Do this to get back on track after a break in routine

Tiffany Sauder: It's January and for some reason this year, I am finding myself maximum annoyed with all of the new year's resolutions. My best self walking into 2024 like You know, the word, why is this literally grading on every nerve this year?  Like why is it bugging me so much? Is it because I am frustrated with myself for not having all of those blanks filled in for myself? Is it that I'm secretly jealous? Sometimes that can be my first reaction to jealousy is like. Annoyed and I hate you. Um, so like asking myself, why am I so annoyed with all of this, like, meta narrative in our culture right now?

Why am I so bugged with it? And I got to the place where I think I know why I'm so annoyed. I think I got to the root cause. It is because the date, the calendar is somewhat putting social pressure on me to create change in my life. Like this external thing is like, Oh, it's the new year. You should change something. And I'm like, no, I don't need to change anything right now. So then I started saying, well. I'm just not in a season of change. that is not what I'm in right now. There's not things in transition.

I don't feel like I'm living in a broken, clumsy, reactive life that I'm like frustrated with. I actually feel like I'm living in a sustainable place that I'm at peace and the things are working. And I started to have this awareness of, cause this has not always been my experience with New Year's Eve.

Like I loved a Monday diet, you know, loved a fresh start from a bad weekend, loved a fresh start in a new year. But I think in my own like maturity and maturing my systems and reactions to my own life is that I now can wait for a moment of change. Meaning like my oldest daughter now has to be a practice before school that created a change for us that required a system change to be able to support that new thing in our life as an example. that I now wait for change in our lives. Or for something to break, something to get hard, a value to be violated, something that not be working in the way that I want them to, or the way that we want them to in our household or something, not operating in the right way in my business or in a relationship.

I now wait for those signals to tell me, Hey, something's out of whack. Something's not working. Something isn't scaling. A system isn't serving you anymore. What are you going to take a look at? And what. Micro change. Are you going to make like shift? Are you going to make to be able to accommodate this new thing? And what do you need to maybe let go of to make room for this new choice? This new decision. So I think that's why I'm annoyed is that we allow the calendar to tell us, Hey, get your attention. Like you need to change something because it's a new year, but maybe you're not in a season where change is. Required where change is important where change, maybe you are, maybe things are crashing in and it's kind of hard and you do need a fresh new year and a January 1st and a clean break and a clean start and a season to kind of get your attention and recalibrate. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I was just reflecting on my own internal reaction of like just being so annoyed.

adjustment, a new set of ingredients to be the things that requires a reaction from us instead of responding to the calendar and a new date. anyway, I don't know why I'm sharing it. I guess if you find yourself annoyed, maybe ask yourself the same questions, but anyway, okay, that's the whole thing on the new year.

The other thing that I'm like. Uh, so bugged about is if I see one more reel on Instagram about how somebody just crossed their 500th day of no drinking, it makes me want to drink when I see that stuff. And this is not to say I think everybody should drink alcohol, but what I've learned in my own personality, this is really about understanding yourself, but I've learned in my own personality is if you tell me I can't do something, it's literally becomes my obsession to do it. Literally, I could go 500 days without alcohol just because I'm like, Oh, I don't really need to, you know, I don't need to have a drink at this event. Like it's fine. I'll feel better tomorrow if I don't. But if I told myself I will not drink for 500 days, it would be the only thing I wanted to do every day was to drink. It's like becomes this obsession in my head. I think it has served me in my life. Like. People told me it is a really bad idea to start an ad agency because there are enough of those on the world. Like it's a hard business. It doesn't scale well. Like there's a lot of reasons why this business is hard, but I'm like, well, tell me I can't and I will show you how I can not only how I can, but I will be the best at it. And so I've learned it becomes such a like mental obsession for me when. I'm told I can't do something. Like know yourself telling myself, no, I cannot have anything like I'm going with for no sugar for 45 days. I am like stopping at the gas station to get Twizzlers on the way home from work that day. which I would never do, but I would do it that day because it becomes this thing. I'm like, Oh my gosh, I can't, I have to have it. So it is not a helpful tool for me. So if you also find yourself annoyed, it's about learning yourself. My sister and I talked about this. you have to pick up things from the world that like serve your personality and serve the way that you're wired so that it becomes sustainable.

That's like literally the whole trick in life is to become sustainable.

I was sustainably sick over the holidays. I had fever for like five or six days. I exaggerate a lot. That was not an exaggeration. Also, this next statement, not an exaggeration. Um, I have been working. For 20 years, and I think I have missed not including like maternity leave that doesn't count, but I think I have missed fewer than five days of work. Because I was sick in over in 20 years. I was like, I literally do not get sick and this flu that was going around it leveled me. It was insane so Christmas Day was when I started getting sick pretty much through New Year's. We hosted a party on New Year's Eve Which was probably not advisable. I just You know, I'm a girl who does, I'm not a quitter. Like we always host this thing and it was fun and I like to do it. and then I flew to Arizona to see my sister, with my girls and we were out there for four or five days and it was such a wonderful time. We had such a great time together. And then we flew home and, uh, got home at midnight, you know, as it goes. And then the kids started school shortly thereafter.

So what I want to talk about is how do you get things back on track? I was sick. All after Christmas. So we've got like, you know, like pine needles still in the house from the Christmas tree. Like things are just kind of schleppy and dusty. we had a new year's party. So there's like still, you know, confetti up practically on the floor. And then I was gone for five days. So we came back to school, starting getting back to work, getting back to life and things were not like ready, set, go. It was like, Pretty messy. And so I started to really look at how do I get things back on track?

I talk about living a sustainable life, having systems inside of your household, you know, your, morning and evening routines that keep the most ordinary things rolling. it's not always on track. Like it's just not always that way. Sometimes you're starting from behind. So what do you do? Pull an all nighter that does not work for me because I do not work well tired. I am in my forties and mama bear needs sleep. So that does not work to just like stay up till three in the morning.

So what I do, this is how I get things back on track is I give myself three days. defining that is so helpful for my brain because I know I'm living in a little bit of chaos, but it's not permanent. I can do anything for three days. So I give myself three days to get things back on track and I separate it into three separate categories unpack because usually it's coming back from a trip or like a volleyball tournament or there's backpacks and you know, it's like just stuff.

So one is unpack that do that one day. Another one is food. Uh, I do that a different, a second day or another day. You can like pick whatever order you want. And then the third one is the house, the space, getting it back to like where things should be, the picking and putting, you know, putting things around. So one day is unpacked. One day is food and one day is get the house put back together. And then after three days, all systems are go. We're like back on track. So what I did on the first day that we were home, that was unpacked day. So I ordered. Pizza, and everybody ate like, pretty brown bananas for breakfast and like bowls of cereal.  like it was not a high quality food day at our house because that was unpack day. But it was get all the laundry to the laundry. Um, you know, get the suitcases back to the basement, like get everybody unpacked, all of the toys back to where they go, That was mission critical on day number one, because it has to happen.

The second day is, is food. So that usually looks like clean out everything that's gross that nobody will eat. The moldy bread, the fridge, you know, leftovers that nobody's going to eat because it's been too many days and make your Instacart orders or go to the grocery store if you have time for that madness. But. No, thank you. So make an Instacart order of just your basics, avocados, cucumbers, you know, cheese, like just do your basics so that there's produce and sandwiches and easy things that can be made in the house.

And then the third day is getting the spaces back, you know, just like getting the dust bunnies out of the corners, making sure the surfaces are for the most part clean.  going through the mail, getting your packages undone, like getting the space back.

So define it. you can use my. Formula, if you want to have like giving yourself three days unpack, then food, then house. Um, that's usually the order that I do it in, or pick your own, but define it that way. It does not be like, Oh my word, it's next weekend. And, uh, their girls still haven't unpacked their suitcases and somebody is complaining because this didn't get done with the laundry and like all this kind of stuff.

It puts the whole household and everybody in the same plan, even for getting back on track. There's a system for that. Also, I know I've talked about this before, but if you get back from a big trip, send your laundry out to poplin, get it all done at the same time because it can be hard to get back on track with laundry where you've got every day.

If somebody is wearing something dirty, you're coming home with five, seven days just like laundry bags filled with a bunch of dirty stuff. So I use poplin. It's a laundry service. It's a dollar a pound. And I assure you. I will pay for your laundry if you get home from a trip and you send all your laundry out and it is more than 40.  I will pay for it. Send me an email, send me an invoice and I will pay for it if it's more than 40. It will not be. I promise you. It's like I take my family to Starbucks for like one swoop through the drive through and it's 40 bucks. I'm telling you, you spend 40 on things so you can get all your laundry done for 40 bucks through poplin.  literally getting yourself back on track also needs to be a system. We are not always, always, always on top of things, but getting back in rhythm is a necessary part of running a system really consistently so that we can live a life of and so that we can say yes to the things that give us life and we can live a peaceful life.

Um, okay. So we are getting to the home stretch on, on the ordinary. this is the course I've been working on that is about giving you the tools. To make the most ordinary things in your life fit in the smallest box possible so that you have time to say yes to the extraordinary.

To the people, experiences, adventures, new things that you want to do. Like this whole middle aged thing can become real boring because you're just managing all the crap you have, uh, and all the kids that you need to take places. Instead of it being continued to be filled with this like adventure and spirit of like closeness and intimacy and life and all those kinds of things.

I want that for you. my favorite thing about our life today is that we have worked really hard to own the ordinary so that we can live a life. Uh, that is extraordinary. So, we are at the place where we're recording the lessons. We have it all outlined. Uh, I'm very excited.There's not very many things I've worked harder on than this, and I'm just hoping it's such a gift to you guys.

So, our plan is to open up, for our first class of people to go through it. In like the next call it three to five weeks. Um, so we're getting close, we're beginning to record, and I'm super excited to share it with you all. So stay tuned. I will continue to give you updates on the podcast about where things are going. and then also on Instagram and stuff, but if you want to follow along closely, we'll be. Giving you updates on the podcast and be opening up to the first class of participants. We're probably going to limit it to be sure that we have the just like system infrastructure to make sure that you have a great experience and We know there's going to be questions I really want to be hands on with this first group that's going through and making myself available weekly to like Answer questions live, uh, give you my ideas of how I might solve some of the things that you're working through.

So to be able to do that, we're probably going to limit this first one. So if you're interested, stay tuned and we will let you know when the cart opens up. So thanks for, being on this adventure with me. I, uh, I don't even want to Wish you a happy 2024. I want to wish you like a happy life, you know, like, I don't know, screw the calendar.

It's where I'm at right now. So anyways. All right. See ya.

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