Ep 16: How to romanticising your life and what it really means to be the main character in your story!
21 Sept 2022 · 13 min
This podcast episode (Ep 16) features host Emma Naylor-Weston, a life purpose and career coach, explaining what it means to "romanticize your life" and how to be the main character in your own story. Using a personal anecdote (a stuck car charger on the motorway) she shows how small mindset shifts and deliberate micro-rituals — e.g., savoring coffee, buying/displaying flowers, dressing purposefully, reading outdoors, meditating, noticing weather — can turn inconveniences into uplifting moments. The episode emphasizes gratitude, mindfulness, creating small daily moments now rather than waiting for big achievements, and concludes with a listener call-to-action to subscribe and review.
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You by me, Emma Naylor, life Purpose and Career Coach. This podcast is for the ambitious and motivated individuals who are ready to take the next step in their life and turn their dreams into their everyday reality. To guide them to live a life of fulfillment within their career, purpose and beyond. And to show them that you really can have it all.
Hello and welcome back to this week's podcast. In this week's episode, I really wanted to talk to you about how to romanticize your life. I want to talk to you about some of the tips on feeling like the main character and to start learning to fall in love with your life. I'm actually recording this on the side of a motorway charging the car. Now that doesn't sound very romanticizing my own life, but actually how I ended up here was I was meant to have a meeting this morning with a coach and the car charger got stuck in the car. And there was two ways that that could have gone. I could have gone, pull me. This is really annoying. I don't know why this is happening to me. Or I could was able to go, actually, let's solve the situation and then let's see how we can actually turn this situation into something positive. Look, at the end of the day, it's not the end of the world. The charger got stuck in the car, everyone's okay, but it's these moments where we get these opportunities to go, a, what is this teaching me? And B, how can I turn this opportunity into a good one? So I managed to go to a different charging point just off the side of the motorway, and I grabbed my book that I'm currently reading, which is Many Lives, many masters by Dr. Brian Wes, that was actually recommended by my first coach, who has actually become a very good friend of mine. And it was something that we'd spoken about. And if you haven't read it, I would absolutely recommend reading it. It's really a round sort of past life traumas, and it's interesting to see a sort of a psychiatrist thought on it. So if you haven't read it, I don't want to give too much of it away. But what I did was I parked up on the side of the motorway, charged the car, grabbed my book, grabbed myself for coffee, and actually looked around and thought, I'm so thankful that I've got an hour back in my day where I physically cannot do anything else because I'm attached to the wall and I've actually been able to give myself this hour. I put a Little bit of meditation music on, and just really romanticized what could be a situation of me sitting there going, hurry up charger, hurry up. I need places to go, I have people I need to see. And actually, regardless of whether I sit there and force the charger and stare at the charger, it's going to take the same amount of time. So actually what I wanted to do was think about how can I romanticize this situation? And that meant grabbing myself a really lovely coffee from Starbucks, picking up the book that I wanted to read, that I have spent time reading, but I haven't been able to find one hour in my day to just sit down and read it. The other thing was I put some really lovely music on in the background, some really, really soft sort of jazz music to really create that atmosphere that I wanted to. Now if you looked at my surroundings, as I said, I'm off the motorway, charging the car, it's not exactly the most romantic or idyllic situation. But that didn't stop me from creating the environment that I needed. So what do we mean when we talk about romanticizing our life? So it's what we desire, it's what we need, it's putting all of those things into action and it means focusing on our own goals and achieving them, but also romanticizing the really small things on the way. So I used to often think, you know, the big goals and the big things in life is what I want to focus, focus on. Those are the most important things. And actually what I realized is it's not waiting until I have certain things or feel certain ways. It's about creating those moments, those little snippets of the day, and creating those for me right now in this reality, rather than actually waiting for something to happen. So as I said, when we talk about romanticizing, it's really about noticing the beauty around us, taking those small opportunities, allowing to, allowing us to notice the small things in life. So when we do look at those real small moments and we find the magic and the beauty in everything, we're able to move into a higher vibrational energy. Okay, that might sound a little bit woo woo for people, and that's absolutely fine. But what it allows us to do, and I'll use this morning as an example, so I could have literally gone, this is awful, this is a nightmare. I'm going to be so late, I'm going to. And got into this really negative headspace. And the whole day the tone would have been, I'm behind, I'm rushing, things are going wrong. What's happening. I was able to pause, take a second look at the opportunity and say, nothing hideous has happened. Nothing bad has happened. I'm okay. Everyone I love is okay. It's just a minor inconvenience. And then the next step was going, how do I romanticize this situation to make me feel good and actually change the tone of the day? And as I said, that day could have gone very, very differently. So we have to start romanticizing our lives now as the main character in our life, rather than waiting for things to happen. So there are a few really small things that we can start doing. And again, this isn't about going and being able to buy yourself a Chanel handbag and have those iconic main character moments. Yes, we want to have those. But actually, it can be the smallest thing, like taking time to make a really lovely coffee on a morning instead of just rushing it and throwing it down our throat before we get home. Taste it, put it in your favorite mug, smell it, create a nice moment for yourself. And I know that might sound a little bit crazy because it's just coffee at the end of the day, Whether you drink it slowly or drink it quickly, it has the same effect. But actually, it's about creating that moment for you, that five, ten minutes of peace to remember that this is your life and you want to take it slowly at your own pace. The neck. The next thing, which I absolutely love for myself, is buying fresh flowers and spending the time displaying them properly, making them look really lovely, you know, taking a photo of them, not just throwing them in a vase in the corner and going, yeah, that's fine. The next thing, and again, this is something I absolutely love doing in the summer is grabbing my favorite book, grabbing an iced coffee and going to sit in the park. Finding a really nice shaded area in the park and just sitting there and having that real main character moment. The next thing, which actually recently I've started doing a lot more, is not sitting at home in my tracksuit bottoms and jumper. I get dressed and put makeup on every single day. Not lots of makeup. I don't wear a full ball gown. But if you absolutely want to, then by all means, please do that if that's the way you want to romanticize your life. But something I like to do is I like to feel good every single day, regardless of where I'm going. I like to get up and get my hair done and do my makeup and put a really nice outfit on and just allow myself those moments. Not for anyone else, but for me. Now, those are A few of the things that I love that make me feel really good and that sort of main character moment. But for you, you have to find those things that make you feel good and romanticize the small things in your life. It may be that slow morning walk in a place that you absolutely love with that podcast on, with no distractions, just feeling really good and grounded. It may be literally meditating in the morning. And again, that's not for everyone. And often we see that as the sort of romanticizing your life. There's this real sort of Instagram and TikTok. This is how you romanticize your life. And actually it's about what makes you feel good in those moments. And as I said, it's these real small snippets of life. And it's really about creating what works for you rather than waiting to see what way what sort of works for someone else. Because there'll be some people that I'll speak to and go, that absolutely doesn't work for me, and that doesn't make me feel that good. And I'll say to them, okay, let's find out what makes you feel good when you're doing certain things. How. How do you. How does that make you feel? What does that make you feel? And I always say this to my clients is far too often, we don't appreciate what we have. We don't appreciate those slower mornings with a coffee. We don't appreciate the flowers that we're buying, the home that we live in, the clothes that we have. Whatever it is, we always try and go ahead in life and get the next thing and the better thing. But rarely do we actually take the time to sit back and reflect on everything good that we have. And it's really important to be grateful for what we have now and being able to have those moments of mindfulness. And if we're happy with the small things in life, we have, you know, as I said, the coffee, the early mornings, the flowers. We're not going to constantly chase the big things and we're not going to constantly feel down because we're not where we want to be at. It's really about taking every single moment and making it the best moment. So the best morning coffee that you've had, the best bunch of flowers, it doesn't have to be the most expensive flowers. It's just the emotion and the energy that you've put into it. And it's sort of one of those moments where when we're walking to work, for example, and it's raining a Lot of people will say it's hard to romanticize rain, but actually it's around looking at the beauty and, and what the rain is allowing to happen. What it's allowing to happen is for that beauty and for the flowers and for the grass and everything to grow. And those small things alone again once we're able to notice them and we start appreciating the really, really small things in life. What we don't have in life won't bother us as much because we're so focused on what we do have that actually we know in time we will get to where we want to be. But it doesn't mean that our life right now has to be. This isn't good enough doom and gloom. Actually, we want to start appreciating what we've got now until we really, really achieve what we want to achieve. And again, it may not be that actually there are these big, huge goals that you want to achieve, but you sort of feel actually there's nothing to romanticize in my life. There aren't these simple small moments. Start creating those small moments for yourself because no one else, no one else is going to create them for you. You absolutely have to create them yourself. So I wanted this to be a sort of really short, snappy podcast for anyone that's listening on the way to work, on the drive to work, or on the morning dog walk. So I just wanted to remind you that in your life you have to start thinking of yourself as the main character. It's not arrogant, it's not big headed. Because if you don't start doing that, life before you know it, and we know how quickly life goes, is gonna pass us by. And all of the things that make our lives so beautiful, not the big things, all the small things that make our lives so beautiful will continue to go unnoticed every single day because we're so focused on the big goal. So just take a second look around and just appreciate the reality that we're living in right now. So I really hope you found that podcast useful and helpful. I'd love to hear your sort of individual ways that you romanticize your life.
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