Latest / The Rooted Family / Ep 21 | How the Right Rhythms Create Freedom (Even in a Busy Family)
Transcript
- Christian Cornish: Can I ask you something? When was the last time you actually felt at peace? Not just productive, not just caught up, but settled. Because most of us aren't lacking desire for a slower, deeper life, we're just stuck in the busyness that keeps us rushing right past it. Well, hey friends. Welcome back to the Rooted Family Podcasts, episode 21. And today's episode is good timing because it is Independence Day this weekend. If you are a USA listener. Merca. Merca, go America, 4th of July, and we're talking about freedom, but in a way that you may not expect. We like to do the unexpected. We really do. So maybe the question isn't how do I get more freedom? Maybe the better question is what rhythms would create more freedom in my life? And remember, this isn't about filling your calendar with more things to do. It's actually about removing unnecessary decisions. So you have more energy for the people and priorities that matter most. So this week we want to leave you with one simple challenge. That's why we created the Slow and Savor Society. It's a snail mail club. Yes, it comes straight to your mailbox. It's a simple, tangible way to slow down each month with a piece of art, a cozy recipe, and a letter designed to help you reconnect with what actually ⁓ God, with your family, and with your own soul. if your life has felt full, Think about one area of your life that feels harder than it should. Maybe it's dinner. Maybe it's morning. Maybe it's laundry. For me, it's kids' bedtime. And ask yourself, what rhythm could make that easier? Don't try to overhaul your whole life. Just start with one rhythm. And if meal planning is one of those areas for you, we'd love to help. So happy Fourth of July to all of our American friends. And I hope that you are having some really fun plans to maybe have some cookouts or go to a parade. Yeah. Maybe see some fireworks. What are some of your favorite things to do on Fourth of July? Well, I just love taking the kids to the fireworks and just having, you know, 75% of them scream their heads off. And we leave after Our free six week meal plan reset was designed to remove one of the biggest daily decisions parents make. And so we'll put that link to sign up for that meal plan reset in today's show notes down below. And next week, we're taking this conversation one step further because sometimes the problem isn't that you don't have rhythms, it's that the rhythms that used to work don't work anymore. So we're gonna invite you into a real conversation as we workshop. but not meaningful. This is your invitation to begin again. You can learn more or join us at legacyrootsco.com slash Mel Club. And right now, if you use Code Podcast, you'll get 50 % off your first month so you can try it out. Now back to the episode. The first ⁓ firework. That's pretty fun. I think we've only tried like seven or eight times before you finally kind of came to grips with this. Like we're just not we're not a fireworks family at this point of our family life, our family stage. I think that is the majority of my memories of the fourth of July. Our kids screaming bloody murder. Now like me saying, you know, I don't know if we should go this close or I don't know and you're like, Let's go closer and then everybody's like One of our family rhythms that's been creating a lot of frustration lately. And we'll show you exactly how we think through and make adjustments for a new season. So until then, remember, freedom isn't the absence of structure. Freedom is having rhythms that support the life you want to live. Just very young and scared and unsure of what's happening and it ends up usually being like a daddy daughter, like the oldest two will go with you, and then I'll stay home with the littles and go to bed early. So that's our fourth of July. It won't always be this way. No, it won't. And I that leads us really well into talking about chaos in the home, ⁓ because Yeah, you might have chaos on Fourth of July during fireworks, but there is definitely a real at home in the life where we can almost live in constant chaos and not really know how to even get out of it. ⁓ it kind feels like this hamster wheel that we're all trapped into ⁓ and there's just way out of it. Yeah, and I think most people think freedom means, you know, having no schedule, no obligations. Maybe I have all the money I need in the bank to make all the choices I want. I never have to work for the man ever again. No structure. But I think we're actually finding in life that the opposite is true. Mm-hmm. That we thrive in structure. Yeah, actually the most stressed and overwhelmed and reactive seasons of our own Marriage and our own life were often the seasons where we had the least amount of rhythms. And so it's not even a money thing. It really comes down to like you could have all the money in the world, but if you don't have intentionality with your time, you can still be living a very chaotic life that lacks peace. And so today we're talking about why rhythms create freedom. And if you're listening and you have some feedback for us, you have a comment, you want to share your thoughts, we'd love to hear them. So make sure you leave a review or get in the comments on your platform, especially if you're on Spotify ⁓ and share what you liked about it and What you didn't like about it. Yeah, I love that. I would love to hear from you all. So before we talk about freedom, let's talk about what life feels like without rhythms. when we use the word rhythm, if you've been here for even a hot minute, you know that rhythms is our way of talking about routines. But we use the word rhythm because we feel like there's a lot more grace in rhythm. ⁓ essentially, we're talking about just different systems and routines in your home. So what does it look like when a family couple or just an individual ⁓ have intentional ⁓ built into their ⁓ I think for one, ⁓ see a lot ⁓ people struggling with decision fatigue on ⁓ daily not hourly basis. ⁓ yeah. Let me tell you what decision fatigue looks like for me. Usually it manifests when I'm making dinner. Like I have to make dinner that night. And, you're like, hey, I've gotta go somewhere. Here's a couple of items that I plan for you to have, but it's not the complete yeah picture ⁓ and I gotta go ⁓ you're out of here. I'm left tired because I've just been working. so I'm mentally exhausted usually. I've probably been bombarded all day on and off by children, which happens just every day. ⁓ now I'm in the kitchen ⁓ I am hangry. I am trying to figure out what to make. But you're not really trying to figure it out because I've given you a plan. But you're trying to figure out The plan. yeah. Like where ⁓ where is the What item am I going to make first? all of that stuff. And then I have every kid coming in at me saying multiple times, Dad, I'm hungry. Dad, I'm hungry. ⁓ I'm just trying to get this done. and then instead of being like, Hey, why don't you hang out with me, team? this will be fun. let's do this together. I'm usually like, Y'all need to go away, go outside, leave me alone. I do not have patience for any of this right now. I'm just trying to get dinner done. And this is with a plan. Yeah, that could totally happen with a plan. Can you imagine what it would be like if you hadn't if you had no plan? Well, there'd be a lot of grounded children. For probably not even their fault. I know. I'm just saying I think we lose it as parents for real on our kids when it's literally not even their fault because we don't have a plan. And I'll be honest, like sometimes I'm just stressed out and I've had no time to decompress. And so ⁓ everybody's just ⁓ dealing with me feeling stressed out. ⁓ And that's ⁓ fault. ⁓ And they don't deserve that either. So I'm not as pleasant to be around. I'm not enjoyable. Uhhuh. but my deepest desire ⁓ is to be, best, most joyful self and to want the kids ⁓ to hang out and talk help out and do something together and just make it more fun. but man, when I've had decision fatigue build up over the whole day. Uhhuh. ⁓ Sometimes you just have nothing left. ⁓ I think that's really ⁓ the hard part when you don't have a solid rhythm in place is you're forcing yourself To just make that exact same decision again and again and again. And it it simply just burns us out. Yeah. I mean so tired. Go back to the meal example. That's a dinner time. If that's the third meal I've had to plan, make decisions for, think about, figure out. You're just not gonna want to deal with it. ⁓ huh. ⁓ Yeah, it's true. other things that lack we don't have rhythms ⁓ is we ⁓ are feeling behind. it's like feeling of being on a hamster wheel, always trying to get caught up instead of the rhythm being more the proactive thing we put in place to help us stay Ahead. Yeah. And we also teach to have some margin built in. And you will never get out of the hamster wheel if you don't have any margin to catch up. Uh-huh. You need time and energy and capacity to get caught up. ⁓ then you're always going to need some margin to stay caught up. If you don't, the moment something falls behind, the rest of the day falls behind. And we all know what that feels like. And that is a very stressful place to be. Yeah. Probably most people listening to this podcast right now, are not getting the eight to nine hours of recommended sleep. ⁓ most of us are parents of young children. My life would be better if there were not recommendations. ⁓ then I wouldn't have something to compare against and I wouldn't feel bad about it. ⁓ ⁓ the scientific study says that we're supposed to get eight to nine hours of sleep a night to be fully functioning humans. ⁓ ⁓ just want to kick that person out at home. you're like you can take your study and go shove it. most of are not getting the recommended sleep. So if you think about even just the concept of getting sleep deprived, your body ⁓ needs like a weekend to just caught back up. And I think most of us are living that way in general is that we feel so behind in our laundry. We feel behind in making our baby picture albums, we feel behind and, you know, all these different little things that kind of catch up with parenting. And then we have no margin to get up or to get caught up even on sleep. And so we're just living these like exhausted lives. But rhythms, really do ⁓ us to intentionally out the things that we want in our life. Yeah. I think when we don't have those things, we might, for example, pray sometimes, but we might not pray consistently. Or you might read your Bible once in a while, but you don't read it consistently. Or, you know, you might work out and start posting on Facebook, I worked out today. Yay, let's do a challenge. But you don't consistently just have that ingrained in your routine or who you are. Totally. I mean there's so many examples. Sabbath, meal planning. There's so many things I hear people say, ⁓ I want to or I should or Yeah, you know, I've done it a couple times lately, but I'm still struggling to do it consistently. ⁓ And rhythms ⁓ the way can build them consistently in our life. Well, let's be real, consistency is not exciting. It is very boring. But if you think about the things we all deeply want the most in life, the very basic answer is consistency. Yeah, and our world is doing everything ⁓ can to rip our consistency apart. Totally. Telling us we need to do this. We need to be here. There is this exciting thing. Watch this new thing. ⁓ it's all about Diverting your consistency. Yeah. Our attention is just constantly pulled everywhere. I am curious to know what area of life do you feel like tends to suffer first ⁓ when ⁓ our family is operating more ⁓ reactively ⁓ than with rhythms place. What do you feel like is area we suffer first? ⁓ I think from we as a family standpoint, I think we begin to not give our children the attention they need. certain ones will get it probably because they're up or causing, you know, a ruckus. so that's negative attention. and I think rhythms give us a good opportunity to have positive attention of just spend time with me. do this with me. let's hang out and do the certain thing as a family. But those things tend to get pushed behind because, ⁓ we to spend all day cooking or, cleaning up or whatever the task is. the quality time we want to have as a family tends to disappear because it gets sucked up in everything else. And it's not too different for me ⁓ personally. And I'd be curious to hear this for you too. I think for me it's like, okay, I really need to exercise to feel like my self. I feel unhealthy and like a slouch by the end of the week. So then it kind of affects everything else. So things like my exercise tend to go because I don't have time for it. So I have to give that up. spending quality time with you ⁓ tends go, It's just so late at night by the time we go to bed, we're just exhausted and passing out. I think it's some things around my own health, like remembering to take my ⁓ supplements or vitamins or things that actually energize me and help give me energy are gone Because you just go into survival mode, I think is the best way to put it. yeah, true. ⁓ It's almost like if you don't decide the rhythms for your life, your circumstances will eventually decide for you. ⁓ That's such a true statement. I think you're so right. Yeah, it's the reality that we all face that ⁓ on the surface might seem restrictive, but actually they really do bring freedom. create freedom. And so when people hear the word rhythm, actually talked about this in other episodes about how rhythms can feel very restrictive for some personality types that are very loosey-goosey, ⁓ more of the creatives ⁓ ⁓ of the people that just really ⁓ more free spirited personalities. I think the idea of having rhythms and routines in place definitely feels like they're putting themselves in prison. ⁓ I think you said it earlier in a really good way, but yeah, they don't feel fun or they don't sound like they're going to be fun. Yeah. I think is the right way to put it. 'Cause I remember, you know, we were more free spirited in college in the sense of, ⁓ well, I could study now or I could I guess I'll just study later and go hang out with a friend ⁓ or, know, go to this event somebody just comes up and says, Hey, you want to hang out? And that feels really fun. You can choose that in the moment. But as adults, we don't have that of freedom. ⁓ in fact, we start to realize ⁓ consequences of those, fully free spirited decisions, become really weighty. Yeah. ⁓ at some point the the laundry has to get done. Now you have to do laundry and you're up till one AM ⁓ Yeah washing and folding your laundry because you ran of underwear for everyone in the family. ⁓ I don't know. But the consequences are heavier. Yeah. it's like we have as adults, these responsibilities that Don't just disappear because we ignore them. just because we don't have an intentional laundry rhythm in place doesn't mean you'll never have to do laundry. And same thing for food. just because you might not be intentionally meal planning right now doesn't mean you're not feeding yourself or feeding your family. You have to still do these things. ⁓ But you have a rhythm or not will determine how peaceful it is. And if gonna actually be efficient. ⁓ I don't know about you as a listener, but I know for me, I definitely want to be efficient because I know that the more efficient I can be, ⁓ more time freedom I'm gonna have for the things I actually want to do. Yeah, I love what John Deloney has to say about this. his analogy is getting under the squat rack of responsibility. Like that's what it means to grow up. And if you think about if you're at the squat rack, you have the barbell on you, you're getting stronger by putting that on your back and by doing the reps. ⁓ that's what adulthood is. that's hard because in our society, people are trying to not step up to the rack all the time. Yeah. And get out of it. Right. But the truth is you want to be stronger. You want to be. Faster. You want to be your best self. And so you've got to put in the work. ⁓ And I think there's really beautiful to that analogy because if you actually are in the world of working out, the more you do it, the more fun it is. ⁓ And the more you want to. And the more you want to. It feels cruddy when you're not. Yeah. And so there's something to be gained there. That only happens on the other side of actually having a rhythm in place and sticking with it. Yeah. And you know, it's funny how many people ask us or make comment like, I just don't know how you do it all. And it always back ⁓ this subject for us. ⁓ literally could not do we do running a business, businesses. you know, it's how many people ask us or ⁓ make the comment like, I just don't know how you do it all. And it always comes back to ⁓ subject us. ⁓ We literally could not do what we do running multiple businesses. feeding and growing and discipling a big family. ⁓ mean, there's so many moving parts to our life that people from the outside, I think, could very well be like, they must be the most ⁓ people on the planet. But it doesn't feel like that because we have become so efficient in our adult responsibilities, like the things that we just have to do on a daily basis to maintain this home and maintain our life. feeding and growing and discipling a big family. ⁓ mean, there's so many moving parts to our life that people from the outside, I think, could very well be like, they must be the most ⁓ people on the planet. But it doesn't feel like that because we have become so efficient in our adult responsibilities, like the things that we just have to do on a daily basis to maintain this home and maintain our life. That we actually do, surprisingly, have margin and white space and so much fun, ⁓ because we're ⁓ using our energy on a daily basis to make the same decision ⁓ over and and over again. ⁓ Rhythms free your emotional energy, they free up your family capacity. ⁓ That we actually do, surprisingly, have margin and white space and so much fun, time for fun, because we're not using our mental energy on a daily basis to make the same decision over and over and over again. Rhythms free up your energy, they free up your family capacity. ⁓ They free up your time in such a big way. You won't even know it until you start living this way. You ⁓ be surprised at how much more you can actually do in life because rhythms you more efficient. They free up your time in such a big way. You won't even know it until you start living this way. You ⁓ be surprised at how much more you can actually do in life because rhythms you more efficient. And they also free up your attention. you're able to give your attention to the things that really matter. And they free you from giving your attention to the things that just don't. Yeah, we don't realize, scientifically, how difficult it is to switch your attention because we do it all day long. Yeah. Like you can go from working to checking your phone to checking Instagram to back to working to ⁓ to the bathroom to, ⁓ somebody's talking. Well, multitasking is a big fat myth. Right. It is actually not true. You cannot ⁓ legit focus on two things at one what is that study? It's very interesting. They say that if you get distracted from ⁓ doing something, ⁓ it literally takes your brain 20 minutes to refocus to get back into that. Deep thinking process. And so if we don't have rhythms in place, but we're trying to do a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a little bit of that, we are essentially creating ⁓ chaos for brain. And you can see it on these families. Families who don't live with rhythms, who live by just flying by the seat of their pants, there's this ⁓ long exhaustion. You can even see it in how people talk. I've noticed families who live without rhythms, without some sort of structure. Even how they talk is kind of fast. It's really fast paced and chaotic. It almost resembles the fast paced, chaotic, unstructured lifestyle that they're living. Yeah, and you know, it's constantly moving on to the next thing, the conversation, moving on. when you're exhausted, you just kind of almost want to isolate too. we talk a lot about isolation in our culture ⁓ and the harm it's causing, but part of the reason we're isolating is because we're just so dang tired. Yeah, that's a great point. And when you're exhausted, you have no capacity. I mean, we talked about how hard it is to have capacity for your own children. ⁓ you don't have capacity for someone outside of your own family. we've talked about, know, rhythms of community ⁓ and how intentional that you have to be. Yeah. Well, if don't have energy to put into that, understandably you'll probably start isolating. Mm-hmm. ⁓ Yeah, so it's almost like if you can't get the basic of your home running like a well-oiled machine. This is why we actually talk a lot about the basics first. Nailing your meal planning rhythm, nailing your house cleaning rhythms, nailing your family connection rhythms. when you nail some of these basic core rhythms is what we would call them, ⁓ that opens you up to ⁓ more rhythms can bless your life and make your life more enjoyable, more ⁓ fruitful. just recently we have fallen in love with the sport pickleball. which ⁓ Chris I think excited about my excitement. ⁓ I am very I'm very excited. I've also created a monster. ⁓ What ⁓ just because want go play at 530 in the morning doesn't make me a monster. Okay. That's just when we can. Compared to ⁓ any other thing we've to do together That is like remarkable in itself. Absolutely. It's been fantastic though. Yeah, I so I bring this up because we have the capacity and we have the margin in our life. I mean, we don't have a lot of margin, but we have a little margin. And when you have efficiency and other ⁓ necessary rhythms, can make fun rhythms like a pickleball rhythm. And that's where life gets so fun with rhythms. Is that you get to schedule in, like I love having a watercolor rhythm where when the kids go down for nap time a couple days a week, I will watercolor for even 15 minutes. And so I just share that as a hope for you that maybe this idea of living rhythmically is so brand new to you. This feels so overwhelming. ⁓ But the thing is, you're so used to the That it's hard to imagine being so consistent with something. It does take discipline. It does take intentionality and a little bit of grit to stick with it. But I promise you, as someone who is living on the other side of implementing rhythms for the last decade, it does get easier with time. And eventually you'll look back and say, ⁓ my gosh, rhythms really did. give us so much more freedom than we've ever had before. I think the goal isn't to have any perfect rhythms. I think the goal is truly to help reduce unnecessary decision making. Thank you so much for being with us here on the Rooted Family podcast. We hope this episode blessed you and gave you ideas for your family. And we look forward to having you again soon. God bless America.