Will Your 2021 Goals Make You Happier? This week we are talking with Patricia Vander Laan because she is further along her happiness journey than I am! I asked her to share her advice to our community. She shares how she ended up on her personal journey as well as some awesome advice. Patricia and I agree, its still an inside job.
Resources I referenced this week:
Patricia’s Facebook Page: Blue Sage Energy Arts
Patricia also joined us previously on episode 029 – Find The Things That Make Your Soul Sing
I hope you enjoy this week’s podcast. Don’t forget we’d love to see you over on the Facebook Group, The Happier You Podcast!
And remember you can get the podcast and the Happiness Newsletter emailed to you weekly when you join our mailing list here!
Episode Transcript
Bona Normandeau: Hi, happy people. And welcome back. Welcome to our first podcast of 2021. Happy New Year!
I have done a lot of introspective work in order to figure out what I wanted my 2021 goals to be. For the podcast in particular, I want to inspire our community to find your happy. I did a lot of thinking about how we can move into 2021 and inspire you to go within and get to know yourself better.
I honestly believe that I have been on my personal growth journey for years. But in the fall of 2019, I took a step back from a lot of the roles and expectations on me. And I tried to connect to me.
To listen to my inner voice and see what she had to say about things.
If you’ve been on this journey with me for a while now, you know, that meditation is not an art that I have mastered. For sure I still struggle with it, but I have enough experience that I realize it helps me to slow down and connect to me. I honestly believe that this is an important part of my happiness.
I have said from the beginning of this journey that I believe this is an inside job. So if it’s an inside job, then I need to encourage you to go inside, work on you, not the outside world. Don’t worry about keeping up with everyone on social media.
Just get to know you and your inner voice better.
One of my goals for 2021 is to increase the conversations I’m having with people about their happiness. So for the first conversation of the year, I asked Patricia Van der Laan to join me and discuss a few of these things.
Patricia and I met through a course we were taking on Mindset. After the course, and the coaching that we did along with the course was over, Patricia started an accountability group with those of us that took the coaching together. Since then, we’ve gotten to know each other better.
Remember, this is all virtual. We aren’t even in the same country right now!
It’s been a very cool way to grow a friendship. Especially for a girl like me who isn’t very techie. So I can acknowledge that some cool things have come out of 2020 for me.
If you ever meet Patricia, you will be drawn to her calm energy. She has a calming influence on things and people around her, but she also has an infectious laugh. She’s one of those people you just love being around. In fact, one of the ladies in our accountability group said, “I want to be Zen like you, Patricia!”
So when I was contemplating starting our 2021 podcast season off on the right foot, I thought it’s got to be Patricia!
I honestly believe my happiness lies in self-acceptance and love, and Patricia is already there.
I asked her how she got started on her personal journey.
Patricia Vander Laan: I’ve had health issues since right after I had my son. I have chronic migraines, fibromyalgia and arthritis. That actually fed into a lot of my journey. It’s funny I don’t talk about them, but I don’t. I mean, you’ve met me mostly virtually, but it doesn’t stop me from enjoying my life.
I’ve really just changed my perspective.
But 15 years ago I was distraught at how these migraines, fibromyalgia, and arthritis were going to change my life. And it has. But I’ve allowed myself to take that time and space. Where I used to be even busier than I am now, because I would be out doing things.
And then I couldn’t. So I had to spend so much time with myself. Alone by myself. That made me really start looking inward. And so now people will feel sorry for me. I don’t feel sorry for me at all.
I feel like I’m living the life now that I’m supposed to be living.
I’m in touch with who I am.
As you know, I’m happy with who I am. I’m in love with who I am. And even though I might be mostly confined to my house, I’m living my best life. Because I’m doing all things that I want to enjoy and I don’t get upset and go, “Well, I can’t be doing that.” Because I’ve changed my perspective.
I’ve changed how I think about things.
And, so much of what is around us is a distraction from actually being inside of ourselves and connecting to who we are.
Bona Normandeau: I was telling Patricia that I love the hope that comes with the new year.
I always get excited about what I can learn and discover about myself each year.
A few years ago, I had a mentor that told me the books I am reading now, and the work I do now, will show up in my life in five years. So even though sometimes I think I have so much work to do to get to the life I want. I have seen that advice hold true, and it gives me hope.
That, what I do now, no matter how small the step seems today, it will bear fruit in my life in five years. I asked Patricia her thoughts on that, and she said, “There’s no timeline.” I agree, but it doesn’t mean that when the calendar rolls over in five years, that it miraculously shows up in my life.
The point is, if you don’t push yourself to learn and grow, now, nothing will change for the better.
But if you set goals and create positive habits in your life now, then in five years it will be part of who you are. It may happen in two years. It might take more work than that and you don’t see it until three and a half. But by the time you hit five years, you should see it in your life.
I shared my goal with Patricia, that I want the podcast to inspire people, to get to know and love their true self.
I believe this is important to each of our personal happiness journeys.
So, I asked this inspiring woman who is further along on her journey of connection to her inner light than I am, what advice she would give people about this journey?
Patricia Vander Laan: One thing I would say for sure, so I’ll talk about a couple of things, one thing for sure, I would say is,
Be okay with feeling uncomfortable.
That was really hard for me at first. Like I would have little times where I would feel lonely, because you need to provide space in your life for you to tune into yourself. Which means you may have to shed some things off the calendar. Isolate yourself.
And then, and if you feel like you don’t necessarily have someone to talk to, or if you’re going through and allowing the feelings to overcome, like, I have blocked a lot of feelings and feeling things.
And when I started just allowing them to come into me, I would have days where I would cry all day. Because it was just a whole bunch of feelings and things coming up. But then I would feel better. And when it first happened, I thought there was something wrong with me. Again, I questioned as opposed to just saying, Hey, this is who Patricia is.
She feels things, and she’s just letting it go through.
Or I was like, “Oh my God, there has to be something wrong with me!” As we do in this society. So , being comfortable with having tons of uncomfort and discomfort. Where we typically now would say, “okay, well, I’m not supposed to, I’m supposed to be okay with everything.”
No, you don’t have to be okay with everything! You can be mad and sad and everything.
And one thing I’ve learned, is to, I observe a lot more, as opposed to taking on the personal feelings of a situation. But before I got there, it was learning how to acknowledge those feelings and say, “Oh, I’m mad about this thing.”
I’m mad. Bona looked at me funny yesterday and I mad about that and I can’t figure out why. Well, you know, I realized really now if Bona did look at me funny, it has nothing to do with me. It has to do with Bona.
So I’ve let go of that. Right? Like I think about as women, and growing up and all the times we would sit and go, well, “did you see how he looked at her?” And how much time and energy we spend on that!
When there’s so much more bigger or funner or things we could be doing with our life.
So that’s one huge thing, is getting comfortable with being uncomfortable or in discomfort. Knowing that it’s temporary. I think that was a huge thing for me, was understanding that everything is temporary.
Whether it’s extreme bliss or extreme anger or upset. They’re all just temporary.
To me, where you want to get to, is kind of this nice peaceful contented space. And understanding that when we’re happy, we get really upset when things go South. But when you’re, south things are going to be, it’s like, like a journey right? Up and down and up and down. They’re all temporary .
Meditation.
We’ve talked about that ’cause I think meditation is one of the best ways for people to get in touch with themselves. Because you’re building the space around you to just listen to whatever’s coming in. Either things will come up inside of you or things will come to you because you’ve allowed yourself some space.
Meditation can be hard. I talk about the fact it took me eight years to get really good at it. ‘Cause I was determined. I would have these glimpses of feeling that bliss, or feeling that just neutral peacefulness. And come out of that and then having that with me all day. And also just getting answers to things. So I would be mulling something over and I’d go into a meditation and I’d come out and I’d be like, “Oh, there was so much clarity of that to me.”
Meditation doesn’t have to be sitting down and being still, it can be walking meditations.
Right? There’s a lot of different ways to do it. I have journaled, not consistently. I talk about this as well, because some people are really great at it. There is a lot to be said for being able to just journal and let it come out without thinking about what you’re writing as you respond to journal prompts, and then going back over them.
For me, it was just so much of trying to figure out how I ticked and what made me me and stop questioning.
Some of the things that I did personally were personality tests and different types of things to understand where my strengths were. Where my personality was. So I didn’t feel like I was such an odd ball in a sea of people. And it’d be like, Oh no, it’s okay, that’s the way my brain thinks. And then I could let some of that go .
I think as women, we all know we get those little red flags. Oprah talks about the universe will try to get your attention with the little red flag. And if you don’t hit it or listen to it, you’ll get a little pebble on the side of the head. If you don’t listen to the pebble, it turns into a rock and then it turns into a brick and it just keeps going until
the next thing you know, there’s a tsunami and your whole world is a disaster.
Then you go, “Oh, if I’d have listened to this thing that I knew.” So it’s really about our own women’s intuition that we have, which is really our own divine self telling us something.
We’ve learned to tune it out over the years from our cultural programming and go, “How do I listen to that? How do I get myself to a point where I’m not focused on my day-to-day hectic-ness and I can actually listen to that?”
A lot of that gets to being what feels right. You and I have talked about energy, and it’s like, you can tell how the energy feels about something over time. Initially, you might be completely not aware of it because you’re so turned off from everything else that you’ve been programmed on. But it’s really getting to that space.
I love how you call the inner spark. I call it like our inner spark. Our divine love, our who we are complete essence of ourselves within our hearts.
And that’s who we all want to be.
Bona Normandeau: Such awesome advice, Patricia. Thank you. I honestly believe that meditation and journaling are a big part of my connection to my inner voice. My inner light. Important to really getting to know me better.
I have found that as we pay attention, be present and listen in our lives that we notice those little red flags sooner.
Sometimes we don’t want to acknowledge them, but we notice them. It all takes practice. Now Patricia’s advice about being okay with being uncomfortable. That is so true. Comfort is not part of learning and growing. I think we all know this to some extent, but it’s good to be reminded of it.
If you are comfortable, you’re not learning and growing.
If where you are right now is where you want to be in five years, then that’s great. But if it’s not, then you have to figure out where you want to start with being uncomfortable.
I always love my conversations with Patricia. Thank you so much for coming and talking with us today, Patricia. If anyone wants to connect with her, you can email Patriciabluesage@gmail.com or check her out on her Facebook page, Blue Sage Energy Arts.
Alright happy people.
So your challenge this week is to think about what you want in your life in five years that you don’t have right now.
Sounds simple doesn’t it? Well, once you know what it is, then ask yourself if your 2021 goals or resolutions are in alignment with that. Then set that intention and enjoy the journey.
This week’s quote, Patricia shared it on her Facebook page, is from Pattie Gonia.
The finish line is for the ego. The journey is for the soul.
Alright happy people, have a great week and go get your happy on.