Not Loving the Life You’ve Built for Yourself?

Here Are 3 Steps to Course-Correct.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

My friend Martha was precisely three kids into child-rearing when she realized being a mom wasn’t for her.

Not exactly the best time to have that particular insight, eh?

But Martha doesn’t run away from things, so she faced the problem head-on and did what any self-respecting adult would do: she kissed each of her little cherubs on the forehead before releasing them into the wild, then went on to build the life of her dreams.

Okay, okay, that’s not exactly what happened. Everyone knows that it’s next to impossible to build the life of your dreams when the state is chasing you down for neglect and Martha is no dummy. In fact, she’s about as intelligent as they come. She has three degrees from Harvard and Oprah refers to her as one of the smartest women she knows. Martha’s last name is Beck and, technically, she doesn’t know she’s my friend (yet).

But Martha does know how to solve a problem. Instead of releasing the kiddos into the wild (which, by the way, family lore says my grandmother did), Martha journeyed inward, where all the important answers lie.

Where to Start

Martha started by acknowledging her truth: caring for her toddlers felt “muddy and self-confining.” But, since she’s one of the wisest women alive, she didn’t stop there. She proceeded to break down the individual components of mothering and evaluate them one by one. Her conclusion? Most elements of being a mom brought her significant joy, but a select few felt terrible.

For her, it was the “motherly” parts, like baking, playing peek-a-boo, and singing nursery rhymes that made her miserable.

So she — are you ready for this? — just stopped doing those things.

And — hold onto your chair — her children didn’t die. Not even a little bit. They stayed fully alive and are now healthy, flourishing, adult humans.

Even without the baking!

I know. Wild.

How to Transform Your Own Life

Now we’re going to get even wilder. Because Martha, who is considered the best-known life coach in America, asserts that we all have this power.

When things in our life make us miserable, we can break down the components then, largely, just stop doing the parts we hate.

Let me say that again: we can just STOP doing the things we hate doing.

For real — we’re allowed! The world won’t even end!

Martha’s 3-Step System

My real life friend Rosemary, a Martha Beck certified life coach, taught me one of Martha’s course-correcting tools.

To transform your life, Martha advocates for a “bag it, barter it or better it” approach. When you identify the pieces of your life that make you feel icky, you either:

1) Bag it: If it’s something you don’t enjoy and the world won’t end if it doesn’t get done, just don’t do it.

2) Barter it: Find someone who loves doing what you hate and who hates doing something you love, then swap services.

3) Better it: Improve the task by incorporating something fun or by planning a reward once it’s done.

The System in Action

In Martha’s transforming motherhood example, which she details in her book Steering by Starlight, she bagged cooking, “by purchasing healthy food that was already prepared (did you know grocery stores sell premixed salad and organic turkey breast?).”

She bettered quality time with her children when she bagged baby talk and began talking to them about things that interested her, “such as zoology and physics.” Her kids, “who have genetic reasons” to share her interests, “turned out to love this” as much as she did.

Win. Win.

Win. Win. Win.

All the wins.

Which, by the way, is what you should expect when you learn to turn inward for your answers: all the wins.

Our insides are where real wisdom lives. Also, pleasure and joy, which come from living in alignment with our own values and highest truths.

Potential Pitfalls

However, most of us don’t trust our inner truths. When we hate things like baking or baby talk, we feel ashamed. We don’t think, “Well, maybe this just isn’t for me.” We think, “There must be something wrong with me,” as we compare ourselves to “everyone else” who outwardly loves the thing we dread.

It’s not a fun place to be. I know because I spent a lot of time living there. Most of the things I like are not what Western society says I should. Exo facto, I was broken.

Except I wasn’t. And I’m not.

You either.

What we are is humans who are inherently good. It’s societal norms that are broken, not us.

Don’t Let Broken Messaging Convince You You’re Broken

Martha was a mother in the years when a popular advertisement sang, “I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let you forget you’re a man!”

She was supposed to build a thriving career, dote on her children, tend the house, look polished, keep the king of the castle happy and SMILE, for Pete’s sake. Show those teeth, Martha. No, not in a snarl or a yawn. In a grin. A big one. Aren’t you having fun?!

Hint: she wasn’t. Who would be? Humans need sleep to have fun and be happy. And women trying to live up to the advertised ideal certainly didn’t have time for sleep.

Changing Our Approach

So how about we try something a tad bit different, huh? Like taking the time to get still and tap into our inner wisdom. Practice discernment. Step away from outside noise for long enough to actually figure out what matters to us.

I, for example, have figured out that I don’t give a single hoot about feeding any future children home-cooked meals.

So hunka-hubby and Mummy dearest, if you’re wondering if I just wrote a 1,000-word essay to justify never learning to cook — well, let’s just say that blogging is a beautiful thing. But you better believe that I’ll be using the time I save by purchasing organic prepared foods to teach the minis how to think for themselves. And really, isn’t that a bigger gift?