Okay, you've made it to the last lesson of Module Two, managing your personal life. You're more than halfway through the program at this point, you're doing awesome. So there have been a lot of exercises in this module and you might be starting to lose steam. Hang in there, take a break if you need it. Again, no rush, go at your own pace. Module Three isn't as intensive as module two was.

So there's a light at the end of the tunnel. And remember that you can keep checking in with the Facebook community. Let us know how you're doing and let us know how we can help you continue to move forward. And if you're getting a lot out of this program so far, go ahead and share that with us too. We love celebrating your wins. So let's go ahead and dive in to lesson four.

In this lesson, we're gonna overcome some of the biggest obstacles I see facing working parents today. I know there are probably at least a few of you who aren't getting along with your spouse. We're going to talk about different ways to get back on the same page as your spouse. Your partner is your biggest potential source of support. And let's face it, fighting with your partner makes everything just that much harder. So our first point of order is to talk about different ways to help you become a team again.

Next, we're going to talk about other sources of support that may be available to you that you might not be utilizing right now, our goal is going to be especially important for those of you who aren't married or can't rely on your support spousal support, you have other options as well. And so we'll go over a few of those. Finally, we're also going to take a closer look at some of the social engagements that you are participating in and see if you're falling into some sneaky time traps that you might not have thought about in the past. There's a top 10 Top 10 tips to increase efficiency at home tip sheet that includes a number of different actions that you can take to get extra support and eliminate those those time traps that I just mentioned. I'll go through the main points in this lesson, but your exercise is to download that tip sheet and go through each action Step to see if there's something that would help you in your life.

If it sounds like something that would be helpful, go ahead and implement that strategy. Get creative and choose what fits best for you. So first step, let's talk about getting on the same page as your spouse. When I was doing research for this program, the second biggest complaint that I heard from working parents, after not having enough time, of course, was feeling like their marriage was suffering as a result of having too much to juggle. So let's talk about working with your partner to help alleviate some of that stress on you both individually and as a couple. So there's a tendency after you have kids to feel really overwhelmed, you're back at work, which is demanding your kids need you more than ever.

You don't get enough sleep. You never have enough time to take care of yourself. And there are more chores and errands than you've ever had in your life. You try to keep up with everything but it's overwhelming, which is a whole which is the whole point of you being here. So basically you're struggling to stay afloat. And I don't know about you.

But for many couples, marriage is the first thing to get put on the back burner Who has time for romance and fun and connection when you're just trying to get through the day. So what's the solution? How do you get out of this cycle of feeling disconnected and blaming each other, we're gonna go over a few steps that you can take to begin to get back on the same page. Before we get into that, though, I do want to say that the more on top of things you are in your life in general, the more relaxed and gracious you're going to feel. So just going through this program alone is going to help a lot, I think, but going also going ahead and taking some specific actions to start working with your partner a little more, I think is going to be really helpful. So the first thing that you're going to do in the worksheet for this lesson is create a list of everything that you currently have on your plate.

Your life balance plan and your personal priorities profile is going to help out a lot with this. So go ahead and create a master list of everything that you have to think about and deal with on a weekly basis. Then work with your spouse to create a list of everything that they're working on as well. Sometimes our perception of reality isn't always accurate, and I have a feeling that your partner is doing more than it might appear. And Either way, it's going to help you both start off on the right foot, if you can come from a place of appreciation rather than blame. So the first step is just to get a list of everything that you both handle down into one place.

Once you have a complete list of everything that you and your spouse are doing on a regular basis, you're going to start breaking things down. I want you to find a good time to sit down with your partner where you won't be distracted, get a sitter, go out for dinner, or wait for your kid, wait for kids to go to sleep, and you guys are going to start getting creative. You're going to start figuring out this list so that it's not so overwhelming. I want you to come up with a plan to divide what needs to be done in a strategic way, a way that works for you both so that you can eliminate that bickering and fighting and resentment. There may be some extra tivities that you're doing that you absolutely hate to do and want to hand off. And that's probably the same for your spouse.

And if so go ahead and negotiate with your partner. Be strategic. Figure out who has time to do what maybe your partner gets home from work earlier than you do and can start prepping dinner. And then you can take over bedtime duties later on. Or maybe your spouse is a morning person and wouldn't mind making coffee or putting your kids lunches together. The point is to become a team.

Try to try to tap back into that feeling of being on the same side. Avoid blaming your partner for the stress and frustration that you felt the past and try starting to work together. Also, there aren't any rules here. get as creative as you need to to make your life finally work. Don't quit until you have a plan that works for you both. Okay, so moving on.

Another great resource that you can rely on, that most people don't really think about is your kids. And I'm not just talking to those of you who have teenagers or older kids. For example, my son when he started when he started crawling is kind of when I started giving him you know, quote, chores. And he would, you know, be playing with his little toys on the ground and I would hand him his toy to put back into his toy bed before we moved on to something else. So we started implementing that routine really early on. And then by the time he was walking, he put all of his own clothes in the laundry basket every night and he cleared his plate at mealtimes.

He also helps clean up any messes that he makes, he spills something or if he, you know, is playing in our living room, and he just kind of has all of his toys strewn about. And now at age three, he loves to help sweep and vacuum, put dishes in the dishwasher, put them away. And again, another example is my sister's three year old, who is crazy. She wakes herself up every morning, she gets herself dressed, she makes herself breakfast and plays quietly until my sister wakes up, which kind of sounds like a dream to me personally. And so it It's absolutely possible. really all it takes is a little training.

And if your kids are older, they can do even more than that. There's probably a lot more that your kids could be doing to help you around the house. As a bonus, actually to transferring household responsibilities to your children is really good for them. Studies show that children who take responsibility at home at an early age are better equipped as adults. So let's let go of that guilt and start recruiting your kids to be your helpers. While their efforts be perfect, probably not at first, but they'll get better expect the transition phase as it becomes routine for them.

So for this tip, consider what would alleviate some of that stress in your home. Ask yourself what you could be doing for yourself that you can't do now because you're so busy working on all these things that you have going on at the house. Ask your self what your kids could be doing, that you don't really need to be doing. Like for example, are you making Your 10 year olds lunch, are you doing your 15 year olds laundry? If so, if so, then stop, start transferring that work to your kids so that you can open up time to do something that they really can't do, or something that you really want to do just for yourself. The next tip that I have is to collaborate with your friends.

Do you remember that tribe that we created back in module one. So this is where you're going to start utilizing that support network. Now, your friends are also probably really busy. So my biggest tip for this lesson is to try to come up with solutions that will be mutually beneficial. Think about how you can help each other out and not just how they can help you. And now again, I want you to get creative.

There are a lot of different options here. So for example, you could create a babysitting Co Op with a couple of different friends, or you can do a dinner exchange. Or you can coordinate with a friend whose kids are about the same age and exchange an evening or a weekend away with them. The kids get a slumber party and you get some time off which sounds like a win win to me Another thing that my husband and I like to do is that we go on vacation with some other friends of ours who are parents as well. And so our kids get to play together. And then a couple times throughout that week that we're away or however long we're away, we'll each get our own little date night, which is kind of nice.

It's kind of built in babysitter. So the main point I want to make here is don't be shy. modern society can really be difficult for working parents, there seems to be this belief that we have to do everything ourselves. So we have all of these little islands of families who are struggling to survive. But I'm going to tell you one thing that will save your working parent behind it is okay to ask for help. I am serious start start.

Start reaching out to other working parents, who I promise you are struggling just as much as you are, and who would probably be relieved to work with you. It doesn't need to take a village to raise a child but it does absolutely make it easier. And it can really help make your experience a lot more fun and a lot less stressful. I don't know about you. But it's important to me that my son has a really strong relationship with his extended family. So his grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and some of our close family friends.

So coordinating visits with my extended family is a great way to kill two birds with one stone. First, I find that, you know, leaving your kids with extended family is a great way to help enrich that relationship. But also, you get to sneak away, so you and your husband could maybe sneak away or your wife could sneak away for a date, or you could maybe sneak away to get a little work done. Or maybe you can clean the house while they're away or take some time just for yourself to relax. And one thing I do want to note here is if you don't live near extended family, you have a couple of other options. I'm going to go into that a little bit more in the next tip.

And my husband and I can relate to this one we recently moved away from San Francisco where we had a huge support network all my in laws live there. My husband's cousins and grandparents everybody lived out there. When Have a ton of friends. And we moved to the San Francisco to the San Diego area where my husband and I don't know anyone. So we're kind of coming up with other options, which is what we'll go into next. But I just wanted to mention that this is another idea.

If you're struggling and you need a little extra help, this is another great place to look. So there are probably a lot of free resources available to you in your neighborhood that you're not even aware of. If you're having trouble juggling everything in your life, do some research on some of these free resources that might be available in your community. So for example, are you a member of a church churches have a ton of resources for families, including childcare in most places, marriage counseling, outreach and information. You can also look for a YMCA in your area. Our YMCA personally has a free daycare for up to three hours anytime we want to go.

They have a very affordable part time and full time preschool program. They also have a date night program where we can drop our son off for at least four hours. I think that happens maybe every month or so. And we can also use that opportunity to meet other families in the neighborhood. So you can kind of build in your support network there. It's obviously a great research resource for learning as well in fitness, nutrition and recreation.

So take a look at that to see if you have one available in your area. And also, don't forget about your neighbors, your neighbors can be a great resource for babysitting exchanges, or maybe dinner exchanges. They can also be a great contact for carpooling, since they're often going in the same direction, especially if they have kids your own age, your kids age. Okay, so if all of that fails, all of those free resources fail. You can also always pay someone for a little relief, too. So I know that money can be really tight when you have kids.

And it can be hard to give away some of that hard earned money to someone else, for something that you know that you could do, and might even do Better in some cases. But my question for you is what is your time really worth? And this isn't a rhetorical question, I really want you to break down how much your time is worth. For example, if you make $50,000 a year, your hour is worth $25. If you make $100,000 a year, your hour is worth $50. And that's not even taking into account opportunity costs, which are the opportunities that you can't take advantage of because you're busy doing something else.

Some of the things that we do ourselves can be done for far less than we think you could be paying a babysitter $12 an hour. For a date night out, it might be closer to maybe 15 or 20. For those of you who live in pricier areas, you could pay a high schooler maybe $20 a week to come to your house and chop up all of your food or go shopping, maybe prep all your meals for you. Amazon prime is also $100 a year and you get two day free shipping on any item. So for me personally, I Never go to Target or anything like that unless I want to go shopping, of course, you know, for fun things. But I mean to get things like toilet paper and paper towels and soap and those kinds of things, I don't even think about it anymore.

I just have it all set up, and it's just automatically delivered to my home when I need it to be. There are also companies like Blue Apron and plated that prepare healthy, delicious meals for about the price that you would pay at a restaurant, and then they just deliver that right to your doorstep. So there are a lot of different research resources out there that don't really cost as much as you might think they will ask your friends and your co workers what they do to save time and come up with some creative ideas to remove even more of those items from your to do list every week. Just remember to ask yourself is the time I'll save worth the money that I'll spend in the long run. Okay, so we've talked all about different ways to maximize your time at home. Now I just want to go over a couple of things that might be costing you more time than you think the first Is your social engagements.

Now as we'll talk about in the next module, I am all for fun. I think it's absolutely important for working parents to connect with other people dedicate time to interests and hobbies that offer meaning and generally relax and have fun. But if you're overwhelmed and stressed out, it's possible that the social engagements you have on your plate aren't meeting your needs. As you've heard me say before, you only have so much time, you need to be really intentional about how you spend that time. So the lesson for this exercise will walk you through a few questions you should ask yourself when you're evaluating social commitments, or trying to decide whether to agree to something in the future. Go through your social account, calendar and evaluate everything.

Do you want to keep all of these appointments? Are you looking forward to all of those activities? Are these activities with people you truly like and get energy from? Or do they deplete your energy and create more chaos in your life? Is there a way to streamline the activities There's less dead time between them. For example, can you run several different errands at once, rather than spacing them all out throughout the week.

Just be aware of the time that you're spending doing things because you feel like you should rather than because it's something that truly gives you energy. And even if everything on your list truly does fill you up, you may still have to narrow it down. I feel like I want to tell a story. I have a really good friend, who is one of the most passionate people I know. I absolutely love her excitement about everything she takes on she's super outgoing and social and her life is honestly, it seems really fun on the outside. But we've had enough conversations to know that she's so that I know that she's told me how stressed out and exhausted she is from everything she has on her plate.

So at the end of the day, if you have so many fun social engagements on your calendar, it might be thing that's actually causing you chaos. So take a look at that and make sure that that's not something that's eating up your time. Another thing that might be causing chaos in your life are volunteer activities. Now, here again, you might, you'll never hear me criticize people who are trying to serve their communities or the world in some wonderful way. volunteering your time for a greater cause is a noble endeavor. And I think that it's an important part of a balanced life.

But I have a really serious question for you. How much time are you spending helping others when you don't have that time for yourself? Because if you're feeling depleted, anxious, stressed, exhausted, overwhelmed, but you're still dedicating a bunch of time to everyone else. I'm going to tell you right now, you're not helping anyone, especially yourself, giving something that you don't have to give. And in this case, your time and energy isn't Noble. It sets you up for all sorts of negative things like depression and anxiety, frustration, resentment, that list goes on and on.

And it really does. Steal time away from the other people in your life who are important to you like your spouse or your kids or their friends. friends and your family members. So do you remember our discussion about priorities and seasons from lesson one. So that's where this comes in. Ask yourself whether this is the best time in your life to be giving away your time, it may be one of your priorities right now might be giving to others.

And that's totally cool. Just make sure that you have the time to give and that you're not demoting some other priority in order to make time for this particular volunteer activity. Another thing you should be evaluating is the amount of time you spend on personal development. So as a working parent, you might not have all that much time for personal development. And I'm not saying that you don't need some personal development, just make sure that you're balancing it out. For me, when I did my time audit, I realized that I spent a lot of time on self development like reading or meditating.

Now I'm a personal development junkie. And so I could spend entire weeks just learning and reflecting and writing and all those things. I left trying to figure out how to improve my life. I am an introvert though, and so I can be a huge sucker for that sort of stuff. But when I finally did my time on it, it became really clear how much time I was taking away from my family and other things by focusing so much on self development. That can be a middle ground where you're getting what you need, but where it's not at the expense of your relationships or your stress level.

So take a look at your time on it and your life balance plan, and decide where you might be getting lost in self development at the expense of other activities, such as spending time with your family or your friends or taking care of business. So as we go through the tips on the 10 tips to increasing efficiency at home tip sheet, keep in mind that there are a few success tips that you can use to get the most out of this exercise as well. The first one is to realize that you make the final decision about what goes on your life balance plan. These are all suggestions so take what you like and leave the rest Second, choose at least one tip and implement it right away, do something to make a real change in their life. None of these strategies will do anything to improve your life until and unless you actually apply them.

We went over a lot of different tactics you can use to simplify your life. In this lesson, we talked about a lot of practical real solutions that you can apply to change your life. But there are two places where I see people getting really stuck. And so I want to talk about those now. The first one is believing that you can't ask others for help. As we discussed earlier, there's this common theme among parents, especially among working parents, that it's not okay to ask for help.

I think a lot of people out there see these Pinterest perfect lives where everyone else seems to have it all together. Let me spare you this suspense. No one has it all together all the time. Everyone needs help sometimes and it's okay to ask and accept help from other people. It doesn't make you failure, it doesn't make you less of an employee or less of a parent ask for help. So if you're someone who feels like they need to do everything for all people all the time, I want you to just question where that belief is coming from and starts to challenge it.

If it's not working for you, it's okay to change things up and start collaborating with other people. That's the whole point of having a tribe. There are people out there who would love to help you. Give them the chance to support you for once. It doesn't make you weak or less valuable. It makes you smart, because utilizing the resources around you is the only way to sustain a happy, balanced working parent life.

Question your expectations of yourself and start doing things because that's what's best for you and your family. Not because you're trying to adhere to some outdated concept of what a mom or an employee or a dad should be, for instance. The second pitfall I usually see is people feel the need to control their life so much that they have a hard time letting go and delegating to others. So I used to have a really hard time handing off work especially Other people, because I just believe that no one else could do it as well as I could. But becoming a working mum sort of forced me to let go of those crazy standards, both of myself end up other people. The truth is that others were quite capable of doing the things just as well if not better than me.

But when I gave them half a chance, and a little bit of training, I was able to offload a ton of stress in my life. So take your power back and design a lifestyle that actually fits your unique situation. For me, it really helped to step back and realize that there's more to life than doing everything myself. And that help was available as soon as I decided to ask for it. The last potential pitfall I want you to be aware of, is being afraid of real change. So let's be super honest here.

Making lasting changes in your life and in your family can be really scary. It's hard to adjust your life in a new way. A lot of times, it's easier to just accept the status quo and continue going on with whatever momentum you've created already. But if you're moving in the wrong direction, you're only going to find yourself miserable in the future. There's an old saying that goes, quote, if you could, you could succeed in climbing the ladder only to find that it's against the wrong wall. So don't waste your life change can be uncomfortable, but it's really worth it.

So use your support network in the challenging moments and keep moving toward a lifestyle that works for you. So there are two different books that I wanted to share for this lessons recommended resources. The first is a book called The happiness project by Gretchen Rubin. Gretchen Rubin used to be a lawyer in New York and then she eventually shifted into being an author. And like many other working parents out there, Ruben felt like she probably should be happy. She had a happy, healthy family and a good job, a stable marriage, they lived in a nice apartment in Manhattan.

By all accounts, she realized that she had a lot to be grateful for, but she wasn't really happy. And I don't know about you, but I can absolutely relate to that. So she started doing a lot of research on how Venus in established a plan to incorporate more happiness into her own life. She focused on improving her life in one specific area each month, over the course of a year. She called this the happiness project. And what she discovered has been really enlightening to me.

So I wanted to pass this along to you as well. The other book that I wanted to mention is the 10 habits of Happy Mothers, reclaiming our passion, purpose and sanity by Meg Meeker. So this is just a really self help book. It's a good self help book that goes through 10 different things that you could do to experience more happiness in your life. So it's geared more towards moms, but I think the lessons are universal enough that it would apply to both moms and dads. It's worth a read if you're struggling with feeling unhappy and unfulfilled as a working parent.

So check it out. All right, so you made it to the end of the second module. Congratulations. So just one more module to go in this program. And as we wrap up this module, I want you to go ahead and download the top 10 tips to increasing efficiency. tip sheet that we were talking about throughout this lesson, and choose one or two options to implement in your own life.

And then go ahead and jump on the Facebook community and let us all know how it's going. And I'll see you in the next lesson.