How do you create the joyful life and fulfilling work you desire? 

Often when I talk to mothers they share that that they’re not sure what they should  - or could - be doing with their lives. They’re not sure what the right business would be for them, because they don’t actually know WHO they are anymore.  

In this episode, we’re going to look at who you are - what your passions are, what your strengths are and what your purpose might be. I’m going to talk through a step-by-step process to work out the ideal business for you – one that lights you up, that feels aligned with your values, that plays to your strengths & that brings you joy and fulfilment.  

Here are the highlights from this episode: 

{00:35} Being a mum is part of you, not the whole you 

{4:47} What are your signature strengths? 

{9:56} Eudaimonic happiness 

{12:42} Channel your purpose through your business 

Click here for the VIA free scientific survey to discover your character strengths.

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Update: AMotherBrand closed its doors in March 2023.

I now help purpose-driven female entrepreneurs to create maximum impact alongside maximum wellbeing, through 1:1 coaching.

I combine my experience as a Founder, with my background in Social Entrepreneurship, Positive Psychology and ICF-Certified Coaching to help ambitious women create the flourishing life and meaningful work that they desire.

Head to https://noniewhite.com to find out more.

Social links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nonie-m-c-white/

Insta / facebook: @noniewhite_

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Hello, and welcome to episode one of the motherland podcast. Who are you? And what's your ideal business? One of the things I hear a lot in the underground world is that people don't know what they should be doing with their lives or even what they could be doing. But then what sorts of business would be right for them because they're not entirely sure who they are anymore. And that's the thing. When we become a mother, we lose our old selves and our old identity, literally overnight. And as time passes and we settle into a role of being a mother, it can become hard to remember who we were before we had children or know who we are today. I hear this question around identity and what we should be doing and what would be aligned for us from moms we're working, but perhaps they're doing something they always did.

They haven't really questioned it for a while and they want to start working for themselves from stay at home moms who want to do something beyond being a stay at home. Mom who felt like they'd just become amazing at being a mother or washing up dishes or cleaning the floor, but they want something more. And from women who are already in business, but who feel like they're missing a trick and there must be a way to have some more joy in their work and some more ease, there must be a better way. And that's what this episode is all about. I'm going to take you through a process informed by the science of wellbeing, positive psychology. And that's going to help you get clearer on who you are now and what your ideal business. One that gives you the most joy, ease, fulfillment, and success might look like.

So grab a pen and paper, and let's get going. During this episode, we're going to look at your passions. What do you love doing? We're going to look at your strengths. What are you good at? And what comes naturally to you? And we're going to look at your purpose. What do you care about? That's bigger than you. And then we're going to look at how we can put these things all together to create a business that truly lights you up. So first things first, I'd like to invite you to think about your passions. Why is it so important to work out what your passions are? It's pretty simple. Really? If you're doing something that you're passionate about, you're going to find it more enjoyable. You're going to want to do it more. You're going to be intrinsically motivated to do it. And you're going to have greater achievement and greater sense of fulfillment.

So what are your passions? Let's have a think. The things that you want to ask yourself, what lights you up? What inspires you? What brings you joy and what energizes you and never feels like work. Now, if you've been in the underground world for any amount of time, you know another quote. So I've got a couple of really good quotes for this one is by LL cool. J he says, do what you love. You'll be better at it. It sounds pretty simple, but you'd be surprised how many people don't get this one right away. Do what you love. You'll be better at it. And then another one is Oprah. And she says, passion is energy. Feel the power from focusing on what excites you. Now, we're going to look at your strengths. These are your unique superpowers. We're going to look at three different types of strengths, talents, skills, and character strengths.

So what might your talents be? Talents are an innate ability to master a skill or a type of knowledge. And so you might have, you might be born with a talent for music or a talent for sport. For example, you may never use them in your lifetime, but you're born with a talent to master a certain type of thing. So if you can think of what your talents might be, write those down. Now. Now we're going to look at your skills. Your skills are something that you've honed over time. So this is something that you might have done in a previous work, or you might have done it in some other parts of your life and you might be doing it. Now. It could be anything from Excel spreadsheets to research, to project management, whatever it might be. Those are things that you've learned over time.

Those are skills. So write a little list now of what you think your strongest skills are. And now we get to the exciting bit. These are your character strengths. These are a huge part of positive psychology. And what research shows is that two thirds of people don't have any meaningful awareness of their strengths and they under use them. But people who do use their strengths at 18% more likely to be flourishing, if it was a good idea, to get really clear on your character strengths, when you use these in your life and your business, you're going to be spending more of your time doing things that come naturally to you, but it completely aligned with your values and that energize you. So your character strengths are your values in action. They kind of being and doing qualities and then like your true self, where you are at your best, and you have the most potential for growth.

So examples might be leadership, creativity, or hope that sort of thing. Scientists have identified 24 of these character strengths. And we have all of them, all of us have all of them, but some of them are stronger than others, and those are our signature strengths. So I'm going to whiz through the character strengths. So, you know what I'm talking about, they operate under various categories. So under the character of wisdom and knowledge, there's creativity, curiosity, judgment, love of learning and perspective under courage, there's bravery, perseverance, honesty, and zest, and the humanity. You've got love, kindness, social intelligence, and justice. You've got teamwork, fairness, leadership under temperance. You've got forgiveness, humility, prudence, and self-regulation. And on the transcendence, you've got appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, humor, and spirituality. So we all have all of those and our talk it, but some of them will be strongest for us where we have the most potential for growth.

And those are our signature strengths for the ones that matter most to us. And they feel most essential to our sense of self. So for greatest ease, flow and joy, we want to use as many of our signature strengths in our life and business as possible. True story. When I learned my signature strength, my whole work life to date made sense. My old career, my pre-children career was in making documentaries. And I really loved elements of that. I love interviewing people. I love finding out about their lives, and I love the privileged position of being able to share their lives and their stories with other people. And this element of my job was completely in alignment with my signature strengths, my signature strengths, some of them are love, love of people, love of learning and honesty, also fairness. However, there were other elements of my career that were not aligned with my signature strengths, and I found really uncomfortable.

And suddenly that made complete sense because they went against my truest values. So I was also able to see why I absolutely love what I do now, because it's completely aligned with my signature strengths and what I hold most. Dear, how do we use these signature strengths or superpowers? But when we use them in our life and our work, we increase meaning because they're so important to us, we increase engagement and flow because we're using our values and action. We're using the parts of ourselves that are most important to us, most valuable to us and come most naturally to us and our strengths help us to get clarity on our life, purpose or direction and to achieve our goals. Finally, that brilliant for problem solving. So when you come across a challenge in your life, you can think, right, or which of my signature strings can I use to help me overcome this challenge?

And then you can go through them in turn and think, okay, well, I'll try honesty. Is that going to, how could that help me? That's one of my ones will love of learning. What could I learn about that would help me overcome this challenge so that brilliant little tools and superpowers, and they uniquely come from us. So I really encourage you to work out what your signature character strengths are. There are a number of ways you could work out what your signature strengths are. You could ask a friend, you can ask people who know you or what they think your strengths are. And you could ask people from different areas of your life, for example, an old boss or a pair for a kind of 360 degree review of your strengths. Another thing you can do is a really fun exercise called a positive introduction.

So you sit down with a friend or family member and you share a story with them about when you felt you overcame something difficult. And when that listen to your story, they need to be jotting down. What positive qualities, what strengths of yours face here in your story, and then they share it with you. And that's a really, really interesting way to get a portrait of your strengths through the eyes of your friend and the story that you told. Finally, there's a scientific survey you can do. That's free. You go to www dot V I a, which stands for values in action, character.org. So via character, T H a R a C T E r.org. And that's also in the show notes and you take that and it will break down all of your character strengths in order of strength. So you can just mark off what the top five are, and those will be your strongest strengths.

Those will be your signature strengths. So now you should have a list that has what you love and what you're best at, and how are we going to know for your purpose, what you care about most. So your purpose evidence shows that we're happiest in life. And we have the most fulfillment when we're spending our time and energy working on something bigger than us, something that matters to us. So there are two types of happiness in life. There's her donut, which is found in things that bring us enjoyment or pleasure, but it's fleeting. So you might have a really nice walk in the park, enjoy a really nice some way to whatever it is. It's great. And in that moment, you're super happy. And then it passes. That's a hedonic type of happiness. And then there's another type of happiness called eudaimonic happiness, which is a kind of deeper, more consistent level of happiness that comes through pursuing things that have meaning for you.

And that's why purpose is so important for us and why it's so important to have purpose in any business that you start up. Your purpose is why you do things. It's like a golden thread that weave through all that you do there, your house and your purpose is your why you're doing them. And it helps you work out where you're going. So you're working towards some sorts of targets or some sort of life goal. If that's your purpose. So working on something, which has the purpose keeps us anchored, it helps us keep clear on our priorities and why we're going and where that also really, really helps you. When you do come to set up a business, there are lots of ups and downs, um, connecting into your why also really helps you through the ups and downs of building your own business or difficulties in life, because you know what you're trying to do because you know, what's important to you and what has meaning for you.

It also tracks other people. There's a great quote by Simon Sinek who writes people don't buy what you do. They buy, why you do it. So I'd love you to think about what your purpose might be in life, what your why might be. And it's important to note that like your passions, you don't just have to have one purpose or one passion in life. You can have lots of them and they can change over time. So I'd invite you to ask yourself what things make you angry in life, or what makes you sad and what is something bigger than you that you really care about? Well, how do you feel called to help others in the world? So now you should have a list of your passions, your strengths, your unique superpowers, and your purpose. And I'm hoping that this is helping you get clear on who you are and what elements should go into your unique, ideal business.

Does any sorts of business come to mind that uses your passion and strengths and serves the purpose you can most about? Is there a problem in the world to which you and you alone could provide a solution with that knowledge? There's a tool that you can use. It often goes by different names and I've tweaked it a little bit. And I call it the build and thrive framework. It's a really nice visual way of looking at everything that we've discovered about ourselves, looking at it all together and seeing what that might mean for an ideal business. For us, you can download a worksheet for this. It's in the show notes, and you can just plug in your own answers. So we're drawing a Venn diagram. You want to draw three intersecting circles in the top one. You want to write your passions that you've discovered in the bottom left.

You want to make your strengths. So that can be anything from your talents, your skills and your character strengths. And in the bottom left one, you want to think about what the world needs and what I mean by that. What is a significant need in the world that needs addressing that connects in with something that you really care about and in the middle, that's what your business might be. That's what your purpose might be through your business. I'll give you an example with my purpose and I'm on a band. The top circle is Mike going to have my passion. So helping people flourish, positive psychology and wellbeing, raising happy children, self-development business as a force for good. The bottom left circle is going to have my strengths. Love, love of learning, hope, honesty, creativity, communication skills, project management, and design. The bottom, right, is going to have what I believe that the world needs that I can help with.

And that's mothers who want to build businesses, need a clear pathway, targeted expert training, relatable role models and a like-minded community. And in the middle, my business is serving those three circles and is my purpose is empowering mothers to create those businesses around their families and thrive with the tools and with the community. And that's a mother brand, the membership platform. So that's how my passions, my strengths and what the world meets, meets my purpose. So have a go download it from the show notes, Paula, again, your answers share a snap of yours tad minutes. And let me know how you get on to summarize. In this episode, we've looked at what lights you up, what your superpowers are, your strengths are, what you care about and how you can bring all of these together to create a business. That's going to bring you joy, ease, success, and fulfillment.

If you want to go deeper on this topic, I have a membership that can help you with this, and also provide you with all the tools and community you need to build a business. You love around your family and thrive. Go to www.amotherbrand.com forward slash membership. For more information heads up the doors to the membership, only open a few times a year and that opening soon. So do you jump on the wait list and make sure you don't miss out now. And the next episode, we're going to be looking at mindset, what that means and how important it is. If you're trying to build or grow a business, I'm going to be giving you some quick and easy, positive psychology exercises that you can do to make your mindset stronger. If you've enjoyed the episode, please do hit follow, leave a rating, leave a nice comment and share with anyone you think you might enjoy it or find it useful. See you next time.