You’re on this site because you manage the household finances, but I’m guessing you also manage the kids, the weekly menu, the washing, the after school activities, your own employment, family visits, birthdays, father’s days and probably even your own mother’s day. You’re on a treadmill of life and prioritising everyone’s needs so they can live a happy, comfortable and fulfilled life.
At the same time, you feel like every other mum in the world has it all together, so you suffer in silence.
The longer you are in this daily grind, you start to dampen your true feelings and hide your true character. You suddenly find you are living your life reacting to external factors and demands placed before you and then one day you look at your life and think “how on earth did I end up here?”.
You suddenly realise you have no idea who you are, what you want to do or who you want to be. You realise that somewhere along the way you lost your joy and the life you are living isn’t the one you had planned.
Sound familiar? Sound hopeless?
It doesn’t have to be.
The solution is simple… all you need to do is bring in some self-awareness.
All you need to do is give yourself permission to ask yourself some questions and really listen to the answers, then start making choices based on those answers. Choices are made based on what lights you up. Choices are made based on what feels right. Choices that bring a smile to your face.
Here are some questions that you might like to ask:
- What areas of your life are working and feel good?
- What areas of your life aren’t working and feel hard or aren’t enjoyable?
- What are some patterns that you are repeating that you are not really happy with?
- What are the situations where you don’t feel comfortable?
- What are people doing or saying or being around you that doesn’t make you comfortable?
- Who are you?
- How do you feel?
- What parts of your life light you up?
- What parts of your life don’t light you up?
- What activities bring you joy, relaxation and happiness?
Just allow this process to take place. It can take an hour or it can take 10 days. It’s really just up to you and it’s your own personal journey, so allow it to flow.
These questions are the beginning of conducting a stocktake of your life and they will help you to realise where it is that you currently are, what you love about your life and what you’d like to change. It can be simple little things like “I hate that I bite my nails” or “I hate that I can’t exercise when I want to”, or “I don’t have the motivation to exercise” or it could be something deeper like “this pattern of rejection keeps repeating itself”.
To really benefit from this process, grab a journal. Write one of the questions at the top of a page and then just let your mind wander and write down whatever comes to you, no matter how silly it sounds.
Just keep writing, write whatever thoughts and ideas pop into your head until there is nothing left to say. Then re-read over what you have written and you’ll find many hidden gems of advice that you can follow to start changing areas of your life that aren’t serving you. This is just one of the beautiful, simple processes of increasing your self-awareness that is available to you.
The power of self-awareness is immense. Self-awareness gives you a chance to discover who you are, what you want, how you feel, how you behave and how you live your life. A chance to discover your thought patterns and your reactions to life’s moments. This awareness will give you more options, a chance to have a voice, to choose who you want to be, no matter where you’ve come from. Best of all, these personal choices will come from within, and your life will get easier because you will learn what brings you joy and start making decisions as such.
There’s no right or wrong. There’s no bad or good. It may be that it’s just time for you to go on a Change Journey.
Nikki Lane is the author of The Change Journey: A self-awareness guide for women who are thinking, “how on earth did I end up here?”. Her website www.thechangejourney.com.au offers resources and coaching for anyone looking to embark on their own Change Journey.
