033: How to Love Your Life Even More

This month is all about the love! Have you ever found yourself saying, “Ugh, life is so hard!”?
I know I’ve said it a time or two myself but it’s time we ditch those phrases and remind ourselves of how much we genuinely love the lives we get to live.
In this episode, I am giving all of my tips on how you can begin to love your life even more. You’ll hear why this is so important along with practical ways to get started!
What you’ll find in this episode:
A segment on our creative community
Why you should practice saying, “I love my life”
My 5 tips to loving your life even more
Read the transcript of the episode below:
 Episode 33 - How to Love Your Life Even More

Can you remember the last time in conversation with someone else or just to yourself that you said the words: "I love my life"? Whether it was recently or a long time ago, that is what we are going to talk about today. This is Episode 33: How to Love Your Life Even More.

Welcome to the Committed to Create Podcast. I'm Lisa Funk and I am excited to hang out with you here as we talk about the power of creating with our hands and our minds. I like to keep it real, remind you that you are not alone and share specific ways that creativity and mindfulness can help us live even more meaningful and joyful lives.

I am so glad that you're here.

Hello friend, and welcome back to my big blue couch. That is where I sit when I am doing my embroidery, which I know some of you have been following along. It's my new obsession, I might say. I love it so much because I'm combining my lettering and my embroidery, you know? And I'm almost done with my love design that has like a floral wreath around it.

And I'm kinda sad that's going to be over, but it just means I need to start a new design. And the love wreath design is so perfect for this month because we were talking all about love.

Last week's episode was about self-love and whether or not it's selfish. It's something that we sometimes have a stigma about. And so I'm glad that we were able to talk about that.

And today we are going to talk about loving your life. These topics are coming from prompts, mantras that are in the Daily Mindful Lettering Book. It's pink. You may have one, you may have seen it. It has a 30 lettering affirmations about living with love.

And so that is what we're focusing on this month because it's February and whether or not you're into Valentine's Day, love is always a good idea. So we're not just talking about romantic love. In fact, we have not yet talked about that this month, but today we are talking about loving your life. Before we get to that, I wanted to do a segment: our creative community.

So I hope that you know how much I appreciate your reviews of the podcast. It is so loving to leave a review. Am I going with the theme? Am I going hard enough with the love theme this month? No, but really it is so uplifting to read your words and to know that you're listening and that it's making a difference for you.

I recently got a review from Amy. And I just want to just share a part of it with you. Cause she's part of our creative community and I love what she said. Well, one thing that she said was that she loves picturing that we're on the big blue couch and I hope that all of you feel that way.

She says: "the biggest takeaway I've had from this podcast was the unrealistic, perfect expectations I was placing on myself for something I had never tried before. Had it been anyone else I would have recognized how crazy that was. This expectation paralyzed me from pursuing a major interest of mine because I couldn't live up to what I was demanding for myself and feelings of selfishness for taking that time just for me, I'm happy to report lettering is now one of my favorite activities to do, to relax and create an actually takes the pressure off."

I hope that for all of us who are here that are a little bit plagued by perfectionism or from that fear of failing or not being good at something, I hope that you take that same thing away that Amy has that it's okay to just start.

I mean, how many of us have had a child say to us: I can't do this. I'm not going to try it because I couldn't do it exactly perfectly the first time. And we're just like, oh no. Oh honey, of course, you're not going to be able to do it the first time you have to learn how to do it. You have to try it. You have to get better and improve and you have to make mistakes.

And it's real easy for us to say this to other people. It's not always as easy when it comes to us. We think that we should be good at it right away, or else it's not something we should do. And I just want to normalize the idea that we can do things, even if we're not good at them.

Of course we can get better at them, but sometimes we enjoy doing things, even though we're not the best at it. And that's okay. We can do things just because.

So that was a really nice review to get Amy, if you are listening, send me an email. hello@handlettereddesign.com and we will get you a free lettering course. Your reviews mean so much to us, and that is our segment for today, our creative community.

All right, so now we're going to talk about loving your life, and I hope that you guys enjoy that this is really a conversation. Just like I would be having with you if we were on the phone. Except of course I would love to be able to go back and forth and hear what you have to say as well, which is why I love your messages. But I don't write out every single word that I'm going to say as I'm sure you can tell from listening to the podcast.

And I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that, but for me, I am just sharing my heart and the things that I think about. And because I have struggled so much, it has propelled me to really dig in and do some work so that I can do things like love my life more than I already did.

So one of the affirmations and the daily mindful lettering book is "I love my life."

Now. I want you to think about what comes up for you when I say that, or if I were to ask you to say that right now, you might be in the car, you might be folding laundry, maybe you're lettering, maybe you're, you know, I don't know. What are you doing? I would love to know what are you doing right now? I want you to say, "I love my life."

And when you say it or think about saying it, what comes up for you? Is there resistance there? Is that easy for you to say? Or is this something that you're like, I don't really love my life. Why is it challenging to say that? I think it's very telling to kind of investigate why it is that we resist wanting to say that.

This is something really interesting. Did you know that you can just love your life? I think that some of us believe that we want to live our lives, but that we can't because our lives are hard and we have hard things going on. And so we can't love our life. Or that we shouldn't love our lives because maybe we feel guilty that we're really blessed. And maybe we have, you know, some really amazing blessings and we feel guilty about that. So we feel guilty loving our life?

Or I don't know. What is it? What is it for you that keeps you from feeling like you can just say, I love my life.

I think for a lot of us, it's that we think about the challenging things. We think about, you know, maybe the tantrums that our toddler is having, or how tired we feel, or, you know, some struggle that we're having. So we believe that that keeps us from being able to just say that we love our life.

And so the first tip that I have for today is examining our expectations because a lot of us are expecting our life to be different than it is. And I just want to share that there is so much power in accepting your life for what it is right now and not expecting it to be different.

I'm not saying that you can't want certain things to change or that you have to love everything about your life. When you say that you love your life, that doesn't mean that you are happy about the hard things. It doesn't mean that you rejoice in the negative things that are happening or the struggles that are happening.

I believe that it's easier for me to love my life when I expect that there's going to be positive and negative, that the challenges are there for a reason to help us to teach us that we wouldn't feel the joy and the happiness without them. We wouldn't know that contrast.

And for me, I also have to change my expectations in believing that somehow once I fill in the blank, maybe have an organized house or more money, or some other things have changed that all of a sudden I'm going to love my life.

The truth is that our brains are wired to look for danger, to look for negativity. And so it's really natural to think that somehow when things change, then we'll feel like we can love our life. But right now there are all these really hard things. And so I think changing our expectation of what our life should look like can really help us to embrace and love our lives right now.

And also knowing that there is no prerequisite to loving your life. It doesn't have to look a certain way. You can just decide to love all of it. And that doesn't mean that you enjoy the hard parts or that you're just like thrilled and happy about the sad things that happen, but you can still love your life.

Okay. Number two is to stop comparing your life to other people's lives. For one thing, other people, even if they have what you think looks like the perfect life, it seems like they have the perfect house. Perfect kids, the perfect husband, the perfect wife, the perfect, whatever. They don't. Just telling you.

Everyone has struggles. Everyone has hard things and we don't need to focus on that. We don't need to talk about how, oh, they're hiding something. I'm not saying like everyone's hiding something from you, but we are not robots. We're humans and all humans experience positive and negative emotions. We all experienced trials and challenges.

Sometimes they come at different points in our lives. I've definitely had times where I have struggled more than others. I've had times where I was grieving loss. I've had other times when I was super depressed and barely functioning. I've had other times when I've really struggled with parenting. I hope that one thing I have done on this podcast is kept it real and showed some of the things that I have really struggled with.

Not that anyone thought I was perfect to begin with, but I think that sometimes we do tell ourselves a story. We do see someone and think, oh, they get to letter for a business. That's cool. You know, and they're not looking at all of the behind the scenes and the hard things that happen and the challenges that are associated with that thing that we think may seem glamorous or exciting or just so fun.

And I'm not saying that those things aren't fun, but when we compare, we're normally looking for a way to make ourselves feel worse or make ourselves feel better. And it just, isn't helpful at all. Looking at other people to kind of size ourselves up is not the way to go.

And I think that some people do this and they think that it's a good thing, but I think it can be dangerous in the long run.

For example, when you say, well, at least we don't have this problem, or at least we don't have that problem. It's like, what if you have that problem next week? What if you have that problem next year? You want to just embrace and love your life and face your life head on the way that you want to face it without needing to stack yourself up and comparing yourself to others, whether you are feeling like they are better off or worse off than you.

It really isn't helpful in the end because it means that you're always stacking and you're always, always going to be trying to figure out how to figure out where you are depending on where other people. And it's just so much easier to just manage your home life with your own expectations and your own mindset, which is our third tip for today.

Change the mindset you have about your life. Would this be the Committed to Create Podcast if we didn't talk about mindset? I don't think so.

So of course we naturally want to believe that if we just changed everything about our lives, it would be much easier to love it. But I want to wager that while it could be easier to love it, if certain things change, some things are always going to be challenging. And some things are always going to be there. No matter what we think will be helpful.

Like even if we think, oh, if I lived in a bigger house or a more organized house... You guys, can you tell that I am like wanting to organize my house? We've been here for nine years, which may not seem like a long time to some may seem like a really long time to others, but things accumulate. I am loving the idea of less stuff and more organization. Anyway, the point is that even if we can't change certain things about our lives, we can change the mindset that we have about it.

And it will be different for all of us, because for you, there might be a certain relationship that's challenging, but that, you know, you can't just delete from your life and for someone else, they might say, well, I actually have a job that I know I'm not going to quit because I really need this job to be able to provide for my family.

And there's certain things that, of course, you know, if we wanted to do something drastic, could change, but also we can change the mindset that we have about those things and how we want to approach them.

And one really easy way to begin to shift our mindset is with affirmations. And the one that I mentioned from the Daily Mindful Lettering book is "I love my life."

It's so simple, but I really think that it can be powerful to say to yourself: I love my life. Another one is: "my life doesn't have to be easy for me to love it." I think that sometimes we look at other people, the people that we think love their lives. And we think that they love them because they're easy because they don't have to work so hard because things don't seem challenging for them. But the truth is that my life doesn't need to be easy to love it.

Another one is: "when I love my life, it loves me back." And you might be thinking, this is super cheesy, they say your life is not like a person, but it's all about the mindset. So when I pour love into my life, and I believe that my life is wonderful and I talk about loving my life, my life experience is going to be more full of love. It's going to be more enjoyable because of my mindset shift.

So just pay attention to the way that you talk about your life. And I'm not saying you should lie. I'm not saying you should tell people things you don't actually believe, but pay attention. Is there something that you often say when you're talking to people like, gosh, my life is so hard or man life stinks. Life is so hard. Life is so terrible. I am not going to tell you that it doesn't feel that way. Sometimes, of course, it does. And I'm also not going to say that you should ignore for those tough emotions that we have. I think it's so important to feel them. And it's so important to acknowledge when life does feel that way.

However, I do think that sometimes we get into it habit of the way that we talk about things. And the way that we talk is really a manifestation of what's happening in our mind, right? Our thoughts are what come out of our mouth. And so when we're saying things like the way that we feel about our life or life in general, it's how we're thinking, and that does affect our experience.

So just pay attention. I am not saying that you should just be Pollyanna and positive all the time and say, oh, life is amazing, even when it feels hard. No. But is a default for us to just kind of focus on the negative because that's what our brain actually really wants to do. So adopting some of these affirmations as a way to kind of train our brain, to look for the positive and to believe that our life is amazing, even though it has its challenges and that we can love it, no matter what.

Which leads into tip number four, having a gratitude practice. In episode 18 of this podcast, it's called creative gratitude, I go through a bunch of ideas for how to incorporate a gratitude practice into your day. Because Brene Brown in her research has found that just trying to be a grateful person doesn't necessarily help us quite as much as having a tangible gratitude practice.

Whether that's saying something before dinner, each person saying something they're grateful for, or keeping a little journal where you write down three things every day you're grateful for. In that episode, I explained what gratitude letters are. There's a bunch of really creative, interesting, fun ways to incorporate more gratitude. And I do think that it helps us to love our lives even more.

I also have talked about my friend Rachel's Flecks of Gold journal that I've been using where you just write down one Fleck of Gold today, which is, you know, basically something you're grateful for, but it's something that happened. And of course you can do this whether or not you have kids, but it's helped me to just find those little moments that I'm super grateful.

The other day, my daughter, we, so I have one daughter who has planted a garden in the backyard and she like is the cutest with her garden. She's always tending to it. She goes out and reads to her plants. She is very sweet about her garden. And so when it was raining a lot. My other daughter was a little concerned that her sister's garden might get too much water.

And so in her prayer that night, she said, please bless the rain to be polite and not put too much water in the garden. It was the sweetest! And because I'm in this practice of looking for flecks of gold every day, these special ordinary, but special moments, I feel like I treasure them even more.

And so having a way that you're looking for gratitude and either writing it down or somehow finding a way to practice it regularly can really help you to love your life even more. Because are there still plenty of moments where it's challenging to have kids? Where they do things that are not necessarily like the sweetest little prayer? Sure. And that's part of having realistic expectations of what our life will be like.

I'm not waiting to love motherhood or to love my life until it looks 100% perfect and like roses and daisies all the time. I am expecting that there's going to be positive and negative, but that I'm going to find those special moments that I'm going to be grateful for them and treasure them.

And number five is to add in fun things you love into your life and small pleasures. So I want you to think about this. You know, you've decided that you want to have clean clothes. So you're going to do your laundry. You've decided that you want to have a delicious nourishing meal for dinner. So you're going to cook.

You've decided that you want these things and you can use tip number three to kind of adjust your mindset about those decisions that you're making, owning them and leaning into them instead of being annoyed and stressed all the time. And I'm not blaming you here. I think it's really easy to get overwhelmed and kind of sick of some of our ordinary daily tasks sometimes.

And you know, it's just, sometimes it can help to adjust the way that we're thinking about that. But also thinking, how can I make this more fun? Can I listen to a podcast while I'm making dinner? Lately I have been listening to lighthearted audio books. Okay. Not all of them have been lighthearted, but I've been listening to audio books while I'm making dinner, doing laundry or cleaning.

And I love podcasts too, obviously. Recording a podcast, but I've also been listening to some more audio books and music and things that just are fun and lighthearted. And that is a way for me to have more fun and love my life even more. Think about how can you listen to more music when I'm doing something.

If I have music on it's just so much more fun. I just love it so much more. And sometimes we get out of touch with what we even like. Can you tell me what music you like to listen to? Do you ever discover more music? I feel like before I had kids, I loved finding new music to listen to and listening to new songs.

And then all of a sudden you're listening to Laurie Berkner band, which no shade on Laurie Berkner band. I love listening to her music for kids. It's awesome. But sometimes you're like, okay, we've been listening to Disney favorites on Alexa now for a long time, which is again, so great. But do I even know what I enjoy listening to when it's my turn?

And also did you know that you can train your kids to let you listen to your own choice of music? Sometimes I know that sometimes that is easier said than done because some kids just are really, really headstrong and have strong opinions about what they want to listen to. But I think sometimes we underestimate the ability to have the kids listen to something different and you know, they might think it's the oldies, but when you have them listen to the songs.

I love listening to music from high school. I don't know why there's like something really comforting for me sometimes, not all the time, but throw on some high school music. Right? And do something fun. Maybe you like oldies, maybe you like country, maybe you like, who knows whatever it is. That's fun for you incorporate more of those small pleasures into your day. Do you enjoy lighting a candle? Do you enjoy, you know, having some essential oils, defusing, what is something that just kind of brings you a little bit of extra joy for me?

I love getting fresh flowers. Every time I go to Trader Joe's. I just decided a very long time ago, that I was going to buy myself flowers when I went shopping at Trader Joe's. And their flowers are beautiful. They are affordable. This last time I went, I got camomile flowers. And they're just those little tiny, they look like little tiny daisies, like little wildflowers, with the white little petals and the yellow centers.

And they're just the cutest. I love them so much. I think they were 3.99 for a huge bunch of them. And, they just make me so happy. I just love seeing them on my counter. I loved buying them. I love having them. It's a small and simple thing that brings me so much joy.

What are those things? What are the things that you can incorporate?

Those are all kind of sensory things. But think about, of course, you know, I'm going to talk about a hobby. Is there a hobby that you like and that you are prioritizing? That you are making sure you have time to do? And you know, I'm going to tell you that you have time and that you can do it while your kids are doing their own, or while you're watching a show or when you're chatting with someone.

I mean, think about it, even if you wanted to go in and chat with your kids at night, and you're like, I'm bringing my cross stitch with me or, you know, I'm not saying you're going to haul in your canvas to put your kids to bed, but what if you're listening and chatting with them while you're both drawing?

I turned on a little video for my kindergarten or the other day, cause she wanted to learn how to draw Fox. And we both did the video together and it was just fun. It was simple but fun.

And I guarantee you that if you start looking for ways to fit in creativity and your hobby throughout your day, and even when your kids are around, you will.

You have a very, very smart creative brain. If you ask it questions like, man, why don't I ever have enough time? Your brain will answer that question and say, well, let me tell you why you don't have enough time.

But if you say, how can they find more pockets of time to do things I love? Your brain is very smart. You will think, oh, you know what? I actually have 20 minutes when I'm waiting in line for the carpool for parent pickup, or I actually have 20 minutes after the kids go to bed when I can do something.

You are very smart. And I know you can do this and it's so rewarding. It really is. And it's going to be even more fun if you don't expect yourself to be perfect. And if you really just embrace the experience of doing it and not expecting that you're going to be some expert right away.

Those are my tips for today for how to love your life even more. First is evaluate your expectations. Stop expecting your life to be different than it is. Two is stop comparing your life to other people's. Three: change the mindset that you have about your life. Four is make sure you've got a gratitude practice. And number five is to add in things you love and simple pleasures.

So I don't know. Tell me what you think. Do you want to tell me that you love your life? I think that you do. I think that you really do love your life, even though it's challenging, even though it's hard. I think we all can, and incorporating some of these other things might help us to love it even more. And that's okay too.

So anyway, this month is all about the love and we are highlighting the Daily Mindful Lettering book. If you don't have it yet, I just can't tell you how many amazing messages I have gotten about this book. It's such an amazing self-care practice. I love hearing how people tell me they use it to wind down at the end of the day.

And if you're looking for something for yourself, it's just an excuse to buy it for yourself. This is your Valentine's Day present to yourself. Or if you have someone who would like to get you a gift for Valentine's Day and they would actually like to get you something that you might actually enjoy, don't be afraid to tell them. The best way for someone to know what you would like is to just tell them.

Sometimes we have to get over ourselves. Right? I know I've talked about this before. Very life changing for me. When I, number one would just tell people what I wanted and not expect that it needs to be some amazing, surprise and that somehow they're going to read my mind, even though I don't even know what's in my mind.

And number two, I can also buy it for myself if I don't know that anyone else is interested in getting a gift for me and they're not looking for suggestions, I can treat myself because I want to. Isn't thatamazing? Okay. So anyway, I will leave the link to that in the show notes as well.

I love you guys so much, and I'm so glad that you're here. It means a lot to me and I love it. So I will talk to you again next week.
Links:
Daily Mindful Lettering Book
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I hope that my podcast has left you feeling inspired and excited to create the life that you want. If you’ve enjoyed listening to this podcast, I’d love for you to subscribe so you can continue to hear more. Want to get to know me better? Connect with me on my website or on Instagram to keep up with everything that is going on with me and my business.
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Jennifer L. IN LOVE!! What a perfect idea! I am a plant mama too, like Lisa. I also manage a great deal of anxiety. I got into lettering a couple years ago as a creative outlet and discovered a multitude of treasures in the lettering community! This book that Lisa created with her daughter is just perfection! It's all the feels for me! Thank you both!!!
Cinthanie C. EXCELLENT BOOK! I really enjoy taking a minute each day to slow down and apply my hand to something that is not only emotionally supportive but relaxing and fun to do!! The mantras for everyday are very helpful for me. Thank you for your work and bringing such a high quality product into my life!
Daily Mindful Lettering Kit: Live With Love

Daily Mindful Lettering Kit: Peace & Calm

033: How to Love Your Life Even More

Podcast

046: Removing the Pressure

045: Creative Constraint
