Welcome to another episode of the milspouse mastermind show. I’m so excited to be back with you today. Today, we are talking about what to do when we feel this sense of purposelessness. What is the first step we can take to find purpose and fulfillment as a military spouse? This is something that I know that so many of us struggle with.

[00:00:25] We know that life. The life we wanted and we struggled to thrive in the midst of our current circumstances. And so today we’re going to talk about. The first step to getting on a journey to purpose actually looks like. Let’s dive into the episode.

I know I say this a lot, but it is so true the best way that you can support this show and help your fellow military spouses is by sharing about the show and leaving us a review on iTunes. Hannah D. Hensley just left this review, and I want to share with you today.

[00:01:54] She writes, you’ll finish an episode feeling like you just met a friend for a cup of coffee in this life that can feel so isolating, not even considering COVID. Christine makes you feel like you have a friend who will sit with you through all the seasons of life. Thank you so much, Hannah, for writing that.

[00:02:13] And that’s exactly what my goal is. To feel like we’re just having a cup of coffee together and talking about the challenges of our lives as military spouses and how we learn to thrive despite our circumstances. If you have not already done so, go over to iTunes, leave the show a review. So more people can find us. Take a screenshot of this episode, share it to your stories on social media tag, me and I will share you.

[00:02:42] And we will let more people know about the milspouse mastermind show and build this supportive community of military spouses. Now I’m so excited to be back with you today. I know it may not seem like I took a brief hiatus, but I batched a bunch of episodes because for two reasons. One, my spouse was gone for the last five weeks and I wanted to make sure I had some episodes banked in case anything happened.

[00:03:08] I use that time to start working on a project that I am so excited to share with you. It is a course designed to help you. From feeling this sense of purposelessness, of not knowing what you’re supposed to do with your life of not feeling like you’re thriving, but not being sure of what you need to do.

[00:03:34] And I took everything that I’ve been learning about and reading about over the last few years, everything that I’ve tried, that has worked and has not worked, and put it in a step-by-step course for you to find. If you have ever wished that there was a way to get absolute clarity on who you are, what lights you up and how you can live a life of matters.

[00:04:00] This is for you. I know what it’s like to put your dreams on hold and then lose your way. And to question if you’re doing enough with your life and wondering what life is supposed to be about, if this is all there is to struggle with stress and anxiety and self doubt, and to feel like you’re throwing spaghetti at a wall, trying to figure out what you need to do.

[00:04:24] I spent years researching and figuring out how do I get unstuck and live with purpose and learn to thrive despite the unpredictability of the military lifestyle. And this is all going into the milspouse purpose playbook course. And in this course, you’ll get clarity on your purpose. You’ll learn how to craft a life with purpose and began chasing your dreams regardless of the season of life you’re in today.

[00:04:54] You’ll learn how to prioritize what matters most and, in the process, discover who you are meant to be. You’ll walk away with your own personal purpose statement and a vision for the life you want to create, a decision making framework to help you prioritize what matters most. I’m creating this workbook to guide you through each clarity exercise.

[00:05:19] You’ll get daily productivity sheets. And a goal setting masterclass to figure out how you can actually pursue goals as a military spouse. And if you’ve ever wondered, how do I actually trade frustration for fulfillment and isolation for a life of impact, then this is what’s going to help you do just that.

[00:05:45] So I am in the process of creating all of this material and getting it ready to put out. If you are interested, then I highly recommend that you go to milspousemastermind.com/clarity to get on the waitlist. And you will be the first to hear about this course when it is ready for. And I’ll have an exclusive bonus just for you for getting on the wait list.

[00:06:12] I’ll link that below in the show notes. So it’s easy for you to find, but I’m so excited to share this process. I will have more to share in an upcoming episode just about everything that I have learned as I’ve been putting together this course and everything that I learned while doing this while my spouse was gone for five weeks, what it was like to.

[00:06:38] Do this and manage three littles at home and get them ready to start a new school year. And just, I will just say the deployment curse is real. Now my spouse was just off at training. He wasn’t actually deployed, but the adage always holds. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong when your spouse has gone.

[00:06:57] And that’s just the reality of life, but we made it through. We did the best with what we have in here. So I will go into more the details in what happened and what I learned through that process in a future episode. But today I want to talk about this first step to learning to live a life of purpose and fulfillment as a military spouse.

[00:07:21] Because I think when we think about what it looks like to thrive in our current lifestyle, without our situations. Without waiting until a future season to chase our dreams. It has to start in one place. And if this is not established, then you can’t build this life of purpose of joy of it impact you can’t live filled, fueled, and full of joy unless first things first.

[00:07:57] It begins with our mindset. Our beliefs play a pivotal role in what we want and whether we achieve it. Now, mindset alone is never going to lead us to success. But the views that we adopt for ourselves will affect the way that we live our everyday lives. Mindset matters. Because if we’re going to live a life of purpose and fulfillment, if we’re going to thrive, we have to start from the place of believing that we inherently have value that we are worthy to give and receive love, and that we have something to offer.

[00:08:40] And if we cannot realize. If we don’t realize the value that we bring, that’s when we conform to a shell of who we’re meant to be. We struggle with greater anxiety and stress with depression, and we feel this sense of purposelessness. We feel lost and confused, and we know we’re not thriving and we won’t find peace and fulfillment that our soul craves, it starts with believing that we have value.

[00:09:10] So today I just want to quickly go over four things that will help us with our mindset, because I know this is something that so many of us struggle with. Especially when it comes to perhaps we are on the job hunt, we’ve moved somewhere and we’re trying to find a job and goodness guys, when you are trying to apply to place after place after place, and you’re getting rejected. Rejection doesn’t feel good.

[00:09:41] It doesn’t boost our self-esteem, it doesn’t help us with our confidence. We feel like we’re lacking something that we don’t have, what it takes. And over time, if we let that message continue to play in our head, then we’re going to start acting in accordance with the belief in our head.

[00:10:04] If we’re struggling to manage the home. And we feel like this is not where our giftings are and our kids are not the most encouraging. And we struggle with mom guilt. And we worry that we’re not raising resilient kids. There’s just a lot that happens in our life to make us feel like we’re not enough and that we don’t have value or our contributions don’t matter.

[00:10:33] Or that we’re not doing a great job. We don’t have these people that are speaking into us many times that are saying you are doing this fantastic job. You have so much to offer. You’re bringing such great value. We don’t have those messages. Your spouse is in the military and they get feedback sessions and their supervisor is going to tell them. This is what you do really well. And this is what there’s room for improvement

[00:10:59] But for most of us, nobody’s telling us, Hey, you did this really well. You are really great at this one thing, right? So if we don’t have these outside voices speaking encouragement into us, then it comes down to what we believe about ourselves and what voices that we are listening to.

[00:11:23] So four things that I want you to keep in mind. Number one understand that you were made for more. Yes. You, the military spouse, the stay-at-home mom, you stuck in that unfulfilling job that is sucking the life out of you, or you living away from friends and family and struggling to figure out how to thrive and who you are.

[00:11:51] Somebody convinced you that you were something less and that you are ordinary and that what matters most is just doing the thing, compliance and conformity and making it through life. I think sometimes we get stuck in this idea that it’s impossible to chase our dreams and to step into our unique God given callings.

[00:12:19] Because of the unpredictability of our lives, we should just settle for what gives our family a decent paycheck or what everyone is doing. We should settle for just dreaming dreams. We settle for the idea of helping our spouse chase their dreams. And that we’ll just be this great supporting player. While being a supportive spouse is amazing.

[00:12:50] It doesn’t have to come at the expense of your story, of you stepping into your unique calling. You were made for more and the longer that you live without intention, the more you become aware of your limitations and the more that you lose touch with your possibilities when you play small. The entire world misses out.

[00:13:18] I think if there was one thing I would say to you, it’s this. It’s not that only certain people have something to offer. It’s not the famous people or the people who have money. It’s ordinary people like you and me who seek clarity and step out into their callings and purposes that make a difference in the world.

[00:13:43] And so we first have to believe that there is a story that we are supposed to be. You were made for more and there’s more to life than just existing. You were created to create something that blesses the world around you, which brings me to the second thing. Believe not only that you were made for more, but that you have something unique to offer.

[00:14:09] Each of us has a unique purpose, a unique set of skills, experiences, and passions. And even if you don’t know what that is, right now. You have to first believe that you were made with and for a purpose, that you have something to offer. Your uniqueness was placed inside of you for a reason. The things that light you up, that things that bring you joy, they were placed inside of you.

[00:14:39] There are gifts inside of you, entrusted to you. It is your responsibility to seek them out and just develop them. Even if that doesn’t feel like much right now. I absolutely love this quote from the book, Imperfect Courage by Jessica Honegger. She, she says, and I put this on my website too.

[00:15:05] The world needs your contribution. Even if that contribution feels really small right now. I know what it feels like to not know what you have to offer, but the starting point is believing that there is something inside of you and that you have a contribution to make.

The third thing I want you to keep in mind is to embrace the life you have.

[00:15:36] You have what will never get us to a life of purpose and fulfillment is wishing that our life looked differently than it does today. We can’t control what happens, but we can control what we do with what we have. And it starts when we embrace the life that we have. No, I’m not going to climb the corporate ladder and pursue a career in marketing and that’s okay.

[00:16:04] That was the story that I had in my head, but life has played out differently. And now I’m at peace with that. I’m at peace with where I am in life, because I know that there is something inside of me and that I can use what I have to serve others. And it starts when we embrace the life we have.

And then the fourth thing I would say is understand that confidence is built through three different things, clarity, competence, and congruence. Now let me explain.

Clarity is knowing what you have to offer, what you value and where you want to go in life. If we don’t know these things, then we’re not going to walk in confidence. We have to know what it is that we have to offer and what we value and where we want. And that’s part of the reason I created this clarity course to help us get started.

The second part of confidence is competence. That is gaining the skills and experiences we need to operate out of what we have to offer. We have to take action and gain more knowledge and more skills and more experience.

[00:17:31] And that gives us evidence of the value that we bring. So we have to know what that value is, and we start living and walking in that that’s giving us competence. And then the third piece of confidence is congruence. It’s basically aligning our actions and what we do with what we believe and who we want to be.

[00:17:57] So we have to start with that belief, but then we’re going to align what we do with what we believe. So there’s three pieces of the confidence puzzle: clarity, competence, and congruence.  Confidence isn’t something we can manufacture. Faking it till you make it will only get us so far. A life of purpose, though, starts with that belief that we have something to offer.

[00:18:30] I don’t know where you are today and what you’re struggling with, but I do know that if you are at a place of not feeling fulfilled, of not loving your life and not moving towards a life of purpose, if you feel stuck, the starting point is in your belief, that mindset. And if you want to live a life of purpose and meaning and fulfillment.

[00:19:01] If you want to walk in confidence. Number one, talk about our beliefs and our mindset. Believe that we have something to offer. Then number two, we pursue clarity of purpose. We, we get clear on what it is that is unique to us, what we value and where we want to go in life. And then we start taking action.

[00:19:25] We develop competence by gaining more skills and experience, and we develop congruence by aligning what we do with what we believe and where we want to go. In the course, we’re going to go into this on a much deeper level. The first module is all about mindset and the power of belief exploring what it is that you currently believe about yourself, what to do with the beliefs that aren’t serving you.

[00:19:53] And the beliefs that you need to adopt to start this journey of purpose and lead to a life of fulfillment, a life of thriving. Or you are today without changing your circumstances, nothing in your life has to change in order for you to start this journey. Now, if the course is not for you right now, that is okay.

[00:20:20] Over the next few weeks, on the podcast, we’re going to talk about a lot of these concepts at a high level. So even if the course is not something that you can do right now, or it’s not the right timing for you, you can start taking action. And your first step today is to examine what you believe and to ask yourself, do I believe I have something unique to offer because if we cannot start this.

[00:20:51] That we’re never going to thrive. We have to start by believing that we have something to offer. Now, just as a reminder, if you want to be one of the first to know when the course is ready head over to milspousemastermind.com/clarity, and there you can register to be the first to know when the course is ready, you’ll get an exclusive bonus for being on that list.

[00:21:17] I’ll have that link in the show notes below. Until then may you live filled, fueled and full of joy. I’ll see you next week.