S3 E14 - Are You Living by Default?

In this conversation, Sophia Hyde discusses the importance of living intentionally rather than defaulting to societal norms and expectations. She shares personal anecdotes and insights on how to cultivate intentionality in various aspects of life, including friendships, personal goals, and daily habits. The conversation emphasizes the need for self-awareness and proactive decision-making to create a fulfilling life.

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Transcript

Sophia Hyde (00:00.578)
Hello, my goodness. It is October here in Waynesville, North Carolina outside of Asheville and it is peak fall y'all. The leaves are gorgeous. my gosh, so much beauty. I'm loving it. I'm so happy here. Yeah, it's been a hot minute. It's been two months since I dropped an episode and it's not actually an accident. Y'all know, we talk a lot about not being shitted on.

And even though all the marketing experts say you should be consistent with your podcast, here's the deal. Y'all, I am not going to record a podcast just to check a box. If I, I'm going to wait to drop episodes until like, I feel like I have something valuable to share with you that I haven't already shared. Because if you want to listen to some podcasts from me, you can go back. There's like over 60 different episodes with concepts and ideas and ways to move through the world as your favorite self.

And until I feel like I have something to share that we haven't talked about yet, I'm not gonna force this, okay? That's how this podcast is gonna work because I wanna continue adding, I want them to be good. I want you guys to be excited when a new one drops because you feel like it's something we haven't talked about already. And that's what we have today. Two people said something to me recently that were like kind of holding up a mirror. it's so funny how the way we all move through the world,

is we just think that the way that we think or the things that they're just so obvious to us are obvious to everybody else, but they're not because all of our brains are wired so differently. It's why I love the CliftonStrengths profile, which I've talked about many times on this podcast is because it shows us how we all have our top five strengths and it's different. our brains, our priorities, our values, we're all each individually unique, right? And

I had a friend say to me last week when I was staying with her, she just went on this tangent about how the way I show up in friendship is so different than the other people she's in friendships with and how mine is way more intentional. And then I had a shout out Dr. April, if you're listening to this, a former client who had me on her podcast.

Sophia Hyde (02:20.59)
and was interviewing me about my book Unleash Your Favorite Self. And she made this comment about how, you know, really one of her big takeaways from the book was what it means to just live in a very intentional way in every area. And I just, I hadn't even realized that that's what was happening, but it kind of made me laugh because I don't know. I've had a Facebook profile since 2005.

And at some point in one of those updated years, 2008, nine, 10, who knows, somewhere early on, they did this update. We could like put like a mantra under your name. You don't see them. We have to like go looking for it, but sometimes I'll end up on some screen and it shows me. somewhere around 15 years ago, I put like under my name, my little quote thing was living with intention and helping others do the same. And I've never changed it because

I'm still doing that. I'm still doing that. But it wasn't until I started reflecting on this, because they both said it to me within a couple of days of each other. And I thought, what is this? What is this intentional living? And I realized, first of all, that I have not always moved through the world this way. And so we're going to talk about that. And what does it mean if somebody is not living with intention? Which I think of as just

the default, like you're living in a default setting. You, I just think about those TVs that, know, have you ever been to somebody's house and they just installed their TV, turned it on or whatever, and the picture is that weird. I wasn't planning, this was not in my notes, so I don't have the actual name pulled up for you guys, but it looks so creepy and weird on the screen. I can't stand it, and I don't even know how to describe it, but like, it's like fake, like something they write.

And it's a default setting that all the TVs have. And because I'm married to a tech guy, I always have him change it immediately. And he wants to do it. It's not like I have to ask him. He hates it too. And he'll even when we go to like friends or family houses and they're not techie, I'll be like, Brandon, they have that bad setting on you need to go fix their TVs for them. Get this weird thing off of here. And it's kind of like that. It's like you just.

Sophia Hyde (04:36.242)
bought the TV and you plugged it in the wall and you were like, whatever, the settings are fine, they're default, but it could be so much prettier and clearer and it doesn't have to look weird, right? You can change the settings for your preferences. I think so many of us are moving through life where in a way that it's just, this was the default. I plugged it in, I go through the motions of checking the boxes and I'm just taking this a day at a time.

living in the default setting that I somehow, some way walked into. But here's the reality, living your favorite self, it takes a hell of a lot of of intention, because you have to go through every single area of your life and ask yourself, what do I want? What do I desire? What does a 10 look like in this area of my life? And then, then you have to look at the gap and figure out, how am going to close it? And then, and then you have to set new goals and then you have to figure out those habits. And so then you create these habits.

and you know why you made them because you're trying to get closer to your 10 and suddenly every area of your life you're moving with a lot of intention around. It doesn't happen overnight, but it happens step by step. And so I want to tell you the comment that my friend Leanne made. I was staying at her house and so one of the reasons that y'all haven't heard from me is the last month my husband and I have been in just a

Funky season, right? So when we relocated, we knew that a lot of our life, our network, our connections, our job related things were still based in the Tampa Bay area, because I'd been there for 30 years, he'd been there for 20 years, right? And so we ended up in this weird predicament where I was gone for like six days.

And then he literally, I got off of a flight and he got onto the exact same flight that I was just on that was heading back to the St. Pete airport from Asheville. And so we, after not being together for six days, we like gave each other a hug in the, at the gate, which by the way, that was the first time since 9-11, I had somebody meeting me at the gate. And so we said hi, we said bye. And then I had my dad in town for four days.

Sophia Hyde (06:52.374)
And then he came home, we had a couple days together. Then I flew out again. cause he was gone for five days, six days for that work trip, maybe even seven, doesn't matter. So I was gone a week, he was gone a week. We had a few days together. I left for four days, got home at Wednesday, 11 p.m. He flew out 9 a.m. the next morning. And it was a whole month of this passing back and forth between either one of us was traveling, we were either traveling or solo parenting.

And I made a decision with these two Florida trips I had to make, I made a decision that I wanted to use the fact that I moved away from all my friends and family, that I wanted it to actually make the friendships better, which doesn't seem like that would happen if you move away, right? But I realized that I could default, again, what's the default?

I could just stay with my parents. There is an extra bedroom. It's like my dad's TV room where he watches his shows and sports, and mom had the living room, right? But they would totally welcome me. Absolutely, I could have that bedroom, right? So I could just go to town and stay with my parents. Or I could just go to town and get a hotel. But I decided I would just reach out to my friends and each time stay with a different person. I managed to stay with four different people over the two trips. I guess five if I my parents.

And it's so fun because who gets to have sleepovers at 38 years old? It's been a blast, but we get to have these conversations. And I loved getting to like see my friend Christina. We've been friends since we were 14 and I'm like watching her interact with her two kids and we're playing chess and we're cooking dinner together and washing dishes. And I am like, this is the best. This is the best, right? But that didn't happen on default. It happened with intention and

Leanne had said to me, you just show up in friendships so intentionally in a way that nobody else I'm in friendship with does. And I told her, girl, we got to rewind four years ago because my friendship spoke got really, really low in 2021. I would have said my friendships were at a. I think they were either at maybe a two or three on on the scale of 10. And again, if you read my book.

Sophia Hyde (09:17.312)
I explained very clearly how I grew that spoke and the aha I had, you know, really declaring exactly who I want to invest into and what kind of habits you would have. And so I really narrowed it down a lot. said, I can't have, I can't maintain a hundred friendships with people, right? So who are the small handful of people that I'm going to choose to be really intentional with and how do I show up for them really well?

And I just started putting in a little bit of effort or a little more effort with just a small group of people and, and Leanne's on that list, right? And so I can handle five or six people that I'm intentional with, but I can't handle 20. And so for those, there's probably people in the world who think I'm not that great at friendship, but for these small handful of people, I am, right? And Dr. April on her podcast episode, she mentioned this.

question that I ask in the journal in the spiritual chapter it's a reflection and please feel free to use this I asked it for the first time of myself in 2011 and the question was if I died today what would I be disappointed never happened

Since 2011, so 14 years later, I still live my life by this idea. It was the question I first asked myself when I made my very first vision board. That was how I answered it. If I died today, what would I be disappointed never happened? And then I wrote those things down and then I went and found pictures of them off the internet and sent them to CVS one hour print and I pinned them to a cork board. I'm not super creative. I am not like your artsy fartsy person.

It was literally pins, a cork board and Google images. But they all represented something that mattered to me. And then I started rearranging my life in a way that would get me closer to those goals. And I've been doing that ever since. So what is default living? It's the opposite of intention, right? Default living is just going through the motions of what's in front of you. It's checking the boxes. It's just waking up and going through the motions without consciously really deciding what it's going to be.

Sophia Hyde (11:36.079)
And when I think of some ways that I used to default live, one of those was the many years that Brandon and I lived in Plant City, Florida. How did I end up in Plant City? First of all, it started in 1995. Both my parents are, I don't know, fourth, fifth, sixth, like super generation deep from small towns in Louisiana. And my dad's job in...

1995 he was a manager for Piccadilly cafeteria and they transferred him to the Brandon, store and So we ended up in Brandon, Florida and we were there for three years and my parents Felt like it was too much hustle bustle, which if you're not familiar with Brandon, Florida You've seen a Brandon somewhere in suburbia America. It's the part of town. So this was like they call like Tampa's suburban Or bedroom community Tampa's bedroom community, but we've all seen it. It's the part of the big city where

Everybody is building like all of the subdivisions and all the franchises are there and all the big box stores. It's just a concrete jungle of capitalism America and neighborhoods. I don't know how else to describe it, right? But we've got the one of those, there's a brand in Florida and like every metro area, right? And so my parents were like, we hate this. They're both from really small towns in Louisiana. And so they got a realtor when they were ready to buy a house and

They showed them Plant City, which was a small town with a little main street and a tight knit community. And they said, yes, here, this is where we want to raise our kids. My parents bought a home in December of 1997. I was in the fifth grade. And that's how I ended up there because of a job transfer from Piccadilly cafeteria. And all these years later, it's like, that's why we were there. And then I met my husband and we stayed and then we got jobs and then we grew businesses and

It just happened. It just happened because one thing led to another. And at some point we lifted our heads up and said, why do we live here? And do we want to keep living here? And the answer was no, we don't like the beach. We don't want being hot. We started asking, what do we love? We love the mountains, all of the mountains. And we intentionally chose a city, right? That was the difference of moving from default to intention is, okay, well, if we could live anywhere, where would we want to live and why?

Sophia Hyde (13:59.491)
We looked at hundreds of cities, right? And we picked our values, the things that mattered to us. And we ended up here because of a community theater program for our kids and having small town atmosphere, but like a really active, engaged community, driving distance from family. It's just over an hour to go see his parents. We did need, there was a big decision in living in the mountains versus being able to see the mountains. Like that was a big threshold between how we eliminated a lot of cities, which my husband said, I don't want to look at the mountains.

I want to open up my front door and be able to smell them. And so we knew we had to be in the mountains. And you know, we just took all these factors and said, this is what we're looking for in a place you want to raise our kids. And we ended up here and we love it, but we know exactly why we live here. And you can take this exact same idea. I just mentioned it in the friendship spoke. I mentioned it in our home, right? But you take this to

every aspect of your life. And so just start thinking about the way you move through the world and ask yourself, are you driving the car and consciously making decisions? Or do you feel like you're in the passenger seat or maybe even the back seat of your own life? I think of, you know, so many stories where people end up married because they're like, well, we were dating and there wasn't a real clear reason why to break up. So we just stayed together.

And then after so long of being together at some point, like we figured somebody should propose. And so then we just get married and, and, and, and then you wake up at some point and you're realizing why I'm married to this person. This isn't what I wanted in a relationship versus going into dating and being in relationship and knowing exactly what you're looking for and finding that and saying, this is why this person is the right fit for me and making it hell yes. Right. Over and over and over again, we can take this. So.

Why do we slip into default? How does the default even happen? First of all, I think it's just normal because we live in a society, right? Like we're born in a place with belief systems and societal expectations and cultures that we didn't get to choose for ourselves, right? As adolescents and children, people decide those things to us and they teach us ideas.

Sophia Hyde (16:23.33)
whether that's families and religions or teachers and they plant these ideas in our heads and they give us this blueprint. And so we just keep putting one foot in front of the other. But at some point, you have to decide to wake up and question everything, everything. Why do I believe this? Why am I doing this? How did I end up here? What is it that I want out of this?

and until you decide to wake up out of that default setting and say, wait, I am an adult now and I get to choose, you're gonna stay in whatever you were born into. Next, why are we in default? Because honestly, living with intention can be exhausting. All right, it takes more energy. And so if you're in a moment of your life that you feel like you're in survival mode, honestly, this isn't the time to switch from default to intention. I'm just gonna be honest with you.

If you are in survival, then the intentional thing you can do is just get through it. I remember 2018, when I went to do my annual vision board and goal setting, I was like, I cannot, not this year. My one goal for this year is to survive. That was all I could handle. And that's because I had taken on a full-time job like nine months in May. So I'd only been in for seven months and found that I was pregnant and then it became a really difficult pregnancy.

but I was so new in the job. still had all these demands and it was a learning curve, drinking water out of a fire hose. And then I still had a small child and I was still hadn't closed the businesses I was running. And it was like, you know what? If I can get to the end of this year and I'm still alive and this baby that I'm carrying is alive and we just made it through this year. Oh yeah, because on top of that, my husband took on five feature films and was like never home. It was great. It was really great. I was just like, survived. That is the goal.

There was nothing intentional about 2018 other than getting through it. And I did, and that's okay. But there are other years then I had more bandwidth and I could say, okay, we can do more than survive right now. We can thrive. What does that look like? What needs to change? I think another reason we stay in default is not really knowing what we want, right? If you don't have any clarity of what you desire, then what are you even chasing?

Sophia Hyde (18:40.364)
And honestly, I wrote a whole book about that, right? My book on Leash Favourite Self. The subtitle is creating a life you desire, right? And awaken the life you desire is actually what it says, it has to start there. You have to define that. And then lastly, I think another really strong reason that people will stay into default is fear. Whether they're fearing change or fearing disappointing people. Like let's use a really great example.

in my spiritual spoke, right? Default, it's really common that we live on a default setting of our spiritual beliefs because for many people, you're born into a belief system that your parents chose or maybe their parents chose, right? And so you were told to believe these things and so you just keep believing them. But at some point in my adulthood, I woke up and I said, I don't think I believe this stuff. I think they believe it. And I think they think it's really, really, really true. But I don't think all of this is...

true for me. I don't want to intentionally choose this for myself. I want to choose something else. But that came with first of all a lot of fear and second I had to be able to handle what it would feel like to disappoint so many people. If you live inside of a religious community like I did, everybody's common denominator of why they're all in that room together. So many of my friendships

so much of my community was built on the one thing we have in common is our belief system. And so when I said, I don't believe this anymore, I lost my community. It heavily impacted familial relationships. I lost friendships because I didn't belong based on the definition somebody else chose anymore. And that was really hard, right? And so I understand why some people might be really afraid to exit the default setting because somebody's gonna feel disappointed. Maybe.

I just think of how many books I've read where their parent wanted them to grow up and become an XYZ, either take over the family company or have this career. Shout out to all my Asian friends who basically were told that they could choose between being a doctor, an engineer or a lawyer and wanted to do anything other than those things, right? It's like so deeply in their culture. Like these are your paths, pick one. But maybe none of those felt right to you. And so the ones who wanted to become entrepreneurs and artists really had to fucking fight for that, right? And maybe you...

Sophia Hyde (21:05.206)
are in some other familial system. I'll never forget, my gosh, so much of this is cultural, but I just think of this friend I had, and I don't know if you know this about me, but I spent a lot of time in Taiwan in my, I went for a month and then another time for a couple of weeks and built friendships over there. I got to talk, their culture, it's just so much like the matriarch of the family decides what you're gonna do. And I made friends with this guy who loved, he was from Taiwan, but he had spent time after uni.

in Australia and then lived there for a while and he was in the financial sector and I think maybe doing some financial advising and loved it. He was so happy. He loved, loved, loved, loved being in finances. But then like his dad got sick and they were like, you need to come take over the family furniture company. And he moved back and he just did it, right? He just did it. That was duty. You run the family furniture company because his grandfather had started it then he was doing it and.

He, it was really open, like he hated doing it. He did not like it. He loved being in the financial sector, but he was like, I'll never do anything else. This is, this is my duty. And again, that's very, very cultural. It's so American of me to be like, what? No way. You got to chase your own individual dreams. Like that's very individualistic of me. Whereas their culture is very we centered, right? It's community. It's like, no, this is our family needs this. And

And he was totally fine with it. I, as the American, was like struggling with this idea of you're doing a job you hate and there's something else you'd love to do. This makes no sense to me. But he wasn't struggling. It was just, I don't know, he just accepted it, right? Because culturally it was different. But anyways, gosh, man, me with these stories that were not in my notes, y'all, this is what happens when you listen to a podcast from Sunday with ADHD. They're just, it's coming, okay? I didn't plan on having his story in my thing, but the point was...

Some of us are living in default because we fear change or we fear disappointing people and it can look so many different ways and take on so many different appearances. So next point is what do we do with all this, right? Why does it matter? And what is the power of intentional living? Guys, it makes your whole fucking life better to live with intention because you're going to just

Sophia Hyde (23:29.038)
Feel better, have more energy, be less resentful of other people. It's easier to know what boundaries is set for yourself. You feel so much more joy. Like living your life with intention means you're living a life that you chose and it feels good. So a couple of questions is to just start thinking about like, can this play into the small moments? I think about little, I've started, was like, what are little bitty ways that I went from whatever some default was that I inherited to an intention?

One of them was I thought about my workout. I used to do workouts because somebody did a workout video or it was the trend or it was popular. And at some point I decided that I wanted to be really intentional. And so my workouts are walking. There's so many benefits to walking and I love it around here because there's hills. And so I also get a really great leg workout with those inclines and gets my heart rate up. I love the walking. I love yoga, the stretching. Oh my God, it feels so good on my body.

and there's a million benefits of yoga, right? So I know why I'm doing those and I love them. Both those things make me happy. And lastly, there's a million benefits to strength training, but I used to like not know where I was just doing certain exercises because somebody somewhere told me to, but now I do them really intentionally because I...

injured my shoulder a few times and I learned that people who slump forward like me because I'm working at a computer or leaning forward to take notes or leaning forward on my phone, it stretched out a bunch of my back muscles. And so I have this very specific workout to make sure that my back and my shoulders stay strong to accommodate a posture to hold my shoulders back better because I'm more prone to injury with the leaning forward, right? So I have like seven exercises I do very specifically for my back and my shoulders. I have very specific exercises given to me by my

pelvic floor therapist to work on strengthening my core, because it turns out that pretty much all of pelvic floor now is about having a strong core. And you're also much less prone to injury for that. And I have just different leg and arm workouts that I do. But all of them that I do, it was really important to me when I worked with these two professionals to help me find the right workouts.

Sophia Hyde (25:43.883)
I refuse to do workouts that I hate. Like it's a thing. I want to enjoy them. So I, like when she was teaching me different exercises that could work my abs in certain way or this muscle group or that muscle group or whatever, I was like, I hate this. This feels like torture. don't like, I don't like the way this feels. I don't do them. She, there's like, there's so many ways to work different muscle groups. And she worked with me a few times until I was like, this is sustainable. I could totally commit to doing this a couple of times a week.

This feels good. I like this. It feels really good on my body. I can enjoy doing this right and so now even something as simple as my workout is an intentional choice and My recommendation to you guys if you're like, how do I do this? Where do I start? Just download my wheel the the favorite life wheel if you don't already have it through the journal the book or the journal you can download it from my app or

I'll put the link in the show notes to just go straight to my website with all my resources. You can download the free resources there. And you can download the inside the free resources of my app, which can also be accessed from a web browser on the computer. There it says free resources. And then you could just do the wheel assessment and you can assess where you're at in all 10 areas, define your favorite life in each of those.

So like, what does your 10 look like? Rate where you are and see what you wanna change. And you can just change with tiny little bitty habits. Like what is your morning routine? Or even why are you wearing the clothes that you're wearing? Are you wearing the clothes you're wearing? Because somebody somewhere said they were stylish. That was another big aha. I was like, no, I don't like these clothes. And at some point I decided to be really intentional. All my clothes.

have to first of all, bring me joy. They have to feel like Sophia. When I put them on my body, I have to feel like myself. And if I don't feel like myself, I am not buying them. I don't care how cool and trendy they are. I have to feel like me. Second, I decided what is my style? I like classic timeless looking clothes. So you know what? I wear a lot of jeans and white t-shirts or black t-shirts or blouses, right? But I love them. They feel like me and my clothes have to be comfortable. I am not going to torture myself in uncomfortable clothes. And then it also helps when I did the

Sophia Hyde (28:01.186)
The seasons, whole, color wheel thing, I am a classic winter and I, or clear winter, there's different names for it. But anyways, it showed me the colors that look best on me with clothing and lipstick and it makes a huge difference. And so I know every single piece of clothes in my closet, I can tell you exactly why I own it. And it's not there by default. It is all very intentionally chosen. And sometimes it doesn't fit.

any of those things I just told you. And the only reason I own it is because it made me feel happy. That's it. I have a few pieces where they're not my colors. They're not really my style. They're not classic. I just look at them and they make me smile. And it's the only reason I own them. And that's why. And it is enough. Really, it comes down to this. Do your actions that you're taking, do they line up with the vision you have for your life? Are they going to get you closer to your favorite self?

All right, now let's close this out with a couple more, a couple things. And one is how do you get out of default mode? Default mode. My recommendation is to just hit the pause button. If you're going through the motions of life, if you feel like you're in that default setting, you've gotta hit the pause button. I do think that downloading the favorite life wheel is gonna help you. Also in the free resources, I teach you your favorite week and your Monday me meeting.

And these things, they're game changers, man. They're the biggest difference between living with intention versus just going through default. It doesn't have to be this radical overhaul. It's just really small choices. What time am I waking up? What do I do when I wake up? What kind of food do I put in my body? I mean, what time do I go to bed? Those little tiny things, are you doing them with intention because they are the difference maker.

A few journal prompts I'd to give you guys, just things to think about or write down and reflect on. Of course, if you download the wheel, then that's a, I mean, that is enough, because it's gonna ask you to look at all 10 areas and rate that. So it's definitely the most powerful one. But if you're not gonna do that, or you're just driving down the road and you want somebody to think about right now, I'm gonna go back to the question I told you guys from the beginning that Dr. April brought up earlier this week, which was, if I died today, what would I be disappointed never happened? And build a life around your answers.

Sophia Hyde (30:23.944)
I would encourage you to think about what areas of my life are on autopilot. Like where am I living by default? And lastly, I always recommend that you change your life one goal at a time, one habit at a time, not take on the whole world, just one little thing at a time. So what is one new habit that would help you? Something as simple as sometimes it's as simple as guys, like the time you're going to bed or the time you're waking up, or maybe if you resonated with the friendship chapter, it's

I'm gonna text one friend a day or make one weekly plan. Just think about it. Like what is one thing in one area of your life you can create a new habit around?

And I last note, I would love to hear from you guys. So if you start making some of these changes, reach out to me, whether it is a DM on Instagram or shooting me an email. I'd love to hear from you as you move your life from default to intention. Tell me what's changing for you. Also remember all this shit is an experiment. You're not going to it right the first time. It is all about just.

practicing and playing with it and then until you find the thing that feels good to you. And again, I already said this, but I do want to reiterate it. This topic is so helped by the favorite life wheel exercise. It's what the whole book is about, the journal is about. You can get it for free in my app, but really sit down and do that. Spend probably 15, 20 minutes. You can knock that exercise out and it can seriously change everything.

And that's all I have for you guys today. That's it. May we shift our lives from default living to intention, sending you love. Bye-bye.