Ep. 13 Intentional Living

This is Lacey Jones. And this is Episode 13 Intentional Living. So this past week, I have had the most beautiful coaching sessions with my clients. And some of them, when I walk away, they just leave me thinking. And I've been helping my clients, a lot of them, with processing emotion, which is what we talked about on the podcast last week. And there was one in particular today, actually, that talked about more of an intentional choice within her relationships with others. And she wanted to set boundaries that were from a place of love and respect and not boundaries that were from a place of fear or anxiety.

And she was being really intentional about her boundaries and the reasons why she chose those boundaries and what it meant for her. It was just so beautiful. And so this week, I want to talk about intentional living and that it pairs, I believe, with processing our emotions and feeling those emotions first to make sure, as we move forward, we can create a new story with a very intentional emotion behind it, so that we can act from a place that we want to act from.

And it honors who we are or who we believe we are and the choices that we want to make and the results we want. And so to kind of dive into this, I kind of want to probably talk a little more personally than I expected to about some of the choices I've had to make over the years. But as I'm writing out these podcast episodes, this is kind of what just came out. So welcome. Thanks for joining the ride as we talk a little bit about intentional living and the choices I've been making.

So I was experiencing some stress and anxiety the other day, and my mind really had been racing about several things. Relationships with my kids, this continual state of construction that we have in our house right now for almost a year now, our bank account. Who doesn't worry or isn't aware of their bank account, and my coaching practice and business decisions and future employment possibilities, all the stuff that I would label as adult stuff. And I really had just fell off all day. And I was unable to focus on creating, which is really where I want to be right now within my own life, personal life, and within my business life.

I want to be creating content. I want to put things out into the world that have value and can help others. Well, I was feeling unable to focus, so I sat with that feeling and I actually curled up in a blanket and allowed myself to feel the anxiety as I scrolled away on my phone. Right, so there was a little bit of buffering going on, that buffering that we talked about last week as we process our emotions.

And I was definitely doing some of that while also trying to process and just allow and just sit with this anxiety and unknowingness, I guess. So after a bit, I realized I was feeling anxious as a result of my thoughts. I know, kind of a shocker. There something I teach and preach and these thoughts about the future and the work I have put into my business so far. So I'm sitting with it for a time and that was useful. But I also know that for myself, inspiration tends to come while I'm doing something. So I decided to use my anxious energy and work it out of my body by doing the dishes and laundry rather than just trying to create this business content that I was really trying to focus on.

And while I created order within the dish and kind of laundry realms of our home, the thought came to me that I'm not doing anything wrong right now, but rather I'm in the developing stages of creating this intentional life that I've been wanting and that it's going to take some time, it's going to take some work. And this seems like something I already know and it is something I already know. But at this time I was just feeling the weight of my self created doubt and I was carrying around this thought that somewhere along the way something not really sure what had gone wrong and that's where the weight was coming from.

Remember that 200 pound tractor tire that we talked about in one of the other episodes? Kind of that dirty pain that we add on top of a situation that isn't always necessary, right? I was carrying around the weight of that.

So I pondered on it and I started to see how nothing has gone wrong. That I'm actually in the stage of figuring things out and that I am making progress towards what I want for my relationships with my family members and what we want our house to be and the goals that we want for our bank account and this creation of my coaching practice that is all part of this intentional living.

And I was reminded that I can figure things out, I can create the results I want. And that rather than progressing downward, I am currently taking very deliberate steps upward towards our goals. Now, with this new thought, I really felt that weight of doubt just lift as hope settled back in and I so appreciated that reminder. I think hope has such a booing feeling, if that's the word. Right. It can really lift us up as we restore hope as we move forward.

So this thought of deliberately creating an intentional life led me to kind of reflect on our family's life up to this point and the moments when we have intentionally made choices to create this future that we want. And one of the main purposes of coaching really is moving forward by first figuring out the stories that we're clinging to that are keeping us stuck. So once we gain this awareness and we accept our role in it, we can work towards creating the life we want.

This is living a life of intention. It's all about moving forward and not just casually moving forward at the mercy of others, but rather intentionally moving forward in a way that creates and builds the life, the relationships, and just these hopes and dreams that we want. And as we come to understand and fully accept where we currently are, our role in where we are, we can proactively create that future. And I want to be very clear in stating that as we move forward and create the relationships, the future, the dreams, the life we want, it doesn't mean that we will be free from stress, anxiety, hardships, failure, and doubt.

It just means that when circumstances come along that we had previously struggled to move past and move through, we now have the tools to identify them, and we have the tools to process those stories that we create about them. And then we can move through the emotions so that we don't get stuck in the mud of uncertainty and doubt and failure once again.

So for me, living a more intentional life started after I stumbled into the coaching world. I would say up to that point, I had goals for myself, right when I was younger, wanted to go to school, wanted to graduate from high school, wanted to go to college, wanted to get married, and wanted a family. And we kind of got to that place, and I had a little more goals for myself and for our family. But for several years, it really felt like survival as we worked towards the next thing.

So I did the thing right, went to high school, went to college. Great. Check those things off the list. Got married, another check. Mark. We started having babies. Okay, check. Graduated from college while supporting my husband through his bachelor's degree and then his master's degree. Checkmark, checkmark, checkmark. Then we sought to find employment that fit within my husband's kind of personal and professional goals.

And things didn't go as planned, but you better believe we sure tried to make it work. And this checklist that we had just kind of fell apart. Well, during this time, we had moved to Seattle, and it was difficult, it was messy, and it was uncomfortable for me. There were so many unknowns for our family and so many new circumstances for me to process while also raising our family. And we really tried to find the humor in it all. We added our fifth baby to the mix just to kind of liven things up. And it just felt like this extra large dose of adulting. And I think in the grand scheme of things, we were progressing. But on the day to day, it felt more like we were just surviving as a family and trying to wade through all of the things. And we were still working towards some dreams while other dreams were being rewritten. It took us a couple of years to wade through all that crap, right? We made some big decisions and we were attempting to sort things out. Well, circumstances changed, I found coaching relationships ebbed and flowed. We welcomed many new people into our lives, and we closed necessary doors to others.

We experienced joyful moments along with sorrow and grief. And as I've been thinking about this topic of living with intention, I've tried to identify some key decisions that help direct us to where we are today. So a couple of years after we moved to Seattle, we purchased our first home. And I really think this is when life became more intentional for me.

We were putting down roots while creating a foundation of memories and connections for our kids and ourselves. And I continued to dig into coaching and seeking to improve myself so that I could show up in a way that I wanted to for my family. And shortly after moving into our new home, a friend introduced me to this way of eating that some may think is so extreme. But for me, it clicked and it freed up some much needed mental energy. Now, I share this not to say that this is something that you should do, but really just to share my personal journey as I've come to be more intentional. And part of that, for me, has been a little bit of self discipline, making those deliberate choices, even when I wanted to choose something else.

So my friend comes in, she introduces me to this way of eating. And a couple of months prior to that, I had stopped eating candy. Now, I love candy, so that wasn't easy by any means, but it was really just kind of this experiment just to see if I could overcome those desires and urges for candy. I love me a bag of Skittles or Mentos. And I think at this point in my life, if I had either one of those, my body would go into, like, some diabetic shock coma, right? I don't know if that's the medically correct term, but something would happen to my body. I would just be overloaded with sugar. But I made that choice and I cut candy out. I became a person who no longer eats candy. So a couple of months after that, my friend, she came and shared this new way of eating that eliminated flour and sugar altogether in any sort of food. And it increased my intake of veggies and balanced that with fruits and grains. And surprisingly, I was ready to give it a try.

And it actually didn't seem like such a foreign idea. I think it's bonkers when I look at it, but the time something just clicks, right? It just fits. So I again approached this change as another experiment to see if I could process those urges and desires. But I quickly saw health benefits. I was finally losing the baby weight that had crept on from the five babies. But the biggest benefit for me was a huge decrease in migraines. I used to get those migraines that start with, like, a flash in your vision or an aura in my eyesight, and I just knew that once that started, then about half an hour, that pain would just kick in.

So the occurrence of these migraines, it drastically diminished with my new food choices. So I kept going with it. Was it easy? No. Capital N? No. No way. It would? Absolutely not. I need to make that very clear, and I need to make it very clear that that's what worked for me.

I can't say that it will work for you. This is my experiment, and I'm sharing my experience. So with that, I love cookies, I love treats, and I love homemade treats and homemade bread. Is there anything better than, like, a homemade oatmeal butterscotch chip cookie made by your mom? My mom makes the best ones. Or even like a homemade oatmeal raisin cookie? I know that there's some strong opinions about oatmeal raisin cookies and whether or not they're a real cookie, but in my world, they were a very real, delicious cookie. What about a warm loaf of bread straight from the oven? You cut it, you slather it with butter and homemade jam, right? I can just taste it and smell it. These things are actually comfort foods for me. They remind me of my mom and my grandma. So when I cut those items out, I still desired those things.

But with time, I learned how to process that urge to eat them and allow that to move through me rather than to just give into them or resist them. A lot like emotions. Right. And to resist that urge only to then binge on them later, that was the real experiment. Can I allow this and not resist it so that I don't just give in and go hog wild later? Well, it wasn't perfect, and occasionally I enjoy a sweet treat. But I have sure learned and felt the benefits of making very deliberate, intentional food choices.

And for me, that helped to also improve my physical and my mental wellness. So as I continued to improve my health, I ended up starting a new job. It was so out of my comfort zone and not in my life plan, and it was a detour from my personal career path. So at the time, I believed it was the correct choice, and I embraced it. And it required extreme amounts of self discipline and hard work. These were skills that I had recently strengthened as I had changed up my eating habits and as I dug deeper into coaching so that I felt prepared and adjusted to the demands and ready and able to answer those. I did have to overcome thoughts of failure and doubt and rejection and self pity. And in the end, I started to see my strengths in the professional world and in leadership.

And I thoroughly enjoyed the new connections and friendships that I developed. Many of these people that I met during this time are lifelong friends, and I learned to appreciate the opportunity to think critically and work towards goals. So during this time, our kids started growing into teenagers and we dove into middle school and cell phones and relationships.

And as we were learning to navigate all of that, the pandemic hit. And our world, like everyone else's, turned upside down as we questioned whether or not we had enough toilet paper even just to get us through to the next shipment at Costco. Like, what a wild time. And when the pandemic hit, I liked the direction I was heading professionally, and I was grateful to work from home as the kids started schooling from home as well.

But then it didn't end and the kids didn't go back to school. And we were in each other's space and our house started to feel really small as all five of them and me. The six of us were all on computers, either working or pretending to do school. And I was stretched beyond my capacity attempting to manage it all. I felt flat as a pancake, and at times I started to crack. So we went into survival mode and I lowered my expectations and it got real bumpy and even more messy. But we did it, and we did find joy along the way. As we navigated our new normal, we experienced new things that tested how we wanted to respond in times of crisis and uncertainty.

We didn't handle all of them with ease and grace, and we carry a few scars from that time. But as we gained our footing and we rethought the why behind our actions and I dug more and more into coaching, I started to again see how I wanted to move forward and what needed to change in order to do so. So much of my energy at this time was focused on the relationships that I wanted to maintain with my kids during this time of stress and this time of differences of opinions that sometimes comes along with raising teenagers. And I coached my way through some of the tough stuff. And as I cleared up my thoughts, I was better able to receive inspiration about how to move forward. I reworked my thought process and found myself responding with softer answers and guidance when a child exercised their agency in a way that I didn't agree with.

But again, I have to be very clear I messed up a lot. It has been and it continues to be a bumpy ride, but I have way more confidence in my ability to figure things out. I've learned to be vulnerable with my children so that when we work together, we can build healthy and stronger relationships. So during this time, we started looking at our house in new ways. And we put together a game plan to kind of create a home that better served our needs.

And we sought outside help to create the vision. And we also took on pieces of that creation process. My husband started taking an active role in much of the demo work and construction work. This guy, man, he is just a beast. And he loves not only demoing things, but also building them back up. And he has welcomed the challenges and hasn't flinched at them. Because let me tell you, once you start taking a wall down or cutting holes in the floor or the side of our house when we took our chimney out, man, you can find a lot of things that need to be corrected in the way that your house was built. And it would take a lesser man out. It would have taken me out. But he didn't flinch. And he thought through the process and he found an answer.

That's one of his great skills. So while this construction project is taking longer than I expected, and there always seems to be a layer of drywall dust on everything, I do have to say that I have loved watching our home come together in a very intentional way as we seek to create a home that fits our needs. And we have, we've been approached by others with options to buy their homes. And one person who came and asked me, without knowing that I had my eye on their house, they offered their home to us and a way to buy it.

But as we considered that option, my husband and I, we both realized that this is the place where we want to stay, that we're intentionally choosing to stay here and build something pretty cool. Now, don't get me wrong, if someone or something comes along and we need to move for our employment or we feel strongly inspired to do so, we will. We will do that in a heartbeat. But for now, we're going to keep working on our dreams for this house and our family within this realm.

So during this time of creation for our house, I really started feeling that I needed to use my skills and talents in a different way and bring value to the world through coaching other mothers as my full time employment. But this would require me to close a very beautiful chapter of my professional career. And it really surprised me. And I wavered between faith and fear. And I truly sought guidance and inspiration and counsel from others who had also taken Ginormous leaps of faith.

This decision felt huge, but it also felt necessary. I didn't take that responsibility lightly because it had a huge impact on our family financially. And did I mention all the construction going on at that time and the rising cost of just about everything? That's not really a great time to walk away from a healthy income. But as I considered the decision, I saw how that chapter of my professional life had served me. It served my friends, my family, and that it was closing. And I was seeing that my energy and creative power really was needed somewhere else. And I saw how making this choice would impact relationships within our family and how I'd be better able to show up as a mom. So there were several pieces to the decision. And as I made each decision and walked towards a new professional path, I felt this weight again.

It eased up. And I remember sitting at my desk after each decision and feeling lighter. I had weighed myself down with fear for the future. And I coached myself and sought coaching from others. And I stepped into the future with faith instead of fear. Faith and hope are very similar in their ability to help buoy a person. So during the construction on our house, we added a much needed additional bathroom.

And in that bathroom is a large, beautiful round mirror. I think we got it at Target, right? And I call this my CEO mirror. And as I questioned my decision to move forward with my coaching practice, I'd stand in front of that mirror and I would look at myself and I would see myself as the CEO of my coaching practice that I wanted to become.

And I swear, if my boys ever caught me doing it, they thought I was crazy. But it really was this actually powerful exercise. So think about it. How would your life benefit from looking forward when you envision yourself reaching a goal you're working towards? How do you feel? What story plays through your mind? So, for me, I see myself helping hundreds and hopefully thousands of women to strengthen their relationships with their teenagers and the other children in their care.

So in order to do this, I see the content that I have to create and the systems I have to create to deliver that content and the professional relationships that I need to develop in order to do so. I see the decisions that I have to make and the crap I have to dig through and the mental process that I have to go through in order to get out of my own way. The personal growth and the knowledge that I need to acquire. It's exciting to look out from the exterior, looking in. But where I am today in the thick of creating content and learning those new systems to deliver the material is daunting. And the stories I'm prone to create about my progress can be anxiety producing. So do you remember that instagram reel that many people use to show their before and after shots of a project and they were working on before the transition to the after? It says, can we skip to the good part? And then bam, this beautiful, like, after pick, it pops up.

Well, do you find yourself asking if you can skip to the good part as you transition to the life you're intentionally building. My experience these past few days has me thinking that the good part is actually the transition. It's not the before and it's not the after. It's the act of intentionally building a life you want. Now, if you can't see that and you're feeling stuck in the mud with this weight of anxiety or fear for the future, please, please reach out. You can go to my website, you can schedule your free coaching session. Let's work through your story so we can get moving again as you live the life you've imagined. Take care, my friends. I'll see you next week.