Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 76 | How Do We Establish Rhythms in a Season of Constant Change?

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Ep. 76 | How Do We Establish Rhythms in a Season of Constant Change? · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  It's really, really helpful to know what your ideal week is, even when it's getting blown up a lot. Hey guys, welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Bethke, along with my friend and mentor, Jeremy Pryor. Join us Monday through Friday as we chat about quick tips, skills, and ways to help equip you on your journey as a father to build your multi-generational family team on mission. Stay tuned.
• 0:31
  What's up, guys? Welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood. We got a great question in our community called Homeroom, and it was, how do we establish rhythms in a season of life where the last year and looking forward to the next couple will be continually filled with change? Careers, moving, same city but new housing, relationship changes, adding kids through foster care and parenting.
• 0:53
  the lifelong project of coaching. So this is a real problem that a lot of people face is they go through huge transitions. And what we're really focused on right now with Homeroom is how do we establish rhythms? And a lot of times people can wait to establish rhythms until life is peaceful, predictable, stable. And I would really encourage you guys to not wait until life is perfect before you establish... Because you won't ever... Life's never stable.
• 1:22
  There's also another really cool reality to, when you think about rhythms, it starts with us with, you're trying to craft your ideal week. And when life is changing, it's really, really helpful to know what your ideal week is, even when it's getting blown up a lot. Yeah.
• 1:39
  You know where you're headed and you know what to go back to. And one of the things that we've learned, if you want to create a lot of stability through seasons of change, is what you want to get really skilled at as a family is moving from a chaotic season right back into that ideal weekly rhythm. And by the way, when we say ideal, it takes a lifetime time.
• 1:58
  to learn to live an ideal week. And so we're not saying you should craft a rhythm and it should be ideal tomorrow. We're saying that you should make a pursuit of your life the design of an ideal week, and then you kind of move your life into that trajectory. And a lot of people get discouraged quickly because often, especially in seasons of change, they're not experiencing that ideal week.
• 2:20
  But it's really important to know what it is, know where you're headed, and know what you can get back to when life begins to get a little bit more stable. So I really feel like this sort of creates an anchor in your life to know what your ideal week is. And when you're experiencing all that change, to begin to attempt to maintain some semblance of that ideal week—
• 2:43
  but then quickly moving back into it as soon as you have a stable week. We have experienced a lot when we would travel. We would travel for a bit. And then as soon as we got home, instead of just sort of like, a lot of times what we used to do was sort of almost restart the whole rhythm conversation. And it would take months to get back to anything like stability. And we said, we can't keep doing that if we're traveling a lot. So what we began to do is as soon as we got off of a season of change, the next week, literally, we'd be back into our normal, ideal rhythm.
• 3:12
  That was so much more healthy and it helped anchor us through those changes and allowed us to get through those changes and even embrace a lot of those crazy seasons better. Totally, totally. And a couple of things I'll say right there is that that word anchoring, I think, is most important. It's like if you don't anchor yourself, you will fly away. Like you literally like change is best metaphor pictured as like a storm or as just like wind blowing really fast. That's because you're moving and you're changing. And if you're not anchored in that, right, like in here in Hawaii, we have crazy winds sometimes.
• 3:40
  And so everyone always has those umbrellas out in their yard with, you know, for shade, but everyone else has to have a huge weight at the bottom of it, you know, like a huge 25 or 50 pound weight, or at least they have the ones that are already weighted so that it doesn't blow away when the umbrella gets crazy. And I think a lot of us with a lot of change, it's almost like we're changing umbrellas like, Oh, I want a blue one now. I want a yellow one now. And that's fine, but you have to make sure that you're always having the weight on the weight is the sustaining variable. Like that, that holds the umbrella.
• 4:05
  down so that you can actually live in it and you can be anchored in it. You can have shade. So I think that's important. And then two quick tips I'll say is, um, kind of, I feel like the way I like to think about it in small bursts when it's, when it is crazy is what's my bare minimum. What's my bare minimum that re that's going to give me the most meaning.
• 4:21
  and the most anchoring for maybe, you know, but like still is the easiest to apply in crazy seasons. And so that's for us, like you said, is similar with travel. So that's not always travel to other people, but for us it was travel. And so then the thing we would do still is like a kind of a pseudo Shabbat where we didn't do this crazy, you know, big dinner, but the ritual still is really fun to like, Hey, can we find a candle somewhere just for dinner Friday night? Can we, you know, can we sing a song? Can we do that? Can we, can we get up and just do one family activity Saturday if we're
• 4:49
  Even if I'm speaking that night, like, and it just does something or just pulls you down and feels like, oh, this is just who I am. This is just my week. Just because I'm in a different place doesn't mean it's not true. And then that, and then there is small seasons where I think you not for lack of a better term, uh, kind of can throw it all out the window. And what I mean by that is like once every two years, me and Alyssa are usually launching a book.
• 5:10
  And those are kind of insane where you have to just say yes and go everywhere, go to every city, say yes to every podcast, every media for about three to four weeks. And so for us, we very much say like, okay, everything's off for that kind of three to four weeks. We'll keep the baseline semblance of sanity as much as we can, but we give ourselves grace of like, hey, that's three weeks about every two years.
• 5:32
  Um, and the cool part is I know that that, and like you said, and then we just pop right back into it. And for us, there's something about that that just feels like you kind of just do it and you just kind of move on and your body just kind of locks back into place, you know? Um, and so that's what I would say is like, you can give yourself grace, you can have some kind of seasons, but I wouldn't say those should go more than maybe, you know, four to six weeks, anything more than that. And I feel like you start kind of messing with, um, your actual, um,
• 5:57
  physiology, right? That you start almost changing your rhythm into a chaotic one. And so I would say, yeah, definitely give yourself grace, but also anchor yourself, whatever it takes to anchor yourself in small ways that you can do, even in crazy seasons of change is probably the best thing you can do.
• 6:13
  And if you guys are not familiar with this idea of crafting a rhythm, Jeff and Alyssa and April and I created a course called The 7-Day Family, which walks you through the steps to create an ideal week, how to create a day of rest. It has a lot of details there. So check that out at familyteams.com.
• 6:33
  Hey guys, one of our favorite places to hang out on is the family team's Instagram. That is where you will find tips, quotes, tricks, and a bunch of other conversational things to help you build your family team on mission. If you're on Instagram and you want to get encouragement as you do this and build your family team, just head over to Instagram and follow us at familyteams.com.