Navigating your un(Balanced) Life Character: The Grumpy Servant

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:01]:

Welcome to Scared Confident. I'm your host, Tiffany Sauder. Okay, so in this episode, we're jumping in on the third unbalanced life character. The third unbalanced life character. Okay, so if you're again just jumping in on this series, let me give you a couple minute backdrop on what we're talking about. And then today we're going to jump into some details and what it sounds like to be a grumpy servant, which is one of our three unbalanced life characters. Okay, stepping back, when I talk about a life of. And it's a great concept, right? But what I mean practically about it is picture a Venn diagram where there are three circles.

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:39]:

Yourself, your family, and your career. Yourself, your family, and your career. And where those three circles overlap in the middle is your life of and where each of those three areas of your life are being served in the context of your goals and in the rest of your life. So, meaning in this season of my life, this is how I'm going to manage my commitment to my health and to myself in this season of my life, in the context of my goals, in the context of my family, in the context of everything else. This is what progress I want to make in my career. And that exact same thing as relates to our family, our relationships, our time together, what's required of us. All three of those areas of our lives have to work in harmony. That does not mean that they are always equally served at different seasons of our life at different stages.

Tiffany Sauder [00:01:31]:

Sometimes work takes a lot. If you start a new job, if you have a new boss, if you're working for a company that just got acquired, if you just took on a new team, a new territory. Like, there are seasons when your career is going to take an outsized amount of time because it's in a season of transition, of change, of growth, whatever. Likewise, like, there's times when your family is in a season of growth or change when you have a baby. Like, holy crap, it's like the rest of life, at least for a small season, kind of needs to pause so that you can get your feet under you and be like, holy crap, I just had a new baby. We just had a new kid. We're not sleeping. I'm breastfeeding, whatever.

Tiffany Sauder [00:02:07]:

This is taking capacity. And there are times when maybe your own health, you're going through a health challenge, a health scare. You're trying to get on top of a Bunch of new habits and get to a new Level of Health for yourself or you're going through cancer or something like that, there are seasons where each one of these areas just take more time. And a life of Anne does not mean that it is a Third, a Third, a Third across each one of those. It is a choice of saying, these are my priorities and these are my values. And in the context of all the things going on in my life, I'm going to make choices and decisions and these three areas of my life such that they can all be managed and maintained in a way that you feel like on top of things. That is a life of Anne. That is what I mean.

Tiffany Sauder [00:02:52]:

And that is the three circles, yourself, your family, and your career. So that's like an ideal world, right? What happens when we're not in the middle? Where do we go instead? That was a question that I asked myself. What happens if I'm not in the life of and if I'm not in the middle of Venn diagram, where do I go instead? Well, what I found, actually, is that we don't go to just one circle. We tend to retreat to a place where two overlap. And today we're going to talk about that area in the Venn diagram where the serving your family and serving your career, where those two circles overlap. I call that the grumpy servant area. When you're serving your family and you're serving your career, but you fall out of habit of serving yourself, we who get in this area of this Venn diagram, we become the grumpy servant. So I'll quickly name the other two unbalanced life characters, but go back and listen to those episodes.

Tiffany Sauder [00:03:49]:

We'll link them in show notes if you want to hear more specifically about those two, which are the fearful loyalist and the lonely achiever. So the lonely achiever most naturally is serving self and career. Families kind of last in the dust. Just paraphrasing. And a fearful loyalist is most naturally serving self and family and has a lot of fear and trepidation as it relates to reaching into their professional or career area of their lives. Okay, so there's two episodes that are, like, 20 ish minutes long on those two unbalanced life characters, lonely achiever and fearful loyalist. There's 220 minutes ish episodes focused on these two, the the lonely achiever and the fearful loyalist. I'm not going to go deep into those here.

Tiffany Sauder [00:04:31]:

If you want to learn more, go check out those two episodes. We'll link in show notes. So today we're going to be jumping into this grumpy servant Persona, this who we become when we're out of balance, when we fall outside of our life, of ant. And we jump into this place and it's like, why am I this person? And I really love this idea of it being a character of us because it's like a character. It's like who we become. It like takes over our actions and our thoughts and our reactions and our tone of voice and our body language. It's like suddenly I can like feel inside of myself and I'm like this huffy, like, oh my word. Do I seriously have to clean up again? Do I seriously have to put the kids to bed? Do I seriously have to make dinner again? Do I seriously have to dot, dot, dot, enter the thing, clean up the house again.

Tiffany Sauder [00:05:18]:

Like, I've gone done all my emails today, I've done all my meetings, I prepared all the agendas, and I'm just like doing these things that I've chose and naturally in a normal state, I would love them. I love my family. I love my job. But when I get out of balance and I start losing any margin of time for myself, I start to hate the perpetual output that is required to serve my family and my job well because I'm not doing a good job of hanging tight to the minimums, to the choices that I have made. To say I have to have fuel somewhere, I have to work out, I have to have some quiet time. I have to have a little bit of time out in nature. And by I mean a little bit, I'm like seven to ten minutes. It does not need to be a nature hike 2 miles away.

Tiffany Sauder [00:06:11]:

But because I'm a natural helper, because I'm a natural task oriented person, I can quickly lose hold of my calendar and my time in such a way that any space that was for myself totally gets absorbed by the kids request, by driving people to practice, or by other people's expectations of my time professionally. Because I love to say yes, I love to do stuff, I love that it makes me feel important, I love that it pays me, I love all those things about that. But when I do that at the expense of maintaining the minimums that I've put in place for myself, I move from a full, healthy person who's living inside of their life of hand and I retreat to this crappy version of myself, which is the scrumpy servant. And this is the quadrant for me that feels the most comfortable. When we talk about these three unbalanced life characters, this is the one where I'm like, holy crap, this is me. And I know exactly what I need to do to stay out of this unhealthy, unbalanced version of myself. And it is to maintain control over my me time. So we can talk about that in a minute, but here's what I want to do.

Tiffany Sauder [00:07:22]:

A couple of months ago, I asked for your question, like, hey, what's on your mind? What's hard right now? What do you wish that I would talk about? And in those. In each of these episodes I've done this, I pulled out questions or little phrases commentary from you, the audience, that, to me, feel very much grumpy servant. So that a obviously, like, can kind of share what it sounds like in my head. But I'm going to share some of these with you to see if some of these ring true. So I've got three of them here, I think. So these are just verbatims from these responses that we got back. I'm just going to read and we're going to kind of explore them together a little bit. So this is a grumpy servant narrative.

Tiffany Sauder [00:08:04]:

How do I have enough time to parent two kids and a third is on the way? I work full time and I do all of the things around the house. This results in my husband, who also works full time, picking up the pieces and then complaining that I don't do enough because my job is more demanding than his. It's a cycle we've gone through over and over. I help more, and then I get busy, and then I have to pitch in less and he complains, which cues me helping more, and the cycle goes on and on. How do you break the cycle? But I hear grumpy servant in there, right? Like, literally, she says, I do all the things around the house. I work full time, and I parent two kids with a third on the way. So I am hearing from this individual, my family circle is being served, my work circle is being served, and I don't know how I can get more time. And I suspect if I talked to this woman and I said, do you love your family? She would say yes.

Tiffany Sauder [00:09:01]:

Like, do you love being with them? Yes. Do you want to be with them? Yes. Do you like your job? Yes. Are you excited about the problems you're solving there? Yes. Then why are we in this state of, like, we almost act like I'm tired and I don't like it. Like, why is that? And I think, I suspect if I helped this young woman find time for herself and for me, it's literally like two, two and a half hours a week. It is not a lot of time. If you define your minimum and you manage it, it gets that bucket full so that you then are like a whole person, feeding into the family and feeding into your job.

Tiffany Sauder [00:09:38]:

So that was one. Okay, another one. I get so overwhelmed by the daily stuff, by all the house chores on the weekends, laundry, groceries, mowing the grass, cleaning. All on top of wanting quality time as a family. I can't hire all these jobs out. So how do I do the ones I need to keep in our home? I've got little kids who have no help from older kids in these tasks. Okay, some of this is like a practical thing of like, how do you just get more done? How do you maybe simplify some things so that cleaning, organizing, laundry and stuff is easier? I also would tell this young woman, please, please, please outsource your laundry for the cost of your Starbucks in a week. I promise you, you can do it.

Tiffany Sauder [00:10:19]:

Most families that cost between 20 and $30 outsource your laundry to Poplin. And that is an easy way to get some time back. I guarantee you'll get at least 4 hours back. Washing, folding, drying, putting away, gathering, sorting, all that stuff. It takes much longer than you think. And if you can give yourself back, it's about 45 minutes a day. At least. That becomes really, really real time if you stack that up.

Tiffany Sauder [00:10:44]:

So your grumpy servant in there, too. This is the third one. How do I manage the house? I'm working full time. I've got a toddler transitioning to school. I'm trying to take care of myself before getting pregnant. All this stuff is happening. And again, some of these are real moments in time where we are looking at and saying, look, change is coming. How do I manage well through this? Oftentimes, my first reaction is to over perform.

Tiffany Sauder [00:11:12]:

When there's a season of change, when there's a season of complexity, when there's a season of a little bit more than I can fit into the bag, my first reaction is to over perform and to give up. The things that I know are keeping me sane. And I've said this a million times. For me, as a natural grumpy servant, I naturally fall into the in my head, it's like the bottom third, the bottom area where other people in my family get served. And I let go of doing those few things that I've defined are so important for me when I've defined those minimums, which for me is lifting two times a week for 1 hour. So that's 2 hours. That is my minimum. No matter what week that can happen.

Tiffany Sauder [00:11:54]:

And when that happens, my brain can stay in the center and I can get a lot of stuff done. I can serve a lot of things because I have held fast to that one thing that I know is very, very important. I'm in the process of putting into place better nutrition minimums. Honestly, that part of my life, I don't go naturally, go get McDonald's or something, but I don't know, I just feel like I'm less clear on some of that as, like, my body is aging and changing. I don't know. I gotta put some energy towards that. But right now is not the season. I will get there soon, I keep telling myself, but I want you to hear in these that we've chosen these kids, we've chosen these jobs, we've chosen these lives.

Tiffany Sauder [00:12:37]:

And sometimes I think when we are in this place where we feel like kind of a grumpy victim to it all, it feels like the solve ought to be inside of one of these circles of family or career. Like, if I could just somehow get my family to need me a little less or to help a little more, if I could somehow get my career to be a little simpler or my people to be a little bit more cooperative or the projects to get a little bit more done, that that is going to be the thing that gets us out of this grumpy servant space. And that's not true at all. It's a little counterintuitive. What gets me out every single time, and I suspect if you tried it for six weeks, you would feel very different, too, is do something for yourself. Because what's happening is you're neglecting that part of you that needs to feel, like, loved, intended to, and a customer of somebody's time. And oftentimes we inadvertently burden our spouse with that job. And it's like I feel so alone, I feel so tired.

Tiffany Sauder [00:13:40]:

I feel like I'm doing everything. Like, what in the world? Why don't you see me? How is it that you're getting out of bed and working out, and I'm staying up late and getting up early and, like, that sets off a really bad cycle for junior and I. And I suspect it may in some of your homes, too. But when I say to myself, this is my job. I'm a whole person. It's my job to take care of me. And anything that I get from junior is, like, not a bonus. But it's not his job to make me whole.

Tiffany Sauder [00:14:09]:

It's not his job, my job to figure out how to stay whole by myself. We learned this in marriage counseling. My emotional space, my problem I need to solve that for him, so that I can step into our relationship and not be this needy, exhausting thing. And so I notice this in myself now when my mind starts to be like, oh, my word. I'm literally doing everything. And he has time to work out, and he has time to golf with friends, and he has time to do dinner with colleagues, and he has time to go see his dad. Like, it's like all this stupid stuff in my head that in my regular self, I'm like, no, you should totally go do that. I get that you need to, like, go be outside for a couple hours.

Tiffany Sauder [00:14:49]:

I get that your relationship with your dad is, like, really important. You should go invest in that. Like, my whole self is very supportive of all those choices. I don't actually hate them. Why I hate them in the moment is because I'm not getting the time I need for myself. And so I hate watching him get that time he needs for himself. Well, that's a pretty crappy. Like, that's not who I want to be, and that's not how I want a relationship defined.

Tiffany Sauder [00:15:19]:

But as I've thought about this further, that is exactly what is playing out. If I had gotten up early that morning and had a great run in with a girlfriend and had some organic eggs with spinach on the side for breakfast and a protein shake at 10:00 a.m. and he asked me if I can go golf, I suspect I'd be like, oh, my word, totally. Because I feel whole, which is not a hymn job. So, anyways, if you find yourself in this grumpy servant space, I'm going to challenge you to try not making your family more cooperative or your job smaller, because those things will always be slightly out of your control. But what is in your control is figuring out how do I make a little bit of time for some me time. Because I suspect that bucket is so empty that it's making your responsibilities to your family and to others feel so heavy because you have no well to pull from. Start small.

Tiffany Sauder [00:16:15]:

Take a ten minute walk outside before your shower when you get home from work, before you go, walk to the mailbox and walk back before you start dinner. Get all the kids out of the house and say, we're going to shoot 15 baskets. It doesn't have to be big and hard. Pick some very, very small things. Take a walk for 15 minutes after you eat your lunch. Find one phone call that you can take a day that is a walking call instead of one that's sitting at your desk. I don't know, but there are a lot of creative ways that you can come up with other than hiring a trainer and going to a gym 30 minutes from your house. Maybe that's what you end up doing.

Tiffany Sauder [00:16:56]:

Maybe that's what it can grow to. But find small ways to be able to feed yourself so that we can all stay out of this grumpy servant space. It doesn't serve our goals. It doesn't serve our families. It doesn't serve the habits of who we want to become, how we want to be known, the talk track inside of our head. We don't want to be that person. So find one small way if you're finding yourself in this grumpy servant space to serve yourself, and I suspect you will find the load of responsibility inside of career and family don't actually become lighter, but you have more fuel for the tasks and people inside of them. As always, thanks for listening you guys.

Tiffany Sauder [00:17:40]:

The show is growing so much I just can't even believe it. And I know it is due in large part to you sharing your favorite episodes with your friends and family. If you were touched by this or know of somebody in your life that maybe needs to hear or maybe you think might identify with this grumpy serve it Persona, I would love it if you would share this episode with them. As always, thanks for listening. 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. I will.