Being a Contribution

You know what fuels patriarchy and capitalism? The “what’s in it for me” mindset. You know what nourishes our souls and creates a sense of community, connection, and care (especially during difficult times)? Shifting into the mindset of being a contribution.

Whether we call it being of service, sharing our gifts, or leaving things better than we found them – adopting a mentality of giving what we have to offer on a daily basis boosts our sense of happiness and well being. Changing the world (with a lowercase w) happens through simple acts of kindness and care between two people.

So, if you need a little dose of hope and encouragement that you can make a difference today, this episode is for you.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple

Listen on YouTube

Find the episode wherever you listen to podcasts!

Resources, References, and Links

Note: book recommendations include affiliate links. If you buy a copy, I’ll get a tiny commission, and that would be super cool.

Episode #35: Cultivating Joy Amidst the Shit Show

The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. 

The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Episode #29: Intuition & The Reclamation of Feminine Wisdom with Andrea Leda.

Transcript

Note: this transcript was generated by AI. Please forgive any malapropisms and misspellings. It’s the robot’s fault!

Cate Blouke (00:00.046)

this is a central tenet of positive psychology, of the study of human thriving, which I’m trained in and which I’m a huge proponent of, is really thinking about other people. It’s small acts of kindness. It’s getting out of ourselves and into the ecosystem of humanity that we participate in on a daily basis and recognizing that we are worthy and capable of contributing to that.

Cate Blouke (00:35.459)

Welcome to Settling is Bullshit, a sweary podcast about claiming your joy. If you are craving healthier boundaries, a greater sense of purpose, or an increased capacity to feel at ease in your own skin, then you are in the right place, my friend. I’m your host, Cate Blouke, joy activist and life coach to smart and sensitive humans. I’m here to offer you practical tools and playful encouragement to step forward and be your most awesome self. My hope is that each episode will leave you feeling a bit more empowered

Make brave choices and claim your joy!

Cate Blouke (01:11.277)

Hello, my dear. Today’s episode is about a topic that is really sort of central to my way of being in the world and that I’ve been thinking about for quite a long time. And then I think is also pretty relevant in these dark and foreboding times because I think many of us have been really stuck or overwhelmed by the sense of hopelessness, the sense of fear and anxiety and like what the actual fuck is going on.

that is swirling around in these crazy fucking times of 2026 and 2025 and everything that led us to where we are today and what is probably going to continue for some time to come. And while this is very much a podcast that is all about claiming your joy, and I recommend the episode about…

cultivating joy amidst the shit show and I am planning to record an episode about how joy is resistance. This episode is about really centering ourselves in the reality that despite all of the fucking chaos and shit show that is going on, we have something to offer. That each and every one of us has beautiful magical gifts that make us who we are and that those are offerings that we can make.

to the world around us. That when we feel like there’s nothing I can do, everything is shit, I can’t make a difference, that’s a mindset that we could choose to change. And one of the ways into shifting that perspective, shifting that mindset, shifting that place of like just being stuck and depressed is in recognizing that we are capable of being a contribution.

of making a difference in the day-to-day lives of ourselves and those around us. Now, the actual phrasing of being a contribution is something that I got from one of my very favorite books. You’re going to get a lot of book wrecks in this episode, just fair warning. I’ve referenced this book before, but it’s called The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander, their couple. And it’s just a really beautiful book for

Cate Blouke (03:34.347)

recognizing the ways in which our mindset and our perspective creates our reality and that if we want to be moving through the world with a sense of possibility, with a sense of hope and generativity, that that’s available and accessible to us. And they offer a series of very specific practices that we can do to help cultivate that sense of possibility in the world. And one of the chapters is about being a contribution. And it has stuck with me ever since the first time I read the book.

This is a concept that also shows up in a variety of different places, in a variety of different ways. In kind of the camping sphere and the national park sphere, there’s this idea of leaving it better than we found it. In positive psychology, there’s a core concept that other people matter. In the Book of Joy by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, which is another one of my favorite books that I tend to revisit.

They talk a lot about how moving through the world in a joyful and hopeful and impactful way involves shifting our focus away from ourselves and on to others and on to what we have to offer others. And I love this idea of focusing on what each of us has to offer because the reality is that every single one of us has specific gifts.

has talents, has skills, has things that we are good at. I am good at reading a lot of books and giving you endless book recommendations and synthesizing that information and bringing it together and representing it in ways that are digestible and accessible and hopefully entertaining. And that is one of the gifts that I am recommitting to sharing with the world as I sort of get myself back into the momentum of this podcast.

but it’s so easy to get really stuck in the comparison game, to get stuck in the not good enough story, to get stuck in the like, nobody cares story. And that’s a really common experience. And it’s something that happens to me or happened to me. No, we’re gonna go with like happens. This is always an ongoing process. And even just thinking about this podcast. So.

Cate Blouke (05:53.689)

Hooray, excitement, my gosh. Actually, I think fucking today, the day that I am recording this is the two year anniversary of when I launched this podcast, which blows my mind, right? But when I first launched it and for a very long time after I launched it, I could not check the analytics. I could not check the how many people are listening, where are people listening from. I couldn’t check any of that because every time I looked at it, it was depressing. Like it was.

I couldn’t get myself out of the like, not enough, this doesn’t matter, like that part of me that wants to keep me safe kept coming forward and saying, look, look, this doesn’t matter, it’s not making a difference in the world, nobody gives a shit, even though like y’all are listening, you know, but it can be so easy to compare ourselves to others, right? Comparison is the thief of joy and I can know that and that doesn’t mean I can just think myself out of that box, but.

Something that has been really cool lately, as I took an inadvertent big break from the podcast, as I got some coaching about whether I wanted to come back to this, I realized that doing this, this way in which I can show up in the world and share what I have to offer to my small corner of the world, to whoever happens to want to listen, doing that is really nourishing to my soul. And it doesn’t.

actually matter how many people listen. I know that at least a few people do listen and like that’s what matters is that I am making an offering to you my love, thank you for being here and I’m being a contribution in your day. And you’re being a contribution in mine by listening even if I don’t know that that’s what’s happening. That there’s sort of like if we’re gonna go into the woo-woo land like there’s energetic magic that is happening between you and I in this exchange.

And when I can see that as enough, when I can just be in this space of saying, oh my God, I have something to offer that I think will be useful to someone and I can put it out there in the world. I get to nourish that little part of me that wants to be useful in the world, that wants to feel like I am making a difference, that I am contributing something. And I don’t have to like.

Cate Blouke (08:16.099)

be attached to what that looks like. And there are so many ways that, you know, giving ourselves the gift of knowing that we’re making a difference in the world. And again, like making a difference in the world, that phrasing can feel really big and overwhelming. And I’m not talking about changing the world with like capital letters. I’m talking about like, how am I contributing to my community?

How am I contributing to the people I see on any given day? How am I contributing to the people that I’m connected to? Right? When I’m feeling really stuck in my shit, a great tool that I often forget to pick up is reaching out to somebody else and saying, hey, I’m thinking about you. And that’s like making a contribution, being a contribution to that person’s day. And I’ve been playing with this in the last week in particular.

I did a values exercise in therapy and recognized that this is one of my core values. And if I start actively thinking about, how was I a contribution today? How can I be a contribution today? That can be things that are as small as like smiling at a stranger, saying good morning when I’m on my walk, putting away the stupid fucking shopping cart that other people didn’t put away. Like, I have a choice in that moment every time to be like,

annoyed with the fucking people who didn’t put their shopping cart away or nourish my own sense of community and care and kindness by putting it away and like making the parking lot a little bit better, know, freeing up that parking spot for the next person. And to quote from the book, the way they explain it, which I love, they write, unlike success and failure, contribution has no other side.

It is not arrived at by comparison. All at once, I found that the fearful question, is it enough? And even more fearful question, am I loved for who I am or for what I’ve accomplished? Could both be replaced by the joyful question, how will I be a contribution today? And it really is a more joyful practice. Again, this is a central tenet of

Cate Blouke (10:40.889)

positive psychology of the study of human thriving, which I’m trained in and which I’m a huge proponent of, is really thinking about other people. It’s small acts of kindness. It’s getting out of ourselves and into the ecosystem of humanity that we participate in on a daily basis and recognizing that we are worthy and capable of contributing to that.

And if you are in a place right now where you don’t feel like you have anything to fucking contribute, then my God, sweetheart, please, please, please start looking for a counselor. Talk to your therapist about it. If you don’t have one, ask a friend to help you get to a place where you can get the support you need because I promise you have things to offer. And I don’t think it’s, you know, a coincidence that 12-Step Recovery Programs

every world religion that I am aware of will really center this idea of being of service. It is a scientifically and colloquially and lived experientially proven thing that when we are centering ourselves on like, how can I make the world better today? How can I make other people’s lives better today? What can I do to get out of myself?

And again, like participate in the ecosystem of humanity. I think I just invented that phrase and I really fucking like it. So I’m just going to keep saying it is how can I participate in the ecosystem of humanity today in a way that feels joyful, that feels good? I, in this case, don’t have a source to cite for you, I’m sorry, but I’ve heard people talking about this idea of being a prosumer as opposed to a consumer. And I…

love that and think it’s really relevant to the topic here is, you know, we can go through the world consuming, we can buy shit and not think about it, but this idea of being a prosumer is being mindful about our purchases, being mindful about the way in which our money is part of

Cate Blouke (12:59.747)

the local economy, being mindful of the ways in which our financial contributions are circulating within the sort of system as a whole. And like, do we want to be giving Jeff Bezos our money? To be clear, I shop on Amazon and I don’t shame myself about that, but I also try not to always shop on Amazon. And I think a huge part of that is letting go of the what’s in it for me mentality.

And shifting into this mindset of like, how can I be a contribution? How can I participate in my local economy more by shopping at local stores when possible, when reasonable? How can I participate in the local economy by going to the local coffee shop instead of Starbucks? And that’s a value choice for me. And I’ve also been thinking a lot in the last couple of years. I mean, this is

a topic that came up in my episode with Andrea Leida, which I’ll link to, which is all about feminine intuition and helping to fight patriarchy with our dollars, you know? And am I buying products from women? And by products, I mostly mean, am I buying the book by the person I respect? When I’m thinking about Instagram creators that I like, if they write a book,

I will buy it because I want to support them in continuing to create content that I consume. I don’t always want to subscribe, you know, but there are ways in which I can use my dollars to contribute to the ecosystem that I want to cultivate. We’re in this era of like free content and free apps and all of these ways in which we have come to expect things to be free. mean, this podcast is fucking free.

even though it costs me a substantial amount of money every year to produce it. And that’s something that I’ve been sitting with actually in recent months as I’ve been thinking about if I want to continue to do this. But when I shifted my mindset to this idea of being a contribution of this is a practice that is nourishing to me, that I know some people get some things out of and it feels like I’m contributing something positive to the world, then I’m…

Cate Blouke (15:17.665)

shifting my mindset away from that ROI capitalist productivity mindset and into a more joyful way of thinking. Do I enjoy doing this? Yes, I do. Do I think it matters on a good day? Yes, I do. And is it a worthwhile endeavor that I’m willing to spend my own money on to contribute to the betterment of humanity?

Even though that feels like a very lofty goal, I do know, because y’all have told me here and there in little tidbits, that this matters. And when I zoom out to that bigger scale, then it is worthwhile. And it’s a really nourishing and valuable shift for me to move out of the what’s in it for me mindset, which I feel like is a very capitalist, patriarchal mindset, is the what’s in it for me.

and into the, what can I reasonably offer? I fucking feel better. I enjoy life more. I feel more energized and excited about like how I am moving through my day. And to be clear, this is also a podcast for recovering people pleasers. So we also do need to be mindful about overgiving. There’s always a balance between that place of am I pouring from a full cup?

or am I pouring from an empty cup? I could not keep up with this podcast in the fall because all of my spoons, all of my cup was taken up with taking too many classes. But now as I’m rounding the corner on my prerequisites and heading into a more expansive summer and then a fall where I’m gonna be starting grad school.

I haven’t made an official announcement, but here we go, Easter egg, if you’re listening. Like got into the graduate program I wanted to get into, and I’m going to be starting an art therapy program in the fall. And I have the space, I have the spoons. I feel nourished enough to be showing up to the microphone and to be offering this to you and to offer this pep talk and this perspective shift to you on whatever day that you’re listening to this, that if you’ve been feeling in a funk, or even if you haven’t, like if you’re feeling pretty good, like,

Cate Blouke (17:36.513)

You know what will feel even better is thinking about how you can be a contribution today. Like it’s a fun game. I challenge you, I hereby challenge you my friend, to come up with three ways that you could be a contribution to the world today. Be a contribution to the people in your life today. To leave today better than you found it.

I do really like that concept of am I leaving it better than I found it. Like even when I’m walking into shitty meetings, shitty situations, when things are fucking hard, if I can invite myself into the opportunity to leave it better than I found it, maybe I can’t fix it. Maybe I can’t like make everything perfect, but can I minimum not make it worse? And you know, bonus brownie points like.

Can I leave this better than I found it? So that’s your invitation for today, is to think about whatever situation is happening in your life, whatever roles that you are in, like them or not, how can you be a contribution in those circumstances? What unique, beautiful things do you have to offer that will leave this situation, this person, this day, better than you found it?

Cate Blouke (19:04.227)

Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please help me grow the podcast by subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with anyone you think would benefit from hearing it too. Your support means the world to me. If you’d like to get updates about new episodes, posts, and offerings, please visit settlingisbullshit.com to subscribe to my newsletter. You can also find information there about working with me one-on-one to build your most amazing life. Until next time, remember that I believe in you, and that you are fucking awesome!