Who is your (un)Balanced Character?

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:00]:

I like to think I am the best version of Tiffany. When I am balanced, when I have the discipline to get up and pursue what I need for myself, my Bible study, my personal time for my body movement, getting prepped for the week. I'm like available for the family and I'm present and I'm not grumpy and all these kinds of things. And the same thing for my business and the same thing for my family when I'm able to feed them literally and figuratively. And I feel like those relationships are in a good place. I have the most to give the world around me when I am living inside of that life of ant.

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:33]:

I'm a small town kid born with a big city spirit. I choose to play a lot of.

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:38]:

Awesome roles in life.

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:39]:

Mom, wife, entrepreneur, CEO, board member, investor, and mentor. 17 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. Im Tiffany Souder and this is Scared Confident.

Tiffany Sauder [00:01:15]:

So right now on the podcast were talking about this word balance. If you did not listen to the episode right before this one, I talked in some depth about my own discovery for the definition of balance that gave me a proactive control over this being a permanent part of my life. And I was not reacting to oh my word, life is so out of balance. I'm so overwhelmed. I feel so guilty, like I was just done with that. And so I needed to create a formula and a way of being able to measure myself and hold myself accountable to living this life in balance. So if you haven't already, go listen to that episode. Because I talk in a lot of detail about what life looks like in balance and what happens when you end up in a different quadrant and you feel guilty, you feel reactive, or you just feel bored in your life.

Tiffany Sauder [00:02:03]:

So if you're in one of those places not in balance, but rather guilty, reactive or bored, go listen to the other episode and there's some tools and definitions I think will help you. But let's keep digging into this idea of balance. So I talk about this life of and and to me that is sustainably living in such a way where the three areas of my life, personal, career and family are being fulfilled. Fed let's use that word in a way that feels really sustainable and who I want to become as a human being, myself, my fitness, my growth, my friendships, my spiritual time, my relationships. Like feed me, that is, self. So those things are getting done in such a way that it's sustainable and I feel available and free and ready for my life. The second circle then is family. And this can be like, in my world, it's like my nuclear family.

Tiffany Sauder [00:03:03]:

It's very much defined by my husband. My marriage sits in this circle. My kids, my mom, my extended family, my parents, my siblings family and some people. That is like a different definition of family. But what I mean is, like your primary relationships that are important for you to feed, to be able to keep centered and feel like you have a tribe, you have support. These are relationships that are important to you and feed you. So that's family. And then the third circle is career.

Tiffany Sauder [00:03:33]:

So think of this as like a Venn diagram, quite literally, self, family and career. So the third circle is career. And what I mean by career, like, for me, again, that's like literally career. I go and do a thing that ideally pays me, but it could be a volunteer pursuit. It could be going to the school and working in the library. It could be pto, it could be work inside of your church, a Bible study that you lead. It's anything that is like enterprising, using your gifts and talents for something outside of you. It's not serving yourself, and it's not feeding your primary relationships.

Tiffany Sauder [00:04:05]:

It's feeding something else, like another pursuit. And I just call that career. It works for me. And this is my podcast, so I get to go what I want. So yourself, your family and career in the middle of those, where those three things overlap, that is your life of, and that is where we want to live. Where those three areas, self, family and career, are being fed, and they're being fed in such a way that our minimums are being met. It's sustainable. We're not in this, like, glut and famine seasons in our lives.

Tiffany Sauder [00:04:35]:

It's like, look, I've made choices. I'm managing those choices. I'm living in balance. I'm living inside of my life at hand. That's where we want to get to. In the last episode I talked about, my definition of balance is when your priorities and your values are fully aligned in your decisions, your commitments, and the things that are getting your time. So inside of that life of Anne, that's where your balance lives. The things that you've decided.

Tiffany Sauder [00:04:59]:

What are your priorities for yourself, your priorities for your family, and your priorities for your career. But what happens when we get out of balance, who do we become? And I've spent a lot of time thinking about that, too. Who do we become? What version of ourselves shows up when we are not living inside our life of ant? I like to think I am the best version of Tiffany. When I am balanced, when I have the discipline to get up and pursue what I need for myself, my Bible study, my personal time for my body movement, getting prepped for the week. I love to cook, and so I'm able to kind of scratch that. It's like when I'm able to do that, I'm, like, available for the family and I'm present and I'm not grumpy and all these kinds of things, and the same thing for my business and same thing for my family, when I'm able to feed them literally and figuratively, and I feel like those relationships are in a good place. I have the most to give the world around me when I am living inside of that life of hand. But I started to think, and if you're listening to this on podcasts, there's going to be a link in show notes you can download called where is your balance? There's a download.

Tiffany Sauder [00:06:04]:

You can look at it as I'm talking through this, or if you want to go look at the video, the YouTube version of this episode. And our videographers have brought this graphic onto the screen while I'm talking through it so that you can watch it while I'm speaking it. So imagine a Venn diagram with these three circles, self, career, and family. And in the very center where they all overlap, that is your life of and but like in every good Venn diagram, there are places where only two of the circles are present. And so what happens when we lose hold of our life? Of and our place where all three are present and we slip into just one of them? And my observation is that we have a tendency normally to fall into one of these three areas when we don't actively work towards our life of Anne. So let me give you a quick example. When self and career are present only you're good at prioritizing yourself. You get your workout in meditation, whatever the thing is, your ag one grains and your job, your career, the thing external to you when only those two things are being fed.

Tiffany Sauder [00:07:08]:

That little area of overlap I call the lonely achiever, where you most naturally lose connection with your spouse or the family or connecting into, like, what's going on back at home. And so that quadrant is called the lonely achiever, where we drift into this area where we tend to ourselves well, and we tend to our external pursuits, but we don't do as good of a job as naturally pouring into our family and staying connected that way. The second area is where you're really good at your career, your job, your to dos those things you're pursuing, and you're good at serving the people around you, your family, your kids, your husbands, helping your mom, whatever that looks like. In that area where just those two things are fed and you're not serving yourself, that area is called the grumpy servant, where everything external to you is getting done and you feel like the Sahara desert. I'm out here. I'm doing all these things, and I don't have time for myself, and I don't have time to work out, and I don't have time to eat well, and it's just you become this grumpy servant. I call this the unbalanced characters. Who do you become? And this is me when I am, like, doing all the external things because I'm very good at the list.

Tiffany Sauder [00:08:19]:

I love a task. I love to get stuff done. I turn into this psychopath. It's like this grumpy servant. It's like a caricature of myself. It's not really who I want to be. It's not how I want to show up for my kids. It's not how I want to show up in my marriage.

Tiffany Sauder [00:08:32]:

I don't want to do my responsibilities reluctantly, like, that's not who I want to be. I'm not a victim to my life. I can act that way when I get to this place where I have lost hold of making sure I need to do for myself what I need so that I stay full, so I can give well in these other areas of my life. So that area, when you only serve your career, your external pursuits, and your family, that's called the grumpy servant. And the third area where the two circles overlap, where our family and self are, only those two are present. And this is called the fearful loyalist. I call this unbalanced character the fearful loyalist. I find when I talk through this, that area gets the most.

Tiffany Sauder [00:09:11]:

Huh? What do you mean? What is that? What are you saying, Tiffany? But when I explain it, it makes sense to people. So, again, fearful loyalist is when you're good at serving yourself, you're good at taking care of what you need, exercising, eating well, whatever that is, like you feel well tended to. And you're good at serving your family, but are less confident with stepping into external pursuits of your gifts. It could be. I don't know what job to get. I feel really unfulfilled in my career, but I have fear when it comes to stepping out and trying new things or figuring out where my gifts would be well used or I've been home for a long time, and I get intimidated by thinking about going out and doing something that's bigger or in a different industry that I haven't been in before. And so this strong anchoring to, like, I know what I need to be centered, and I get so much gratification of serving my family, but there's, like, this emptiness, this fearfulness that comes with imagining going and doing something different or bigger or a divergence professionally or volunteer or whatever that looks like. There's this fear that really says, look, no, stay home, serve your family, take care of yourself.

Tiffany Sauder [00:10:24]:

Let the wild world be the wild world, and you just kind of stay anchored home and take care of yourself and serve your family. And that place in this fearful loyalist is not a good spot either. So the awesome thing about a life of ant is this is an abundant resource. Literally, there is room in the pool for everybody. All of us can live in such a way where our individual self is served, our career is served, and our family is served. It's figuring out to what intensity in this season of life and how do I define it in such a way that I can manage the commitments inside of those three areas so that it fits together to live a life of. And what I have found because this is focused on two career families and often juggling with a spouse, somebody at home, is that, like, for my husband and I, we have natural places that we slink into if we don't stay vigilant about this, mine is I can move into the grumpy servant. It's very easy for me.

Tiffany Sauder [00:11:20]:

I'm getting better and better at this with age, but it's very easy for me to, like, stay up till one in the morning and get all my tasks done and get my inbox cleared out, which I'm not as good at anymore. But it was like, get the tasks of the day ready, get to bed too late, not get as much sleep as I need, then I can't get up the next morning, and then I don't work out. And then all day long, I'm, like, annoyed with myself for not working out. And then I carry that and I'm like, oh. And then I just do all these tasks, and it starts to become begrudging because I didn't take time for myself. And so my husband has done an awesome job of being an agent for that. And like, at the beginning of the week, he'll be like, what mornings are you going to work out? What mornings is he going to work out? And how do we be a team and encourage each other in this? Because he is very good at taking time for himself. And when he helps me make sure that I am fighting for time for me, he helps me stay inside of my life of and he helps me move up into the, I'm tending to all three circles area of the graphic instead of me just being, I'm serving everybody external to myself.

Tiffany Sauder [00:12:22]:

And I can be an agent for him because he oftentimes, left to his own devices, ends up in the lonely achiever part of it again. He loves us, he loves our girls, he's such a good dad. But the fact of the matter is, he travels a lot. He's in and out of the household more than I am. And if I am not helpful in being an agent for him and connecting into the family and scheduling family dinners and sometimes telling the girls, no, you can't go to a friend's house because dad is going to be home, I need to help facilitate that family circle for him so that he can stay inside of a life of hand, be connected to all of us, be thoughtful about getting ahead of things so that we all have time with him. This was a total unlock for us in our relationship of I don't need to get pissed at him that he's getting up and working out and I don't have time to, if you would help me with things around the house, and I would have time to work out too, like, oh my word, that is not how I want our relationship to, like digress into that kind of interaction. It's not productive for anybody. And when I started to see, it's not that he is working out instead of me, it's that he is better at prioritizing himself than I am at prioritizing myself.

Tiffany Sauder [00:13:35]:

And so if I can learn from that, if I can, like draft behind that, if I can say, hey, why don't we wake up a half hour early and both go on a run together? It holds me accountable. And his natural tendencies help me stay inside of my life, of ant. I don't need to be mad at him for doing things that I don't have time to do. I can draft behind him on that and the same thing for him, I can help him stay inside of that family circle so that he can stay inside of his life at the end. I am desperately hoping that this comes across in this podcast, this framework, because it was a total unlock for me when I started to grumpy, to say, I am in my unbalanced character right now. I am acting like a brat. I'm like, throwing my emotions around in a way that is not how I want to show up for our family. It's not how I want to interact with the girls.

Tiffany Sauder [00:14:27]:

It's not the tone I want to set in the evening. How do I stop that? And now I know when I'm acting like a grumpy servant, the only way to get me out of it is for me to say I am not prioritizing myself. I have to make time to do that. When I do that, I'm inside of my life of and. And that unbalanced character goes away. And I don't have to be the grumpy servant because I know I'm fed in all three areas of my life when I do that and hang on to it. So if you've been listening for a hot minute, you know that I talk about minimums as well. I'm not going to go into deep dive into that, but this is where minimums serve you so, so well.

Tiffany Sauder [00:15:05]:

Creating minimums for yourself inside of each of these areas, but especially in the area where you most naturally, like, kind of give it back to the world, you have to fight harder for it. It takes more discipline. It takes more intensity. It takes more focus. It takes more intention to keep that circle in your life so that you're fully inside of that life of and inside of the center. So here's your to do. What is your unbalanced character when you're out of balance, when you're not inside your life of and when you're reacting to life and you're just showing up your unbalanced character, are you a lonely achiever? Are you a grumpy servant? Or are you a fearful loyalist? Where do you end up? I've heard people say that they have been in each of those quadrants at different season of their lives. For me, I'm like a full time grumpy servant.

Tiffany Sauder [00:15:57]:

It's kind of the one that I just have the most relationship with. So it might be in a different season of your life and then also have your spouse explain this to them and have them pinpoint themselves. Where are they at? What's their unbalanced character? And this unbalanced character is not like a personality test where it is baked into who you are. This is something that you can decide to un become. But knowing this is who I become, this is how I behave. This is what happens inside of my head when I lose track of that third quadrant, I think, is a very, very powerful tool, a very quick self awareness that then you can turn into very instant action of, what do I have to do to get that third quadrant into my life? And the bonus is, how do you have your spouse be an agent for that? And this vocabulary be something that is, you have permission to use with one another. If I'm acting like a grumpy servant, I want Junior to say that to me, you're a full grumpy servant right now. You need to go on a run, or you are full grumpy servant right now.

Tiffany Sauder [00:16:56]:

We've got to make sure that you work out tomorrow morning, get to bed early tonight. That's okay. There's all green lights on that. I want that to be part of our relationship. I want to be held accountable for that. And I think we need people who love us, who are willing to help us stay in the center line inside of this great, big, crazy life that we're all trying to do. So what is your unbalanced character? This does not have to be who you are. Having awareness of it, I think, can help you quickly undo this Persona that we become when we're out of balance and we feel like life is running us instead of us running our lives.

Tiffany Sauder [00:17:30]:

As always, thank you for listening in on this journey. I want to encourage you that this life of and this pursuit of challenge in all areas of your lives is not an easy one, but it is, in fact, very, very worth it. So thanks for listening in. Appreciate it.

Tiffany Sauder [00:17:47]:

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.

Tiffany Sauder [00:17:56]:

I will.

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