Bloom Your Mind

Ep 139: Finding your Moxie

• Marie McDonald

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With a cup of melted ice cream in my hand, I waited for a group of kids to explore a book store, staring in the window at the best sellers. That was the day I found an author whose prose gave me a week of  both mind-swooning entertainment and a jolting moment of reflection. 

She wrote about giving our time and energy to things that fill us with passion and motivation. That fill our minds the moment we open our eyes in the morning, and fill our souls with purpose and life. Everything I’ve created in the last five years of thought leadership is about this idea. I’ve created podcasts and books, programs and coaching groups to helping people find where and how their passion can take form. We all want to find it. 

So why do we so often find ourselves pulled off track by the passion and motivation of others? If you’ve ever found yourself working too hard at a job or in a volunteer position, giving too much to the family or relationships that you serve, this episode is for you. 

Things you’ll learn in this episode: 

  • The one most common thing that makes people spin their wheels instead of getting into action
  • The difference between working toward your passion, and giving time and energy too someone else’s passion
  • Why it feels so good to support people when their idea is inspired and their vision is full of intent and energy
  • How to intentionally choose to support someone else’s idea, and find your own vision inside of it
  • How to know when the time you’ve spent working toward someone else’s idea has come to a close
  • Why the world needs feminine ideas and feminine leadership more than ever before
  • Two questions to ask yourself to help uncover the whispers of your own ideas, and how to know when you’re giving too much time and energy too something outside of yourself

Mentioned in this podcast:

  • Taylor Jenkins Reid: Daisy Jones and the Six
  • Taylor Jenkins Reid: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

How to connect with Marie:

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Bloom your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified Coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it. Well, hello everyone and welcome to episode number 139 of the Bloom your Mind podcast. I'm recording this for you in a cabin up in the Sierras that I helped to build with my brothers and my dad up right around Bridgeport on the eastern slope of the Sierras. So while normally when I record a podcast for you, I warn you that you might hear something in the background, like neighborhood sounds or my children, today you might hear my dad with his tree trimmers cutting off the limbs of aspen trees that are growing too close to the cabin for fire safety. So that's pretty fun. You might not hear them, but now your imagination can create them in the background.

Speaker 1:

I've been coming to this cabin for years. I've probably told you about it before on the podcast. I remember during graduate school in San Francisco driving this tiny little fishing truck, the Chevrolet, a manual Chevrolet fishing truck over the Sonora pass. This pass that goes over the Sierras called Sonora pass, in the middle of the night, with it hailing, and I was just telling my husband about that and he was like thank God you made it through that night. You know, back in my twenties, late twenties, when I felt invincible. We made it. And now we are back in this beautiful place where my children have memories from every year, and I am recording an episode for you here at the cabin among the Aspen.

Speaker 1:

So last week I picked my kids up from camp they're one week of camp this summer and I picked up a bunch of their friends too, which I have a tendency to do to create a little party for my kids all the time and I took them into the local neighborhood village of South Park and we're getting some ice cream. It's after camp. They have face paint on that looks like some combination of a coal miner and a clown blended up. It's like used to look amazing, but it's smudged from a day of sweat and play and tree branches whipping over what used to be a masterpiece on their face and then painted there with love and care and now was replaced with like a scene from Mary Poppins, that chimney sweep scene. That's what they looked like, like this black face paint just smudged and they have ice cream that we've got next door and they decide that they're all. You know, there's like seven kids and they're all going to go next door.

Speaker 1:

A couple of the moms had come to go to the bookstore, so I'm standing outside holding someone's half eaten ice cream in a little ice cream cup. It is melted so it is fully liquid. It's like a couple of flavors melted together that should never be put together and they're melted in this cup in my hand, which is precluding me from going into the bookstore because you can't go in there with a drink or an ice cream, and I know the child is not going to finish eating this. But I haven't quite gotten to the place where I'm like I'm going to throw this away. I'm standing there holding it and I'm looking in the window and looking at the books in the window because I can't go in yet.

Speaker 1:

And one of my friends, a parent, comes up to me and she says have you read that author? And she's pointing at this book in front of us. Don't remember? Maybe it's something about Malibu? Was the cover of the book or the name of the book? And I said no, I haven't read that author.

Speaker 1:

She says do you read? And I say I read all the time. I often read about design thinking and psychology and sociology. I'm mostly always reading some kind of business or psychology or sociology book, a book on hypnosis or something like that, and I usually have a fiction book going at the same time, often in audio book form, to give my brain that kind of fun imaginative escape. And I said to her but I need some references here, I need some book recommendations for really good fiction. And she says this author that we're looking at she's it. She said everything she writes is gold, which I love. I love finding an author and then falling in love with them and reading everything they wrote. So she gave me two book recommendations and I bought them and he said who do I start with? Which of these books do I start with? Because this author has been pretty prolific. There's a lot of books that I could choose from. And I'd heard of the author which I'm sure all of you are rolling your eyes like, of course we know who this is Taylor Jenkins, reid, and I just hadn't really dug in yet and she said, well, of all the books, I'd recommend Daisy Jones and the Six and the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. And I was like all right, tell me why. And she said I got both the books. And I said tell me which one to start with. That's what I said she's like well, I don't know, they're both so good. Daisy Jones and the six, that's rock and roll. The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo, that's like old Hollywood and kind of glam and started talking about that. And I, I went immediately with rock and roll.

Speaker 1:

So now I'm here at the cabin where we're spending two weeks. I've been on road trips with my kids, I've been on all kinds of summer adventures, but this, this is downtime. Sure, we'll take the kids fishing, we'll take them to parks, see wild horses, we'll take them on some adventures. But what I want out of this trip is to read. I brought seven books with me and we've been here now for two days, my friends and I've read two books. I can't even believe it. I started with Daisy Jones and the Six and I burnt through it in a day and now I have one chapter left of the second book and they're phenomenal.

Speaker 1:

She was right, but, as great fiction does, I got to a line in Daisy Jones and the Six that slowed me down and touched my heart and made me stop and write for a little bit because it spoke to my life and what I'm doing in the world and what we talk about on this podcast. And now, when I went to record this podcast for you, I thumbed through the book for quite a while trying to find this one sentence, and I could not find it because I can't even remember which part of the book it happened in. I just paused and threw down the book and started writing about this idea, and so I'm just going to tell you that the basic kind of like meaning of this sentence this, this quote from the book was about how one of the character's father she wasn't very close to him, but he said one thing that always stuck with her, and it was that whatever you do with your life, whatever you spend your life doing, make sure it's the thing that you're passionate about, that you want to put your life energy into, and he said make sure it wakes you up in the morning. You want to put your life energy into and he said make sure it wakes you up in the morning. You wake up thinking about it, you can't wait to get back to it and you love it. It's this thing that you're passionate about. And, of course, taylor Jenkins reads that so much more eloquently than that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but you know, read the book. It's phenomenal, and I will.

Speaker 1:

When I'm back where I have access to Wi-Fi, I will actually have AI find the quote for me and maybe I'll add it to the show notes and I'm all about this. I mean, this is what the Bloom Room is about making your ideas into real things, what Bloom your Mind, the podcast, is about and what my mastermind, the Moxie mastermind, is all about. My favorite quote that talks about the same idea that I've talked about on the podcast before is finding where your heart deep longing, meets the world's deep need. But I want to go two zooms in here and talk about something else. That zoom in is on where the word your, where your heart's passion, and the second zoom in is on the world's deep need where your deep passion meets the world's deep need.

Speaker 1:

Because the thing that I see taking people off course over and over more often than anything else, and the thing that has taken me off course or actually just made me spin my wheels for years and maybe decades before I gave time and space to my own idea, is that they or we put our passion, our energy, our time, our drive into someone else's passion, someone else's need, their deep passion and their need. Because it feels so good to be next to somebody's passion, to be a part of a vision that's inspired, that somebody else is so fired up about, and we want to cozy up to that bright light, that sense of purpose. When we're working, spending our effort, our time, our energy, our money, whatever to support somebody's purpose that is full of light and excitement, we feel like we're a part of something. When that happens, it's happening here and now and we're in it, and sometimes that's a good thing. Maybe it's a good thing for a while, and I also see it pull us off track, because we get overly committed to our part in their vision, our responsibility in pulling off their idea, and we get so pulled off track that we sort of lose sight and start to think we can never leave. We couldn't let them down. We couldn't let it down. Our part, our responsibility, is too big. We can never change the way that things are, instead of knowing when it's time to change course and follow our own idea Because that's so much scarier we're not only in the rhythm and the responsibility and maybe the people pleasing or whatever, maybe the culture that we can't see out of, because it's the water we're swimming in, where, for all these reasons, it's hard to break out.

Speaker 1:

But also we're fighting our motivational triad that wants to keep things easy, stay comfortable, not do scary things, not push ourselves, never risk rejection or failure Right. So we're really rowing against the current when we decide I'm going to leave this safety of this complacence or what's comfortable, or this service that I'm giving, even if it's draining my energy and my time and the years of my life, but I'm going to stay here, because it's way scarier to think of going and changing things, speaking up or going out on my own and starting to make time for my own idea, and similarly, we do this instead of speaking up about the parts that we're not okay with. I see this a lot in family cultures, in work cultures, in relationship cultures where we're like it's always been like this. The whole rest of the system is like this how can I speak up? No one will listen, so we just go along with it.

Speaker 1:

And oftentimes the person that is leading this vision, the person that is in charge, whose vision we're enticed by or whose vision we are inspired by, they have a lot of positional power, which again, isn't a bad thing, right Like. We put people in positions of power sometimes because they are visionaries, because they have visionary ideas for how the world can be a better place, and that's okay. It's just important to be aware of it, because sometimes we get stuck giving that power to someone else instead of realizing how much power we have in ourselves and understanding when it's time to step out of somebody else's story and out of being the supporting actor in somebody else's movie, in somebody else's idea, and to become the lead actor in our own life, in our own moment, and give the time and weight to our own idea that we want to, because we don't have to give our heart and money and well-being and ideas and the minutes of our lives to somebody else's idea, no matter how great it is. We can do that when it feels right. It's okay when our love and effort are going towards someone else's idea, when it is a conscious choice. We believe in them. We've decided how much time we're going to give it, or we've just decided we're going to give our time and energy to it. And one thing that I think works specifically well when we're deciding to do. That is when we really believe in it, to see how we can bring it into a bigger bloom than what was possible before. Because we are there. What's our part in it? Why do we believe in our part of it? When we're working to make someone else's idea real, how can we make it even bigger and beautiful than it was before and go with full intention into it, knowing the reason we're choosing to give our time and effort and love to their idea is because we want to. It's in line with our values, because we say so.

Speaker 1:

I made this mistake a couple times. I did it with families, with my bosses, with some relationships, and then I realized the cost. With my families, it was kind of the idea of how family dynamics should be. With my bosses, they had brilliant ideas, these two specific CEOs that I gave years to because I believed in their mission and their vision, their organization, their business, their cultures, and I'm so glad that I was a part of both of them. I would never have taken those back. And I heard myself both times after a certain amount of time had passed. I heard myself saying I'm ready to put some time and energy into my own idea, into my own vision into what I want to create in the world, and I wasn't quite ready yet. But at least in the second instance I stayed too long. I was stuck because I started to realize then at the end I it has been a couple of years. It's been a few years where the cost has been way higher than what I'm giving here.

Speaker 1:

It's the cost of my story, my life, my ideas, and there was this little piece of me that was whispering and whispering to be let out, and I realized I don't want to be a human being, a woman who lets my daughter learn from this type of example. I want to be for myself, for her, for all of us example. I want to be for myself, for her, for all of us. I want to make my own ideas real. I want to push into what's totally uncomfortable and go out there and give what only I can give to the world. And again, this story is different for everyone. I'm sharing mine because this is my version of it. I think this you know, a version of this can look as many different ways as there are people in the world.

Speaker 1:

What I'm encouraging us to do is to look at where we're folding our story into someone else's, where we're storing, folding our vision into somebody else's vision, else's vision, where we're giving more time, energy, years of our life, effort than we actually want to be at the expense of what we want to do and create in the world. So I started seeing that cost and I thought wait, this isn't right. I'm not being authentic, I'm not being as courageous as I want to be. I'm not going to be silent anymore about the parts of cultures that I'm not okay with. I'm not going to let myself be drained anymore by saying yes and yes and yes, and I'm not going to be complacent as years pass by while I serve somebody else's idea of becoming real, no matter how much I believe in it. I'm not going to do it because it feels more comfortable, because I can tell that I've done it enough, that part of my story is complete. I've loved my time here, and the only reason I'm here now is because it's more comfortable than what I know I need to do next, because there's a whole land inside of us full of magic, full of fire, full of love and full of moxie, and the reason I'm so passionate about vocalizing this and about making this episode about creating spaces to pull out other people's ideas is because that quote in that book made me think about my own work. That's what it is for me. The reason I've done everything that I've done this podcast, the bloom room and why I created the Moxie Mastermind is because I am passionate about creating spaces where other women, other people and specifically, other women can let out their ideas that they see in the world for how the world could be a better place. They make their ideas real, not put their effort into making somebody else's ideas real, not put their effort into taking care of everybody else. Because the world right now, with all the isms that we live in this patriarchal structure and a capitalist structure, structures full of racism and a rejection of nature we need strong feminine leadership. We need strong feminine ideas made real. We need more and more of those ideas. So that's what I did. I created the Moxie Mastermind, a space to nurse the Moxie out of the fierce and tender women in this world.

Speaker 1:

Their idea, your idea, your way. What's your idea? Maybe it's creating spaces, maybe it's just changing something in your life. Maybe it's changing something in a relationship in a family. Maybe it's changing something in a relationship in a family. Where is the place where your passion is whispering to you and has been, maybe, for a while.

Speaker 1:

Two last questions for you here. What is an idea that has been whispering to you? Just take a moment and think about that. An idea for how your life or the world, or a relationship that you're in? Or an idea for something you really want to create and put out there in the world of business, or a book, or a piece of art or a community? Where has that idea been whispering to you and you haven't been giving it time or space, because your time and space is taken with something else, either someone else's idea or service. And secondly, where are you working too hard or giving too much for someone else's idea, someone else's vision of the way that things should be? That's what I've got for you today.

Speaker 1:

I would love to hear from any of you that do this exercise and find something, and until then, I will see you next week. If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, you got to come and join us in the Bloom Room. If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, you gotta come and join us in the Bloom Room. This is a year-round membership where we take all of these concepts and we apply them to real life. In a community where we have each other's backs and we bring out the best in each other. We're all there to make our ideas real, one idea at a time. I'll see you in the bloom room.