Creating a sustainable life by Owning the Ordinary

Tiffany Sauder: Okay. Here we go. I talked about this in the last solo episode where I wanted to review some of the findings from the program survey that I sent out. So if this is your first episode, 30 seconds of background.

I've been talking about this life of and which is a great concept, right? How do you get to the place where you can say yes and in your life like all the things, all the roles? As I started to think further about that and have more conversations. I realized I really have a responsibility To not only inspire you to live a life of and, but also to help you do that in a way that is sustainable.

I'm passionate about this word sustainable, meaning every week of my life, I can commit to the things that are most important to me, that is not these seasons of glut and famine, where it's not like work my face off till my eyes bleed.

And then I have to. Take a sabbatical as an extreme example, like I, I want my life to be sustainable. I want my relationships to be sustainable. I want over a long period of time to invest well in the things I want. To be successful people, experiences, rest, achievement. I just think that the Holy Grail is to get to a place where life is sustainable.

And so I've been really challenging myself to kind of curate from my own journey. So my husband, I've been married 18 years, I've run the agency for 18 years and we've had two career homes the entire time that we've been married and our oldest is almost 15. So let's, you know, Tiffany math always round up, um, for 20 years I've lived in a two career family and for almost 15 of those I've been raising kids in a two career home and we are in this amazing moment of opportunity.

For everyone. I am a woman. And so that's the place where I specifically see like the doors are flying open for me. the doors are like opportunity and what I can do and where my career can go. And just the opportunities. Are incredible. The boards I can be on. There's a real moment where there's opportunity for me.

And I think that's really special and really cool. But there's also this secret consequence that comes with saying yes to this career thing. And trying to figure out if both of you are high achievers, if both of you are running after your lives, your professional lives, how do you make sure that you're also proud of the home that you're keeping, the relationship that you have with your spouse, the time you're able to invest in your own growth and rest and exercise.

Like, how do we do that well too? And so I've been working on this course called on the ordinary. And the goal is just that to say, I observe in my life.

The more I'm able to contain the ordinary things in my life into the smallest possible container, meaning like it takes me the least amount of time to do with the least amount of friction, the least amount of decision making lift because decision fatigue is a real thing. And the minimum amount of relationship expense, like that we're not fighting to try to get stuff done in the house.

Like, that's what we want. The most ordinary things. Laundry, keeping the house up, kids schedules, food, like all, those are like ordinary stuff and it starts to own us and it starts to take such a foothold in our relationships because we get so pissed off. That the dishwasher wasn't unloaded. We get so pissed off that your workout clothes were on the floor again.

We get so pissed off that you didn't use the right cleaner to wipe down the like countertops, whatever your thing is like, is that really. What we want to have taking away so much from our relationships, like our relationship with our spouse and our relationship with our kids. Is that, is that what we want?

And I don't think it is. And so I'm working on an online course called own the ordinary that is just that giving you a toolbox of things to be able to streamline these core areas of our life into the smallest possible, most efficient. Easiest lift container of our life so that we have time for all of the ands so we have time for the extraordinary like own the ordinary so you have time for the extraordinary.

So that took more than 30 seconds. I apologize so what I did is I put out a survey and if you still would like to participate we'll Put the link and show notes today again. Um, and almost a hundred people responded, which blew my mind away. I thought 30, maybe, I don't know. I didn't know what I was expecting, but a lot more responded than I was expecting.

And my observation is that 100 percent of the people that responded are also in leadership positions at work. It's manager, director, SVP, market lead, assistant director, founder, entrepreneur, CEO. Chief admin officer, HR business partner, a co founder. They're all also leading people at work.

And I think there's this multiplying effect when you're leading your household. Like you're really the COO of the household. You're leading that there's. All of these administrative tasks that have to take place. There's all these decisions that need to take place. There's all these schedules that have to come together.

There's all this like negotiating that has to take place in our homes. And that's like the exact same motion when you're at work and you're in a position of leadership, responding to other people's needs, getting things organized, creating clarity. You know. and I think it becomes just this heavy load because you feel like Where am I a customer of my life?

how is it that we're working this hard at our careers? How is it that we're working this hard to make more money? How is it that we're working this hard to step into the grandeur of opportunity and I hate it so much Why am I so tired? Why am I so sad? Why do I want to cry because my marriage isn't where I want it to be I know about that because I was there and we are not anymore and it's because we put some really specific things in place.

so this course is going to articulate what we did there. But if you're feeling that way, I want you to know two things. One, you are not alone in that. I just feel like this is the silent. struggle right now inside of homes. And I hear about it over coffee. I hear about it over lunches. And it sounds like things like, I know right now we're really pushing hard, but we think once we get through this season, it's going to be okay.

No, we have to solve for right now. So I want you to hear, first of all, you're not alone. And the second is I want you to know, it doesn't have to be this way, but it takes a choice to say, I'm not going to allow this to be the thing.  I'm not allow this to be my life. Like I don't, I don't want it to be like this.

I don't want this to be the story of what it looked like for 20 years while I was raising kids. I want it to be filled with, yeah, it's going to be busy. And yes, it's not going to be perfect. That's not the expectation, I wanted there to be this proactive control of my life and not this reactive state that I felt like I was in.

So I thought I'd go through a high level, some of the Overall trends that came through and I don't know, it's like quantitative, but not, I mean, it's quantitative because we can do percentages. But, I think just the anecdotes that came through were also just so clear some of these themes. So I want to walk through a few of those react, to.

A few of them as well, okay. So some data, So almost 40 percent of you said there's some kind of relationship stress and that sounds like we don't have time to connect with each other. We have resentment to 1 another. we don't prioritize 1 another.

We don't have time to relax and experience each other. Like. Okay. That's what that sounds like. Does that sound familiar to you? Like you're married to this person and you feel like you don't know them anymore. And you feel like loving them as maybe more of a habit. And that's not the way it's supposed to be.

Like, I have to sometimes say when my 23 year old self was laying in bed at night and dreamed of what it was going to feel like to be a mom, to have a family and to be married and to be middle aged. Was this what I dreamed of that? Like, is my marriage what I dreamed of? Because I think we dream of those things for a reason.

you know, is it lacking adventure? Is it lacking spontaneity? Is it lacking an understanding of who are you today, now, in this environment? That was one. 40 percent said don't have enough time for my spouse. We don't have enough time together.

about 20 percent mentioned the word overwhelmed, which was my magic word when I was buried underneath the task of life, just feeling overwhelmed, which to me is a trigger that I'm in a reactive posture that I don't have control.

And that's why I feel like, Oh my word, my day is just taking off. The things I want to get done or need to get done are not intentionally inside of that space. And so I'm just overwhelmed. And now I know that. Samantha and I kind of going on, a research, like investigation on like, what does it actually mean to be overwhelmed and, and what's behind that emotion?

So hopefully we'll kind of get more academically informed, but right now it's very much just experientially informed to me when I say I'm overwhelmed. I now can say to myself, Tiffany, you say you're overwhelmed when you're in a reactive state. What is not happening in your days or in your week? That's pissing you off.

And how do you put that in there so that you feel like you are back to a proactive management of your goals and your life. So for me, that's a hack and a trick and a signal. this week actually is a great microcosm of that. We're going into fall. My husband travels about 50 percent of the time in September, October, November.

It's just a big travel season for him. And so I have to solve differently. And I've probably said this already, but my. Kids have to be at practice in the morning before school and they have to be at practice after school and we have games two times a week that are sometimes at home and sometimes away.

So when am I gonna find time for myself because I know I am full psychopath when I do not have that time. So when my kids were little, I would get up really early or when they, you know, when like, or sometimes I would actually never really did it effectively after work, it was always in the morning, early, early morning has always been my time.

And now I don't have that anymore because my kids get on the bus early and or they have to be at school. So this week, I was starting to feel this. Twins when I can't find time to work out I get really grumpy and then I feel like oh my word like literally I'm just running people everywhere and I start to be so grumpy at the people I love for no fault of their own except I just don't know how to solve for how to find time for me and I'm looking for like 45 minutes Not like two hours.

And so what I did this week, because my husband is traveling and I know this is going to be a new motion, my daughter has to be at the pool at school at 545 in the morning. My first daughter to get up that needs to get on the bus has to get up at 645. And so I said, you know what, I have an hour. And like eight minutes of drive time.

So I dropped my daughter off at the high school 545. I parked my car and it's dark out still. And so I don't like to run in the country where we live, but in town there's street lights. So I did my four mile run. in town with street lights. Yes, it was dark out, but I felt very safe and comfortable. I had my phone on me.

There was, you know, there were light street lights and I did my run and then I got home by six, like 43 felt so like a Ninja. And then I got my daughter up, got her on the bus, showered like I normally would. And so that was a way of like, if I'm going to obsess over this goal. Of making sure that I can maintain my minimums of exercise, which keeps me sane and keeps me present and makes me good at everything else that I do.

And I'm able to fight for that time. You will get incredibly creative in the way that you solve for that. And that little story for me as a way to say, you know what? I'm not overwhelmed. But I would be if I got up, I took my daughter, I came home, I had like 32 minutes and I didn't really know what to do with.

Then I unloaded the dishwasher and then I got up my daughter and then everybody got out the door and then I had a shower and then I was just like at work and I was like, holy crap, all I did was administer things this morning. I didn't take any time to just let my brain rest, let my body rest, have a minute for myself.

So for me, getting proactive is an antidote to overwhelm. So ask yourself, is that true for you? struggling with 25 percent said that's an issue. let me tell you a hack that I use and because I have got to have food like I joke, it's like from food to fork in less than 30 minutes,

Whatever is coming out of the fridge or whatever produce needs to be cut, whatever that is, like from the very first moment, I touch a morsel of whatever is going to be dinner to it being on our fork has to be 30 minutes or less, or it does not work, does not work. So when I talk about eating at home, I have really figured out how to do this in a way that does not.

Take us an hour to get food on. So I do a couple of things. I'll just share real quickly on food. one is one protein, three meals. So I will make like a huge thing of salmon and I will use that three ways. We'll do like salmon, sweet potatoes and vegetables. Then I'll make like salmon rice bowls and then I'll make salmon tacos.

So are my kids like, Oh my word, I've had salmon so many times. They're really not, I don't know. Maybe your kids are pickier and my kids are just used to it. but if somebody needs like a packet of lentils to Heat in the microwave because they don't want what we're having. That's fine. I'm not mad about it, but that's a way that like making the protein just one time and using it three times has been really helpful.

The other thing that I do is I dice or like cut up a million vegetables on the weekend so that we can use those a bunch of different ways. I don't love to use the salad packets, A, cause they're like so expensive, B, they don't feed our whole family, and C, I've heard they have a bunch of chemicals on them.

I don't know if that's true. but I just don't love to use them. So what I cut up is, cabbage, like purple cabbage, stays good for like years. It stays good for so long. I'll shred a bunch of cabbage, a bunch of peppers, cucumbers, cilantro, pea pods, And I'll use a mandolin and just like shave a bunch of it and I will have, I don't know, probably like 8 to 10 cups of vegetables that are cut up that then we'll use all throughout the week.

So you can pull it together and make it a salad and put some grilled, You can throw it into a wrap and put some deli meat in there or something like that. You can use a wrap. You can use it as a bowl, put like a warm grain at the bottom of it. Rice or quinoa or couscous or something like that.

But that way I don't have to like get a pepper out, cut it, get a knife and a cutting board dirty. Like I just. Smash that out on the weekend. It does not take me very long at all. And that just in a great big Tupperware like tub is such an easy thing to just pull out of the fridge and the kids like eat it and use it a lot too.

So those are just some hacks on the food. Just like I guess little freebie thoughts here. but I really want to help families also manage this meal thing. Well, because fueling our bodies is such an important part of our performance. And even more as adults, I mean, our kids are at practice all the time.

They're learning in school for six, seven hours a day. And there's a lot on us. And so feeding our bodies well is an important part of feeding our goals. We cannot see those things as not related because they are. okay. 25 percent of you say time for self is an issue. I wouldn't want to investigate this too, because I think that's true.

I think one in four don't have the time they need for themselves. I actually think there is at least one in four, maybe two and four that have even given up on the possibility of having time for themselves. Is that you where you're like, you know what? I don't actually even think it's possible. And so I'm not going to dare dream it.

I'm just not, I'm not going to even wish for it anymore because not getting it makes me so sad. It makes me so grumpy. This is important. You are not the only human being on the planet who doesn't need time to renew and figuring out how you do that best is really, really, really part of getting life to a place where it's sustainable.

For me, it's moving my body. I prefer to do it not in front of a screen. I wish I loved the Peloton more because it's like such a thing. We have one. I use it when it's really cold out, but I find I don't like, this is just an example of me solving well for what my brain needs. I don't like being in front of a screen while I'm moving my body because I miss out on just seeing where my mind goes when I just let it be.

And for me, moving my body. That is a really big part of me. Just discovering. What am I feeling? What am I seeing? And I always run with my phone not because I care about my steps But because 100 percent of the time I have a thought or an idea or a place where my mind Synthesizes something I've been thinking about as I'm moving my body So for me, I try as much as possible to do that away from a screen so that I can really just let my mind rest while I'm exercising my body and I love the Compounding effect of being able to do two things at once.

It's my very favorite. I talked about overwhelmed. The other word I hear very consistently is guilt, missing things, not having the energy I want, And I want to really dig into this idea of guilt too, because I think there's different kinds and different roots for guilt.

and again, I'll export just on my experience here. There are times I feel guilty because I think I'm supposed to, but if I ask myself, do I really feel guilty? I don't. Examples. Um, Let's say there's a dinner and I'm on a work trip and my daughter has a volleyball game.

I feel like the thing to say is, I feel really guilty. I'm not at my daughter's volleyball game tonight. But do I actually? And the truth is I don't feel guilty for not being at my daughter's volleyball game. 100 percent there is somebody there who loves her that is watching her from the stands, grandparent, my husband, probably somebody from there.

We've got a million aunts and uncles in town too. Somebody is going to be there who loves her. And I have accepted that for the goals I have in this season of my life. Alongside the season my kids are in, there are going to be some things I likely miss. So I would not be okay with missing an entire season of volleyball.

but I am okay with missing, I don't know, probably 10 to 15 percent of her games knowing that somebody is going to be there that loves her. So that's an example where guilt can sometimes not actually be authentic to you. You just think you're supposed to feel guilty to be doing it right as a parent.

And I had to work through that, that like, if I don't feel guilty, does that mean I love my kids less than people who do feel guilty? And what I realized is no, for me, it's not that I love them less. It's just, I have wholly accepted the amazing possibility and the consequences of the choices I've made for my goals.

And so I can rest peacefully in those moments instead of saying, I feel guilty. I do think that there are times where guilt is productive, where it is a sign that your actions are not congruent with your values. And so it's a moment to really look at where is there friction? Why is there friction? And what can I do to take control of getting that friction to go away?

So we'll use similar example. Let's say I was in a job where it required me to be gone every week, Monday to Thursday. And so I was going to miss 100 percent of my daughter's season and I would get to the place where I said, I feel really guilty about that. It may be. A choice that I need to make to find a different job, negotiate a different way to get done what's requiring me to travel, condense it so that it's one week a month for that period of time where my daughter's involved in something that I want to be present for.

Like, how do I renegotiate the time required away so that I can fulfill what's important to me, which is that my kids feel supported. And what they're doing, not just in our financial support, but in our energy support, that they feel like a priority and that they feel supported. That is important to me.

that's not a real case in my life, but if that, if a project was requiring that of me, if a goal was requiring that of me, I would need to renegotiate that because I think that guilt of being away would actually be productive and it would be something for me to acknowledge that my actions are requiring something of me that are compromising my values.

That's where I think guilt can be. Productive. I also think there's probably a version of guilt that is other people imposing their Values on us and me not having enough clarity on what I think and so I assume Your feeling of guilt into my life. I'm trying to think of a good example here.

This is like kind of silly, but there are people who, if they don't work out, they feel guilty for not working out. I don't feel guilty for not working out, but I could see that I felt guilty for not working out if I hadn't gotten clear with myself about what my minimum was in that area. My minimum is lifting two times a week.

As long as that happens, I am on track with myself. There are times when, I wake up in the morning, my alarm goes off early and I realize my body better needs sleep than it does to be exercised. And so I'll go back to sleep and I'll feel good about that choice. I don't feel guilty about it. But if If I hadn't decided on that minimum of lifting two times a week, then I likely would feel guilty for not running because I hadn't decided on my minimum.

I don't know if this is coming across as clear at all. This is where I feel like sometimes I had the addition of your body language as you're listening to this. But I don't. so anyway, I think guilt is a really big topic and I'd ask you to like really journal or like as you're driving around, ask yourself, what do I feel guilty about?

And why do I feel guilty about it? And how do you put yourself back in the place where you have control over what's happening? So we're going to be doing a lot more on this. I just got back the first video. we recorded. I think it was 4 or 5 videos, and there's some editors that are working on cleaning it up so that we use your time.

Well, and, got the 1st version of that back. My plan is to take, like, a beta group through it this fall. I don't know quite how big that beta group is going to be yet. If you're interested in being part of that beta group. Go find the link in the show notes and complete the program survey. And that will be how you get on the list.

We will ask for your feedback on a few things. I think there's 1, questions. those questions are, what are the top 3 frustrations that you face as a family in a dual career home on a daily basis? If this program could help you accomplish 1 thing, What would it be? And then what format are you most interested in?

We're working with, it's definitely going to be an online course component. We are also playing with creating a way for there to be some support like real time, whether they'd be putting you in groups or me hosting a conversation monthly where we share tips with one another, kind of, you know, ask you questions and help you work through specific scenarios that might be Causing some just like solving complexity for you in your own mind.

So thinking about what that might look like So we'd love your feedback so if you go find that link if you fill it out that gets you on the list to Let you know when we're opening up the beta group and then our goal will be Early next year to let it really be available for you guys to use give us feedback and help us make it even better So anyway, this has been A really cool thing to just kind of see this continue to grow.

I'm setting my mind so intentionally on my own life and my own solving and the places where J. R. and I just really got stuck and how do we Get to a place where we are so excited about our days, our life, our choices, the things that are happening and understand life is not perfect, but man, it's really fun when we're in control.

So thanks for listening today. I encourage you as you passionately pursue your life of and think about how can you better own the ordinary so that there is space for the extraordinary.

‍