Why You're Unhappy and One Simple Thing You Can Do About It

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Transcript

 Hey everyone, it's Christina Driscoll, host of this She's Brave podcast. I'm so glad you're here with me. I did not start out brave at all, but I learned that we can do brave things one small step at a time. I wanna get brave women's voices out there in the world and inspire women to find their own bravery within themselves a year and a half later.

I'm in the top one and a half percent of all podcasts globally. I've interviewed amazing women who've overcome and accomplished so much to live the life of their dreams. If they can do it, you can do it too, and so can I. Let's go.

 Hey everyone, it's Christina with the She's Brave Podcast.  Now you might be hearing some traffic in the background and a little bit of noise engine because I am driving. I'm in the car driving my husband's 20-year-old Honda Element car. Why the heck would we even have this old beat up vehicle other than transporting our ridiculously messy chalk?

Clint lab, well, my husband's really sentimental about this car. You see his, father actually purchased it for him right before he died and he was going through a divorce and , his dad had never done anything like , that, and it wasn't like he needed the money either, but he just, his dad just did it.

And today inspiration has struck in the car, so this is gonna be not a perfect episode. And that's again, something I think that we're gonna talk about today because yesterday evening I just got home from Sweden. I was there for two weeks for my cousin's wedding. And I feel like I learned a lot because Swedish culture and European culture in general is really different.

Than American culture. And I come back home and I'm realizing how hectic our lives are here and how busy we are and how we don't take time out to enjoy our lives and how it's never enough. We don't ever have enough. We don't have a big enough house, a nice enough car. Um, enough followers on Instagram. Um, enough.

Friends, we're not skinny enough, we're not popular enough. the list goes on and on. I think in American culture, we're really obsessed with this and the problem is. If we're always comparing ourselves to other people, we're never gonna be happy. I'm reading this really great book right now.

It's by a woman named Barbara Bures, or it might be Barbara Burgess. Anyway, I'm gonna say Barbara Berges, and it's titled enough and I was reading it on my trip and I'm going to interview her, so be sure to check out this interview because I think it's gonna be one of , my best ones yet. And she talks about so many things.

Many here's just one example. So in our culture, she talks about herself actually, and in high. School how she loved to sing, but she didn't have the prettiest voice for the high school choir. so she just didn't sing. , She didn't join the choir. She didn't enjoy that because she wasn't the best.

And when I was in Sweden, we were in a little town where there is a woman. Swedish Saint. She was made into a saint within the last a hundred years, . And so it's kind of a big deal 'cause there aren't that many women, saints and there's getting to be more. And , I think there's only two women, , European Saints, and she's from Sweden. And one of the things that she was really all about living a simple life, well, she was actually about a lot of things. Um. , I would've loved to have interviewed her on She Brave because she was married off this, she lived in the 13 hundreds. She was married off at the age of 13.

She had eight children, and I think four or five of them survived to adulthood. So people lost their children all the time. And then her husband died and she completely reinvented herself in her forties, and this is in the 13 hundreds. Such an inspiration for us, right? Women didn't have rights back then.

Women just had a bunch of kids and then they died. But she was still young enough and I will say. She was very blessed and fortunate and privileged that she came from a fairly wealthy family, so , she started having these visions and I know it sounds kind of out there and corny, but.

It's almost like what all women go through in America today and we're actually paying attention to it and we're actually trying to do something about it because we hit our forties or our fifties and all of a sudden we just start wondering, wait a minute, my kids have grown up and I don't know what my next chapter is.

, I don't know who I am anymore. And she. Went on that journey of finding herself. she started doing a lot of meditation and prayer, and she had a vision of a monastery that had monks and nuns together. Now, they were somewhat separated, but they could. Send each other messages through this rotating barrel wheel so they could communicate and write each other letters , and, you know, talk about different bible passages and things, even if you're not a Christian.

it's a cool concept, and she was all about helping the poor, so she wanted to form a new type of nunnery that was dedicated. To helping the poor and , having contact and communication with males, which was really, really different for the Catholic church back then. She traveled down to Rome.

Can you freaking even believe it? This is the early 13 hundreds. She travels on a boat down to Rome. She lives there for a lot of years trying to convince the Pope to let her start the first nunnery in Scandinavia, like Northern Europe. There were no Nunneries. There was only monasteries. So eventually she succeeded.

She got to meet the Pope, he said yes. And they began work on establishing and building a new nunnery in Sweden. Not only did she do that, she also decided to do a, spiritual journey to Jerusalem. And I mean, who did that in the 13 hundreds? Right. So that was super cool. \ Her name is Saint Beita.

You can look her up. Very interesting life. She was the most prolific writer in Sweden in the 13 hundreds because she wrote down all of these visions that she would have when she would pray and meditate. So even if you're not a Christian or a Catholic, I think from a spiritual point of view. I love the fact that she really listened to her intuition and \, lived life on her own terms after her kids were grown and reinvented herself.

And that's what she's brave is, really all about. It's about living your life on your own terms, right? And that doesn't have to be in your forties and fifties. It's at any point figuring out who am I, what do I want, uh, from life. And she just lived very, very simply. And she wanted to also use this whole nunnery as a vehicle to help the poor.

She was so dedicated and in particular to help poor women and poor women prostitutes even, and poor children. So. What a person. Right? And , between that and observing Swedish life, the pace is just slower over there. They don't wear as much jewelry. I live in the Seattle area. People are pretty glamorous around here.

People wear a lot of flashy jewelry. People wear a lot of designer clothes. They drive flashy cars. And does it really make them happier? -, I don't think so. 'cause , they're still getting divorced. They're still having to go to therapy. So obviously I know money helps make things somewhat better, but it doesn't buy you happiness.

It's just not automatic. And in reading this book called Enough, it really got me thinking more about simplifying my life and why do I need a ton of jewelry? Which I used to have a lot of jewelry and there's a story behind that because my mother also , has jewelry, and my grandmother and my great-grandmother, they all had a lot of jewelry.

They weren't rich, but they liked having their jewelry. And my mother has all this jewelry in a box up in Canada and she's looking at it saying to me, I don't like this stuff 'cause I didn't pick it out. It's not my style. And can we just sell it? And it got me thinking, you know, why do I have, too much jewelry to even wear.

You know, like to really enjoy it. And so I decided to either give away, like if you listen to in my first episode in 2025, I gave away I think eight pieces of jewelry, like quite expensive jewelry. To some staff , on a little boat that we were on in Cambodia, um, to people in need in Cambodia so that they could go to school, that they could better themselves and be tourist guides instead of just a server on a boat or whatever.

So, um, I digress. So,  anyway. The other thing that I think St. Brita talks about, and Barbara Burges talks about in her book enough, is I think St. Brita said at some point in maybe one of the museums, what if only. The bird in the forest that had the prettiest song voice sang, then there would be no bird music.

Like that was one thing I really enjoyed when we spent some time out in the Swedish countryside. we would wake up in the morning and there were so many different bird sounds, so many birds, and it was such a beautiful sound. Well, what if all those birds just said Uhoh? I'm not as good as Joe over here.

Joe's the best singer of the bunch, so he's the only one who should sing. And I think we live our whole lives that way sometimes. Or at least , a good portion of our lives, right? Like , we say, well, I'm not the best singer, so I'm not gonna join the choir. I am not the best writer, so I'm not gonna write that book.

Um, you know, , I am not good. And I'm not as good. And guess what? In the book. She talks about a ladder, and she says that in any given thing in life, there's somebody in any given point in time who's at the top of the ladder. It changes over time, right? Like it's kind of amusing, right?, You can look up at any time, who's the richest man on the planet?

, It goes back and forth. It doesn't stay the same. It's been Bill Gates, it's been Jeff Bezos. Elon Musk, whatever. Um, but none of them stay on the top ever for forever, for long. Somebody overtakes them and then maybe they're back up there again. But the point is maybe we all need to get off that ladder.

Because the way we tend to live our lives is we tend to just get on that ladder, look up and look at all the people who are above us on the ladder and think, well, they're better than I am, and then we don't. Feel so good about ourselves. Oh, this person is a better singer than me. This person has more friends on Facebook than I do, and so I feel bad about myself now 'cause they're a little bit higher up on the ladder than me.

Well, you know what? Get off that damn ladder. Get off that. Damn ladder. Just get right off of it. Stop comparing yourself to other people. You'll be so much happier because you're -, never, most likely, never gonna be the top. And even if you are at the top of the ladder. Let's say you are the best person at making ceramics, ceramic pottery in the world.

Are you the best skier in the world? Heck no. Are you the best baker? No. You're never gonna be the best at everything. And I think the way social media is set up is that it's like we're always trying to compare ourselves and trying to be the best at everything, and we're never gonna accomplish that. And I felt like over in Europe, they were so much simpler.

They just dressed simply. They dressed comfortably, they prioritized Feca, FIKA. That is where you get to. Or maybe you don't get together, maybe you're alone at home and at around three o'clock you sit down, you have a cup of coffee, and you might have like a little snack. You know, it could be a salty snack, it could be a healthy snack, or it could be a cookie.

Whatever you want, but you take out a little time for yourself and you slow down because guess what? In Barbara's book, we're never gonna have enough and we need to stop this. We need to stop this because enough is enough, right? Guys? We have enough. We have enough. And it doesn't matter that other people have more or less than us.

We should just, I don't like that word, should, right? Like we, you know, shoulding all over ourselves. We should do this, we should do that. . That also becomes an issue in the book where she talks about how we can get really caught up in self-development, which a lot of you guys are my listeners Well, you're all interested in self-development. You wouldn't be listening. And by the way, thank you for listening and subscribe, rate, and review if you haven't already, so that we can keep good content coming out to you. anyway, the point is. This whole thing on being on enough is maybe we need to just be grateful for where we're at. And as far as self-development goes, maybe we need to scale back on that too. I know self-development junkies, I think I've been a self-development junkie in the past. There's never enough courses, books, you know, time spent on self.

Development. So what you do is you're constantly trying to read these books. You're constantly trying to better yourself, and then you're beating yourself up because it's never enough. So I want you to stop that. Just stop it. If you only read one page of a self-development book once a week, that's good enough.

Let's work on just being content right where our feet are at, and let's focus on knowing that wherever we're at in life right now, it's enough. It's totally enough. And . We can be happy with so much less. There's a lot less materialism in Europe. And again, the same thing. There's always somebody who's got a better car.

, I could have a $300,000 car here in Seattle, but every so often I'd be on the freeway and guaranteed there's gonna be other people with it. Have a better car than me. I don't have a $300,000 car, but just as an example. So anyhow, guys, um, that's I think what I just wanted to do, like a little mini episode after getting back , from a trip and having a lot to do to catch up and trying to slow down in that catching up.

And. To realize that I have enough and so do you. And ,. Here's another  really good one that Barbara talks about in our book, wait. With women, we seems like we never think that we're skinny enough, that we never think our body is good enough. In my case, it could also be age I'm aging. , There's always. Something I could be doing to , get rid of more wrinkles. It's never enough. It'll never be enough. that game of trying to keep yourself young is a losing very expensive game. But here's a really novel thought. Maybe your body's not perfect.

And Barbara worked on this in her book, maybe it's okay to just accept your body right now exactly where it's at. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's enough. It's enough. And. Maybe you can't do it forever. She did it for two weeks and then she kind of fell off the wagon, but then maybe she got back on it.

So I think we're a lot happier if we can just be more accepting of, again, like it's enough, our body is enough. Maybe it's not perfect, but maybe not doing anything. The whole self-improvement thing. Always trying to improve everything in our lives. Everything in our bodies stop. Maybe , it's a time in our life.

It's a chapter in our life right now where , it's not about trying to grow and create more and more and more and more, and whatever it is, whether it's self-development or making your body better or getting a pay raise. Maybe it's about just being happy right here, right now with exactly how things are and not changing anything, just keeping everything the same.

My body is not perfect, but I'm happy with where it's at. It's okay. Um, I may not be the wealthiest person on the planet, but I am happy with where I'm at. I am not gonna try to make more money because that's stressful and maybe that's just too stressful for me at this time in my life. So yeah, this was a really fun little Minnesota, and I hope that you loved it and I hope that you learned something from it.

And maybe, maybe you need to stop. You need to stop trying to improve yourself and just live your life, and maybe you need to join that choir or that ukulele group or that running club, even if you are the last person to finish that half marathon. I'm gonna leave off with that. Go do that. I want you guys to think of one thing that you have.

Not done because you've thought, well, everybody's gonna be better than me and I'm gonna be the worst one , in the entire Pilates class or ballet class or whatever, or art class. Um, you know, or in this new job and not worry about it. It's okay. It's okay. Think about those birds in the woods. What if they all decided not to sing?

'cause they weren't good enough? You don't have to be the best In fact, life is so much richer and. Those birds, you know, singing, they're not the best and they're making the planet a better place. And you can too.

 Thank you for joining us on the She's Brave Podcast with Christina Driscoll. I hope today's episode inspired you to embrace your courage and step boldly into your own journey. If you enjoyed the show, we'd love to hear from you. Please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform.

Your feedback not only helps us improve, but also allows more brave souls like you to discover the show. Don't forget to follow us on social media for updates and join our vibrant community. Connect with me on Instagram. At She Brave Podcast, or check out my website at www.shebravepodcast.com. If you're interested in learning more about podcasting, join my Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/podcast mastery journey.

Until next time, stay brave, be bold, and keep shining.