How Do You Want To Feel?

When you lean into your desires, you liberate your power – and your joy. ~ Danielle LaPorte

There was a time in my life when I would add chore after chore to my to do list. Big chores or projects that really didn’t fill my soul and were a struggle to complete. Now when thoughts of adding those to my plate crop up, I like to consider how they will make me feel. Not only when I’m done, but while I’m in the midst of them too. Will I have a similar passion like I do for my writing? Will they fill me with joy and happiness? Will they make me feel proud of my accomplishment? If the answer is no, then they definitely go on the back burner.

I think we all can reach a point in our life when we take stock and really try to assess if what we are ‘doing’ each day is enough to satisfy us – mentally, physically, spiritually, joyously. Sometimes it’s hard to figure that out and so we just plod along doing the same things day in and day out. How do we go about finding these important qualities, meaning and even purpose in our lives?

Well for me, this question started to get answered after I read a book by Danielle LaPorte called The Desire Map (well, it is continually getting answered and tweaked all the time!). She really stresses the importance of figuring out how we want to feel. When we have those feelings narrowed down, then we can start working on doing the things that help to make us feel that way.

Here are some of the feelings that I jotted down way back then: happy, peaceful, enthusiastic, creative, accepted, thankful, confident, passionate, accomplished, proud, excited, fulfilled, energized, inspired, satisfied, understood…. And so much more!

Then that led to coming up with listing the categories or components of my life that I dubbed My Life Essence. I came up with 5 of them: Mind/Body/Spirit; Purpose; Connections with Others; Play; and finally Endeavors & Chores. From there, I assigned the feelings I wanted to feel with each one of the categories. Here is just a snippet of the big white board I created some time ago to remind me of where I wanted my life to lead me and the feelings I wanted to feel along the way:

As I look at this list again, I am reminded how I wished I had discovered this thought process way back when I was starting out in the work/career world. It may have made a big difference in my choices and experiences along the way. But then again, maybe not – I do think the universe is always guiding us along our way for certain, perhaps unknown reasons. I am thankful however, that I stumbled across this way of following my feelings with hopefully ample time left to follow them.

I have been keeping track of my progress of all of these in my daily journal. It keeps me a little bit held accountable and focused on the things that matter to me… and to make sure I am still feeling what I want to feel! As a good friend of mine said the other day “We have to make life happen, don’t just let it happen.” I believe this is so true. It is hard to carve out time in our lives to do the stuff that lights us up. The stuff that memories are made of. The little things that give us comfort and joy. The things that make us feel good. This is especially true when a difficult challenge hits us – like my health issue that I spoke about in my last blog – or any unexpected turn of events that soak up more of our time and efforts. Oh, and perhaps like during a pandemic! During those periods, it is more important than ever to really nurture the feelings that we want to feel and allow them to help us through the harder times and tougher feelings.

Sure there are those mundane chores that do have to get done. But maybe when we think of them as satisfying some of the feelings we want in our life, they can take on a new meaning. Cooking dinner as a way to build up some curiosity in a new dish using new spices perhaps. While doing yard work, cleaning the house or going on a walk you could pull up a podcast on a subject you are interested in. This could give you a sense of well-being, excitement, adventure, learning, joy and much more in addition to the feeling of accomplishment with your chore. I also like to look forward to how I will feel after an unpleasant chore is done to spur me on to get it done, like taxes!

I think it is important to balance what we do in our lives between the must do items and the want to items. All too often we tell ourselves that we have to get the pantry organized, or the car cleaned, or the checkbook balanced, or a multitude of other things before we will schedule a fun day for ourselves, go on a weekend get-away, take a walk on the beach, call a good friend we haven’t spoken to in a while or write a chapter in the book we haven’t finished yet. How about if we start to prioritize and mix in more of the things that will give us joy, happiness or any of the other feelings we are after? After all, some of those mundane chores are probably not a top-notch priority all the time anyway.

I know from personal experience that getting bogged down in the everyday chores can be very exhausting. It does take effort to mix in the fun things, and the things that will give us those good feelings, but it is so worth it!

Each week, I try to make sure I get a few things done in all of my Life Essence Categories. Before I started thinking this way, the Endeavors or Chores of my life were getting most of my attention. But now, I really do fit in more playtime, connections, purpose and of course my daily mind/body/spirit efforts. At the end of the week I tally these up in my journal, and if I didn’t quite meet my goals, I note how I can do better the next week. It doesn’t take a lot of time or effort to track, but it does help me plan my time just a little bit better to keep experiencing the feelings I want to feel in my life.

I will also take stock of my current moods. Sometimes I just need a quiet day to feel happy. Sometimes I need to be creative, or analytical, or spontaneous. Some days I want someone to share those feelings with, and other days it’s just me and my Zen Puppy Caylee. I do think it’s very important to notice our feelings and be comfortable with them. We need to especially notice and witness when the good feelings crop up and why. Then keep doing those things that bring them up! So how do you want to feel? What can you do to make attaining those feelings be a part of your everyday life?