Episode 334- How to Sit in Satisfaction
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[00:00:00] You are listening to episode 334 of the Peaceful Mind Podcast. Welcome to the Peaceful Mind Podcast, a place where you can move out of overwhelm and into a calm, confident motherhood with God at the center. I'm Danielle Thienel, certified life coach, Catholic mom, and creator of the Cyclone Mom Method. I help you create emotional steadiness and peace of mind from the inside out, so you can experience more balance and more joy in your busy mom life.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, let's get started.
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Peaceful Mind podcast. I'm your host, Danielle Thienel, and I'm so glad you're here with me today. If you're listening to this right when it comes out brand new, we are in the middle of summer. Today's episode and the [00:01:00] next few will be released in July of twenty twenty six, and I wanna be mindful, right?
I want... It's summertime. I know what that means for most of you, my listeners. It means that our schedule has shifted, the kids are home more, the activities are a little different, and somehow the days feel both more relaxed, I hope, and more full at the same time, right? So I wanna honor that, so I'm actually challenging myself to make this month's of episodes be shorter, quick, to the point, so that you can get back to that awesome summertime that I hope you are enjoying, right?
I'm just gonna intentionally keep them a little shorter. And I of course want to give you something meaningful and useful, but sometimes in the summer I do replay past episodes even giving myself a break, [00:02:00] right? But I wanted... I just have such a big content library of ideas in my ideas notes on my phone, and some of these I just am really wanting to get out.
So I decided, Danielle, just challenge yourself to make them a little bit shorter, and it's ironic as I'm sitting here thinking that I feel like I'm running on to explain this. It's probably making it even longer. Anyways, let's jump in then. The-- today's episode, I wanna talk to you about something that I think is quietly stealing a lot of peace from your life without you probably even realizing it, and I...
what the title of the episode and what I wanna help you do is I wanna help you sit in satisfaction because I do believe that if you do this, you will have more peace in your life and in your motherhood. And so today's episode is about how to do that, how to sit in satisfaction. So here's where I [00:03:00] want-- what I want you to think about here at the beginning.
When something good happens in your life, when you accomplish something, when things, as our brains will tell us, finally come together, or when you reach a goal, cross a finish line get through a hard season, or have just a genuine beautiful moment maybe with your kids that you actually stop and recognize as being a beautiful moment, what happens next?
For most of us, the answer is we move on, and we move on quickly. We check it off. We might feel that brief flash of relief or happiness, and then almost immediately our mind is already scanning for what still needs to be done, for what's next, for what we haven't figured out yet. The satisfaction of accomplishing [00:04:00] what-- or having a great moment, it barely lands before we are on to the next thing, and it literally is the nature of our brains.
So this is what I want to help you overcome, override, and practice, and what I want you to understand about that, and it-- I realize we move on not because we're ungrateful. It's not because we don't care that we accomplished that. It's actually just the way our brains are wired, right? The human brain i- it's a problem-solving machine.
It's always looking ahead. It's always scanning for what needs to be, like, addressed, and that did serve us well at some point back in our history. But in everyday modern mom life, which is what I am speaking to, it means we're almost never fully [00:05:00] receiving the good that's already here. We finish a great morning with the kids, and before lunchtime we're already mentally rehearsing the afternoon.
We finally clean out the closet we've been putting off for months, and rather than feeling that sense of accomplishments settle in, we notice three other things that still now need our attention. We come out of hard seasons, and instead of exhaling, right? When we were in that hard season, all we could-- we couldn't wait to be out of it, and, but now we're there, but we're bracing ourself for the next hard season around the corner.
Does any of that sound familiar to you? So I want to bring up the question, what does it actually mean to sit in satisfaction? And then also because I truly believe this will bring more peace to your life, more peace of mind. It-- what it-- here's what [00:06:00] it doesn't mean, right? It doesn't mean we become complacent.
I want to say that clearly because I know for many of you, the idea of contentment can feel a little dangerous. If you slow down, if you feel okay where things are, then you'll stop trying, you'll stop growing, you'll stop feeling motivated to go after it. And this is not what I'm teaching here.
Sitting in satisfaction, it is a skill. Like many of the things I hope and want for you all to build and to experience requires this skill building. It's... Sitting in satisfaction, it's the intentional practice of letting good things actually register in your body and your mind and your heart before you move on.
That's the key. It means pausing long enough to say to yourself, "This is good. [00:07:00] What I did matters. What just happened here was real, and it deserves for you to receive it." So think about it this way. If a friend came to you and said, "I finally did the thing I was working towards," you wouldn't say, "Great, so what are you doing next?"
You would stop. You'd celebrate with her. You'd let her feel it. And y- we need to learn to do that for ourselves. And I believe this deeply. When you learn to sit in satisfaction, feel content more often, more regularly, you will feel that more satisfaction. You'll have more experiences to feel more satisfied and more content that you will grow in this wonderful feeling.
Not because your circumstances changed, but because you are actually receiving your life and the [00:08:00] goodness instead of just running right through it. Right now, just that whole stop to smell the roses bubbles up for me. And here's the connection I want you to make. So much of what drives our restlessness, our kinda low-grade anxiety, our sense that something is always a little off, it isn't actually about what we don't have.
I think it's about not fully inhabiting what we do have. Because contentment, it's not like a personality type. It's not like you have the chromosome of contentment or not. It's not something that some people naturally have or others don't. It's a practice, and like any practice, it grows the more you consciously do it [00:09:00] Paul wrote about this in Philippians.
He said he had learned to be content in all circumstances. Learned. That word has always stood out to me. He did not say he was born content. He said he learned it, which means it's a skill, which means you can develop it, too. And when you do, something will shift. This is what I'm after for you all, shifts, change, transformation, ones that are always leading you to more joy, more balance, more peace, more calm, more in control, more confidence of your life, in your life.
The quiet moments, they stop feeling like nothing is happening, and they start feeling like rest. Your ordinary days stop feeling like they're getting in the way of real life, and they start feeling like they are real life. [00:10:00] And the sense that you always need more, that you're always a little behind, that satisfaction is always just one more thing away, that actually starts to soften and loosen up.
And when you find that place, that's where more peace lives. Not in the getting more done, in receiving more of what's already here. So let me give you something practical. This week, I want you to try what we'll just call, it's not like this any, fancy name, the satisfaction pause. It's simple. When something goes well, when you accomplish something, when you have a good moment, when you get through something hard, when you notice something that feels genuinely good, stop for sixty seconds.
Yes, just sixty seconds. And in those sixty seconds, I want you to ask yourself three things. [00:11:00] What just happened here? What did that take from me? What do I want to remember about this? You don't need to like journal it, though you could if you want, right? And you don't even have to share it with anyone.
You just need to let it land. Let your mind actually acknowledge it. Let your body settle into it for a moment before moving on. And let's just talk about a few real examples of what this could look like because I do want you to be able to picture it in your own life, and I know that I have a variety of listeners with moms in different stages of where your kids are, so let me try to speak to m- many of the stages.
Okay? So maybe you have a toddler, and they finally slept through the night. Maybe they have a hard time sleeping, and they're sleeping through the night, and this has been like the first time in weeks. And instead of grabbing your phone or starting like the mental [00:12:00] checklist for the day, you sit on the edge of your bed for sixty seconds, and you let yourself feel that.
Like you sit in the satisfaction that you had a win, that it mattered that you went through those hard few weeks, and then now you're at this place. Like you soak in, be satisfied that took place. Maybe your teenager came to you and actually opened up about something that was going on in their life.
I know, sometimes we say that's a miracle. And at the moment that the conversation ends, your instinct is to jump into problem-solving mode or I don't know, go tell your spouse about it. But what if instead you paused and said to yourself, "She or he came to me." That is something. That is worth receiving.
And again, for sixty minutes, just feel satisfied, [00:13:00] see the amazingness of it, and just really soak it in. Maybe you made it through a whole week of dinners at home when you said you would, or you had a hard conversation with your husband and it actually went well, or you kept your cool in a moment where the old version of you would have completely lost it.
These are not small things, but what I know is that you most likely treat l- treat them like they are. Or maybe it's something that's even a little bit more quieter. Let's say your college-aged daughter called just to talk. Maybe your kids played together for an hour without you having to be the referee.
Maybe you sat outside in the evening and it was actually peaceful. Maybe you finished something you've been putting off for months. I'm just trying to give up, give examples here that [00:14:00] knowing that these moments, they pass so quickly and we let them pass quickly, and today I'm offering, how about we don't let them pass so quickly, right?
The satisfaction pause. Again, this is just the practice of saying, "Not this time," but this one I'm gonna make it count. I'm gonna let this win actually reach me. I just think, again, it's a small habit, and when small habits are practiced consistently, they start to rewire your brain, and that rewires the way you move through your days.
And then you start to notice there's actually more good, and you feel better. And then you'll, again your brain will start to collect even more things that are already good and present in your life that your brain was not giving you credit for, and that's the part that changes everything. So [00:15:00] at this point, when you're listening to this episode, here is my gentle invitation to you.
Before you race past the good, pause, let it in, let it count. You literally are building something so beautiful in your life and with your family, even in the everyday and the ordinary daily routines th- that are imperfect, that quiet Tuesday afternoon or maybe that chaotic Tuesday afternoon that will seem so completely ordinary or forgettable in the moment and a completely irreplaceable memory is what it could become if you're somebody who learns how to sit in satisfaction.
Learn to sit in it. Don't skip over the good. That is where contentment grows, and contentment, mama, it's one of the quietest and most powerful [00:16:00] forms of peace there is. All right. I hope that, I think I did keep this a little shorter than the norm. And as always, at this point, if this episode has resonated with you, I'd be so grateful if you knew of another mom to share this with or the podcast in general who might need to hear the messages that that are given on it.
Okay, everyone, thank you so much for being here. I love you all, and until next time, may peace be with you always. Thank you for listening to The Peaceful Mind Podcast. If you've been feeling a quiet desire for more peace and steadiness in your motherhood, I invite you to take the next step by scheduling a peaceful mom strategy call at daniellethienel.com.
You'll also find the link in the show notes. It would be an honor to support you at any stage of your motherhood [00:17:00] journey
