If you’ve ever wished you could make life less complicated, you’re going to love my guest on today’s podcast. Brenda Yoder is here with me talking about contentment - what it is, how to cultivate it and what is keeping you from feeling satisfied with your life.

You’ll Learn:

• Why there is more discontent in our current society that in past generations
• How contentment and happiness are different from each other
• Common challenges to feeling content
• 7 strategies for bringing more contentment into your life
• The exercise I used to create more contentment in my marriage

My invitation to you today, Mama, is to chase contentment. Choose it. Figure out how to bring more of it into each moment. You’re already good enough.

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My guest, Brenda Yoder, is a licensed mental health counselor, school counselor, speaker and educator. She is also the author of Uncomplicated: Simple Secrets for a Compelling Life; and Fledge: Launching Your Kids without Losing Your Mind.

She’s the cohost of the Midlife Moms Podcast and Facebook community. She also hosts and writes the Life Beyond the Picket Fence podcast and blog, covering a variety of topics on faith, life, and family beyond the storybook image.

Uncomplicating Your Life

Brenda lives in a small Amish-Mennonite community, and sees how tourists flock there because there is something in that lifestyle that they want in their own lives.

How many of us watch Hallmark movies at the holidays and long for those quaint towns and communities? We’re drawn to the uncomplicated, less chaotic, less busy way of life. 

Visitors to Brenda’s town think they would have to be Amish in order to have that simplicity and satisfaction. But contentment isn’t about where you live or what you have or don’t have. It’s more internal - how you view the world and what you value. 

As a working mom to 4 kids and now a grandma to 3 little ones, Brenda understands that there’s more to an uncomplicated life than just “slowing down”. She says, “It really is a sense of values clarification.” 

Clarifying our values, modeling them and seeing them lived out is not as common as it was in previous generations. Instead, we’re inundated by technology, social media and other distractions.

In Brenda’s book, Uncomplicated, she outlines ten virtues, mindsets and behaviors for an uncomplicated life: resourcefulness, practicality, fidelity, equanimity & forbearance, stewardship, interdependence, being grounded and humble, foresight prudence and, of course, contentment.

A Culture of Discontent

Brenda defines discontentment as “that one thing that’s always out of your reach.” Maybe it’s always looking to a new goal or experience as soon as you achieve something. As a parent, you might find yourself constantly looking ahead to the next stage, wishing for your kid to have better grades or better behavior. 

When you are discontent, you’ll always be looking at what’s out of reach, rather than seeing what you already have that can fill you up. You take things for granted, and nothing ever seems to be enough.

Finding contentment comes back to asking yourself, “What if today is as good as it gets?” Can you be content and satisfied with what is here? 

Brenda explains that many people confuse contentment with happiness, but they are not the same. She says, “Contentment is a sense of ‘I am full, and I don’t need more’.”

In helping moms raise emotionally healthy kids, contentment is huge. We don’t want our kids to grow up and be people who are chronically dissatisfied with their life. Our kids pick up on what we model and how we view our lives.

Obstacles to Contentment

Many aspects of our society tend to steer us toward discontent. Social media (and lots of other types of media), ads and algorithms want us to feel unsatisfied so we keep buying. And there are some common thought patterns that you’ve probably fallen into yourself.

Performance. In our American culture, we are driven to perform. It can even make us fear contentment. There’s a belief that we can’t be satisfied with what we already have because it will make us lazy. We think we always need to be doing more, being more and achieving more. 

Doubt. This is the if/when type of thinking. If I can…I’ll finally be satisfied. Or, when I achieve…I’m finally going to be at the place I want to be. You’re relying on something outside of yourself to make you feel better. 

If you can find contentment first, then you can pursue something more, better or different knowing that you already have everything you want and need. You don’t need anything from that next step.

Putting off contentment. Maybe you think you’ll finally be content when your kids are older and more settled or when you’re retired. But there are no guarantees in life. What can you do to cultivate a sense of content and gratitude right now, in this season, exactly where you and your family are? What can you jump into and enjoy?

Cultivating Contentment

Feeling content requires the ability to hold two things at the same time. I can be sad and okay. I can be disappointed and be okay. I can want more but be okay with today. It is hard for your human brain to do that, but you really are capable of it.

Here are some tips to bring more contentment into your life.

Recognize your discontent. Brenda says, “I think a lot of discontentment is driven within our body. In quiet spaces, when we're not busy, we're uncomfortable. Those tasks that we tend to do kind of shelter our brain and our heart from all of the worries and thoughts pinging back and forth.”

When we truly let ourselves rest, our minds might wander to places of discontent. So we reach for the phone or a quick dopamine hit to soothe that discomfort. We're seeking something to make us feel successful, alive, better. If we could feel deeper contentment, being alone in that quiet space wouldn't be so uncomfortable.

Have a replacement. It’s great to say you’re not going to reach for your phone when you feel that discontentment pop up, but what will you do instead? What else can you put in your environment that you enjoy? Brenda loves using a gratitude practice. You can place your journal nearby or simply an item that you touch while you think of a couple things you’re thankful for.

Create a marker in your day. Decide when and how you will make space for contentment and gratitude. Brenda prefers early-morning journaling but realizes not everyone is an early riser. Consider turning off the radio on your way to school pick-up and practicing gratitude while you wait in the car line. At the end of the day, think about everything that happened and what you really loved. 

Make a big deal about small things. Even though Brenda had published two books, earned a Masters degree and had many other successes, she could only focus on what she hadn’t done yet. Now, she preaches making a big deal of those things we often tend to overlook, celebrating all the beauty in your life

Drive in the middle lane. On the highway of life, you don’t always have to be in the fast lane, speeding past people. There will be times when you need to steer around an obstacle, accelerate for a little while or pull into the right lane and slow down for a bit. But after those shifts, return to the center lane and to a sense of balance. Trust that if you have to pull off at a rest stop, you won’t live there forever. You can always put your foot on the gas, and you can always let it go.

Find a role model. When you think about contentment, who in your life comes to mind? What about them do you want to emulate? When you want to feel more content, envision that person. 

Look for evidence. Years ago, when my husband and I were struggling in my marriage, I challenged myself to complete the sentence, “I am happily married because…” It was so powerful. I found areas where things actually were good enough and a few very specific areas that weren’t. When I knew what those problems were, then we could have a conversation about improving them.

You can use this same kind of prompt to find the truth about other areas of your life, too:

• I am a good mom because…
• I am a success in my career because…
• My house is good enough because…
• I am fairly healthy because…

Brenda uses a similar exercise in which you draw a t-chart and list out lies in one column and truth in the other.

When you see the evidence and truth laid out, can it be good enough? What if it already is? 

In parenting, what if your kid’s behavior isn’t as terrible as you think it is? What if we want our kids to make mistakes? What if a meltdown is the best thing that could happen today? What if it’s a chance for connection and learning and growth?

These are all great ways to reframe discontented thoughts.

I’ll leave you with this perspective from Brenda: 

“To another person, our lives are always a cup that’s more full than someone else’s. When you're in the busy seasons of raising kids, it is just hard. The last thing you want to do is reflect because what you're living is not what you had thought you were gonna be living. But the bottom line is that what you're experiencing is not the end of the sentence. It's not the end of the story.”

Free Resources:

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Connect With Darlynn: 

• Book a complimentary session with Darlynn
• Learn about the different parenting programs at www.calmmamacoaching.com
• Follow me on Instagram @darlynnchildress for daily tips 
• Rate and review the podcast on Itunes

Connect with Brenda Yoder:

• Find her online at BrendaYoder.com 
• Follow her on Instagram and Facebook
• Read Uncomplicated: Simple Secrets for a Compelling Life
• Read Fledge: Launching Your Kids without Losing Your Mind
• Check out the Midlife Moms Podcast and community
• Listen to Life Beyond the Picket Fence

Welcome back to become a calm mama. I'm your host. My name is Darlyn

Childress, and I'm a life and parenting coach. And today on

the podcast, I've invited Brenda Yoder to come to talk

about her new book, which is called Uncomplicated Simple

Secrets For A Compelling Life. And on the podcast, we

focus on one of her secrets, which is contentment.

And we kinda dive deep into what contentment is,

how to cultivate it, and what are some of the obstacles that come

up in our mind when we are trying to be

satisfied with our life. So I think you're really gonna love this episode.

Brenda is a counselor, a speaker, an author,

an educator. And so I think you're really gonna love listening to her

and learning from her. And I also talk a little bit

about my marriage on this podcast. So listen up for some of the

tips on ways that I have created contentment in my

marriage. Alright. Here we go. Welcome,

Brenda, to the podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm excited

to be here. Yeah. You're gonna share a little bit about your

book, Uncomplicated, and then we're gonna take one of these values,

contentment, and we're gonna, like, kinda break it all down. Introduce

yourself, tell us a little about the book, and then we'll get into our topic.

Sure. I'm Brenda Yoder. I'm a licensed mental health counselor. I'm also a

school counselor. So I currently work in a k through 4 building part time. I'm

a mom of 4 children who are all young adults and adults. And

currently a grandma a grandma to 3 little ones.

Congratulations. That's a new in my life. I am

a therapist, a former teacher, school counselor, and I'm also have been a dairy

farmer's wife. So I live in the middle of Shipshewana, Indiana, which is a

little Amish Mennonite community in Northern Indiana, and I've

been a was a dairy farmer's wife for

the first half of our marriage. And so we currently live on a family

farm. I've been a working mom for, the majority

of my professional life. I stayed at home for about 10 years with my kids

when they were younger, but I've been a working mom, either full time or part

time in the last 20 years. So uncomplicating

your life and growing contentment is not the Instagram

slow down your life dreamy life. It really is

a sense of values clarification no matter where you

live. And I wrote Uncomplicated for a couple reasons.

One reason is that as a therapist, I was realizing that

a lot of people were losing skills that used to be

embedded in our culture. Basic life skills, basic problem solving,

basic middle of the road thinking. The other piece is

just living in an area where we're the largest we're the number

one tourist destination in the Midwest because people flock to our area because we're

kind of like a Hallmark y town. And people come because they they

wanna be among the Amish because there's something there that they want in their

life, but they don't think they can have because they would have to be Amish

to have it. And I really wrote Uncomplicated Simple Secrets for a

Compelling Life to say, you know what? What you want, you can actually

have. We just need to clarify it, and we need to

model it more. Uncomplicated really was birthed

from this this need of needing to

see values lived out that used to be

common in our grandparents' generation, but have become

less common because we're so inundated by technology,

social media, and by all of the things that are antithetical to a

healthy lifestyle that everyone's trying to figure out how to get.

And it's much less complicated than what you think it is.

Yeah. We see that, I think, you know, sometimes, the in

the winter, there'll be all these holiday movies, and it's like, you know, these

small quaint towns and simple lifestyles or whatever, or

or prince and princess are involved sometimes. But we want

sort of whatever that nostalgic,

slow paced, everyone knows everybody community kinda thing,

and possibly some drawbacks to that. You know,

traditionalism and things like that, maybe not open mindedness, etcetera. So there's,

like, some good things about change, but also

the simple ways of living and

the kind of the thing we're drawn to is probably that that uncomplicated,

less chaotic, less busy. And you're right.

That'll you look at that on an Instagram or go to this little town

you live in, and you're like, well, that's so quaint, but

totally unrealistic. And your book is really

saying it's not about what where you live or

what you have or don't have. It's like more internal

of how you view the world and what you value and what you think

about. And so I love how you said that this book is really clarifying

values. You know, the moms listening, they wanna

raise emotionally healthy kids. One of the themes of this podcast. We

want to have our children grow up and be people

who aren't dissatisfied, chronically dissatisfied with their

life and unhappy and, you know,

unfulfilled. So we're like, okay. How do we do it? Well, if we just say

to moms, oh, it's contentment, it's gratitude, it's, you know, purpose,

it's mission, it's service, whatever the themes are. And then they're like, okay. I gotta

make sure I do that. I gotta make sure. And it becomes like this check.

That's not really the way to achieve it. It's really to

model it within ourselves to cultivate these values within

us. And the value we're gonna talk about is contentment, one that you

start within your book. Before we get into contentment, can you just, like, kind

of list off some of the other values that you dive

into in the book? Right. So I'll quickly mention the other 9.

And these are kind of they're virtues, mindsets, behaviors Because what

we believe is what we think is what we do. That's cognitive behavioral

therapy. And it's how our brain works. That's how our body works. So they

include contentment, and then resourcefulness, practicality,

fidelity, equanimity, and forbearance, which are

old fashioned words for that calm even mindedness in

difficult situations, and also, self control.

Stewardship, interdependence, being grounded and humble.

The last one is foresight, which really is about thinking about your heritage

and legacy. I may be missing one in there, but

Yeah. I have the book here. So Yeah. But I think that I think I

kind of went through the order. I didn't count on my fingers if that was

10 or not. But Oh, prudence. Prudence. Okay. And that one sounds

like, oh, prudence. That's Like be a prude. Victorian era.

But no. Prudence is really this pause to be able to think

about cause and effect. So so that we can

slow down our mindset and so that we aren't so impulsive. So that's

Yeah. Students on a short scale. Yeah. In my

program, the primary thing I teach, I call it the pause break. And it really

is when you're recognizing that you're either becoming

dysregulated or you are, you can even actually do it on

reflection. Afterwards, I teach the concept of the pause break, and it's just

really stop whatever you're doing and then reset your

biology or reset your body and then reset your mind. So the audience is very

well they're like, oh, we could call it prudence. Yeah. It's

just pausing. Yeah. Good. So let's get into contentment. And what I

love about the book is it's you could probably, like, use this

book for a whole year or something. You know? Like, 1 month

of the year, you take one of these themes, and you apply it to your

life, and you practice it, and you learn about it, and you dive deep into

it, and then another month, and really use a whole year to your life. Because

I think sometimes we read books like this that are, you know, we're like, okay.

I'm gonna do all of it today. Like, I have to be prudent, and I

have to have my family legacy, and I have to have

commitment. It that's not what we're saying. It's like, slow it down,

take one at a time. So I wanted to do that on the episode is

just take 1 at a time and talk about one theme. Yeah. And I do

have an at the end of each chapter, there's it's called the next steps or

simple steps. Mhmm. There's about a dozen next steps you can

take. And I think that's what's important is because anything we need to

do, we need it in bite size chunks. Right? Our our attention span

is decreasing. Everything feels overwhelming. So

we just need to always take that best, that best next step and

say, I don't have to do all the things. I'm not gonna change my life

today. It's these small habits over time that make a difference. Yeah. So and we're

gonna give a bunch of those in this episode, which is great. So

stay tuned and get your pencil ready, people. Okay. So tell me,

how do you define a lack of contentment, like or discontentment?

I think it's always one thing that thing that's always out of your reach.

So for me, personally, I realized a few years ago that

I was always seeking the one thing, the next

experience, the next goal, even when I had

achieved a lot of things. And I think, you know, as

parents, this is so natural because are we ever really

content and satisfied with our with our children's

grades? With their behavior? With what they're supposed to be doing?

You know, when I think about as a mom,

we tend to always be thinking ahead. What if? Or

when then? When this happens, then

then I'll be at this place. Yeah. Just like when my kids were

home, I kept on thinking, well, when they're at the next stage,

then this is gonna be. And when I really

finally realized that, oh, this was it. I only had a couple more years at

home with all my kids home, and some things needed to change because I was

a reactionary parent. So I think contentment comes back

to this element of if today is all I

had in fact, I use the term in the book called if if today

is as good as it gets. Yeah. Mhmm. What if this life is as

good as it gets? Yeah. What if this life is as good as it gets?

And it And I like that today even. What if today is the as good

as it gets? Right. In fact, that's that's really where this contentment hit me smack

in the face was during the pandemic. Mhmm. That was about day 2 or 3

of the shutdown. And I was sitting out on my front porch, and I was

so restless. And I was like, when are things gonna be back to normal? And

that's when this email On day 3, you felt that way. Yeah. Yeah. And

that's when this email came up came into my inbox from a newsletter

that a mentor of mine had forwarded. It was, reference

to opening line of City Slickers. And there is Billy

Crystal looking in the mirror and saying, what if this is as good as it

gets? And that line really challenged me because if

things never got back to normal, could I be

satisfied and content with what was? And it really hit

me in the face because I I had to think about what if this

is it? What if nothing really ever goes back to normal? What if

can I be happy and content in today? And I I looked around

and I was observing nature. I mean, it was in the spring. Right? This all

happened in March, so my daffodils were blooming. And I started really

being drawn to nature in a way I had never been done before. Why? Because

I'm a busy working mom, and we've got kids, and we're running around, and we've

got kids in college, and we're at sporting events. And it was just like

everything stopped. I had to come to the conclusion that

if life never got back to what I knew it was, could I be

satisfied with what I was given, which was my

family, a home, so many different resources

that I think when you're discontent, you take for granted because

nothing is ever enough. Not good enough. Yep. No. And I

think as parents, when we do model this, when this is

our internal driver, our kids pick up on that. I went to grad

school when I was 40 to become a therapist. And it was a 3 year

program. It was full time, a 1000 hour internship. And I had 4 kids

at home, and I had one who was getting ready to go to college. The

challenge to get a's, like, that was always my lane as a

student. Always. Right? That was a standard you had for yourself. I

don't get anything less than an a. And reality was my daughter was

graduating. Life was incredibly busy. I

had 4 kids who were in sports, and I I couldn't get an

a. Like, it was either be present for my kids, and and that's

when we started talking, you know, c's get c's get degrees. The bottom line

is c's really do get degrees. Mhmm. Well, at our family, it

became d equals diploma. Yeah. There you go.

So I think that whether it's in relationships, in your

marriage, in your relationship with your kids,

with your material possessions, or or just with if

today is the only day we have, can I be satisfied and

content? It doesn't mean that it it's an element of happiness.

Contentment does not equal happiness. Contentment is a sense

of I am, full, and I don't need more.

It's like a good like satisfied. I keep thinking of the word satisfied. It's like

a good meal when I know I had a delicious meal. I

just had a delicious meal last night, actually. And I I really

couldn't eat anymore. And there was still some food left there, but I was

so delightfully full, and everything was delicious.

And I just was so content. It didn't didn't need anything else.

There was stuff there. And I was like, my belly is telling me I'm

full, and I just enjoyed the twinkle lights in their little restaurant, and it was

just great. And I was like, oh, yeah. So that feeling great example. And I

think in prior generations, we saw that more.

We saw simple living, whether it's because of

necessity, whether it's because of true contentment.

You know, my parents lived in a generation where you bought something and

it lasted for a long time. You didn't buy something unless you really needed it.

And, actually, marrying a farmer, that was how I was socialized as a

young mom. Was the your cost went into the farm.

It didn't go into all of the household things. It didn't go into the

the the newest and best. You got something when you

needed it more. Well, the newest isn't always best anymore. No. Yeah. Exactly.

Products are meant to only last a certain amount of time so that we purchase

again and again. And that, I think, is one of the obstacles when we get

into that of, like, modern society and how the value

system has shifted in terms of what what the messages

are that we get in society from

all sorts of media or just different pressures that we influences that

we have, there is a lot more emphasis on purchasing. And so,

yeah, it does they have to create discontentment

in order to create desire for something new and better

and more and different. Yeah. And the algorithms are

driven towards that. Right? Like, we're not even content. You know, if you

post something, you are you know, you get 20

likes. Well, then that's you want more than that. Well, I

want 60 likes. Yeah. Well, and it's all like, you know, what you

get what you get fed, like, in terms of sponsored ads and things

like that or even non sponsored ads. It's like whatever

you're searching for a lot of times is your is your pain, kind of you're

putting it into the Internet, and then it spits you right back into,

oh, you're in pain? Here's a solution. And usually, it's purchasing something. And

so it doesn't lead to the long term contentment that we're

talking about because it creates more of that unrequited

desire. Right? Just doesn't really fulfill full. Right. And, you know, you

were talking about being a calm mom, and learning how to

calm your body, and learning how to regulate. And I think a lot of this

discontentment is driven within our body. You know,

we tend to I think when we tend to be quiet,

these quiet spaces, when we're not busy,

then we're uncomfortable in those spaces. Because then

those tasks that we tend to do, they kind of

shelter our brain and our heart from all of the worries,

from those pinging thoughts that we have back and forth.

What we're not always addressing is the deeper

discontentment that happens in quiet spaces. When I'm

alone, I'm not looking at my phone, I'm not distracted.

And I'm kind of just supposed to be right

resting or whatever, my mind might wander to

places of discontent. Mhmm. And that's so

uncomfortable. So then I reach back for the phone, or I reach back

for, like, a dumb task just to give myself a little

dopamine relief. And I, all of a sudden, start to, like, you know, as a

mom, you're like, I'm gonna take all these this underwear drawer and

redo the whole thing and, like, figure, what are these socks? And you're,

like, what the heck? This is not even productive. I should not be doing this

today. I have all these other things to do. We're seeking something

to make us feel successful, alive, better. And

it's, like, if we could feel deeper contentment, being

alone in that quiet space wouldn't be so needy and so

uncomfortable. No. And I think that's where our body our body gets

restless. Yeah. It gets super dysregulated. Yeah. Right. And

so we tend to grab our phone, but if we can replace

those so just even thinking about gratitude. I'm a

journaler. So first thing every morning, I even set my alarm. I

get up on my school days at 4:40 because I've got to be out of

out of the door at 6:30 to head to school. And I

want a good hour of quiet time to

just call my mind, and have some pleasant

space. That's that's a practice I do. Now I don't I

don't encourage everyone to get up at 4:40. But, I also

fall asleep about 8 o'clock at night too. But, you

know You're like, I still am on farm time. Yeah.

On old people time is what we're on. But but a simple

replacement task because I think this is what's really important. Is that we tend

to say, okay. I'm not gonna do these things. But then we don't have

replacement. So it's really important that if you're wanting to cultivate

more gratitude or cultivate more contentment, just

take a simple marker in your day. Or take another

obstacle. So rather than grabbing your phone in order to scroll,

so that you don't feel as restless, but it's gonna build

discontentment. What can you grab? What can you put in your

environment that is something you actually enjoy that you can go

to? Whether it's looking to that thing, whether

it's touching that thing. And then in doing that, the the rhythm and

the practice is just to say 1 or 2 things that you're grateful for.

Right? Like, in in a in an ideal world, everyone's gonna start off with

a gratitude journal, you know, for an hour before their day starts. Or at the

end of the day, well, we all know that that especially if you got a

lot of kids at home, that's not practical. So I know. It's not. If you're

sitting in the car line, if you're waiting for one of your kids at practice,

you know, what are you doing while you drive? Can it be turning off your

radio? So that's a practice that I share that I often

do on the way to school is turn off the radio. Don't listen

to podcasts. And during that time, start making that mental list of

gratitude. Yeah. What am I grateful for? What happened

what happened yesterday? Or even have a rhythm of when you wake up

to be grateful for, you know, a new beginning. What is new about the

day that you are really grateful for? And then at the end of the day,

scroll through that list of what happened today that I really loved.

What happened today that I really wanna make a big deal about? And I'm a

big proponent of making a big deal about small things because those are the

things that we tend to overlook. Like, in my own discontentment

journey, I had published 2 books. I had, you know, a master's degree. I've

done all these things, and yet I found myself I

was always looking at what I needed to do next.

Yeah. So to other people, they're like, Brenda, why are you complaining

about what you haven't done yet? Let's look at what you have

done. And when we're in that place of discontentment,

we will always be looking at what's out of our reach and not what we

have that should fill us up. Yeah. What we wish could be

happening or what we want outside of this moment.

I wanna think about the obstacles, like, really labeling

those to accessing the state of contentment because I think

that we can say, you know, oh, yes. Thinking about ways to replace like, when

I when I go on and go for my phone instead, I'm going to

pause, think of 2 things that I loved about today or,

like, that I like in this moment or name the 5 colors. Like, you

can do so many different strategies. But the bigger

picture is I think we have to tackle a little bit of the bigger

stuff that leads to discontentment. I was thinking about, like, you were talking about

your career, really. You would write a book and do all the success, and then

you're like, okay, what's next? And so that's, like, one of the areas I think

that can be an area of our life where we find ourselves very

discontent, always seeking more, better,

next. Then, of course, our home, you kinda talk about that a lot in the

book of, like, getting new furniture, new decor. You

know, it's like more. It's always not good enough. I wanna get this on to

do that. And it's not like anything's wrong with that. It's just kind of noticing

what our reason is for it. And if you're

seeking to feel good, did it work? You're exactly right.

And so, yeah, the obstacles there's a whole section in each chapter about the

obstacles of attaining the virtue, the mindset, the

behavior. And one thing I mentioned is doubt. And what you talked about

really identified that doubt. It's kind of the if when. Then

I'm finally gonna feel I'm I'm finally gonna be at the place where I

wanna be. Yeah. Like, oh, if we could just get a new couch, everything will

be so much better. Right. Like, this so my whole problem is my couch. And,

like, it just like, constantly dirty or the kids broke it or so once I

get a new couch, I'm gonna feel so much better. And then it's like, big

and then you get the couch, and you're like, well, that chair doesn't match. Mhmm.

And then that one's like, well, I gotta get this chair. It's like, I think

about, as a life coach,

how are you how can you be happy with your couch? Because if you could

be happy or content or, like, satisfied with what you

currently have, then when you replace that thing,

it's not because you need something from it. You already have

everything you want and need. And if you pursue

more, better, different, it's

not in order to get a better feeling. It's

like I'm bringing my feeling with me into my next experience. So that's one of

my things about contentment. And I think I thought of it when you were talking

about it. I think this happens to women in my audience too, is that there's

a feeling like I can't settle for what I already have.

Like, I'll get lazy. You can't rest on your laurels.

Like, you should you know, there's an American value system of, like,

keep doing more, being more, achieving more,

and it can almost seem lazy to be okay

with today as it is. And I wonder if you could talk about that a

little bit, What your thoughts are? Yeah. I think as Americanized culture,

we are driven to perform.

So what you just described is performance. Yeah. And actually that

drives a lot of anxiety because a lot of anxiety is driven by

performance. Whereas if you go to other cultures, like a lot of the

Mediterranean cultures or I've been to India a couple of times.

I'm on a board of directors for a medical clinic there. And when you're in

other cultures where you observe people enjoying life, one

thing I observed in a lot of other cultures is they're not striving for

the next thing. Because when you're striving for the next thing, even in your own

thought process, you're missing what's happening now. And I think that's why that question

about what if today is as good as it gets is so striking, and it

was so impactful for me is because when I really think about

when I'm gonna be content and this this was my thought process. I

think back when this question really challenged me, is when I'm

retired, when I've got time on my hands, when all my kids are

at a place where their life is all settled. Well, you know, I'm

somewhat on that journey. My kids all have their own spaces in

life. They're all professionals. Life doesn't get less complicated,

And there's no guarantees in life. So I'm also coming through a

season where multiple people around me have died, and they died quickly

from cancer, from accidents. My husband had a near fatal accident. I'm at the

place where this has really become real. And I think

for us as Americans, and I think for any mom who's listening,

that if we were to just step back and have that pause of

calm like you were talking about, that pause pause of prudence to say,

if this season thinking about seasons of life but also seasons

of the school year. As you enter into the holiday season, as you

enter into those slower months of winter, what can I do this

season even from November to February?

That I'm gonna cultivate a sense of contempt and gratitude

in in the justice season. If in this season where my family's at

right now, what can we really jump in and enjoy? What can

I hold off in needing to change or

plan for? Because I know for myself as a parent, when I was in my

twenties, I was always thinking about what was gonna be next in my thirties. And

then when I was in my thirties, it was all about what was gonna happen

in my in the next stage of my children's lives. And when your kids

start leaving with, you realize this is it. There's no more.

And then when they leave, you kind of have this values clarification

of what just happened and where what am I doing now?

Mhmm. But I wanna talk to all moms is that contentment

really is just about this full cup.

I talk about, you know Yeah. Yeah. Talk a little bit about the full cup,

empty cup, half empty cup. Yeah. Empty cup. Do you look at do you look

at a situation or your life or a relationship,

expectations, whatever it is, do you look at it as a half empty cup or

a half full cup? Because our perspective is what the the difference is. Facts

are it's a cup that's halfway full of water. Yes.

If you're thirsty, that is gonna be so refreshing.

Mhmm. But if you are discontent, you're

gonna look at that cup and say, well, I'm not even gonna drink that much

because it's not even gonna quench my thirst. Yeah. When you drive in the

middle lane, whether it's middle lane of contentment, like, being content with what you were

talking about. If I'm content, well, then the fear is I'm not gonna

reach my goals. Most of the world and in past generations, they

lived in the middle lane. You accelerate when you need to to get

around obstacles and to get where you need to go, but you go back to

center lane. You go back to a balanced life. You go back to a

balanced thinking. And sometimes you slow down.

But if you if you slow down all the time, then you aren't gonna get

where you need to go. And so we really have lost the

art of life balance. I think it has to do with a little bit of

self trust too. Like, as I've learned when

I trust that sometimes I'm gonna have my foot to the pedal, and I'm gonna

be pushing the gas, and I'm gonna be achieving some things and moving life

forward in some way. And then sometimes I'm not. I'm gonna let off

the gas if something tragic happens or something just disruptive

or a life transition, your children change, you know, when they grow up or

whatever it happens, you change jobs, stuff like that. I'm a okay. I'm

a back off. I'm gonna reassess and trusting that

I can always put my foot on the gas and I can always let it

go. And then I'm not gonna become a person who just pulls off at a

rest stop and just lives there. Like, who wants to live in the rest stop

in the middle of, like, some random highway? Nobody. Well, maybe

somebody, but not me. And I can trust that. I can trust that I'm

I I think I was very afraid. I used to say a lot, like,

self loathing is excellent motivation. And I didn't

really believe that if I didn't

have that itch all the time that I would give

up. And it's just not true. And I think that is

about our own belief, like, in ourselves. Yeah. And I

think I think your analogy of going back to eating and

feeling full. Mhmm. You know, like, I have a history of an

eating disorder. So the whole thing of being full

or feeling hungry, that has a lot of

meaning to me. But I think for us as women,

especially, we're socialized to perform.

I mean, that's just the bottom line. We as we as American women have not

been socialized to to not perform.

And so so much of our contentment or of our perception

of happiness or our perception of the life

we really want, we don't see that

modeled well of maybe what we would consider

successful women who have values that they're

living out and they're achieving, but it's done in moderation.

But it's still what we would see as successful.

There's tropes. Right? Like Right. Successful woman who doesn't ever

spend any time with her children or something like that. You know? It's like we're

forced into boxes if you choose to

pursue. Sometimes you can be accused of not being content.

Right. You know? So we have we don't have good models of, like, no. I

wanna be a kick ass business owner and also have an amazing life

just as it is. Like, I'm I'm good. I'm good if we get it. I'm

good if we don't. I'm good if we make it. I'm good if we don't.

Because that message is not what is put before us. But in

every chapter in uncomplicated, I have a question for each of

us to think of the person in our life who models that value. And

we all have them. And I think part of what

my encouragement is through the message in a complicated and through some of

those rhythms is to think about who is it in my life that when I

think about contentment, they automatically come to mind?

And let's keep that person in front of us, and and then ask ourselves,

what about them do I wanna emulate? It really

helps us step back and think, you know what? I actually

can achieve that. Can achieve it in my life, and I know what

it would look like. If I wanted if I wanted contentment in

my life, in this season of my life, or in this area of my life,

whether it's my relationship with my spouse

or with my children, or I'm really struggling with that materialism,

or I can't go back to work yet because my kids are too young. I

really wanna stay at home, but I feel like I'm not achieving

anything. What would it look like to have contentment

in your life the way you would like it to be, like you

can envision that person? Because when we have something to

look towards, again, going back to modeling,

Then we see and then we do. These practices that I encourage

throughout the book really are about doing that. Let's think about who and what we

wanna emulate, what we want in our life, and

then what do I need to do the next steps to do that?

And it really is as uncomplicated as that. I was thinking of an exercise

I did a few years ago because I was very unhappily married. My husband and

I were struggling. And I was not

sure what if it was me, if it was actually him, what was

hap like, I I was am I

happy and he's just we're not a good fit? Or,

like, am I unhappy and he's made I was so confused. So

what I did, I challenged myself. I said, I am happily married because

and I kind of forced myself to find evidence

that that could be true. Now this is, of course, we had decent

relationship. We're still married. We got through it. Mhmm. It's not you don't

wanna gaslight yourself if you're being in an abusive relationship. But, you know, he

was just kind of a regular dude. I'm a regular gal. And

I just found out that I was. I'm like,

I thought I was so discontent and that he needed to

change a 100 things and when I looked at evidence of,

like, maybe things are okay, maybe things are good enough. What if it was

true? Then when I did that, I actually found a few very

specific areas where it wasn't true, and then we could have

a conversation about making those improvements.

And it was very powerful for me to just I am a good mom

because I'm happily married because I'm a success in my career

because I'm you know, my house is good enough because I

wonder what you'd find. I love that. And

and that's a very similar exercise that I do with clients

too, which is just to make a t chart. So we just call them lies

and truth. You know? Go to that default. What is the lie? The lie

is my marriage can't be happier until. It's that doubt

again. It's that if then or when then or when. You know, what

if you put down the lie and you put down the truth

right beside it because what our brains, our brains do default to the

negative, but our brain needs new information. So that's the other thing that needs a

replacement behavior. So the replacement narrative. So what you just modeled

for the audience is a new narrative. Mhmm. And

that's what I've had to do with myself. You know, even just going to

contentment with my body, with my weight. Yep. Yep. With my little

exercise. You know, I'm I'm in midlife, and theoretically,

I should be working out. I should be eating certain foods. I should be

taking these You better be eating more protein, Brenda. Should be doing this. I do.

We we butcher our own meat. We've got all we've got a whole thing in

your feed. You don't you don't need to justify it as a joke. What what

I don't do though is I value my sleep. I value

my sleep in that personal quiet time. I value that more

than I do exercise right now. Now I'm pretty active because I do work with

young kids. So I'm always on the go. I get many steps in.

But I have to tell myself rather than say, I should

be doing more because that's gonna prevent this when I'm

70. You know, the narrative would be, for my age,

I'm fairly healthy because x y z. I do

eat the what I should. I do avoid these things. And in

moderation, I do these things. And my sleep and my mental

health is my top priority now

rather than having the best looking body like I wanted

when I was 30. At midlife, I think it's I can have grace

to have a midlife body, and I can be content with that. Yeah. Yeah. And

it's just challenging yourself. It's like, can this be good enough? Can this be

okay? And what if it already is? What if it's

already good enough? I mean, I talked about

this. This episode will come out right after I did a cognitive behavioral

therapy, what that is. And we talked a lot about mindset

and reframing, and I use this metaphor around a kaleidoscope. And it's like, the

kaleidoscope looks one way, you shift it just a little bit, it looks totally different.

And so it's kinda like what we're doing with our default thinking

of, like, I'm fat. I'm

not in good shape. I'm not in good shape for the future age. I will

be good. And it's like, okay. Well, why don't you just try

out I am? Mhmm. I don't know. Because it's all just

thoughts. Not anyone is truer than the other. Really, you are whatever

size you are, and what if it's okay? You know, sometimes you can't get your

brain to go that far, but you can challenge it to start

to possibly maybe see that your body's

okay or your children's behavior isn't as

terrible as you think it is. You know, sometimes they're acting out,

which is evidence of their emotional dysregulation. That's

fine. What if that's okay? What if we want our kids to make mistakes?

What if we want meltdowns? What if meltdowns are the best thing that could also

possibly happen today? Is it a chance for connection and learning and

growth? It's like we think the number on the scale is too high. If

I have a messy house, I don't do date night for a month or whatever

we think. I haven't worked out, you know, then everything is terrible, and I better

I'm I'm not on a bad path, then I better fix it. And then I

would say, fix it, change it, stop it, solve it. And it's like, what if

this was like you said, you know, what if this is as good as it

gets, and that's okay? What if this

is great? Yeah. And that is our

challenge. Right? Yeah. And I think that's really what we just need to

settle into. Is my cup half full?

Is it half empty? To another person, our lives

are always a a cup that is more full than someone else's.

I know when you're in the busy seasons, when you're raising kids and you're in

your twenties and your thirties, or even in midlife and you got

teenagers, it is just hard. The last thing you want to do is reflect. And

when you do, it's probably a bunch of cuss words that you're gonna say because

what you're living is not what you had thought you were you're gonna be living.

But the bottom line is what we're experiencing is never the

is never the period until the period really comes. Like it's not the

end of the sentence. It's not the end of the story. As I walk with

people who have life altering experiences, but I see people

who have walked through adversity with a sense of

contentment and satisfaction. Not that they're really okay with what's

happened, but there's this an element there to say, this

is my life, and I can be sad and

have joy in it at the same time. Yeah. I think contentment

requires that ability to hold 2

things at the same time. I can be sad and okay. I

can be disappointed and be okay. I can want more, but be okay with

today. And it's it is hard for

our human brain to do that to, like, hold they almost seem

like they're contradictory emotions at the same time.

And it's hard, but it's really we are capable of it. Well,

we are because we're human. It it's how it's how how we're designed. And

and I think that when we are able to say, you know what? There's

nothing different about me as a human than the humans who who

lived 40 years ago, a 140 years ago, except for our environment.

Yeah. I still have the capacity to problem solve and to be content.

So we can we can take on as much as what the world gives us,

or we can take on in moderation as much as what we want to accept

from what the world gives us. Yeah. We have a lot of agency.

Yeah. Just looking at our own needs, all of

our behavior comes from unmet needs. Mhmm. As

we can look at those unmet needs and as we can get those needs met

through healthy resources Mhmm. Then the more content we

are. Yeah. Yeah. I think, the takeaway can be just chase

it. Chase contentment. I'd often talk about what

feeling what do you wanna feel like? What are you chasing? You know, what experience

or feeling you're chasing? Because it it kind of sets us up towards

where we're going. And it's like if if you're

listening to this episode and you're feeling really like a lot of life

feels hard and there's a lot of unhappiness, I'm gonna

choose contentment. I'm gonna chase it. I'm gonna try to figure out

how to bring more of it in each moment. Like, how can I

be okay with this? Well, thank you so much, Brenda, for

being a podcast guest on Become a Calm Mama. How do people

find out about you? How do they get the book? How do they connect with

you? Yeah. They can get the book, at probably any,

online retailer or in store retailer. I know it's been in

some Barnes and Noble's books, bookstores across the country. It's called

uncomplicated. Complicated Simple Secrets for a Compelling Life. They

can find me at brendyoder.com. I'm also on Instagram at brendyoder

speaks and on Facebook at Brenda Yoder speaker. And I also

have host of on Midlife Moms podcast too. Nice.

Yeah. Well, have me on there because it'd be fun to keep our conversation going.

Yeah. Yeah. Love that. No. Everyone can listen to us talk more. That'd be great.

Well, I would love to do that. Yeah. Okay. Good. Well, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me.