Reflect, Refresh, and Thrive in the Year Ahead

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:01]:

I'm a small town kid, born with a big city spirit.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:00:04]:

I choose to play a lot of awesome roles in life.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:00:06]:

Mom, wife, entrepreneur, CEO, board member, investor and mentor. Seventeen years ago I founded a marketing consultancy and ever since, my husband JR 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. I'm Tiffany Sater and this is Scared Confident.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:00:42]:

I had lunch today with someone and he is married, is a father and he has two young kids. And one of the like words of wisdom from the old 43 year old came out and I thought I'd share that with you guys too. They have a baby and he was talking about how as soon as the baby sleeps through the night, like they'll get out of the rat race. As soon as you know xyz, you'll get out of the rat race. And it kind of sounded like time out. What I have found, I mean we've had kids for 14 years. I've been married for. It'll be this year was 18, like almost 19 years, almost 20 years.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:01:17]:

So crazy. You think the next stage is going to be the stage where you have time for things and it's not true. It's like a grand lie, a grand illusion in life that you think like, oh, I don't totally understand the complexity of the next stage of my life. And so I'm oversimplifying it in my head and I don't understand. There's just going to be new things to solve and so we think, oh, I don't really have to deal with what's in front of me right now because in the next stage of life this will work itself out. So it's true. You know, when you have really little kids and they're not sleeping through the night, that works itself out. They eventually sleep through the night.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:01:53]:

But there are other things, new complexities that come with that next stage. And so this is my encouragement to you to say, no, we can't accept that this stage we're going to sacrifice. It's going to be so crazy, it's going to be so over committed. It's. We're going to have bad communication, we're going to be overwhelmed. Which is like my kryptonite word. When I am in a place where I'm saying, oh, I'm overwhelmed, I'm overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:02:19]:

I know I am like flat out reacting to my life in every orifice of it. It's not a good existence, it's like not a real existence to me to be reacting to everything in my life. I want to have control and so don't give in to this lie, this illusion that the next phase is going to be the one where life is neat and tidy and you'll finally get to your priorities. I think the great, I don't know, challenge in life, excitement in life, like puzzle of life is figuring out how right now in your stage, do you wholeheartedly accept the things that are hard and a little bit crazy, like for us right now, I mean literally we're scheduled to the max. How do I delight in it? How do I make it fun? Like how do I solve well for where we are right now instead of being drug like a rag doll through my life? I don't want to be like that. So I was kind of like scoldy. I can get like that, like you know, like wagging my finger at him, essentially, like figuratively speaking. No, don't feed into the lie that the next stage of life is going to be the one where you have the time, have the resources, whatever.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:03:28]:

Like how do you solve for what you want now? And there were a couple of things like tips or hacks that like came to the forefront for me that I thought I would share with you that have been really helpful and I would say served our family pretty well in spite of the fact that I was a little bit of a like savage monster this weekend. Ordering everybody around, getting everything cleaned up. One of them is the one empty shelf, one empty drawer, one empty container rule. So what I mean by this is like when we're cleaning out, let's say the girls playroom, I went there to be one empty drawer, one empty shelf. And the reason is there is no way that we have the exact perfect number of belongings to be held by the furniture that we have. And accidentally you can measure your belongings by the amount of space that you have instead of measuring your belongings by the number of things you actually need or want or play with, et cetera. So but just because we have room for 20 dress up dresses doesn't necessarily mean that we need 20 dress up dresses. Like let's pick the ones that in the eight that we use the most often.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:04:32]:

I'm using this as like a really rudimentary example, but that way if there's an extra drawer, extra shelf, extra container, there's going to be you know, four birthdays for everybody going through the year. There's going to be Valentine's Day, there's going to be Easter baskets, there are going to be Christmas gifts. Like, there's always more stuff coming into the house, no matter how much I try to contain it. And so when we clean out a project or we cleaned out our garage this weekend too, if everything starts full, like every drawer is full, every shelf has something on it, then instantly, as soon as you get more things, it, like, the overflow process starts. And so it was like a real point of awareness for me to realize, like, we can't just have all of our surfaces clean. Like, we have to have space inside of our drawers. And I realize this is like such a consumer. I don't know.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:05:23]:

I feel like a little self conscious being, like, we have so much stuff. But you get my point. Like, if you're going to have order in your space, there's got to be space for more things to come in. Because you know it's going to. You just know it's going to. In this, like, world that we all live in, so. Or that we live in, at least. I have the giftiest mother in law.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:05:42]:

I have the giftiest mom. It's the most amazing thing that my kids are celebrated like this. But we have to have a place to put it. So that is one kind of cleanup hack. One empty shelf, one empty drawer, one empty container. Make sure when you're going through stuff kind of, I don't know, fall cleaning, you know, sprucing things up, getting everybody's clothes out of their closets that don't fit them anymore. Make sure there's space for those new belongings to come in. The other thing I do, I was not very fun this weekend.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:06:11]:

I'll like, own that. But sometimes I am fun and sometimes I am able to make cleanup fun. This weekend is not one of them, but when I am. You think about in our family, there's six people. Quincy doesn't count when it comes to cleanup. So there's five of us. If all of us work for an hour together, that's like five hours of like pickup, cleanup, et cetera. Like, play some loud music, have some popcorn at the end of it.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:06:37]:

Like, define an amount of time exactly when it's going to happen. Everybody does at the same time, like, make it fun. In those family cleanups, we get our house, like, ship shape again. When I'm not in a savage mode, it actually is. It can be fun and at the end have like a fun reward, play A game of Uno together or go outside and, you know, shoot baskets or. My girls love it when we're just outside with them blowing bubbles and playing volleyball with the older ones and just, like, hanging out, kind of reward everyone. That has been a way for me to not feel like, oh, my word, this is all on my shoulders. To keep things ship shape.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:07:14]:

And if you, like, live by yourself, make it fun for yourself, give yourself a very finite period of time. For 30 minutes, I'm going to do as fast as I can, and at the end, I'm going to, like, paint my fingernails or something. So those, like, contained compressed family cleanups are a great way for us to get a lot of progress when we need to be very efficient as a household because we're going a lot of directions. The kids are in school all day long. In the evenings, we're usually at, like, games and practices and all that kind of stuff. And that is a really helpful tool. The other thing I started doing, I think is very smart. I will try to put together an Instagram reel on this.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:07:51]:

Candidly, I'm like, I feel like super medium at those, and it takes me a long time, and then I get grumpy. So I'll try to do that, put it together, an Instagram reel on what this looks like. But my younger kids are often at games with us for the older, like, swim meets and volleyball games. And so I need something for them to do other than play on my phone. I'm not too good to let them play on my phone. That happens sometimes, but we don't always. I don't want to do that the whole time. So when they're not watching, which sometimes they don't want to, and when they're not just, like, playing under the greasy bleachers with friends, I have an activity bag that I take to games and practices, and that's in the car when we're driving around.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:08:32]:

But those activity bags get, like, really old, really fast. You know, they're like, I've already seen this toy. I've already seen this thing. I've already read this book. And so I have three bins in our laundry room that are filled with stuff that they don't have access to otherwise. So one bin is, like, coloring books and craft, like, little craft packages, markers, crayons that aren't broken, a thing of Crayola crayons. Like, literally still $1.39. Like, it's incredible.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:09:01]:

So one bin is crafty stuff, coloring stickers, that kind of stuff. One bin is, like, little figurines like, Quincy's super into cocoa melon right now. So I have this, like, little Ziploc bag of, like, the six cocomelon figurines. Little princesses, little Lego sets, little magnet things. Like, little things like that that, like, would be great for a church bag or a toy bag. Little puzzles. One box is that, and then the third box is books. Things, again, that's, like, not on their bookshelf all the time.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:09:33]:

And so at the beginning of the week, I literally just swap stuff out. I go to those three bins. I pull out, you know, maybe half of the bag from the week before. Maybe there was one thing they were, like, super jamming on. And I'll leave that in. And I replace a new coloring book. I put some new stickers in there. I might switch out the markers for crayons or some cool glitter pens or something like that.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:09:52]:

And then down the line. And then also Avi, like, put snacks and water bottles in there. Like, I stock those bins with, literally, gifts that we get. Like, things that come home from birthday parties, like, little favors, like Play doh. That kind of stuff. When they have their birthday, I'll, like, literally just, like, stash a couple of things back and put them in those bins because they kind of forget what they got. All came at the same time. That's a great way.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:10:19]:

Easter basket gifts, Valentine's Day gifts, or just, like, walking through the Clarence sticker aisle, like, at Target, I'll, like, pick up stuff. So it's not, like, a expensive thing to maintain at all. But that has been a lifesaver where the girls hardly even understand what's happening. But it keeps the bag fresh. It keeps me from scrambling. It keeps me from having just, like, literally a bag of used Kleenexes and, like, old stickers that, like, the play bags casually devolves to if I don't stay up with it. And it works really well. So if you're trying to figure out how to keep little ones or if you've got a lot of travel in between practices and stuff, this activity bag hack has been really helpful.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:11:03]:

And I feel like it's like, kind of a system where Sunday night, I unload the one from the week before. It takes, like, literally less than probably six minutes. Like, it's really fast at this point. And it's been a really great way to, like, use the stuff that we have, keep it fresh, keep the kids engaged and off my phone most of the time, some of the time. So, yes, And I'm beginning to set My mind on planning. And when you're like, in the world by yourself as a grownup, you get to think about, what do I want for my life this year? Which is still a good question to ask at this point where I have a lot of other people that depend on me. But one of the things I'm going to try to do this year is to first go and ask the people who are depending on me. So like Kyler, President of Element Three, Rachel, the CEO of Share your Genius, my husband, my kids, and ask the question, what do you most need of me this year? So that I am planning my own goals for myself in the context of what other people need from me.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:12:11]:

And that doesn't mean I'll say yes to all those things, but that to me is going to be a, I think a good hygiene practice especially. I'm just like, really aware as my girls get older. Aubrey's in high school now. Asking her what she needs from me is a really important part of our relationship. So she may say, like, I don't need anything from you, mom. Or it might be mom. On the mornings I have early morning practice. I really want a hot breakfast.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:12:39]:

I don't know what she's going to say, but asking her gives me a chance to serve her well. Like, my second one will probably say, mom, I really love it when you pack my lunch. Everybody in my house hates to pack lunches. But, you know, how do I create the capacity to give her? I think that makes her feel like I've taken care of her when I pack her lunch and she doesn't have to do it herself when she comes home after a long day of school and then practice or a game and still has homework. I think for her it's like one more thing she's trying to do. And she's trying to, like, she likes to eat really healthy. And so packing her lunch is part of managing that decision for herself. So I'm going to ask them, what do you need from me? And that is a new step for me in my goal planning.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:13:21]:

So I think that for you and your spouse, Junior and I have started to get in the habit. This is will be the second year, but we're going to go away together in November. And for us, that falls at a really good time of year because our teams a lot of time are in, like, deep planning mode. It's between seasons for our daughter who's in volleyball. So that November timeframe a little before Thanksgiving is a good season. And I really want us to hear one another well, on what do we need from each other? With what we see as coming up in our businesses, with the things that we personally want to get done, the places that we want to grow individually, where we see our family is going. So I don't know. As you're going into this season of planning, ask the people around you, what do you need from me for you to feel like I'm serving our relationship well? For you to feel like I'm serving my commitment well to you? I think when I think about planning, I'm more.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:14:15]:

I'm like, what are my dreams? What are the new things I want to do? What do I want to add to my plate? And maybe that's the other question to ask myself is what will I remove? I've actually kind of been in a season of removal right now, pruning, thinning the herd on the number of different things I've said yes to. Because I've realized whenever I say yes to, like, a new board or a new, like, mentoring relationship, it's a totally new group of people and totally new place that I need to go instead of it being, like, inside already, like the nucleus of places that I am. And that takes just more motion. And there was a season of my life where expand was very much the name of the game. I think it served my career really well. I think it served my personal growth really, really well. But right now, as of, I'm like, prime season of my kids needing me in a different way. What I mean by that is, like, logistically, I have to, like, drive to a volleyball game that's 45 minutes away.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:15:14]:

That starts at 5:15. Like, it's bananas. You know, that takes a lot of capacity in our family schedule, and I want to be able to be there for that stuff. And so getting. I think it's kind of a season of pruning so that I can be really present in a way that I won't regret for my family right now. So just some thoughts on planning. I'd be curious to know what that process looks like for you. I'm asking myself those questions.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:15:43]:

Where do I need to prune? What do the people and relationships that I'm in need from me in the coming year for me to do well by those relationships and commitments. So, anyway, life is so fun. Last thing I would say I'm working on is just my talk track to other people. When people ask me how things are going, I want to be honest, like, when things are hard. But also I'm aware of the way that we talk about things becomes our reality. So I say, like, we are, like, super busy, but it's all the things we've chosen. It's amazing. We have the four, like, most amazing kids.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:16:21]:

Our life is filled with lots of opportunities to do really cool things. And the challenge is fitting it all together in a way that is sustainable. But life is great. Another way of saying that that might come across even differently in my emotions is to be like, oh, my word. Like, things are so busy. I feel like we're running all over the place. Like, the girls are going in a thousand different directions. Like, that's the same story said with a very different energy behind it and coming from, like, a very different place.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:16:51]:

And I have found even the rehearsal of how do I really feel about my life? How I really feel about it is, like, this is excellent. Is it perfect? No, but it's excellent. And the way I talk about it will inform the way I feel about it. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not saying it, like, overcomes reality, but I'm just really aware of that. It's like, this is a grand life. This is so fun, has so much in it. There's four amazing kids who want to live a great big life just like their dad and I. And, you know, it's imperfect and we're doing our best and we're having a great time.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:17:30]:

We spent so much time listening to podcasts and reading books and all this stuff about having a baby. And then here we are, a two career family. There's just no guidebook for it. And there's not. And it's not for everybody. And it's not a perfect path. But remind yourself that nothing is perfect. No path is perfect.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:17:49]:

This is the one you've chosen, and it's our job to make it the best we possibly can every single day. Thanks for listening.

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Tiffany Sauder [00:17:57]:

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 [00:18:06]:

I will.