intentional living

Ep 078: Living Light in a World of Excess with Jen Hatmaker

October 10, 2018

I'm allie

I'm here to shake things up and challenge the status quo of motherhood. Let's throw out the old rulebook and create a new narrative where moms are living their dream lives unapologetically.

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I get it, daily routines can be overwhelming. But you? You're seeking life ownership. Dive into this beloved guide and tap into easy self-reflection, without overtaxing your brain.

A book can teach you something new. It can inspire you to make positive changes in your life and can take you to a different level in your life. Reading is so important to me which is why I am excited for Allie Reads October here on the podcast! All month I am interviewing some amazing authors. We will talk about their books, life, and living a life of purpose and intention.

Jen Hatmaker is the author of 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess. 7 is a day-to-day journal that Jen kept of an experiment that she took herself through for seven months where she really severely limited herself in seven different areas of her life. Really, it’s about perspective, getting honest with yourself, looking at how blessed you are, where you’re wasting and getting back to grateful. It’s just a really unique book. I absolutely loved reading it and know you will love it too!

Use the hashtag #AllieReadsOctober to share with me this month. What are you reading? Did you get any of the books from the authors I’m talking to you about? Are you reading a different book? How are you taking this challenge to read more and putting it into action? I cannot wait to see what you share!

 

 

 

In This Episode Allie + Jen Discuss:

  • Seven areas where there tends to be major excess and the experiment Jen did to change those areas in her life.

  • Why fighting excess can be challenging, yet humbling.

  • Ways the 7 experiment has shaped Jen’s life and ways she is implementing what she learned today, years later.

  • How you can start your own 7 experiment.

Mentioned in this Episode:


It’s giveaway time! Jen’s book, 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess, is incredible and I am SO excited to gift it to one of you. Head over to The Purpose Show Facebook Community for your chance to win! I cannot want to connect with you this month on all things book related. #AllieReadsOctober

 


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 Purpose Show.

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Hey, sweet friends! I’m so happy that October is finally here! For months I have been planning and dreaming this up for you and I’m so happy to finally unveil what it is I’ve been working on!

This month, October, is all about reading. We’re calling it “Allie Reads October,” and the purpose behind this is for me to inspire and encourage you to read more often. Reading is such a gift. We take it for granted way too often, myself included, but reading is powerful. You literally have a whole new life in your hands when you read a book.

A book can teach you something new. It can inspire you to make positive changes in your life and can take you to a different level in your life. Reading is so important. I read all the time and I wish that I would have started sooner and so I’m taking that passion of mine and turning it into Allie Reads October. Every October here on The Purpose Show, we are turning it into author central.

I’m interviewing some amazing authors this month and we’re talking about their books and I want to see you use this Hashtag. I’m going to be checking it every single day on Facebook and Instagram and I want you to use it. #alliereadsoctober.

Share with me. What are you reading? Did you get any of the books from the authors I’m talking to you about? Are you reading a different book? How are you taking this challenge to read more and putting it into action?

Let’s celebrate this month October! Allie Reads October. We’re going to talk about authors and books and encourage each other to read more books.

I encourage you to get other people involved in this. Get your kids involved. Encourage them, read with them, next to them or to them, or have them read in their own quiet time. Share this with your friends. Let’s encourage each other to get better equipped to live an intentional life by reading more.

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Hi, beautiful! Welcome to The Purpose Show. Today’s guest is someone who is really special to me. She’s been a big part of my life over the last few years. I was honored that I got to sit down with her.

She’s the author of about a million books…no, just 8, but that’s a lot to me. I sat down and talked with her about one book in particular.

Jen Hatmaker is the author of 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess. 7 is basically a day-to-day journal that Jen kept of an experiment that she took herself through for seven months where she really severely limited herself in seven different areas of her life. Really, it’s about perspective, getting honest with yourself, looking at how blessed you are, where you’re wasting and getting back to grateful. It’s just a really unique book. I absolutely loved reading it. It’s right up our alley. It was just a perfect fit for this podcast.

So, I sat down with Jen and asked her some questions that I had after reading the book and we talked about all kinds of things. I’m so excited for you to hear this.

I also just got really honest with Jen and shared a struggle that I’ve had in the last couple of years. As you guys know, especially if you’ve listened to Episode 6 of my podcast, you know Brian and my story, the rags-to-riches story. We went from one extreme to the other, really being broke, broke as a joke, and then going to the other side of that and having the business explode. Having wealth, all of a sudden, it really does a number on you and makes you realize things. And I’ve found this need to pacify myself and remind myself that I’m not broke anymore. We have what we need.

It’s made me a very, very generous person, but it’s also brought up other more negative things in me as a person. And so, I got really honest with Jen about that and we talked about that. Her words of wisdom are just…she’s such an amazing person. This interview is awesome. I can’t wait for you to hear! So, let’s dive in with Jen Hatmaker.

ALLIE: Hi, how are you?

JEN: Good morning!

ALLIE: Oh my gosh, there’s so much that I want to talk to you about, but I have to stick to just one book I guess.  

So, there is so much that I wish I could talk to you about. Adoption. How you do so many speaking engagements in a row. I don’t know if you’re super extroverted or what, but I can’t even. How you love the crap out of the LGBTQ community. I just love you. You’re amazing. I’m so glad you’re here.

JEN: That’s nice! Thank you.

ALLIE: But today I really want to talk to you about your book, 7. I just finished it. I actually can’t believe I never read it. It’s amazing and it’s right up my alley. I love it.

So, you call 7 an experimental mutiny against excess. Can you tell us a little bit more about what the book is about, and how you came to write it?

JEN: Yeah. I wrote 7 several years ago. I had this sense, I don’t know, I had this nagging sense that I couldn’t pinpoint exactly, but I just felt like, “Gosh, we have a lot. We have a lot. We spend a lot. We waste a lot. I don’t really know what it is or where it’s going, but it feels unregulated.”  

Honestly, it felt like our stuff owned us. That’s really how it felt. And that we were locked into this unhealthy relationship of wanting more, spending more, appreciating less. This was for our family, just nothing I had really ever examined in earnest.  

I just do not know how to do anything halfhearted. I just really don’t. I wish I did. I honestly wish I did. It would be easier if I could just do something medium. But I just don’t have that gear.

Right around that time, my girlfriend, Susanna, was just in her own little life doing this little personal project that she called Pick 5. So for 40 days she picked 5 of the same foods and that’s all she ate for 40 days and journaled through it. And I was like, “You are crazy! Why?”

But, I could not shake it. I couldn’t shake the idea of it. It was kind of like in the spirit of a fast, where for a short amount of time, for a temporary amount of time, you go full restraint, whatever that looks like. Whether it’s complete abstinence or less than or whatever.

And so, I was literally in the shower one day and the whole idea of 7 just downloaded into my brain in a second. It was sort of modeled off of Pick 5, but it wasn’t just food for me.

Over the course of a handful of weeks it developed into what it ended up being, which was we took seven areas in our life that felt extremely excessive, unchecked and out of control. And we were like, what if we boiled it down, our options to that category for seven things for a whole month. We picked food, clothes, spending, possessions, waste, media & technology, and stress (busyness). All of that felt out of control.

And so, we spent one month on each thing with seven choices. For example, we ate the same seven foods for a month. Then we wore the same seven pieces of clothes for a month. We gave away seven things a day that we owned for a month. We only spent money in seven places for a month. It was radical, obviously, and extreme, clearly, but it permanently changed our lives. And so that project, that experiment, became 7.

ALLIE: That’s amazing. So, did you say that you gave away seven things you own every day?

JEN: Yes. And to be honest with you and you’ve read the book so you know, I was afraid that I was going to run out of stuff by the end of the month. I’m like, “who can give away seven things a day?” Just for your folks listening, I let you know in this book when I blew it, when I tried to cheat or did cheat, so this is not like some guilt trip book at all.  

But I pre-hoarded some things. I had cleaned out my kids’ closets a couple of months before and I thought, “I might need this. I might need these by the last week of the month and I’m just going to put these in a side drawer.” Terrible. And the truth was I didn’t need it all. We gave away way more than whatever it was going to end up being, 210 things or whatever, because it turns out we had more than I thought and we weren’t even using it.

ALLIE: It’s crazy how much you don’t realize. I mean that’s kind of what I teach, really, your things not owning you; you owning your things. And it’s so hard. On a regular basis I’ll be teaching a class or whatever and be like, “Okay, I’m taking you into my closet and there’s really not going to be much in there, but we’ll just see what we can find and I’ll show you how I make decisions.” Then I’m like this is literally a “10” on the awkward scale. I have three bags of stuff.

JEN: Totally. I remember at one point, especially during that month when I was frustrated with how many things we had stashed away in drawers, in closets, in nooks, in bins, under beds. And I was like, “Oh my, who bought all this?” And I was like, “Oh, I did. I bought it. I paid money for all of this.” It just sneaks up on you. It really can. If you are not keeping an eye on it, if you not paying attention, then all of a sudden you are owned by what you bought. And that’s where we were at for sure.

ALLIE: Yeah. I think my favorite section in the book is the food one just because I love food so much. I’m not going to say I could never do it because I want to do it. I just finished the book, so I’ve been thinking like you’re right in a way that, like you said, it’s not a guilt trip. But also, I’m super convicted in a good way and I feel like I can’t just read this book and then move on.

This is kinda what sucks, and I know you know this about being a podcaster, is that you read these amazing books. And then, “Dang it! Now my life is changed and I have to change this area.” I remember it was chicken, avocado and spinach, was a few of the things that you were eating.

JEN: Those were three of them. Chicken, eggs, bread, avocados, spinach, apples.

ALLIE: And it was the section where I actually was laughing so hard that I stopped and read it to my husband and he was like, “What are you reading?” It was the part where you wrote a paragraph about how much you hate chicken breast. About how terrible it is and you wanted to die, and I was just dying. Because you couldn’t use onions and things that basically chicken relies on for tasting good. It was hilarious, amazing and just so eye-opening. We have so much wealth here. It was really, really eye-opening, the way you spoke about it.

I wanted to know what do you think was the hardest thing to give up?

JEN: Funny. I thought it was going to be clothes. I thought going into it… “Gosh, the same seven pieces of clothes for a month.” Over the course of that month, I was traveling to speak, so I had to have something in there that was at least decent enough to be in front of people in, like on a stage. This is going to be terrible. Easiest one of the all.  

It wasn’t clothes. I actually loved the freedom of “this is what I have.” No decision making. Hardly any laundry. And you know what? Nobody cares. I assumed that I was going to be fielding questions every day. Why are you wearing that shirt again? Why am I seeing you in that shirt again? Nobody cares. Nobody is paying any attention to what we’re wearing. They don’t care.

What was hardest, actually, was spending. I combed through all of our bank statements for a year just because I didn’t even know where we spent money. I couldn’t have even told you. We averaged – averaged – every month spending money in 66 different places. That’s not even repeat expenditures. That’s just 66 different places we spent money month every month. Different places. That for sure felt out of control

So for 7, for the project, we got to spend money in seven places for the month. We had to do some consolidating just because of bills, so we counted bills as one. But that month was hard. I had no awareness of just how casually and all the time I was spending money. This little thing, that little thing, none of it felt super substantial to me, although the number 66 tells me that it was.

Just having to essentially say “no” to almost everything. I mean, our 7 options really just gave us food and gas in our cars. We kept a lineup item open in case we had emergency medical, which we never used, so I didn’t even get to use that one. There was nothing extra at all and it was hard. That one really pinched.

ALLIE: Was it just that that was the hardest or would you say that area or another area was maybe the most eye-opening and humbling for you? Or was there a specific thing in that area that was really eye-opening for you like, you know, when you get embarrassed in front of your own self?

JEN: For me I think there was this “dawning,” this sense of, “Oh if we really renovated this portion of our lives, how much money we spend, and where, it would mean a lifestyle change for us. It wasn’t just a quick toggle. On my clothes, for example, I was wearing the same thing obviously virtually every day, but my life carried on. I still did what I was doing. Whatever my life was, was still my life.

But the spending piece was prohibitive. My friends were like, “Let’s go to lunch,” and I’d be like, “I can’t.” Or, “I’ve got to bring my own lunch.” And I did that a couple of times. I brought a lunch to restaurants. “Let’s grab a glass of wine.” Can’t do it.

So, I realized how much of my social world is predicated on spending money, as opposed to just quality time. So yeah, that one was really, really eye-opening because I’m like this isn’t just what we’re doing, it’s how we’re living. And so, we would have to make some monumental changes to curb that really crazy appetite.

ALLIE: There was one part in the book where you talked about you were adopting your kids in the process of this book, so you kind of had your mind on Ethiopia and the conditions there, especially the food conditions there. Can you tell the story that you say in the book about when you were doing 7 and eating your dry spinach and you made your kids the breaded fish and all that, and the trash can, can you tell that story because I just think it’s so powerful.

JEN: Yeah. So, I’m thinking about my kids a lot, and my adopted kids, my youngest two are Ethiopian, so at the time they are in Ethiopia, across the world. We were not even matched with them yet. We didn’t even know who they were. We didn’t know anything about them, but we had the promise of them.

By the way, our kids did all of 7 with us except for food and clothes. I can’t do everything; that’s just too much. And they would have been like, “When I was in fourth grade, my mom made me wear the same outfit for a month.” No thank you.

So, I had made my kids this separate dinner. It was not good food, it was just like fish filets. I put their plates out, went to the next room for like a minute to do something, come back in and I see (I can’t remember if it was all of them or one of them now) but they were done. Two minutes.

And I was like, “Did you eat all your food in two minutes? And I think it was my son, Caleb, who just kind of gave me the look. And I go and I open the trash can and I look in and his plate is in there, absolutely full, hadn’t even taken a bite of anything I’d put on his plate. And I was like, “What in the world…” And he said, “Well, we didn’t have any ketchup.”

And I’m like, “Okay.” So, I’m raising kids right now to have such little respect for what it means to not go hungry, to have food, that they’ll literally throw away a full plate of food because it doesn’t have the right condiment with it. That is how far away we are from gratitude. Then I’ve got my other kids in the back of my mind knowing for sure that they were probably going to bed hungry, and that food insecurity had been such a part of their childhood, which it was.

And the dichotomy was so painful and so upsetting and it just broke my heart and I’m like, “This is the problem. This is the problem. We have too much. We’re not even grateful for it and we are willing to waste it.” That solidified it for me, this is why we’re doing this.

ALLIE: If I can ask, because I just was so curious about that story. What did you do? How do you change that? Because we live here, and this is the way that it is. Did you do anything to start to open their eyes? How did you handle that after that realization about your kids?

JEN: Oh yeah. Well first of all they got an earful on that. You can believe that.

It’s not a simple answer, like these are the things we started doing and now we have grateful kids. It’s not like that. It’s more that the things that we were paying attention to and sort of weaving into our lives became more like the air that we breathe. So, these are things that now we’re talking about all the time. These are things we are paying attention to now. These are conversation points that we are engaging our kids with now.

So, it wasn’t like we just started doing a thing, like a program, but more like, “Guys…gratitude. And stuff. All this has a lot of power over us.” 7 was obviously a short-term experiment. It was never meant to be permanent. No one was going to eat the same seven foods forever. It was meant to be short-term, but a lot of the effects of it were permanent for us, even some of the habits.  While the exact mechanics of the way we went about 7 obviously had an end date, the effects linger on. I see that now in my kids, that a lot of our life was shifting, tilting, and turning toward different conversations, different set of values, different habits, and those just stuck.

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Most people know I’m a blogger and a podcaster, but that’s really just where the inspiration happens. I can only scrape the surface of equipping you to bring positive change to your life here. That’s why I create online courses on my Private Students-Only Platform.

I don’t spend months creating courses for no reason. This is where the action is. My courses are for the serious doers out there. If you want to see focused, real change happen in your life – change that lasts – this is what my courses are for.

This is where I dive all the way into actually implementing minimalism in your home and simplification to the cluttered parts of your life as a mom. We get legit detailed in these courses. My students have incredible success rates that they share in our Private Students’ Community and you can see some of their testimonials on my website.

I work really hard to keep my courses priced as low as I can, but you guys know I totally get being on a crazy tight budget, which is why I also have payment plans available

My courses are different from each other. They each serve different purposes and will take you to different places in your life. Don’t overthink which one to start with. Just go to the website and pick one that’s resonating with you and enroll.

For Purpose Show listeners only, you can take 10% off any course you choose with the code PURPOSESHOW.  Visit alliecasazza.com/nextlevel for the breakdown of all the different courses I have to offer, how they’re different from each other and which one might be best for you.

I cannot wait to cheer you on and take you onward and upward. Motherhood is much too sweet a time to be spent in survival mode.

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ALLIE: I’m really curious about the things in the book that center around things like the shopping, clothing and possessions sections. I know how you limited yourself in those areas. I mean I know it’s been years.

I think one thing that bothers me about what I do, what you do, is that people tend to think that if you ever wrote about something you do that all the time and that’s how you are. It’s kind of frustrating. Not meaning this to sound like that, but in those three areas – shopping, clothes and possessions – what has stuck with you? What has lasted in the way you live now?

JEN: Yeah, and a lot of it didn’t. You know, a lot of it didn’t. We still will catch ourselves being out of control. It’s just so easy because that’s the norm around us.

During the course of 7, I gave away about 80% of my closet and I have really, to be honest, never really filled that thing back up again. Like I mentioned earlier, I discovered that’s not a value of mine. I thought it was. I thought it was going into it, but it turns out I it wasn’t. That one line item. Now I’m not saying all possessions, I’m just saying that one thing. While I’m on your podcast, I’m wearing a tee shirt. That’s not my thing. That for me, has stayed under restraint, but there are other areas that still just kind of slip out of my grasp, and all of a sudden I’m like, “What the heck? Why am I doing this?”

I don’t mean this to sound inconsequential because it’s not. Like I spend too much on books. For me, I’ve think this will probably just be forever, things that we kind of have to sit down with one another and be like, let’s do temperature checks here.

For example, right now, this very second, I’m sitting in my office and directly behind my office is an industrial-sized dumpster, like the kind you would see at a work site. And my husband ordered it two weeks ago because he’s like, “We’ve got too much. We’re generating too much. We’re wasting too much. We’re buying too much.” It’s literally behind me full. So that will tell you right now that we have to keep putting gas in this tank or the tail will start wagging the dog again.

ALLIE: I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately in my own personal life. Just to briefly give you a backstory, we used to be, I hate saying “poor” because it’s very much America’s version of what that looks like, but we were. And then the blog, my business, and my husband came home, and we run it together now, and we are very much on the opposite end of that now.

And I find myself pacifying with food. I used to have a cup of soup or whatever, but I can go and get Sushi, so I’m going to. I need to feel that in myself. And with things and clothes, I’ll find myself filling that God-shaped hole with things and comforting myself. So, it was really perfect timing for me to read 7.

We’re 3-4 years into this now, but it’s just the remaining, almost like a PTSD of the past. I think it’s so neat how you talk about these things, you’re so honest. “I just went and I ate this food and I don’t even care.” But I think like how you talk about that it keeps coming back in.

I think we all kind of do what Brian and I’ve been struggling with on a regular basis. Comforting ourselves or filling something in our lives with buying things. Even if it’s not to that extent. But, why? Why do we have to go to Target and fill our cart with pointless things just because it’s there? Is that what you mean when you’re saying “temperature check,” that you have gotten to that point where you’re just needlessly bringing things in and you have to get it back out?

JEN: Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. Just this morning, I was in the house and my husband and I sat down for probably an hour and went through, “Ok, what are we spending?” We sat this morning and he’s going through it, line by line, and he’s like, “What is this? What is this?”

Not like in a gotcha kind of way. He’s talking about his expenditures. Frankly (and he would say this if he was in the room) but he’s the spender in our marriage. And he’s like, “Okay, this is what it costs to live our life in a month.” I mean we just went through it again. He’s like, “so in these areas, we’re slipping. We need to tighten it up. We need to lock it down.” And so, I think it’s just that sort of attention that we give it. Do not expect it to run on its own momentum forever. It won’t. It just won’t, because there’s so much competing for our loyalties, too much competing for our headspace and definitely too much competing for our dollars.

I just feel like for us this is just work that we will have to just keep our foot on the gas with these sort of periodic dumpsters and spending renovations. A lot of this has to do with our kids too and what they feel entitled to.

We were a lot like you. We’ve been married for 25 years and it wasn’t until probably the last seven years that I could fill my whole tank with gas and not be afraid that I didn’t have enough money to do it. We really struggled financially for the majority of our adult life and marriage. I ran a student ministry at church. I was a teacher and then I had a bunch of kids so I stayed home. We just really scraped it together. So that sense of scarcity for us, still, is like a ghost that haunts us.

And to your point, we find sometimes just the ability to buy what we want to buy such a comfort. So we have to also pay attention to that. And I’m not one that says, “You can never have anything nice.” I’m not like that. I hope that those listening don’t think, “These two are a drag. I can never get some sushi?” Yes, you can. That’s not my life philosophy. I’m not some, “you can never have anything fun or nice again.”

But we do pay attention to our motives behind it. Are we feeling grabby and desperate, or do I just want to have sushi with my friend? I suspect that we will probably never be fully on the other side of this.

ALLIE: Yeah, I love your honesty about that. So just curious, is there anything since 7 that you just can’t personally justify buying or do anymore?

JEN: I don’t know if it’s so much a brand issue like that. I think just because I came into this one at a zero, I mean I’m an absolute, “I’ve never even thought about this, much less practiced any of it,” that stuck the most was waste when it came down to the earth and how much we use. And that concept for me was pretty revolutionary.

So, it’s funny now when I go back and read it, I’m like, “Come on Jen. I was real green there.” Pun intended. Now I read it and go, “That’s not that special. Everybody else was already caring about the earth. You were just a dumb-dumb.” But at the time, to start from nothing. We took on seven habits for “a green life” in the project and it was real eye-opening for me. And so those things stuck for sure. Well, not all of them; we’re not still collecting rain water, but we are careful. We’re careful about that.

That is something now that my kids don’t even know another way than this philosophy of earth-care and economy. We never went back to burning everything like we used to, just burning through it without a care in the world. We’re really careful about what we buy, what we reuse, what we won’t purchase in like one-time use stuff. Big time recyclers. All of it.

ALLIE: This is embarrassing, but we just started recycling and you know why? Even my reason for doing it was vain. I was so tired of somebody coming over and being like, “Oh, do you recycle?” And me being like, “No.” It’s just unfortunately not something that’s on our minds unless it was instilled in us as kids or something. So yeah, I love that. I love that it stuck with you guys.

So everyone listening is going to want to do this. So where can they go? How can they get 7? I know that you have a whole thing that goes with it now.  

JEN: It’s really easy now. We’ve taken 7 and we’ve digitized it and now we have bundled it. Now we’ve got just the book. We’ve got a workbook if you want to go through it. Let me back up real quick and then I’ll answer your question.

When I first did 7, I just wrote it and it never occurred to me one time that somebody would ever want to do it themselves. Not one time. I thought, “I’m not writing a prescription here, this is just some random story we’re living.” And then when everybody started buying that book and were like, “We’re going to do it in our neighborhood. We’re going to do it in our family,” I’m like, “What? I cannot believe it.” I was shocked by that.

And so, my publishing team came back a few months later and they’re like, “Everybody is wanting more instruction on doing it.” I’m like, “Well I didn’t give any instruction. I wasn’t thinking like that.” I went back six months later and wrote a workbook through it.

In the workbook, there’s a ton of options. It’s not like this is how it has to be. It’s not really formulated. I never meant for it to be like that. It was more like Food: Here’s 10 different things you might want to do. Do what makes sense for you.

And what I noticed is the outcome is the same. So, the mechanics may be different, but the ideas are the same. So, there’s a workbook and there’s videos. I filmed videos to go with every single chapter, all seven chapters. We’ve got an online Facebook group that’s private and everybody’s going through 7 right now.

You can get all that on my website. It’s Jenhatmaker.com. If you click on the “store” tab, it’ll take you to it.

I went through this with a bunch of girlfriends. I call them The Council. There were seven of us total. They did “versions” while I did it a specific way. Having them in the project with me, I just can’t imagine not. And so, I think that 7 is best done in a small group or with your friends or with a couple of families. There’s a lot of powerful conversations that come out of it. There’s a lot of discussions. To me, it’s better in communities.  

ALLIE: And you have given us a coupon code too. So, if you guys want to use the code PURPOSE, you get 15% off. It’s awesome.

I’m trying to work on texting some of my friends. When you describe what 7 is, it’s like,“Hey, do you want to, I dunno, come and basically be in a concentration camp with me for seven months? It’ll be fine.”

JEN: Well you know what, a lot of people do it just a week. There’s so many ways. There’s no one way to skin a cat. It’s okay for you to be like, “this is a way that I think will still be impactful in my life, but not destroy my life.” There are versions of the project for sure.

ALLIE: Yeah. And I think the point is looking at how you’re spending, what you’re doing, like how I talked about pacifying myself with these things. The point is being aware, which is huge.

JEN: So, for sure, all of your listeners can get 15% off any package that you want with the coupon code, PURPOSE.  At checkout, you put it in PURPOSE and you’re going to get 15% off.

ALLIE: For you guys that are listening, I’ll link in the show notes so you’re not searching everywhere for it.

Thank you so much!

JEN: I love talking about 7. It was such a monumental time in my life and paid such dividends forward. I feel like I’m the leader and the mom that I am right now, largely in part because of what I learned during the year of 7.

And so, thanks for being interested in it. Thanks for putting in front of your listeners. I love that. They can always find me online if they’ve got questions or want to talk about it. I’m all over social media.

ALLIE: Yeah. And guys follow Jen on Instagram because you share so much. I love watching a mom who’s a couple seasons ahead of me and your daughter just went off to college and just seeing your thoughts and your tears and your honesty about everything. Even this morning you posted something hilarious about your kids going to school and all that. I just love you on Instagram.

JEN: It’s so much fun, isn’t it? It’s my favorite of all the social medias, it feels like that’s where we go to have a good time. All of the others are where we go to have some drama, but Instagram is fun.

ALLIE: Yeah, it’s really easy to spend time there.

Okay. Well I will let you go. Thank you again so, so much and I can’t wait for everyone to hear this.

That was such an incredible interview with Jen. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. It was an absolute pleasure to talk with her. She’s amazing. All the things that Jen and I talked about, especially about you taking the next action step for yourselves and reading the book 7, maybe getting the workbook and putting it into action in your own life can be found in show notes. You can find that at alliecasazza.com/shownotes/078. Everything you need will be right there. The link to her shop, the coupon code that you can get 15% off of everything, all that good stuff. So head over there and take action because you know that’s what I’m all about and that’s what The Purpose Show is all about.

_______________________________________________________________

This was an episode of The Purpose Show. Did you know there is an exclusive community created solely for the purpose of continuing discussions surrounding The Purpose Show episodes? And to get you to actually take action and make positive changes on the things that you learn here? Go be a part of it. To join go to facebook.com/groups/purposefulmamas.

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, and get step-by-step help from me, head to alliecasazza.com. There are free downloads, courses, classes, and ways to learn more about what the next step might look like for you and to focus on whatever you might need help with in whatever season you are in right now.  

I am always rooting for you, friend!

See ya next time!

Hey mama! Just a quick note, this post may contain affiliate links.

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