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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Bite-Size Brilliance podcast. I'm your host, Dr. April Darley, and I'm gonna stir the pot today. I have a very controversial episode about the soft life. I think I'm gonna title this episode, "Do you really want a soft life or is that just your burnout talking". Ouch. So I have a slightly different opinion on the soft life and the feminine energy movement right now.
And this is gonna take a lot of people by surprise, because I do identify as a woman, she/her, and I think other people think that when you're a woman, you're supposed to be more in your feminine energy and they look at you in some kind of way if you're not. Like, maybe you have more a [00:01:00] masculine energy or you do more traditionally masculine things and people think it means something about you. And years ago they'll say it's hustle culture and it's bro culture, or it's this masculine energy way of doing things.
This churn, and a lot of people got burnout. And now I feel like the pendulum has swung way the other way, and people are like, you should want the soft life flowy fabrics and only working five hours a week, or marrying rich and letting some guy do it for you. There's so much danger about all of that, in my opinion.
So I believe that people create their own narratives about what masculine and feminine energy's like, what hustle culture versus soft life is like. And [00:02:00] because we're in this echo chamber of the algorithms in social media, it's really easy for our subconscious to be tricked and for us to be influenced about maybe I'm not doing the right thing, maybe I'm not good enough.
Maybe my ambition is too masculine. And I think that's crap because it makes you doubt yourself. And this is my opinion, and this is gonna be a little bit woo woo 'cause there's gonna be some astrology in here. But if you look at your birth chart, astrologers consider that kind of like a, blueprint for what you came here to do to achieve.
You have free will of course, but there's some themes that you're gonna see pop up in your life and there are some people out there that have more masculine energy in their chart and that's if you have a lot of air and fire signs in your planets, in those, in your chart, especially if you're big three, sun, moon rising.
If they've [00:03:00] got fire or air in them, you may be more masculine in your presentation or your wiring versus someone who has a lot of earth or water, which are very feminine elements. So, when I see someone who has a lot of masculine energy in their chart, and this is not about gender, it's just the vibe of this energy.
And if they were to try to listen to this stuff that says, be in the soft life, be in the flow, be in the feminine. And if you're not in this receiving energy, that's why you're not getting what you want. And it can trick you to thinking you need to mold yourself to be that way. But if you've got this masculine hustle drive energy in your chart or your personality, and you were to try to mold yourself to this soft life, you're actually taking yourself farther away from your blueprint, [00:04:00] and you're also not gonna get what you want.
Now, I agree that we all need softness. And we need soft spaces and we need the time to decompress and allow ourselves to appreciate safety and connection and security fellowship, friendship. And it doesn't have be go, go, go all the time because that is how you burn out. And that is how hustle culture has been portrayed is , go all the time, burnout.
And if you were someone with a lot of feminine energy and you did try to hustle in that masculine way, you would burn out because that's not your natural wiring. And the most important thing you can do for yourself is to figure out who you are. What is your identity and what do you want? Not from a place of the [00:05:00] algorithm or society telling you you should want, but what do you want for you and why do you want it?
Do you want it because it's the best fit for you? Do you want it because it matches your values, your internal self, or do you want it because you're tired? Do you want it because you feel like if you just molded yourself to this thing, then you'd get what you want. Think about that. And I also feel, I'm gonna double down on the unpopular opinion here about the soft life, but humans have this, I call it the Happily Ever After Syndrome.
To where we get burnout or we get tired and we start to fantasize that if we just had the thing like Prince Charming, if we just had Prince Charming, everything would be great happily ever after. Because if you look at the Disney movies, that's where they [00:06:00] end and not trying to call out Disney. So please,
disney Gods don't sue me. But all of those fairytale movies, that's where they end. At getting the thing and then roll credits. Your brain will see that as being normalized, as getting the thing means happiness. And because getting the thing gives us a dopamine reward hit and it makes us feel pleasure and your brain will completely ignore what might come after the credits roll. Because nobody checked in with Cinderella five years, 10 years later when Prince Charming might be leaving his dirty socks and underwear on the floor, or he's not listening to her, he is tuning her out. Nobody checked in Real Housewives of Disney, you know, because they might be complaining about all these princes.[00:07:00]
And it, you may find that there's some trouble in fairytale land because real life, you don't stop at just the dopamine hit. You keep going. And when you think a soft life, it sounds amazing. If you're burnout, I mean, it sounds great to just sit on a beach and sip margaritas for the rest of your life, but what tends to happen is you get bored.
Because the brain is wired for novelty and eventually you're gonna start to feel itchy in your skin and you're gonna wanna do something. But then there's this other part that says, I don't wanna do something. I was burned out and if I start doing things again, then I might get that. And it creates this crazy inner conflict in your brain.
And then you end up being stuck, but unhappy. The soft life, you have to determine would you [00:08:00] actually be happy with that? And some people, the answer will be yes, that is a great match for you. But for other people, you may find that it's too soft, that there's not enough drive or purpose or ambition in it, and it's okay to have a soft space while you heal from burnout and you learn better tools to switch between your sympathetic and your parasympathetic nervous system, when you learn your own values, what really matters to you, what your limits are, throwing off all of this conditioning, then you can allow yourself to pursue your ambitions and to have the soft space.
But not fall for the trap that everyone needs a soft life. So I know this may be weird for some people, and please comment if you think I am dead wrong. Like [00:09:00] leave me some comments. I wanna know what your perspective is ? Are you team more masculine energy because you're naturally wired that way? Or are you team feminine energy, soft life because you're wired that way?
Or let me know if you've had these same thoughts. And you've tried to be the soft, but you haven't gotten that thing you are looking for, or you've tried to be too hard and burn out, where are you? And if you don't know, if you have let the algorithms, the echo chamber of social media get in your head and you just feel really lost at this moment, then I'm going to propose something to you.
I offer a free consultation to talk to you about what's called my Bespoke Brain System. And this system takes you through these different levels of your own brain, your own pathways that are very unique to you, to help you determine [00:10:00] your own values, your identity system where you have been conditioned to think, act, behave in a particular way that's not true to your blueprint, and then design a life that does match you without burning out or sacrificing what you want. If you'd like to learn more about the Bespoke Brain System and how it can help you navigate the soft spaces, the soft life, the ambition, the hustle, and to find the blend that is unique to you, call me.
Book a consultation at aprildarley.com and we'll get into it. And I wanna know what you think, what you have to say. So leave me a, like a comment, share this with somebody you know who needs to hear an unpopular opinion about the soft life. I am here for it. If you feel so called, please leave me review. I would love to [00:11:00] read your thoughts, and I'm so thankful and appreciative of you, my listeners, and all those watching on YouTube. So until next week, find your balance, my friends, hard or soft. There's no right or wrong. It's only what's best for you. Bye.
