There’s this perfectionism that Pinterest and Instagram have brought into our society. And from that, there is this idea that if you change your mind, it looks like you are a mess. But, life is so crazy. Things are so stressful. Things change and flow all of the time. Seasons ebb and flow which means how you operate in those seasons sometimes changes. It is about saying “no” to what isn’t working and saying “yes” to what is. Do what works for you. Pursue what your version of less and your version of joy is in this season. It’s OK to change your mind!

In This Episode, Allie Discusses:

• The weight of perfectionism on our culture + how that translates to when things change.

• How saying “no” to what isn’t working means you are saying “yes” to more joy, time, family, and what matters.

• The value of letting go of the idea that you have to stick to your guns in everything you say and do.

• Why going back to homeschooling in this season has impacted her family (in a good way!)

Mom life. We are surrounded with the message that it’s the tired life. The no-time-for-myself life. The hard life. And while it is hard and full of lots of servitude, the idea that motherhood means a joyless life is something I am passionate about putting a stop to.  I’m on a mission to help you stop counting down the minutes till bedtime, at least most days.  I want you to stop cleaning up after your kid’s childhood and start being present for it.  Start enjoying it. I believe in John 10:10 “that we are called to abundant life” and i know mothers are not excluded from that promise. Join me in conversations about simplicity, minimalism and lots of other good stuff that leads to a life of less for the sake of enjoying more in your motherhood.  I’m Allie Casazza and this is the The Purpose Show.

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Hey everyone!  Welcome to Episode 17 of The Purpose Show!  This episode is entitled “It’s Okay To Change Your Mind.”   And that is exactly what I am going to be talking about.

This episode is the product of several conversations I have had recently.  I had a conversation recently with a good friend at a coffee shop.  It centered around this issue of judgement surrounding you when you change your mind, especially on big things.

It’s something that I have struggled with, just as an influencer. A lot of the things that I do are shared publicly.  People message me and say things that make me feel like “not a great mom” or “I don’t know what I am doing”. Honestly, sometimes I don’t and that’s OK.  It’s called being a human being.

That’s my point. It’s like this weird thing that’s happening with social media – sharing a lot of what you’re doing, or things that happen in your life being shared publicly – whether you are an influencer or not.  Just social media.  Everything is just public.

It’s almost this idea that if you change your mind, it looks like you are a mess. I just wanted to shine a light on it.

There’s this perfectionism that Pinterest and Instagram have brought into our society. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy those things very much.  Pinterest has helped me become a better cook, a better decorator, a better organizer.  It is so helpful.  I appreciate a beautiful Instagram feed.  I think I have one myself. I love taking photos and editing them.  It is a hobby of mine. I love it.

I think that sometimes people take it a step too far and bring this perfect vision into everything.  Oh my gosh, life is so tumultuous. Things ebb and flow.  They change. They are supposed to. I change my mind, or make a mistake, or I do something for a little while and then I leave it.

I have received messages: “Wow! You are already doing that?  Whoa! You went back to this? Wow! You’re moving back already?”  It’s like an undertone of judgmentalness.  It’s really not cool.

I think it stems from this perfectionism in our society.  I just want to address it. I feel a really strong conviction to use my platform to shine the light on important things.  To infuse everything with purpose that I can. God really brings episodes to my brain based on that concept. I just want to talk about that a little bit today.

I am a doer.  If I have an idea it’s hard for me not to do something about it.  At the very least, I will get my laptop out, open Trello, and dump an idea or goal setting process into a Trello board.  To map out or hammer out an idea.  It is just not natural for me to have an idea and keep going about my day.  I will totally stop and jot a note in my journal, grab my phone or laptop, call a friend to talk about it – just do something about it.  It’s just the way that I am.   With that, comes a lot of change.

Life happens. Things change. Seasons ebb and flow.  Because of being a bit more in the public eye, I am pretty transparent.  There are things that I feel don’t need to be shared; they are just for me.  Even some really important life lessons that have deeply impacted me – those are just for me and they are not something I feel I need to share publicly.

Typically, I am really transparent. I enjoy sharing things with you guys.  Instagram is my main hub.  It is where I am.  I will never hire that out.  I have people that help keep my other social media platforms active, but on Instagram it is always me.  While I don’t get to every single message, I am very present there. I share on my Instagram Stories things about my day, my life, little tips and tricks, little lessons that I have learned here and there.

For example, when we moved from Southern California, which is where we were both born and raised, to the Midwest.  We moved for about 18 or 19 months.  When we moved back, people wanted to know, “Why are you moving back? Why are you moving back so fast?”  People are just nosy, I think.

When we decided we were going to buy a camper and renovate it and travel the country, we didn’t really know how long we were going to do that.  We said for one year. We ended up doing it for about 6-7 months.  We were done with it and didn’t want to continue with it.  We moved back home.  We couldn’t find a house so we moved into an apartment temporarily.  When the time in the apartment was up and we found a house, we moved again.  People sent messages: “Wow, you guys change your minds a lot. Why are you moving again?  Moving again? Oh my gosh!”  Those are big examples.

Changing your mind about homeschooling – not homeschooling and then homeschooling again.  Starting a juice cleanse and then deciding that my body likes food.  Starting Whole30 and not finishing.  There’s a difference between laziness, having trouble following through, sticking to your guns, but there’s also a difference in just changing your mind.  Being a person.  It’s OK to change your mind.

I wanted to dive into one of those examples in detail. I got a lot of response from women feeling the same way.  They had changed their minds about the same topic and gotten a lot of flack from friends and family about doing so.  And that is homeschooling.

I have always said that we homeschool not year by year but season by season.  I am always at the feet of God, praying, “what do you want us to do in this season?”

Last year, our business just exploded. I went from running a little blog with one person to help with emails to incorporating and hiring about nine new people.  Needing to hire each of them desperately because things were so busy.

We were running an empire all of the sudden. There was so many moving parts to that. It was very overwhelming. It was all good, but it was just a lot.  I found myself thrown into this new life that God had given us, but it was just a lot.

I found that homeschooling had totally gone to the back burner.  It wasn’t even really happening.  I have always liked the idea of unschooling.   I thought we would just do that. Unschooling is “learning happens as you go.”  It just did not work for me. I won’t get into the details of it but it absolutely did not work for our family. At all.  It was like trying to mix oil and water. It just didn’t work.

It’s funny, because with homeschooling I am so laid back and mellow. I don’t like bringing school into the home and being rigid.  I really thought that was going to be fine and it just wasn’t.   It was very stressful.   It just didn’t work at all. I tried it every different way.  Homeschooling was such a source of stress.  There was yelling and meltdowns.  Just stress.

The business was requiring full time from both Brian and myself.  We were balancing working with the kids all of the time.  Last summer we wrapped up our camper living, moved back home to Southern California, started looking for a house.  We started to pray and feel really good about sending the kids to public school for the year.  Going into it I felt this was just temporary.  At least one full school year.  

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Do you feel like you are barely getting through your days friend?  Does motherhood feel more like a hurricane of chaos that you are just surviving rather than the awesome, joy-filled season that you want it to be?

Well, motherhood is hard.  I am not going to lie to you about that. While it is servitude and giving to your family from yourself, it doesn’t have to be something that we are waiting to be over.  Something that we are counting down the minutes till naptime, or bedtime, or waiting for the next day to start.  If you are wanting to sort through the clutter in your mind, your heart, your home calendar, your health, routines, and relationships, I created Unburdened just for you!

It is a guide that will help you go from drowning in the sea of stress and overwhelm, to owning your time and living the best version of your motherhood.  So you can live abundantly while intentionally focusing on those who matter most.

Unburdened is the overwhelmed beginner’s guide to a simpler motherhood.

In Unburdened, I will walk you through how to stop over-complicating, procrastinating, and just start making positive changes now.  How to declutter, just a little bit – not super deep into it, because you can’t handle that when you are this overwhelmed – but a surface declutter that will get you real results in your house so you can clean up less.

How to declutter toxic relationships in your life and set some good boundaries.  How to simplify cleaning, get healthy and feel better – finally!

How to simplify your calendar.  How to start owning your time and not just managing it as life happens to you.

How to stop just setting goals and letting them sit there. Start actually defining where you want to go and getting there through reverse engineering and goal-setting.

How to create a cleaning routine that works for you and your life.

This course is a mini-course.  It is small.  It is straightforward. But it is everything for the mom who feels like she needs a total overhaul, but is too overwhelmed to start.

It will help you simplify the things that have you stuck and leave survival mode behind for good.

Is this resonating with you? Sound like you?  Does this sound like something that would really help you right now?  Go to bit.ly/getunburdened.

I really poured my heart into this little course.  I created it for the mom who is really wanting to simplify, declutter, and pursue a life of less, but she is so burdened and overwhelmed with the mess of life.  It’s not just her house. She wants to simplify at the surface of all the different things in her life so she can focus on her family more. So then she can focus more on really, truly purging her entire house.

If this sounds like you, I encourage you to check it out.  You are probably the person I created it for.  I want you in there. I want it to help you.

Check it out.  bit.ly/getunburdened

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They started school in August.  November, December came around. We found a house. We moved in and were settled.  We had never really done homeschooling while being settled in a house, and not for a temporary few months, an apartment in between houses, traveling the country.  Brian and I hadn’t really done homeschooling together, settled in a normal house.   

We fell into this really great season. We were feeling calm.  A bunch of new people had been hired.  My workload went from beyond full time to just a few hours a week.  Brian’s matched mine.  We were playing ping pong with our work hours.  It got very simple.

That was our goal, but it was funny to have reached it.  And feel like “wow, things are really light.”

Then we noticed that we were still doing the drive-the-kids-to-school thing.  Doing drop off and pick up two and three times a day because everyone is at different ages and grades.  Even if they were at the same school, it was different times.  It was just a lot.

Now this thing that had just saved us and helped us so much as far as the business, had actually become a point of stress.  Now it is really inconvenient.  The kids are asking every week to be homeschooled again.  We loved our rhythm.  We loved our friends we had when we were homeschooling. We loved our lifestyle.  We loved being together as a family.

Also, Brain and I had worked really, really hard to remove ourselves from the 9 to 5 of normal jobs.  To have the freedom of traveling whenever we want. Doing whatever we want, whenever we want with having our business. Putting the kids into public school plopped us right back into that category where you are off when everyone else is off.  Your breaks are when everyone else’s breaks are.

We felt like this had turned into this huge inconvenience. We knew we were definitely going to pull them out when this year was over.  As the weeks went by, God just really showed up and changed our hearts.  He had us feeling like we didn’t really want them going back after winter break.

We prayerfully made the decision to let them finish through until winter break.  They had school all the way up to the Friday before Christmas.  They went and that was their last day.

At the time of this recording we are starting our first day of school this coming week.  But by the time you guys are listening to this, we will be in full swing with homeschooling.   We transferred them to a Charter School and we are homeschooling again.

It is so funny to say things that I am sharing my day or sharing how exciting I am.  Some people’s comments are just so nasty and rude.  For example, “I can’t believe… wow!  They didn’t even finish the year?”

Guys, I just want to empower you.  Life is so crazy.  Things are so stressful.  Things change and flow all of the time.  For me, the minimalist lifestyle is about saying “no” to what isn’t working and saying “yes” to less. Less stress. More joy. More time. More family. More of what matters. And less of just what isn’t fitting in my life.

Why does that have to line up with the school year? Why does that have to line up with summer’s arrival?  The end of spring? The last day of school because the state says it is the last day school?  Why does our last day of school have to be the same as everyone else’s?  Why is that how it works?

That doesn’t make sense.  How many months are left of the school year, 4-5 months?  Why would I put my family through going almost a half year more of something that we know just is not working, something that has become so inconvenient, just because this is when everyone else says this is the last day of school is?

Our kids have so much stability in our family, our marriage, our home, the way that our family functions.  I know what’s best for my family.  You know what’s best for your family.

It is OK to change your mind!  It is OK to change your mind about homeschooling. It’s OK to hate it and send your kids to school midway through the year.  It is OK to do the opposite of that.

It is OK to start a juice cleanse, go 12 hours and hate it, and then stop.  It’s OK to change your mind about what you thought was a good marriage.  It’s OK to change your mind about what you thought was best for your kids.  It’s OK to change your mind about discipline tactics.

It’s OK to change your mind about your style and your outfits.  It’s OK to change and grow.  It’s OK to go to a family function and be a different person. Have a different career. Be making a change. Not be the person who does the things you used to do anymore. Not be the person who struggles with the same things you used to struggle with. To grow. To mature. To become a better version of yourself.

If that makes people uncomfortable, if that makes people feel the need to share their opinion on that, that has everything to do with them and their issues and nothing to do with you and yours.

I just wanted to give you that little pep talk.  Be really open and honest and say it is OK to change your mind. Do what works for you.  Pursue what your version of less and your version of joy is in this season.

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This was an episode of The Purpose Show.  Thank you so much for tuning in.  If you are ready to uplevel and really take action on the things I talk about on my show, head to alliecasazza.com for free downloads, courses, classes and to learn more about what the next step might look like for you.  I am always rooting for you. See ya next time!