Ep #17: Align Your Life for What Matters

I'm, Mikki Gardner, and this is the Co-Parenting with Confidence podcast, episode number 17, aligning your life for what matters.

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Welcome to Co-parenting with Confidence, a podcast for those courageous moms out there, who wanna move past the conflict and frustration of divorce, and show up as the mom they truly wanna be. My name's Mikki Gardner, I'm a certified life and conscious parenting coach, with my own personal dose of co-parenting experience. Throughout my co-parenting journey, I have learned to become confident in who I am as a woman and a mother, and I'm here to help you do the same. If you're ready to learn what it takes to become a great co-parent and an amazing example to your children, well get ready, and let's dive into today's episode.

Welcome friend. This week is slightly different, recently, I hosted a free workshop, it was called Align Your Life. And it was all about learning to make decisions, the decisions that guide you to the life you want to live, not the one you thought you have to live. It's about shutting those expectations and prioritizing the things that matter to you. About tapping into the power of your inner guidance system, just so that you can design the balanced, abundant life that you're truly after. So today, I wanted to share a part of that workshop with you, so let's dive in and take a listen.

And so I'm gonna tell you a little story that maybe some of you might be able to relate to, but, in my previous life as I call it, I was a wedding planner, I was married, I had one son. I was as type A perfectionist as they come, checking all the boxes, doing all of the things, running all over the place, all of the time. Finding a lot of my worth from my clients, I felt like a doormat half the time, just always trying to be in service, not of service, but in service to people. And I was doing that so much that I really lost... I didn't know that I had lost connection to myself, but I was just disconnected all the time, it's like I could never keep up, I could never do enough, and things we're always falling through the cracks.

Well, for me, my life got pulled out from underneath me in an instance, and the marriage and the family that I thought I had were instantly gone. And it was a really difficult time. But through that pain and that healing, the one thing that I learned is how disconnected I felt from myself. If you had asked me what I wanted for my life, I could not even tell you, except all the boxes that I have been checking, all of the, get married, have the kid, get the job, get the bigger contracts, have the flashier... I was doing weddings, so we did some flashy weddings. It was like, all of the more, more, more, but none of that was filling me up. And then when everything came to a crashing halt, I was really left in this place where I had to figure out what was going on and what I figured out is that I was out of alignment. And so that's really what has brought me to this work, but lately really wanting to figure out what does alignment look like? We hear a lot about balance and living a balanced life, that to me feels like a teeter totter that we're constantly sort of working on. To me, alignment is really a life that is built on, where all of the parts are working together.

Where we decide what matters and what doesn't, and we really focus on what matters, and we learn to do that from a place of authenticity and strength. That's what I wanna talk about today. So whenever I have a question, I always start with the Googles. And so I asked the Googles, "What is alignment?" And it's actually a noun. And it says, and I put this in your workbook, but, "An arrangement in a straight line or a correct, appropriate position." And so that to me started to feel like, "Well, that doesn't feel aligned. 'Cause that feels very structured," like we have to do something. It also says that alignment is a position of agreement or alliance. And with this one, I was like, "Okay, we're getting a little closer." But for me, the way that I want us to think about alignment today is really a state of being, where we are whole and undivided, where we are working, all of our parts are working together. That doesn't mean all the parts are working an equal amount, but it's all working together towards our highest self. And so that's what we are gonna talk a lot about today.

It starts with deciding, deciding what alignment looks like. It's not about being more productive, it's not about doing all the things, it's really about deciding what matters to you, and then starting to take efforts to get there. So why do we feel out of alignment? That's one of the first things that we have to think about, is why do we feel out of alignment? Well, there's a few things. First, expectations. And the story that I just told you that maybe some of you could relate to, is all of the expectations that other people put on us. Society, maybe our family, maybe our spouse, or our ex-spouse, maybe ourselves. But we're trying to do too much, and we're trying to do everything, or live up to this perfectionist tendency. And that creates dis-alignment.

The second thing that helps us stay out of alignment or keeps us out of alignment is focusing on all the wrong things. And what do I mean by this? These are all the shoulds, these are the things you should be doing. To me, the story I just told, it was like I had checked all the boxes of all the things that I should be doing. And I don't know if any of you can relate to this, but then all of those shoulds eat up all of your time. And there becomes a tension between what you're actually doing versus what you wanna be doing. When we're out of alignment, we might want to say something, and to make a change in our life, but we're just not doing it, and that tension is when we're out of alignment.

The third thing is when we're not focusing on what matters. This really pushes us out of alignment. This is about when we let other people dictate how we spend our time and what we don't. And this might not be people intentionally trying to take away our time. But it's when our... The school really needs you to bake the cookies for the bake sale. But maybe you're not a baker, or maybe you just don't have the time. But when we say yes and we let other people pile on to our calendars and our list of responsibilities kind of without even asking ourselves, "Does this matter for me?" And then it also looks like, when we're not focusing on what matters, we'll often spend time, energy and money on things that don't really add value to our life. And over time this end up with a pile of stuff, but not really stuff that matters to us.

And so you can see that these are the three things that really kinda keep us out of alignment. And we all fall into this for a number of reasons, and I'm just gonna list three reasons that maybe you can relate to. Number one, I certainly relate to is the need to be loved. And I heard recently someone say, there's a difference between doing something to be loving and doing it to be loved. And that one hit me square in the chest, because if I'm being honest, a lot of my helping can be done out of wanting to be loved, wanting to be recognized. But it creates a lot of resentment. And so we have to be really careful of that trap, of are we doing something to be loving or are we doing it to be loved? And that really goes to the intention behind what we're doing, and that's a lot of what we're gonna talk about here in alignment.

The second thing is the need to impress others. We live in a social media world, where 50 years ago, you might compare yourself to the mom down the street, now you compare yourself to 50 million moms around the world at any given moment on an any given day. And this can keep us on a hamster wheel of really feeling out of alignment, because we're so busy trying to impress someone, we lose track of what really is important to us. And the third one is needing to prove ourselves, that need to prove. This falls into all the over-doing, all the overworking, all the over committing. I know, I certainly fall into this one. But what this does is keep us in almost like a black hole of insecurity that never can get filled up with all the doing, where we can do and do and do, but it still doesn't fill that hole that's inside of us.

And I know for me, and many of my clients that I talk to, there's a lot of times where we feel, especially being divorced or single moms, we feel sort of different, separate, not like the moms that have the normal-looking life. And when we do that sometimes we tend to overdo, we'll over commit, we over-give to our children. We do these things, not wanting to feel like we don't belong, or wanting to prove that we're okay, and you can see where this puts us straight out of alignment. Because we're trying so hard to control what other people think about us. And so these are just three of the traps that we all fall into that keeps us out of alignment, so after all those things that keep us out, how the heck do we get in alignment? And what does that look like?

Well, there's really a couple of things here. First, we have to decide and accept and believe in who we truly are, I'm gonna get to that one in a little bit. But we all have to decide what's important to you. What do you value? What do you really want out of this life? And so often we don't take the time to ask ourselves that, and even when we do, we're like, "I don't know, a vacation?" It's like, you don't even... We're so not used to wanting, and so we have to really take a little bit of time to decide what's important to me, what matters to me, why. And why do we wanna do this? Because when we know what matters and we commit to doing what matters most, you know how we feel? Aligned. We feel filled up, we feel energized, we feel ready to go. When we stop doing all the things that pull us out of alignment and start doing more of the things that keep us in alignment, this is where we have more power, more grace and more opportunity to change.

And so I wanna start here with what matters, and I have the little work book for you, which hopefully you guys are... You maybe printed out. But the first one we're gonna do, we're gonna go through this exercise, and I'm gonna, sort of guide us through this and I'll offer some of the answers that I came up with, and you can do it now, or you can circle back later. But one of the things that is most important is that when we're looking at all of this, so often it's like, "What do I do next? What's the next action to do?" And sometimes that's not the question that we wanna start with. When we wanna live a life of alignment, we really wanna start by asking ourselves, "Who do I wanna be?" And that is a different perspective, and just asking that question. This isn't necessarily the things that matter most, like family or friends, or work, or faith, or any of those things. But it's really what are the characteristics that you want to show the world that you value most, that are most impactful for you.

And so I don't know if, as I'm talking, have you thought of a couple that come to mind. I'll just go through, for me, one of the things that's really important in my life that I value most is making an impact, that's why I'm doing this workshop. It's why I work with clients. It's why I do many of the things that I do, is because for me, that is what drives me, it's what fills me up. It is one of the things that I really value most. And hard work comes along side of that, and I can work hard when I'm making an impact. When I'm working hard just to work hard, and I'm just checking boxes and doing things, I'm out of alignment. But for me, when I'm making an impact in working hard, that is a value that matters to me, and so that made this list of who do I wanna be. I wanna be a hard worker who's making an impact.

Another one that I know is on so many women that I talk to, on their list is, generous, abundant. I very much love the feeling of being generous, it makes me feel good to give to others, to give my time, to give my attention, to give money, to give whatever it is that I have to give. And so generosity for me, makes this list. Another one for me that make the list, is integrity. That's a big one. How do I show up? How am I living a life? It is it honest? Is it forthright? And so for me, that's all underneath integrity. A lot of people... Peace, peacefulness might be one. Contentment is a big one. Oftentimes, we overlook contentment as this idea that isn't very sexy and isn't very fun. But contentment is really a place of peace, of being balanced and content and comfortable. That matters to a lot of people. To be loving, to be mindful, to be present. Whatever it is for you that makes you feel most aligned, most in your body, most in your spirit, these are the two to five things that we're gonna write down in this who do you wanna be section.

And so the next thing that we're gonna talk about is then defining... I wrote a couple of questions there to help you define what matters most to you. And you might need to spend a little time on these questions and really go through them, but the first one is what do you need in order to be the person that you wanna be? I just asked a client this, just this morning. And one of the things that I think comes up so often, and I know for me is space, time, and how often do we actually, in our busy days give ourselves the time and the space. This client I was on with today, she said, "Well, who do I ask for that?" We're so used to asking permission, "Hey, can I have some time and space?" Especially as moms that are obligated, everybody is wanting us to do all the things. I'm getting ready for a trip, I have the biggest list of things because I'm leaving everyone and it's like the world is ending. But I've also decided to give myself time and space, and so I have to prepare for that, if that matters most to me, maybe I don't mind getting everything ready quite as much. Maybe I don't have quite as much resentment around it because I'm actually filling up my bucket in a way that I need to. And so that question about what do you need to be the person, I really want you to spend some time on this today, and decide what are some of the things that you need.

Another one for me is meditation, I have to have my meditation in the morning, that has now become a baseline that I set for the rest of my day. Clarity, again, the time and the space to learn and to grow and to heal, so that I can be clear. That helps me be that person that I wanna be. So for each of you, it's gonna be a different answer, but I'm curious what it is that you need to be that person. And what makes you feel most aligned? And when I say aligned, I mean that place of contentment, that place of peace and balance. But another one that I think when we're defining what really matters to us, when do we feel most alive? It's not the easiest question to answer, honestly, sometimes for us. But when is it that we feel most like ourselves? I had to sit with this one for a little while when I went through this. But for me, when I am making the impact, when I am working hard, when I am of service, I feel really alive during those moments. Also when I'm in nature, just out on a walk, I feel most alive in those moments. And so we wanna know these things because we're gonna use them later to start to piece together more alignment in our day-to-day.

So the last one on this page, the last section, is to define what matters most to you, and these are the things that allow you to be the person that you truly wanna be, to lead the life that you want. So these are gonna be the relationships, the activities, the commitments, that really light you up, that fill your soul up and that make you feel alive, make you feel aligned, bring you peace and contentment. So are you guys thinking of a couple as we're talking here? For me, again, sort of work is one that is top on my list. I love it dearly. My podcast is another one, those are very high. My son and my family, those are things that... When I'm spending time with them, I'm spending time being the person that I wanna be when I show up with them. Exercise, time outside, like I said, hugely important, meditation, travel, learning, each of us are gonna have our own things, but what is it? One that made my list that I was a little surprised by is, time to myself. And often we don't think that that's something that really gives us a lot of value, but it does, at least for me.

So I want you, over today, really spend a little bit of time, but to define what matters most to you, because we're gonna look at these things, these are the things that when we're doing more of them, we feel more aligned, we're living more into the person that we wanna be. We're showing up in a way that feels more true to us, and so you can always go back and adjust them. But it's important to at least start to get them down and on paper, so that you can start to see what is it that really matters to me. And now we're gonna start to talk about what we do next once we know what these things are. So once we know what matters, we have to start to protect what matters, and this is where earlier we talked about the traps that we fall out of alignment, we have to learn to protect what is most important to us. And this starts with a couple of things, but the first is how we view ourselves.

So there's really only two options here, there's a past view of ourself or a future view, and this is the way that we see ourselves, this is the thoughts that we think. This is the sort of when we think about ourselves, our response that shades and clouds everything or illuminates. But the first one is the past, when we have a view that is past-oriented, it's usually based a little bit in our fear, and it's based on past mistakes, past failures, past experiences. So when we use this version of ourself to make our decisions about what matters most and how we align ourselves, we're using the past to do that. So what are we gonna get more of? What we already have.

So the option to this, the second option is a future-based vision, and this is really based on desire, this is what we've been talking about for the last few minutes. Is really, when we are looking at what we desire, what we want, what matters to us, we are fueling possibility. We are creating dreams. We're not doing this from a clouded past version of ourself, but looking at it from a fresh perspective. And so when we can do this and we start to learn how to view ourselves in a new way based on what matters to us and who we want to become versus whatever happened previously, we start to protect what matters most because we want to become that possibility, we want to be in that alignment more than the past. So we start to choose differently, we start to commit differently.

And this is what I call our even when mindset. We are willing to commit and show up for ourselves even when things get hard, even when people disagree with us, even when people leave, even when people are upset, we still show up in the way that we want to. And by knowing what matters most to us and what we want to be connected with, it makes it easier to stay connected to who we wanna be. When we are protecting and focusing on what matters and letting go of the rest, we can show up differently and align differently. So I also left you a couple of questions under the even when section that I want you to take some time after this, because this is really about commitments that we're willing to make to ourself, permission slips that we're willing to write, and what we're willing to set down that which is not serving us. And so after this, maybe go back to this page and answer those journal questions.

But we're gonna keep moving forward with this what matters. So you have this list of two to five qualities that you want in your life of who you wanna be, and now you should have at least a starting list of what matters, those activities, all of those things that really matter to you, these are the things that we are going to prioritize more of. So why is this important? Because there's always forever going to be more demands on you of your time, more asks, more opportunities, more needs being asked of you than you could ever meet. And that's not saying that you're not able to do enough, not at all, it just means there's more always coming at us than we physically are able to do, or that we have the time to do.

Now, so we can either try to do all of it and fail because we will, because it's just too much, or we can decide what truly matters and focus solely on that. And you get to choose what that is, nobody else. And the amazing part about this is when we are living in a more aligned state, really clear about what matters versus what we're willing to let go of, we stop feeling like a victim, and we realize that the person in charge of us or the person in charge of you is you. You get to make every decision, and I know it so often feels like everyone else is making the decision for you, but it's simply not true. So when we know what matters, we have an easier time letting go of what doesn't. And when we define what matters most, and we get clear from what's distracting us and keeping us from what matters, we can start to protect things in a different way and we do that with confidence.

And I know confidence is something that I talk about a lot with my clients on my podcast on other things, but confidence comes from a couple of places, but this is gonna bring us back to the first thing that I said, which was being in alignment is really a choice. It's a decision that we make to believe in who we are. And I mean who we are, on a daily level, how we're showing up, which is aligning to what matters, but it's also a faith and a belief in who you are as a human, as a person that is on this planet. And to me, that's the belief in connection to higher self. And this is not a religious thing, it's just... One of my favorite quotes is, you are a master piece. You are a piece of the master. I just truly believe that we are all one energy source, if you zip up our meat suits, all we are is a big ball of energy and we would ooze into each other.

An atom, if you look at an atom, it's 99% energy, 1% matter. That is us, that's what we're made of, we are a giant balls of energy. And so having the understanding that, the outside of us, this meat suit that's running around, that's not me. I am the energy and the spirit within it. And so this is important when we're talking about alignment and about confidence, because understanding that we don't have to prove our worth or our enough-ness because we just are, because we are a piece of the source of the universe, this is where this faith starts to come into play. Because when we wanna be more confident, part of it is about faith, faith that we are enough in where we are, practicing it. How do we practice it? We show up making conscious decisions, we show up in an aligned way, choosing what matters most to us. And then we use courage, and what is courage? It's being completely terrified and doing it anyway.

And how many of us have to use courage every day? I know oftentimes we are so scared, but when we feel really truly aligned in who we are aligned in what matters to us, this is when we can use our courage muscle more and more, because we can do things that scare us, because we have our own back. And that's what confidence really comes from. So boundaries, but saying no. This is a hard one I know for so many of us moms, because our kids have figured out really effectively, if they just ask enough times, we will eventually say yes. But how many times this has happened in regular life too, we just can't say no to the person that called and ask for money, or we just can't say no to, "Oh, could you just grab this one more thing for me," right? It happens all over, and it's just so pervasive and we sort of have these boundaries that aren't really there. So we have to learn to say no and to mean it, because when we say no and we mean it, that no carries a ton of weight. And what that does is, it makes our, yes, that much more powerful. So when we can learn to say no, we can learn to say yes to the things that really matter.

And most importantly, it's not that you have a right to say no, you have a responsibility to say no, because whether it's your time, whether it's your money, whether it's your attention, whether it's giving some guy your number, whether it's you helping, you are not obligated to say yes just because somebody asked. And so I think so often as women, we have been groomed to say yes. We've been told that we should just go along, we should just do all these things, because that's what it is to be a good girl or to all of those things. But it's really about learning to decide, What do I wanna say yes to? And what do I wanna say no to? What matters to me and what doesn't, and am I willing to take a hard line and stand for what I do want, what's aligned for me, and start saying no to the things that aren't. Because an honest no, is always, always, always, always, always better than a dishonest yes. Because when you say yes, when you mean no, how resentful do you get? How angry, how bitter. And then we don't show up. And so how much better is it to learn to just say no, when we mean no, and avoid the pain and avoid showing up and being upset with ourselves for it after. A little bit of discomfort on the front end can lead to a lot of connection afterwards.

And so learning to say no is a huge one. But this is the whole point, is that your life is just that. It's your life. You get to decide what matters, you get to decide where you spend your energy, you get to decide if you're willing to speak up, you get to be your own advocate, you get to set your own boundaries and you get to decide what and who gets your attention, what and who gets your energy, what and who gets your money. Everything will seem urgent and important, but it's not true. You get to decide, and you get to decide what is a priority and where you spend your time and your energy and your money, period. End of story.

So I'm curious, after all of that, what is coming up for you guys? What are your thoughts about all of this? And if we want to have this more aligned life, we have to be willing to do the work, to ask the tough questions, to make the tough decisions, to be uncontrollable, and also to let go of what's weighing us down. And that's where freedom comes from, when we unlock the chains that have been holding us down, it allows us to move ourselves towards the life we want, towards the version of ourselves that we most want to be. And I think the one thing I wanna leave you with as we go through all of this, and it comes with boundaries and alignment, but how I love myself teaches others how to love me. And the same goes for you, how you love yourself, how you treat yourself, teaches others how to do that. And so when we are living a life that is aligned and full of what matters most to us, we make it really easy to love us. And we have more and more and more love in our lives.

So that was the show for today, and I hope you enjoyed the conversation, and that it offered you some ideas on how to live a more aligned life and maybe gave you some thoughts on things you might be ready to give yourself permission for, and maybe some of the things you might be willing to set down and let go of. If you wanna hear the whole workshop and get the workbook, just DM me @mikkigardner on Instagram, that's at M as in Mary, I-K-K-I-G-A-R-D-N-E-R over on Instagram and I will send you the link. And one last thing, if you're receiving value from this free podcast, I would be so grateful if you would rate and review the show, this helps me more than you know, it helps me deliver more of what you love. When you rate and review it helps more women find the show so that we can create more peace and more alignment in this world for us and for our kiddos. Thank you so much for spending time with me. I'll see you next week, and in the meantime, take really good care of you.

Thanks for listening to Co-Parenting with Confidence. If you want more information or resources from this podcast, visit coparentingwithconfidence.com. I'll see you next week.