Grandma’s Wisdom and the Journey to an Intentional Life

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:00]:

The prospect of asking myself, what do I want out of life? Seemed really scary because what I wanted hadn't mattered for a really long time. And beginning to say, do I need to wait until all my kids leave the house? Do I need to wait till my midlife crisis to create the life I want to be, what I want to be? Or can I do that in the middle of all of these awesome responsibilities that I have? But how do I color them in a way that really fits how I want to grow and keep just doing new stuff?

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Tiffany Sauder [00:00:31]:

I'm a small town kid, born with a big city spirit. I choose to play a lot of awesome roles in life. Mom, wife, entrepreneur, CEO, board member, investor, and mentor. Seventeen years ago, I founded a marketing consultancy. And ever since, my husband, junior and I have been building our careers and our family on the exact same timeline. Yep, that means four kids, three businesses, two careers, all building towards one life we love. When I discovered I could purposefully embrace all of these ands in my life, it unlocked my world. And I want that for you too.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:01:06]:

I'm Tiffany Sauder and this is Scared Confident.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:01:14]:

Guys, welcome to Scare Confident. This is the first time that I'm pushing record in 2025. The things that have dropped, I did last year. And I tell you every time I've been off the mic for a minute, there's like this fear wall I have to jump over in my head. Just be like, no, push record. Make it happen, Tiffany. So I would say I've pushed this to do like maybe four days further out than everybody on my team for me to do. And I just have to be honest with myself and with you guys.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:01:41]:

It's like just kind of this little thing that takes hold of my head and is. I don't know, it, like, makes it hard. So here we are. We're pushing record and we're doing the thing. So I don't know how your 2025 is going, but if I were to use a word for mine, so far it's been like three and a half weeks. I would say it has required a lot of flexibility. We've had late start days and just, I don't know, it's like plans haven't been, like plan A hasn't been executed very often. And so it's taken a lot of flexibility, but it's still working.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:02:11]:

Like we're making a lot of progress. A lot of cool things are happening. But I'd say flexibility has been the word for me so far this year. I kind of just want to use this episode as an export for me. And I guess just to kind of catch you up on what's been going on in my world over the last few months as we were walking through the holidays. My oldest birthday is in January, so I'm going to go through. My grandma passed away. My maternal grandmother passed away two days before Thanksgiving.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:02:41]:

She's played a massive role in my life. So I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the things her life taught me, because I think grandmas have just. They imprint really hard in lots of good ways. So I'll share some lessons from her life. So I remember them so my daughters can hear them, and I think that you'll get some things out of that, too. My oldest turned 16, which is a big milestone in our household for social media. And so I thought I would just share some of the things we are doing in our family around phones and technology and social media. And you can do what you want to do with your family, your life, but I think it's kind of working.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:03:16]:

And I just was going to share what we're gonna do there. And this kind of I'm excited about for 2025. So that's where I spend some time. Here we go. So my grandma passed away. Let's start with Grandma. Her name was Marcella. My third one.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:03:28]:

Our third daughter. Her name is Ivy Marcella, named after Grandma Marcella. And there's four things that, as I started reflecting on her life, I just took a little bit and it's like, think you are Grandma. My mom is the only daughter, and I am the oldest daughter of my family. So we grew up about 30 minutes away from my maternal grandparents. So when my mom first got married, when she was a new mom with me, we would just go to grandma's house a lot. It's where we were, and I loved going there. I would walk in and say, here tum tt.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:03:58]:

My grandma was always so excited to see me, no matter what age I was, whether I was 2 or 22 or 32 or 42, my grandma was so excited to see me every single time. So it was a reminder of how that energy imprints so much on a kid. And I don't know, I think sometimes when my girls walk in from school, I'm like, hey, girls, what's going on? And I realize it's different than Grandma. But it just kind of made me remember, like, you know, I need to make sure that I'm thoughtful about those moments of, like, being united, because I remember how my grandma just made me Feel so special. Okay, the first lesson from my grandma is dress to forget yourself. My sister and I and my sister in laws all have, in my grandma's handwriting, these words, dress to forget yourself in our closets. And my grandma was always just very graceful and gracious and well put together. And she would say this of dress to forget yourself.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:04:58]:

And we've all, I think, know where that place is for us, where you're like, put together enough in a way where you're like, I feel so good about myself, I don't have to think about myself. And as a result, I'm just completely open to giving my time and attention and ideas and energy and creativity to the world around me, because I'm not thinking about myself. And that sometimes getting dressed and taking the time to find clothes that fit you, that look good on you, that are your right colors, that are those things, like, that's not selfish. It's actually getting yourself to a place where you can feel so good about yourself that you can forget about yourself. And I have been on both sides of it where I'm like, so jacked up, so dressed up, so in something that's like too tight or too low or whatever it is, where I am very much not forgetting about myself. I'm very aware of myself. And on the other side, where I feel like, super frumpy, like, I did not dress well for this occasion. The sweater is super itchy.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:05:55]:

I don't like how it looks on me. My pants are too tight. If you're any months postpartum, nothing feels good. And you're just so aware of yourself that you're not really present for the people around you. And so one of Grandma's advices was just dress to forget yourself. And I love that advice. The second advice from Grandma Marcella, and she told me this when I think it was. I was engaged.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:06:19]:

And so it felt like wild advice then. But she would say, love is a choice and sometimes an emotion. Love is a choice and sometimes it's an emotion. So, you know, if you've been married for a minute, you know that sometimes you feel this, like, passionate sense of connection and love. And sometimes you have to choose to act and react and behave and connect underneath this choice of loving this person. But I'm not totally in the feeling of loving you right now, but I can still act from the choice of love. And I was a kid. Well, I'm not a kid now.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:07:01]:

I'm 44. And I never remember Grandma acting out of, like, a selfish place. And this is a Kid. She's my grandma, so I see her almost perfectly. But I think this is really sound advice that love is a choice. And it is sometimes. Sometimes we have the benefit of the emotion of love, but oftentimes, I don't know what the percentage is. But oftentimes we have to choose to act out of love, even when we're not feeling it.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:07:27]:

Because, you know, in those seasons where you're not feeling like love and you act in violation of that, it creates a lot of problems. So, anyway, love is a choice and sometimes an emotion. This one is not quite as succinct, but she would say, everything that annoys you about someone, I'll pick on Junior. He has a few little things he does when he walks in the house. Everybody else, somehow in the house is able to get their coat to go on a hanger, and he hangs it over the chair. It doesn't annoy me anymore, but it used to. He also has a hard time getting his cup all the way to the dishwasher. He'll put it just in the sink.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:08:05]:

I don't know why. This is like his things. And she would say, honey, sometimes the things that annoy you, all the things that annoy you is what you're gonna miss someday when they're gone. So love the mess, love the burnt pieces, love the dirty dishes, because those are signs of life. And so I actually just said this earlier this week. Our space was getting just kind of out of control. And I said to the girls, girls, you guys have got, like, it looks crazy around here. We have got to pick up tomorrow.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:08:36]:

And Ivy said, what does it look like, Mom? I said, it looks like a family just kind of, like, went crazy in the house. And she goes, is that bad? And I was like, no, it's not bad. It's annoying to me because I like our space to be clean. But signs of family, signs of play, signs of snacks after practice, signs of kids who came home from school, signs of playing in the snow, signs of unmade beds. Like, no, those are signs of life. No, that's not bad, Ivy. I am annoyed with myself for being annoyed. Just let it be sometimes.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:09:16]:

And so, I don't know, it made me think of this saying that my grandma used to say, because I would. I think we were newly married. And I was like, I love Junior, but I'm so bugged. Blah, blah, blah. And she said, honey, someday those are going to be the things that you miss. So I guess remember that some of the things that are around you that are annoying you they're actually just beautiful signs of life. Okay, last piece of advice from Grandma Marcella. I'm sure there's more, but these are the ones that came to my mind.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:09:44]:

Everyone is living a story, so be patient with them. My grandma had this way of being eternally patient and forgiving with people's growth stories. My grandpa farmed, but he was a lay pastor. His primary profession was being a lay pastor. And he, like, farmed on the sides. He gave a tremendous amount of his time to other people, counseling them. There were always people in their home, meeting with engaged couples, walking with people through baptism. Just spent lots and lots and lots of time with lots and lots and lots of people.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:10:20]:

My grandpa did. And so, as a result, my grandma saw a lot of stories, and she saw a lot of life, and she saw a lot of people who at seasons were kind of seen as lost causes, that those people, those situations, those stories be redeemed. And so she was just. She would say, everyone is living a story. I never heard her gossip. I don't know. Like, she definitely had the tea on what was going on. And she had such a mature way of looking at and seeing the journey that people are on.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:10:54]:

And I think as you get older and you live more life, you go through more things. You see your friends go through more things. You just see and understand the world, at least for me, in a less naive way, you start to understand that everybody is living a story. And there is a lot of maturity and wisdom instead of talking about it, judging it, I don't know, making it the dish of the day to just be patient with them. And my grandma had a lot of wisdom in that. So these are things that my grandma lived so vividly. And some of them, she had some really concise way of codifying and articulating them, which is a huge way that my brain works. So I love those little pockets of truth, but I just wanted to share those with you, and maybe they'll inspire you to be a little more like no one.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:11:41]:

Marcella. Like me. Okay, let's turn the page. Grandma, we love you. And I don't know, we love. Just love you, Grandma Marcella. Okay, Moving to Aubry. So my.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:11:50]:

Our oldest has turned 16. Such a big milestone for her. It's kind of weird to, like, be of the age as a parent where you have a kid who's 16. I loved turning 16. I loved driving. I loved the freedom that came with that. I loved being able to leave the house by myself. I love being able to listen to the radio.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:12:12]:

When I wanted to, to make it as loud as I wanted it to, to open the sunroof if I wanted to, to, like, just loved it, I loved it. And so I actually find it kind of easy to Let Aubry turn 16 from a mom perspective, because I'm like, I don't want to take that from her. Like, turning 16 was so rad. And I hope that she loves it, too. So In Indiana, it's 90 days after you turn 16 that you can actually get your license. So we don't have that quite yet, but we're getting close. But I want to talk about 16 in our house, because at 16 in our house, you get to get social media, which is very late. So I just thought I'd share quick overview of how we think about technology and social media, and you can take some tips from it or not.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:12:52]:

You get to pick. So we let our girls have phones. At 13, Ainsley played travel volleyball. And so if I'm honest, she got hers probably about six months earlier than that because it was more convenient for her to have a phone. And I do find she's young for her grade. In that seventh grade window. They start to need a phone at school, like, for QR codes and just, like, learning. So in that seventh grade year is when we let the girls have phones.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:13:22]:

It's our phone, obviously, but they, like. It's theirs to use. It's their phone number, all those kinds of things. I have a rule against group chats. It can't be in a group chats of more than five people, because I think that is where just a lot of bad things happen. These classes, these kids have, like, group chats with like, 40, 50 people on them, 20, 30 people on them. And those are just like, nothing good happens on those chat strings. That's where kids get left out.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:13:52]:

That's where they get bullied. That's where they get hurt. And so my rule is, if I pick up your phone and I see a group chat on there, my girls are very clear on the rule around this. If I see one on there, then you lose your phone for a week. At the first infraction, I just, like, take it, turn it off, take the phone. This happened to Ainsley. She lost hers for a week. She was actually not mad at me because she knew she broke the rule, and she already knew what the punishment was going to be for that.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:14:18]:

If I pick it up a second time and I find that you're in a group chat, then you lose your phone for a month, which is very painful. For everybody. And I don't know what happens the third time. We haven't gotten there. But they're very clear. I don't like them. I would never send them to an unchaperoned party with 20 people, with 20, like 8th graders there because that's a recipe for disaster. And that's the exact simulation in my view, that these group text strings have these big groups with like the kids don't have half the kids numbers in their phone.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:14:46]:

Like I think they're Satan's playground. I hate them. So I take a very strong stance on them. So that's kind of our primary rule. I let the girls have boys phone numbers, friends phone numbers. You need to know who it is. I talked to them about catfishing with Ainsley. She's a little more gullible than Aubrey.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:15:03]:

And so she kind of got caught up in one of those like text strings where it was like, clearly somebody was baiting her with like, hey, you. One of your friends, Julie told me, blah, blah, blah. So we talk about stuff. I do not have software on our girls phones that like report to us or necessarily sort the Internet. What I do instead is I take their phones for 24 hours. Like I don't know, once a quarter or like if they're in the shower, I'll go grab their phone and I'll just like sort through all of their text messages and just read them. I'm not trying to like get the dish on everything. I just want to make sure that what's being talked about is, is what would be talked about if I was in the room.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:15:40]:

You know what I mean? It's like that it's healthy, that it feels age appropriate. That's kind of our policy. And as long as we're in a high trust situation and the girls are being responsible with it, I'm not going to assume they're going to do bad things with it. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt until they show me that they can't handle it. So that's kind of our strategy with that. We don't let the girls have any social media until they turn 16. My observation has been that social media plays a huge role in their brain development, their belief development, their identity, the way that they think about their value. And so I want to keep that influence away from them for as long as possible.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:16:22]:

But I want some of their relationship with social media to form while they're still underneath our roof and that I can still inform that. So that's why we pick 16 what I've observed is that the girls friendships tend to form also with people whose parents are a little slower on the social media thing. If there's a friend group where all of the social capital happens on Snapchat and my girls don't have Snapchat, then it's going to be hard to be friends with those people. And I'm just kind of okay with that natural consequence because I don't want that friend group to override my parenting decision. So again, pick what you want. But this is how I think about it. My observation is that my girls have really healthy relationships with their phones. It is not uncommon for them to sit in the living room for two hours without their phone.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:17:09]:

We'll go out to dinner as a family and the girls will not be on their phones. They'll just like leave them behind for a couple hours and they're completely okay with that. My belief is a strong connection to that is that there is not this like dopamine response of this like social media thing. And so they have a much more casual relationship with their phone. And I think not having social media has really helped that. So at 16, we let the girls have social media. Right now I've kind of said you can pick whatever social media outlet you want. If you want Snapchat, get Snapchat.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:17:39]:

If you want Instagram, get Instagram. If you want Twitter, get Twitter. I really want to raise girls that are good decision makers. And so at 16, I want them to start discerning and making choices about what they let into their world, what they went into, their brain, what they want to manage. And so Aubry got Instagram, which is great. I'm excited for her about that. So I don't want my girls to think social media is bad. It plays some really productive roles.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:18:06]:

But I think even as an adult I have a hard time keeping good boundaries with it. And as a 13 year old, like they have a much harder time with it. I actually just put, I didn't know this could happen. Read my Element Three Office. He taught me this. You probably know this. I'm probably just like the last one on the planet to know. But on your phone you could actually set a time duration for different apps of like how much time you want to allow yourself to be on it.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:18:31]:

So for LinkedIn and for Instagram, I set 10 minute maximums for myself on my phone for those two apps per day, 10 minutes per day, and then just like goes dark. You can override it if you want to, but like it'll say do you want to give yourself one more minute or 15 more minutes? I'm trying really hard not to do that and it's actually really working. I really like it. It's like the app is dark, kind of like gets grayed out and I'm like, oh, I'm done. I don't need to go there anymore. And it's a reminder that I've already spent 20 minutes of my day on that part of the outside world. That's not where I want my energy to be. I want it to be in my home, on my projects.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:19:10]:

Uncool stuff I'm doing and scrolling can just become this easy fill in the gap thing that happens if you're not aware of it. And I find setting the time bounds has been really helpful. So I don't know, I think for me, it's just about me helping exercise really productive boundaries with something that serves my business. I think social media is really productive. I don't want it, not in my life at all. But if I'm not careful, it can take up way more space than I want it to in my life. So anyway, little rant on the social medias, but it's a big deal. My little girls, we have like two broken iPads.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:19:46]:

It's like we have no money and they kind of have to fight over them. And I find that friction is really healthy to not having them watch it all the time because they kind of have to fight over them and. Or they have to sit really close to each other on the couch and watch them together, which is so cute. So I don't know. That's our kind of cobbled together technology and social strategy for raising the girls. And I think Jira and I both feel like really good about it right now. It's hard to roll it back. You've already let them have it and so you kind of got to stay strong so that they don't break you down when they're young.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:20:24]:

Because it can be easy to say yes, but I think we serve the kids better when sometimes we say no. Okay. You know what I'm excited about for 2025 is this whole life of Ann Journey. And I've like lived a lot of this journey out loud into this microphone in 2020, which is when I started this project. It was really the beginning of beginning to dare to dream for myself again. I was 25 when I committed to Element Three and the entrepreneurial journey that was going to be. And you know, when you are running something and own part of it, just deciding you don't want to do it one day is kind of a pretty complicated decision. And then I got married in.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:21:06]:

At 25. I had one kid in my 20s, two in my 30s, one at 40. It was like, I just spent a long time, not in a way that was resentful, but just, like, kind of dutifully executing against the things that I had chosen. Like, hey, I was the president of Element Three. I got to keep being the president of Element Three. I got to keep growing this business whether I want to or I don't want to. I didn't always realize, like, you need to reevaluate these decisions in different seasons. And her marriage went through different seasons.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:21:34]:

As your kid, your family starts to evolve, as you add different kids, like, it was just like, okay, I have all these things. The prospect of asking myself, what do I want out of life? Seemed really scary, because what I wanted, like, hadn't mattered for a really long time. And beginning to say, do I need to wait until all my kids leave the house? Do I need to wait until later, like, till my midlife crisis or whatever it gets named, like, to go do what I. To create the life I want, to be what I want to be, to do what I want to do, or can I do that in the middle of all of these awesome responsibilities that I have? But how do I color them in a way that really fits who I'm becoming and how I learned, grow, and keep just doing new stuff? So, I don't know. I feel like it. It's been five years since I started that journey and kind of dared to ask myself, what do you want? And it was from that question that I got these words of a life of and I want a life of. And. And I was embarrassed to explain that to people.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:22:42]:

I was embarrassed to say it to people. I was embarrassed that I don't know that I like, literally, I just want more. Not because I'm trying to be this, like, hoarder of resources and money and things in time. It's because I love to experience new things. And when that is the primary currency of life for you want to say yes to a lot of stuff. And when you want to say yes to a lot of stuff beside a life that is already stuffed full, like, that starts to create a real impasse, like, a real situation, because there's no more room to add anything. And so beginning to get clear about my dreams, beginning to get clear about how I want to use my time, beginning to get clear about what I believe is my unique ability as A human being. Beginning to get comfortable with the role I wanted to play as a mom and what I wanted to outsource in our home to.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:23:31]:

Beginning to get comfortable with, you know, sharing with my friends what I wanted to do and become and be okay with, whether they thought that was cool or they didn't think that that was cool. Like, all of that becoming has really happened for me over the last few years. And I feel like 2025 is like, I'm getting there. It's taken five years to get a leader in place at element 03 that is totally the right person doing such a good job. I've figured out my relationship with him where I'm an accelerator to what's happening, but not a drag and I'm not too far away that I can't be helpful. I've moved my office home, which has given me just this like new level of flexibility with my time. And it was like we had a couple two hour delays this week. And that was real.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:24:17]:

I was able to really easily absorb that and move some things around because of the way that I've kind of brought my whole life within like a six mile circle of our home so that I can be more available for our kids. In the season, I've gotten really crisp in what I'm outsourcing and to whom, so that I have the allotment of time that I want for my own health and exercise, that I've got the time I want with my mom, so that I've got the time that I need and want for these projects that I'm working on. Like, I just feel really locked in. And one of my biggest dreams have been taking our home and making it so a place that's just like so easy to entertain. We live on two acres. Like, I've always wanted a pool. We don't have any of these things right now, but we're getting really close to some of this stuff coming true. And you know when you start at the beginning of a journey and say, dang, it's gonna take me five years to get there, it looks like a long ways away when you're starting that journey.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:25:17]:

But in the context of a life that's 102 years long, which is how long I want to live, that's my number. I'll go more, but I want to at least get to 102, five years. In the context of a hundred and two years, that's 5% of my life that I spent getting from where I was to where I am. And I think it's I just feel like, holy crap, we have four kids, My husband has a huge job. I've got all these ideas in my head, like, we are doing it. I've executed towards this. And it is not uniquely available to me. All of these things that I teach in the life of and academy, like, genuinely is the toolbox that I use to make this happen, that I can like literally make it all happen for myself.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:26:02]:

So I'm not saying this in like, oh, good for you, like yourself glorifying pain in the butt. I think this is my fear saying, like, can you shut up? Nobody cares that you think your life is amazing right now. It's not perfect. I am living in the existence that I have created, and so are you. You are also living in the existence that you have created. And in the same way that I had to own when we were living in a reactive place where there was a lot of disconnect in our home, where I was microsolving every single day, and every day felt hard and I felt empty, I was the author of that existence and I had to own that. And today, five years later, I am also the author of this existence where I feel proactive or I feel connected to my family, where we have a plan for every single day, where there is clarity in communication, where the kids have clear expectations, where everybody in our household has priorities. I am also the author of that reality and that existence.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:27:01]:

And that is like such a powerful thing. It is so much easier for me, for some reason as a person to own the crappy hard stuff and to take a hundred percent accountability for that. And it is harder for me to take a hundred percent of accountability for the great things that happen to you. So I think this is me practicing that. And I'm kind of uncomfortable with it, honestly. But we're doing it because this is what we do, is we do uncomfortable things. But whatever you want, whatever you're moving to, wherever you are in that journey of starting in the hard and moving towards your dream and vision, you will only get there if you believe it can happen. And for me, believing that what I want can happen is a very, very, very scary proposition.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:27:48]:

Because if I begin to want it, I begin to dream it, I begin to see it, I begin to feel myself there, then that makes me unhappy with where I am right now because I start to get a more vivid picture of the future. And if I am not able to deliver that vivid picture of the future to myself, the prospect of that failure and that disappointment and not getting there is very scary. For me, for some reason, maybe you don't feel this, but I do so viscerally. And so there is so much courage required to dream, to believe. For some of us, I think others it comes more easily to like the idea of a dream comes easily for me. But actually believing that I deserve it, that it can happen for me, I have the ability to get there, that I can figure out how I'm not going to let myself down, like that is hard for me. That feels really, really, really risky. Because I can make the today fun.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:28:46]:

And fine, I totally can. But there is a dissatisfaction that has to come with where you are, to propel you to where you're going. And for me, it starts with believing that what I want can really come true. And I have to practice that every single day, like in a nerdy way in the mirror. I believe I can have a pool. I believe that I can have a home that is so generous and such a great backdrop to the entertaining that we want to be able to do. And we still entertain all that. There's always somebody at our house.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:29:19]:

It's not like it's going to be a switch where like suddenly we decide to share a plate of food with somebody. But you know, when your house is like just built for, it's like, oh, it's so easy to have 25 people over. Like, oh, it's so easy to, you know, just do the things. Like that's what I want. And I love so many people and I love generously sharing our space and our time and food and our family. I just like, love it all so much. And to be like, we could really be on the edge of getting that. I could really be at a place where I feel like I'm giving 100% of my unique ability into my professional pursuits.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:29:59]:

And I am giving 100% of my unique ability as a mom to be able to do those things side by side and to not feel like I have to take from one side to give the other. Like, I'm really there. I'm really, really there. I have microsolved the minutes in a way that gives me a lot of freedom to live in both of those spaces. And so I had to first believe that there was a world where I could both be 100% in my unique ability professionally and 100% in my unique ability as a mom, that I could be in a space where those two things could live beside each other. And this is not about my story. I'm just explaining my own reality and truth with this. But the Life you want will only happen if you first believe it can.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:30:45]:

So we're in January, we're in the season of fresh starts. Whether it's a word that you pick or a New Year's resolution or you don't like any of that, I don't really care. But practice believing that what you want can in fact be true in your life. And for me, disconnecting it from the timeline has been very healthy for me. I did not know how long it would take me to get to where I am. I just made some progress, always. I just made some progress always. It's like instead of saying I have to lose 10 pounds by June 1st, if you just say, I am on a 10 pound weight loss journey.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:31:26]:

All of these goals of mine have to live in the context of one another. They have to live beside each other. They have to live in the context of my actual life, of JR's actual priorities. So I don't always get to pick the speed that they happen on because my achiever self is like, do everything as much as fast as possible. And that cannot be the way that things actually happen for me if I'm going to have them happen sustainably because there's not enough time, there's not enough capacity, there's not enough resources. And so it has to start with believing that it can happen. And for me, again, I'm just saying, for me, releasing the timeline that that has to happen on has been helpful. So it has to happen eventually.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:32:04]:

But as long as I'm making measured progress, always, I will get there. Whether it was four years or seven years doesn't really matter. It doesn't really matter. As long as I was on a journey of getting to where I want to go, that's what matters. You know what I mean? If it's four years away or seven years away, who really cares? Both of those are better than staying stuck in where you are. So I don't know, I always, like, here I am on this podcast speaking into this microphone. My hair is like a mess because I burnt the front of my hair. And so she had to cut these, like, weird little shaggy bangs that I don't like.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:32:39]:

And so now they're back in a, you know, a thing. It's like, my hair is from the 90s. I don't know what's happening. It's a meatball. Alandra, you're amazing. It's me, it's not you. But today it looked a little sus. It's just how the year is going.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:32:51]:

I had 40 minutes where the house was going to be quiet. So this is exactly when I needed to record this. And I don't look like the best. And that's totally fine. That's what happens when you just do the things you know. We have to do it even when it's messy and even when it's unperfect. We have to show up. So.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:33:06]:

All right. Thanks for listening. I hope this is starting off as a good year, but I'm just going to encourage you to practice believing in the future that you want. Thanks for listening.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:33:17]:

Thank you for joining me on another episode of Scared Confident. Until next time, keep telling Fear. You will not decide what happens in my life.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:33:26]:

I will.