Today I’m continuing my conversation with author, fellow business owner, and friend Tanya Dalton. Tanya is the owner of Inkwell Press and she is also the author of The Joy Of Missing Out. Today we are digging deep into the topic of pursuing your purpose when your kids are little. You don’t want to miss the second part of this amazing conversation. So, let’s dive in!
In This Episode Allie and Tanya discuss:
Practical tips for starting a business when you have kids at home
Training your kids to be an active part of your business
Raising your kids to be invested in your business
Connecting to your purpose and connecting your kids to theirs
Mentioned in this Episode:
Courses (Use the code PURPOSESHOW for 10% off!)
The Purpose Show Facebook Community
The Joy of Missing Out by Tanya Dalton
The Purpose Show Summer Book Club
Ep. 157: Building Teamwork Into Your Family with Tanya Dalton
Mom life. We’re surrounded by the message that it’s the tired life. The no-time-for-myself life. The hard life. We’re supposed to get through it. Survive. Cling on by the last little thread. And at the same time, Carpe Diem—enjoy every moment because it’s going to go by so fast. The typical mom culture that sends us all kinds of mixed, typically negative messages: We shouldn’t take care of ourselves; it’s selfish. The more ragged you run yourself, the bigger your badge of honor. But also, ditch your mom bod and work out. Don’t yell. Make more money. Show up. Be better, but not at the expense of time with your kids. I am putting a hard stop to all of this. While being a mom, running a business, and whatever else you might have going on is hard. It is a lot and there’s lots of giving of yourself. The idea that motherhood means living a joyless, nonstop-hustle-with-zero-balance kind of life where you give and give and give and never take, needs to stop.
I’m on a mission to help you stop counting down the minutes till bedtime (at least most days). Stop the mom guilt and shame game. Stop cleaning up after your kids’ childhood and start being present for it. I want to help you thrive in work, home and life. I believe in John 10:10 that we are called to living an abundant life and I know moms are not excluded from that promise. Join me in conversations about simplicity, some business and life hacks, spirituality 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.
Hi, sweet friends! This is the continuation of my conversation with author and friend, Tanya Dalton. Tanya is the owner of Inkwell Press and she is also the author of The Joy Of Missing Out, which is incredible.
We had this really long, expansive, incredible conversation a few weeks ago. We shifted gears halfway through so we decided to split it into two different episodes. This is the second one.
In the first episode we talked about building teamwork into your family, which was incredible. It’s really a fresh take on this new topic that I’ve never talked about here on The Purpose Show. I loved it.
In this episode today we’re talking about pursuing your purpose when your kids are really little. This is great if you have a passion project, you’re starting a business, or if you have a blog and you really believe that it’s going to do big things and you want to grow it.
How do you get okay with being multi-passionate? Because you’re passionate about your kids and your family, but you’re also passionate about your project, your business, or whatever it is.
I know we have a lot of listeners that have nonprofits and online businesses. We all have these purposes and sometimes it’s more than having our kids.
How do you pursue that when your kids are really little and there are a lot of interruptions? How do you deal with that internally?
And practically speaking, how do you get stuff done with little kids in the house and all that that goes into it?
We’re going to dive into this amazing conversation with Tanya. If you haven’t listened to her other episode, Part 1, I encourage you to go and listen. You don’t need it to understand what we’re talking about in this episode, but it is so good.
Also, don’t forget we’re doing a book club with Tanya this month. Go to alliecasazza.com/bookclub. Join the The Purpose Show Community on Facebook and then get her book and join the conversation.
Even if you miss it live, you can watch the replay. It’s basically two bonus podcast episodes and they’re recorded with you guys involved.
There are comments and a Q&A. Oh my gosh, so valuable!
She should be charging for this but it’s just free and sitting there. Go to Alliecasazza.com/book club to join and get involved.
Let’s welcome Tanya back.
ALLIE: I would love to shift gears and talk to you about working moms, especially work-from-home moms. I want to talk about working from home, especially when you have little kids at home—whether you homeschool them or they’re just too little to go to school or whatever it is.
I get questions all the time asking how I homeschooled while starting this business. I answer them, but I feel like you have spent so much time in that topic that you have really thought it through.
You have all these incredible answers and practical tips for people. I would love for this conversation to go in that direction for all the people that need help.
TANYA: Yeah, absolutely.
I like to say that I’ve been almost every version of mom. I’ve been the stay-at-home mom. I’ve been the work-at-home mom.
I’ve been the work-from-home mom. I’ve been the full-time working mom.
There are all these different iterations of motherhood and I’ve lived quite a few of them because as my business has grown, as I’ve evolved as a business woman and as a mother, it’s shifted and changed. It’s been fascinating.
I started my first business in my kitchen with $50 and I had two small children playing at my feet. I think people look at me now going to an office space with a team, running a seven figure business and they think, “Oh, you have no idea what it’s like.”
And I say, “Oh no! I’ve been there.”
My first desk was 1 ft X 2 ft and was literally in my kitchen so that my children could play and I could make dinner while I was responding to emails and doing those kinds of things.
ALLIE: But that’s why you’re brilliant in this! I feel like anyone else would have thought, “Well, I need space. I need to convert the closet into an office and hide.”
And that might be your situation and that works for you. But I love what you did!
I always say that instead of trying to silence the love in your life, maybe we should silence what doesn’t really matter as much like technology and our perfect schedules. And I feel like that’s what you did.
You thought, “Okay, my kids are little. I’m not going to shut them up, get them out of my way, and go and hide because I’ve got to get all this stuff done. I’m going to find a way to get the quiet stuff done when I can, but I’m going to sit in the midst of my beautiful life and see it as a blessing and not a burden and just work within that.”
And I really love that about you.
TANYA: Thank you.
I had a really audacious goal when I started. Well actually, when I started my first business, I thought it was just going to be for fun. It would just be a side hobby.
And then I set a crazy audacious goal for myself with my business because I had a conversation with my husband. He was doing marketing for Fortune 500 companies.
He would literally leave our home (we were living in Dallas, Texas at the time) and he would go around the world. His ticket was literally called, “The Around The World Ticket.”
He would leave and go circle the entire globe. In one trip he touched six of the seven continents.
It was crazy. He’d be gone for three or four weeks at a time on these gigantic business trips.
I knew that he loved marketing, but I had this conversation with him when he was on the other side of the planet. I can totally picture it today.
I can picture my yellow kitchen. I can picture myself sitting on the steps, having the conversation where I said, “These are the things that Kate’s doing, and she’s saying this.”
She was really little at the time Jack was doing these things. And my husband got really, really quiet and I said, “Are you okay?”
And he said, “I’m missing everything. I’m missing all the milestones. I’m missing the moments. I’m missing being the hands-on dad I really want to be. And I don’t know what to do about that.”
At the time I was a stay-at-home mom, so he was the breadwinner. I had this little tiny business that I started with $50 where I was selling to friends and maybe friends of friends.
No website. Nothing fancy.
And so, I had that conversation with him. And I can picture it right now, hanging up the phone, looking out my window and seeing the kids playing on the playground.
In that very moment I made the decision that I was going to grow my business to the point where my husband could quit working in corporate America, come and work alongside me and be a full-time, hands-on dad next to me.
ALLIE: This is why we’re friends. We have the same story. I love it.
I love your husband’s heart. I feel like he and Brian would be friends because they are good dads. They love their kids and they want to help.
Oh my gosh, I’m warm inside because it’s so nice to hear about another husband that doesn’t love being away. I hear that a lot.
TANYA: I feel so blessed that my husband loves his role as a dad and just revels in it.
I set that goal for myself, which is a crazy goal when you think about the fact that the number of business courses I had taken in college is equal to zero. The amount of business experience I had was zero.
And yet, I thought, “You know what? I’m going to do this. I’m going to make this happen.”
That’s how crazy I am. I put my kids to bed and I probably did not even bathe them because I think I got really excited and said something like, “All right, we can skip bath tonight. We’re just going to go to bed. Here’s some chicken nuggets. Go to bed.”
I sat down and I thought, “Okay, let me figure out how I’m gonna make this work. How am I going to do this?”
I mapped out, “Here’s how we’re going to make this work.”
I was still a stay-at-home mom with two small kids and a husband who traveled for three or four weeks at a time. How am I actually going to make this happen?
So, I created a plan for myself. I got really on fire with the idea.
That was really my “why.” I think it’s so important to understand your “why.”
Why are you doing it? Why is this important? Why is this going to help you or help your family?
My why was so strong that within about a year I was able to make that goal happen.
My husband was making six figures with his MBA working for corporations. I was able to tell him, “We’re going to work together.”
We absorbed his income and started working together. That was in 2009.
We work across the desk from each other. We literally work in the same room all day long. We’re together 24 hours a day and we love it.
ALLIE: That’s what I love about you guys—that you love it. Brian and I have done several episodes on working together and we always get messages.
I mean, everyone, you do you. If you know what your strength is and you’re happy in your marriage, just do that.
But the messages that bother me are the ones that say, “I just don’t think we would make it if we did that.”
So, basically, it’s a statement that if you’re separate, that’s what’s keeping you happy.
TANYA: I know. People are always saying, “Are you guys crazy?”
And I say, “No. I’m crazy about my husband. I picked him. I married my best friend for a reason and there’s nobody I want to spend more time with than him.”
We drive carpool together. We drop the kids off.
We work together at the office. We come home. It works for us.
And some people say, “That would never work for us.”
And that’s okay if that doesn’t work for you. Everybody’s different with what’s going to work for them.
But it works for me and it makes me incredibly happy. And at the end of the day all that matters is that you’re doing the things that make you happy.
That life feels fulfilling to you. And if that is getting your husband to work alongside you, then make it happen.
Just like me, you may be thinking to yourself, “Well, I have no business experience.”
So what? You can do anything you put your mind to.
Quite frankly, the fact that I can do it tells me that anyone can do it. I want to say I’m nothing special, but my mom would probably balk at that because she thinks I’m special.
But there’s nothing magical about me. It’s just that I made a decision.
I made a choice. And then I thought, “What do I need to do to make this happen?”
I didn’t worry about what the giant steps were. I worried about what’s the first small step I can take?
What’s the next small step? What’s the step after that? You just tackle it step-by-step and productivity allows you to create a little bit of structure for yourself.
In that season when I was working from home with small kids at home, I would sit down on Sundays and I would say to myself, “All right, what does this week really look like? I’m going to get my work done while they’re at Mother’s Day Out and Preschool, so how many hours do I really think I can work this week?”
Is it 10 hours this week? Is it 15? Maybe it’s 20? Never was it 40. Never was it 40 at that season. And that was okay.
Again, there’s that flexibility that we’ve been talking about. Some weeks are going to allow for 15 hours.
Some weeks are going to allow for 20. Some are only going to be 5 and that’s OK.
Like that whole idea of harmony where we’re leaning, counterbalancing, and leaning again, some weeks you can lean harder and some weeks you’ve got to counterbalance. And that’s all right because that’s the season you’re in.
It’s okay not to feel like I have to have a giant business right away. You start small and you grow it piece by piece by piece and it is attainable. It’s achievable in the time you have.
A lot of times people say, “Oh, I don’t have the time.”
It’s not time that you need. You need to prioritize.
If something is important to you, treat it like a priority. Prioritize it by giving it the time it deserves.
In that season that meant I could give it 15 hours. Where is that 15 hours going to show up?
And I would carve it into my calendar. Monday morning I’m going to work from 9:00-1:00. Tuesday I’m not going to work at all. Wednesday I’m going to work from 2:00-4:00.
I would literally put it into my calendar as an appointment and I would treat it like any appointment that I would have with a doctor, my hairdresser, or anyone else where you can’t cancel at the last minute.
I would treat it as a priority because I only had these tiny little slivers of time. I call them containers. I call them my containers of time because you get in and you get out, right?
So when I’m in that container of time, I’m really deeply focused on my work. I’m not worrying about signing field trip forms.
I’m not worrying about what I am going to make for lunch for the kids tomorrow. I’m really giving 100% of me fully, completely, absolutely poured into my business.
When I’m out of that compartment, I’m fully, completely, 100%, giving myself to my family. And that’s the way that I made it work at that point.
As my kids got older, I had bigger containers of time. When they were both into elementary school, it was like I won the time lottery.
It’s like when your kids get out of diapers and suddenly you wonder where did all this extra money come from.
ALLIE: $300 a month! I had three in diapers. That’s a big example to me.
TANYA: It’s exactly the same thing, right? We have that time.
If you were to ask yourself right now, “Do you have $300 extra lying about?”
You’d say, “Oh my God, no!”
But you had $300 for diapers, right? Or if your car breaks down, you have $300 to go get your car fixed.
So you tighten your belt in other areas. You scrape your pennies together. You make that a priority.
Because diapers are a priority. Getting your car fixed is a priority. It’s no different with time.
I like to equate time and money a lot of times because it’s the same thing. We say we don’t have time, but where can you cut the fat just like you can when you’ve got to get your car fixed?
Where can you tighten your belt a little bit? Are you spending more time on Facebook than you really want to?
Are you binge watching more TV shows? Where is it that you’re spending extra time that really you could pour into whatever this passion project is you want to do?
Maybe it’s not a business for you. Maybe it’s something else altogether, but you do have that time. It’s available.
It’s just you actively carving it out and making that space because it is absolutely not going to magically appear. It’s not going to suddenly be like, “Oh, here’s five hours!”
It doesn’t happen. You have to say, “I’m going to have five hours and I’m going to take it right here.”
I say that all the time. Carve it out. Because you’re literally marking it in your calendar, marking it in your planner and you’re making that a priority.
ALLIE: I love that so much and it’s so practical.
All right, loves. I’ve got some really good news that I think a lot of you are going to do a happy dance about because it’s something that I’ve been asked to do for a long time.
I am doing a book club to kick off summer. Our guest today, Tanya Dalton, wrote a book called The Joy Of Missing Out: Live More By Doing Less. You know this is my style!
Tanya is a wealth of wisdom. She is going to come into The Purpose Show Community on Facebook. It’s a Facebook group that has existed for a long time, so if you’re not in there, we’ve got to get you over there.
She’s going to go live with me. We’re going to sit and talk two separate times over the course of a couple of weeks. We’re going to talk about the book.
She’s going to answer questions. You can make yourself a cup of coffee or tea, sit back, relax, and just enjoy the inspiring conversation, or you can use the chat to talk to her and ask her questions.
This is, of course, free! To join to to alliecasazza.com/bookclub and that page will link you to buying the book through Amazon so it comes quickly, and then go to the Facebook community where you can join for the discussion.
Tanya’s going to be going live twice in the group with us to discuss all the things: the book, productivity, living a good life that’s focused on what matters. It’s Tuesday, June 16th and Tuesday, June 23rd at 10:00 AM Pacific, both days.
Even if you can’t come live, which I hope you can, you can join the community and watch the replay because that’s going to be some serious inspiration. It’s basically like two extra episodes of the show, but live.
alliecasazza.com/bookclub. Go over there, get ready and let’s do this!
ALLIE: Can we go back to the little years? I know a lot of my moms either homeschool, are starting a business, or their kids are too little to go to school and they’re in that place.
What tips do you have for when you don’t have five solid hours in a row and you’re trying to create a course or launch a business?
What did you do with your kids? Let’s get really in the nitty gritty for these women that are listening.
TANYA: Yeah, I’m happy to.
You heard me say this the other day, but if they can train a monkey to ride a tricycle, you can train your kids to allow you to have distraction-free space and that’s the truth. I feel like I say that and people think, “Well, yeah, you’re right. They can train a monkey to ride a tricycle.”
ALLIE: I can’t really argue with that.
TANYA: You can’t argue with it. Truly. If you walk into any preschool or any Mother’s Day Out, so even younger than preschool, and you hear the fire drill go off, you’ll notice those kids line up.
They don’t fight. They don’t argue. The teacher’s not screaming her head off.
She says, “Fire drill!”
They all get in line. And parents think, “What happened here? What’s this magic?”
It’s not magic. It’s training the kids how to react to different situations.
I actually talk about that in the book, this idea that it’s an investment of time into your kids, an investment into your future. There’s lots of different ways that I would do this.
One of the examples I like to give is that I had a separate ringtone for my phone, so if it was a business call it was a different ringtone than if it was a personal call. You can set that up through free services, like Google Voice or things like that, but you can set it up so it has a certain ringtone.
What I did is I trained my kids to know my work ringtone, so anytime that my work ringtone would happen, they knew that was their time to get quiet. Mom was going to get on a phone call. She was not to be disturbed.
My kids did not know how to do that the day they were born. They had no idea what that meant.
We would practice it. I would put the ringtone on the phone and say, “Oh! Work call! Work call!”
Over animated, a lot of jazz hands, a lot of dancing. Overdoing it.
And I’d say, “What do we do? What do we do? What happens during a work call?”
I had posted a little chart with pictures of clip art that I had downloaded off the internet. There were different ideas for things they could do on their own.
As soon as the ringtone happened, they would run over and they would point to something on the chart. These are all things that we chose together, so they were mom-approved and kid-approved.
They were things like watch a TV show, read a book, or go out to the playground (we have a playground in our backyard where I can watch them from the window.) They would point to it and I’d give them a thumbs up and they would go do their thing.
They knew that when that ringtone happened, that was their chance to go over to pick something from the fun wall of choices and do that item or do that activity. They would go do their activity and I would get on my phone call without a kid in the background. That’s just one example.
Another example (speaking about talking on the phone or talking with other adults) is I trained my kids that if they needed to interrupt me, and kids do sometimes need to interrupt you because they have a question for you or something like that, they would come over and they would put their hand on my wrist.
Now, if I was in the middle of talking I would put my hand on top of theirs and that was my way of acknowledging, “I see that you’re here; give me just a minute.”
And then, once a nice break came in the conversation, I could say, “Can you hold on one second? I just need to go check on something.”
I put it on mute and then I would turn to my kid and say, “Okay, what?”
And it better have been something important, right? They knew that.
But that way they weren’t saying, “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” And I didn’t sound unprofessional on the phone.
It was a very silent way of us interrupting, acknowledging, and then having a conversation with him or her depending on who it was.
My kids would do that even when I was having conversations with other adults in person. They would come up, put their hand on my wrist, I would put my hand on top of theirs to acknowledge them, wait for a break in the conversation and say, “Hold on just one moment. Honey, what do you need?”
And then I’d have a quick conversation with them, turn back, and then get back into the conversation.
It really is this idea of getting your kids to understand how they can communicate with you silently. What kinds of things can they do?
What activities can they take care of on their own? I can keep giving more if you want.
ALLIE: I just feel like when these women listen, this is new for so many of them, you know? They’ve been struggling.
Or I talk to a lot of women who are avoiding coming home from their jobs that they hate and starting a business and they don’t think it can be done because their kids are home.
TANYA: Here’s the thing, you can look at your kids as a stumbling block or you can look at them as a starting block. It’s totally up to you.
Your kids can be such great advocates for you, your productivity, and for your business. They don’t have to be something that’s like, “Oh gosh, I’ve got to deal with the kids.” That’s why it’s important to bring them into it.
Because we were having conversations about my business around the dinner table and during our team planning, my kids understood that when I was on a work phone call it was important. I was actively making them feel like they were a part of it.
It wasn’t something that was happening outside of them and their world. It was something that was happening inside of their world.
I always referred to it as our family business. I’d say things like, “Oh, our business is doing this… This is what I’m working on this week… You know what was really helpful this week? It was so helpful that when I had a work phone call on Tuesday you did such a great job of knowing right away what to do. You went over and I saw you choose an activity that was perfect for that time. I was so proud of you.”
What do you think your kids are going to do from then on? They’re going to do it because they love the praise. They love that.
I would say to my kids, “There’s no way I could run my business without you. You are so important to my business. You are so important to the success of our family. All the work that I’m doing to help these women, that’s because of you, because you’re able to find things to do so I can get on these phone calls. I love how hard you work for our business.”
I think that really builds in that idea that it’s ours, that this is for us, that I’m a part of that and I want to be a part of it. When you think about when your kids are little, especially, and you need something done, they’re like, “I’ll do it! I’ll do it!”
Because they want to help. They crave helping.
They crave being needed because they feel like so much happens to them. They like to be a part of the activity, of the action, of actually making things happen.
When we bring them into that it makes a huge difference not only in how they feel about themselves, how they feel like they belong, and that they’re an active part of the team, but it allows you all to become closer and stronger as a family unit.
I think one of the things that has been so beneficial for my family is watching my business grow because they are very much a part of it.
There’s a thousand different ways that you can do this, whether it’s asking your kids to help you with stacks of paper. “Oh, all these stacks of papers need a sticker on them. I just don’t have the time to put a sticker on it.”
And they will say, “Oh, I’ll put a sticker on it!” Then you can say, “Oh, oh my gosh, could you do that? Because these really need Snoopy stickers right now and that will be such a big help to me.”
They don’t need that at all but you’re giving them little tasks and chores to make them feel like they’re a part of it. I think that’s really what builds in that idea of, “I’m a part of this team; I’m a part of this business; I’m a part of the success that we’re all experiencing.” I think it really makes a huge difference.
ALLIE: And you’re instilling purpose in them, which is something that Brian and I have been really passionate about in raising our kids because we both felt so lost when we were graduating from high school, going to college, dropping out of college, and just floundering.
I knew what I didn’t want, but I didn’t know what I wanted. Brian totally struggled with his purpose and lack there of until recently.
We’re both 33 now and we are just figuring that out. I don’t want that for my kids.
I think even if they’re not going to be entrepreneurs that just by instilling in them that confidence of, “You are important. You matter here. Look how good you are at this.”
If they’re working on something, you have an opportunity to truly see where their strengths are and point them out to them and empower them with that knowledge about themselves.
TANYA: I think it really is so powerful. It really is.
I was just having a conversation with Jack the other day. Jack is 17 and he’s getting ready for his college applications.
He’s been taking the ACT and all those crazy things that you think as a mom are so far away and suddenly they’re here. It’s sad and exciting all at the very same time.
It’s so bittersweet because you’re seeing them grow and mature, but it’s sad because I can’t imagine what life is going to be like when he’s not here every day.
We had this conversation the other day where he said, “Mom, I don’t know what I want to go to school for. What if I go to school and I don’t know what I want to major in?”
I said, “That’s okay. It’s okay not to know. It’s okay to figure things out.”
And he said, “Well, what if I get a degree and I never take a job with that degree?”
I said, “Oh honey, you’ll just be like everybody else out there who is not using their degrees. It’s okay.”
I think because of how I grew my business and how I didn’t start that until I was well out of college and everything else, he realized, “Oh, you’re right.”
I said, “You know what? As long as you’re feeling confident and strong in what you’re choosing to do, don’t worry about it. Just keep moving forward.”
And I think it really does give them that sense of a purpose, even if they’re not a hundred percent sure and saying, “I know I’m going to do this.”
Because I’m seeing it on an ongoing basis I’m able to give him that nice strong foundation of who he is and I think that is really, really powerful. I can tell him, “You do this really well and you do that really well.”
ALLIE: Yeah. I think that there’s so much pressure on them at such a young age.
The expectation is that you need to know exactly what you’re made to do, what you want to do, how you’re going to make money doing it and go spend a bajillion dollars or your parents’ dollars to get a degree to do that. It’s so much pressure.
And actually my little brother (I’m much older than him; he just graduated from high school about two years ago) was struggling so much and he felt like he was depressed. He had so much anxiety.
And all my parents were doing was saying, “Okay, figure out what you want to take in college. Even if it’s just general-ed, go to college.”
Everyone else was knowing what they wanted to do and he just had no idea. I want my kids to have a stable confidence.
I want them to know that they’re made for something. I want them to know that it’s okay if you don’t know exactly what that is at every moment of your life.
TANYA: Yes. A lot of people don’t know for quite some time.
And here’s the thing too and I talk about this in the book, I think you have to keep in mind this idea of “Your North Star” which is Your mission, Your Vision, and Your Core Values.
And I think people think, “Oh my gosh, it’s so heavy. It’s so big. What’s your purpose? What is your mission?”
I say, “It’s okay because it can change just like you evolve and change. The things that were important to you 10 years ago may be very, very different than what’s important to you now.
And that changes too. That evolves and that grows with you.
Never feel like it’s so set in stone that you cannot change it, because the truth is you make your own way. You make choices every single day about staying on that same path you’re on or veering off and creating your own path. You have that ability to choose.
ALLIE: Oh my gosh, this is so good. I’m trying to think of if we’re missing anything or if there’s something else that these women need.
Because there’s so much, you’re so valuable, you’re so brilliant, and the things that you say feel very light and doable, which is totally my style. I love that.
Is there anything else that you want to talk about that I didn’t ask you? It might be about working from home, running a business, or just wanting to get something done at home?
TANYA: I’m trying to think. The whole book is very intentional. “Intentional” is my big word, which I know you love Allie.
I was really intentional when I was structuring the book with how it flows. Even the discussion guide is not just a fluff discussion guide. It goes deep.
Let’s peel back the layers of onion here and let’s figure out what is important to you. We really dive into a lot in this in the discussion guide.
What I want them to walk away with is this: I have the ability to choose my own path. I can make choices. I can bring my family into this and make them a part of it.
And I really want them to understand that truly getting caught up in the busy game, in that wanting to wear that badge of busy where we are wearing ourselves out isn’t the path to success and happiness.
How many times have you checked a thousand things off your to-do list and then slipped into bed at night and thought, “I didn’t do enough. I should have worked harder. I didn’t do enough.”
We’re so caught up in the quantity game. What was my numbers? What was the number of things I got done today?
Instead of really focusing on the quality. Am I doing the things that are important? Am I doing the work that nourishes and fulfills my soul? Am I doing the things that make me happy?
We tend to undervalue that emotion of happiness. But truly when you think of it, every goal that we set, every dream that we have is steeped in happiness.
We want to lose 10 pounds so we can be happier when we’re on the beach. We want to run a marathon because we want to be happy to think we crossed that finish line.
We want to start a business because we want to be happy being our own boss and setting our own hours. It really is this idea of questioning yourself, “Am I happy?”
And if that answer is “no,” what do you need to do to change it? It doesn’t have to be big.
We get really caught up in this idea that it has to be these giant leaps of faith when oftentimes it’s the first step that really makes a difference. That first step can be so tiny.
Then you might have a tiny step again. Then another tiny step.
Then a little bit bigger step, and then a bigger step after that. It is the continual steps, the intentional steps day after day.
That’s what gets you closer to that ideal version of you that you’re really looking for. That happy version of you that’s doing work that feels intentional, that feels aligned and makes you feel on fire and that’s what it’s all about.
ALLIE: Okay, that’s amazing! We are going to end right there.
So, so good. You are such an encourager.
I always say to my husband that I wish I could put my job description on my business card. I feel like I am a hope-dealer and an empowerer for women and you’re like that.
I feel like I have a friend in you. You are a hope dealer.
You are such an empowering encourager for women and I just love your message so much! Thank you for spending so much time here speaking this over my listeners.
TANYA: Well, thank you so much for having me! As you know, I could talk about this all day.
I love it. I love what I do and all I want is for others to love what they do too.
ALLIE: Thank you so much Tanya!
Everybody, go to show notes, go to alliecasazza.com/podcast to find the show notes for this episode. Go get your copy of The Joy Of Missing Out.
We’ll link up to you and your website Inkwell Press and everything that you have going on because you do so much. Thank you!
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!
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