Episode 50: Finding Yourself Inside Your Life - Protect Your Joy

A Soulful Mom’s Wisdom

Protect Your Joy

On this episode of A Soulful Mom’s Wisdom, Africa O. gets real about the cost of building something meaningful when the pace becomes unsustainable. Episode 50 is a candid, personal account of what burnout actually looks and feels like from the inside — not as a dramatic crash, but as a slow, quiet erosion of the things that matter most. This conversation sits within season seven’s theme of finding yourself inside your life, and this month’s focus on the balancing act of navigating identity while being a mom and building a wellness platform.

At the heart of this episode is an important distinction: happiness and joy are not the same thing. And when you’re pouring from an empty cup — building, creating, and showing up for everyone else — it’s your joy that quietly pays the price.

Theme: Finding Yourself Inside Your Life (Month 1 — The Balancing Act)

This month’s conversations continue to explore what it means to hold on to yourself while holding everything else. The balancing act isn’t just about time management — it’s about recognizing when the pace of building something is working against the very values that inspired you to build it in the first place.

Quote

“Happiness is fleeting. But joy is not. And you cannot build something sustainable on a foundation that is costing you your joy.” — Africa O.

Episode Summary

Africa opens by drawing an important distinction between happiness and joy — two words that are often used interchangeably but represent very different experiences. Happiness is tied to moments, adrenaline, and highs. Joy is a deeper, more rooted state. When she reflects on the early seasons of building her wellness platform, she recognizes that a lot of what she was chasing was the adrenaline of creation — the excitement of launching, filming, and producing — not necessarily the sustainable joy of it.

She then walks through the real, granular details of what burnout looked like in her daily life: consuming more coffee than usual, falling asleep in coffee shops (which, as she notes, is basically unheard of for her), losing quality time with her partner, and feeling too tired to even sleep. She describes a slow buildup where she was juggling her podcast, YouTube channel, one-on-one coaching, fitness classes, blogs, and all the behind-the-scenes work of marketing and research, all while being a mom with limited outside support and no nearby family.

Eventually, she hit a wall. She went from always being “on” to experiencing a kind of paralysis — unable to film, unable to edit, backlog growing, motivation gone. That’s when she knew it was time for a real check-in. She began examining her cognitive function, her physical and emotional wellbeing, her wellness routines, and her family’s health as a whole. She recognized that the very tools she uses to maintain her health — journaling, meditating, exercising, reading… were the first things to go when life got too full.

The episode closes with a direct, grounding takeaway: identify what is costing you your joy. Not with judgment, but with honesty. Reflect on what has brought you genuine fulfillment and ask yourself what is standing between you and that experience. And then protect it…  because if you don’t, the cost will compound over time.

Episode Highlights

• The important distinction between happiness (fleeting, adrenaline-driven) and joy (sustainable, rooted)

• An honest look at what burnout actually felt and looked like day to day

• The slow buildup: extra coffee, missed partner time, falling asleep in public, creative paralysis

• The reality of building a multi-faceted wellness platform with limited support

• How the first things to disappear during burnout were the very wellness practices that sustain her

• The value of journaling and reflection as data, a way to track patterns over time

• Examining cognitive, physical, emotional, and family functioning as part of a serious self-check-in

• The realization that you cannot pour from an empty cup… especially not into a wellness platform

• A practical takeaway: identify what is costing you your joy, without judgment, and protect it

Make sure you explore more health & wellness insights and coaching opportunities at liveafricao.com. Stay connected for more episodes of A Soulful Mom’s Wisdom.

Please be sure to rate and review the podcast. You are greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Transcript

[INTRO]

Welcome to A Soulful Mom’s Wisdom. I’m Africa O., your host and Wellness Guide. Each episode, I open with a quote that has shaped my own life journey in a positive way and explore how that same wisdom can uplift and do the same for you. This is a space for moms who are ready to reconnect with who they are beyond motherhood. Pull up a chair. Pour your coffee. Let’s get into it.

[EPISODE]

Hello, beautiful people. Welcome back to another episode of A Soulful Mom’s Wisdom. I’m Africa O., I am the host of A Soulful Mom’s Wisdom. And I am so excited to dive into another conversation with you all centered around wellness, lived experiences, and this safe space we’ve created together. Hopefully this information will elevate your day. And as always, if it does, don’t be shy… feel free to go over to buymeacoffee.com to support, or feel free to leave me a review, reshare this content, whatever you feel led to do. I appreciate your support. Now let’s dive into this episode.

So we are in season seven. The theme for season seven is finding yourself inside your life. And in this particular month of season seven, we are exploring quotes centered around the balancing act and my personal experience navigating identity while being a mom and building Live Africa O., which is my wellness platform.

In today’s episode, episode 50, I’m going to open with a quote that I saved in my quote bank. I’ve shared this with you all before, but I keep quotes. I have a lot of them. I do a lot of reading, a lot of processing. I’m an analytical thinker and an integrative processor, so I pull concepts from a lot of different places. I get inspired by so many things. I don’t have a perfectly organized system yet for storing all of the quotes I come up with, but I’m getting better at it. This particular quote came from my Samsung Notes folder — shout out to Samsung, no Team iPhone over here. Okay, let me get back on task. Here’s the quote, by me:

Happiness is fleeting. But joy is not. And you cannot build something sustainable on a foundation that is costing you your joy.

That’s deep. It really is. You know, sometimes you write something and you come back to it and you think — yes, that’s exactly why I put it in my quote bank. When I think about this quote and how it has informed my life, happiness and joy come to mind immediately. And they are not the same thing, contrary to popular belief.

I also think about the adrenaline I experienced when I was first really trying to get my podcast off the ground… when I was launching and even before then, when I was pumping out workout videos and just really enjoying the creation of my platform. There was a lot of adrenaline, a lot of highs. And then came the burnout that followed those late nights, and basically being a zombie the next day.

And that’s the data, right? When you really pause and look at your journal… that’s why you keep a journal. But even if you just pause and do a quick reflection over the last week, two weeks, or even the last couple of days… that’s when you really start to gather data. And what was the data revealing for me? Well, I’m going to tell you.

First, I started thinking about my trade-offs. I’m sure you’re familiar with this concept — essentially, what are you willing to give up for this other thing? And then I started asking: is it worth it? These were the questions I was sitting with as I reflected on what I had experienced while building my wellness platform as a mom.

For more context: I have one child and I am married, so I do have some support. But I don’t have grandparents nearby… actually, I don’t have any grandparents in the state I live in. I have about one or two people, outside of a sitter I use occasionally, who help. In general, I have some help, and I am so grateful for it. But I don’t have a lot. I just want to put that out there.

Living within those circumstances, and then also trying to build a wellness platform with multiple entities under it… my podcast, my YouTube channel, my coaching practice, fitness classes, blogs — all of that makes up Live Africa O. I am very passionate about all of it. But the journey of doing all of this, marketing it, and managing everything involved really took a toll on me.

And I want to be honest and say — it wasn’t an immediate cause and effect. It wasn’t like I went on four hours of sleep one night and then fell apart the very next day at a playdate. No, it wasn’t that direct, at least not initially. It was more gradual. Over time, I noticed I was consuming more coffee. My boundary is one small coffee a day. I found myself having two. And then I started trying to change up my environment for energy, going to a coffee shop and I started falling asleep even there. If you know me, you know that is basically impossible. Falling asleep in a coffee shop? That was a sign something was really off.

I also started having less and less time with my partner. My partner travels for work, so when we do have time together, we’re trying to make the most of it — especially with a child in the mix. I started noticing how often I was turning down movie nights, saying “no shows tonight, I’m just going to keep working on this a little longer.” Between that and being too tired to even sleep, I was at my wit’s end. Something had to change.

On top of all of that, I was already managing doctor’s appointments, activities, grocery runs… the usual weekly logistics. But now I felt even more pressure to move quickly through all of it so I could get back to creating content, editing, marketing, and doing research. It was a lot. I was always trying to schedule the next social post or edit the next workout video. And eventually, I didn’t want to do any of it. I got to a point of near-paralysis. Things that had been sitting in my backlog for months just stayed there. Simple things became harder to work through. That’s burnout.

I even shared in a previous blog and episode, I think it was titled something like “Surrender Your Life”...  about the experience of falling asleep in a coffee shop parking lot. That was real. And all of that together is what made me pause and do a serious check-in.

What did that check-in look like? Primarily, I checked in on my health. I thought about my cognitive function, which is incredibly important to me. I need my mind working well…  I’m trying to take care of myself and show up for others. I also looked at my physical and emotional functioning. My wellness routines… exercising, journaling, meditating, reading, writing… are not just things I enjoy. They are genuinely critical to my health across all dimensions. When I’m not doing them consistently, my physical and emotional state are both negatively impacted. That’s a problem.

And then I thought about family functioning. I’m a strong believer that strong bonds lead to healthier relationships…  There is research that supports this and that those bonds ultimately lead to better health outcomes for everyone involved. So I started thinking about the moments I couldn’t get back, the times I wasn’t fully present with my daughter and my husband. There weren’t many, but if I had continued on that path, there would have been more. Permanently missed opportunities. And that weighed on me. Especially as someone who has lost both parents and who deeply values having a healthy, connected family.

Mindfulness is about being present. That’s why I meditate, why I journal, why I practice affirmations. But if I’m in zombie mode, I’m not truly present. And it’s a scary feeling to look back on a week, a month, or a year and not really know where it went. Time is too important to me for that.

So I had to get real with myself: there has to be a better way to do this. What I was doing was not sustainable. And the premise of my entire platform — Live Africa O. — is to help moms prioritize their mental wellness through sustainable joy. I was creating wellness resources while quietly losing the essence of what wellness actually is. The goal is to pour into myself so that I can pour into others. You cannot pour from an empty cup.

[TAKEAWAY]

So what’s the takeaway? Let me circle back to the quote so we can close the way we opened.

Happiness is fleeting. But joy is not. And you cannot build something sustainable on a foundation that is costing you your joy.

I don’t know who needed to hear that, but I know I did… and I still have to remind myself of it.

If you take away anything from this episode, take away this: ask yourself, what is costing me my joy right now? Don’t judge it. When we judge something before we’ve even admitted it, we close the door on honesty. So just ask. It’s not always black and white. You may need to look at an old journal entry, or simply pause and reflect on something that made you genuinely smile recently… and then be honest about what is keeping you from experiencing that again.

Maybe it’s something as simple as a walk you used to take… five, ten minutes, to your stop sign and back, or around your neighborhood, or to the track in the morning. Something you noticed you genuinely enjoyed and somehow haven’t found time for in the last two months. And consider this: how does not having that thing in your life affect you long term? Mentally, physically, emotionally? The bottom line is this…  protect your joy.

[CLOSING]

Thank you again for listening. I really enjoy having this conversation with you. If you feel inclined, please feel free to give me a shout-out on social media by re-sharing this episode with someone you care about, giving me a follow on your podcast platform, or simply going over to buymeacoffee.com and buying your girl a coffee. All of it really helps me make the time to create this content, do the research, do the reflection, and just show up for you all. I enjoy this space so much, and I hope my experiences are pouring something positive into your life.

Stay tuned for the next episode for another candid conversation on A Soulful Mom’s Wisdom. Talk soon.

That’s a wrap on today’s episode of A Soulful Mom’s Wisdom. I hope this quote sat with you the way it sat with me. And if it challenged you, even just a little… good. That’s where the growth lives. You showed up for yourself today, and that matters.

If you’re ready to continue this journey, come find me at liveafricao.com. Until next time… you are seen, you are safe, and your joy is worth pursuing.