Many of us were taught that if we just accomplish the right things that we will find happiness.

If we could just hit a certain level of success or find just the right partner to complement us that we will wake up just thrilled to take on the day. And children… oh yes! The allure of imparting our wisdom onto the next generation and sharing in their joy as they experience the beauty of the world is completely intoxicating. The wonderful fantasy of if all can leave us yearning for that beautiful, magical next step.

But what if the next step is not so magical?

What if the “dream job” is exhausting and frustrating?

What if your perfect partner is not so perfect?

What if being elbow deep in poop and tantrums and conflicts was not the dream you thought it would be?

 What happens when you either run out of things that are supposed to make you happy (you already have the kids and the house and the job) or CAN’T accomplish the next item on the checklist (that dream house is out of reach or conceiving is hard or you are passed up for the promotion or you have set an impossible standard for yourself like helping every homeless person in the city). Then what?

Here’s the thing: None of those will make you happy long term.

Sure they might give you a temporary boost of bliss… but when that fades…

If you are like me, that means you start searching again for the next thing that should do it.The searching then striving cycle is what I call the happiness treadmill. Always working hard but never getting any closer to your goal.

The moral of the story is that happiness comes from within. But what does that even mean? How are we supposed to magically cultivate this happiness that just isn’t there?

Well the first thing is to address WHY it isn’t there in the first place. What’s getting in the way? Old programming. Messages that you received as a child that are still running the show today.

As I share in this personal video, some of my old programs were:

I do not deserve to be loved unless I am productive, and sweet, and patient, and strong, and unflappable, and smiling, and happy, and put together.

I also had ones that told me that I do not deserve to be happy unless I can make everyone around me happy, or that making them happy would be what makes me happy.

And so I worked hard to make my partner, my kids, my bosses, my friends, and my co-workers happy. And while I did get some satisfaction in that, what it really meant was that I lost who I was entirely.

Here is my personal story of how I got off the treadmill and figured out who I really was:

Video transcript below.

If you would like to dig into YOUR old programming to see what you uncover, check out this blog post.

You ARE strong enough to battle your own programming and you CAN find happiness right now, even if you feel completely overwhelmed by the demands of your life.

Join a community of parents who work on ourselves so that we can model what a happy life looks like for the next generation and self-care becomes normal for us AND our kids in the Blissfully Busy Facebook Group.

Kristina Coderre is a busy mom of 4 who is passionate about helping parents build a lifestyle that includes joy and fulfillment WHILE tending to the chaotic grind of raising a family. You can join the conversation in the Blissfully Busy Facebook group or chat directly with Kristina to have a heart to heart about your personal circumstances.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to self-care Sunday where we explore what it means to fill our own cups!

Say hello in the chat so I know you are here, whether you are watching live or watching the replay!

For the last little while we have been talking about old programming, or the set of hidden messages that our mind picks up throughout our lifetimes, and we have done some activities to start uncovering yours, because all of this is subconscious. And we start to discover how it came to be and how it’s affecting you now.

And so by now you know that I believe this is the most overlooked component of self-help because if we don’t re-write these programs, our mind will sabotage our efforts and that can leave us feeling even more frustrated and hopeless that our life will ever be blissful. Think about when you are trying to sit down and the second you sit down your mind jumps in with all of the things that you have to do and it won’t let you rest. That is your old programming.

So today we are not going to do any exercises. Today I am just going to explain how I got so passionate about uncovering and rewriting our old programs.

It started around 2010.

I had been back at work for a few months following my second, and last, maternity leave.

I was sitting in my gray cubicle trying to focus on doing an amazing job at my work. Proving that I could do it all, I would be a mom of 2 and a great worker, and a great friend.

I could hear the chatter around me, and some people laughing a few cubicles down. And I remember that I was trying to answer my emails and I was typing out message and signing off with “Have a great day!” and a happy face emoji and as I was typing that I was trying desperately not to cry.

Coming back from my last maternity leave meant that there was nothing else to work towards. I had done all the things, completed all the tasks on what I now know was a subconscious checklist created by my old programming. This was a checklist that was supposed to lead to a good life. It was supposed to lead to my personal happily ever after – and my checklist was something like this (let me know if you had this type of subconscious checklist): Finish university, get married, build a career, buy a house, have children.

Did you have a subconscious checklist? Things that you must do, or must not do, to have a good life?

I was taught my whole life that if I did those things, if I just worked hard and kept at it, I would be successful and happy. Other people seemed to be, but I was on edge all the time. Work was demanding, home was demanding. It felt like I was constantly doing things for others and I felt trapped like I had no escape.

And it was crazy because I had a beautiful home and beautiful children, but there was no money left over for lavish vacations and no time or space left over for anything other than just keeping up.

Yet I knew I had it good! I knew that thousands of people would line up to step into my life – because from the outside, I had it all! But on the inside I was miserable. What was I doing wrong? What was wrong with me?

I figured, still subconsciously at the time, that it must be one of those elements, one of those steps to happiness on my checklist. Maybe I had picked the wrong job, the wrong neighbourhood, the wrong house, maybe I had the wrong husband?

I was so tired of feeling overwhelmed, overworked and out of balance. I saw other people living life, going on cool vacations, having a wonderful time with their kids and it felt like there was some secret formula that I was missing, so I set out to figure it out. So over the next few years, I went back to school, I got a new job, I even left my husband, moved to a new neighbourhood, and started dating again.

I did my checklist all over again!!

And I remember the moment it hit me. I was sitting in the bath with my boyfriend. I know TMI but there it is.

I remember being in this cocoon of perfection. I had hot water embracing me, I remember the smell of the bubbles and I could hear them popping around me, and an amazing man sharing it with me. I should be in bliss! I should be marvelling at the beautiful life I had created! But instead as I sat there, surrounded by bliss, I was panicking. my mind was telling me to RUN. Run, get away!

And that’s when I realized…it was ME!!

The common denominator in my misery was me.

I was what was in the way of my happiness!

Something inside of me was not letting me take in the joy, like it was unsafe. Like I didn’t deserve it.

This was now 2017 at this point and my anxiety was so high that I was buying wine by the case just to be able to get through the day.

But I didn’t want to be numb.

I wanted to live!! I wanted to be blissfully happy! To enjoy the small moments with my kids, and I wanted to let myself love the man in front of me, and to let him love me.

I wanted to love myself.

That brings tears to my eyes because I was super scared, like terrified, to let myself love and be loved and so I always had one foot in and one foot out, ready to run at the drop of a hat. I know now that I had so many programs that told me that I didn’t deserve to be loved unless… (you can fill in anything you want here and I pretty much had that program). I do not deserve to be loved unless I am productive, and sweet, and patient, and strong, and unflappable, and smiling, and happy, and put together – you name it. Those were my old programs.

And Tim, my current partner, boyfriend at the time, now husband, is the most genuine person I have ever met, and I remember thinking, he’s in with both feet, all in, committed to me.

And that was humbling. Here was a man strong enough to hand over his heart… and I had to decide what was I going to do with it?

Was I going to let my anxiety and insecurities stomp all over it, or was I going to heal my trauma and give him the partner he deserved? The partner he SAW IN ME?

That was one choice. My other choice was to continue on, always scared, always anxious, searching, and sabotaging and never trusting my own decisions.

And so here we are, back in the bath on that fateful day in 2017, and I watched him, and the bubbles popped, I felt something pop inside me. I don’t want to feel uncertain anymore. I don’t want to live in anxiety anymore. I am SO TIRED of searching and working so hard to find “the thing” that will make me happy.

I do not want to get in the way of my own happiness anymore.

He deserves to have a partner as committed to him as he was to me. Could I be that person? I was going to figure this out.

For some reason, it was easier to commit to doing it for HIM than it was to commit to doing it for me, because I realize now that deep down I didn’t think I was good enough or strong enough to overcome my old programming, to be that person that he could love and who could love him back.

But HE did. He believed in me. And that was enough to get me started on my healing journey. And it took 5 years, it took a long time. And somewhere along that path I did start doing it for me because along the journey, as my old programming was replaced with newer, truer, better programs, I started to believe that I too deserve all of the love that I so easily and readily pour out to other people. I too am lovable.

And you can see that this journey lasts a very long time because here I am 5 years later and I still have tears.

Healing myself has let my heart be open to love, and Tim and I are closer than ever.

I have clear and healthy boundaries, and I’m learning to balance my various needs, including my love of being busy. Now I’m strategically busy with things that light me up instead of a being busy in a desperate attempt to hide from my emotions and my insecurities.  I used to use it to cover up all of the things that were hard in my life, to not feel.

And now I feel empowered CHOOSE to be busy (or not) with what lights me up and CHOOSE not to worry about all the other things, all the other things that used to drive me crazy on my to do list! Because I got to CHOOSE and create my new programs.

And then I realized how exhausting and depleting it was trying to be someone I thought would be more lovable than me. Hiding my true self and my voice and my thoughts and my opinions and my weirdness and my emotions (the #1 thing to hide that my programs told me would make me look silly and unprofessional and crazy) – hiding all of that took up so much energy and created so much tension and anxiety and anger that I carried around for years.

So today I am sharing this raw emotional story with you because dropping your old programming is the most effective and efficient way to find peace and happiness.

I spent so many years figuring that out. And uncovering my old programming and then systematically creating new programs that were actually in alignment with my true self allowed me to be able to fill my cup while getting more stuff done than ever before. And it doesn’t need to take years.

I hear so often that “I just can’t wait to retire” or “I wish I could fast forward to retirement.” You do not need to wait years! It doesn’t need to be slow, and arduous, and confusing. Like where do I start and what do I do next? Trying to figure that out was a complete puzzle to me for many many years.

Some of you may know that I am a learning designer in my day job and one of my super powers is taking abstract concepts and putting them into a systematic, step by step, learning product. So, if you came to my last two lives, you got to experience some of my systematic ways that I use to uncover old programming. And so I took the last 6 years of figuring all of the out and I created a program, Bridge to your Best Life, to give everyone a fast track to doing this so you don’t have to wade through years of heartache like I had to before you feel better.

So I call what I was doing, the happiness treadmill. I was working toward things that were never ever going to lead me towards happiness. I was working hard, blood, sweat, and tears, all of my energy trying to create something that would give me the life that I wanted to live and I knew deep down I knew I deserved but on the outside I didn’t believe it. So I ended up going nowhere because I was searching outside of me.

And I can imagine where we all got off the happiness treadmill and we actually started going somewhere, if we were able to love openly and take love in, and be busy with the things that light us up, and feel like we were good enough just as we are, even if we are resting, and even if we are not getting likes on social media.

If we all shed our old programming and just showed up as our beautiful imperfect weird selves, and other people got to see that, how would that change our world? How would that change the next generation? I believe that this work (working on ourselves and creating the life of our dreams) is the most important and productive work you can do.

I know how scary it can be, you saw me today still having this fear inside of me. But we can do this! And can do it together because now we have each other.

So I leave you with the message that I love you, and I see you. If there is a part of you that doesn’t believe that you are strong enough to battle your own programming, I believe in you.

YOU can change your life and YOU can do anything you choose to do.

If you want to know more about how to fast track off the treadmill and into your best life, keep showing up here, keep showing up for yourself like you did today, 20 minutes just for you so you can grow and learn and figure out how to move yourself into YOUR best life. If you want to know more, send me a message and we’ll chat.

Thank you so much for showing up today, and for listening, and for being my safe people that I can share this with.

Have a wonderful day!