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Guest Miranda Anderson: Minimalism with Kids & Cultivating more Adventure {Episode 46}
99 Plays5 years ago
We're thrilled to present today's guest: blogger, podcaster, and now published author, Miranda Anderson! Miranda share some amazing wisdom with us about living an intentional, creative life by choosing adventures and an abundance mentality over the all-too-common and neverending search for MORE.
In this episode with Miranda Anderson, we pick her brain about how minimalism works with kids. She shares tips for helping kids declutter and making intentional choices about what to own. Then she gives ideas for adventures with kids and how to cultivate an adventure mindset. Finally, she advises about keeping a positive mindset when things go wrong.
Mentioned in this episode:
Miranda on Instagram
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Special Guest
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 46. Today we're super excited to have special guest Miranda Anderson with us and we're going to chat with her all about living a more creative, intentional and adventurous lifestyle with kids.
Hosts' Introduction and Podcast Mission
00:00:21
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumber the Podcast. I'm Bonnie. And I'm Audrey. And we're homeschooling moms to a combined total of 18 children. We know firsthand that motherhood is full of crazy chaos and overwhelming obligations, but it should also be full of love and laughter. Regardless of where you are on your journey, come join us as we work together to find joy in the chaos of motherhood.
Guest Introduction: Miranda Anderson
00:00:46
Speaker
All right, so we are super excited and a little awestruck to introduce you today to our guest. It's somebody we talk about all the time. We're so delighted to interview Miranda Anderson of Live Free Creative. Hi Miranda. Hello ladies, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for the invitation. Yeah, we're so excited to have you.
Funny Mom Moments
00:01:07
Speaker
Okay, so we'd like to start off with humor. Do you have a funny mom moment or something one of your kids said or something funny you can share with our listeners? Yes, I was so excited to see this question because just a couple days ago, I had one of those mom moments that I had to write down in my daughter's journal because I thought it was so funny.
00:01:27
Speaker
This was in the evening and the kids had been kind of winding down. We had already had dinner and we had already had dessert. And I think just because there happens to be a lot of treats around right now because of the upcoming holidays, there was extra chocolate somewhere. Now, I don't know if it was chocolate chips or if it was like a candy bar or something from the cupboard, but we had told everyone to brush their teeth and get ready for bed.
00:01:51
Speaker
And Dave and I went upstairs to change into our pajamas to help them come down and read stories and do our bedtime routine. And my daughter, Plum, who's five, came upstairs with her face covered in chocolate. And I was like, Plum, what have you been eating? And she said nothing. And I said, well, you have a little bit of chocolate on your face. Were you eating something chocolate? And she looked me straight in the eyes, this like,
00:02:17
Speaker
poker face and said, mom, Elliot was eating chocolate and he got some on my face. She's covered in chocolate. And I was like, oh my gosh, you are such a little liar.
00:02:35
Speaker
And I love that it didn't even occur to her that that was such a ridiculous excuse. Like, it's like the person of, you know, like when kids, you hear the story all the time. I think it's like a classic story of a kid writing their name on the wall and then trying to put it on the other brother, you know, or whatever. This was the same thing, but it was food on the face that I'm like, I don't think your brother eating chocolate is going to get it around your own mouth. So nice try. I'm always asking, when are you going to learn to write your brother's name?
00:03:05
Speaker
Like, what do you say you're gonna get it? Because if I write my name, I'm gonna get in trouble every time. Totally. So funny. So I loved it. I had to write it down in her journal because I thought that was so cute.
00:03:16
Speaker
Totally, totally. And then maybe a little chat about dishonesty, right? Yeah. Yeah, this is very clear who is eating chocolate and let's figure out where it came from and how we're going to hide it better next time, basically. Because you're a female and you have to learn how to hide chocolate. Exactly.
Miranda's Background and Career Transition
00:03:36
Speaker
I know. I need my only sta- my stash.
00:03:39
Speaker
Okay, so Audrey and I were actually just talking about how we quote your podcast all the time. So you're like an unofficial member of the Outnumbered podcast. Oh, hey, thank you. I appreciate that. But for listeners who are not familiar with us, can you tell us just a little bit about you and your family and what you do? Yeah, so I'm Miranda. My husband is Dave. We've been married for 13 years and we have a 10-year-old, an 8-year-old and a 5-year-old. My older two are boys and then I got my daughter and then we stopped.
00:04:06
Speaker
We have a dog and four chickens. We live in a little house in the city of Richmond, Virginia and just love our everyday life. I feel like the move, this last move, we've lived all over the country and this last move to Richmond kind of slowed our role a little bit in a good way. We downsized, we
00:04:25
Speaker
Dave's job, the reason we moved to Richmond was for a job that was a little bit less demanding than his previous jobs had been. The kids are all in school together. We walk to school, we're right in the city, so we get to kind of walk and bike and be involved in our local community in a way that we haven't ever when we've been in the suburbs.
00:04:42
Speaker
And we really love our day-to-day life. So my background is in nursing. I was a registered nurse and worked for a few years, five years as a registered nurse diabetes educator. So I focused on nutrition and exercise counseling, and at the same time started a blog. And I blogged as a hobby for many years, and then in 2014 turned my blog into my business and have worked as a blogger for
00:05:10
Speaker
I guess that's five years. And then last year started my podcast, and then this past July released my first book. And then just a couple months ago, I started doing some creative mentorship coaching as well. So right now, I think of myself more as a podcast host and author and coach. The blog has kind of taken a little bit of a back burner as I've been working on these other
00:05:37
Speaker
places to get out my message of intentional living and creative living. And it's been really fun to kind of have my toes in lots of different pots and realize what I like more than others. Yeah, you sound a lot like us. Let's try this for a while.
00:05:54
Speaker
It's a good way to live. I think experimentation is one of the foundations of creativity. And so being able to feel free to try. Yes. And it's neat to watch a woman with such confidence make pivots and turn and go to something else. It's like inspiring the rest of us that are watching. You're like, oh, hey, I could do that too.
00:06:14
Speaker
Well, that's really nice. Yeah, it's always scary to make changes and always scary to try new things that you haven't done before. And you kind of just have to rely on the idea, at least I rely on the idea that things either work out or they don't, but I have survived this far. And so I will at the very least continue to just survive. And, you know, it's nice to branch out and to see what you're capable of. So it's been really fun.
00:06:42
Speaker
Yeah, okay, so let's back up and talk about your book.
Inception of Miranda's Book on Minimalism
00:06:46
Speaker
Tell us about the why behind it, like how you got started, and also we want to know what's your favorite part of being a real, true, published author.
00:06:58
Speaker
Okay, good questions. So the book came as a result of this minimalism experiment that our family did. And the why behind the minimalism experiment was that I
00:07:13
Speaker
could not keep up with my own life. That probably sounds familiar to you all as mothers of many children who also have business endeavors and creative pursuits and all sorts of other things. After the birth of my third child, I found myself wanting to
00:07:30
Speaker
accomplish a lot and feeling like I just simply didn't have the time or energy. And so I started to really take a hard look at what things was I doing that mattered a lot and what things was I doing that mattered a little. And so I started to do these kind of little experiments here and there of
00:07:46
Speaker
minimizing, like for example, I recognize that I didn't want to spend very much time or energy thinking about my clothes. And so I tried what was called a capsule wardrobe, which has kind of gone up in trend and maybe now is the trend of capsule wardrobe is fizzling out a little bit, but I still am very much on board for it. This was minimizing my closet down to the essential like 40 or 50 pieces and then just mixing and matching and not spending any time shopping outside of
00:08:13
Speaker
like you know you kind of create this seasonal wardrobe and then you don't think about it again for like several months and that was new and different and felt very much like something that I could use to manage my own energy. I didn't have to make decisions about
00:08:30
Speaker
what new things to buy, when to buy them, how to get there, how to manage them. It decreased my laundry load, it decreased the amount of time that I spent dressing every day, and I started to feel more confident in my clothes than I had in years.
Consumerism and Finding Contentment
00:08:44
Speaker
All of these little things added up to this big aha moment at the beginning of 2017 when I was organizing my cabinets and realized
00:08:53
Speaker
Just again, I feel like we realize over and over again how much stuff we have in our lives and in our house and how we are stuff managers. I just thought, my goodness, I have so much stuff, yet I still keep buying stuff. Why do I have cabinets and closets filled with belongings, clothes and shoes and decor items and unused dishes?
00:09:16
Speaker
party supplies and all of these things. And yet when I go to Target, I bring home more of the stuff that I wasn't planning on buying and just put it on top. And so I decided, I had this light bulb moment where I decided that I was going to not buy anything that was not a consumable good for the whole year.
00:09:36
Speaker
As I started to share about this, what we called our more than enough stuff challenge, I realized how many people felt the same way. They felt like, I have so much stuff. I don't know why I keep buying more. I would love to feel content and successful without always chasing the next shiny thing in my life. The amount of reaction that I got
00:09:57
Speaker
as I was sharing on my blog was what led me to the idea that it really needed to be in a book format. The lessons that we learned during this year of not shopping because they were such fundamental principles and they were resonating with people. And so I think that it's a message that so many people
00:10:15
Speaker
really crave. They want to hear. It's not a message we hear very often. The message of, you have enough. You're good right now. You don't need to buy more. More often, society is telling us all of the things that we lack and why we need to continue shopping and why we need to continue trying really hard to be better than we are and hustling for our worth.
00:10:34
Speaker
And so it was really fun to take the lessons from this specific challenge and kind of extrapolate them onto our general lifestyle and be able to package it in a way that is easy for people to read and learn from and then also apply in their own lives.
00:10:51
Speaker
Yeah, I know that your message really resonates with Bonnie and I because well, we talk about it all the time. But I think also, you know, with kids just comes a lot of stuff or can come a lot of stuff. And so maybe that's why it's resonates so much with us. Yeah, there are.
Kids Adapting to Minimalism and Joy
00:11:11
Speaker
toys and their clothes and their shoes and their books and there are craft supplies all over and Legos underfoot in every single room. And I think not only do kids come with a lot of stuff or we think that we need a lot of stuff, it's also a time frame that's really heavily marketed to because parents want to
00:11:33
Speaker
increase the chances of their kids being happy. And so we're a really susceptible audience to the idea of buy this thing and it will give you some extra time in your life because your kid will be occupied for a little while. Or if you want your kids to, you know, you want to be a good parent, then your kids should have XYZ items. And some of that, you know, maybe has seeds of truth. And then a lot of it is just is just marketing. It's just, you know, creating problems so that you can solve them with your kids.
00:12:03
Speaker
product. Okay, so we were just talking about this aspect in regards to budgeting with kids and teaching them how to manage money. And we talked about how difficult it can be heart-wrenching to not buy your child something because you can't afford it, but how much harder it is to say no when you can afford it just because
00:12:20
Speaker
it's unnecessary and you know it will ruin your child you know and create this excess of stuff. So that's my next question is how did you approach this challenge and your whole mantra of less stuff more adventure with your kids and were they quick to grasp on or was that a bit of a struggle? Yeah it's a good question. Our kids were
00:12:42
Speaker
younger than they are now. My daughter was three. I had a five-year-old and a seven-year-old. That's pretty young. The younger two especially weren't very autonomous when it came to choosing their own things. I would give them choices of what to wear and stuff like that, but it wasn't like they were wandering toy aisles deciding on their own.
00:13:02
Speaker
toys, I guess. The seven-year-olds had a little bit more of a struggle trying to think of, so how does this affect my regular life? Not getting new stuff. We found that our kids were much more resilient than we expected. We thought that it was going to be a lot more of a fight than it actually ended up being. The idea of not
00:13:25
Speaker
adding extra stuff really informed us as to how little our kids actually need in order to be happy. When we removed the expectation that there would be a continuous inflow, what they did was turn around into their toy room and re-learn all of, you know, reacquaint themselves with all of the toys that they already had that they loved. And in fact, I share an experience in the book. There's a chapter about
00:13:52
Speaker
how less stuff creates more focus and I share how I, while all the kids were at school one day, I went into their toy room and there were toys all over the place and I realized that I hadn't seen them play with a lot of these toys. A lot of them were just toys they were pulling out of the bins and throwing on the floor in order to get to their favorite toys.
00:14:09
Speaker
And so I wondered what would happen if I just packed up most of the toys that they weren't playing with and put them in the garage. So I did that and the kids came home from school and I kind of expected a fallout, right? You think like, oh no, they're going to see that all the toys are gone. I mean, not all of them, but over half. And they went into their toy room and they found their favorite toys and they played longer and with more imagination than I had seen in weeks.
00:14:33
Speaker
because I had cleared the clutter. I had cleared the distraction. Kids' brains actually function better when there's less to focus on because their mind is able to choose, like it's able to stay put. When there's 50 things in front of them, they don't even know where to start, and so it becomes so overwhelming that they just give up, and then they come find mom.
00:14:58
Speaker
Yeah. That is so fascinating. And what you started with saying that, you know, your kids weren't wandering the toy aisles. I think that we really do our kids a disservice by introducing them to things that they don't have. Now they're going to get a little bit of that, you know, when they go to their friend's house or they talk about things at school or whatever. But like our kids do not need to go to Target and wander the aisles. They don't need to look at brochures. The other day I made the mistake of pulling one out of the mail and saying, here, look at this. This will entertain you.
00:15:24
Speaker
And then for three days, it was, can I have this? Can I have this? And I was like, give me the thing. It's going on the garbage. And then a day later, they'd forgotten all about it. But when you give them an opportunity to want things that they don't have or need, and then you take their cues to mean, oh, well, they really do want this thing. I better get it for... No. Like, we can just...
00:15:44
Speaker
You know, ignore that whole cycle. And like you say, focus on the wonderful things they already have. I love that. Right. Yeah. Well, and that's true for adults as much as it is for kids. When I sort of announced on my blog and on Instagram that we were going to do this year without shopping as a family of five, like a normal... No, we're not like...
00:16:03
Speaker
Wild minimalist creatures that live in a tiny house in the wilderness like and you know like live off the land like we lived in a big beautiful home in suburban Texas that we had built ourselves our home and recently been featured in a big online magazine and Like with our furniture and our decor and you know It wasn't like we weren't the family that you would necessarily call you wouldn't call us out as a minimalist family like I collect cake plates for heaven's sake but we
00:16:32
Speaker
were able, when I announced that we were doing this challenge, a lot of people, their first reaction was, how? How can you possibly do this? And I thought, well, by not shopping, like we're not doing anything. What we're doing is not doing something. And so guess what? If you don't go to Target, you're not going to bring home a bunch of random stuff from Target.
00:16:54
Speaker
We eliminated the outings that were unnecessary. And during that year, I only went to stores that sold exactly what I needed when I needed it. So my groceries I bought at Trader Joe's or at Costco, I really probably went to Target countable number of times, like maybe two or three times during the whole year. And maybe that sounds like a sad, slow death to a lot of listeners.
00:17:20
Speaker
But if you're thinking, I mean, when you think about it, what you're saying that you did with your kids, you give them a catalog and then say, no, you can't have this. That's the same thing that we do to ourselves every time that we go into all of the stores selling all of the things. We create a subtle discontent by seeing things that we don't need, but that we might want and then having to resist that.
00:17:43
Speaker
And
Impulse Buying and Limiting Shopping
00:17:44
Speaker
I don't think it's an all bad thing to resist. I actually think that impulse control and understanding that you can create space between the idea I want that and the actual buying of it is a really like emotional development and that's something that's necessary in adults and in children. So I don't think it's the solution is fully disengaging from anything that would tell us what we might want because I mean, you can't escape it.
00:18:10
Speaker
the marketing that happens on social media and on Facebook and on Instagram and on television and on podcasts even and everywhere, you know, like we are sold to all the time. So I think some impulse control is really necessary. But I also think that we spend far more time browsing than we might need to as a people.
00:18:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I love that. That makes total sense. In one of your podcasts, you were talking about decision fatigue, and I find myself so often in decision fatigue. So when you pare down and you have a smaller wardrobe that cuts down on decision fatigue, and when you don't
00:18:54
Speaker
you know, browse, then you don't have decision fatigue because it's the, should I buy this or should I not buy this going on, whether you realize it or not.
Encouraging Kids to Value Necessities
00:19:01
Speaker
So I can really relate to that too. Okay. So I don't know if you have any kids like this, but some of my kids sort of have some hoarder tendencies. Do you have any kids like that? So hiding all of my kids on some level, I think that's a kid thing, right? Like collecting treasures.
00:19:22
Speaker
The one trick that I found is that I mean I want to encourage them to collect things and to think things are fun and they gather like my daughter especially she's of the age that she will fill her pockets wherever we go like whether we're inside and she's just like wandering around putting like
00:19:39
Speaker
Like marbles and Legos and cars and and flowers from outside and crayon like she'll just fill her pockets with stuff Or if we're out like on a walk though, you know She collects rocks and sticks and leaves and everything and then she brings them all home and then she thinks that they're things that we're gonna like keep forever because they're really special and
00:20:00
Speaker
We've had to talk about how things can serve us for a while, but they don't have to serve us forever. We'll count the rocks and talk about how beautiful they are, and then find a special place to put them out in the garden. Or color over the leaves.
00:20:20
Speaker
crayon etchings, you know what I mean? Where you can lay the leaves down and put paper on top of them and etch them out. And then go discard the leaves and we can keep the drawing for a little while or when we're ready to be done with it, we can recycle it. I think it's helpful for kids to give them a certain amount of space, whether it's like a bin in their room or an actual little treasure box or a drawer, something that can be their space to collect and to hoard.
00:20:48
Speaker
And then that is it. So here's your space, here's your box. And naturally, if they're hoarding things, they will naturally come to a time where they have to start making choices because not everything they want is going to fit. And so when you have given them a specific amount of space,
00:21:05
Speaker
Then they come to the point where they get to start choosing, and that's the critical moment where they get to weigh, what do I like? Which things do I like more than others? I don't have unlimited space. I don't have unlimited capacity, so I have to make choices.
00:21:22
Speaker
That's the skill that's going to serve them throughout their lifetime because that is something that's real. Like we get to a point where we have to start making choices. We can't just keep filling closets and we can't just keep buying random stuff. We need to actually start deciding what matters the most and what are we going to give place for in our lives. So I feel like that can be really helpful.
00:21:42
Speaker
That is really awesome. So we're teaching them to be good decision makers when we're limiting the amount of stuff they can hoard. Totally, and prioritizing, helping them decide what things they like the very most. Because a lot of kids and adults as well will keep things just because they have them, even if they don't really like them that much anymore.
00:22:07
Speaker
just because we own something isn't a good enough reason to keep it forever. Not everything is an heirloom. And we tend to naturally allow the influx but not have a system for the output.
00:22:24
Speaker
So we collect and collect and collect, but then we don't ever let things go. And so I think that it is helpful to teach both of those skills. Be discerning about what you bring into your life and what things you choose, but then also understand and be aware of when something no longer serves you. I think with kids and toys especially, the parents are often more of the culprits of having the hoarding tendencies. I know for me, when I did this big kind of toy purge in my kids' toy room,
00:22:51
Speaker
A lot of the toys that I was getting rid of were things that they hadn't really liked for a while. They were developmentally beyond them. They were kind of more baby toys, things that of course they weren't playing with. But I was emotionally attached to them because those things felt like special to me because they reminded me of their childhood and of their baby years. And what really helped me was thinking that
00:23:14
Speaker
While they were sitting in my house not being played with at all and just being thrown on the floor, there was a young mom out there with a new baby who was going to be wandering the Isles of Goodwill or a thrift store in the local thrift store. She would feel like this was a gold mine to come across these gently used, really nice
00:23:35
Speaker
baby toys and being able to understand that like these things are not serving me but they can serve someone and they're going to add value to someone's life even if it's not mine really helped in the kind of push I needed over the edge to start letting things go a little bit easier and holding things lighter.
00:23:53
Speaker
Yeah, man, I really, really love that. And that was going to be my next question is, how do you deal with kids who have a much higher tolerance to clutter than you do?
Teaching Value in Belongings
00:24:03
Speaker
But I love what you said that you teach them that things should not... I mean, there are some things that we'll have an emotional connection to, like you say, heirlooms or pictures or things that really evoke...
00:24:14
Speaker
wonderful memories or whatever. But most of the stuff we own is not like that. And in order for us to be able to let go of them and to teach our children the same is to, like you said, say, has this served its purpose? And maybe its purpose was just to educate me that I made a bad purchase or totally too many spatulas and now I know.
00:24:35
Speaker
And I can pass them on. But I love teaching kids that too. You know, this served its purpose. We had these blocks for a while, and you guys loved them. And now no one's playing with them. Who do you think we've given to so that someone else can enjoy them just as much as we did? So what a wonderful lesson to teach kids. Yeah, totally. It reminds me of my son's last birthday. He got some great toys, some great gifts. And one of them was this really big car set. So his car is with a track.
00:25:02
Speaker
It was big. The box itself was kind of like a microwave sized box. It was full of this set. We live in a fairly small house. We downsized when we moved to Richmond.
00:25:18
Speaker
So there was just like we could have made space for it for the long term if it had been something he was thrilled about and like wanted to play with often. But I could tell when we first started to play with it, you know, we got it out the next day or something and built the whole thing. It took up the whole rug in the living room and we played with it for a few hours and he was into it for a little bit. And and then we tucked it away. And then the next time I kind of prompted like, hey, do you want to play with that set?
00:25:44
Speaker
He was like, I don't really like it. It was fun, but I'm not really super into it. And he would rather build with Legos. And I was like, you know what? That's fair. Even though it's brand new, literally played with one time, I thought this was such a great gift. We had such a fun two hours playing with it as a family. It was novel. We set it up altogether. It was really great. And now we're going to donate it to someone else.
00:26:08
Speaker
And without any, like I don't have to feel bad about that because we did, we got to use it for a little while. And even if we hadn't, recognizing that we get to be in control and choose the things that do add value to our lives, gift giving is a whole other thing. There's a whole chapter in the book about the idea of gifts and giving gifts and receiving gifts. Because I think that there's a lot of, obviously a lot of emotion kind of tied up in that, but it's so empowering to think we get to choose what we keep.
00:26:34
Speaker
And we only want to keep the things that add value to our life because there comes a point where if you're keeping things that don't add value, it starts to actually detract value from your life. More is only better until a certain fine line and then more actually becomes worse and starts to deteriorate the quality of life rather than adding to it.
00:26:56
Speaker
That's what we want to talk to you about next, is the other half of this equation. Your
Creating Adventures with Curiosity
00:27:01
Speaker
motto is, less stuff, more adventure. We want to talk about kids and adventure. My kids love adventure. They're always open to any new, exciting adventure, way more open to it than I am usually.
00:27:16
Speaker
But we want to pick your brain and have you share with us some ideas for families that are outnumbered. So lots of kids and maybe can't afford to jet set off to Hawaii or whatever for that kind of adventure.
00:27:30
Speaker
help us figure out some adventures we can do with our kids when there's a whole bunch of them. Yeah, OK. So I think that there are some important elements to the idea of adventure. Actually, I have a podcast episode about the idea of adventure mindset. And it's one of my earlier episodes. But I think some of those things are going to apply here. So I think it's a little different, though, when we're talking about parents kind of preparing adventure for our children. I mean, anything can be an adventure if you approach it with curiosity and optimism.
00:28:00
Speaker
That's kind of my main thing. And then I think as a parent, something that we can do to create a sense of adventure is to add something, some element of surprise and an element of whimsy. So an example of this might be doing a picnic in your own yard. You could do it in your front yard, your backyard, or even like in your living room.
00:28:22
Speaker
But you prepare, rather than a regular dinner, you prepare, and this can even be more simple than regular dinner, actually, because you can prepare kind of picnic style foods like cheese and crackers and grapes and, you know, vegetable sticks. And I think that the touch of whimsy for me in this scenario would be like maybe a fun, like sparkling apple juice or something that my kids don't get very often that will feel really special or maybe really fun paper plates that have like, you know,
00:28:51
Speaker
polka dots on them or just something to make it feel different. It has to feel special and feel magical and very simple. I mean, kids can be wooed by very simple elements. And so doing something a little bit different
00:29:09
Speaker
creates and invites a sense of magic and whimsy. And so it can feel like an adventure to have an indoor picnic or like a backyard picnic that just feels a little bit different than what you would normally do, for example.
00:29:24
Speaker
Um, I think there's a ton of ideas for things you can do locally, whether it's, you know, going to a new park. And one thing that I like to do when we go, uh, our family goes on lots of hikes and something I started doing when my kids were a little younger, every time we went on a hike, I would create a little, uh,
00:29:45
Speaker
What is it called? Like a wild goose hunt or like a treasure? What is it called when you cross off the things as you go? Oh, a scavenger hunt. A scavenger hunt. Yeah. So we were going on a hike just like in the big park behind our house. And I thought, what are the things that we might see?
00:30:04
Speaker
just like on I just did it on like Word and I just pulled in little clip art and I mean you don't even have to do it this it wasn't that fancy but I even I pulled them into Word so that I could print off three copies and so it was like a butterfly a lizard and
00:30:23
Speaker
a pink flower and a dog on a leash and a blue jay, like things that I thought that we would see. So then instead of just like, oh, mom, we're going on another hike. This was like, I gave them some sense of purpose. They got to be curious. We got to like gamify it a little bit and turn something that could feel like a kind of normal, like, oh, this is something we always do into something a little bit more fun.
00:30:50
Speaker
Oh, that's awesome. I'm totally feeling inspired to turn everyday events into adventures by adding curiosity and whimsy and surprise. Yes, I love that. And I especially love that you said that you say positivity as well, because that's my problem. I do not bring a lot of positivity to adventures because I'm not a very adventurous mom. I'm kind of a boring mom.
00:31:10
Speaker
And so to just approach everything with, we're going to have fun regardless of how it pans out. If it all pans out, great. And to also, what do we say, Audrey? What's our unofficial tagline? Lower your expectations, right? To just make it super simple and it doesn't have to be a Pinterest scavenger hunt, but you just go to the park and you say, hey, what are we going to find today? What can we see in the trees? What can we see in the sky? What can we dig up in the dirt? But I just love having that mindset. That's awesome.
00:31:36
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I do this segment on my show that I call magical adventure moments.
Curiosity and Optimism in Adventures
00:31:42
Speaker
And some of them have been, you know, when we're out traveling, like these beautiful places that we've seen or like these big things we've done traveling. But a lot of them have also been kind of like everyday moments that feel like a magical adventure moment just because of the emotion and the
00:32:00
Speaker
the level of awareness that's brought to them. So one that I can think of was that we were staying in an Airbnb because our house had this big flood. Long story anyway, we were in an Airbnb in our city, but it wasn't nearby where we normally live. And so everything was a little bit new.
00:32:16
Speaker
And that can be a little bit overwhelming, but we decided to try to, again, approach it with a sense of optimism and curiosity. And so one Sunday afternoon, we went on a walk down to a park that we had driven by several times on our way to and from the Airbnb. We knew it was just a couple blocks away. We had never been there. And so we walked over to this park and it turned out this park was on the edge of a hill that overlooked the whole city of Richmond. It was so beautiful. And we just, like,
00:32:43
Speaker
swing on the swings and went down the slide. And it was just like a normal playground. But the fact that we had gotten out of our little hole in this little Airbnb that we could have just stayed in there feeling like, oh, we're you know, we're not in our house. And there's like nothing. We don't know anything around here. Nothing's familiar. Like I'm so frustrated. Our life is really inconvenient. And just like saying there are cool things right here, too.
00:33:08
Speaker
There's something amazing anywhere you go. Walk around your block and collect leaves or look for birds. If you bring a sense of curiosity and optimism to anything, even a trip to Costco can feel like an adventure. Think of how fun a scavenger hunt with your kids at Costco would be.
00:33:27
Speaker
Like, they would be gone down the aisles. It would almost be like a solo trip because you get to end them off looking for these, you know? But this is just, it's really, adventure is about mindset. And adventure is about understanding that, like you said, lowering your expectations. Like, you don't have to have expectations. You get to let life unfold in front of you and experience it as it happens. That's what it means to be present. That's what mindfulness is, just,
00:33:55
Speaker
experiencing your life rather than trying to stay several steps ahead expecting what's going to come next. Just allowing it to happen sometimes is really fun. I think, especially with your bigger families, a little bit of pre-planning and some input. This goes maybe against what I just said.
00:34:14
Speaker
I think it would be really fun to sit down with your kids and say, hey, let's choose three fun adventures this month, maybe one at our house, maybe one in our neighborhood, and maybe one that's a day trip or like a half day trip. And involve them in deciding what do you want to see and do, what is nearby. I'm sure that there's free
00:34:33
Speaker
museums or you know gardens or I mean there are cool things everywhere and so a lot of times we forget to play tourist in our own town because we live there when there's so many incredible things just right where we are you know even just like going on half off ice cream day to a local ice cream shop and you know trying it out I don't know
00:34:54
Speaker
I love how you can look at anything with that sense of adventure. It's really, really helpful for me who is a mom that struggles with finding and making fun time because I'm so busy with the things that have to be done. But like you say, not even having any expectations, just watching life unfold. So that leads me to my next question for you. We have watched on social media over the past year or so as you've changed your housing situation, then had your catastrophe after
00:35:21
Speaker
catastrophe and a lot of upheaval. So our question
Maintaining Optimism Through Challenges
00:35:25
Speaker
is, how have your kids dealt with this? And has this been something that you've been able to see as an adventure or has that been a real struggle? Yeah. So you know what is surprising? Our kids, again, I feel like kids are so resilient and we don't give them enough credit for being able to handle whatever life throws at them simply because I think they are not yet mature enough to try to get out of the moment. Like they really
00:35:51
Speaker
don't think ahead that far. In a lot of ways, that serves them. That's what that childlike demeanor, in some ways, the childish is tricky, but the childlike, where they are able to just take what comes at them, is really interesting. I just had a conversation a couple weeks ago with my son's teacher, and I was explaining how
00:36:15
Speaker
This year has been really different so far from last year because around this time last year is when we had this big flood and we had to move out and we lived outside of our house between hotels, Airbnbs and friends basements for like eight months. And it was very unexpected. And at the same time, we're renovating our house and I'm trying to still like work and write my book and all of these things. And I said, you know, it's so interesting. My kids did so well. And she said, the teacher said,
00:36:42
Speaker
your kids did well because life was crazy but you were still there. Like my husband and I obviously were with them the whole time and we were trying to compensate by making sure that our family dinner like even if we were in a weird hotel that we had great family dinners and spent time connecting together and you know so in some ways we almost like over
00:37:02
Speaker
overcompensated for the upheaval of our lifestyle by making sure that our family unit felt really solid and secure. In a lot of ways, that was a huge blessing because we didn't rely on the systems of our life to create connection. We intentionally created connection for ourselves.
00:37:24
Speaker
So, was I able to see it as an adventure? For the most part, yes. With my kids' examples, let me just share for those of your listeners who don't know. So, if you're listening and you don't know anything about my flood, you have to go to my Instagram and watch the flood Instagram stories highlight.
00:37:45
Speaker
This is gonna blow your mind. You totally nailed that reaction too. I mean, you're just sitting there laughing about it and I'm like, that is my hero right there. Well, you know what was so funny? My favorite part of that, like coming home, having water, running out my door and my ceiling's raining and my daughter runs into her bedroom and puts on her bathing suit and comes out to play in the indoor rain.
00:38:10
Speaker
And that is such an example of you cannot control what happens to you, but you can control how you react to it. She saw rain and thought, this is so fun. I've never seen it rain indoors. I better take advantage of this by putting on my bathing suit and playing in the water.
00:38:28
Speaker
How can you be mad when you have that type of an example? The other thing that I've learned a lot in the last couple of years is that I have very little control on the things that happen to me.
00:38:43
Speaker
You know, we moved to Richmond. We stayed in a rental. We had some issues with our rental. We moved into this house. We renovated for six months. Our ceiling fell down. We repaired the ceiling. And then our ceiling fell down again. And we had 80% of the house that was damaged that we had to start all over again. It was like, it was this comedy of errors. And then we move into an Airbnb. This is finally like our, we're going to be in this Airbnb for two full months. So it feels like a little bit of stability, like within all of the madness. And guess what happens? A flood in the Airbnb.
00:39:16
Speaker
The guy was like, do you want to like, do you, can you stay while we like fix it? Like no one was home. It was again, it was like, none of this was our fault. These weren't things that we could control. They weren't mistakes. They weren't oversights. Like these were just circumstances. These are just unfortunate events. The sense of humor.
00:39:32
Speaker
Right, exactly. And so you think you have the choice when things like this happen, unexpected things that could be seen as terrible or they could be seen as what they are, which is just life. Life is always throwing something unexpected at you. And whether it's a big thing like we've had to go through or it's little things like not finding a parking spot or getting rear-ended on your way to a ballet, you know, whatever it is.
00:39:59
Speaker
we have a choice always about how we react and how we see it. And so I have just made the deliberate decision to see my life as for me, supporting me and encouraging me. The universe has my back. I believe God is watching out for me and that he wants me to succeed and he wants me to feel happy. And so the things that happen to me are always gonna be
00:40:28
Speaker
for me, for my benefit. And I might not be able to feel it in the moment. It can feel really tricky in the moment. But if I believe that, and I've chosen to believe it, then I'm able to, as time goes on, actually start to recognize the lessons. But I don't make myself wait to feel better about it until the lesson has revealed itself. I allow myself to feel OK about it, trusting simply that there is a lesson and that it is going to be for my betterment.
00:40:57
Speaker
And this is a deliberate choice. This is not necessarily like a natural reaction that I have. I'm not just hyper-optimistic, although I would like to think that I am. I choose to spend a lot of time working on my mindset. I do daily gratitude practices.
00:41:13
Speaker
I do meditation. I mean, I am trying to train myself to have a default reaction of optimism. And it's been really interesting to see over the last several years, the way that the way that I've reacted to my life circumstances has evolved as I've put such a focus on understanding that I get to choose how I react and that I want to choose to enjoy what's happening, even if it's sort of crappy.
00:41:41
Speaker
Wow, that is so powerful. I love it. And I wouldn't say that, you know, you would choose all those events to happen in your life again, but like the lessons you learned from them were so good. Just, it's like,
00:41:57
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. There's some things in my life where I wouldn't have ever chosen them, but I'm really thankful for the things that I learned because of them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, of course. I would never have chosen, are you kidding? Like never, ever have chosen the things that we've gone through. In fact, the other day there was a big flood at a big building nearby in Richmond called the, I think it's like the Capital One Center or something. I don't know exactly. It's like a big
00:42:21
Speaker
event space and they had a giant flood, like one of their water mains broke and my husband texted me a picture. It was like the article and he texted it to me and then he said, trigger warning. And I pulled up the thing that he did. He texted the picture first though. So I pulled up the picture and immediately my heart jumped and like caught in my throat and I felt sick like a little PTSD.
00:42:46
Speaker
And then his text comes through trigger warning and I had to just laugh and send it back. Honey, the trigger warning goes first.
00:42:54
Speaker
I was unprepared. I was totally unprepared. And it actually reminded me like, gosh, we've been through a lot and we have managed really well. And I still would never, ever not only choose to go back, but I also wouldn't wish it on anyone else because as much as you can say, gosh, we learned a lot, there's a lot of ways to learn things. And sometimes, you know,
00:43:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think that I think the main message and now it's a message that I can share too because having gone through a bunch of kind of random crazy things and I
00:43:38
Speaker
Also get to share and maybe that's part of going through things that you know We do get to choose and it is okay to choose to be To feel positive even when things are going wrong in your life or things that you wouldn't like to happen happen A lot of people will say it's okay to feel bad and that's also true but I found that it's also okay to feel good and you don't need to you know, try to
00:44:06
Speaker
Um, you don't have to justify the negativity in those types of situations. You can also choose to be okay. And that can be just as powerful. Yeah. Yeah. One of your most impactful episodes for me on your podcast was the power of optimism. That
Upcoming Projects and Intentional Living
00:44:25
Speaker
one, like everybody needs to listen to that. I need to listen to that several times in the year. Yeah.
00:44:32
Speaker
Okay, so we are almost done here, but we just want to wrap up with one quick question for you and we want to know what your plans are for the future. Do you have any big projects on the horizon or planning even less stuff in new adventures?
00:44:45
Speaker
Yeah, yes, I know. Gosh, I'm like right in the middle of this right now. I am. I'm making a lot of big decisions right now. And the the again, it's like the scary in between where I'm leaving behind some of the things that have felt really comfortable, like making a living blogging as a sponsored blogger and embracing some new things like being an author and a speaker and a coach. So some things that I know for sure that are coming up that are really fun are
00:45:14
Speaker
an online course that's going to be a companion to the book. So the book is more than enough and it's these lessons that we learned during our year of not shopping. And I've heard so much feedback that people read the book and they love it and they do the exercises and then they think, okay, I want to do more. Like I want to
00:45:31
Speaker
feel like I can implement this in my life on another level. And so I'm going to do a guided more than enough stuff challenge. It'll be a five week course and that will come out in January. So right at the beginning of the year, people can jump in and go through some modules and also have like Facebook lives and things to help
00:45:51
Speaker
help people start to develop these sorts of ideas of enough-ness in their own life. That's really fun. I'm also hosting a creative writing retreat in West Texas in May. I'm working on the confirmation for those dates.
00:46:10
Speaker
And one of the things that I learned when I was writing my book was how important it was, and you guys will know this being moms, to have uninterrupted time is like so unheard of in your life schedule. And so one thing that I did that was
00:46:26
Speaker
super effective for me was that I went on writing retreats and I just made them myself. I took myself to an Airbnb in the middle of the desert and spent three days writing and that created the outline in the first half of the book basically and then I wrote consistently in between but then
00:46:43
Speaker
But toward the end of my manuscript, I also took another three days. I went to a hotel nearby and I spent three full days with uninterrupted writing time. And that's how I finished the book, like being able to take myself apart, not have to worry about taking care of my kids, taking care of my house, like managing anything, but just focused on this deep work was really instrumental. And so I'm actually hosting one
00:47:08
Speaker
this month in November in Asheville, North Carolina, but it's full. And so the next one will be in May. And I'm really excited to provide a place for people to come do that deep work and invest in themselves to create, whether it's books or whether it's, you know, art or whether it's courses, something that they like has been nagging at them that they want to do. And they just haven't figured out where to where to do it or how to find the time. This is like investing in that time so that they can
00:47:37
Speaker
do it. So those are two of the big things coming up that I'm excited about. Oh, that's fascinating. So fun.
00:47:44
Speaker
Thank you for sharing with us. I think, Bonnie, you and I both have birthdays in May. We do. Maybe we'll have to take a birthday trip for a riding retreat. You guys could record so many podcast episodes during the days of this retreat. It's going to be really fun, so I'm excited to put more together and start sharing about it in the next couple months.
00:48:09
Speaker
Oh, that sounds so amazing. So if people want to learn more about you or this upcoming stuff that you have, where should they go? How can they find you? Yeah, so I'm on Instagram daily. That's livefreemoranda. And my website is livefreecreative.co. And that's where all of the podcast show notes live, as well as my blog posts.
00:48:30
Speaker
I have a free five-day email course that's really great. It's called Five Days to Freedom, and it touches on the idea of abundance mentality and gratitude and organization and adventure. And that, if you go to my website, liveforcreative.co,
00:48:45
Speaker
you can see it, it's up in the top bar, like at the headline. So you can sign up, it's just a free five day course. And also through the, it's through email, my newsletter is how I do a lot of my announcing of upcoming things. And when the course is ready to roll out and when the writing retreat spots are open, that will all come through the newsletter as well as I'm sure I'll share it on Instagram too. So yeah, that's where to find me.
00:49:14
Speaker
Awesome. Thank you so much. And the book is available on Amazon. So if you don't have a copy of the book yet, I think that you'll love it. It's great. So check that on Amazon more than enough.
00:49:26
Speaker
I totally feel like I've just eaten a huge meal and I have so much digesting to do just to listen from listening to you talk. Totally. I think that's a good thing. It's like a good comforting fall and not like if I feel a little bit sick fall. No, no, no. It's like hot chili on a cold night. Oh, good. I'm so glad.
00:49:47
Speaker
Thanks so much for tuning in. If you've enjoyed this episode, we'd be so grateful if you'd leave us a written review on iTunes. If you have any questions or ideas for future episodes, you can reach us at outnumberthepodcastatgmail.com and find us on Instagram at outnumberthepodcast. See you next week.