Welcome back to another episode of the milspouse mastermind show. I am so excited to be back with you today. Sipping my coffee and sitting behind my mic. Chatting with you today. We are talking about the concept of identity. Why is this something that we struggle with so much as military spouses?

[00:00:22] Why does it matter and what can we do about it? How can it help us craft a life with purpose? I can’t wait to explore this concept with you. So let’s dive in to the show.

Do you wish there was a way to actually thrive as a military spouse and wake up each day feeling filled, fueled and full of joy? I know what it’s like to put your dreams on hold and lose your way and to question what you’re doing with your life and to sit there, struggling with stress, anxiety, and self-doubt, and to feel like you’re throwing spaghetti at a wall, trying to figure out what you need to do it.

[00:01:54] I know because I spent years researching and figuring out how do I get unstuck and learn to live a life with purpose and thrive despite the unpredictability of the military lifestyle. I’m here to tell you it’s possible. And I want to teach you how to get there in a matter of weeks, not years. That’s why I created the milspouse purpose playbook.

[00:02:19] In this course, you will get clarity on your purpose. Learn how to craft a life with purpose and start chasing your dreams regardless of what season of life you’re in today, you’ll learn how to prioritize what matters most. You’ll create a vision for your life and craft your own personal purpose statement, a life of greater purpose.

[00:02:45] Confidence and impact is waiting for you to be the first, to know when the most spouse purpose playbook is available. Go to Milspouse mastermind.com/clarity to get on the wait list or click the link in the show notes below. I am so excited to share all of this information to you, and to really be able to take everything that I have been researching for the last several years and put it into a step-by-step framework to help you learn to thrive.

[00:03:19] We’re doing a new series on the podcast that talks about a lot of these concepts at a very high level. Last week, we talked about the first step to finding purpose as a military spouse. And that is really your mindset and what you believe. We have to start from the place of understanding that we inherently have value.

[00:03:42] Each of us has something unique to offer the world. And when we play small and live without intention, when we just use our lives to support others dreams, the entire world misses out. So first we have to believe that we have something to offer. The second piece of the puzzle is starting to gain clarity on what our uniqueness is, so that we can craft a life with purpose.

[00:04:15] And here’s the thing about learning to live with purpose. So many of us start from the wrong place. We start by asking the question, what should I be doing? Because purpose ties in with action. And so we want to know what our purpose is and what we’re supposed to do. The problem with this is that we’ll never get to the answer.

[00:04:41] As long as we keep asking the question, what should I do now? I can’t blame any of us for actually asking that question, because I think it’s so ingrained in us.

Let me give you a little bit backstory on the milspouse mastermind show. When I started getting my own clarity on what I love, what lights me up and how I wanted to serve.

[00:05:04] I really got focused on this problem of unemployment and underemployment for military spouses, because I knew this was something that so many of us struggle with. We want to find purpose. And so we need to know what to do. How do we make a contribution as a military spouse? But the more that I dug into this issue, the more that I realized that it is a problem, but it shows us a deeper problem.

[00:05:38] And that’s really when I want to talk to you about today, it’s the problem of identity. So let’s talk about identity for a minute. We are a culture and a society that values contribution, right? And as students growing up, our identity is usually tied into what we do at school, how we perform. We’re used to those labels in school.

[00:06:07] We leave school and enter the working world. And society says, well, you need to go get a job, make money and prove your value. And so our identity transfers to what we do to earn money. But here’s the problem. What happens when we’re not earning money? When we become a stay-at-home parent or when we struggle to find employment?

[00:06:35] Our identity takes a nosedive. And then we began to struggle with added stress and anxiety because we don’t feel like we have an identity outside of what we do. And what usually happens is that we just transfer that identity into our relationships. Our identity becomes about being the supportive spouse or being a great mom or dad.

[00:07:06] We get ourselves wrapped up in the identity of others. And we still fail to contemplate who we are without the doing. The most common question when we meet someone is, what do you do? If I were to ask you to tell me about yourself, you would probably tell me that you are a military spouse and a mom or dad, and maybe a hobby that you have on the side. It’s all about what we do instead of who we are at our core.

[00:07:41] So when I set out to think about how I could help military spouses address unemployment and under-employment, I came to the realization that for so many of us, we have lost this sense of self. We’ve lost this sense of identity. And that holds us back from living as the people we were meant to be. From making the difference that we are meant to make in the world, in starting the businesses that we can start.

[00:08:13] And until we first address the core issue of purpose and identity, we’re going to continue to struggle. Because I could offer to teach you how to start a business right now. And some of you would be ready for that, but there’s a great majority of us that would not be ready because we don’t know what it is that is unique to us and what we have to offer the world.

[00:08:44] And so we first have to get clear on what our uniqueness is, and that starts with our unique identity. So today I want to share my story with you of how I went from asking, “what should I do?” to asking the question “who am I?”

My journey to purpose really started after I had kids. Before kids my career kind of went all over the place, but there were still things that I could do, and I could still find my identity in the doing, because even if I didn’t have a career, I could still freelance for people.

[00:09:27] I could still pursue volunteer opportunities. I could still pursue all these interests of mine and find my identity in the doing. But after I had kids, I really started to struggle. What is it that I want to do and who am I anymore? Because all of my own interests and things that light me up took a back seat in life with littles.

[00:09:55] And I felt like I was throwing spaghetti at a wall, trying to figure out how to prioritize the needs of our family, but still pursue the things that light me up at the same time. The real turning point for me in my journey was when I was working a full-time job with a toddler, I was pregnant with my second child. My husband was deployed and I had an hour round trip commute every day.

I would literally wake up, get us ready, get in the car. Drive for an hour. Work all day, drive home for an hour, throw dinner on the table and get my daughter ready for bed. And then crash on the couch. And I felt like life was passing me by and I was not living life. I was just existing through life. And

[00:10:45] And I thought I want to be able to contribute, to make a difference and to do the things that light me up, but it’s not worth it when I barely get to see my daughter. And when I feel exhausted and overwhelmed and like, I’m not actually living life and making time for the things that matter to me.

[00:11:13] I’m not living in alignment with my values. Something’s got to change.

I just didn’t know how to make a change. And I was reading about purpose and trying to figure out, how do I balance all the things? How do I set goals? How do I know where I’m supposed to go? Am I supposed to work full-time? Am I supposed to stay home?

[00:11:38] What about all of the things that light me up? And as I asked all these questions, I heard someone say, the true measure of success is the legacy we leave behind. And that’s really the aha moment for me because I said, huh, what do I want my legacy to be? What do I want people to say about me when I’m gone?

[00:12:07] What do I want my kids to remember about me? Do I want them to just say she worked really hard at a job? What kind of impact do I want to have? How do I want to live? And. How can I make a life that aligns what I say I value, with what I actually do. I really came to the conclusion that I was asking the wrong question.

[00:12:39] I was focusing my career goals and my life goals around the wrong things. And at that moment, I decided to focus my life goals around a new objective: how I wanted to show up and the characteristics I wanted to define my life. I took the emphasis off of what I was doing, and I turned it to binge. Who do I want to be? How do I want to show up?

[00:13:11] And the more that I have sought to put this into practice over the last several years, the more that I have researched and studied this, I have come to the conclusion that who we are is the foundation for everything we do. How we live, how we love, how we parent, how we pursue purpose.

So here’s really what I want to say to us as military spouses on the concept of our identity and our value and our contribution.

[00:13:49] Society has told us this idea that our value lies only in our contribution, not who we are as people. And they’ve sold us this idea that success comes down to how much we make and whether we check all the boxes of the right number of kids and the right house and the right location. And whether we live 20 minutes from family and so on and so forth, climbing the career ladder.

[00:14:15] But I can’t tell you how many people follow that path, that climb that ladder and check those boxe,s only to get to the end of their life and wish they would have done something differently. Bronnie Ware wrote this book called The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying. While I have not read the book yet, I’ve had two different books that I read recently that referenced her work.

[00:14:42] The number one regret of people at the end of their life was wishing that they’d had the courage to live true to themselves. Life as a military spouse can be challenging. It makes it more difficult to check off all the boxes of what society, society deems success, but it’s also an opportunity to live true to ourselves.

[00:15:14] To find our identity outside of what we do, and really look at who we are and who we want to be. And build a life, a purpose out of it. Now, when we talk about who we want to be, I think it comes down to three big things. Number one, what we want our legacy to be? What we want people to say about us when we’re gone, it

[00:15:43] It comes down to how we want to live and what characteristics we want to be present in our lives. And it comes down to what we value as people. Now, as you’ve probably heard me say before, our values are unique. Each of us has a unique set of values that matters most to us, a life of purpose. Comes down to a life of alignment, where we align, what we do with who we are and who we want to be, where we allow the decisions of what legacy we want to leave and what characteristics we want displayed and what our values are to be the guide that allows us to determine how we live on.

[00:16:31] And as you’ll recall from last week, living a life of alignment and congruence is part of what gives us the confidence to show up as the people we’re meant to be, to make the impact that we’re meant to make identity can be defined as the condition of being oneself. There is so much. And really seing the connection between our identity as what we do and finding it and who we are and who we want to be.

[00:17:08] There is so much freedom in finding the courage to live true to ourselves, and not what culture or anyone else says. Is success a life of prayer. Comes down to finding your uniqueness and using your uniqueness to serve the world around you. It starts when you believe that you have value and you have something to offer, and then you explore who you are and ask the question, who do I want to.

[00:17:48] The three parts to this are your values, your characteristics, and your legacy. So I want to leave you with one simple action step today. And that is to think about your legacy. Spend some time journaling on this topic. What story do you want to tell with your life? What do you want others to say about you?

[00:18:14] What legacy do you want to leave?. Can’t wait to hear what comes out of that session for you. Don’t forget. Head to milspouse mastermind.com/clarity or click the show notes below to get on the wait list and be the first to access the milspouse purpose playbook. When it’s available and get your exclusive bonus content until next week now you live filled, fueled and full of joy.