Start in the Middle

Are You Happy?

• Kristi Ballard Falany

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Imagine finding happiness that isn't tied to your job, relationships, or possessions. In this episode, I'll share my journey of overcoming challenges after foot surgery and the powerful lesson I learned from a podcast episode with Jamie Kern Lima and Ed Mylett. We'll explore how self-love and inner peace can boost your happiness, leading to better relationships and smarter decisions. This episode encourages women to focus on their self-worth and true joy, making choices that genuinely benefit their well-being instead of seeking approval from others.

Start your day with intention by trying my simple morning routine of deep breathing and setting intentions. Along with practices like meditation, scripture reading, and devotionals, you'll learn how to keep a positive mindset throughout the day, improving your emotional health. I'll also introduce you to our Empowering Women Coffee and Connections group, where we support each other in personal growth and living out our purpose. Plus, discover my coaching program, Discover You, which helps you build your identity and make decisions based on your happiness. Join us on this journey to shine bright and inspire others. For more details, visit kristifalanycoaching.com.

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Speaker 1:

Hi, I am Christy Ballard-Fellaini. I am a certified life coach who found herself at 42, freshly divorced kids off to college, and having never dated in my adult life, I was starting in the middle. If you haven't yet hit, start on your middle time in life, let's do it together. Let the journey begin. Hello, hello, my friends, this is another one of those podcasts where something amazing, where something amazing drops into my path. Something amazing has inspired me, and it makes me want to sit down and pull out the microphone and hang out with you. And so what's really cool about this is that this morning, I had the opportunity to go and take a walk. Hey, if you've been following my foot surgery journey, this is an amazing feat. This is only the second time that I've gone out and taken a walk. The first time was kind of a fail because I took my unbalanced Frenchie with me and I came back not feeling good. But today I was inspired to go and give it a shot, and so I called up my girlfriend and on the way over to her house, I was listening to a podcast.

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If you have not yet read the book Worthy by Jamie Kern Lima, I highly suggest it. In fact, I shared with my Empowering Women's Coffee and Connection group. I shared parts of that book with them last month inside our Summer of you series, because there's some powerful information in there and, as an influencer, you learn from other people and you take what resonates with you or what resonates for you and you cannot not share it with your girlfriends, because what you're doing is that you are taking that word, you are internalizing it and helping your girlfriends to see it in a light that will resonate with them. The hope is that when you share your stories, when you share your life with the other women in your life, they see a different perspective maybe than what they are seeing through the lens of their life. They're able to see something different, they're able to identify themselves in what you're sharing and we are able to heal together if we choose to do so. Okay, because healing and putting away the past is a choice. So, with that being said, I was listening to this podcast. It is Jamie Kern Lima and she is interviewing Ed Milet and man. I got all of the feels, probably within the first five minutes of listening. I do still need to go back and listen to more, because I want to, because I know that there's good, solid information.

Speaker 1:

There was, when Ed Milet said that, a form of child abuse and of course I'm paraphrasing, I'm not using their own dreams when a parent does not pursue their own happiness. Now, a couple of reasons. That this stuck to me was number one not too many months ago, I was actually faced with the question from my son, from my son mom, are you even happy? And at that time, when I thought about how to answer that question, at that time my answers came from outside of myself. My answers came from what do I have in my life that are bringing me happiness? What do I have?

Speaker 1:

And as I am now reflecting on that question, I'm blown away by what I know now, because, as I was listening to this podcast, I was reminded that our happiness comes from within, that our happiness should not be based on our relationships and what our relationships bring to us. Our happiness should not be based on what other people bring to us. Our happiness should not be based on our bank account. Our happiness should not be based on all of the things that we have accumulated. And we, as Americans, that's exactly what we do. We believe that all of our successes are going to lead to our happiness. We believe that once we finally have that big, beautiful house that we've been dreaming of, it's going to bring us happiness. We believe that when our intimate relationships are all repaired and everybody is acting the way that we want them to act, that we are going to be happy.

Speaker 1:

And so what I want to tell you, and what I want to encourage you, is that your happiness has got to come from within, and it's got to start with your self-worth. It's got to start with your own love for yourself. It's got to be an internal job. Your happiness has to come from within. Happiness has to come from within, and when you are truly happy from within, that is where you're going to see changes in happiness, in your relationships. Because when you are happy from within, you're going to start seeing that you want more of that. Seeing that you want more of that and the people who are in your lives they're either going to step up to the plate with their own happiness or they are not. You're going to start seeing that you want to surround yourself who either lift that bar of happiness for yourself, and what I mean by that is you're going to say I want what they have, I want some of that, and then you're going to start working more on your self-worth. You're going to start working more on loving yourself. You're going to start understanding that loving yourself is the secret ingredient to your happiness. And then the people around you are going to start raising the bar. They're going to start wanting more of what they see in you. So the quality of your relationships are going to change. You're going to start making hard decisions, but the cool thing about it is that you are doing it for you.

Speaker 1:

Too often, women compromise their own happiness for others. They compromise the feeling that they want to feel inside to please someone else, to keep from hurting someone else's feelings by not showing up the way that they expect you to or the way that they want you to, when the true fact of the matter is, if they loved you, they would want to see you happy and they would want to understand the choices that you are making. You see, because it is when those people who are in our lives, when they are not happy with themselves, that's where they look to us to make them happy, and so I just want to encourage you that this idea of being and loving yourself is where your happiness is going to come from, and so that means Chasing your dreams, that means going after the things that you want in your life. And, as I look back over the way that I raised my children and the amount of happiness that I'm going to be very honest with you, I didn't know I wasn't loving on myself, I wasn't creating my own internal happiness, but what I was doing was trying to be that parent that was doing for them, loving on them and trying to give them all of the happiness that I could that I didn't have as a kid.

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How many of you are guilty of this and maybe guilty isn't the right word, because I don't want you to feel guilt over this because we do better when we know better. I didn't know better. Do better when we know better. I didn't know better. I didn't know that what I was doing was actually not helping in the long run. What I should have been showing them was the love for myself, so that they could instill that in themselves, and I hope that you are understanding what I'm saying.

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If you need further clarification, I encourage you. Please reach out to me so that we can have this conversation, because this is such a powerful conversation, because now, as I'm reflecting back and I am looking at my own children, I can see now why there might be some areas of struggle for them, where they might struggle with self-doubt, they might struggle with self-worth, they may be going through some things where they don't feel worthy and their actions are showing that. So if this is you, if this resonates with you, do not get stuck with looking in the past and wanting to feel shame over it or wanting to feel guilt over it, because, again, we do better when we know better. And so my challenge to you is start today, start now, start loving on yourself, start taking care of yourself, because I promise you, when you start going inside and you start doing the work of healing old wounds and loving yourself from today, moving forward and continuing to work on that, continuing to work on your self-worth, it is going to show. It is not too late. It doesn't matter if your children are young adults. They are going to see a difference in you, and this is a testimony, because, I promised you, one of my children sees the difference and one of my children doesn't, and this is my opinion. I am choosing to not feel guilt and shame over it because I am seeing things better. My light is flickering on, and so now I can choose to continue to do better. So I want to encourage you, if you take some time to reflect and you look at where your children are at, start now, start today and do not stop.

Speaker 1:

On the last two podcasts, I shared with you how important personal growth is, and so I encourage you, continue to do the reflecting, continue to look for the growth. It is not selfish at all for you to work on yourself, and if you have been in my circle for any amount of time now, you will see that that is what I preach. That is what I want to bring to you, that is what I want you to know, is that you deserve happiness while you are here on this planet, and you deserve to have your light shine bright so that other people will say I want what she has Now. The other thing that blew me away was when he said the quality of your emotions is the quality of your life. Whoa, and the reason that this just blows my mind is because there are days when I wake up and I don't feel good, and when I mean that, I mean there's dread, there's negativity, and so the reason that I want to bring this up to you is because you can change the trajectory of your day before your feet even hit the floor. So if you are someone who has the pattern of waking up in the mornings and the first feeling, the first emotion you feel is negativity, dread for the day, the I don't want to, today you have the opportunity to change that emotion before you even sit up.

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I shared with a friend not too long ago on his podcast, clifton Pope, a practice that I sometimes do. When I wake up with that negativity and I want to change it, I decide right, then that's not how I want to start my day. And so what I do is I place one hand over my heart and one hand below my belly and I take three big, deep breaths and I decide what do I want my intention for the day to be? If you have my 90-day planner, you know that at the top of that planner you have an opportunity to write down what is your intention for the day. So, before your feet even hit the floor, you have the opportunity to decide what emotion you want to feel that day, and then let it be a snowball effect. Let yourself find that emotion purposefully throughout the day. When you notice your energy dipping, when you notice a negative thought, come to mind. The Bible says capture that thought. So capture that thought and choose again. Do whatever it is that you need to do to set your intention for the day.

Speaker 1:

I have a book that I have been using over the last couple of days. It's called what's True About you, by Holly Gerth, and basically what I do when I just want to change my emotion I just want to change how I'm feeling is I will just close my eyes, flip through that book and randomly stop at a specific page. Today it stopped at you are wanted, and so can you imagine how that feels that when my energy starts to dip, when my self-worth starts to dip, I can remind myself of the scripture that goes along with that phrase you are wanted. So my second point today is your emotions dictate your quality of life. So let me just sum this up for you, and the first caveat that I want to bring to you is remember that it does you no good to dwell in the past.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so if you are thinking about the points that I'm bringing you today and your brain wants to go to the past and how you showed up as a parent. Use it as a reflection and decide today how you wanna move forward, because the only place that you are going is forward. And so I know, out of excitement, I may have kind of rambled on a bit, but what I want you to get from this podcast today is that your happiness is an inside job, and people are watching. Okay, you choose. What happiness means to you is not by looking outside of yourself. The best way to create the happiness is through the love that you have for yourself, and if you choose to continue to work on this, your light is going to shine so bright that the people that you come in contact with are going to say I want some of that. Your children are going to see it, your loved ones are going to see it, the girlfriends that you come in contact with are going to see it, the people that you go to church with are going to see it, and so, by working on yourself and loving yourself, you are giving others the opportunity to do that too. And the second point that I want to bring to you is that your emotional home dictates your quality of life, and, again, utilize this information to move forward. Utilize this information to gauge where you are at right now, in the present. What tools do you need to move forward? Maybe it looks like opening up your Bible, reminding yourself who you are in Christ. Maybe it looks like doing that short meditation of deciding your intention for the day. Maybe it looks like picking up a devotional and just flipping to a random page where you get to read something that somebody who already has this light shining in them wants to share with you. So lots of options here. If this is something that you are struggling with, I want to help you with this. I have a couple of different ways that we could do this. You could join my women's group called Empowering Women Coffee and Connections. We do a monthly women's meetup Doesn't mean you have to live here in Corpus Christi, texas. We do it over Zoom and we would love to connect with you.

Speaker 1:

This summer, I did a series called the Summer of you Series. In June, we talked about your identity and how you are hiding certain parts of yourself from the world. Once you get this light shining bright, you are not going to want to hide your identity anymore, because the world needs you. Your girlfriends right here need you. In July, we talked about self-worth versus self-confidence and how, when you work on those two things and you add in personal growth and you add in what are the gifts that you are sharing with the world in contribution, all of those things lead to joy and lead to fulfillment. In August, we talked about purpose. You are here for a purpose. You are here to share your purpose and a clear path to start living it out.

Speaker 1:

I also offer one-on-one coaching. I have a program called Discover you and all of the things that we talked about this summer. Imagine having a coach working with you on building those things in a one-on-one setting, honing in on your identity, loving yourself on purpose so that you can love the people in your life and love the people in your world, to impact the world through love and making powerful decisions around hard things in your life and choosing your own happiness versus doing things out of guilt or out of shame or out of wanting to make sure that everyone else is happy. So two opportunities for you to connect with me and for you to start doing this work for yourself. You could join my women's group, empowering Women, coffee and Connections, or you can get on a free coaching call called Discover you and we can talk about how you and I can work intimately one-on-one.

Speaker 1:

So, you guys, I know that I gave you a lot of nuggets here and I hope that you will take them to heart, that you will understand how important it is to look inward and your happiness through your purpose.

Speaker 1:

So if this conversation resonates with you and you have a girlfriend who you know will benefit from this and you share the same mission that I do in making sure that all of my girlfriends are shining their light, please share this out with them. You know, I said in the beginning that when things like this come into my heart, inspire me. I cannot keep it to myself, so share this episode with your girlfriends. All right, you guys, any questions, reach out to me, follow me on Instagram and Facebook and I will talk to you next week. Who is your life coach? I would love the opportunity to work with you as you are rediscovering the woman you were meant to be. Visit christyballardfelainicom for more information on how we can work together to ignite that passionate, enthusiastic woman who may have been tucked away for some time. Let's start in the middle together. Thank you.