Claim Your Awesome
Claim Your Awesome is on a mission to inspire and support women in connecting to their truth, awakening to their own power and unapologetically claim their big dreams so they can create a life that lights up their soul and manifest a life of abundance.
Weekly topics include healing your relationship with money, letting go of limiting beliefs, upgrading your money mindset, manifestation, living with more joy, finding balance, spirituality, entrepreneurship and wellness.
Claim Your Awesome
Cultivating Joy and the Power of Living in Alignment
How can we tap into joy and align our lives with what truly brings us happiness? Join me as I share the transformative power of meditation and gratitude, and how starting the day off with a gratitude practice can help us tap into our intuition, manifest our goals, and invite more joy and ease into our lives. So, let's prioritize joy and create space for it in our daily lives – you deserve it!
Byron Katie's Work - https://thework.com
Enneagram Test - https://www.eclecticenergies.com/enneagram/test
Join our community on Instagram or Facebook!
Have any questions or comments?
Send me a note at hello@abundancewithease.com
Please share this episode with a friend and don't forget to rate, review and subscribe!
Join the FREE Everyday Magic Community here
If you're local to Philadelphia and want to know about upcoming in person events, DM "Philly" along with your name and email on Instagram
Join the Wildly Abundant Women private Facebook Group Here and connect with other amazing women just like you.
If you are feeling called for 1:1 support to help you get unstuck, clear the limiting beliefs, reprogram the subconscious mind, GET INTO ACTION and manifest a biz and life you love, you can apply to work with me here.
Want more abundance flowing into your day? Follow along on Instagram
Have any questions or comments?
Send me a note at jess@jess-hook.com
Please share this episode with a friend and don't forget to rate, review and subscribe!
Hello, welcome back to the Claim, Your Awesome podcast. I'm so excited that you're here. Today. We are going to be diving into one of my absolute favorite topics, my favorite topics to discuss, to explore, to just understand more of, and it's all about the power of joy. So there's a personality test called the Enneagram and it is one of the personality tests that I personally really love and I love to use this with my clients because it really shows more of a kind of like emotional look at how you manage emotions, what's important to you, how you kind of see the world and what kind of shapes. What kind of shapes some of the patterns and behaviors that you have, and I just find there to be so much wisdom in this test. I will definitely share it in the show notes. There's a free test online that you can take and it's really powerful, I think, but in this test I am a number seven and the seven is the enthusiast. So I think that that is also why I love joy so much. I think probably even somewhere in the Enneagram.
Speaker 1:It's like I just want people to feel joy, and that is so true, and I'm very unapologetic about it, and I know that joy may not be the best or the top emotion that everyone maybe wants to have or feel, but I personally find there to be so much power in joy, so much power when we just feel so good, and isn't that like really what we want? Like we want to feel really good and sometimes that is through a feeling of freedom or peace or love. There's all these emotions, but at the end of the day, yeah, we just want to feel really, really good and, yeah, i really want to dive into that more. Like how can we all foster and nurture, you know, more joy within ourselves? How do we make that something that's prioritized every day? and then the power that comes from this. So I want to start out by sharing a little bit of just kind of how I found this idea of joy and the power of it, and it really starts with kind of when I became a stay at home mom because of the pandemic and I was just in such a funk I feel like funk is not even a good enough word like it was such a challenging time for me. I was just feeling really depressed that I wasn't able to be as quote unquote productive as I want to be like. I really love creating and doing and I just felt like so stifled, you know, by just being in my house all the time, not being able to kind of create in a way that felt really good and nourishing for me.
Speaker 1:And really in that moment or in those moments, what I found and learned is that I just wasn't prioritizing myself. I had two really young kids at home. There's a pandemic going on. There was just a lot of crazy stuff happening and I was managing everyone else and really not prioritizing my own needs at that time. And when I finally woke up to, okay, if we're all going to get through this and stay happy, insane and you know everyone's gonna feel good on the other side of this like I need to start prioritizing myself and if I'm feeling good, everyone else is going to feel that and that's going to create, you know, more feelings of safety and love and joy, like in my family. It's just gonna be a ripple effect and it started with me. So I've shared this in previous podcasts.
Speaker 1:But I basically started waking up super early, because that was the only time that I had and I started doing a meditation practice and I started working out and also kind of in there. I really started doing like a daily gratitude practice and what I found was that I started to feel so freaking good like that. Those few little things and even though the workout yeah, like that was giving me a lot of energy, honestly, if it were just for the meditation and gratitude, i think those two things alone would have been huge for just how I felt emotionally and really fostering this like inner peace and joy within that. Yeah, just gave me like just a sustainable level of joy and it was so beneficial to me and really so powerful because ultimately, it has kind of led me to where I am today and wanting to be a coach and wanting to share this message and like wanting to just share the power of all of this and doing this work.
Speaker 1:So, with all of those things said, what I have come to realize after doing a lot of my own inner work and doing work with clients is prioritizing joy is so hard, especially for women. We take a lot of responsibility on ourselves, like we are responsible for our kids and sometimes we're over responsible in a lot of areas in our lives and we put a lot on our plate and I'm sure you can relate. We carry a lot of people's expectations and in all of that, it's really hard to prioritize our own time. And I'm not always just talking about, like, self care you know, going to get a massage and that sort of thing is great and beautiful and that's part of it but more importantly, it's about doing things that really feel good and nourishing for you, things that really light you up, things that, yeah, things that just really bring you joy. Prioritizing space in your day, really every single day, to do those things, because they're so nourishing and that just feels so good, especially when you're then making the conscious effort to prioritize yourself. You're showing up for yourself, you're showing up to do something good for yourself, and that just adds to just like these, the feelings of joy that come about when you're making time for this.
Speaker 1:Again, as I've worked with clients, what I realize in even I had to check myself on this a little bit is a lot of women have guilt around this. I mean, i remember even like thinking back to some of these earlier days, my husband was obviously still working, but I felt that, okay, i'm not, i'm the one that is not working right now, so I need to just be like so dedicated to running my household and my kids and helping with everything that. That leaves very little time for myself And unfortunately that is just, oh my gosh, like that's a whole separate podcast conversation. But you know, generationally, genetically, like that has just been kind of passed down. You know, for women, just this belief that those are some of our roles. Again, even logically we may not know that, like, again, it's in our genes, it's like subconsciously programmed, that those are the things that we need to be doing. Right, we need to be prioritizing our family's needs before ours And again, especially like if our husband is working, then we need to be taking on the roles of the household. And me and my husband, we have very equal roles in our house. And still, i was like falling victim to some of these thoughts. So it's so easy to fall into. But the truth is that when you do the work to show up for yourself and prioritize your own needs, everything else improves in your house, like your relationship with your partner, your relationship with your kids, how you're able to be more present, hold space for everyone else and everyone else's emotions. It all gets better when you can prioritize this for yourself.
Speaker 1:For me in that moment, it was almost like I was forced to make a decision, to prioritize myself, and I think that sometimes that's how things happen, right, you either have this nice long road to this realization, to something having to change, or you're like, forced into the change and either way works And it's just all about your experience and your journey. And for me, in those moments, i really felt like I was forced. It was if I'm going to get out of my funk, if I'm going to stop being like irritable and resentful of my family, i need to do this for myself, and it was exactly the change that I needed to take. So if you're struggling with this, or if this resonates with you and you're like, yes, i love this, i need this, but how do I break out of this pattern, the first thing I would invite you to do is just start to get really curious about the thoughts and the beliefs and the judgments that you're currently having around, whether it be the guilt, the over responsibility, not feeling like you can prioritize yourself, all of those things.
Speaker 1:Because when you start to question it, when you start to really kind of peel back some of the layers, some of the judgments that you think maybe your spouse, your kids, your family, your boss, whomever has around you for doing whatever it is you feel maybe guilty about doing, whether it be taking more time for yourself, or maybe it's not working late anymore at your job. Whatever it is, some of those judgments that you think other people are having, ironically, are actually the judgments that you have about yourself. And when you can do the work to really understand, and when you can do the work to realize that it is so freeing because you're like, oh my gosh, none of what I thought was true was really true, this was never really about me. Like all of the pressure, all the things, all the things I thought people were thinking about me, like they just weren't thinking that, like it wasn't about me. It's about the judgments I'm putting on myself, it's about the ego making up these stories. And again, once you can do that work to realize that it is so incredibly freeing, it feels so good, because then you have this new lightness about you, because you're not burdened by just the weight of other people's expectations, the weight of the world, the weight of your own over responsibility for all of the different areas in your life, and that alone starts to create more joy, because you're able to release all of that you're able to let go and it feels so good to let that go. That is one of the most freeing things. And if you want to dive into this a little bit more on your own and understand some of these questions that you can ask yourself and how to look at some of these beliefs, there is this beautiful work from Byron Katie, called The Work, and you can go into her website and she has free tools and that's a lot of the tools that I use.
Speaker 1:But Byron Katie lived with severe depression for a really, really, really long time And finally she figured out that when she was believing certain thoughts of hers, she felt really bad, but when she wasn't, she could feel a little bit better And she started to get really curious about that and started to realize that it is truly our thoughts that create a reality and we have power over that. And she wrote she's since written multiple books about this. She speaks on this topic. You can follow her on Instagram. She goes into prisons to speak about this. It's incredibly influential And I think it's just such a powerful way to, yeah, really reframe the thoughts and question what is true And when you see that again, so many of the things that you were initially thinking were real really aren't.
Speaker 1:They're just your perception. And again, when you can come to that realization and that knowing it just gets so much easier and so much more fun and so much more lighter because, yeah, there's no longer that expectation there, you're realizing that all of those things were simply things that you were putting on yourself. So if they were things that you were putting on yourself, they're things that you can break free from And then again that just opens you up to all of these new ideas and possibilities. So we were just covering the idea of prioritizing joy, how to create more of that in your day, and I want to just kind of reinforce the idea that as you're doing this, making sure you're doing things that again feel really nourishing for you.
Speaker 1:One thing that I love again I think I talk about it almost every episode is meditation. It is so, so, so good for you. It's so powerful, like quieting your mind, reconnecting to your inner essence and just letting yourself be in those moments, like just being without doing is so powerful and so so important, connecting more to your feminine energy. And as good as it feels sometimes to just get home and like plop down on the couch and, you know, watch Netflix after the kids go to bed, and there is a time and place for that. And I'm not undermining that. But doing the work to do something that really feels good to you will serve you so much more.
Speaker 1:I remember when I was working in an office, i would always this is even before I had kids I remember I would always have like these really big things that I wanted to do when I get home, like work on whatever side business I was working on just do all of the things right. Like just had so many creative ideas that I was feeling so energized when I was at work to do the things I wanted to do when I get home. Then I get home and I'm just like so depleted from the day that I just didn't feel like doing anything And I wouldn't. And it would just be like this vicious cycle of like getting up the next morning doing it all again and then really beating myself up because for some reason I couldn't get the motivation at night to do the things you know that I wanted to do And it was really really frustrating for me.
Speaker 1:So trying to get to a space where you're not like so worried about the doing, but just allowing yourself to be more in the being phase, the being stage. Because, again, when you're just allowing yourself to be ironically, you do more. Ironically, you create more space for other things. You open up your awareness to allow in the inspiration, the insights, the creative thoughts, the whatever it is that actually are going to move you forward to whatever next place, next level you wanna be at. And it's more in the being that you get there than the doing. Yes, the doing is important, because then you know you wanna take kind of that inspired and aligned action, but when we're forcing getting there it's so much harder. So, yeah, doing things that feel really good and nourishing for you are what is going to serve you in the long run. And next I wanna move on to something that I learned so much later in this journey around joy. But it is something that is so, so, so important.
Speaker 1:And I don't know if you, any of you, have seen the movie Inside Out. My kids recently had it on, so it's kind of like refreshing my memory of the story. And in that movie, joy. You know the emotion, joy, that lives inside the little girl. She just wants you know her to be happy and joyful all the time and like that is her mission. And I feel like that definitely, like would have been me, i like would have fallen into that category And I still do. I still wanna be able to be happy and joyful.
Speaker 1:But what we actually realized by the end of the movie is that it's through sadness that she comes back to her joy. And it's so easy And I'm speaking for myself so easy for me to want to push down the emotions that don't serve me. In the past, i would have really like, not wanted to sit in negative emotion. I definitely was the kind of person that was like everything's gonna be okay. You know, i'm just gonna get past this and it's all gonna be okay. And again, i still believe that. I still believe that life is always working out for us And I still really, really believe that. But what I realized is that in not allowing the negative emotion, yes, you can get back to joy, but that it's not as sustainable and that will always come back up.
Speaker 1:So what I have found to be just so incredible and something that I feel like has really provided just like the sustainable level of joy and ease and peace, is embracing whatever emotion you're having, when you're having it like for as long as it needs to pass, and embracing the emotion and stewing or looping in the emotion are two different things. So if you're feeling frustrated with someone, looping in the emotion is like replaying the story in your mind about why you're frustrated with them. You're replaying what happened. You're replaying the conversation, the argument, the disagreement, the scenario, et cetera. You're replaying that story in your mind. By embracing it, you're dropping the story. You're feeling that emotion in your body and you are just letting it be there. And typically it only takes about 90 seconds to let that emotion go. But being fully present with any emotion that you're feeling, just again breathing into it, just allowing it to be there, not trying to change it, it just starts to go away and it's just like this beautiful feeling. And you can do this with every single emotion that you're having, with overwhelm, with sadness, stress again, anything that you're feeling. You can do this. Some things may take a little bit longer, but the more you practice this, the easier it gets and the better you get at it, even in and this isn't really even so much like kind of in joy and on the emotional side.
Speaker 1:But I even discovered the power of this through meditation. I remember having kind of like a cramp or something in my back that like for weeks I just hadn't gone away and it was really frustrating And I was like I'm gonna just again like be with this sensation in my body, i'm gonna breathe into, you know, this kind of pain in my back, just sending like positive energy there, and literally after a couple of days of meditation it was gone and I haven't had it since. And that is a little bit different, like I was breathing in positive energy. I was in that moment kind of like wanting to change that sensation and make it go away. And you know, actually it still did work. This is kind of before I again got really into some of the inner work and I was just testing things and playing around.
Speaker 1:But so often we just need to like presence, our emotions, and just be with them, like they just want to be heard. Sometimes I even say things like what do I need from this moment? Or like what is this sensation trying to tell me? Or like what do I need to know? And it's almost just like giving that emotion the attention that it needs, just again giving presence to it, like that's actually all it needs, right? And then, once you embrace it fully, you can let it go And then you move on and you again just feel so much lighter, so much lighter. It's just a really simple and powerful tool.
Speaker 1:So, as I mentioned before, when I really kind of started this journey out of need, out of necessity, i was doing meditation and I started gratitude practice And my gratitude practice was in the morning, before I even got out of bed. I would think of three very specific things that I was grateful for. And when you do this and you're specific and you really feel into the emotion of what you're grateful for and just feel into the memory of the gratitude, like you actually transport yourself back to that emotion, you get to relive it and just feel so good And the brain actually doesn't know the difference between something that actually happened or a future thing that you're being grateful for, or if you can really lean into this vision of something. Like your brain doesn't know what is actually reality like if it happened, if it didn't happen. And the reason that I say this and the reason that gratitude is so important is it is a great tool as you start to manifest things that you want in your life, like leaning into the vision, really feeling into the vision of what you want, with gratitude, so as if it has already happened and I shared this on a previous episode kind of a very simple way that I use this was kind of accidentally I didn't kind of know all of this at the time, but giving my body gratitude when I was kind of actually feeling really down about it after not losing the weight from my second child my baby weight And instead I had chosen to give my body like gratitude and love and how that transformed me, being able to show up for my body and ultimately like lose the weight that I wanted to lose and cultivate a workout routine that I still stick to, et cetera. So just gratitude being so important and it can be really whatever you want it to be like. If you love to journal, doing your gratitude in a journal is a great practice.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's hard to find specific things that we're grateful for, so can you lay in bed in the morning and just be so grateful for how good your pillow feels, or the night of sleep that you have, or the birds chirping out of your window or the sun coming through. You know just what can you be grateful for? And in those moments, as you're expressing that gratitude, just yeah, really just feeling it, just letting yourself soak it all in and be with it. Because the more connected to that gratitude and that positive emotion you are, the more you will feel your energetic vibration raise and, ultimately, the more in alignment you are. Things just start to get easy, things just start to show up, synchronicities happen, like it just becomes so fun, and then you just realize like, oh, it's just like this playful fun game and like what can I think about today? What can I create, what can I do, and there's so much joy in that, it's so fun.
Speaker 1:I think we, somewhere along the way, like forgot to have fun. Like we became adults and we just thought we had to go to work and we had all these expectations and society has told us that we need to do things a certain way and we just forgot about fun. Yeah, i think there are some people out there who have jobs that they love and creatives who, you know, are maybe creating music or designers different things. Maybe they're having fun, but even then, like there's so many people who I think are just even stuck in taking everything so seriously, so like, how can we just have a little bit more fun? And it's way easier to have more fun from a place of gratitude and being in alignment and just being just so connected to just really the energy of life, cause there's so much power there, there's so much insight and wisdom and yeah, when you're aligned with that just makes everything easier And really you show up differently.
Speaker 1:You show up differently for yourself, you show up differently for your family, for your job, and then, like what beauty comes from that, like there's so much available to you if you open yourself up to that And it's, yeah, just so much fun. It's like just like this very playful way of being, and you realize like, oh, didn't actually have to take everything so seriously. I thought I did, i, you know, i thought that you know society has told me that like I have to just work really hard and do this and show up in this way And you're like, oh, all I had to do was like be a little bit more and stop doing so much. And then in the being and in the gratitude and in the joy, like things actually just get so much easier. So, yeah, really inviting you If you don't already have a gratitude practice to start it.
Speaker 1:I know some people that I've talked to or like listened to on other podcasts. They do like a gratitude rampage And that's where they literally like they'll just give themselves five or 10 minutes and just go on a rampage about all the things that they're grateful for. And it really is amazing when you start your day in this way And again you have to do it first thing in the morning. You have to do it before all of the thoughts of what you have to do today come through, all of the like thoughts of anything that was frustrating for you yesterday, like you have to start your day this way, otherwise, like those negative emotions so quickly creep in. But by doing this first thing in the morning and the more you do this daily, it's like those negative things, like they just start to get drowned out. And yeah, sometimes things still happen, of course, but they're not as frustrating, they're not as de-abilitating or you can handle them and deal with them with just more like ease and grace and flow. They don't seem to be as much of a hindrance to your day And again it just feels so good when you can go through the day like not frustrated, not stuck in the overwhelm of everything.
Speaker 1:So what can you be grateful for? Can you just allow yourself first thing in the morning to find a few things to be grateful for, whether super specific or not. And then I want to invite you, as you do this, notice what changes in your day. You'll have thoughts about something, maybe you have a thought about an old friend, and then they give you a call or send you a text and all these little synchronicities start to happen And it's just again, it's just so fun, and you just feel the energy in your body rise. It just feels different, right, it just feels lighter and easier. Then again, what can you create from that space? Maybe from a place of gratitude? you're actually just able to create more space for yourself in a way that's really nourishing. This is not specifically about being in gratitude and feeling really good to do more, but what can you create from a again like a more feminine energy, like a place that just feels really good and light and easy. So I hope this was super helpful. Again, i love the power of joy.
Speaker 1:So, as you do this, as you, whether it's through, again, meditation, gratitude, really embracing those emotions, exactly where you are, whatever practice you want to start implementing again, really starting to notice the changes that happen for you And start to notice the insights that start to come in for you. The more aligned we are, the more connected to our own being, the more we open ourselves up to receive, again, like those insights that are just going to serve us, like so powerfully in the long run. And everyone's journey is a little different And I don't know, obviously, what that looks like for each and every one of you, but maybe you can even set an intention. Is there something that you want to unfold for you? Is there something that you're trying to manifest? Is there just something that you want more guidance around?
Speaker 1:The more you focus on prioritizing joy and being in alignment because, ultimately, like that's what joy is right. It's like being so aligned that we yeah, our energy level, our vibration, is higher And when we're in this place of alignment, in this place of just, like acceptance of everything that is and just, we're present and we're feeling really good, we open ourselves to receive all of the insights that are going to guide us to where we want to be. But when we are stuck again in the stress and the overwhelm and the expectations that we think other people have of us and all of the other lower level or lower vibration emotions. When we are living in that place, we can't hear, we can't be a channel for the insights that we need to really like elevate ourselves and get to where we, you know, ultimately want to be or what we ultimately want to create. So that's where it's so important to be in this place of alignment.
Speaker 1:Open yourself up to receiving all of these ideas that are coming through, like maybe you're, you know, really feeling called to do something bigger, but you're not quite sure what that looks like for you, or that feels really scary to even admit what that might look like And you certainly don't want to share it with anyone else because God forbid what they're going to think and the judgments they're going to have And again, the ego right just starts to like fill our brain with all of these thoughts And they're just not true. So when you're in alignment, you get these insights, they start to feel really good because you feel really good. So you're aligning with the things that you want to attract, the good things that you want to attract, and from that place it's like, oh my gosh, that insight that just came in. That feels so good, that's so interesting. I like kind of had like a little inkling of that, but now I'm more clear, i'm more open to receiving that now. I can explore it a little bit more now, more curious about it, now I'm ready to take action on that and it's just like this ripple effect and it's so beautiful and it's so fun and gets so much easier because again, in this place of alignment, you no longer care like what other people's judgments are about it.
Speaker 1:First of all, you realize that mostly they're your own judgments, they're not theirs. And secondly, like you're so lit up by feeling good, you're so lit up by the insights that you're having, you're so lit up by wanting to follow these creative impulses that you simply just you're not worried about all of that other noise anymore. You just go out in the world and you're creating and you're feeling so good and you're just like a light to everyone else and you're again now you're more present for your family and you're showing up better in so many other ways, your relationships improving because you're feeling so good and you're following what feels nourishing to you and you're following these little insights and you're having fun and you're letting go of everything else and it's, and it just gets so beautiful and then you get to show someone else that that's also possible for them because you're doing it and you're paving the way for that and you know, maybe now you're making more money than you ever thought that you could because you're doing something that you love and now you're able to create, you know, bigger impact because you love philanthropy and you're wanting to share some of that and you're buying things that are from sustainable businesses and and you're helping the pollution problem. I know I'm going on this really long tangent and it could feel a line for you or not, but I'm just giving you as an example. Like the world needs you to find your joy, the world needs you to prioritize joy and living in alignment so that you can live a life that's true to you, because when you do that, the world gets better. You are showing others that they can do that as well and you're helping cultivate a more conscious community. You're creating a bigger impact and that's my mission. It might not be yours, you. You might not even realize that you have a bigger mission yet, but, selfishly, that is my, my bigger mission and really it, it doesn't matter, like you don't need to have a mission of having a bigger impact.
Speaker 1:You showing up in your truth and in your power and having fun and living in joy is going to make a huge impact, no matter what, and it's also going to be a lot of freaking fun and you're gonna feel so good and you're gonna be like why did it take me so long to learn this? I hope you got something out of this today. I hope it resonates with you and I hope you take some time to really figure out how can I prioritize a little more joy for myself today. Can I start cultivating that gratitude practice in the morning? can I set aside five minutes before I get out of bed to do that? and again, can I start embracing just where I am in this moment, embracing all of the emotions, embracing wherever you are, exactly where you are. It's all valid, it's all okay, it's all meant to serve you. I hope you have a beautiful, beautiful day and I hope you find lots of joy.