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Create your own New Normal {Episode 76}
90 Plays5 years ago
Have you wished you could push a reset button? Create your own new normal? In this episode, we teach you how to create a new normal in 5 different areas; emotional, physical, interpersonal relationships, financial and with your health. If you've been looking for a way to keep the benefits you discovered in quarantine, here's your chance on learning how.
Mentioned in this episode:
Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and John Townsend
Episode 70 with Centsai Financial
Episode 65 - Homeschool Obstacles
Episode 25 - How to Afford Kids
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Transcript
Introduction to Creating a New Normal
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 76 of Outnumber the Podcast. Have you ever wished that you could just press the reset button and start over and develop a new normal? Well, you can. And in this episode, we're going to cover how to create your own new normal in five different areas. Emotional new normal, physical new normal, relationships new normal, financial new normal, and a new normal for your health. So if you're ready to create a new normal for your life, let's get started.
Mission to Help Parents
00:00:36
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumber the Podcast. I'm Bonnie. And I'm Audrey. We're experienced moms to a combined total of 18 children. Our mission is to help overwhelmed parents find peace in parenting and humor in the chaos. Come join us as we attempt uninterrupted conversation about parenting with joy and intention.
00:01:01
Speaker
All right, and so now we are going to talk to you about creating a new normal. And we don't mean a new normal like the way it's being talked about in the media and everybody else is talking about it. We've got a little bit different take on the new normal. So we're going to jump right in after Bonnie has something to make you laugh.
Humor in Parenting Chaos
00:01:23
Speaker
Okay, so this is not meant in any way as disrespectful for a scary time when many people are getting sick and worried about their health, but it is a little something to lighten the mood. I'm sure many of you have had conversations with your children about the COVID epidemic and how it's affecting the world and how we need to be more cautious. And one day we were having this talk around breakfast and one of my little kids, I can't remember which one, but they were eating granola and they said, I think it was my two-year-old or my three-year-old,
00:01:52
Speaker
And she said, what's a guanola virus? What's a granola virus? She said, and everybody cracked up and we said, no, no, no, honey, it's called a coronavirus. And it's very serious. We're trying to explain things. She goes, I don't like a guanola virus. I like this one over there or something like that. Every time
00:02:12
Speaker
Someone has granola now, they're chit chatting about, uh oh, don't eat granola, you'll get the granola virus. So that's our way of blowing off a little bit of stress. And I hope that doesn't come across as disrespectful, but it gives me a good chuckle anytime I'm feeling stressed out about this whole thing.
00:02:28
Speaker
Oh, that is so cute. That reminds me the other day. We talk a lot about, in our episode on picky eaters, we talk a lot about introducing your kids to different foods. So we were having lobster the other night. We bought a package of lobster and all the kids were trying it. And my little three-year-old says, pass the monster.
00:02:55
Speaker
She wanted to try the monster. Well, it does look like a monster. Those things are kind of freaky looking. After we all got on laughing, we said, do you mean lobster? And she says, oh yeah, pass the lobster. That's a scary monster.
Intentional Choices Post-Quarantine
00:03:13
Speaker
All right, so today we're going to talk about creating a new normal and we don't mean the kind of new normal that's been talked about in the media where you have to just change your life and adjust to the new way that things are. What we're talking about is what we talk about often and that is making our own intentional choices about what we want our lives to look like.
00:03:36
Speaker
We do want to take lessons from being in quarantine for months and months on end. So what things have you learned from quarantine and what things do you want to take? What positive things have you benefited from during quarantine that you want to take forward into the rest of your life? So that is what Bonnie and I have been doing some self-reflection on and we're going to be talking with you about today.
00:04:01
Speaker
Right. When we started, we hopped on this call, Audrey and I started talking a ton about all the things that were changing. We're like, well, we better just hit record because this is exactly what we're talking about. All the things that we're shifting and adjusting, especially in our states that are moving from phase one, possibly into phase two, and figuring out what this is going to look like for the next few months.
00:04:22
Speaker
We have split this episode into five areas. We're going to be talking about transitioning in the emotional area, the physical area, in relationships, financially, and in the arena of health. So those five different areas are going to help us break it down.
00:04:40
Speaker
Starting with emotional new normal. Time in quarantine has been slow and quiet and there's been a lot of time for self-reflection. I'm speaking for myself, but I think maybe a lot of people can relate to this kind of slowed down time. In fact, I even saw someone has been calling it the great pause.
00:05:02
Speaker
where a lot of things are on pause and so you have more time and maybe you've spent more time scrolling but maybe also you've been spending some more time in reflection. So one question I've been asking myself is who do I want to be in 20 years? Like especially at my stage I have children who are just getting ready launching
00:05:22
Speaker
they're fledglings leaving the nest and they're launching their, you know, their lives, their futures. And I'm asking myself, who are they going to need me to be in the next 20 years? Like how can I support them and their future families? And so I've been thinking a lot about creating a new Audrey or maybe a new and improved Audrey. There you go.
00:05:47
Speaker
I love that thought. I think that you're very good at looking ahead to that future goal you have for your family. And the past probably 10 years or so, I've been really stuck in the baby phase. And so it's been hard for me to even look up out of the pile of diapers I'm buried in. Oh, I know it. But I love that concept. And I also have been able to do a lot of self-reflection at this time. And I feel like I've been
00:06:16
Speaker
open to more suggestions from God, from my loved ones, from all my surroundings as to how I can improve and become a better person. And I've loved that. I know that so many of us are just running so fast all the time that it can be hard to pause and think about, am I even running in the right direction?
00:06:37
Speaker
Right? Do I need to stop and think if all my actions are getting me to the place where I want to be? So yeah, I love that. My personal thoughts have been on specific aspects of personal development that I want to improve on. I really feel like
00:06:52
Speaker
There's something kind of waiting for me if I can move past this current place of where I am personally. I think that that happens kind of in seasons in our lives, right? Like I said, the past few years have been very, you know, baby heavy, just busy with the logistics of keeping kids alive. But now I'm able to look up a little bit and improve myself a little bit. And then also just lots more grace and patience with myself. So when I'm running around fast, I have a hard time
00:07:21
Speaker
being graceful with my mistakes and saying, that's okay. That's just something that didn't work out for us. Or maybe you need to slow it down because you're not juggling all the balls the way you anticipated, right? So that's been really peaceful, a peaceful feeling to have more patience with myself.
00:07:39
Speaker
Yeah, that makes so much sense. Like being strung out all the time. You don't hardly have time to slow down and think about yourself and your own needs when, you know, we're so busy taking care of others' needs and dealing with everything else that we allow and bring into our lives. Oh, okay.
Emotional New Normals
00:07:56
Speaker
And so we're going to move on to creating a physical new normal. But you mentioned, you know, running around all the time.
00:08:03
Speaker
nonstop and that's something that I've been thinking about too. Like maybe not out in my car driving kids here and there because I don't tend to take as much outside activities on but I do take a lot on a lot of projects and a lot of ideas and I have a lot of things I want to do and one thing that the new and improved Audrey is going to be working on is not taking so much on.
00:08:27
Speaker
so that there is more time for this new emotional normal to continue.
00:08:39
Speaker
Speaking to those who do have a hard time not taking so much on activities outside the home, if that's really stringing you out and stressing you out and taking away from time that you could be and maybe should be doing other things, just ask yourself a question. How many activities do they really need to participate in?
00:09:01
Speaker
So if this is speaking about your kids, so if your kids are in soccer and dance and gymnastics and swimming lessons and blah, blah, blah, you know, you've got a whole entire list and every day of the week you've got, you're taking two kids, you know, mom is Shuffer. Well,
00:09:16
Speaker
how many activities do they really need to participate in? So the thought here is that if you give your kid one activity, just say, okay, you can choose music lessons or sports or, you know, whatever, just give them a choice, then they can become a master in the one thing that they've chosen instead of being
00:09:37
Speaker
sort of proficient in a whole bunch of different areas. It's just another way of looking at it. I'm not saying it's right for you, but it's one way to take a whole bunch of things off your plate. Yeah, I love that you brought that up. I didn't think that I had a problem with putting my kids in lots of activities until I had nine kids. And even like three activities is too many running around. So yeah, I challenge everyone to, like you said, to just
00:10:03
Speaker
change your mindset a little bit or flip it on its head and just explore a different mindset. So I grew up in a family that my mom allowed us to do one physical activity and one music activity at a time. And she had five kids and she was busy taking kids everywhere. I have allowed my kids to continue doing piano even while they've done a couple other things because the piano teacher comes to our house.
00:10:25
Speaker
So things like that where it doesn't really stress me out because we're not going other places, I've allowed to continue. But I also realized that I just have a lot of dreams for my kids. And so I think, oh, but it won't be a childhood if they don't get a chance to do X or Y or Z. And I have to just spin that mindset on its head and say, really? Is that really what childhood is? Will they really be less of a person because they didn't do dance? Am I less of a person because I didn't do flute?
00:10:52
Speaker
or gymnastics or whatever I didn't do. I don't think so. I can give them similar learning opportunities in other ways that don't make me crazy and don't take us away from our, from my household. So I am definitely working on that as well. And I would also share thinking about
00:11:09
Speaker
challenging some of the closely held notions that you might have. For example, if a kid goes into dance at age six, most people keep them in dance all year long until they're a teen or they leave home. That's not really necessary, right? What if they did dance one year and then something else or nothing the next year? Or what if they did dance for half the year and then you took the other half off?
00:11:34
Speaker
Are they going to become a world-class ballerina? Probably not, but they probably weren't going to be anyway. Give yourself a little break. Just kind of challenge those notions of, well, this isn't working for us anymore. I'm going to try something different, right?
00:11:47
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. To be intentional about it. Right, exactly. I have decided that I'm going to create kind of a standard that I measure all our outside the home activities by. I haven't fully formed this standard, but I've been thinking about it for a while. And it's going to include things like, is it
00:12:06
Speaker
extremely uplifting, like can I not imagine not doing it, right? Is it necessary? And really most of the activities we do outside of our house are not necessary as we're coming to see, right? Ask myself how much time does it take and is it worth
Balancing Family Time and Activities
00:12:20
Speaker
taking that time away from the family, right? So, you know, maybe if my oldest is taking an ACT prep course that's going to help him get into college
00:12:29
Speaker
and it's taking up dinner time for the next six weeks, I think that's probably going to be worth it to me because I really value his improving education. If it's going to be a dance workshop that my six-year-old really wants but it's going to take away too much time from the family, then I'll probably say no to that. And as life changes, obviously your standard will change as well, but that's what I'm working on. That sounds like a good thing to be working on.
00:12:54
Speaker
So I think the new normal, and I hope the new normal for a lot of people, many people is spending more time together. And that's kind of a segue into the next one where, you know, relationships. But I did want to say when we're talking about this physical new normal is if you do have a lot of things that you want to squeeze in and
00:13:15
Speaker
you're not really finding places to make them fit. You might consider taking Jordan Page's productivity bootcamp. So she offered her two courses free during the month of May. And I took the productivity bootcamp for free and I kind of zoomed right through it. And the thing, I think the number one thing that I took away from this was not how to squeeze more stuff in and do more.
00:13:42
Speaker
But it was about prioritizing and finding out what really matters and then how to keep that going. And the whole course is so good. Like I would encourage anybody to take the whole course because she really does offer tons of tips on how to be more productive and get more done. But for me, that was kind of interesting what came out of it. So I bring this up when I'm talking about a physical new normal because one thing that
00:14:10
Speaker
came to the very forefront for me that was that I need to prioritize spending more time together. I suppose it's going back to these, you know, fledglings leaving the nest here that I just see how short it is in the whole scheme of things. But, um, yeah, spending more time together. And so that's one thing that I hope everybody comes away with their new normal, having more family time together. Yeah, totally.
00:14:36
Speaker
All right, so moving on to relationships, interpersonal relationships, new normal, what does this look like? Well, since we all spent lots of time together,
00:14:47
Speaker
I think if you had a relationship with somebody in your house, one of your kids, your spouse, whoever, and there were some sticky spots in the relationship, well, I'll bet some of those got dealt with and worked out instead of glossed over. If you can't spend time away from each other, then you have to learn how to spend time together. Well, you have to learn to get along. And I think that has happened.
00:15:15
Speaker
during quarantine, even if you had a great relationship with somebody, I think there's opportunities. I know some of my relationships have gotten better because of being in quarantine. So for the new normal, for me, for relationships, it's going to be having a more open and honest communication in my relationships with other people.
00:15:34
Speaker
Yes, excellent. I have seen the same thing. And one thing I will share is that my husband and I, I think always have a pretty great relationship, but there are, you know, ups and downs as in any marriage. But he travels a lot for work and we have a lot of kids and I have a business. So, you know, there's a lot of things keeping us from each other. And since this quarantine happened, he has had zero travel, right? Because he's not selling things. He's not going on trips. He's not whatever. And I have learned that
00:16:02
Speaker
time is number one in our relationship. And I did not realize how much a lack of time together was affecting us because all of a sudden it feels like we have
00:16:14
Speaker
just grown leaps and bounds in our relationship and gotten so much closer because there's more time together. And he's not even working from home. He's still going to the office because he has a team to manage and he has to be there. But isn't that interesting? Well, it's not really interesting. It's very obvious probably from the outside, but I had just lost sight of how little time we were spending together and that as we got more, it was like, oh, yes, this, I remember this, right? You know, from our early years of marriage. Oh, that's such a beautiful sentiment. Thank you for sharing that one.
00:16:44
Speaker
I'm excited to see if we can keep that happening as activities come into our lives again. I wanted to share that this is going to be a really important time to maintain boundaries with those outside of our houses.
00:17:00
Speaker
I personally have what I like to call a stranglehold on my daily schedule. We do this at this time, and then this at this time, and if I don't get this work done, then this falls
Maintaining Boundaries and Flexibility
00:17:10
Speaker
apart, right? So it's very important for me to have structure. And yet during summer is when, and especially now that we're kind of leaving our homes more, when kids want to play with neighbors and friends want to come over and cousins want to hang out. And I love that.
00:17:24
Speaker
but I also have to create enough boundaries so that I don't go crazy by letting go entirely of my structure, if that makes sense. So it's kind of a two-sided thing that I'm working on. I'm working on maintaining my own necessary structure for my own sanity while also relinquishing just a little bit so that I can have those relationships again that we haven't had for several months, you know.
00:17:46
Speaker
Yeah, totally. I think everybody during quarantine, I think one thing everybody saw was how awful it felt to have lack of structure. Like maybe the first week, you know, you slept in till 11 and eight potato chips for breakfast. And then everybody was like, oh, this is just horrible. Yeah, yeah, totally. And about boundaries, I just want to share one more thing. We've talked a lot about boundaries on this podcast, and I think it's because
00:18:10
Speaker
both of us, Audrey, who are working on them ourselves. But I've been reading the book called Boundaries. It's by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend. If anybody's interested, it's very fascinating. And it's written from a Christian perspective. And this just quote just popped up and I wanted to share it. They say, so I'm thinking of this in regards to people outside of our home who want some of our time, right? It says, when you respond to a person, you need to remain in control with options and choices. So responding versus reacting.
00:18:40
Speaker
If you feel yourself reacting, step away and regain control of yourself so family members or friends can't force you to do or say something you don't want to do or say, something that violates your separateness. When you've kept your boundaries, choose the best option and the difference between responding and reacting is a choice. When you are reacting, they are in control and when you respond, you are.
00:18:59
Speaker
And this was actually shared by a friend in regards to how we treat our teenagers, which I think is very valid. But I think about even in friends and family members who want to spend time with you during the summer, right? If you've made a conscious decision that this new normal is going to have more family time, then
00:19:16
Speaker
beware to respond to them in a way that keeps your options open, that you're not looking to just people please and react to what they're asking you to do because you feel guilty or because that's what a good sister would do or whatever, right? So to always maintain those choices and those boundaries helps us show love.
00:19:36
Speaker
Okay, everybody hit the pause button and go hit the back button a couple of times because y'all need to listen to that one more time. Like me, I'm talking to me. I need to go listen to that like three more times.
Financial Mindfulness
00:19:49
Speaker
Okay, moving on to financial, a financial new normal. Now, this has been an interesting time financially because for a couple of reasons. One, because we couldn't buy certain things, we didn't buy them. You couldn't go to
00:20:07
Speaker
go have some retail therapy. And so we didn't, right? So there was that part of it. The stores weren't open, so we couldn't buy, so we didn't buy. And then there was another part of it where there was the scarcity of items. So certain items, at first we saw toilet paper was scarce. And then it went into some of the protein, beef and chicken and pork. Some of those were scarce. And then, you know, there are other things, whatever. So that is a very interesting
00:20:36
Speaker
position as well. We didn't buy because we couldn't buy. So the first one is that we couldn't buy so we didn't buy and the second one is that we didn't buy because we couldn't buy. But all this is just pointing out thinking about the reasons of why we buy what we buy and how we spend our money and maybe
00:21:02
Speaker
maybe less emotional buying. I know we talked about that a lot in our episode with Sensei Financial. And they were talking about it during a quarantine or during a pandemic or a critical situation. But also, let's take that into the new normal going forward. Let's examine why we buy what we buy.
00:21:23
Speaker
And then, so another thing that came out of that and also because, you know, thinking about the things that we couldn't buy, I saw one headline that said, America stress bought all the baby chicks.
00:21:38
Speaker
And I don't think the writer of the, I mean, it was a cute headline, maybe it was clickbait, but I don't think the writer of the article understood that people weren't buying cute fluffy baby chicks to make themselves feel better, but people were wanting to get in control of their own food supply. And yeah, and a lot of people, you know, planting a garden. What did they call it? A quarantine garden? I think there was even a hashtag for it or something.
00:22:02
Speaker
Everybody is like, well, why don't I have a garden in my backyard? Why aren't I growing my own food? And then the third area, kind of an interesting one, is homeschooling. It's interesting to talk about this during a financial new normal, right? So in our episode on homeschooling, homeschool obstacles, we
00:22:25
Speaker
addressed this topic of being able to afford to homeschool a lot. And then we have a whole very popular episode, how to afford kids. So there is a big part of
00:22:37
Speaker
It is a financial decision as well if you decide to homeschool your children. But I think, and Bonnie and I, I don't know, maybe we should do a whole episode about why we think people should continue to homeschool their kids going into the future coming out of quarantine. But maybe that would be, maybe I'm allowed to put that on my list of things that I hope for people as part of their normal, at least to examine why they're choosing the educational method that they're using and
00:23:07
Speaker
to make an intentional choice. Yeah. Yeah. I think that lots of moms whose kids were in school before are thinking, hey, this isn't so bad. We could do this. And another large group was going, this is terrible. I'm never going to do this again.
00:23:22
Speaker
I'm going to blame either of you. We really don't. We have been in both places. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we also stress bought chicks. I think we have 25 now. They're really cute. And we're excited for our eggs that are coming. But of course, now we have to buy them. And we have to build a big coop. So that's going to cost us money. But oh, well.
00:23:39
Speaker
So our financial normal has been a big new normal. We have been blessed financially in the past 10 years or so with plenty of money to support our big family. And we've been very grateful for that. But then my husband's in sales. So his commission stopped. That was a big portion of our income. And all of a sudden we looked at our budget and went, oh, now what?
00:24:02
Speaker
But it's actually been really, really refreshing. So we budgeted before the, I'm just going to share the budget system we use is called You Need a Budget or YNAB is the app. And we're big fans of it. It's like one of those zero based budgeting platforms. If you're looking for one, that's a good free one you could try. And much of it was working for us, but there was also a lot of fluff spending, you know, just because we could, because I needed something at Target and I would go to Target and spend
00:24:28
Speaker
a couple hundred dollars on who knows what, right? And yeah, and then all of a sudden we couldn't. And it felt kind of good to trim the fat and go, okay, let's look, let's take a deep hard look at our finances and decide what is necessary and what is not. So while Audrey took Jordan Page's productivity bootcamp last month when it was free, I took the budget bootcamp. And it was also very, very enlightening. I recommend that one or remember Sensei Financial also has two really awesome financial courses you can look into.
00:24:54
Speaker
And if you feel so kind of iffy about your finances, like managing them is not your favorite thing maybe, or you're just still a little scared of it, take a course. There are so many affordable options and even free options, videos and blogs and lots of resources out there to help you get a handle on it. And I have felt really, really empowered the last month or so as we've
00:25:16
Speaker
dove deep and really cut out the unnecessary spending. And it feels really, really good to know that when life does get back to normal, hopefully soon, that we will have so much better handle on our spending that any excess can then go towards savings or maybe paying off our house or any number of large goals that we felt were out of our reach in the past. So we're pretty excited about this new restructuring of our finances.
00:25:41
Speaker
Yeah, that's pretty awesome to take what could have been something pretty bad and make such a good situation out of it. Yeah, we're hoping.
Continuing Healthy Habits
00:25:51
Speaker
Okay, and the final area that we're going to cover is health, a healthy new normal. So what does it mean? So in quarantine, people spent
00:26:02
Speaker
There was a big emphasis on spending time outside. So people were exercising outside. People were just spending time outside in their backyards in the sunshine, maybe tending to the chicks or planting the garden. And all that was really important to get, you know, the fresh air and all that was really super important. But a side benefit of that was vitamin D. You know, most Americans, more than the majority of Americans are deficient in vitamin D.
00:26:33
Speaker
And they think that, just a side note here, they think that that could be one reason why the coronavirus was so lethal in the US is because of the vitamin D deficiency.
00:26:45
Speaker
But anyway, so an emphasis on time outside would be an awesome new normal to have. But then I saw a lot of people going back to home cooked meals. Obviously, can't eat in a restaurant. You've got to cook at home. I saw tons of people getting into sourdough bread making, something I didn't do because our family, you know, when you're off when you're off of flour and sugar, sourdough bread making isn't really in your
00:27:14
Speaker
in your repertoire, but it was really neat to see people making sourdough bread loaves and posting it and sharing it and their tips and all that. I think we can categorically say that what you cook at home is probably most likely going to be healthier than what you eat out. And even on, you know, you can control your portions better. There's so many ways that it's healthier for you to cook at home. And then, and let's take that into our new normal is healthier eating.
00:27:44
Speaker
And then going back to exercise, definitely exercise more often and exercise outside. Like those things really, if everybody prioritized exercising, I think everybody would just be feeling better. And like you and I have talked about so many times, Bonnie, not only feeling better, but mentally in a better place to go through every day.
00:28:08
Speaker
Yes, and that was going to be the first thing I talked about was exercise. Guys, I have to say upfront that I get the feeling of, oh, one more thing on my list and I don't want to do it.
00:28:18
Speaker
I get it. I have gone through these really radical times of exercising because when I'm exercising, I'm usually going whole hog and I'm doing something every day and I feel really fit and strong. And when I'm not, I'm doing zero for like months at a time. I'm kind of an all or nothing person and I know it's not healthy, but that's just kind of how my mind works. And so during quarantine, I went from one of those periods of almost no exercise because life was crazy and I had a baby last year and was just kind of trying to keep my life together.
00:28:45
Speaker
to, I miss this for the sanity aspect and getting back into it. And having a little bit more time at home has allowed me to fit that in, right? I'm not running kids places. And so I'm so grateful for it. All of a sudden I feel strong and that is one of my most
00:29:01
Speaker
most missed feelings that I've had in the last, you know, year or so is I forgot how good it felt to be strong, to go to lift up a kid and not feel exhausted, right? Or to take laundry up the stairs and skip stairs, right? And just feel so energetic.
00:29:17
Speaker
And if there's anything moms need more of, it's energy, right? So yeah, I just highly recommend trying to find something that works for you. You know, we did yoga the other day and all my kids got into the Cosmic Kids yoga and they had a kick out of that. And then I found a new video and just anything to get your body moving and reconnect yourself with your body. And it just helps your mind so much for sure. I'm glad you added that.
00:29:42
Speaker
I was also going to say on the cooking at home, that could also be a financial new normal, right? Save yourself tons of money. We are not big eater outers, if that's a word. Not a villain that eats out a lot, but we do order pizza occasionally or we'll be at the park and decide to just go get hamburgers and eat at the park. And just having restaurants be closed and taking a closer look at our finances, all of a sudden we were only maybe getting takeout once a month.
00:30:09
Speaker
instead of once a week and saving tons of money. I mean, I get it. Most people don't have a family of 11 to feed at the, but still even smaller families. It is very expensive to feed your family at a restaurant. So that's also a financial thing.
00:30:25
Speaker
Nutrition, I mentioned as well, having more time at home means that you have more time to focus on your nutrition. Although, if you went from kids in school full-time to kids home full-time, that you might not feel the same way. I think Audrey and I are a little better at it just because we've had more practice. But at least being home, you have the option of eating better. And then my new normal has included a new focus on sleep.
00:30:52
Speaker
And again, part of that is just because of the chapter I'm in. I have a one-year-old now who sleeps through the night and I'm not nursing anymore. So there's all these things that allow me to get a full eight hours if necessary. And then eliminating the junk. I think, like you were saying, those first couple months, people are like, yeah, let's catch up on all our shows and binge all the cookies in the world. But we're probably all feeling the effects of that now. And realizing that too much of that junk is not going to be part of our new normal. So that's what we've been working on.
00:31:22
Speaker
Okay, that all sounds really awesome, especially that focus on sleep. I think everybody who gets more sleep is gonna feel better. Yes, yep.
00:31:33
Speaker
Okay, so I have a couple final thoughts on creating a new normal. I just wanna say the reset button has been pressed. It's not, you know, when I get around to it, but the reset button has been pressed. Everybody has been home, everybody has been on the great pause. It's a perfect time to make changes. You're not gonna get an opportunity like this again. Okay, let me see that. We hope not. I hope. We never get another opportunity like this again. But the time is,
00:32:02
Speaker
It's perfect to make changes and you have a reason, excuse. You know, because of this and that and the other thing, we're going to, this is going to be our new normal. And your new normal does not have to be defined by anyone else, not even Bonnie and I and what we're doing. It's time to make your own intentional choices. It's time for Bonnie and I to make our own intentional choices and for all of us to take those new intentional choices and make that the new normal.
00:32:32
Speaker
Yes, I love that. This is a great, great, great time to just stop and think and sit down with your spouse, sit down with your kids and say, what do we want to keep doing? This would be a great discussion with your kids, right? What have you guys loved about the last few months? And it might take a little digging if they've been kind of going stir crazy.
00:32:48
Speaker
I love that we did puzzles. I love that we played so many card games. I love that we could have movie nights and stay up late. I loved sleeping in, whatever it is. And then what have you disliked? And maybe try to take the things that they've really missed, slowly incorporate some of those back in while maintaining your own sanity and boundaries, you know, to keep yourself healthy physically and emotionally. So it's an exciting time for sure.
00:33:12
Speaker
All right, so we want you guys to go out and make a list of and like Bonnie said, sit down with your kids of what you liked about quarantine, what you didn't like about quarantine, and then take how you're going to take that new normal forward and share it with us. Take it on. Take us on social media. Email it to us. We want to hear what what are you guys going to do for your new normal? Yeah, and we will share some in another episode.
00:33:38
Speaker
Thanks so much for
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00:33:39
Speaker
tuning in. Did you know you can help the podcast in several ways? First up, we're on Patreon and there are three different levels to support us there. Just head to patreon.com slash outnumbered. Next up, if you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a written review on iTunes. It helps other parents find the podcast and receive the help you're enjoying. And finally, you can follow us on Instagram at outnumbered the podcast. We're always having fun over there too.
00:34:04
Speaker
As usual, if you have any questions or ideas for future episodes, you can reach us at OutnumberedThePodcast at gmail.com. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week. I think we could probably categorically across the board say that what you cook at home is going to be healthier than what you. Try that again without a motorcycle going by.