Ep 147: Lost Your Spark? How to Reconnect With Yourself and Feel Alive Again | Part 1: Why You Feel Disconnected

Do you ever catch yourself thinking "Is this it?" or "I thought I'd feel happier by now" — even when nothing is technically wrong? 

You're not broken. You're disconnected. And there's a difference.

In Part 1 of this two-part series, I open up about my own post-divorce experience of doing all the "right" things while still feeling like something was missing, and why that feeling is far more common than we talk about. This isn't a motivation problem or a discipline problem. It's a disconnection problem.

Using my body, mind & spirit framework, I break down why so many women pour energy into two of those pillars while the third — spirit —  fades into the background. The result is a life that looks good on paper but feels flat, busy but not fulfilling, productive but not alive.

In this episode: why "going through the motions" sneaks up on us, how management mode takes over without us noticing, and why you genuinely cannot think your way into feeling alive.

Part 2 will cover what to actually do about it.

=== Mentioned in this episode: ===

Wellness Wake Up intro program — $99 — LEARN MORE HERE

Untamed by Glennon Doyle*

*Full disclosure: I participate in the Amazon Associates program. When you buy through my Amazon links, I earn a small commission that helps support my podcast

Transcript

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Welcome & What This Series Is About

0:51

Hello friends, and welcome back to this episode of Real, brave and Unstoppable. I'm your host Kortney Rivard, and thank you for tuning in today as I talk about how to feel more alive and joyful in our everyday lives. I have a little bit of a cold, so if my voice sounds a little funky, that's why. But anyway, this is part one in a two-part series. So today we'll talk about what's going on here with not feeling alive, feeling kind of disconnected from ourselves. And then next time we'll talk about kind of some shifts that we can make.

A Personal Story: Doing Everything Right and Still Feeling Off

1:25

So, first of all, I'm gonna start off with a little personal story, personal experience. There was a time period after my divorce where I was really focusing on rebuilding my life, getting back on my feet, creating stability, figuring out what I wanted next, and I was doing a lot of the right things. I mean, I was probably doing a lot of the wrong things too, if I'm being honest. But, but I was moving forward, I was checking boxes, so to speak, and then I, and I was making, I was making progress, but there were these moments where I would have thoughts like. "Is this it or I suck. I thought I'd be farther along by now. What happened to my life?" And those thoughts didn't just pass through. They hit me really hard and they've made me feel pretty shitty about myself, honestly. Kind of inferior like I was behind and like I somehow messed things up or I wasn't doing life as well as I should be. One thing that I've come to realize is those thoughts are actually a lot more common than we think, and I still have thoughts like that sometimes, 10 years later. Life just didn't turn out how I thought it would. And these kinds of thoughts can show up after big life changes, but they can also show up in really normal seasons of life too. Even day-to-day moments. You can be doing a lot of things right, and you can still feel like there's something missing or not quite how you thought it would be. I hear versions of this all the time from people, especially women. "I don't feel like myself. I thought I'd feel happier than I do." Nothing's really wrong, but something feels off.

When "Is This It?" Thoughts Won't Let Go

3:08

And here's what I think is really important: those thoughts. "Is this it? I should be farther along." The thoughts aren't the problem. The problem is that we get stuck in them. We get caught up in them, and then we start to make those thoughts mean something about us. You know that we're behind, we're failing, or this is just how life is now, and we're stuck with it and it's kind of deflating. So instead of getting curious about why we feel disconnected, we stay in that loop of thought. We think, we analyze, we judge ourselves instead of actually addressing what's missing. So it's really important to realize that most of the time. It's not that your life is broken or you're behind, or you should have done something drastically different. It's that you've become disconnected from what actually makes you feel alive inside of your life. When we're focused on all the things that are wrong, it's pretty hard to feel great about life, right? So I wanna talk about the feeling of stuckness which sort of is the, anti aliveness feeling. The feeling of stuckness, autopilot-y-ness, the thought "is this, it, I should be farther along." This can all be really pervasive. And it can start to run like an automatic narrative in our brains. And because thoughts create feelings, basically, this starts to make sense why we don't really feel alive or joyful. So it makes sense that we feel like we've lost the spark that we used to have.

The Signs You're Living on Autopilot

4:41

In our day to day, this can look like going through your day, doing all the things you need to do, but feeling kind of disconnected from it while you're in it. Going through the motions, you're productive, but not really fulfilled. You're getting things done, but you're not actually really enjoying your life fully. And when you have free time, you might even feel overwhelmed when you think about what you should do with it, because something that feels light and free, something that brings you some joy, might feel unproductive. Or the should police is telling you that you should be doing things that are productive, that move the needle to move farther along or get back on track. Life can feel like everything has become a task. Anyone resonate with that? Your workouts, your meals, your schedule, even things that used to feel really good. Now they just feel like things you have to do. You might notice that you're constantly busy, but that busyness doesn't actually feel satisfying. It just feels like you're keeping up that hamster wheel effect. There can also be a low level feeling of it's just something's off. I don't know what it is. You can't explain it. I lost a little bit of my spark, my mojo. Which also makes this more frustrating because now we have this problem to solve that we don't really know what it is. And a lot of times the women I to will feel ungrateful for the good things in life. Like, why can't I focus on that? And then there's even more beating of ourselves up, like, "why can't I just be happy with what I have"? So there's a lot of self-judgment. Mentally. This can show up as a lot of overthinking. Questioning yourself, comparing where you are to where you think you should be or where other people are. A lot of times there's a clear reason why we think this, and sometimes there's not even a clear reason why. So emotionally, it's not always this big dramatic burnout. It can be more like I said earlier, feel things, feel a little off. Things feel a little flat and a little muted. Like you're not fully in your life. You're there, but you're not really there. What makes this especially hard is a lot of the women I talk to are doing a lot of the things, "right". They're responsible. They're showing up for their families, their work, their health. Which makes it even more confusing when they don't actually feel good. Friends. This is a lot more common than we think it is. There's actually research that shows that a large percentage of women over 40 feel like they're just going through the motions in their day-to-day lives. So if this resonates with you, you are not the only one. You are not alone. When I started really looking at this, both in my own life and in the women I work with, I realized this is not a motivation problem. It's not a discipline problem. It's actually a disconnection problem.

The Body, Mind & Spirit Framework

7:41

So let's look at this through the three pillars. As you know, if you've been listening for a while, you know that one of the ways I like to think about this is through three core areas: Your body, your mind, and your spirit. Always bringing things back to those three pillars. Because they're all interwoven. Most women are actually spending almost all of their time and energy in just two of those. So this is what makes me unique as a coach, is when I help people, I look at all three. Like I said, they all work together. They're all interwoven. So if we start with a body pillar. This is where a lot of women are already putting effort in. You know, you're trying to eat well, maybe you're trying to get your workouts in and stay on top of your health, but even that can start to feel like a checklist. You know, movement becomes something you have to do. It's not fun anymore. Food becomes something you're managing instead of something that actually helps you feel good in your body. So even though you're doing things for your body, you're not necessarily feeling more connected to it. And feeling connected to, it's super important. Then there's the mind pillar. This is where a lot of us live most of the time. Me too. It seems like this week I am living almost entirely in my head and it's kind of exhausting. Planning, thinking, overthinking, that's me. Managing schedules, solving problems, trying to stay on top of everything. And it's not that any of that is bad, but when you're constantly in your head, it pulls you out of actually experiencing your life. You're not present. So we miss out on a lot. And especially those little things that do bring us joy. This is also where the thoughts like I should be farther along. Is this it? That's where those thoughts live, and the more time you spend there, the more disconnected you feel. And then there's the third piece, which is the one that almost always gets overlooked, and that's the spirit pillar. And when I say spirit, I'm not talking about anything complicated or abstract or religious. I'm talking about the part of you that feels alive, the part of you that experiences this life, that experiences joy and connection and meaning. The part of you that feels like you. This is what you tap into when you're out in nature and you just feel different. Or when you're doing something you genuinely enjoy and you just lose track of time. Or when you're fully present in a moment, instead of thinking about what's next. For a lot of women, this is the piece that's been missing, not because you don't have it, because you're not making space for it. So you end up living in your body, checking the boxes and in your mind, thinking, planning, managing, but you're rarely in that place where you actually feel connected and engaged and alive.

What Happens When Your Spirit Goes Offline

10:36

The thing is when your body and mind are doing all of that work. But your spirit is completely offline. That is where people start to feel stuck. That's when life starts to feel flat and we have thoughts like, "isn't there supposed to be more than this?" If you've read Glennon Doyle's book, untamed, there is a quote from there that says, isn't it supposed to be more beautiful than this?" To be clear, this is all not because you're doing something wrong, it's actually a really natural result of how most of us are living life. Life these days is not set up to help us be present and connect with our higher selves and inner knowing. But it does explain why you can be doing so many things right and still not feel the way you wanna feel. So if you're hearing this and thinking, yeah, that's exactly where I am. I want you to know this isn't because you've done something wrong. This is actually a really natural result of how most of us are living. At a certain point, life just becomes a lot to manage. I have a client who said she feels like she has an arm full of eggs and she just keeps dropping eggs because she can't hold all of them. I kinda loved that analogy or metaphor. Work, family schedules, responsibilities, you know, we're all juggling a lot, holding a lot of eggs, and a lot of it actually does matter. So naturally our focus shifts to keeping things running, being responsible, showing up for everyone else, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it does come at a cost if you don't balance it. Because the things that feel less urgent, like joy, creativity, connection, even just having space to think, those are usually the first things to go. So without even realizing it, then you shift into what I think of as management mode. Where your life becomes something that you're managing instead of something you're actually experiencing fully. You're thinking about what needs to get done, what's next, what you should be doing differently, and you spend less and less time being present in your life. And this is also why those thoughts start to get louder. I should be farther along. Why doesn't this feel better? Because you're just living in your head. And autopilot can be super efficient, those autopilot thoughts, but that is not where feeling alive lives.

How Busyness Becomes a Buffer

12:54

And then like a lot of us just stay busy. And busyness can be a "buffer" because when you slow down, that's when you start to notice how you actually feel. And then if there's any discomfort there, any disconnection, any dissatisfaction, it's a lot easier to just stay busy than to sit with that feeling right? Yeah, so this is where the spirit piece we talked about really starts to fade into the background. Without even realizing it, you stay in motion 'cause stillness feels unfamiliar, not because it's not important, but because it doesn't demand your attention the way everything else does. It can feel selfish. It can even feel unproductive sometimes. No one's. Emailing you about your joy. No one's scheduling time for you to feel alive, but you are getting a constant reinforcement to be productive, responsible, and on top of everything. So the things that help you feel alive, they get pushed to the side without even a thought. And over time, that disconnection, it doesn't feel dramatic, but it just starts to feel normal. Like, this is the way I should be. And you tell yourself, this is just this stage of life. This is just what being an adult is like, I should stop complaining. And so you do, you stop questioning it. But just because something is common doesn't mean it's how it's supposed to feel. And the tricky part here is that most people don't get out of this by doing more. In fact, doing more is usually what keeps them here, because it is much easier to stay busy than it is to slow down and actually ask, Because that can actually be a harder question to answer, and it often means doing some work, it often means maybe doing some things that are uncomfortable and unfamiliar. So when you put all this together, the responsibility, the constant doing, the busyness, the lack of space, it makes sense that you might feel disconnected. And the tricky part is even when you start to notice this, even when a part of you knows something feels off, it's really easy to stay stuck in that pattern. So why does this matter? The problem here, like why do we care about this? Why does it matter? Is that when you stay in this place of disconnection, when you're just going through the motions, telling yourself you'll deal with it later, it doesn't just stay neutral. Over time, it builds up and life just starts to feel flat and blah lifeless. Even when it's overall good, not terrible, not falling apart. Just not as good as it could be, we don't feel the same energy about things. You know, we might feel less joy, for example. But it's really easy to dismiss. because we tell ourselves I should be grateful. This is just a season. I just need to keep going. And. The thing about it is that here's something to really think about: you did not build this life just to get through it, right? You built this life because there are things that matter to you, feelings you wanna feel adventures, you wanna have connections you wanna make. Aliveness to be felt. And this, my friends, is really the heart of this podcast. Real brave and unstoppable, really fully living your life. Now, I can't say I always fully live my life. I get stuck in my thoughts too.

Why You Can't Think Your Way to Feeling Alive

16:07

But let's bring this back to the mind. So when you feel disconnected, your mind tends to get louder. More overthinking, more questioning, and more comparing. And if you've ever heard the quote comparison as the thief of joy, there you go. When something feels off internally, your brain tries to figure it out. Our brain loves to solve problems. But this isn't something you can think your way out of with that "thinky part" of your brain whose view is clouded by a lot of narratives and belief systems or schemas for making sense of how the world works, and it tends to get in the way of what we really want. You cannot think your way into feeling alive. You just can't. And this all impacts your body too. Your workouts might feel forced. Your routines might feel really effortful, and it becomes harder to stay consistent, not because you're lazy, but because you're not connected to why it matters to you. So it starts to feel like you're just going through the motions, checking boxes, and most importantly there, your spirit stays disconnected. You miss out on feeling present, on experiencing joy and on actually being in your life instead of just managing it. And hear this: That's not because those things aren't available to you, it's because there's no space or attention being given to them. Let that land. So if we zoom out a bit, at the end of the day, this is not just about habits or routines or feeling a little more motivated. This is about your actual experience of your life. How do you feel day to day? How present you are, how connected you feel to yourself and the people around you. You can have a life that looks good on paper and still not feel good living it. So this all seems kind of hard and like a lot, doesn't it? Yeah.

Where Reconnecting Actually Begins

18:09

So let's reframe it a bit. The flip side of that is that if this is something you're experiencing, it's also something you can shift. It's not about overhauling your life. It's not about needing a completely different life. It's about learning how to reconnect with yourself within the life you already have. That's what we're gonna start getting into next. Because once you understand what's actually going on here, the question becomes how do you start to shift it? Where do you start? And a lot of women are waiting to feel alive again someday without realizing it's something that they have access to right now.

Pulling It All Together

18:47

Let's pull this all together. As I said before, this is a part, one of a two part series. And if we zoom out and kind of pull it back together, all this together, if you've been feeling stuck, disconnected, like something's missing, it's not because you're broken or there's something wrong with you. And it's not because you're not doing enough. It's just that somewhere along the way you become disconnected from what actually makes you feel alive. So when you look at it through the lens of body, mind, and spirit, most women are putting a lot of effort into their body and their mind, but their spirit has just been pushed to the side. That's why you can be doing so many things right and still not feel the way you wanna feel. You can't out discipline a disconnected life. So the real starting point here, it's not doing more. It's becoming aware of where you feel disconnected in your life right now. And once you start to see that, the next question becomes, what do I actually do about it? What matters to me? How can I connect with that Awareness is really important, but it's not enough on its own. So in the next episode, I'm gonna walk you through how to actually start reconnecting with yourself. How to feel more alive, more present, more like yourself again, without needing to completely overhaul your life. We'll talk about what actually creates that feeling of aliveness. How to start building it back in small, realistic ways and how to do that even if you feel like you don't have time or you don't know where to start. But for now, I just want you to notice where in your life are you going through the motions instead of actually experiencing it? When was the last time you truly felt alive? Not productive, not accomplished, but like really alive. You're not as far off as you think, you know, you're just a little disconnected. And this isn't about becoming someone new. It's about coming back to yourself. Feeling alive isn't something you wait for. It's something that you can start creating today. You have access to that.

Work With Kortney + Until Next Time

20:46

So if this resonated with you, I'd love to hear what came up for you. This is something so many women are experiencing, even if we're not always talking about it. And if you're listening to this and realizing, yeah, something feels off to me like you've been going through the motions. Or you don't quite feel like yourself right now. This is exactly the kind of work I do inside my coaching practice and specifically a good start is my Wellness Wake up intro program. It's 99 bucks. It's designed to help you step out of autopilot and really look at what's going on in your body, your mind, and your life, so that you can really start to understand what's missing, and you can start creating a way forward that feels good and realistic for you. It's not about overhauling and everything or adding more to your plate. It's about getting clarity, reconnecting with yourself and identifying a few key shifts that can make a real difference. I'll include the details in the show notes if you wanna check it out. So my friends, I, that is all I have for you today. I hope this has been really helpful. I appreciate you being part of my community. If you're enjoying the show, please share it with other people or leave me a rating and a review. It means a lot to me and it helps other people find the show, which is what we want. So have a great rest of your day, and I will see you next time.