In today’s episode of The Purpose Show, I’m challenging you to let go of the pressure to always feel like you have race to the finish line; to always be a finished version of yourself. What if you allowed yourself to just be in process and allowed yourself to enjoy that process? This quick pep talk is so good! Let’s dive in!
In this episode Allie discuesses:
- Being in process
- Transitioning through life changes
- Allowing yourself to feel the process
Mentioned in this Episode:
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The Purpose Show Facebook Community
We’re surrounded with the message that it’s the tired life, the no-time-for-myself life, the hard life. And while it can be hard and full of lots of showing up for others, the idea that being a mom means living a joyless, stale, or shit-show life all the time is something I am passionate about putting a stop to.
I’m Allie Casazza, and I’m about to make your life so much lighter.
I’m the best-selling author of the book, Declutter Like A Mother, and the creator of several life-changing online programs that have enrolled tens of thousands of students.
If you’ve been feeling chronically behind, if you wake up feeling exhausted for a day that hasn’t even started yet, if you constantly feel like you don’t have time for the things that really matter to you, I’ve got you.
I went from being a completely overwhelmed, depressed, struggling mom of three babies and toddlers who, I’ll be honest with you, didn’t want to be a mom anymore because I felt like I was failing so hard at it every day.
Through a lot of figuring out, searching for help, inner work, and shifting how I was doing and being, I found that the less I had in my way, the more joy, focus, and purpose I brought into my life. We have to define what is in our way and what is actually worthy of our energy.
I went from blogging about my journey to becoming the founder of a multi-million dollar online business, all based on helping women live better, lighter lives.
Join millions of listeners around the world for conversations that will lift your mood, focus your intention and raise your vibe week after week.
We talk motherhood, lifestyle, wellbeing, and simplifying everything from home to schedule to business.
Listen, this is about not just waking up and reacting to our lives and letting the day run us, but setting the intention, taking ownership of every single day, and making life work for us, making it easier.
Friend, I am so glad you’re here! I’m Allie and you’re listening to The Purpose Show.
Hey friends! Because it’s so important to me that I am able to authentically be myself and I want to speak the way that I normally speak here on my podcast, you’ll find the occasional curse word in my show. So if that bothers you or it’s not something that you want your kids to hear, grab your headphones.
In the show you’ll also find some episodes with adult themes, just things that are a little bit too mature or hard to process for young ears. So, in general, headphones might be a good idea. I love you guys. I’m glad you’re here and enjoy this episode.
Hey guys! Welcome! I’m currently coming to you from my car. I’m sitting in my locked car in a parking lot. I just ran some errands, went to the chiropractor and, of course, brought my handy little travel microphone, my little phone mic so I can sneak in some podcasting amidst all the things.
You’re going to hear me closing my sunroof. It’s open and I don’t have the little shade on and the sun is beaming down on me. Please hold. That was fun together.
This is actually kind of awesome because my house is always a noisy place, but it’s especially and constantly noisy right now because of the kids being homeschooled and the renovations at the same time. It is just really crazy. It’s so loud. There’s constantly the sound of drills, nails hitting the floor, hammering, kids playing on scaffolding and all kinds of stuff. Honestly the car is the safest bet for me right now anyway, so here we are.
Today we’re going to have a chill conversation. Honestly, these episodes are my favorite ones to record because it’s really just me processing externally what’s been mulling around in my own mind. I feel like I have some thoughts and ideas that pass through me and I don’t really think of them again, and other ones that hit me and stay with me for a while.
This is one of those. I’ve been in a place of thinking about this, processing it, and noticing it showing up in different ways in my life over the last couple of months. I thought it would maybe be something that you would resonate with that would support you, so I’m here to share.
I’m going to be super vulnerable and share this from my own perspective. Maybe it will resonate; maybe not.
I’ve been thinking about how so often I have this almost automatic, unspoken, inner expectation for everything in my life to be at the finish line all the time.
I expect myself to be like, “Okay, I want to be happy and healthy in my body. I want to be at a good weight that feels good to me. I want my body to be finished. My skin journey (I’ve shared about that here) I want that to be finished. I want my skin to be clear, nice and vibrant. I want my body to look great, feel great. I want my house to be done being renovated. I just want it finished. I hate the process. I just want the result of everything. I reject the process of pretty much everything.”
Does that resonate with anyone else? Do you feel like you’re like that? With some ways, with some things, with everything?
Even in relationships I notice this about myself. I want my marriage to be total bliss and if it’s not, “Ugg,I hate the process!” Or I’ll think I’ve got to get it to that point. Instead of sitting in the middle of life, in the middle of a process – can I even say – enjoying it? Even if it’s a hard process or a frustrating process, depending on what area of life we’re talking about? Can I sit and enjoy the process?
Because, really, being alive is a process. Being a human being is the act of being in process.
I’ve been thinking about how often I treat myself like some kind of project and if some area of my life is off…I’m gonna go back to using weight as an example because it’s a great example and I think a lot of people can relate to it.
In 2020 I went through a huge transformation internally and that was reflected externally. I released over 45 pounds of excess weight that was not feeling good on my body at all. I felt great. I felt like I looked great.
Then this year came and this year, 2021, (at the time that I’m recording this it’s at the very end of 2021) has been probably one of the top three, most difficult, emotional, and draining years of my life.
So much happened. I’m not going to sit here and list it all. You can look at my career alone and so much has happened. Good things, hard things, and neutral things, but just things that take up space on the calendar.
And it is a lot. Launching a book. Running a company. It’s been a very weird, hard year in every area of my life, all at once this year. It’s been one of those years that you think, “Oh, I felt that one.”
I’m grateful, but definitely ready to move forward.
In all of that – moving across the country, not having a kitchen for about four months – I gained some of that weight back and I’ve been noticing how hard I’ve been on myself.
I have so much to be grateful for, so much to use tool-wise. I’ve shared about my work with my coach, Sarah Spears, and we’ve worked on food, my relationship with food, binge eating, emotional eating, disordered eating, my relationship with my body, and all of that.
I go to those tools, pull those out and I have what I need to kind of move past it, but still overall underlying, I’ve had this sort of disappointment in myself like, “Oh great. Now you’re a project again.”
I have been treating my body like that, like a project.
I’m not a project. I’m a soul. I’m a human being. I’m also not my body. I know I’m just using that as an example, but while we’re on that subject, you are not your body. Your body is just the physical representation of you. You are your soul and you’re not a project.
How often do we think of ourselves as projects? How often do we treat ourselves as if something is not perfect, then it is imperfect, it is a project and it needs to be worked on?
How often do we feel the need to work on our physical selves, on our spiritual selves, on our emotional selves, on our marriages, on our relationships with our children, our homes, on our work? Like every area of our life is this open project that we’re so disappointed in ourselves that we’re in process with any of those things and we just want everything to be at the finish line all the time?
I’m saying ‘we’ but really I mean ‘me’. I have this internal drive, this unspoken agreement with myself that the finish line is, of course, the goal, and if something is not finished, and by ‘finished’ I really mean perfect, then there’s work to be done and we’ve got to work on it.
I’m going to take a sip of water here. You guys are super in the behind-the-scenes of things today. Closing car windows and sipping water right here on the mic.
I’ve been thinking, “What does it look like to not push? What does it look like to just not?”
And you know what? I think that this is what my soul has been hungry for is just rest.
I’ve been thinking a lot about rest. December has been all about rest. I’ve taken so much time off of social media, weeks and weeks off. It was amazing. I’ve been lying super low and not doing any real work stuff this month.
It’s been great. I’ve been just fitting in podcasting as I go, grabbing my laptop, sitting on the couch and catching up on emails when it feels good. It’s been great. As I’m doing that, and you know, in my life, it’s got me thinking that I want more of this.
This internal push, this messaging, even that’s in our society with ads and commercials pushing us to fix every little imperfection right now, join this program, hire this person, get this product and it will fix this problem because everything that is not perfect needs to be fixed and it needs to be fixed right now. God it’s exhausting.
And so, I’ve been thinking, what if I just found a way to enjoy the art of being in process?
My home is in process. It’s not finished right now. Yes there’s hard parts about it and it is affecting me. Your environment affects you. It’s my job to understand that and teach that, so of course I’m hypersensitive to when my environment is temporarily off and that does affect me.
And this temporarily being off is very long. It’s already been six months and we’re going to be renovating for a long time. There’s hard parts to it.
There’s also massive blessings to it. This is my dream manifested into reality. This is what I wanted. And there’s so much beauty in it. I can have hard days, but I’ll have a lot less hard days in this process if I stop expecting everything to be at the finish line all the time, and just remember that to get to the finish line in something, when we even ever do, there’s so much about life that is never going to get to the finish line (if you get to the finish line, you’re dead) but in some things there are finish lines.
And in those things, can I learn to enjoy the process of getting there? Can I learn that even if I don’t enjoy it, it’s okay to be in process?
I don’t need to be at the perfect weight at every event I go to. I always do this. I get invited to a wedding, speaking somewhere, or a brunch or something with other women or whatever, and I get like, okay, that sucks that I got invited to that at this time because I’m not at my ideal weight. Who freaking cares? No one cares. Only I care. I’m doing that to myself and I can release that attachment to this idea that I need to be perfect everywhere I go or everywhere I show up.
You are not your body. You are not a project. My house is a project, but I am not a project. Everything that is not perfect about me is human. I am in process.
And you know what? Maybe I don’t want to fix things right now. What if you just let the weight sit with you and you didn’t feel the push to change it right now? To lose weight right now? To finish your house right now? To have everything be perfect right now? To fix your marriage right this second?
What if you just said, “I release expectations. I am in process. And as part of the process, I’m going to rest from the pursuit of perfection. I’m going to take a break from that. I’m going to unsubscribe from the idea that I’ve got to be perfect. Everything’s got to be perfect all the time.”
And also remembering that you are worthy of good. You are worthy as a human being, period. You are worthy with that extra weight on you. You are worthy when your house is a disaster. You are worthy when your marriage is really difficult, when your relationship with your parent is really hard.
You are worthy when you’re struggling with your child. You are worthy when you feel like you don’t have any friends. You are worthy in all of those things.
You are worthy when your marriage is great. You are worthy when you’re feeling great in your body, when you’re looking like your best self, when you’re feeling amazing. You’re worthy then.
And you’re worthy when you feel like total shit and you just got yourself tits deep in your third row of Oreos, you’re bloated, and you don’t even care, you just don’t even care to change it. You are so beautiful and so worthy all of these times.
It’s okay to not do something about every problem that you are having in your life right now. And it’s also okay to stop seeing them as problems because they’re really not. They are part of your process.
Being in process doesn’t have to mean that you’re doing something about it right now. It can mean that you’re doing nothing and that’s beautiful. And you know what, friend? It’s fricking necessary sometimes.
Not everything in your life needs to be at the finish line right now. It’s not supposed to be that way.
So anyway, I’ve just been kind of setting myself free with that idea and reminding myself of it when I start to feel the pressure, when I start to push myself like, “Oh, I’m going to this event, I’ve gotta get my body a certain way,” – no, I don’t.
It makes sense that my body is going to respond to all the stress and chaos I went through this year. It makes sense that it would be holding on to something because of all of that. My body deserves grace and love as much as I do, if not more. It just does. It’s going to reflect what’s going on internally, so it makes sense that I’ve shifted in that way. I can understand that. I can be in process with that and I don’t need to go and do anything about it right now.
And you know what I’ve noticed in doing this the last couple months? I stopped forcing myself to get every area of my life to the finish line right now and I just decided not to. I sat with that for a while. I stayed in that place with everything for a couple months and it felt really, really good.
Then I noticed this month I started to shift and I felt inspired to make some shifts happen. I started to feel like the foods that I was wanting to eat, what sounded good, how much water I wanted to drink, shifted into what feels really, really good to my body. I can already feel my body responding positively and releasing weight again. And that’s great because I’m ready, because it feels good, because I’m not forcing myself.
The house projects are crazy. It’s loud. Everything takes a million times longer than you planned. It’s just how it goes. There’s so many things that the previous owners and builders of this custom home we bought did that are just lazy and stupid that we’re having to pay for now. There’s so much frustration.
And you know what I’ve noticed the last month? It’s just not bothering me anymore because I stopped holding onto that internal expectation of getting it to the finish line, getting everything to the finish line, hurry up and finish. We need every imperfection to become perfect. We need to fix it. We need to fix all the problems. We need to buy all the solutions right now. Right now. Go, go, go!
It’s just freaking exhausting. No wonder my body’s responding this way. No wonder I’ve been so exhausted and needing so much more sleep, so much more self care. It’s exhausting to hold onto these expectations.
And now that I’ve really let them go, things just don’t bother me very much. The house – it’s all good. It’s a process. This is going to sound annoying, but I’ve been really, truly, feeling so much more grateful for the fact that I even have the budget to renovate a home, that I’m even able to experience this dream that I always wanted.
I also know that maybe in the future, I won’t live in a home while I’m renovating it, but for now I’m in this process. It’s awesome to be able to pick out my own light switches, my own staircase, my own paint, my own everything, make these changes and make this home, me.
I’m just less attached to a timeline. I’m welcoming people into my home now, hosting people for dinner happily because it’s a process. And if people want to hang out with me, I am in process. My home is in process and that’s just where it’s at.
I no longer have the harsh, forceful, unrealistic expectations on myself, on my body, on my projects, on my work.
What if you just let the weight sit with you? You didn’t change anything right now and you didn’t have to? What if you just let your house be the way it is right now and stop trying to make it perfect? What if you just let your business sit in the revenue slump it’s been in for a while and just don’t try to fix it? Don’t try to come up with a solution? Just rest for a minute. Doesn’t that feel good? If it feels good, it’s probably because you need it.
I’m telling you guys, I’m telling you, if you do this, when it’s time you are going to feel a shift. You’re going to start to feel inspired to try different things, do things differently. Move your body, take a walk, maybe do yoga before bed, eat things that feel better in your body.
You’re going to feel inspired to try new things in your business, to buy a book about a new kind of strategy and you’re gonna feel inspired to read it and not forced to read it because you let go of the forcing. You let go of control.
Release control and lean into the process. Allow yourself to not work on something for once and see how that feels. I guarantee you, you’re going to end up just naturally shifting into inspiration to make the changes that are going to feel good to you when the timing is right.
Well, that is my little from-the-car pep talk. I love you guys. Thanks for hanging out with me and making me a part of your day.
If this episode helped you at all, would you just take a screenshot, share it on Instagram and say that it helped you? Tag me. It makes me so happy. It spreads the message, it increases my listeners, and that’s what I’m here to do – take little messages like this and give them to other people that need it that don’t know about it yet. Thank you for your help with that and have an amazing day!
If you would like a more behind-the-scenes view into my life, this lifestyle, regular life hacks, tips and more content that’s really going to create lightness in your social media feed, follow me on Instagram @allie_that’sme, or you can search Allie Casazza and it’s the one with the blue check mark.
If this episode or any episode was helpful for you, please consider leaving me a review on Apple Podcast. It is literally the lifeblood for a podcaster, and it helps me so much.
Thank you for tuning in. If you would like to learn more from me, how I can help you, how you can implement the things we talk about here on The Purpose Show, leaning more into making life simpler, better and more abundant in the best ways, head to alliecasazza.com. There are free downloads, online programs and other resources to help you create the life you really want in a very deep dive style.
I am always rooting for you, friend. I will see you next time. I’m Allie Casazza and this is The Purpose Show.
Hey mama! Just a quick note, this post may contain affiliate links.
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