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A podcast for women doing a lot and craving more soul alignment — motherhood, business, healing, relationships, growth — trying to do it without running themselves into the ground.
We talk about:
* intuition & energy
* nervous system regulation
* trauma healing
* self-compassion
* emotional processing
* entrepreneurship
* motherhood
* creating routines that actually support you
* staying connected to yourself while juggling real life
This is about learning how to feel energized, grounded, cared for, emotionally honest, and fully alive.
Your soul called - are you ready to answer?
Welcome to Your Soul Called. A podcast for those feeling like there's something more. More alignment, more purpose, more peace, more connection, more joy. I'm Nicole your host. Each week we explore the invisible things that shape our lives.
Nicole:Our intuition, our energy, our emotions and the lessons we came here to learn. Through personal stories, meaningful conversations and practical tools my hope is that every episode helps you trust yourself a little bit more, love yourself a little deeper and remember something your soul has always known. So without further ado, let's dive in. Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode 19.
Nicole:What if you finally get everything you ever wanted? That's the title of today's episode because I wanted to do a little episode on what happens when you finally get everything you ever wanted. Are you happy? Are you fulfilled? Is it enough?
Nicole:What does the good life even feel like? Because for me personally, for so long in my life, I had this very, very specific idea of what the perfect life looked like, and I was going to make that happen. I was determined to make that happen and it started from a very young age where it was it looked for me like this where I needed to become president of my school. I needed to become an honor student. I had to join all the clubs and all the sports teams.
Nicole:I had to become an all state champion in soccer and track and become the MVP athlete. I would like set these insane goals and then I had to achieve them. And this was all in order to get a scholarship to college because my mom told me if you go to a good college, you get a good job, you make money. And I was 1000% not gonna end up the way that I grew up because I didn't want that for my family and for my kids. And I knew or at least I thought that if you get a good job, you don't end up on food stamps.
Nicole:You don't end up in some crappy, you know, relationship fighting over money. You don't have to tell your kids there's not enough money for dinner. Not that that was necessarily true, but that's just what I heard growing up constantly. So I was hell bent on not making sure on making sure that that would never be my story. And then college came, and I decided, you know, I needed to do as many jobs as possible so that I could pay off the student loans as soon as I graduated.
Nicole:And I had to play soccer during college because they were giving me money to do that too. The goal was to have zero debt because debt is bad. My grandma taught me that. Don't have any debt. That's the Chinese way.
Nicole:Graduate. Make money quickly. Get a job with benefits as soon as possible. Pay off your loans as soon as possible. Never have any debt.
Nicole:And I did all that. And then I decided I had to save enough money to buy a rental property because rental properties provide safety and income. I had to invest in an IRA, a Roth IRA. I had to put as much money as possible away every month. I had to pay down the mortgage on the rental as quickly as possible.
Nicole:I had to live on the bare minimum. And I remember my grandparents. I spent a lot of time with them because I was like back and forth between my parents' houses. And my grandparents lived this way where they had a house. They had a business, but they would make us eat every single morse morsel of food on the plate.
Nicole:And we would wash paper, whatever plastic plates and reuse them. We didn't throw away anything. We saved everything. And so I had this mentality. Save save save save.
Nicole:You know? Don't go into debt. Pay everything off. And then I had to decide, okay, need to start my own business. Do whatever it takes to make that happen.
Nicole:And I did that. Check. Right? Then I had decided, oh, I gotta make $100,000 a year in my business. Because if you don't do that, then you're not doing well and you're not successful.
Nicole:Check. Did that. Then it was find the dream guy. Check. Have three kids.
Nicole:Check. Buy a house. Check. Right and there it is the perfect life I had all the things that I had set out to be and I spent the first thirty years of my life achieving goal after goal after goal. One thing after another I put my head down, got to work, grinded, worked my ass off, saved more money, saved more money, did everything that I was taught to do.
Nicole:I checked all the boxes. But I never ever questioned why. Why am I doing this? It was partly because I just didn't want to be in this position that my parents were in. I didn't want to be in a relationship fighting all the time.
Nicole:I didn't want to be struggling over money. I didn't want to have my kids put food stamps on that paper thing that you had to put the food stamps on. I didn't want to be fighting over money. I didn't want instability. What I wanted to create and why I worked so hard was because I wanted a life that felt safe.
Nicole:And I was doing all of these things, like committing to it, going all in to make it happen, thinking that this was going to create safety. But does it? Because I literally did all the things. I had three jobs while in college, while playing soccer, taking 19 credits and holding a 3.86 GPA. I bought my first rental property when I was 23.
Nicole:I paid off my student loans by 22 and there I had a lot of student I married the dream guy. I had three perfect little boys and I still felt not enough. I started to get curious about this because I was really really good at pushing myself. I was practiced at getting the hard stuff done. I was super motivated and I was willing to do the work.
Nicole:I could achieve. I could set big goals and I could achieve them But I did not know for the life of me how to love myself. I never ever stopped and asked, how do you feel? What do you want? What would make you happy?
Nicole:What do you need right now? I never gave myself permission to slow down or take a break. I never praised myself. I didn't even know how to praise myself. It felt so awkward.
Nicole:I thought it was, like, the weirdest thing to praise yourself. I never acknowledged any of the accomplishments that I had achieved and I was desperately craving that acknowledgement. I just wanted someone to say you do so much. I'm so proud of you and honestly, I was waiting for my mom to say it. Like, I just needed that parent figure to be like, I see you.
Nicole:It's enough. But she never did and I never heard it growing up and so I never learned how to say it to myself and even though from the outside it looked like I had done it all I had achieved it all I never felt like I was doing enough I got into where guys, you know, before I met my husband, I got into relationships where guys took advantage of me. They talked down to me. They disrespected me. They were mean.
Nicole:Like, straight up mean and honestly, I stayed. I would let them do that to me and I would stay with them for way longer than I should have because that's how I treated myself. I never checked in with myself during that time to make sure I was okay. I can remember for a good many years, like not too long ago, I did life coaching and I remember asking one of the life coaches what does it even mean to love yourself like how do people know how to do that because genuinely I had no idea What do people who feel genuinely loved actually feel like? I didn't know.
Nicole:I didn't know how to feel it. I didn't know what it felt like and that made me sad. Because I didn't know. Because I was so used to beating myself up telling myself that I was behind. That I should do more.
Nicole:That I should be kinder. That I shouldn't let that bother me. That I should be better. That I should know better. That I should be further along by now.
Nicole:Should should should should there's all these shoulds that I was constantly telling myself so even though I achieved almost everything that I set out to achieve I never felt successful or proud I never felt special and it wasn't until my 40s that I started questioning all of it. Why the fuck am I so hard on myself? Like who even cares if I accomplish one more thing? What is this actually getting me? At what point do I get to feel enough?
Nicole:Something that else that bothered me for like a really long time is this feeling felt more like a knowing that my parents never really saw me, that my family never really saw me. They didn't see how hard I tried, didn't see how hard I worked. Nobody ever acknowledged my successes including myself and in fact I was often labeled as easy. Everyone would say oh this is just easy for you and like of course you would do that. That's everything's easy for you And I it's true.
Nicole:I made it look that way. But that wasn't the actual truth what was going on. The truth was that I never allowed myself room to complain. I never gave myself a voice. And I didn't even know how to listen to it.
Nicole:And I think this is what happens when you spend your whole life trying to prove that you're enough. You get really really really good at achieving, but you don't necessarily get good at being with yourself. Because when you finally get the thing that you've been trying to achieve, there's always another thing. More money, more success, the next house, the next business goal the next accomplishment and you keep thinking oh once I get there then I'll feel better but then you get there and you don't because you never actually stop to acknowledge how you're feeling You never learned how to care for yourself. You never decided on purpose that no matter what happens I am more than enough.
Nicole:I am going to have my back no matter what. I love you through it all. You don't even need to do another thing to be more special. I love you for you. You never did that.
Nicole:I never did that. And so that's the shift. Like, you can have the house, the dreamy husband, the kids, the business, the money, the perfect life and still not feel enough because the feeling of not enough is a practice. Think about that. Not enough is a practice.
Nicole:Maybe, like me, you've been practicing it for years, maybe decades. Then not enough practice can look like not praising yourself regularly or ever. Not checking in with yourself when things get hard. Not genuinely caring about how you're feeling in the moment. Not giving yourself the love and care that you're craving always putting yourself last telling yourself you should be doing more moving faster being better be further along making difficult emotions mean something about who you are.
Nicole:So that's like feeling shame and then deciding I'm shameful or feeling angry and making that mean that you're a bad person or feeling disappointed and saying something's wrong with me. But feelings are separate from who you are. They're just emotions. They're just information. They're just, you know, emotions that move through your body feeling shame doesn't mean that you are shameful feeling exhausted exhausted doesn't mean that you're failing feeling angry it doesn't mean that you're bad And beating yourself up when shit gets hard, saying things like, what the fuck are you doing?
Nicole:You're so stupid. Why are you still there? You should know better. You should be better at this by now. That is also a practice.
Nicole:And if you've been practicing, talking to yourself like that for decades, it becomes kind of automatic. You probably might not even realize you're doing it. I didn't realize I was doing it for a long, long time. And, you know, it took a lot of looking inside and becoming curious and aware of what's actually going on in my brain to even see it. But what I learned is that you can practice something different.
Nicole:You can create a new neural pathway in your brain that makes a new script that runs instead of the old one of beating yourself up. You can practice supporting yourself. You can practice talking to yourself nicely, kindly, lovingly. You can practice noticing the things that are going well. The things that you did do amazing.
Nicole:You can practice being proud of yourself. You can practice being there for yourself especially when you're going through a hard time. Because I was doing the not enough practice for so long, of course nothing I did was ever going to feel like enough. Because deep down I decided I wasn't enough. So no accomplishment was ever going to fix that.
Nicole:Even with the house, the fancy car, the big diamond ring, the business. There's always gonna be things that feel hard. So you don't get to this dream life and then you don't have hard shit. Like, you're not in some magical place called successful where you don't have problems anymore. You just have different problems and they're often bigger problems for example I have the house the beautiful dream house and I'm building this whatever million dollar house but I also have leaks.
Nicole:Building costs went up so money is like sketchy right now. One of my car windows broke. I got hit in the face with a surfboard. My dog is digging holes all over my yard right now. There are always going to be things that come up.
Nicole:But on the other hand, if I look at the balance, I have this amazing, beautiful, loving, perfect family. I love my kids. They're so amazing. My husband is hot and funny and athletic he's incredible! He's so loving and so kind!
Nicole:My health is really really good right now I don't have anything in my body that hurts. My body is strong. I get to surf during the week. I get to build a business that I love and have freedom in my week. Like that's such a wonderful thing.
Nicole:I get to do work that I actually care about like record this podcast for you guys. So, both things can be true. You can have some stuff that sucks and some stuff that's amazing and there's always going to be both. There's always going to be that balance. Life isn't supposed to get to a place where everything is just, you know, incredible and perfect.
Nicole:It's learning how to see the whole picture. So, maybe your relationship is fucked up right now. But, your kid is incredible. Maybe your business is struggling, but you have the most amazing friendships. Maybe you're dealing with something really, really hard, but your health is really strong.
Nicole:Maybe money feels tight, but you have people around you that love you deeply. And I'm not saying that you have to pretend that things aren't hard. I'm saying that you have to let the you don't have to let the hard things take over your brain. You don't have to let the hard things be your entire story. There can be hard things and beautiful things at the exact same time, and it's important to acknowledge both.
Nicole:When it comes down to feeling not enough, I think it's also very important to remember that this is just something we learned and practiced for way too long. So maybe you grew up with parents that didn't praise you, like me. I don't remember anyone ever saying I'm proud of you or I love you or look at all the things you did or look at how special you are. None of that. Maybe they weren't there for you in the way you needed.
Nicole:Maybe they didn't tell you how special you are and go into detail about all the things that make you so special and are uniquely you. You probably learned to talk to yourself the way your parents talk to you, but I don't think that the answer is to blame them. But I do think we get to break this cycle. Especially if you're aware of what's going on and it's time to shift out of this cycle and not pass it down to our kids. Because we way too often, just naturally, without thinking about it, talk to ourselves in our head the same way our parents talk to us.
Nicole:If they ignored you, you probably ignored yourself. If they weren't around, you probably are continuing to abandon yourself. If you weren't acknowledged, you probably never take time to praise or acknowledge yourself. If you were never told you were special, you might spend your entire life trying to prove that you are. But that doesn't mean that you don't need these things.
Nicole:And it definitely doesn't mean that you don't deserve them. You absolutely do. And the good news is that you can start giving them to yourself. You can come back to yourself. You can support yourself consistently in the way that you wish your parents supported you.
Nicole:Can acknowledge yourself for all the little things and the big things. You can praise yourself. Can care for yourself when you are sad or hurt or lonely or scared. You can slow down. You can let yourself feel without making the feeling mean that something is wrong with you.
Nicole:You can say I'm having a hard day and I'm still okay. I don't have to figure everything out right now. I'm so fucking proud of myself. Look at everything I've done. I see how hard I'm trying.
Nicole:I'm here for me no matter what. And you can decide on purpose. I am enough. I am more than enough. Not when you get the house, not when you make more money, not when your business hits whatever number you're trying to hit, not when your body looks a certain way, not when everyone approves of you, not when you finally become the version of yourself that you think you should be right now because what if the thing you've been trying to get your entire life isn't actually you know the dream relationship or house or money or success or whatever What if what you've really been looking for is the feeling underneath all of it.
Nicole:To feel safe, to feel seen, to feel cared for unconditionally loved, To feel proud of yourself in all the moments. To feel like you belong here. To feel like you're more than enough. And what I've realized is that I don't have to wait for my life to become perfect to feel those things. I can and should and deserve to feel all of those things right now.
Nicole:And maybe that is what it's it means to get to finally feel like you have everything you ever wanted. Not that everything out side of you needs to be perfect, but that when you finally stop making your worth dependent on the stuff outside of you, you know, that's when you get to feel it. You get the house. It's not, you know, it's not that you get the house and then you love yourself or that your business grows and then you love yourself or that you meet the dream guy and then you love yourself or that you accomplish something amazing and then you get to celebrate yourself. But it's that your business struggles and you still love yourself.
Nicole:You have a hard month financially and you still love yourself. You completely fuck something up and you support yourself all the way through it. Because the goal was never actually to create this life, this perfect life where nothing goes wrong. That's not how this world works. Like, The goal is really to create a relationship within yourself where you matter.
Nicole:Always. No matter what. Where you have your back. Where you're not going anywhere, you're never leaving yourself high and dry. You need to feel like you're always supported, always loved, always enough.
Nicole:Maybe that's the safety that we've been craving this entire time and it was never outside of yourself. Because what I've learned is that it's always always been an inside job. And the best part is that when you can give it to yourself consistently and you start to get comfortable with feeling those feelings of safety, of love, of care, of more than enough, of, you know, of someone that just gives a shit about you all the time that sees the perfection in you, that sees you as special. When you get to feel special, oh, that's the best. And everyone deserves to feel that.
Nicole:And we don't need to get that from anyone outside of us. Not from our parents, not from our relationship not even from our kids we deserve to feel that and we get to give that to ourselves because it's always been an inside job okay that's what I have for you guys today. Hope you found it helpful. I will see you all next week. Bye for now.