What Does "Love Your Life On Purpose" Mean?

 What does it really mean to "Love Your Life On Purpose"? In this episode, I break down the deeper meaning behind the phrase, clarify what it’s not, and share how it can become an attainable, empowering way of life—even in the messy, complex moments. 

I’ll guide you through the powerful themes of intentional living, self-compassion, and embracing the “and” of joy and grief, fun and serious work. 

Plus, I offer three reflective questions to help you explore where you might be out of alignment and ready for a shift.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What “Love Your Life On Purpose” doesn’t mean (hint: it’s not toxic positivity or perfection)
  
  
• How this phrase can guide you through transitions and rediscovery
  
  
• Why intentional living doesn’t have to come with judgment or guilt
  
  

3 essential questions to help realign with your purpose and joy

Download the Self-Care Cheat Sheet

Join the community: Love Your Life on Purpose

Prefer to watch on YouTube (be sure to subscribe!)

Connect with me and DM me your aha moment, question, or to say hi!
IG: @michellevandehey
FB: Michelle Vande Hey
LI: Michelle Vande Hey

Transcript

 What does love your life on purpose mean? That is the name of this podcast, that is the name of my Facebook community,  it sounds like it makes sense. And it's easy to understand, but I also feel like, what do people really think this means?

So I thought this would be a great episode to talk about that.  And this idea of loving your life on purpose might sound nice, but it also might feel like it's this unattainable thing. So in this episode I'll share with you what I mean when I say love your life on purpose and that this is something that's approachable, meaningful, and attainable, and by the end.

You'll know if you're meant to be here or if this is not a space for you, .  At the end I will give you three questions to ask yourself so you can figure out where you're currently out of alignment with loving your life on purpose.    📍  After a lifetime of always prioritizing everyone else's needs over your own, do you feel like you don't know who you are anymore?  You're moving into this next phase of your life or maybe going through a life transition. Maybe your kids are getting older, parents are aging. Your career or your partner relationships are changing and you're saying to yourself.

I'm lost, or maybe you're saying, who am I? You are not alone. It is time to prioritize yourself and power your mission. It's time to love your life on purpose. I'm Michelle Vande, hay certified holistic life coach and trauma-sensitive yoga facilitator to mission-driven leaders around the world. Creating more impact without burning out.

So let's explore who you are and rediscover who you want to become because you are worth it.    If you are new to my channel, I put out a new episode every two weeks on Tuesdays about living intentionally letting go of guilt and loving your life on purpose. So be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode or follow wherever you're listening to or watching this. 

 In this episode we're going to talk about what does love your life on purpose mean? And I thought one of the things we could do is actually start with what does love your life on purpose? Not mean ? So. Love your life on purpose does not mean that nothing in your life goes wrong.

It doesn't mean that everything is just easy and carefree, that you don't have any problems or bad things don't happen to you. I'm not here trying to like tell you that everything is easy and great with my life or yours.  The other thing that it is not.

Is toxic positivity,  which is something I really had to learn about myself many years ago, and is a challenging thing for me because my number one strength from the Clifton strengths finders is positivity. So it's so easy for me to go to the positive and it's also something I've been really intentional with, making sure I'm not doing that.

And so if you ever notice me,  being positive where it feels like it's toxic, you are welcome to call me out on it. Loving your life on purpose also does not mean that you never get in arguments with your partners or your kids, or your coworkers, or your employees or your volunteers or whoever. 

Life things are still gonna happen. You're still gonna get in arguments, you're still gonna get mad, you're still gonna get angry. All of these things. And so you might be like, well, Michelle, it doesn't sound really great. So what, why would we wanna love our life on purpose? Let me tell you.

So what does love your life on purpose mean?  Love. Your life on purpose is fluid. A couple overarching themes with loving your life on purpose, and then we can dive into it a little bit.

And then at the end I'll share the three questions to ask yourself to figure out, am I in alignment or am I out of alignment with loving my life on purpose? So the big thing is  we explore,  

embodying new ways of being and then evolving and elevating yourself, everyone around you. So those are some of the overarching themes. The other overarching theme is living in the, and my favorite thing, my Amber Sand sign, have it almost everywhere. It's in my logo  is embracing the and which

it can be easier said than done because our brains are actually wired to want to know what to do and what not to do, or what is right and what is wrong. Do this and get that result. It's so much easier when we know that this thing is gonna get you this result, and there are some things that you can do that, but when it comes to life, it's not always so simple.

It's not always this. Straight linear path. And so that is part of loving your life on purpose, is letting go of this idea that there's one right or wrong way to do things. There's one right or wrong way to love your life on purpose, and that's where sometimes I have a hard time with defining this because I am not the one who gets to tell you.

How you love your life on purpose, you get to decide that for you. You get to decide if you're loving your life and if you're doing it on purpose.

 A big thing with this living in the end, I became acutely aware of it after my son died and really tuning into this joy and grief that it's funny because when I started out in coaching, after I shifted out of health coaching, I was helping women after child loss.

And this, I used to have something up behind me that said joy and grief, and it was this reminder that I shouldn't have to feel guilty about being joyful while I'm also grieving my son. That there's space for both of those things.  The other big piece of this is prioritizing yourself and powering your mission letting go of that guilt of prioritizing your needs.

 Here's some of the ways where we embrace that and what love your life on purpose means. One is you can be doing serious work and have fun. You don't have to be serious all the time. Just because you're doing serious work, that doesn't mean you're not serious about your work.

If you're laughing and having fun, even while you're at work,  it's okay for you to laugh at yourself. And I often laugh at myself, and this is another big theme, is. Letting go of perfection. I don't even like that word, because who gets to decide what is perfect? So letting go of this idea of perfection and allowing for what's, oh my gosh.

The words that are coming to me are words I don't like, and allowing for flaws. 

We have to be so serious all the time. I touched on it already, is  you can want more, you can want to be better, you can want to do things bigger, and you can also be content with what you have. You can be content with where you are and want more, want better, want bigger, and that's okay.

And that's a big thing that I talked with clients about when I was doing the health coaching because a lot of times with health coaching people wanted to lose weight.  And one of the mindset shifts that we had to make is saying it's okay for you to want to look different, feel different,

and at the same time, one of the ways to expedite that process is to be okay with yourself that can take some deeper internal work, right? You can't just say it, you have to actually believe it. You have to be okay with fully loving who you are right now, while still saying, I wanna work to make things different.

I wanna work to elevate or evolve. Loving your life on purpose means being more intentional without being judgmental about  when you're not being intentional. Because doing things on purpose. Means being intentional, right? But that doesn't mean just because there's times when you're not being intentional that all of a sudden you're not loving your life on purpose.

 Loving your life on purpose is about allowing for all aspects of you to fill up your life and being okay with that.  And what one example, I think, especially right now with where we're at, is being a consumer. So we are trying to be, we have been for a while. Be more intentional about where we're spending our money.

What are these companies doing with their money? And  I don't have the capacity to take on extra stress right now to overly stress about where I'm buying things. For example, target,  one of people's favorite places they got rid of their DEI initiatives, which I think is so dumb. 

But that's neither here nor there. So we're doing less shopping there and there are certain things that I get at Target that I can't get anywhere else, that I'm still gonna buy from Target and I'm also looking at some of the businesses that are in Target. That would be black owned, women owned, marginalized owned companies that sell their stuff at Target that I'm supporting.

Through Target as well.  So what we're doing is we're trying to buy less groceries at Target and  eliminate groceries from Target, but we're still gonna buy other things and we're gonna look other places first before we go there. But then if we do have to go there, I'm not gonna feel guilty about it.

So that's what I mean about you can be more intentional without being judgemental.  To yourself when you're not being this like quote unquote, intentional or this, that's goes back to like the right or wrong, good or bad, you're not a bad person for shopping at Target,   and you can be a more intentional, conscious consumer without feeling the guilt when you're not being intentional.

 Another aspect of loving your life on purpose is being curious. Curiosity with yourself, curiosity with other people, and being willing  to learn to laugh, to love to let go all else. I love it. But that's really right. That's another piece of it.  Learn, laugh, love, and let go.

And that goes into. The last one here before we get into the three questions is forgiveness.  And that's really what letting go means. It's forgiving. Forgiving yourself, forgiving other people, forgiving God or your spiritual connection, whatever that is. Forgiveness is a big part of loving your life on purpose, because if we're holding grudges, there's no way you can love your life on purpose

so if being intentional, creating new habits and shifting your mindset feels. Like a lot, it can be challenging to do on your own, especially when we're hearing all of these conflicting things, divisive messages right now. There's so much divisiveness going on, and that's one of the reasons I created my own community for mission-driven people like you.

So you can have a space where. You are welcome to show up as yourself that we cheer each other on and we are being intentional and we are creating space for all of these beautiful things, while also allowing ourselves to be called out and called in. Like I said  earlier in this episode,  , if I am enabling toxic positivity,  please call me out because I don't want to do that. So it's a space where we have that loving calling out of each other as well. And it's also a space for connection and collaboration. That's one of my favorite things to do, is to see people that I connected and they're doing something together. They're supporting each other, they're sponsoring each other's events, whatever that looks like.

So you can do that by going to love your life on purpose.com to join this community of other mission-driven leaders.

Or you can go to Facebook and search Love your Life on purpose,  and then as a bonus, you'll get my brand new self-care cheat sheet with 20 self-care habits that take five minutes or less so that you can start them today.  Go to Love Your Life on purpose.com  to join the group and get your cheat sheet.

Okay, let's get to these three questions to ask yourself to figure out. Are you currently out of alignment with loving your life on purpose?  Question number one.  What lights you up right now?   So this might be a time to pause and reflect if you're able to write things down.

Question number two.  What feels heavy that I've been tolerating right now?  What is something I've been tolerating that's been weighing on me? Because I've been tolerating it  and silencing myself to protect the comfort of those around me.

Then the third question, where am I living on autopilot?

And maybe a caveat to that question, or in addition to where am I living on autopilot, that I'm sick of living on autopilot in that area of my life, because sometimes we're on autopilot for survival or we're on autopilot because we're running on all cylinders.  Those are your three questions to figure out where are you currently out of alignment with loving your life on purpose.

I so appreciate each and every one of you for listening to this episode. You are welcome to connect with me on social media wherever you are listening to this, remember to subscribe, follow leave a five star review if that's available. Share it with a friend who needs to hear this and always remember. You are Worth it!