it might be with your kids. And this season of motherhood, am I generally feeling like I’m happy as a mom in this season said differently, am I generally satisfied or content with how motherhood is going? Right now, I like defining happiness as this sort of broader definition because I wanna separate it out specifically from joy, which I define as something more specific and in the moment as a feeling, maybe like a moment of bliss, you’re feeling a higher emotion state in your body.

For example, when I have moments with RJ during the day and he is just laughing, I feel so much joy in my body in that moment.

And yes, I would also say that that is a moment of pure happiness. So sometimes these words are used interchangeably, but I do think that in general when someone asks us the question or we asks ourselves the question, am I happy, we’re sort of thinking about it not in that specific moment like, yes, I just laughed with my son and I had a happy moment. We’re answering it from the perspective of looking at our life and our circumstances and maybe a specific area like marriage or motherhood or your work or whatever else your health and, and then interpreting that from our brain, from our thoughts as either being satisfied or content or not. So that’s kind of the starting point and I think that can be really helpful because when someone says, are you happy, right? When you think about it from the perspective of I’m answering the question, am I satisfied or content about my life’s circumstances?

That’s a little bit more specific than did I just feel a moment of joy with my child or with my spouse? But they do go hand in hand. And of course if you’re experiencing more joy, more of those moments of bliss throughout the day, it’s more likely that you will interpret your life as satisfying. But that’s not always the case. You know, you might have had a job where you had moments of laughter and joy throughout the day and yet you felt pretty unfulfilled or unhappy in that specific job. So hopefully you get the distinction there and I think that that can be just really helpful in your own self-reflection and in your own awareness of sort of, um, doing this work and answering that question all with the purpose of becoming happier, if that’s what you want, you wanna bring in a little bit more happiness to your life, specifically in the roles as wife and as mom.

So another way that I wanna add on here to check in with yourself to see kind of where you’re at. So that’s kind of all of the coaching that I do. We have this starting point before we can know where we’re going, who we’re becoming. We need to become aware of the starting point, and I love this way of doing it. How do you talk about your life in a one to two minute explanation? When someone asks, how do you talk about your spouse or your marriage? When someone asks, how’s it going? How’s your marriage going? What about your home? How do you talk about your home When someone asks, what about your kids? Or this season of motherhood, what is your one to two minute answer? When someone asks you how things are going, are you happy? I think just becoming aware of your thoughts about your life will show you how you are thinking and just giving you that awareness of where you’re at can help you become more happier just from the awareness of it.

We often think that we have to go about changing, and of course change is a part of it, but we forget that just becoming aware that our thoughts create how we feel and that how we respond when someone asks us how we’re doing is optional. So I think on default what we do is when someone asks us how we’re doing or how is our marriage going or how are our kids doing? Or how are we doing as a mom, we look outside of us for the answer. We look at the facts, we look at kind of what has happened in the past and then we make an interpretation. But what I want you to see is that that interpretation is always optional. You don’t actually have to look to the past or look to the facts to come up with how you respond. I do wanna mention though that this doesn’t mean you go into toxic positivity and say that everything’s amazing when you don’t think that everything’s amazing. But there is a very big difference between everything’s amazing and yeah, everything’s good. And then going on like a 10 minute complaining rampage, you know, it’s like everything is good except for, and then we, you know, go down the complaining rabbit hole. I think there’s a lot of space in between those two extremes. And so bringing awareness to how you talk about your life can give you the opportunity to choose a little bit more intentionally. Because even if you’re navigating a challenge with your spouse, you have so much leverage in how you are feeling about your marriage and whether you are content or satisfied or happy based on the story that you tell in your mind. And none of the facts have to change. Again, this doesn’t mean you go to, it’s amazing, he’s amazing. We’re amazing. If that’s not genuinely how you feel, if it is how you feel, then yes, by all means, practice that.

But if it’s not how you feel, you know, you don’t have to go down that complaining rabbit hole either. You might decide to just focus on what you want to be, how you answer that question, did you know you can decide ahead of time how you want to answer that question. It’s one of my favorite tips and tools to utilize in my own life as well. Like, if I know that I’m going to meet with someone, um, or just get together with a friend, or it might be a colleague or anything like that, like how do I want to show up? How do I want to answer questions? What do I want to focus on and how do I want to kind of, um, respond when those types of questions are asked in a, in an authentic way? I never want you to answer inauthentically, but because the answer is always thoughts like we’re not giving a fact sheet, right?

Um, there’s so much room to answer in a really empowering way. So my default is to answer in self-pity and sort of poor me. This is happening to me after I say, you know, everything’s, everything’s good, but you know, if this was better, da da da da, right? That’s, that’s how my brain works. So noticing that and and seeing you know, that even though that’s my habit, that that’s not necessarily how I want to answer that question, then I can answer it more purposefully and say everything is amazing. If it is, if that’s my truth. I don’t have to kind of also include something that bothered me or something small that was sort of an annoyance. Cuz on default my brain thinks that that’s important and relevant. So just become aware without trying to change it at first, just become aware of how do you answer questions like how are you doing?

Are you happy? How’s your marriage going? How’s being a mom going? How are your kids doing? How do you answer that question? Like if you’re giving the one to two minute answer and is that how you want to be answering it? So be careful when you do this step to resist any temptation to go into judgment and wanna hurry to change your answer. Instead, I just like to think of myself as being an investigator and putting on my curiosity glasses so that I am noticing and learning more about myself. Because that’s really when you’re able to change the most is when you understand what’s truly happening. And this is really the work that we do in much more detail and in in depth inside Grow You. I show you how to take a look at your thoughts curiously, so that you can change them and become the woman, wife, and mom that you want to be.

It’s truly, truly life-changing. So if you’re not in there, what are you doing? Get in there. Nataliebacon.com/coaching. I really think that so much of life is logistics and responsibilities between kids and home and grocery shopping and cooking and cleaning and appointments, activities and work and family. Even vacations can be lumped in here. Of course there’s supposed to be a time to get away and feel really good, but we all know the reality that planning and preparing and even going can feel much more like a trip than an escape, like a real vacation. And then there is also the physical maintenance, like getting your hair done or going to the dentist. There are so many things that we kind of upkeep in our lives that we are responsible for and that we want to continue to do. Like I want to continue to do my hair and I want to continue to cook and uh, manage my home and contribute to my family in these ways.

And yet we are not just brains, we are bodies too. What I mean by this is that all of these logistics and responsibilities keep us in our heads and there is a time and a place for that of course. But what I see most commonly for myself, I can speak to that as well as for my clients, is that we often leave out the part where we prioritize feeling good in our body and that really matters for long-term happiness. So yes, of course we are going to continue to work and be caretakers and have marriages and friendships and yes to all of the logistics and responsibilities, but also yes to our own happiness and joy too. And a huge part of that I think comes from tapping in feeling good in our bodies. So if you’re experiencing a lot of joy and having those moments of bliss throughout the day to check in with yourself and to appreciate yourself, it’s more likely that you will think about your life as happy and you will be happier.

Now again, in the example of having those moments in a job and not liking the job overall or not thinking that it’s sort of your passion or calling that is possible. And yet I don’t see a downside to doing this. I only see a downside to neglecting our bodies and neglecting our own joy. It almost seems like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll get to that when I have time. At least that’s what my brain tells me, is your brain like that? What would it be like for you to spend 15 minutes a week as sort of like this scheduled appointment just on yourself to experience fun, play and joy? Now of course you likely spend more time than 15 minutes a week on yourself right now. In fact, probably more than 15 minutes a day. This includes the daily tasks that we all do to take care of ourselves, showering, getting dressed, eating, all of those things.

And you might even do other activities like going to a workout class or a yoga class or, or you might not, depending on the season of life you’re in, you have greater or fewer activities that you do in any given day or a week. But it’s not so much as it is the activity, as it is the feeling behind it. I’m talking about 15 minutes a week where you just indulge in your own happiness and joy. Like I’m a huge fan of self-care and I think that contributes to my present and future happiness. But when I think about play and fun and lightness and joy, oh my goodness my friend, I have so much more work to do in that area. I am getting better at it as a mom. I just love to like indulge in laughter with my son. It is like the most fun thing and I just remind myself, ugh, it doesn’t get better than this and I have those moments, but outside of that, I really could benefit just from scheduling in 15 minutes a week for pure fun and play and joy and from my own experience coaching so many of you, I know that for some of you you’re thinking, I don’t even know what that would be like. Even just going on a simple walk my mind is somewhere else.

And that’s why I think setting the intention and making it like a really small amount could be five minutes a day, it could be 15 minutes a week, whatever you want. The number isn’t important. It’s just important that you have this time sort of prescheduled for fun play and joy and indulging in those feelings so that you give yourself permission to feel really good. Doesn’t it sort of seem like irresponsible almost, not consciously when we say, do I wanna experience more joy? Of course the answer’s always yes, but in the moment it’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll get to that. I have a to-do list, I have things to work on, you know, and and the problem with that is that we don’t clock out of that to-do list.

We don’t clock out of of the logistics and the responsibilities of our lives and we don’t really want to. So I think part of the solution can be to notice this pattern and add in scheduled time for you to indulge in your own happiness and joy and what would that be like for you and what would you even do, right? It’s really not about the doing, it’s more about the feeling. So it could just be as simple as a walk. This doesn’t have to be like an art class or something where you have to figure out another thing. It could be so simple. The point is in how you feel. So I do have a list of nine things that I think incorporate real joy, real pleasure. For some of these you may really gravitate towards them for others maybe not. So that’s why I wanted to include a long list.

The key to giving you this list is not that you have another list to follow, but instead as a little brainstorm for you to think about how can I experience just more joy? What would I need to give myself permission to think? And how would I sort of let go of those responsibilities and logistics of my marriage and of my home and of my family and kids and all of the things that we care so much about? How can I let go of those for a specific amount of time every week and just reconnect with myself? This is not fluffy and unimportant. This is so important. It is not good or healthy for your brain to be in that activated state where you are constantly feeling stress or overwhelm or kind of that go, go, go energy. There is definitely a time and a place for all of that, but you just wanna notice are you giving your body real moments of rest?

And now again, if you have really little ones at home, these genuinely are moments. It’s three minutes here and there, but that’s still important. It’s still important because it connects you with you. It’s an opportunity for you to say, I matter, my happiness matters. How often do we just not give ourselves permission to think that? Like just say that to yourself. My happiness matters. It is important. This is important to me. Okay, so here is my list. Number one, laughter. Oh my goodness, laughter is so much fun. What makes you laugh easily on default. I love laughing with my son. Like when he laughs I just laugh so hard and just like lights me up inside. Standup comedy is another one for me. I absolutely love standup comedy. I find it so funny. But for you, what is it that really helps you to laugh and get into that higher vibration state where it’s easy for you to feel good?

Number two, nature, fresh air, flowers, just looking around your neighborhood. I love my neighborhood so much, I love the aesthetics of it. And even if you don’t love yours, you can find things in nature that you do love most of the time. Again, even in car rides, we’re thinking about where we’re going, what’s on the to-do list next. And again, these aren’t bad things to be doing and using our brain for, that’s why it’s so important to carve out this time where you’re not doing that. That’s why for me personally, I just love a small amount like 15 minutes a week because it’s like this is my time to turn off my brain. That’s so active and I love that about my brain. But let me just turn it off and let me literally just smell the flowers. Let me just indulge in the fresh air on my face.

Let me just look at the neighbor’s bushes and their landscaping that I rarely ever notice not in detail anyways and let me enjoy myself. There’s something about this that is just so refreshing because it connects us with ourselves when we really do this on purpose. Now notice that I could suggest go take a walk, get some fresh air. You could do that. Be thinking about a problem with your spouse and have a completely different experience than if you decided this was a specific time for you to let go of all of that and just feel good and feel joy. So it’s the same action, but a completely different experience because of where your attention is, because of what you’re thinking and feeling while on the walk. So while these are hopefully helpful ways for you to bring in more joy and happiness into your life, also know that it’s important for you to remember that the purpose of them is to really feel good while you’re doing these actions.

Number three, physical touch. A hug. Placing your hand on the heart. Physical touch is soothing. So it’s a great way either when you touch yourself, you put your hand on your heart, you give yourself a hug, you hug someone else, sexual intercourse, anything that’s physical touch can really help you feel those good feelings based on all of the chemicals that are being released in your brain and into your body. So allowing yourself to enjoy that physical touch is a great way to have more happiness and joy.

Number four, food. Now food is a tricky one because we can use food to escape pain. We can come home from a stressful day and get a cookie and that is sort of the false pleasure that I don’t think is as useful here as what I’m referring to, which is eating a bowl of fruit and just noticing the sensations that you experience in your mouth and like the goodness of the fruit. Or maybe it’s something else for you. Like I love tomatoes. I am a tomato connoisseur my friends, I have favorite types of tomatoes. I love the way that cherry tomatoes and the sweeter tomatoes taste. I just eat them on their own. It is a cardinal sin to refrigerate tomatoes in my household. So tomatoes always are on the counter. They lose their flavor if you refrigerate them. I could go on and on, but how often are we just in a rush and not paying attention to the natural pleasure that comes from food? Now if you are in the habit of extreme emotional eating or getting lots and lots of dopamine from your food, then you know biting into an apple isn’t going to be as pleasurable cuz you’re used to biting into cake every day. So just keep this in mind that food can be one that you can use for true joy in the moment.

If you are being really mindful of how it feels and if you notice how cake actually feels in your body, like yes, you get that brain hit right away, but then you sort of get that sugar hangover. So you won’t get that with natural foods that feel really good to your body. So just start paying attention to eating and how foods feel when you eat them. Now again, make this really easy and doable for yourself. Don’t try to do this every meal. If mornings and evenings are the most challenging with your kiddos, then it might be that you do this once a week when you are eating lunch, whatever it is. The point is not to make it an overwhelming thing for you, but instead make it a way for you to really approach your life with more moments of joy that are available to you right in front of you that you haven’t yet thought of.

Number five stories. We love a good story. Do you know why those before and after photos on Instagram do so well or why we love to watch a good documentary or hear about a true story. It’s because our brain loves to know and learn about stories. So keep this in mind. I personally love to watch documentaries and learn about people’s lives and I just find human behavior so fascinating and the transformation that people experience. It’s inspiring. We get inspired when we hear the story of Oprah or anyone else who inspires you. And it’s because of that story. So knowing that you can look out for more ways for you to read and learn about stories, which leads perfectly into number six, which is learning. Learning is a way for you to feel really good and pleasurable. Now, I say this, but just be careful with respect to how you’re feeling when you’re learning.

So I love to learn. I get those high feeling states from learning. This is very different than if I felt like I had to learn or I was in a class.

Maybe you can relate to this in college and you’re sort of like, Ugh, I need to do this and I don’t really want to. Or if you’re learning something at work or at a conference and you don’t really wanna be there. And so you’re sort of like scooting through the motions there. That is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about learning about things that genuinely interests you and there is no discriminating here. If you want to learn about bugs because that interests you, go for it. Or gardening. I’m fascinated by gardening. My dad always had a garden in our backyard and I just think it’s so cool. I don’t garden at all, but maybe one day I’ll learn more about it.

Like that would be fun to me. Right now I spend it so much of my time learning, um, and, and sort of being self-taught with respect to the tools that I want to bring you here. And so I feel so much joy and contentment with that process and just learning personal development and it feels very much like, um, something I enjoy in my free time. And, and that is saying a lot. So it comes very naturally to me. I always have audiobooks and podcasts kind of queued up. Now I do think there’s a balance to this. I wanna make sure that I, that I allow myself space to turn all of that off and make sure that I’m also grounded and maybe listening to music or doing something else, um, that isn’t learning because I think that sometimes I love learning so much that it will keep me in my head too much and I wanna remember to stay in my body as well.

Number seven is reading just for fun. Now, I never do this, but it’s on this list because I think that it does bring most people a lot of joy. I don’t mean like reading personal development just for fun. I mean reading fiction books. I am just not a fiction book girl. I think that I appreciate it and I, I get it, but I just always think, well, I could read this non-fiction book and that sounds better. So that’s what I do. But I think that for a lot of people, reading just for fun and pleasure is a way to have these moments, um, to yourself where you feel really good and like you’re taking care of yourself. Cuz that feels really good to you.

Number eight, dancing. Oh my goodness, my friend. This is one that I love to do. Dancing, moving your body in a way that feels really pleasurable. Dancing is like this release of emotions and it’s also just a way for you to get totally into your body. I am a huge fan of dancing. I used to dance so much more than I do now. Um, so maybe I’ll, I’ll bring some more back into my life because for me, dancing is a way of, of, um, connecting with myself and truly of self-care.

And finally, the ninth one is music. Music I put and or art. So if you are into art, that can be a way for you to feel really good and appreciate, um, art and the, and the moment and connect with yourself as well. Same thing for music. Both art and music are very spiritual, so they can be very connecting and rejuvenating insofar as you choose music and art that kind of lights you up in that way. So as you are thinking about becoming a happier wife and mom, from awareness to how you think about your life and the different kind of areas of your life to giving yourself permission to bring in more happiness and indulge in more happiness, I want you to know that the responsibilities and the logistics of your life are part of it in a way that you probably want to be a part of it.

Just like I want to have those responsibilities in my life. And yet when we don’t also make space for joy and for happiness and for making sure that we are satisfied with our lives, our lives just end up passing us spy. And before you know it, we have seasons and years and decades of overwhelm, stress, and worry and anxiety where we can’t remember the last time that we actually just indulged in feeling really good for ourselves. So give yourself permission to feel happy, to feel joy, to decide on purpose, how you want to answer the question, how are you doing and are you happy? And start making little choices that will have a great impact compounded over time on your long-term happiness. And you can start simply by doing some of the activities that I listed here. The only caveat is to make sure that you get the benefit of them, which is to say that you wanna make sure that you are feeling joyful and feeling really lit up.

It’s not something that you want to be checking off your to-do list, but instead making it kind of this sacred space for you to take care of yourself and really prioritize your own happiness because that is important. It is so important for you to prioritize your own happiness. And the added benefit, of course, is that there’s this ripple effect into your personal relationships onto your kids and your spouse. But really the point is for you to allow yourself to feel joy, to be happy because you just want to, that’s all it takes my friend, is giving yourself permission and then little by little making changes in your life that allow you to become happier. Alright, my friend, I will talk with you next week. Take care.

If you loved this podcast, I invite you to check out Grow You my mindfulness community for moms where we do the inner work together. Head on over to momonpurpose.com/coaching to learn more.