[00:00:00] Christine: Hey, amazing milspouse. I’m so happy to be back with you for another episode of the MilSpouse Mastermind Show. I hope you will grab a cup of coffee or your favorite beverage and join us for our chat today. I hear from military spouses all the time that our tired of the way that. Looks, they’re tired of moving.

[00:00:23] They’re tired of uncertainty of not feeling like they have a place to call home of not feeling like they have their own sense of identity, of not feeling in control of their life. They aren’t happy with the way that life looks. So today we’re going to talk about this question. Is it possible to boost your happiness as a military spouse when you have all of these things that you are not happy about?

[00:00:56] Are there things within your control that will help you love the life you have? And if so, what are those things? That’s what we’re going to talk about today. So if you are ready to boost that happiness meter in your own life, let’s dive into the show.

[00:02:05] We all want to be happy. We all want good things to happen. We want things to work out. We want things to go smoothly. We want to not struggle. We want to love our. But the problem with this is that life is full of both blessings and challenges. It’s simply a part of being human. Now we can argue that there’s going to be more challenges to our lives as military spouses.

[00:02:37] Not everybody’s going to have to deal with PCSing all the time, or your spouse working crazy shifts and being on short notice orders to deploy. Some of these things that are just a part of life as a military family, there’s a lot of uncertainty that most people are not going to experience when they feel like they control.

[00:03:01] For the most part, where they live and where they build their lives. So when there are all of these things that are outside of our control that we feel like are prohibiting us or keeping us from living the life that we want, from chasing our dreams, from loving our. So when all of that is true, how do we find happiness?

[00:03:26] How do we actually love our lives as military spouses? And is it even possible? I know you’ve probably had this question because I’ve had the same question in my own life. We’ve been on this journey now for 13 years, going. 15 years together since my husband and I started dating, and we’ve been through a lot together.

[00:03:49] A lot of wonderful things and a lot of challenging things in our life as a military family. And so I wanna talk about this process of how we learn to love the life that we have and use what we have to create a life that really. Fulfilling to us. That really lights us up even when we can’t control our circumstances, when we aren’t in control of what happens to.

[00:04:20] Now, before we get into how we do that and how we really boost that happiness as a military spouse, I want to let you know that there is a brand new workshop available for you on the website for free. This is for you if you have felt the sense of, Hey, I put my dreams, I put my passions on the back burner.

[00:04:44] I’ve given up so much of. In this military life, and now I feel lost. Now I feel frustrated. Now I feel overwhelmed. How do I shift out of this frustration? What do I do with these feelings of frustration and how do I actually find my way back to myself? How do I find my own identity as a military spouse?

[00:05:09] How do I live a life that really. Meet up, and this is gonna be a step by step guide of how to start that process. This workshop is absolutely free. It is available on our website. Just go to milspouse mastermind.com/workshop, or I’ll have the link in the show notes below and you can click on that. But this is the place that you start if you are in this place of feeling frustrated if you.

[00:05:38] To love your life as a military spouse. If you want to find yourself and find your own identity and really learn how to thrive in the midst of a season where so much of life feels out of your control. This is the workshop that I really recommend. We go step by step through this process of how you. To get unstuck and craft a life with purpose.

[00:06:03] So I want you to know that that is available to you, but I just want to talk about this concept of happiness today. And why it seems so elusive to us. So when we think of the term happiness, it’s one of those most basic feelings. I was thinking about this in relation to like how our kids learn about feelings and emotions, and probably the first.

[00:06:31] Two emotions that people learn to recognize as children is this sense of happiness and sadness. I felt this sense of happiness or I felt like this was a negative event. I felt sad. And so we can talk about this in terms of the most basic emotions. But happiness has really historically been used to just describe everything related to positive emotions, I guess, at the core.

[00:07:03] But when I look to dictionary.com, I looked up the definition. It’s the state of being happy, which is not really a great description. It doesn’t teach us anything about happy. Now, if you look at the second definition, it says, Good fortune, pleasure, contentment, joy. So we start to unpack this at a deeper level.

[00:07:28] What are some of the things that contribute to happiness? And one of the definitions I really liked came from Brene Brown’s book. Atlas of the Heart where she goes through and talks about all of these different emotions and feelings that we feel as human beings. And when she gets to this part about happiness, she calls it feeling pleasure.

[00:07:54] Often related to the immediate environment or current circumstance. So happiness is really related to our circumstance and a sense of being in control. Here’s where we, we run into the problem. We don’t control our circumstances. We don’t have control over what happens to us, and if happiness is related to our circum.

[00:08:22] There’s a problem here because we can’t control what happens, but we can control something. What can we control? What is within our control is our response to what happens. We can control how we choose to show up, how we act, and how we respond. To our triggers and to our circumstances. Now, if you’ve been a listening to the podcast for a while, you know, I’m a fan of Victor Frankel who invented the concept of logo therapy.

[00:08:56] He lived at the same time as Freud, and Freud was saying, Hey, What man really wants is pleasure and happiness. And Franco lived and survived the concentration camps in World War ii and really what he walked away with after that time was the sense of what was the difference between those that survived and those that gave up and decided that life was not worth.

[00:09:24] And what came from that was this concept of logotherapy, which says that the ultimate goal for man, what he really wants in life is not happiness, but a sense of meaning and purpose. And the more that we make happiness our goal, the more that we search after and try to obtain happiness as the end goal, the more we actually.

[00:09:52] Disappointed. Happiness cannot be the end goal. When we make happiness. Our goal the more we are actually likely to suffer from anxiety and depression and across many spectrums, many books, many areas of study this has been shown to be true. The harder we chase after pleasurable feeling. The more likely we are to struggle with this and to suffer from anxiety and depression because we’re not getting the outcome we want.

[00:10:27] Happiness happens as a byproduct of a life of meaning and purpose, a fulfilling life. And so we can almost call this the happiness trap. And the happiness trap is the sense of to find. We try to avoid bad feelings. We try to get rid of the negative things in our life, and the harder we try to do that, the more negative feelings we create.

[00:10:58] The more we struggle with this, when our primary motivation is getting rid of everything that doesn’t make us happy of unpleasant thoughts and feelings. It actually drains the joy and vitality from our lives. So what we want to do is shift what we’re focusing on and turn it away from how do I become more happy to, how do I live a meaningful and fulfilling life?

[00:11:30] Because that is something that is possible right where you are today. If happiness is based on our circumstances and we can’t control our circumstances, then we can’t control how we. Happiness is a byproduct, not a goal. And so how do we actually do this? Well, I want to start by talking about why this really matters for us as military spouses.

[00:12:00] So the first thing I want you to know is that you are not alone in feeling frustrated with your. Because it’s, it’s very common among military spouses to feel frustrated because we cannot control what happens to. In fact, it’s not just military spouses, it’s the population at large. People are searching for happiness.

[00:12:24] If you go do a search on Amazon for books on happiness, you’ll find thousands and thousands and thousands of titles of people trying to figure out, how do I have a happy life? How do I have all of these positive emotions and feelings in my. And the more we search after that, right, the more that we struggle with anxiety and depression.

[00:12:47] I read recently that one out of every 10 people is suffering from clinical depression. We’re not getting what we actually want, and our attempts to get rid of these unwanted thoughts and feelings is not helping us actually. So the first step to finding this fulfilling life and to breaking free from getting sucked into this happiness trap is this idea of acceptance.

[00:13:23] So that’s what we’re going to talk about for a few minutes to date. What are we accepting? What is accept? It’s really being aware of what’s going on and just making room for it, making space for it, not trying to fight against it, not getting frustrated that life doesn’t look a certain way, but. Number one, we have to accept that to be human is to feel the full range of human emotions.

[00:13:53] I love the movie from Disney Inside Out where we talk about we have all of these feelings and emotions, and to really live a full life is to experience all of these emotions, to experience joy and sadness and anger, and fear and frustration. Means we are alive and that we have the ability to feel emotion, to accept that as a part of our life in a broken world, we’re going to have good things that happen to us and we’re going to have bad things that happen to us.

[00:14:34] That is a part of being human. We accept the fact that the harder we chase after. The more we will suffer and the more bad feelings we will create and struggle with, and the more that we engage in what we call control strategies, our efforts. To deal with these unpleasant feelings, to be able to zone out or to pretend that they do not exist, to try to get rid of them.

[00:15:08] This is not helping us process through them. It’s actually draining. Us. It’s, it’s keeping us from living a full and fulfilling life. Now we all engage in control strategies. If you’ve had a long, frustrating day, what do you want to do? At the end of the day, you want to feel better, and it’s easy to do these control strategies that help us feel better in the short term.

[00:15:39] I’m guilty of this just as much as anybody else. I’ve. You know, a long, frustrating day. Things didn’t go the way that I wanted them to do. And sometimes all I want is some chocolate or a glass of wine or to zone out in front of the television, right? We want to take our mind off of the hard day, right? And that’s okay on occasion.

[00:16:02] But if we are struggling with these feelings the way forward, the way for us to truly thrive, Is to accept these feelings and to process through them so that we are actually taking time to do the things that help us show up as the people we want to be. And that’s a lot to unpack. But I want to just help us to start with this place of acceptance.

[00:16:29] Hey, this is part of being human and, and to live a life that we find. Lights us up and that we are able to thrive as military spouses. Means that we accept all of life has to offer. Not that we particularly enjoy the bad things that happen, but that we are able to make. Space for these feelings and let them come and let them pass.

[00:17:00] It’s really about accepting the life we have today. It, it may not be the life that we would’ve chosen. It may not be the events we would’ve chosen. There’s a lot of things that are not great, but if we truly want to thrive and live a fulfilling. This is where it starts accepting what is and choosing to take agency over our.

[00:17:27] When I say take agency over our life, I mean really to choose to step into our story and to say, I cannot control what happens, but I can control what I do with what I have and I can make the most of what I have today. And when I do that, I can create a life I love. It doesn’t involve a change in my external circumstance.

[00:17:52] It begins with a change in me and. A change in the way that I view my life and the world around me. That is something that is possible. For each and every one of us. I truly, truly believe that we can live a fulfilling life as a military spouse because that is really what we want. Happiness can come as a byproduct, but what we want is a life of meaning, not getting everything that we want, because we could have everything we think we want happen in our lives, and we would still find ourselves not.

[00:18:31] I mean, you could look at celebrities lives and they’ve gotten everything that this society and culture says we should desire. And so many of them are still not happy because they haven’t found a way to live a meaningful and fulfilling life. And so what we really need to focus on is finding fulfill.

[00:18:55] Living a life of meaning and purpose, and then happiness comes as a byproduct. Then we experience these feelings of joy and contentment and wholeness and alignment. It is possible to love your life, to build a life you love as a military spouse. It just might not look the way that you thought it was supposed to.

[00:19:22] So how do we begin? We begin by accepting the life we have today. Now, if you were thinking to yourself, but Christine, how in the world do I build a life I love? How do I find fulfillment as a military spouse? Well, we’re going to talk about how we start to do this next week, but today I just wanted to give you the foundation for Okay, if we want to find happy.

[00:19:49] If we want to boost our happiness as a military spouse, this is our foundation. We’re laying the foundation for creating a life that is fulfilling, that allows us to thrive. So come back next week and I’m going to give you three tools to find fulfillment as a military spouse. But as we wrap up today, I just want to remind you that we have that.

[00:20:15] Workshop available for you on the website. If you are struggling with, how do I find my own identity as a military spouse? How do I begin to craft a life with purpose? I know you talk about this, but how is this possible that free training is for you? Just go to mel spouse mastermind.com/workshop or find it in the show notes below.

[00:20:39] Now, I would love to hear your thoughts on today’s. The easiest way to give me some feedback is by just joining our free community on Facebook where we unpack each episode together. That is available by going to milspouse mastermind.com/community. I would love to see you in there if you are in this place where you know you need additional support and help.

[00:21:05] You are ready to start getting unstuck in building a life with purpose, and you would like some one-on-one account. Coaching support. I would love to help offer that to you. You can find out all the details simply by emailing me at hello middle spouse mastermind.com. I hope you have an amazing week. Until next time, may you live filled, fueled and full of joy.