What If You Actually Started Liking Your Life?

0:18SPEAKER_00:I don't know about you, but I have had a rough couple of weeks emotionally, and honestly, I could use a break. If you've been following me on social media or listened to last week's episode, you know that Hurricane Lala came through Hawaii and hit this island incredibly hard. My family and I were fortunate, we were safe, our home was safe, but a lot of people here were not. And since then, I've been trying to help in the ways that I know how. Offering crisis counseling, checking on people, and trying to figure out where I can actually be useful.

0:50SPEAKER_00:Watching what's happening in communities around me and knowing that there is a long recovery ahead. And that's on top of regular life, my work, my clients, my family, my own personal stuff, and the 10,000 ordinary things that keep requiring attention, regardless of what else is happening. And then I come here every week and we talk about abuse and trauma bonds and unhealthy relationships and grief and leaving and staying in boundaries and emotional exhaustion, all of which is real and important and necessary.

1:21SPEAKER_00:But this week I sat down to plan the episode and I thought, I just don't want to. Not this week. I need a break. And then something occurred to me. If the only thing that we ever talk about in this space is what hurt you, who hurt you, why they hurt you, and how to recognize it, how to recover from it, and how to make sure it never happens again, then we're still allowing an awful lot of our lives to revolve around the people and experiences that cause the pain.

1:46SPEAKER_00:And I don't want that for you. And I genuinely don't want that for me. Healing matters. Understanding your patterns matters. Doing the uncomfortable work absolutely matters. But so does actually enjoying your life. And I think that we don't talk about that enough. So today, that's what we're doing. We're not talking about him, not your ex, not your narcissistic mother, not your emotionally unavailable partner, not the person who betrayed you, not the friend who treated you badly.

2:14SPEAKER_00:Today, we're talking about you. And specifically, I want to ask you one question. Do you actually like your life? Not, is everything perfect? Of course it isn't. Not, have you healed everything? None of us have. Not, are you happy every second of every day? Please. I mean, when you look at the ordinary life that you're actually living, do you like being in it? Because if the answer is no, I think we should do something about that. And maybe it gets to be a little bit fun.

2:49SPEAKER_00:Welcome back to Pattern Breakers Collective. I'm Lisa, and I am giving all of us permission today to have a lighter conversation. Because I don't want this community to become a place where the only time we talk about you is when we're analyzing what's wrong with you or what happened to you. You are not just the woman who survived something. You're not just somebody's wife, ex-wife, mother, daughter, caretaker. You're not a collection of trauma responses that we're trying to repair.

3:16SPEAKER_00:You are a whole person. And somewhere underneath all of the responsibilities and the healing and the work and all of it, there's a woman who likes things, who wants things, who gets genuinely excited about things, who laughs, who has interests, who might want to try something completely ridiculous just because it sounds fun. And I think sometimes we lose her. Today we're gonna go looking for her. Oh, I'll do that when the kids get older. I'll travel when I have someone to go with.

4:16SPEAKER_00:I'll wear that when I lose some weight. I'll start dating when I've completely healed, I'll go back to school when life settles down. I'll make friends when I have more time. I'll take care of myself once everybody else is okay. I'll figure out what I want once I know what's happening with my marriage. We keep pushing our own lives six months down the road, and then another year, and then another five until one day we look up and think, when exactly was I planning to start living?

4:48SPEAKER_00:Now, I'm not about to tell you to quit your job and buy a one-way ticket to Bali. You have responsibilities. Most of us simply can't abandon our actual lives in pursuit of some cinematic version of joy. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something much smaller: participating in the life that you already have. How often do you think, well, that sounds fun, and then immediately generate seven reasons that you shouldn't do it? It's too expensive, it's too far, nobody will go with me, I'm too old, I'll probably be terrible at it.

5:17SPEAKER_00:I don't know anyone there. What if I look ridiculous? I don't have time. And sometimes those are legitimate limitations, but sometimes they're just excuses we've gotten really good at believing. I paddle outrigger canoes. If you've listened to this podcast for a while, you've probably heard me mention it. I genuinely love it. I love being on the water. I love the physical challenge. I love the history and the cultural significance of it here in Hawaii.

5:44SPEAKER_00:I love competing. I love what it has done for my body. I love that there are still things I'm learning. And are there days when I'm tired and I don't particularly feel like going? Absolutely. But I almost never get off the water thinking, well, that was a terrible use of my time. Because it makes me feel more like myself, not more productive, not more impressive, not more healed, more me. And that's actually the question I want you to start asking, not well, what should I do or what's good for me or what will help me heal faster, just what makes me feel more like myself?

6:21SPEAKER_00:Because I think somewhere in the business of everyone else's lives and everyone else's needs, that question got very quickly dropped. And it's time to pick it back up. Here's something I want to try with you right now. If I asked you what you like, not just what you're good at, not what you do for your family, not what's responsible or practical, just what do you like? How quickly could you answer? What do you like to eat when it's genuinely your choice?

6:47SPEAKER_00:What music do you love? What makes you laugh until your sides hurt? Where do you like going? What makes you lose track of time? What are you curious about? What have you always wanted to learn? What kind of people energize you rather than drain you? What does fun actually look like for you? Not what it looks like in someone else's Instagram reel, but for you specifically. Some of you are gonna realize that you don't really know, and I want you to hear that without shame because I don't think it's unusual, especially for women who have spent years organizing their lives around other people.

7:24SPEAKER_00:What do the kids want for dinner? Where does my partner want to go? What can everyone agree on? What's affordable? What's practical? What needs to get done first? You can become extraordinarily good at building a life that works without ever stopping to ask whether it's a life that you actually like. And those are very different things. So maybe you need to experiment. Maybe you don't fully know what you like because you haven't tried enough things yet.

7:51SPEAKER_00:And that's actually kind of exciting when you let it be. Go take a pottery class, try yoga, or don't, it's not for everyone, and that's fine. Go hiking, try cooking something that you never made before, take a dance class, go to the concert, try the weird restaurant, read the romance novel, join a book club, take yourself to breakfast, go see the movie nobody else in your family wants to see, volunteer somewhere that interests you. Grow something, make something, go somewhere.

8:24SPEAKER_00:And maybe you'll hate half of it. Great! Now you know. That is genuinely valuable information, and I think we underestimate how useful it is to know what we don't like just as much as what we do. We've become so obsessed with finding our passion or our purpose. What am I meant to do? What's my calling? And that's a lot of pressure. How about we start somewhere much simpler? What do I actually enjoy doing on a Saturday afternoon? Start there. You don't need a calling, you need a little curiosity, and curiosity is what makes life interesting again.

9:23SPEAKER_00:Everything has to improve us. We exercise because we're improving our bodies, we meditate because we're regulating our nervous systems, we journal because we're processing trauma, we read because we're developing ourselves, we listen to podcasts because we're learning, we take classes because we're building skills, we walk because we're getting our steps in, and we rest only when we can justify it in terms of productivity tomorrow. Can we just do something because we enjoy it?

9:52SPEAKER_00:I want you to have something in your life that serves absolutely no productive purpose. Something that you're just mediocre at, something that you don't monetize, something you don't post about, something you don't track, something you don't have to become better at, something that doesn't eventually end up on a resume or in a capability statement, something you just simply enjoy. Because play is not a waste of time. Pleasure isn't something you earn, and every minute of your life does not need to produce something measurable.

10:27SPEAKER_00:One of the questions that I've started asking myself is, does this make my life bigger? Not, is this productive? Not will this make me a better person? Just does it make my life bigger? Does it introduce me to someone new? Does it give me a story to tell? Does it make me laugh? Does it make me curious about something? Does it make me feel alive in some way? Does it put me somewhere that I've never been? Does it show me something about myself that I didn't already know?

10:55SPEAKER_00:Does it give me something to look forward to? Because I think we've confused a successful life with an efficient one. And those are not the same thing. You can have an incredibly efficient, optimized, productive life and be bored out of your friggin' mind. You can have your whole day color-coded in a planner and feel completely empty. Efficiency without aliveness is just a well-run machine. And you, my friend, are not a machine. Does this make my life bigger?

11:31SPEAKER_00:That's the question. Not is it productive, not is it efficient, not will it make me better, does it give me something? Does it open something? Does it add some texture to the experience of being alive? Because that actually matters. Give yourself something to look forward to. This might be one of the simplest things that we can do for ourselves, and I think we dramatically undervalue it. Put something on your calendar that you are really excited about.

12:00SPEAKER_00:Not a dentist appointment, not your kids' soccer game, not a work deadline, something for you. And it doesn't have to be expensive or elaborate. Maybe Friday morning you go to your favorite coffee shop and sit there for an hour with no agenda. Maybe Saturday you go hiking with a friend. Maybe next month there's a concert that you've been thinking about. Maybe you take yourself to the beach Sunday afternoon. Maybe you order takeout and watch movies in bed.

12:26SPEAKER_00:I genuinely don't care what it is, just have something coming. There's something psychologically real about waking up and thinking three more days until that thing. And I think adults forget this. Kids are constantly looking forward to things: birthday, summer, the sleepover, the field trip, the last day of school. Then we grow up and apparently decide that anticipation is reserved for Amazon deliveries. No, give yourselves something. And I want to say something specific here because this matters.

12:58SPEAKER_00:Stop waiting for someone else to make it happen. If you want to go see the movie, go. If you want to try the restaurant, go. If you want to take the trip and it's safe and financially realistic for you, start planning it. If you want to take the class, sign up. Stop making another person's interest or availability the admission ticket to your own life. Your partner doesn't have to love everything you love. Your friends don't have to share every interest you have, and you don't have to wait until someone else volunteers to come along.

13:33SPEAKER_00:Sometimes one of the most liberating discoveries a woman can make is uh, I can go anyway, alone, all by myself, just because I want to. And it turns out the world doesn't end. In fact, sometimes going alone is completely different than going with someone and not in a bad way. Sometimes you notice more, sometimes you meet someone, sometimes you realize you genuinely enjoy your own company, which for some women who've spent years absorbing someone else's presence, whether they wanted to or not, is actually revelatory.

14:06SPEAKER_00:You are allowed to build a life that you show up to because you want to be there, not because someone else needs you to be. A rich life has texture, and texture comes from different kinds of relationships, not from one perfectly calibrated person. Maybe you have the friend you call when something is genuinely wrong, the one who listens without trying to fix it, who sits in the hard thing with you. And you have another friend who you call because you know she's going to make you laugh until you can't breathe, and you'll feel completely better without ever talking about the actual problem.

15:39SPEAKER_00:Maybe there's someone you hike with, someone you think out loud with about work or ambitions, someone who sends you completely inappropriate memes at 10 in the morning, someone you only see every few months, but you pick up exactly where you left off, like no time has passed. Someone who you knew before everything got complicated, which means she knows a version of you that you sometimes need reminding of. Different people at different things. That's not disloyal, that's healthy.

16:09SPEAKER_00:And I know making friends as an adult can feel incredibly awkward. It can feel like showing up to the first day of school when you're 43. Do it anyway. Join something, take a class and go regularly, volunteer somewhere, say hello first instead of waiting. Ask someone if they want to grab coffee. You might get the social version of rejection, someone who's just busy or not looking for a new friend right now, or who doesn't click with you, and that's okay.

16:39SPEAKER_00:You'll survive it. And you might also meet someone who becomes genuinely important to your life, someone who you would have never encountered if you'd stayed home waiting for a friendship to appear on your doorstep. Your world should have more than one room in it. More than your marriage, more than your children, more than your work, more than your healing. Build a world, one small, sometimes awkward, occasionally wonderful piece at a time. And here's something I want you to think about.

17:09SPEAKER_00:When was the last time you surprised yourself? When was the last time you did something and thought, I didn't know I could do that? Or I didn't know I like that, or even, I will never do that again. But wow, I learned something. Because I actually think all of those counts. The wonderful discoveries and the disasters both tell you something about yourself that you didn't know before, and that's worth something. One of the things that I find really exciting about getting older is realizing that there are still versions of myself that I haven't met yet.

17:45SPEAKER_00:I don't buy the idea that by 40 or 50 or 60 you're supposed to have yourself completely figured out. How boring would that be? I hope that I'm still surprising myself at 70. I hope I'm still learning things, still trying things, still occasionally doing something that scares me in a good way. Not because I'm running from who I am, but because I'm still curious about who else I might become. And I want to be careful here because this is different from self-improvement.

18:12SPEAKER_00:Really different. Self-improvement says, I'm not enough yet. And a lot of us have been living inside that sentence for a very long time, driven by the belief that we need to become a better, more evolved, more healed version of ourselves before we get to go do anything good. Curiosity says something entirely different. It says, I wonder what else is in there. That's such a different energy. One contracts, one opens. One says you're a problem to be solved, the other says you're a person worth exploring.

18:44SPEAKER_00:And I like curiosity so much better than self-improvement. It's gentler, it's more honest, and it tends to produce things that are a lot more interesting. Self-improvement says you're not enough yet. Curiosity says you're worth exploring. One closes down, the other opens things up. And I think somewhere in the work of healing, we get those two confused and spend years trying to improve ourselves instead of simply getting to know ourselves. Your life doesn't have to be perfect to be good.

19:18SPEAKER_00:And this may be the most important thing I want to say today, because I don't want you leaving this episode feeling like if Hannah do another thing that you're supposed to be better at. Like, great, now I'm also failing at enjoying my life. That is genuinely not the point. So let me say this as clearly as I can. You can have real problems and still like your life. You can be in the middle of grieving something and have a really good day. You can be really worried about money and laugh so hard at dinner with a friend that your stomach hurts.

19:52SPEAKER_00:You can be healing from an awful relationship and discover something that makes you feel genuinely, unexpectedly excited. You can feel lonely and still create moments that feel beautiful and true. You can have absolutely no idea what you're doing next and enjoy where you are for an afternoon. You can be exhausted and still feel the sun on your face and think, okay, this moment is good. Those things are not contradictions. They're just life. And life is almost always both things at once.

20:34SPEAKER_00:I think when we're going through something hard, we sometimes feel guilty about experiencing joy. Like we have to stay emotionally loyal to our pain. Like feeling good is a betrayal of how bad things actually are. And I want to push back on that because it's simply not true. You are allowed to laugh while things are hard. You are allowed to enjoy something while you're still in grief. You are allowed to feel genuinely happy before you've healed everything.

21:04SPEAKER_00:You do not have to earn your way back to joy. You don't have to reach some recovery milestone before you're permitted to have a good time. And you definitely don't have to wait until your life is perfect. Because here's the truth: your life is never going to be perfect. Mine sure as hell isn't. Nobody's is. There will always be something, a problem, a worry, a bill, a conflict, a loss, something that needs fixing, something that didn't go the way you hoped.

21:35SPEAKER_00:If joy requires the complete absence of difficulty, you will spend your entire life waiting for permission to feel it. And that is a genuinely heartbreaking way to spend a life. You don't need everything resolved before you get to show up and participate in your own story. The good parts are happening right alongside the hard parts. Someone is loving you right now, even if imperfectly. Something is beautiful where you are, even if you've stopped noticing it.

22:04SPEAKER_00:Something is possible for you that wasn't possible a year ago. Joy doesn't require everything to be fine, it just requires you to stop withholding it from yourself until some future version of your life shows up. Okay, I want to give you something concrete to take away from today. And I'm going to ask you up front, please don't make this complicated. I don't want a color-coded spreadsheet. I don't want a new planner. I don't want you buying a specialized journal titled My Journey to Joy.

22:45SPEAKER_00:Three things. That's it. First, do one thing this week that you've been waiting for someone else to do with you. Maybe it's tiny, lunch at the place you love, a movie, a walk somewhere beautiful, a bookstore you've been meaning to visit. Whatever it is, do it because you want to and don't wait for permission or company. Second, try one thing you don't know whether you'll be good at. Let yourself be a beginner. Let yourself discover something. Let yourself look a little ridiculous.

23:23SPEAKER_00:That's part of the fun of it. And third, do one thing that serves absolutely no purpose other than making you happy. Don't monetize it, don't post about it, don't track it, don't turn it into a personal growth content. Just enjoy the thing. And then at the end of the week, don't ask yourself whether those three things transformed your life. That's not the point. Just ask yourself, did my life feel a little more like mine this week? That's the question.

23:57SPEAKER_00:That's where this starts. We talk so much on this podcast about self-abandonment, about all the little ways that women disappear inside of relationships. They stop speaking, stop asking, stop going, stop wanting, and stop trusting themselves. And healing requires us to stop doing that. It requires us to come back to ourselves, to learn how to take up space again, to stop apologizing for having needs. But I've been thinking lately, maybe we haven't talked enough about what comes next.

24:31SPEAKER_00:Because stopping self-abandonment isn't the finish line. You have to have something to come back to. You, your interests, your friendships, your ideas that might seem ridiculous, but light something up inside of you. Your ambitions, your body, your creativity, your curiosity, your adventures, the ones you already had, and the ones you haven't started planning yet. Your quiet mornings that belong to you, the places you haven't been yet, the people you haven't met yet, the things that you haven't discovered that you love yet.

25:02SPEAKER_00:All of that is there, waiting. There is this whole life available to you. And maybe that's ultimately what pattern breaking is actually for. Not to become a woman who's really good at spotting red flags, though that matters. Not to spend the rest of your life analyzing every person who's ever hurt you, though understanding what happened to you is necessary. Not to become so hyper-aware of toxic behavior that you forget that there are also genuinely wonderful people in the world who are capable of real love and real friendship and real joy.

25:39SPEAKER_00:The goal isn't only to protect yourself from the bad relationships. The goal is to build a good life, a life with enough people in it, enough interests, enough purpose, enough joy, enough connection, enough of you in it that disappearing from yourself starts to feel genuinely, completely unacceptable. Because you've finally learned how good it feels to be present in your own story. And after the last few weeks, I've had the hurricane, the emotional weight of the recovery happening around me, all of it.

26:15SPEAKER_00:This is honestly what I want. Some fun, some laughter, time with people I love, things to look forward to, moments where I'm not managing or analyzing or supporting or processing. Moments where I'm just there, enjoying the fact that I'm alive and my family is safe and the ocean is right there, and there are still beautiful things happening even inside of hard seasons. I want to stop being so busy surviving the difficult parts that I miss the parts that make the whole thing worth living.

26:46SPEAKER_00:So maybe that's your assignment this week. Not to heal, not to fix yourself, not to figure out your relationship or become a better version of yourself. Just go. Participate in your life, find something you like, do something fun, call the person who makes you laugh, try something you've never tried, give yourself something to look forward to. Stop waiting for the perfect version of your life before you allow yourself to enjoy the one that you're already living.

27:12SPEAKER_00:Because the goal was never just to stop abandoning yourself. The goal is to become a woman who has built a life that she loves too much to keep disappearing from. Thank you for letting me do something a little different today. I think we actually need more conversations like this one in this community. Pattern Breakers Collective isn't only about understanding what's happened to you. It's about figuring out what do you want to create after you understand it.

27:45SPEAKER_00:If today's episode resonated with you, I'd genuinely love to hear it. Come find me on social media and tell me what you want us to talk about more: confidence, friendships, adventure, getting older, purpose, trying new things, building a life after your kids grow up, being alone without being lonely, whatever it is, I want this community to spend more time talking about where we're going, not just about where we've been. And if you know a woman who's been so busy taking care of everyone else that she's genuinely forgotten she's allowed to enjoy her own life, send her this episode.

28:19SPEAKER_00:Not because it has any answers, but because sometimes someone just needs permission. And if you haven't already, a reading or review wherever you listen can make a real difference in helping more women find this podcast. It takes 60 seconds and I would truly appreciate it. And if you're ready for deeper support, building the life and the relationships that actually feel like yours, doing the pattern work with structure and community behind you, you can find all the information about my programs at patternbreakerscollective.com.

28:47SPEAKER_00:But this week, don't overthink anything I just said. Don't make a plan, don't create a new self-improvement project. Just go do something you enjoy. I'll talk to you next week.