Time and Energy Management

I imagine that I just brushed that off either as sounding kind of ish and not very Catholic, or I had the idea that what they were talking about was being grateful for everything. And listen, that’s probably the secret to life and, and being a Saint is just walking around, being grateful for everything. But when you’re having a bad day, when you’re feeling stressed, when you’re trying to build a business, when you’re trying to take care of a bucket of little kids, when you are trying to negotiate life with a teenager, young adult, you don’t want to join a program and have someone say, just be grateful for everything.

And so I think I just didn’t listen. I didn’t choose to see it. I didn’t choose to hear or learn what they really meant by your mindset, because I will tell you right now, it is not what we teach, it is not just be grateful all the time. In fact, I think this recent course that we just launched about the holy spirit was really the first time we talked about gratitude in the present moment. What I’m talking about is actually going to help you manage your time and your energy. I want you to think about time management and energy management, but the way we do that is with our mind, it is with the thoughts that we think. So hang with me, here’s what I wanted to do today. I wanted to go through just kind of a few typical moms scenarios and how I would have done them before and how I would do them now.

So right off the bat, let’s just start off with waking up. I have probably been woken up early from a baby or a toddler. I probably didn’t go to bed at a reasonable hour the night before, probably being sad about not having any meaningful time or not having a lot of things to look forward to. I probably went down the Netflix rabbit hole. I think I still had Netflix three years ago. I would go down the Netflix rabbit hole, stay up late, not sleep well. I’ve always struggled with insomnia and not sleeping well. But first of all, even if you don’t struggle, if you watch two hours of Netflix before going to bed, that’s gonna happen to you. So I would’ve woken up tired.

And when we are tired, we wear a kind of doomsday. EGL where everything around us just looks a little worse or a lot worse. So I would’ve immediately started thinking immediately, you guys like opening my eyes and immediately being like, Ugh, I’m tired. Ugh. I gotta do the kid stuff again today, man. I don’t wanna do this. This is hard. I don’t like it. And I would’ve just started telling myself how not great my life was. Even though you met me at a lovely mom’s brunch? I would’ve said, oh, it’s, I’m so blessed to have six kids in this life. And I would’ve meant it, but that’s not how I was waking up. I was waking up with a sinking feeling in my stomach, feeling grumpy, feeling tired, not liking my body.

So then that, by the way, was the next thing I would do, I would get up and I would get dressed and my clothes wouldn’t fit very well. Or I would feel frumpy and lumpy and old. And I would probably tell myself those things, why can’t you just get it together? You’re so fat. You’re getting so old. You don’t even know how to do your hair. And I just would’ve said pretty mean things to myself. So I want you to know that negative self-talk, which you’re all doing, especially if no one has taught you some of these things, expends a great deal of energy. I wish you had a thermometer on your body. So you could see the energy go down because I woke up tired, but then I’m also, now I haven’t even interacted with any kids yet in this scenario. And I’m just, my energy levels are going down because I’m just expending so much negative energy spinning on how unhappy I am with my life and my body. We’re like 20 minutes into getting up. Okay.

So let’s just pause there and let me tell you how I do it now. Now I do not watch television before I go to bed. I go to bed at a reasonable hour and I read something or I do Sudoku puzzles or I pray. And I just journal with the Lord. I’m not a rigorous journalist. Like, Hey, this happened on this day. I really just mean I have a piece of paper out and I’m just writing and kind of processing my thoughts with God. So now I go to bed at a reasonable time because I love myself because I know that if I don’t go to bed at a reasonable time, I’ll be tired the next day. And I don’t want to live like someone who’s tired, especially when I don’t have to be right. I don’t have a nursing baby right now. All my babies go to bed and they, for the most part, stay there until we all wake up.

So now I wake up and I don’t feel exhausted. And I tell myself really nice things before I even open my eyes. Good morning, love. Oh my goodness, we are awake. It is really miraculous to be awake. My sense of mortality is getting deeper and deeper. And the preciousness I feel about literally waking up and being alive is getting stronger. I thank the Lord for the day and I, I smile and probably not every day, but most days you guys, and I think this is gonna be a good day. I love this thought. I’ve shared it before something amazing is gonna happen today. I can’t believe I get to live this life. And I think about the things that I really love.

And then I get up and I put my clothes on. And even if my jeans are a little tight or I feel like I don’t have something easy or great to wear, I’m so gentle with myself. Hey, you’re doing okay. Remember this year, we’re focusing on marriage and love your body. Look at this body that carried your children and has carried you through this life. And now when I look in the mirror, I always say nice things to myself. You’re so beautiful. Love your hair living this way. Certainly does not expend a great deal of energy. And I will tell you, it actually feels energizing because I’m excited about the day. So it feels like positive or additional energy is running through my body.

Okay. So let’s do a kid interaction. So when I go downstairs to get the boys ready and they are just about like in one week, about to be five, four and three. And I walk in and they’re usually playing around, we call it shenanigans, little boy shenanigans. And they’re usually just like playing around with blankets or stuffed animals and laughing or sometimes hitting each other, but kind of liking it. And I say, okay, good morning, boys. And we begin getting ready for the day. So previously I would’ve been already kind of tired and crunchy at this point and everything about them would’ve annoyed me. I would’ve just like, Ugh, they’re not in their beds. Ugh. This room is so messy. Why do I have to pick up the stuffed animals every time? Why do they even have this many stuffed animals? It’s my fault. If I had better boundaries, they wouldn’t have as many stuffed animals. Ah, you’re not a really good mom. You don’t set a lot of boundaries. You’re doing this to yourself. Oh gosh, you guys, that makes me wanna cry. That’s how I used to talk to myself all the time.

And then I would’ve just made it. I would’ve just been so grumpy and annoyed having to get them dressed, obviously in this scenario, like three years ago, Peter wouldn’t be there. And they would’ve been different ages, but you know you’re with me getting three little kids dressed.

Isn’t like our favorite thing to do, but I would’ve just made it mean so much. This is terrible. I’m stuck here. I don’t even like this. Why don’t they listen to me? I probably would’ve complained about their dresser. We’ve always had like janky, broken Craigslist dressers. So I’ve been like, you can’t even afford a nice dresser, which isn’t even true. By the way, we love to tell ourselves we can’t afford things. Even though the truth is for most of us, we probably would like to have the money, but we’re choosing not to spend it wisely cuz we’re choosing to put it somewhere else. But ladies, that’s not, that’s not what we’re thinking about. We’re just like, I can’t even afford a nice dresser. And then by the way, the dresser thing, I would’ve been like, why is furniture so expensive?

Anyway, I’m so mad. You either have to spend $2,000 on a dresser or you have to buy a crummy one that just breaks and you have to get rid of it in three years. Anyway, This also might just be because I’m a little melancholic, but I would’ve gone down the dresser of rabbit hole and I would’ve gotten them dressed. I didn’t even back then. I didn’t yell a ton in this scenario. I would’ve probably just been like, get your shirt on, come, let’s go like stop messing around, come on, just annoyance. And then I would’ve said, all right, we gotta go upstairs. And maybe they listen and maybe they don’t. And I have a whole series of negative thoughts about that. And then there’s feeding children.

And when we feed children, we just really wish they were adults, but they’re not. They come upstairs and they’re running around and they’re screaming and they’re knocking things over and they’re bugging their siblings or they’re totally checked out and they’re not paying attention to the fact that it’s meal time. Like literally getting a board game out and putting it on the kitchen table. And you’re like, what are you doing? It’s breakfast.

We do this every day. like, why would you put a bar game on the table? And then there’s just making the food. And that just also gives, used to gimme this wave of just like dread and just like, Ugh, what am I making? I guess we’re making eggs, getting out the plates and touching wet, dirty things in the sink. And I would’ve just been so over it, it’s not even 8:00 AM in this, in this store. You guys are not even 8:00 AM. And then I, I, would’ve been kind of snappy with the kids, like get to the table, get your water, sit down, stop screaming. Ugh. Then I would’ve noticed myself doing this and I would’ve been like, why? I can’t believe you’re starting off the day like this with your family. Like, this is how your family’s gonna remember you just being a grumpy mom.

And I would immediately picture someone who had candles on the table or a scripture passage to memorize and was cheery with them and then would make them pancakes. And then I would’ve thought it’s not fair. It’s not fair that other people get to eat carbs and don’t gain weight. My husband and I, we really just like it, we really struggle there. We just, if we eat things like pancakes, we literally would just gain so much weight. And so we don’t do that as a family. And, I feel confused and grumpy about it sometimes. Like why is it that other families get to just eat like that and be thin? So first of all, like other families get to eat like that. And I see that their bodies, at least on the outside, look healthy. Cause that’s kind of one thing that I would chew on. And then the other thing I would chew on would be like, is it even okay to eat gluten and sugar? Because you know, I’ve read so many things that say, you know, sugar is like cancer and you shouldn’t even eat gluten. And, and this is just, I want you to know part of why it’s so hard to live in 2022 just to live in, in the modern 21st century.

Your grandma is not walking into the kitchen, thinking about all of that. So let me just pause there. I feel like I covered most of the getting kids ready, breakfast thing. I mean, in this scenario, we’re not even trying to go anywhere and be somewhere on time. So for some of you, there’s this whole other layer of life, and they need to do it because we have to get into the car for work or school. So let’s go back to the boys’ room and let me tell you how to do it now. Now I hear they’re playing and I smile and I just think it’s so great. They have each other Kendra tyranny talked about, she’s an article about while her kids are in the same room, the girls have a room and the boys have a room.

And I think she has like nine or 10 kids. And she has a pretty big house. Like literally they could have other rooms for the kids, but they really wanted to keep them all together. And ever since reading that article, I just filled with this sense of joy or being so pleased, maybe that the kids are together and that they chit chat and play these games. And then I come in and I sing a little song. I just kind of sing songy. So I kind of say something to the boys, but I sing it in songs and they go, mommy, and I sing a little song, I say, good morning boys. And we start our day and we have a Chany dresser that doesn’t pull out and the drawers fall down. Sometimes that we caught. I think that we, I think we got that one, a Goodwill and I just look at it and I just think, ah, I love these ears. I love these kinds of beginning family years.

And then sometimes I tell myself you’re so good at making decisions about money because the truth is these boys are gonna wreck whatever furniture you get. So it’s totally fine that we don’t have nice dresses for the kids, but see how I, I just reframed that. I reframed that to make it mean something good about me. And I think positively about the future. I think about the day where we have furniture that just works and there aren’t kids kind of jumping on their drawers and breaking things and I get them ready and I tell them what’s happening for the day. Okay. You guys probably for the little boys, just the next hour or two is what I tell them. All right, let’s go upstairs. And then, because I’ve done this work and I’m so much more calm and I planned my life so much more intentionally. I have communicated the rules to the kids in a much better way about what to expect in the morning.

Okay, we’re going upstairs. Let’s keep our voices down. Let’s not run around. I kind of prime them for the rules. Okay. forest, I want you to get the little boy waters. My five year old is now old enough to be able to begin getting water. The big girls have things to do in the mornings. I remind them, Hey, get on with your job. Let’s do that. And we didn’t have that before, before we just kind of told them what to do, but we didn’t really explain the rhythm of the morning. We’re not yet to candle status and practice scripture verses at the table yet. Although my husband does, I would say two or three times a week, sit down and read a Bible story to them. But our mornings are just so much more pleasant. And I am just kind of floating around through the morning with so much more hope and happiness. And I’m doing that by managing my mind. I’m doing that by understanding that my thinking was creating negative feelings in my body, we could measure it.

And I just got to the point where I was like, life is too short to spend that percentage of time experiencing negative emotions in my body, kind of on purpose. So of course we’re gonna have negative emotions, but just look, we just got to breakfast and you could see how negative my day used to be. And I’m telling you that when you don’t manage the way that you think you waste so much time, it’s about a, it’s why you get to 9:00 AM and you feel exhausted. I can take care of six kids now and not feel exhausted all the time. By the way, a small plug for maybe you should get your hormones checked if you’re exhausted all the time. But if you sound like me three years ago, and the way that my mind was describing all these events, let’s start there. That’s free. And so I know it’s kind of back to school time, and everyone loves planners and I love planners and you want to be better, but I am telling you, this is the missing thing. Knowing how to think about your life and think about your day in these micro moments is what’s going to free up energy for you.

And that is what’s gonna give you better time. And then as you start seeing how this plays out, you want more? You’re like, what else can I improve? I’ll tell you. That’s what happens? How else can I bring more peace to my day? And then you just start planning a little bit better and a little bit better at higher and higher levels and just optimizing things in your life. And so you’re simultaneously because you’re managing your mind. You’re, you’re a much better planner about your life. So your life is getting optimized, but you’re also just experiencing so much more peace because you’re not telling yourself lies all the time or chewing on stories that don’t even matter. Let’s say I’m totally right about the stupid dresser thing. And that it’s ridiculous that American furniture is made to fall apart. And we could prove that somehow it doesn’t serve me to think that it just kind of ruins my day or at least my, my moment. And it takes a lot more energy for me to be grumpy about that than for me to think about something completely different.

Okay. I thought it was gonna get through a whole day and maybe even add some Ry things, but we’re already in like 22 minutes. So I hope I’ve just given you a sense of how you can experience a day in radically different ways. Even though the things that show up like the behavior of the kids and the rhythm of the day are the same. I want to teach all of you how to do this. I wanna teach you how to have more peace. I wanna teach you how to walk closely with the holy spirit. I wanna teach you how to enjoy your day to day. Life. Significantly more life is life and there will still be things. It still drives me bananas. When the boys get excited and they start running around and someone runs into a wall and then starts crying. That noise is very assaultive and loud, but I have to be able to calm down and say, they’re boys. They run around, go comfort them, comfort them first. Then remind them.

We don’t run around here. So nothing escapes, that kind of stuff. But the way I think about it now is so different. We have talked about so many things on this podcast and you probably have listened to them while you’re driving or walking or doing house stuff. But there’s a reason you haven’t joined masters yet. So one, I just wanna invite you to join masters. We’re gonna do time management in September, but of course now I think you understand it’s a mix of time management and energy management. And I only begin to talk. I only began to talk about that today. And if you haven’t joined masters, for some reason, you can’t, we have told you so much in this podcast, but I want you to treat this podcast like school. I want you to, to not feel helpless. Like of course, if there were circumstances that said, Hey, I can’t spend $49 to join masters.

And I listened to them and I totally agreed. I was like, yep. I agree. It doesn’t sound prudent for you right now. Then I want you to drop into grit and find some fight energy and be like, but you know what I believe what she’s saying is true. And I’m gonna get some paper and I’m gonna start taking notes and I’m gonna go back to episode one and I’m gonna listen to them. Talk about the model and you, don’t not probably have to listen to all of them, but you could read the, the titles and see, okay, these are the ones that probably will help me in my life. And I want you to become a woman who takes control of her life, because if you’re living in chaos right now, the answer is just finding one thing to work on. But often when we live in chaos, we drop into a victim mentality and blame everything.

And then we’re just, you know, eating chips and watching Netflix and hating ourselves. Our mission is to help Catholic moms stop doing this, to stop living in a prison of their own minds. Do the work, figure out what we mean. When we’re talking about the model, start doing models, start paying attention to the way that you think most of the time and make a deal with yourself that you’re not gonna believe every thought that comes into your mind. And you’re gonna start paying attention to how you feel after you think certain things. And you’re gonna tell yourself, Hey, I feel pretty crummy right now. I’m in a very negative attitude space. I feel very annoyed. I feel very hopeless about my life. And I remember that Sterling said, I probably am wasting a lot of time and not making good decisions when I’m in that place. This is how we really do time management and energy management.

Yes, there’s some things about planning and to do lists and leveraging decisions. And we’re gonna talk about that in this class, but I’m telling you the attitude with which you go into doing those activities, makes all the difference about how successful they are. If you’re trying to time manage your way out of not liking yourself and really being unhappy in your day to day life. There’s no planner for that. I just love you. The more I do this mothering thing, the more, I just think it’s moms who save the world by shaping the next generation. And I wanna raise kids who don’t have such a strong negative voice in their heads. And the only way to do that is to figure it out ourselves and to model it for them.

So I want you to consider joining masters particularly for this month, because I think as we talk about time management, it will really help us to take a look at our day to day life. What am I experiencing consistently on a day to day basis? And how can I enjoy my life a little bit more? How can I walk more closely with the Lord? Because when we walk closely with the Lord, we exhibit the fruits of peace and joy and gentleness and self-control and faithful patience. And I want that for you. So this episode was a little long. I hope I hope you liked it. I hope you believe me. And I hope you’re willing to fight for yourself, fight for yourself in the short life that we have, because it is such a gift. Thank you so much for listening and don’t forget, the world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were Made for Greatness.