Year of Calm

I want everyone to As they’re thinking about the next year to think about how they want the year to feel. And not in the sense that we should let our feelings drive everything, right? We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to have feelings and let our feelings drive everything. We want to bring awareness to what we’re feeling.

And then we want to come back to calm and be problem solvers from that place. And so, essentially, goal setting, when we set goals, what we’re saying is, I want a result in my life that I don’t have. And then we’re going to take a bunch of action to try to create the result that we want. And some things are easy to measure, like pay down 5, 000 of debt, or lose 20 pounds, or teach a kiddo to read.

Some of those things are really Easy to articulate and to measure. And then some things are a little trickier, like improving my marriage, or coping better with the noise in my house, or feeling better about myself, and even spending more time being in a state of peace. These things are harder to measure. And harder to describe, but I don’t think that that makes them harder to achieve.

So one of the things that’s different about this new planner that I’ve created, and for those of you who have been with me for, you know, seven years, all the way back to Catholic’s Crush Goals and, and the Catholic Mom Challenge book that I wrote, you know, you’ll, you always see flavors of those things in the new thing, but then I’ve added tools or strategies that I’ve learned since then.

And so in this planner, we are really encouraging you to focus on systems, systems and protocols. So let me explain systems first. So imagine you have a goal, you want to pay down 5, 000 of debt. So previously that would have been your goal. You would have written that down. But now I want to encourage you to say, I am going to test out systems that result.

In me paying down 5, 000. So a system might be a weekly check in on your finances. It might be spending one hour every other week learning about money. It might be spending one hour a week going through the things in your home to see what you could sell on Facebook Marketplace. So these, these systems are routines or habits that we’re putting in place when we’re taking those.

Those steps and doing those actions will result in the goal. And some of the systems that we try are just going to be a guess. We’re just going to test it out. So one of the things I talk about in the course is minimizing and coping with the noise in your home. For those of you that have a lot of little kids, that is one of the things that steals your calm more than anything.

It’s just the sheer amount of noise in your home. And we just feel like we’re at the effect of this, that we just have to, to take it. That there’s nothing we can do about having little kids who make noise. But that’s not true. There’s lots of things we can try to decrease the noise and to cope with the noise better.

And so I think it’s perfectly fine to have a goal that says, I’m going to test out systems this year to decrease and cope with the noise in my home. Now, that’s not a smart goal, not measurable, but I think that the skill I want to help all of these Catholic moms with, and I always say the number one thing I want to teach you is to discern the will of God, but after that, after you’ve discerned that he doesn’t want you to be stressed out all the time, I want to teach women how to run experiments in their own life to enjoy their day to day life better.

I don’t want us constantly living in a state where we think, Oh, my life will be so much better. Next year, or in five years, or after the kids are gone. I used to think that all the time. I used to think, because my life was so hard and I was so unhappy and so stressed, I just thought, oh my goodness, I can’t wait until the kids are gone.

And how sad is that? It’s so sad to think, okay, I’m just gonna like, grit my teeth and bear it for the next 20 years, and then I’ll be okay. That’s just not a great way to live. And, and that was really, knowing that I didn’t want to live like that was what would set me on this journey. Of trying to figure out how to enjoy my day to day life.

Because I was gonna be in my day to day life with all these kids for a long time. But I want to give you hope, not just from my own experience, but from just the hundreds of moms that I’ve coached and talked to. I mean, it’s a lot of moms now. When I hear them struggling, they feel like they’re drowning, don’t have a ton of hope, and then we do these things.

We put systems in place. We try things. I don’t always have the answer for them, but I will suggest, hey, let’s try this. And if you try enough things and you put enough systems in place, your experience of your day to day life will be so much better.

And part of this systems piece, which is kind of new, I haven’t really put It in this language before in any of the things that we’ve done came out of me having those six kids in eight years and particularly being in bed for the last three pregnancies. There was no way that my husband and I were going to be able to cope with our lives if we did not create some systems.

So that part was kind of forced onto us because I myself am not really naturally organized or an A type personality person. My husband is more so, but. He didn’t have any natural inclination for how to apply his engineering mind to our home. And we really did that together beginning in those bed rest years.

I mean, I don’t remember having as many systems before that, but we had to figure out a way to feed the kids, to get kids to sleep, to clean the house and to connect with each other amidst all of this chaos. And it might feel restrictive to have systems. At least it does for me. I tend to be very rebellious, and I have kind of a romantic, artistic personality, and so I don’t like thinking I have to put something on a system, and I have to do something every Wednesday.

I really, in my body, fight against that. Or at least it used to. Now, I see what freedom is. And what piece systems have brought me, so now I’m, I’m much more sold on the idea.

I want to invite you, as you’re setting goals this year, whether you come and do it with us, in Year of Calm, or you do it on your own, to say, I am willing to test out some systems to achieve the thing that you want to achieve. And I want you to begin thinking about what rhythms and what activities would create that.

So let’s go back to noise for a minute. For noise, A couple things I would try. First, is there a quiet time in your house? Most of us, when we have little, little kids, someone’s napping. But is there a quiet time for everyone? And if there isn’t, how can we begin to institute that and to grow it? So I might start with 15 minutes of quiet time, and I might extend that until I had a full hour and a half of nap time of quiet time.

But I might also institute a quiet time in the morning, maybe for 20 minutes. where I began training the children to be quiet. I also really like talking to children about how loud or quiet animals are, because it’s fun. If you’re already stressed out, training your kids feels terrible, because you’re doing it from a place of being angry and drowning.

But if you make these plans from a calm and peaceful place, then you will have so much more fun with it. It’s actually really fun to get your kids together and to say, Can we all be quiet like mice? Show me how quiet a mouse can be, or a ninja. And then I’m not going to be loud on the podcast to save your ears, but loud like a lion or loud like a dinosaur.

Another thing I’ve been teaching, particularly my five year old, because he just struggles with this more than the other kids, is to use his regular voice and not his whiny voice. And we practice. We practice enough that when I ask him, he smiles. Which is very different than when we cut it, when we come in with sharp cutting energy, like don’t talk to me like that, stop whining, ugh, why are you whining all the time?

And listen, all of us have bad days and speak uncharitably to the children, okay? So don’t beat yourself up about that, but this is the antidote. Planning and having phrases ahead of time and testing out systems is the way that you’re going to improve your life. And so As I begin to think about what I could learn, what I could practice, to get quiet time in the house, to give language to the children, and then also the third thing that I would try would be just coping systems for myself. When it starts to get really loud, what am I doing? Am I breathing? Am I going to the bathroom for a minute? How am I going to coach myself and talk to myself in my brain when we’re just having one of those days? Do I feel free to ask the kids to decrease their noise?

Because remember, and I’ve shared this many times on the podcast, They can’t see the stress thermometer inside your body. It’s filling up and they don’t know until you blow. So that’s something that I share with them more now. Especially if I’m tired or have a headache. I was coaching someone a couple months ago who had a really painful tooth.

And I said, yeah, go tell your children that you’re in a lot of pain. And so you need things to be a little quieter for the next few days. We just don’t tell them what’s going on, and our body looks the same to them all the time.

But I find that children are really very sweet. And when you say, Mommy doesn’t feel good, can you get me a blanket? And they love to bring you a blanket. Can we be quiet like mice for a little while? Can you guys play mice? That’s the kind of mom I want to be. It’s not happy all the time, but I want to communicate well with the children and be proud of how I’m talking to them while still taking care of myself.

So you’re going to think about these systems. So we have you pick four, what we’re calling calm making systems. Okay. So we have you fill up a whole page of things that steal your calm. I think noise is just a really common one. And then to pick four systems to try to address those stressful things. So, for example, if there’s a lot of tension in your marriage right now, then that would be one of my goals, would be, I’m going to learn more about communication, I’m going to learn more about, um, like, gratitude or celebrating this guy, how can we put some spark into our marriage.

And then I would just ask myself, like, what are the systems that would result in us having less tension in our marriage? And then we have you pick one that you want to work on for the quarter. And then we ask a bunch of questions about that one to break it down. What obstacles do you anticipate? Can you find an accountability buddy?

Things like that. And then we have them break it down for the month, and then for the week, and then for the day. This is a quarterly planner, and there are two pages for every day. And I’m really proud of those pages. They’re just so beautiful and they are kind of a mix of The May Daily Worksheet, so for those of you who have been in our membership for a long time, we kind of took that and retooled it a little bit and then put in some more scheduling and to do things.

So it really could be both a planner and almost like a mini spiritual journal. It’s not a full journal, although there is lots of space to write in it, which I really like.

And I just think that that is something that we Miss, we miss this concept of breaking down the goal so that you wake up and you know what to do today. And I really want to encourage all of you to put at least an hour, Saturday or Sunday, to plan the week ahead. Let us be moms who are committed to not being so reactive.

And I really like planning outside of the house, but there have just been seasons where I can’t do that. When I am home, I can’t go anywhere and I have to just sit. And I pray and I plan the week ahead.

And when we do that we can begin to see these pinch points. So much of my coaching with moms is when they come and they tell me, Oh, it’s so terrible and this happened and it was so hard and I’m so upset. And I love them through it and I calm them down and then we just replay it. And I say, how would we do that again?

Knowing what you know now. And they have amazing ideas. I want you to know when I coach people, It is not Sterling giving you lots of ideas. It is mostly me pulling ideas out of them. And that would be true for you, too. You are very clever. You are very good at solving problems. Now, you’re not very good at that when you’re stressed out and reactive, but if I were to show you the week and just say, Okay, let’s get your week.

And then, is there anything going on with your kids? And you’d be like, yeah, my three year old all of a sudden, she’s not sleeping well. You’re like, ah, it’s really hard to be a mom when you’re exhausted, isn’t it? Yeah, so if we knew that we were probably going to be exhausted this week, how would you change the week?

What meals would you cook? Would you cancel that field trip? And I don’t have the answers for you, but you will have the answers and I think that this is what a good homemaker does. And I don’t mean good as in moral, like you’re a good person or a bad person. I mean a skilled homemaker. And in catholicmomcalm.com, We’ll really kind of spend the whole year on homemaking. It’ll kind of be in the background or threaded into all of the things that we’re doing.I just want to bring back how awesome homemakers are. And I think so many of us weren’t trained how to do anything. Like in the 50s, your 50s mom would have taught you how to, you know, starch and iron your husband’s shirt. And praise the Lord Jesus that we don’t have to do those things anymore. I’m glad that we don’t have to do all that. But, also, most of our moms did not teach us very much about homemaking.

And so, we have you set four calm making systems and then four homemaking systems. Meal prep, cleaning. Like, if you have older kids, I want you to teach your oldest kiddo how to make three simple meals. That is a game changer. And I want you, and pick things where you can have that on hand almost all the time.

I’m thinking, like, tortillas, canned beans, rice, protein or no protein. Where if you’re having a really hard day, you can say, Sam, I need you to make burritos for lunch for the kids. And it may take you two months to get that kid over there. But wow, how cool would that be? Same thing with chores. I think a lot of us need better systems around procuring and prepping food and serving it and cleaning it.

That whole thing, that whole system. One of the things I want to tackle this year is our pantry. Like we stocked up on some things, but then now it’s just sitting there. So I just want to figure out a system for that. A decluttering system? You guys know, if you’ve done any of my minimalism or decluttering things, that it is a constant process. It’s never over. So what are those rhythms? Are we kind of decluttering a little bit every Thursday?

In my house, we do like a 10 minute tidy up twice a day. That was just a huge sanity saver for me. So I hope you’re beginning to see that we don’t want to just set goals. We want to design and test systems. And it is completely fine if you don’t know. What systems are going to work? The point is just that we pick one and we try it. And that you know that it needs to be a system.

So the next thing in the planner is that we have you think of four projects that you want to do throughout the year. And those are the things that are really time constrained. So for me, I want to teach Forrest how to read this year. You might want to remodel a bathroom. You know, it’s like we don’t need a system around remodeling the bathroom.

We’re just going to do it. There might be lots of steps and there may be many You know, weeks involved, but it’s not going to be part of your life forever. So that would be a project. To me, take a vacation would be a project.

And again, then you’ll pick the one for the quarter and break it down all the way through the week and then the day.

So you don’t need a planner or a course in order to sit down and say what are the things That are stealing my peace the most because God calls us to be at peace and then to say what systems can I try that would decrease that thing that’s causing me stress?

And for a lot of you, it might be health related, chronic pain, exhaustion, weight, not being as strong as you’d like or as flexible as you’d like.

And so when we get to the beginning of the year and we say things like, you know, exercise more, run five miles, that’s just not enough. I’ll tell you, it’s not enough to leave it there. We need to understand the systems that are going to get there. We need to understand the uncomfortable feelings that are going to come up to do it.

Everything that you want is on the other side of uncomfortable feelings. And if you just know that at the outset, if you just decide, I’m willing to feel uncomfortable to accomplish this, then it doesn’t feel confusing when the uncomfortable feelings show up. And that’s what it will be like to teach your kids to clean anything.

I’ve been kind of lightly teaching the six year old to clean the table. So you have to kind of take everything off the table. And then scoop the crummies, we call them crummies, crummies in your hand. And then spray down the table. Some things need to soak a little bit. We have a scraper. And then wipe it all down.

So those are kind of the steps. Bless that boy. He loves sweeping the crummies on the floor. I’m just trying to save bananas. He kind of overspray’s some of the clean areas and then undersprays the dirty ones that need to soak a little bit. And so I’m just acknowledging that the discomfort of training children to clean is just maddening to watch them do it like children do it. And I’m tired and I just want to do it myself. I know the payoff is huge. And so if I really wanted to train him to clean the table, I would do it with him for at least 30 days.

My initial reaction is just to describe it to him and to have him do it. It’s not that hard. Just put the crummies in your hand and spray the table and clean it down. Or that I showed him one time and I expected it to be done the way that I want it all after that. But if you knew that it was going to be frustrating to watch him and you were going to have to do it with him every day for 30 days, then you’d have a rock solid kid who could do it. It wouldn’t be as frustrating to do that with him.

The other thing that’s in this planner that I think is really special is the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which we’ve talked a lot about on this podcast and in so many of the programs that I do, kind of anchor you back to those and when to pray for certain gifts. But the thing I added was a list of God’s promises, a list of God’s promises that are so easy for us to forget.

And I’ll probably do an entire episode just on the promises. But that was something that I felt was really important to add to this planner so that as you’re gearing up. To plan your week, and even your day, you can kind of reference that page and say, You know, God is good, and he does provide, and he does love me.

I’m not alone, and my hope and my freedom, they come from the Lord. And when we come back to that place, it feels so good, first of all. To sit with the Lord in that way and to trust Him. But we also just set much better goals from that place. We care for ourselves more because we know that we are His. So, I love setting goals. I think it’s fun.

I like thinking about how I want my life to improve. But I no longer do it from this place of thinking, I’m gonna improve my life and then my life will be better in the future when I’ve accomplished these things. My real goal is to enjoy my day to day life.

So I’m not thinking, well, I’m so unhappy now and I’m going to be happy in the future. I’m thinking, I want to build my emotional toolbox and my practical toolbox and my skills so that I can enjoy more and more regular days because I still have those six kids. They’re still there. You guys. They’re still loud.

They ask a lot of questions. And they eat every day and they don’t feel like cleaning because they’re children. And so how can you create family rhythms? How can you be a homemaker, the manager of your home, such that you enjoy it more and everyone experiences more peace? I think that is worth an entire year.

And I would love it if you would come do it with us. So I made this a standalone course. Have I ever done that before? I don’t know what I have, but it’s just a standalone thing. You can buy it. It’s 29. There are three videos, and together they’re 45 minutes long, so it’s pretty short. We give you the digital planning files, which you can print out yourself, and then we also link to a third party company where you can buy a hard copy, and it’s a quarterly planner, so you can do it every quarter. It’s dateless, which I really like. And it has a monthly spread and a weekly spread, so if you’re looking for a planner to actually keep track of all of your appointments and things, I did design it to be like that. I personally use it up until the point where I’m scheduling things, and then I schedule everything on my Google Calendar.

I prayed over this thing, we worked on this for months and months, and We really wanted to design something that led women to the Holy Spirit and really helped them to have more peace in their day to day lives. Kind of like that G, GK Chesterton quote that says, the most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary, is it an ordinary man and wife and their children or an ordinary family? Something like that. I think it’s such a beautiful quote because I think that that, what we’re building and it’s so special, an ordinary family. We’ve lost a lot of the art of homemaking and I understand why it’s overwhelming. If somebody came to me and said, Sterling, I want you to be a better homemaker, I would just freeze and crumple. I wouldn’t even know where to start. But in my planner, I ask questions to help you figure out where to start. Because where I tell people to start is what part of your house is stealing your peace the most.

So if you go to catholicmomcalm.com a lot of those words sound the same, but I think you get it. I’m going to say it again, catholicmomcalm.com/year-of-calm. You can go grab that for 29. And then I’m also doing for everybody who buys that program, two coaching calls. I’m doing one on December 29th, which is a Friday at 10 AM Pacific, 1 PM Eastern.

And then I’m doing it again the following Friday. Which is, uh, the fifth. And so some of you are going to want to do goals this week. Come see me on Friday. And then some of you are still in Christmas, waiting for Epiphany mode. And, um, they’re going to set your goals next week. And then I’d love to, to coach you, answer any questions or help you with any ideas, right? cause I’ve done this with so many people now that you can bring me the thing that’s stressing you out. And together with the group, we can kind of brainstorm, well, what are some systems you could try?

This is a very special program to me. And I hope it brings you peace. Let us be women who are not so frazzled. That’s the kind of year I want to have. All right, my friends, thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.