Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 126 | idk why but you wanted our advice

Episode Date: August 10, 2022

We LOVE these episodes because we get to try to give you advice about a bunch of different topics. We asked what you needed advice on and, as always, you came through with some great questions! Be sure to follow along on our Couple Things Podcast Instagram so you can send in questions for next time! Couple Things Podcast Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/couplethingspod/?hl=en Follow My Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My Twitter ▶ http://www.twitter.com/ShawnJohnson Snapchat! ▶ @ShawneyJ Follow AndrewsTwitter ▶ttp://www.twitter.com/AndrewDEast Follow My Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/AndrewDEast Snapchat! ▶ @AndrewDEast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Defender. With a towing capacity of 3,500 kilograms and a waiting depth of 900 millimeters, the Defender 110 pushes what's possible. Learn more at landrover.ca. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to a couple things. With Sean and Andrew. A podcast all about couples.

And the things they go through. Today, we are doing another advice episode because it came highly requested. That's right. So we asked you on the Instagram for a couple things. What do you want advice on? And today we're just going to be responding to some of those. Did we ask them on everything? On the Instagram, Andrew?

On Instagram. On the Instagram? That's right. Yeah. I don't know if you know anything about the social media, but it's on the up and up. I want to remind you guys, we are not professionals in any of these fields, but we do have personal experience. Even though we love to give advice and kind of talk through it, just know that, um,

We are not doctors. Let me tell you the best case scenario for something like this. Yeah. Is there's someone out there listening, maybe you're listening with the SIGO. Yeah. And you're like, huh, I never thought about that or discussed that with my person. So let me start a conversation with them because this was thought-provoking. So we're just going to throw everything at the wall.

Yep. And if you have thoughts on any topic we discussed, then go ahead and drop into the comments. We love the community of perspectives and the dieticians. and the diverse backgrounds everyone come from. It's just great to kind of get different people weighing in on an issue. So if that's you, please do that. But the goal is to start conversations. One of our favorite things about all of the requested advice topics that we pulled today

is instead of having a lot of authority or confidence in our answers, there are actually a lot of things that we are struggling with and we're going through as well. So if anything, hopefully what you take away from this is this is a normal thing for you to go through. we all go through it and hopefully you don't feel as isolated that's right what a life we live a lot can happen we're just gonna unlock all the dirty laundry right now are we have i don't know i don't know it seemed like a dramatic thing to say before we start if you have me yet please press the subscribe button and give the show rating wherever you're listening we are on youtube spotify apple podcast google podcast all the podcasts yeah check it out let's start okay first up uh you guys

asked how do you stay positive when trying to conceive and keeping it from becoming a quote chore we went through a little window of time yeah this was the case for us where it was like you know you're on a schedule and there's pressure to try to make magic in that little window of time you have and it's not a fun place to be to be honest with you it's not because I feel like I feel like that's the actual reality of trying to conceive is it does become kind of a chore because you are tracking your fertility and your ovulation and you're like, oh my gosh, it's like time to do this and whatever it might be. But I think where you go wrong is like in society and movies and everything,

they paint such a romanticized picture of like finding out you're pregnant on accident. And it's like the most beautiful lovemaking of your life where you like create a child. And it's like it's just so unrealistic because it just doesn't happen that way. Science is a little bit more specific and it takes more planning and thought if you're truly like attempting to conceive. I would say the majority of our friends fall into this category of like things were planned and it was kind of a chore, right? You're on a schedule. I think as I process this question, adopting the mentality of controlling what you can control and then kind of viewing this whole thing as an adventure and not letting it be a stress. on the relationship but rather like really something that can bring you together and and look

there's good times and bad times but both of those situations can I feel like connect a couple so yeah I will say to you I'm not saying this is like the right way to go about it but something that I started to do um even without Andrew knowing when we had decided we wanted to start trying to conceive and we started to feel like it was becoming a tour I kind of just took the the vocalized science away from it. So I would, like, be testing ovulation and all of these things. And if it was ever a good day, I would just try to, like, be romantic with you. I wouldn't be like, babe, like, today's a good day.

We need to try. Because I think as soon as you do that, it kind of, like, psyched you out. So I almost took on that role of doing the science in the background and be like, okay, let's see if we can, like, spark a moment here and have fun. I think being able to zoom out of the immediate situation and still have this element of playfulness or like a sense of humor or like holding on loosely type mentality really helps no matter what the stressful situation is right like you you can't do anything more than what you're trying to do so like yeah you should be disciplined you should do all the tracking things but like that doesn't mean you should vacuum out all. romance or fun and i sorry yeah you got it i also think to um just a a false stereotype out there is that it's so easy to get pregnant i feel like so many people teach you at such a young age that like if you have sex you're going to get pregnant and it doesn't really work that way and i think if you

change your mindset to this is going to be a process and let's have fun with it and let's keep trying and learning and if you just kind of adopt that mindset from the beginning rather than like expecting to conceive the very first time you try I think it can make things a little bit better I'll never forget like one specific instance where the pressure was on and like then that ruined everything experience and like neither of us enjoyed it we felt pressured we were like this we can't do it couldn't do it no because there's too much pressure and then it ended in an argument.

Yeah. Okay. Well, that's not a good way to get pregnant. No. Arguing doesn't get the job done, you know? No. There's more involved. Yeah.

Anyway, so always remember that there is hope, you know, no matter what the situation. And we're rooting for you. So we've had so many friends try to get pregnant for like years. And after like even up to a decade, they finally get pregnant. So never lose hope. Yeah. Next question. How to balance multiple job roles.

are so many hats at work and at home this is relevant yeah so last night i had kind of a mental breakdown not in like a dramatic sense but mental breakdown because i struggle with this i struggle very i very much struggle with this because balancing the job roles of spouse um boss employee mom, friend, daughter, all of these things at same time are very, very hard. They're all very time consuming. They're all very emotionally and mentally consuming, physically consuming. And I want to be the best at all of them. And I think at the end of the day, Andrew and I had so many conversations about this last night of you kind of have to give yourself grace. You can't be perfect at all of them, but you can try your best and give small moments of time here and there and just try to like,

do a little bit of everything instead of all of it. To give context to our situation, we are so fortunate because your parents, we see every single day. Your mom helps with the kids necessary. We have a lot of the people we work with are closest friends. We live close to a good group of friends. And, you know,

there's no shortage of people wanting to be in community, which is like that's what we want is community, right? Sean and I have intentionally tried to build that out and have failed and done things wrong at times for sure and I feel like you know conflict can feel discouraging this is an area where candidly you can grow where it's like part of the beauty of community is like you know you're all you're all kind of shaping each other and and and polishing each other off right and like there will be friction at points but don't run away from that rather see it as the beautiful consequence of community right yeah and so whether

that's with your job or with your wife like there is something to being committed to a person or a group of people and like the effects that that can have on you personally so don't get discouraged um i would say intentionality is the word that comes to mind when i talk to people i admire of hey how do you spend time with your friends and also have a, you know, a fulfilling career and then also, you know, lead a men's group and then, you know, you're active in the church. It's like, you have to be pretty disciplined. And so, Sean and I talk about our Thursday night date nights all the time. One of the things we did that helped us maintain that is like literally putting it on our work schedule from five to nine. It's blocked off. And so we do that with, we've tried to do

that with other things like call blocks. So like our day isn't consumed. by just picking up the phone to whoever rings us or like working out. So just be intentional. And ask your spouse for help, I think, or ask someone for help, whether it's your friend or your spouse, but something Andrew and I talked about last night is like supporting each other more and helping balance those hats and those roles of, babe, I will take the kids for an hour, two days a week, where you can go catch up with some of your closest friends and vice versa.

and helping to maybe take something off of your workload list or whatever it might be, but really helping each other kind of balance those roles out. Yeah, and I was pretty pensive last night about how I've negatively affected your input in community because sometimes I'll get so excited and like try to consume all your time because I'm like, Sean, we got to do this

or take that adventure or film this video because I just get, I like impose my excitement on you. And so I think it does help for sure when Sean comes to me. And she's like, hey, I would love to do workouts four days a week. And she expresses excitement. Like, this is something I want to make a priority. That makes it so much better for me to like make happen as opposed to, you know, her dragging her feet, be like, oh, I guess I should work out this morning or whatever the thing is.

Like, I guess I should go spend time with a friend. Like if she actually shows excitement as opposed to dread, it's like it changes how I view it as well. you can get protein at home or a protein latte at tim's no powders no blenders no shakers starting at 17 grams per medium latte tim's new protein lattes protein without all the work at participating restaurants in canada i also think we talk about this a lot but like that year goal setting i think you can do these you can kind of do a similar form of that on a monthly weekly daily basis where write out what all of your like hats goals roles are how much time do you want to spend one on one with your kids or with your spouse or how many friends do you want to see a week or a month how many date nights do you

want to go on and truly write all of that out what are your work goals and see if you can't come to a system um to where you can kind of fit all of that in in a balanced way and if you can kind of just schedule those those times or those mental spaces where you can say like oh I'm mom hat right now or oh i'm spouse hat or whatever it is it can help you kind of um organize all of those rules my goal is to by the end of this year have 80% of our time intentionally scheduled to match our priority agree and then 20% of our time intentionally not scheduled to leave room for whimsy the exactly the freaking word i was going to use no way that's the exact freaking I don't think either of us have ever used that word in our life.

How did that just happen? Whimsy. We're married. Okay. Next one. Engagement ring shopping basics. What do I need to know? Ooh.

I'll start it off here. How about if you are getting into a relationship where you have started to talk about marriage and an engagement ring is something that you want, both of you need to be open to talking about that. Don't feel like the guy or your. spouse is just going to magically know exactly what you want talk about it go shopping have fun with it so that when the time comes it's it's you're happy I don't know but no that's not how we worked to be honest that is how we kind of expected me to like it's like there's kind of like this

coy little game it is and it's like oh I'm supposed to surprise her and yes the Pinterest the Pinterest board thing. For sure. But I'm also saying you don't need to do that. I think that game we played is unnecessary. I think it's the case for a lot of couples. For sure. Like I think if, I don't know, in our group of friends, like, hey, if you go engagement

ring shopping together, there's like a, oh, well, you're not, kind of like a, you could try harder type of life. I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm not phrasing that right, but there for sure was a little element of, uh, surprise. this is you know we so i don't know if that's your vibe then leave breadcrumbs i would say like tell your best friend yeah make the Pinterest board and like if you're the yeah if you're if you're if you're if you're receiving the ring make it you know possible accessible for for your

sigo to win yeah but if your stylist to just go shopping together that's great sean and i did the surprise thing she had the Pinterest board but i i will say we did go shopping shopping once where we were like I like this not that we walked into a jewelry store yeah and it wasn't specifically for engagement rings because we were we were playing this stupid game we were playing the stupid game but it was like oh I really liked that style ring yeah oh really no way I don't know anyway so I bought it uh I bought the ring that was 2015 um spent way too much money on it by the way I went I went into that's my bad well by too much money I meant I spent more money than I literally had.

I went into, I signed with the chiefs, thought I got a signing bonus. It didn't come in for a long time. So I spent money I didn't have. Lesson was learned that day. A couple of things, though, is shop at multiple places, negotiate, ask for ways you can save money. You can do financing options. And also, something to remember, you do not need to buy the engagement ring and the wedding ring at the same time. you can space those out.

You can buy the engagement ring and then buy the wedding ring closer to the wedding. Just a different way to save money, recoup money. But I also think the engagement ring is like a really cool entry level discussion that you can have of like, hey, what are expectations here as far as like style or like, yeah, I really kind of expect having a shiny diamond cut. Is that what that is? Cushant. Whatever. There's like all the different styles. So it's like, do we want to just do like a rubber ring and that does it for me?

Yeah. Or, you know, it can be an insightful conversation to have. Also, into that insightful, more and more people are getting very, very creative with engagement rings. Whether you're doing a colored stone or the rubber ring or a tattoo, get on the same page there. The bottom line is thoughtfulness, no matter a situation. always goes a long way in relationships. Yes. Next step.

Breakup advice after a long-term relationship and how to pick yourself up after a bad breakup. I fortunately have not had too many bad breakups. I don't think I've ever had a bad breakup. Is that true? Yeah, I don't think I've had a bad breakup. You can do it respectfully. It doesn't have to be like this vengeance.

Are you thinking of someone? What? There's two here. It's breakup advice after a long-term relationship. Okay. Or after a bad breakup. I guess here. I am thinking of one that you've talked about before.

Roger. But I think the only thing that comes to mine here is I feel like when you're in a long-term relationship and you break up, I think what tends to happen is you play this gray game of like, do I really want to start over? Should I go back to them? Will. Charo talked about this in our interview with them. They had some good things to say, but go ahead. And I would just say that if you have made that decision to break up, you've done it for a reason.

And I would cut your losses and move on. That's my personal experience. I played the gray game for so long, knowing very well that it wasn't going to work out. I just didn't know how to start over. I was so scared to start over. And I think you have so much emotional investment into it that I wish I could go back in time and be like, you know what? It's okay. Like it was, you had this long-term relationship, but it's done.

Let's let's cut the clean, like start a new chapter and move on. This is so interesting. It is making me reflect back on the emotions that get so inflamed, not in a bad way, but it's like you feel a lot of things after the breakup and then you see them again. and it's like resurfaced it's tough i guess i do agree with you in the sense that like hey we broke up and it's it's not good to you know be lukewarm about something so you're either in or you're out yeah and decide that um again be thoughtful about that uh but i would say having clear direction and just like sticking to it helps so good luck hope you're okay we're rooting for you the conjuring last rights

On September 5th I come down here I need you Oh! Array! Array! Array! Array!

The Conjuring Last Rites, only in theater September 5th. Next up, how to ask for a raise when you feel like you deserve it. I think this is pretty straightforward. I think this is one of those where you have to take the emotion out of it and the fear of rejection and just present yourself well in a professional way.

Give your reasoning. And if they shoot you down, they shoot you down. If that's a deal breaker for you, that's a deal breaker. But you have to go into it being okay with any outcome. I would say being informed and knowledge. is the first thing. So, like, hey, you know, my job title is X, Y, Z, which has all these responsibilities associated with it, which comes with this salary.

I'm actually doing X, Y, Z additional responsibilities, which means, you know, it's more like this job title. And that market price for salary is this. That's a way more convincing argument than coming in and being like, hey, uh, I think I deserve more money. Like, it should be, it should be thoughtful. It should be thought out, what's your why, what are you asking for, why are you asking for it? Make your argument, make your case.

Yeah, and then any negotiation, having leverage, whether that's another opportunity or whatever it is. Like, information goes a long way. So be fair, be understanding. It is interesting economic times we live in. There's a lot at play. I would also add to that, like, be calm. That's where I was saying take the emotion out of it. Yeah, yeah, that's good.

People get very, very defensive in those types of conversations. So approach it as like a, you know, this has been on my mind. And the friendlier you are, the friendlier your response. It's just being professionally. Yeah. It's not like, it's not a personal attack. Like, just don't go in there and be like, I freaking deserve this. Yeah.

How to manage having friendships and social circles while maintaining a close marital bond. Man, the fine balance. of life. I have a thought here. Okay, hit it. I think if you are openly communicating with your spouse about your needs with friendships and social circles, it actually strengthens your marital bond.

Continue. Like, if I were to just go day and day out without saying, like, I want to spend time with Lexi or my friends or whatever, I'm building resentment and, like, distance between us and our marriage. but if I'm coming to you and I'm like babe I am so excited I would love to do a wine night with my girls once a month you know this is something that I'm really excited about if we can share that passion together and you can feel like you're supporting me and something that I'm passionate about I think that helps our marriage there's a can I just bring up Rachel from the Bachelorette yes first of all as a husband it is so important to me to have Sean really really building strong friendships because the last thing I want is for for like me to have to manage all that to be honest with you and I'm not equipped yeah so like you having other friendships that you can get another perspective on and I don't mean yo you wouldn't believe Andrew did this

and then you have a bunch of friends saying oh my gosh she's the worst it's it's actually Sean I think you were wrong like actual friendships close community like we were talking about earlier that keep you in check and vice versa by the way but like i just think of rachel from the bachelor's who is you know there's this episode where all like there's a boxing match going on they went to yeah and she was like none of the guys looked at me and it wasn't her date it was gabby's date it was like no one's looking at me during the boxing match and she was like upset about this and it made me sad because uh you're you're at a boxing match you know it's not like a rachel on stage thing it's so the less you make

it about you which i think friends help with the better and like in our relationship anytime we're hyper focused on Sean dropped the paper towel on the floor and didn't pick it up like that is nonsense yeah there are bigger issues going on in the world this is where like serving or like being in friends or whatever it is like makes a big difference i also think to something with friendships and social circles with a marriage, something that needs to be an open conversation in your marriage. I firmly believe this. Andrew and I have practiced this and gone in and out of it for the past seven years is you need to have an open communication about each other's friends and how you see those friends affecting your spouse. Andrew and I have amazing friends,

amazing circles but every once in a while in the past seven years we've noticed particular friends that maybe impact us influence us or encourage us in the wrong way and we've had to have open lines of communication and say you know what i love this person i love boris this is what one of our other interviewers names he used um i love boris and i think he's a great guy but i've noticed when you hang out with him, you come home X, Y, Z, more aggressive, more, you curse more, whatever it might be.

And having those open lines of communication and having someone who can kind of be your mirror in that I think is really important. We've had to each individually step away from some friends that we felt the other was being negatively impacted by. And that's prioritizing marriage. Absolutely. There's a, my cousin got married

recently and the part of the service was this quote, which I find so beautiful. It says within this vision of marriage, here's what it means to fall in love. It's to look at another person and get a glimpse of what God is creating and to say, I see who God is making you. And it excites me. I want to be a part of that. I want to partner with you and the journey and you're taking to the throne. And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, I always knew you could be like this. I got glimpses of it earlier, but now look at you.

And it's like, that is freaking powerful. That's a beauty of marriage. What friends of Sean's are helping you get there. It's like a responsibility to keep that in check and make sure you're growing together and towards like this shared vision of who you are together and who you see in the other person. Yeah. Summer's here and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with Uber eats. What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a well-groom lawn delivered, but you can get a chicken parmesan delivered. A cabana? That's a no, but a banana. That's a yes. A nice tan. Sorry. Nope. But a box fan, happily yes. A day of sunshine. No. A box of fine wines?

Yes. Uber Eats can definitely get you that. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol and select markets. Product availability may vary by Regency app for details. Let's take a break to thank our partner for today's podcast, Levels Health. I'm pumped about this.

I love Levels, and if you've seen some of our videos, you may have noticed that I wear a little tracker on the backside of my tricep, and that's a Levels tracker. I've been wearing one of these for the past couple months, I think actually coming up on a year, and it's been an absolute game changer. It shows you how food affects. your health by giving you real-time feedback on your diet. Let me give an example. So Sean loves

pokey. She orders it every other day for lunch, it seems like. And after a few times of us eating it together, I realized that I kind of felt gross and tired and like I needed to take a nap after. And with levels, we were able to confirm this information and track that something in the pokey spiked my glucose levels, which is what made me feel that funky. After we cut that from my diet, it made a huge difference in stabilizing my energy levels. And I've actually taken out several foods as well as added some different foods to help me stabilize my blood glucose levels, which helps me maintain my energy levels throughout the day. If you want to better understand how food affects your health and try a continuous glucose monitor yourself, go to levels.com slash eSfam to learn

more. They also have a really well researched in-depth blog that we recommend checking out if you're looking to learn more about topics like metabolic health, longevity, and nutrition. Guys, Levels is awesome. Try it out for at least a month, see what you learn. And if you're anything like me, it'll be the spark to help you finesse your diet and help you feel better and better each day. So we'll link it down below. Thank you, Levels, and let's get back to it. That was a little bit of rambling, but I'll take it all on it.

Those are my thoughts. Friendship's important. Next up. Date night ideas that work for you. Man, we've done a lot of different things. I have an answer to this. and I think we should keep it simple. Something that I love that we do is we alternate date night planning.

So if we have a date night every Thursday, I take the odd days, he takes the even, or I take the odd weeks, you take the even weeks, where it's like, tonight I'm going to plan it and surprise it for him and vice versa. It can be as simple as like playing charades in your backyard or whatever. But I think having that kind of back and forth of surprise and adventure and excitement and being able to try new things is great.

There's three elements as I'm analyzing our date nights that come to mind. One being we dress up. Yep. Which is our like, hey, we're making an effort here. Two, we do dinner or have some like food adventure, I feel like try out a new spot or like go try. It's whatever. You know, we try to make something exciting out of the mundane. three is an activity so like could be a movie could be a escape room could be put put put

could be we've gone to like a what are they called like a scenic point before and just like sat around and looked at the skyline yeah gone for a walk anything we've gone shopping for shoes but having those three we we always have those three it's like you get ready we go to dinner we do an activity yep next up how to keep a strong faith and world that's telling you not to believe anything. I think this comes down to who you surround yourself with. I think Andrew and I are both firm believers that you should have a challenging community. So like it shouldn't be people of all the same exact belief and like-mindedness.

However, if you want to keep believing in your faith and say you are a Christian, then you should continue going to a Christian church and be surrounded people. by people who remind you of why you're there and why you have that belief in the first place. I would say my appreciation for faith has grown over the past couple months. I've had a lot of friends struggle with like purposefulness in life. What is my purpose? Why are we here? It's led them to addictions and suicides. It's been a mess of a couple months.

And so I think there's two ways that you could look at life. It's very easy to do both. One way is to say, you know what, there's nothing to believe in. And it all ends here. There's no reason we're here. This is just like something. Like, we just ended up here. The second is whimsical.

Like, there is an element of magic in life, you know? The, you know, the getting pregnant is my sixth grade science teacher told me he's like, super hardline science guy, but was like, this is one of the miracles of science. Miracle. Do I say that weird still? Say it. Or like, whatever, going out to see the smoky mountains and like just stepping back. Like they're, there, you can view it as, oh, well, that's just because of low cloud cover and the, you know, the earth, the evaporation is happening and it's a cloud. Or you could be like, wow, that's whimsical.

Both ways are easy. Both ways are true. Neither is wrong. But it has humbled me. I read a book recently called The Short History of Nearly Everything. And this author, Bill Bryson, is not, Christian doesn't have a faith, but he breaks down all these different aspects of science. And one of the things is you have like atom, you have molecules and then atoms and then atoms are made up of like corks, right? Protons and neutrons, but those are made up of corks.

And if you take one cork in the United States and split it from its partner cork and put it in China, if you spin that one counterclockwise, the other one across the world will automatically spin clockwise. wise like and he says at some point science is unexplainable so how do you want to look at that that's a challenge and Sean and I have you know inserted faith there so perspective would be my one word answer next up traveling with breast milk specifically with TSA when not traveling with your babies wow this brings back memories Yeah. I would say we could do an entire podcast on this. Do your research. So there are tons of federally protected laws when it comes to traveling with breast milk, especially without your babies. It is legal. It is legal to travel with large quantities. It's legal for them not to actually test the liquid. But I think with all of that, you just need to do your research and you need to. to know your information because unfortunately traveling with breast milk through TSA is not a

widely known situation a lot of TSA agents aren't educated in this area and that's not there that's not their wrong that's more like a higher like a higher levels issue but I would say read up on it know your laws know your rules basically at the of the day what it comes down to is if you don't want them testing if you don't want them opening your bottles your bags to test that liquid uh you just have to voice that and request extra extra screening so like pat downs look through your bags all that and then you should be good well done did i give a i think so uh how to not disagree with your spouse about money and budgeting i'm not sure this exists I think the best way with this is to get someone to help.

Whether it's a financial manager, an accountant, a therapist. I think for some reason, money and budgeting is a very polarizing topic amongst relationships in the world. It's pretty understandable. It is, but I think it's compounded by society's stigma. and pressure around money, I would say ask for help. Ask for someone to help mediate and interpret and be a middle person for you guys to come to a common ground.

When people say communication is key to marriage, I think this is kind of an example of what they're talking about. I mean, there will always be a spender and there will always be someone who is less of a spender. no matter how much you both spend and communicating like hey let's set a budget and so you could still spend but it's within a range that I don't feel offended by you know what I'm saying yeah so it's just kind of about respect realizing that a compromise will be made like you know you're trying to meet in the middle and and you're going to have to spend less and I'm going to have to be okay with

you still spending more than I'm comfortable with. Yeah. I think this goes back to as well, writing out your common goals and what are you wanting to do with your money and your budget? What's your tomorrow plan and what's your 10-year plan? I mean, but I would advise getting professional help to kind of sort through that. Yeah. And it's not like, I don't know, I think it will be a. persistent issue with us like we've been married six years just we still don't have this dialed in yeah so like recognize that okay it's gonna ebb and flow but this makes me think of the asking for a race too like the better informed you are like hey this is our income this is our spend how can we

you know better achieve our goals maybe you don't want any savings ever so you can make that decision but regardless, measuring and tracking and knowing the situation is the first step and then communicating expectations would be the second and then getting on the same page would be the third. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets

can score you a spot track side. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Presale tickets for future events subject to availability and vary by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex. next up how to pick a baby name that works for you and your family i think adopting this mindset

from the very beginning of there are names that you have grown up with loving the idea of and your spouse isn't going to like them like picking a name for your child that's both you and your spouses has to be mutually agreed upon and it takes time and it takes lots of lists and it takes lots of creativity but it's so fun it is so fun like so Sean I went back and did our family tree which I never thought I'd be that guy but like we did family trees looked at the first middle and last name of all of them um chose ones that we thought were interesting separately came up with the list we also did the baby name app which is amazing swiping left and right with your partner and then it matches the ones that you both liked and then like you just

whittle it down like but it took us months yeah which is fun like we were stuck on bear jet it was another B one I forget I'm sure we have a note on it oh shoot bear oh shoot it was short for um no I think bear it was bear it was the name that we were going to do but call him bear yeah yeah and then jet and then Griffin so then we went through and thought of all the

all the bears we knew or barrets we knew and then you're like oh well I don't I don't want to have a constant reminder of that person or like yeah they're cool or whatever try to make it meaningful Sean and I didn't do anything like

you know we have friends who named their kids like Sela or whatever and it's like this means you know great ambitions yeah it was just for us it was Jets, a family name. Yeah.

We thought it was cool. It sounded good. And it was same with Drew. We liked Drew Hazel and we liked Griffin Dean. Drew was going to be a girl's name and Griffin was going to be a boy's name. But yeah, it took 300 names before we got to those with both of them. So we would write them down. We would print them out.

We would say them over and over again. We did chalk with all of them. All of them. Yeah. Oh, gosh. And you're like, oh, I like the way that. looks so fun last one here is simple ways to show gratitude in your life when times are hard man this is like the key to life dude gratitude are you freaking kidding me this is I'm passionate

about this because I think everyone can have a grateful approach and it's kind of a choice but it's also kind of like I would say a montage of inputs that you have on your life so this is Like, you know, people talk about the music you listen to Matters or the TV shows you listen to watch matter. It's like, are those helping me be more grateful or what? Like when Sean had a baby, I was super concerned about postpartum depression. So I was like, we're just going to listen or and watch like comedies. And then that actually sparked this whole thing of, oh, well, what? I've never actually been intentional with like what we watch.

Yeah. I just would always do like the number one trending on Netflix. or whatever but this was like okay we should actually this has an effect on us um that's one thing two like there's so many good things happening all around there's so much beauty do you leave room margin space to appreciate that or are you like face down in your phone all the time i think like having some type of routine and ritual goes a long way so we start every day with uh this the day lord has made let's rejoice me glad in it and that's like ritual that we don't always feel that way but it it's like okay it at least kicks us in the

right direction a little bit i think it's also just a a basic principle and choice that you choose every single day and whatever you choose over and over again becomes a habit you either need to wake up or you're either going to wake up and choose to be pessimistic about where you're at in life what's happened to you in life what you don't have what you don't think you're capable of or you wake up and you choose to be pessimistic and say you know what i'm so grateful for where i'm at things could be so much worse and i have the ability to to go change anything that i want and i think if you just actively choose every single day over and over again no matter how hard the day is to be optimistic it ends up becoming one easier and easier and

and too, I think, changing your life. Yeah. I've come up with this analogy that life is like a painting and all these little brushstrokes are choices you make or habits that you build. And so when you zoom out,

not every choice is going to be right and not every habit's going to be good, but like zoom out, are you as a whole, like when you look at the painting of your life, is it what you want it to look like? and if not then like you you can control certain things you know not everything but certain things you can so do that um that's all i got we could there's like 20 more of these if you want our take our hot take on any other topics and let us know in the comments um i like these conversations

not because i like giving advice it's more interesting to hear your perspective Sean and then also think through things whatever like how have we done money and budgeting so thank you for writing them in um we we love this show and we love uh the community that's built around it so thank you that's all we got if you made it this far please subscribe to show give it a rating i'm andrew i'm sean we're the east fan out