Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 216 | this changed our lives (and it could change yours too!)

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

check out our free and downloadable vision casting! https://www.familymade.com/vision-setting Check out Modern Woodmen here! ▶ https://www.modernwoodmen.org/busy-moms?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=shawn%20johnson%20east&utm_term=leah%20white%20interview_video_moms%20-%20national_podcast&utm_content=moms%20-%20national Try AG1 and get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first subscription ▶ https://drinkAG1.com/couplethings. Visit https://BetterHelp.com/eastfam today to get 10% off your first month! Today we’re diving into our East family method for vision casting! Whenever we’ve posted things about our family goal-setting and vision casting sessions Andrew and I do for the year, we get a lot of interest in what we talk about so we’re so excited to share our thoughts with you! We want to encourage you all to set your own family vision and goals because it’s made such a huge impact in our house. To help you get started, Andrew and I created a free downloadable resource that walks you through our vision-casting method in depth! Let us know what your family visions are for 2024, we would love to hear them! Love you guys! Shawn and Andrew Follow the Couple Things Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/couplethingspod/?hl=en Follow My Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnjohnson Shop My LTK Page ▶ https://www.shopltk.com/explore/shawnjohnson Like the Facebook page! ▶ https://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow Andrew’s Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Andrew’s Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewdeast?lang=en Like the Facebook page! ▶ https://www.facebook.com/AndrewDEast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. What's up everybody? Welcome back to couple things with Sean and Andrew a podcast all about couples and the things they go through that's not how we do it no why do we keep doing this why are you why are you looking at the side of my face and on my eye what you're not looking at me in my eyes

I because you have glasses on for those watching on YouTube apologies in advance um you listening can't see this, but my eye is atrocious. We have filmed several YouTube videos with a situation like this, but I get these gnarly styes. This might be the worst one, baby. I agree. So I'm just going to put these on,

and I wore cowboy hat just to, you know, amp up the ridiculousness. But I'm excited for today's episode. Enough about me. Enough about me. You guys have requested this episode for a long time. It's something we've talked about a lot,

which is our vision casting. we talk about once a year we do this big like not a retreat but we take at least one full day to go to a coffee shop or a hotel or whatever to like get away from life and sit down and reflect on every single category of our life kind of like dissect it and make goals and lifestyle changes in writing for how we wish our life looked. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay.

A year from now, this is how we want our life to look. Yes. We've been doing this now for five or six years, and we did an episode on it three years ago, and we got a lot of positive responses. I remember when we went on tour, was that two or three years ago, a lot of people brought our goal-setting episode up

as being impactful. We wanted to revisit it since we've been doing it for a couple more years and I think have tweaked our approach and perspective towards it and more things have been included

in our life and thus our goals have kind of changed so we'll talk about our personal goals as well. Before we dive into all of it make sure you check the notes section

of this episode because we do have a free like downloadable vision setting chart that you can download and it will walk you through everything that we're going to talk about. Yeah.

We're loosely calling this method the East Family Vision Casting. Wow. Did you come up with that? No, I just read that from this. Thank you.

Thank you, Jenny. But we really are, we really are passionate about this. I feel like this was a tangible turning point in our life when we sat down with a couple of our mentors, i.e. Josh Axe. Jeremy Bloom and got insight into how they achieve things or how they've, you know, become the people they are, have built a community. and gotten involved in a meaningful ways in organizations, businesses, built businesses, anyway, how have they done that? And it's intentionally is the answer. So we have, I don't think we're like very intense. A couple of our mentors are super intense and like very

sharp with their focus. Yeah. We're kind of just chill. I think we're more chill. It's like a loose guideline. Yeah, we like to have an endpoint. Yeah. Can I tell me? about the first time we did this? Please. So I will never forget the first time we did this. We were living in Ashburn, Virginia, in Gabby and Dustin Hopkins basement. Andrew had just gotten a call from the Washington football team.

And we had been bouncing around the NFL. I wasn't working at the time. I think I was pregnant? Not yet. That was 2018. December 2018 oh yeah maybe I got pregnant there who knows um too much information not at the coffee shop I'll tell you how much you didn't laugh at that so I had to backtrack um but we were in Ashburn during the new year and I feel like we I think we

got an email from your dad where he had encouraged everyone in the family to do annual goal settings but in a very extensive way that year it was like philanthropy it was fitness goals it was like so many things he's like fill it out his family and send it back um and it kind of sparked this idea of uh of hours i think i don't want to speak for your both of us just for myself but i think we were kind of in a phase of life where we felt like we needed some change we felt like we weren't sure about the NFL we weren't sure about um i was talking about going back to work and what would that look like we were talking about youtube more seriously we had a lot of different things we still had our house here in nashville but we were bouncing around we didn't know

where to live there were a lot of like unknowns in our life and we didn't feel like anything was concrete or that we were working towards like a singular singular goal um so we said let's do this in a super intense way and write out what we want our life to look like in 10 years yeah there was a lot happening a lot that we wanted to happen including pregnancy new house the NFL dream had just been achieved that's why we were in Virginia and then so it was kind of this what's next type of question and we also had you know we were fortunate to have a couple opportunities that we needed to thoughtfully consider because we could do one or two but we couldn't do all of them so it was really just stepping back and coming up with some operating system

them for making it easier to choose A or B and not, you know, feeling like it was a high friction exercise. So background on this, I actually found an email from myself from 2011, because as you said, my dad was big into goal setting. He'd always, he'd pay us 20 bucks each if we submitted our goals to him. That's awesome. In high school. And we'd have to print out the piece of paper, give him to him.

He loved it. Wait, I actually love that as a parent. Yeah. It's great. I would recommend it. Yeah. So I'm just recalling this live. I actually haven't thought about this.

But he would have the smart goal system. So it was like something that's measurable, achievable. I don't know. What does that stand for? Respectable? No, let's look this up. Smart goals are specific measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. I haven't heard that for a while.

And it was always an overwhelming process for me to try to go through that, like, What categories do I make goals in? How do I know that they're achievable? How do I make them measurable? So this email for myself in 2011, I had started sending smart goal templates out to some of my friends to, like, encourage them. Oh my gosh.

In 2011? Yeah. I haven't thought about this. And then I kind of took like a five-year hiatus from goal setting just because I was stumbling through college. But fast forward to 20, 18, Sean and I have this conversation in the coffee shop. And it began the process of us shaping this system that did make things measurable, that did make things achievable, that did

give it a tangible timeline. Because you think about all those, the SMART, it's like, I don't know what's achievable in the year, right? And so the beauty of this is, and if there's one thing you take away, the more you do this, the more you'll understand how much you can achieve in a year. Yeah. And it's amazing. Yeah. You'll start to see the increments that you make over the course of 12 months, and it's

unbelievable. So start now, recording your goals, and hopefully this episode, take from it what you will. I'm not saying, do this exactly like we do, but we have a template, we have a method, and for us, it has really benefited our life. I will add to, I will never forget when we sat down the. that first time I'm trying to find words so stick with me listeners um when we sat down to do that all I could say is like there is this unsettling feeling between the both of us we both wanted

something out of life but we didn't know how we didn't know what it was and how to write it down and I feel like a lot of times we can so easily just be caught up in the put one one foot forward just keep going you kind of look you know you let time go by and five years go by and you look back and you're like, what happened? Like, why am I living in this house? Why am I still in the city? Why am I still this job? When I'm not happy with it. And it's so easy to kind of get lost in the mundane that you forget you actually have things that you want to do. Yeah. So it's kind of like working on your life instead of working in your life. Tim's new scrambled egg loaded croissant. Or is it

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So when we sat down for the first time, I remember we were there for like six hours, seven hours. we wrote everything down with a pencil on a piece of paper individual pieces of paper and we literally just put it into categories which we'll give you and we said in five years and ten years what do you want this to look like what do you want to still be doing vice versa and i'm going to jump to the end real quick what's been really cool is to look back at the past six years we've been doing this we've fine tuned our tuned our life so much that every year that we do this now,

it's tiny little changes that we want to make instead of like drastic ones. Which is really peace enabling, I feel like. Yes. It's really beautiful to not have this thing that you really want but can't achieve. It's like, no, yeah, we could definitely do this. And I think it's a little bit of being content

in all situations. It's a little bit of knowing what's enough. and it's also just a practice of you know being intentional last thing i'll say about this before we've been talking around how we do this process and my last philosophical add in here is um people talk about freedom all the time and they want financial freedom and they want travel freedom and time freedom and freedom to do what they want but it's kind of paradoxical that The way most people spend their free time, their free time when they have it, is scrolling through Instagram mindlessly or screen time, right?

And a lot of times we don't know what to do with our freedom. So people ask us, do you feel like you're taking the whimsy out of life when you're so rigid and structured with your time? And my answer is I would rather over-index and over-structure on intentionality than hope that whimsy happens, right? When we talk to our musical friends,

Ben Rector, or even John Williams, the composer, he's not our friend, but would like them to be. They talk about how creativity is not some magical thing that happens. You structure it. Ben sits down and practices every day. John Williams writes a piece of music

every single day. And through that practice, practice the beauty of, you know, a mass record hit develops. Am I your, your passion is palpable and I love it. You're getting more intense and I'm like, he's coming out, baby. It's only through the repetitive passion of practice that we're going to get there. I just know, I know that I am the type that so easily. could sit on the couch and do nothing same and then but I also have these ambitions

right yeah so it's like hey let's actually work on being intentional it's important and I talk about the difference between having a date night that's you know dinner and a movie versus Netflix and chilling the difference is the intentionality and it's like going to a movie on date night and putting down on the schedule and buying the tickets ahead of time you have the anticipation you have that is so joyful than than the other Netflix and Chill which is like escapism mindless non-intentional you stumbled into it you don't know you don't know what you're looking forward to or if you'll be able to find it right I think that's an analogy to life I will say I feel like if you are listening to this you're probably getting frustrated with us by now you're

like how you want me to do what but how trust me we're going to get through we're going to get to it and it's going to make sense because even my mind still blown guys when I get to this annual goal setting and I look at where we started we didn't do anything like wild it was tiny little things it's amazing how big of a difference it makes of the course of here okay let's get into it let's get into it okay no don't pull up the first one what no I'm pulling up our goals okay I know that was obnoxious preface to this but it's important so that you understand how we approach this yes and also our personality types it's not Like, we are not type A, uh, you're type of, I'm type A.

I am like, I am, you know, the type that doesn't always show up to things on time. So I think this speaks to a broad audience. Okay. I'll stop. Here are the ABCs. This is how it works. So when do we typically do our vision setting? It does not matter when you do it.

We do it at the beginning of the year. Yes. Probably a week before the year ends or a week after the year end. is our rough window. I also like that period of time for us because within our personalized workspace which is more like the marketing world, usually the marketing world takes some sort of a hiatus,

a dip at the end of December after Christmas through January. So it's a good time for us to kind of like reflect on things. Yeah. But you can do it whenever. We just do it same time every year. We have three kids. So for us, the realistic time that we're able to spend on this is like a working day. So we'll still go out of the house.

I think it's important to choose a different setting that when you're in a coffee shop, you have a different thoughts and kind of a different approach or like levity to you than when you're in the house where you live every day. So choose whether there's a coffee shop, a park, wherever that's not your normal habitat. I think that's important. I know friends that take, I think it's a two or three day vacation to like a Caribbean island and we'll do some iteration of this. We don't do that. That sounds nice.

It's not realistic. But I also, it's not realistic. And also we were on a vacation towards the end of the year one year and we were like, should we do our goals? And to me, it didn't feel like the right time because I was like on a vacation I want to relax and not be like overworking my brain to the point. Yeah. That annoyed me. I'm sorry. It annoyed me too.

Okay. So we're in a different location. Yeah. The other thing we do is we pray together. Sean and I, we pray together, but it's usually like morning and evening prayers. This is whatever, maybe like five minutes that we just sit and hold hands. And it's like, I think that's important to actually bring God into it and have him be a part of these goals. I think that's crucial because.

I don't want to get to the end of my life and say, oh, well, dope, I accomplish all of these things that I now see are meaningless because they weren't part of a bigger plan. Yes. Is it just Andrew and I that are part of it? So these are a lot of questions you guys have submitted to explain how we do this.

That's what we're reading off of. For now, it is just Andrew and I. We do foresee a time when this will graduate. We'll still do our goals, but then we want to be able to do these with our kids, like personally. And I kind of foresee us doing that one-on-one with each kid and then as a family. Yeah, I'm excited about that.

It's a really unique way to get to know somebody else, too, is we really try to just say, hey, run wild with this. If you have an idea that you want to put on this, go for it. Because if Sean has a goal of whatever, traveling the world, I want her to share that, you know? Let's put that on there. And then this one, I love. It says, does one person lead the agenda or do you work through an

open conversation no an open conversation would never work with this because you would go down too many rabbit holes of ideas or like butts i you it just doesn't work you kind of lead it but it's a formula that we've both put together that has to do with timers like we use very specific timers where you can't go over um and just like this step by step process to make sure that we both have room to speak we have a specific set amount of time and we know we're going to get through everything so let's go through those times yeah the uh i'll give you the categories first and then we'll tell you the time blocks that we have so we have how many how many different categories 12 we've also added categories since becoming parents so you can take these away take some away or add other ones

too the other thing is there will be overlap with some of these categories it's fine um The goal with what with the 12 categories I'm about to give you is just to hopefully spark thought of, oh yeah, I never thought about, you know, household things, but now I want to put X, Y, Z on that. So the 12 are family, marriage, finances, travel, friends, health and fitness, philanthropy, home, faith, business, personal kids. Yes. So listening to that, you could probably say that, oh, yeah, business and finances are going to, there's probably going to be some overlap goals. That's totally fine. It actually helps sharpen what each of those are.

So with those 12 categories. So this is, if it's your first time doing this, this is what we do. We pull out a timer on your phone and you set the timer for five minutes. You get your piece of paper ready or your document on your computer and we say, okay. Wait. We skipped a step. the review. No, because if this is their first time,

there is no review. Okay, okay, you're right, you're right, right. So this is your first time. Disregard that, disregard that. Pull out a timer, pull up the very first category, say it's finances. And you start your timer and you say, you have five minutes to write anything

and everything you can possibly think of for what are your goals in finance in the next year. That could be spending, income, anything. What you want to invest? dollar wise or percentage wise what you want to give away do you want a new credit card do you want to pay off a credit card do you want to pay off debt do you want to buy a car do you want to buy a house restructure loans that has to do with finances so you set the five-minute timer you don't have to use the whole five minutes but you just let the five-minute timer run out as soon as it runouts runs out

you're done okay this is really helpful the time block I don't think everyone will like but for us It was crucial for us to have that window. It's almost like you know what you want when you flip a coin and it's in the air. And I feel like when you start letting it seep over the five minutes, you start to get into such nuanced things that they don't really count as like an annual lifestyle change goal. For us also it helps us move the thing along because like there's categories where you're not going to be able to spend the full five minutes dreaming. And there's categories that you need like 20 minutes for, but you don't. don't get that right so like for the for the blocks where you're not excited about it it's a finite into that like keeps the excitement up I think so also I don't know if this goes without saying

you guys are doing this separate so Andrew has his own piece of paper or document I have my own I'm not writing goals like for Andrew I'm writing goals for us for myself anything that I can think of like individually does that make sense which is really fun Because, go ahead. Then you go, once you finish your five minutes, you're like, okay, do you need a breath? Do you need a drink? Do you go to the bathroom?

Whatever. Second topic, travel. Set your five minute timer, go, repeat. Family, go through all 12 categories. So you can see how like the time adds up. Right there, you have over an hour. And it's good to go through all 12 because when you reconvene,

it then allows each person to have dreamed their own dream without it being like if we're on the third category and Sean's already told me well that's not realistic or I'm not on the same page as that then it would tweak everything from there on yes but when you go through each of the 12 categories in those 12 minute blocks individually and then you come together and you go through each of the 12 sections and we have a time block on that uh we usually set like a five minute timer as well just like to keep it moving but you don't have to so after you get through writing everything down and if five minutes is not enough or it's too much you can also change that but five minutes seems to work for us um as soon as we've gotten through the writing of it all we go back

to the top go back to the very first category and i'm like okay we choose who goes first I'm like Andrew or Sean tell me everything you wrote down in the finance department and then I will share and then we'll go back through it together and kind of nuance it so that if we have overlap we know that's like a family goal that we want to write together

and set aside as like an annual goal for both of us and when there's a difference say she wants to invest 20% of our income and I want to invest 10% then we compromise which for us has been really meaningful and this is why the discussion period is less uh it's more loose on the time because there's so many conversations that are sparked a result of this yes where it's like oh you know i didn't know you want to invest 20% of our income tell me about that well my parents did it and it's like oh and then i get to know sean better so it's like a win win win win obviously if you're not married that you know the reconvening and

the compromise isn't as applicable um but it is also really cool when you're reviewing each category whether you set a timer for that or not but you want to like fully flush out his yours and then to like rewriting that together it also tells you what each other's individual goals are so within say the finance department if Andrew wants to I don't know buy five of your friends coffee a month. Health and fitness is easier. There you go. If I want to drop 20 pounds. Yeah. I know as a wife

what I can support him with. Yeah. So if my goal is to go to dairy queen three times a week next month or next year, if that doesn't align for supporting each other, it shows us very easily either what will have arguments over or how our lifestyle is not going to align

to support each other in the best way possible. Yeah. Which is cool. Our biggest arguments come from when there's a drastic difference and understanding of reality or expectations through this process as we've gotten better with this

and again it's taken five years we have gotten so much more in the same page. Yes. and our goals have become so much more aligned. And it's cool to see on year one, this took us, what Sean said, you know, hours. It took us six to eight hours. Because, not to interrupt,

because when we went through the review process, we each had such drastically different visions of what we wanted our life to look like. Things that we had never talked about before, it took so much effort in time in a beautiful way for us to figure out how we were going to merge these lives together so that we both felt supported, happy, fulfilled, everything. Yeah.

And as time has gone on, the difference between her vision and my vision has shrunk. Yeah. Which is, it's so cool. And so now we're able to get through this in a shorter amount of time, though we still take the whole day. Now, if you do feel equipped or you have done something like this before in any type of goals, there's an added step before you think about what you want to, yeah, what you want to accomplish over the next year. And that is reviewing where you're currently at.

Yeah. And so I put together a list of 120 things that we quantify loosely. I'm not every day going through this 120 point list, but it's things like how often did you go to church last year, how many times you go to church? How much money did you give? What percentage of your money is that? How many times a week did you hang out with friends?

How many times, whatever? How many times a week did you work out? What were your major benchmarks? What travel trips do you want to take? Or did you take? How much, let's see. These are all great things to put within your goals too. But within that list, when you're reflecting,

before you write them down, this is not your first time doing it. You would go back through all of your categories and everything you wrote out last year and you would say our goal was to give 20%, we actually only gave 5%. How did you feel about that? Did that feel like a good amount?

Was 20% over indexing? Did 5% feel good or could we do better this year? Yeah. And we kind of write our reflection of all of our goals to see how we did. Oh, we wrote down last year. We wanted to go on one date night. every single week for the entire year how many did we actually get to which we can kind of go back and say we roughly got to 30 weeks instead of 52 did that feel good should we whatever yeah and so when we quantify it just know that it is a ballpark although that ballpark has gotten more and more accurate as we've been more and more intentional because we think about the thing more and more it's like oh hey we said we wanted to go on date night every thursday and so anytime we miss it those are like very memorable right so we can say you know we hit four

40 out of 52 date nights last year. That felt like the right amount. We want to give ourselves some grace when it comes to that, right? But the beauty is, once you've quantified all this, everything from like sleep to days away from home, days away from kids, whatever, we call that the debrief,

Sean just said, reflect, where you mark all of these data points on the sheet. And then like she said, that makes the creating measurable goals step way easier and also it's just founded on something it's founded on your reality um looking back on your year and data points for me is always super helpful because it's like um it just creates tangible benchmark that are top of mind for me now Like, I want to go to church every Sunday because I love going to church, but also I said I wanted to go three times a month at least, right? And then it also allows you to say, just like

Sean was saying, I want to tweak that number up from 48 date nights a year to 52. I actually want to do every single week and not have any that we miss or tweak it slightly down. It's like, was that enough? Did that feel good? Did that feel bad? Do we need more or less of this in our life. Okay, so today's episode is brought to you by Modern Woodman. We wanted to do something a little bit different because there have been so many questions regarding life insurance and we wanted to get the answers you guys have been requesting. So we have brought in Leah White, Director of Enterprise Marketing and Communications at Modern Woodman. She's extremely knowledgeable regarding life insurance and how to break it down so it's not overwhelming for people to understand. On top of that,

It was a really fun combo because she is from Davenport, Iowa. And we got to kind of fan girl over the Iowa Hawkeyes and Caitlin Clark. So without further ado, Leah White. Thank you for joining us. Life insurance is kind of an intimidating thought. Let's start with, can you just tell us what life insurance is? Yes, absolutely. And been there, been in that same position.

And as a mom and someone who owns life insurance and believes in it, I can say that that's a pretty easy question for me to answer because for my husband and I, it was about making sure our kids have a bright future and every opportunity to have the future that we plan for them. So we can't control what tomorrow will bring, but we can make sure that we do some planning and we make sure that they have the funds there available to do the things that we want to do for them regardless of what happens. So it can pay off the mortgage to make sure they can stay in that same house.

It can help make sure they get to go to the same school. We can set aside money to help pay for college to help for their wedding, all those things that as a mom we hope and dream for. So that's what life insurance does at its core. Where do our viewers, just taking it down to like the basics, where do they start looking for information on life insurance? So one thing that I would really encourage you to start with is just think about all those things we pay for each and every month with the paychecks coming. into our house. So for most of us, we have a mortgage or rent. Then you have utilities, child care, groceries, phoned. There's so many expenses. So tally up those expenses that you, for many of us, like it takes quite a bit of that paycheck every single month. And the thought

of having one of them not there, that's what life insurance is about, right? So add up all those things. If you're a budgeter, you should have that list of expenses and start thinking about all those different things that you'd need to pay for regardless of what happens. And so once you have that together, you can use a life insurance calculator. We have one on our website. They're available really commonly. And I would go and use that because you can look at, you know, how long do I want to cover this for? Do you want it for six months?

Three years. Maybe you want to cover that gap until your kids are out of the house. So it's unique to every single person. but use that calculator and talk to a financial representative that's what they're there for they can help talk you through those things and then it does seem like there's always so many different options available um so where do you start and how do you know which option is best for you like what type of insurance should you get no one has ever called into us and said what type of a life insurance did my loved one have okay they just want to know that it's there that it's going to help

their family and and will it be enough so really something is better than nothing. And then you kind of touched on this already, but the budget, how do you know, how does it fit into a budget? I feel like when you talk about life insurance, people think it's really expensive and it can't fit into their budget. Do you have options that kind of can cater to any budgetary plan? That's an awesome question. And in fact, we have a trade association called limra and one of the things that we know is people and especially women overestimate the cost of life insurance by more than three to four times its actual oh my gosh yeah and 54 million women are uninsured or underinsured so that's a heck of a lot of moms out there who have absolutely no

coverage what do we do when do we review it when do we change it when do we update it what are like those stipulations that we should follow so it's really up to you I would suggest at a minimum once a year is a great place to start. It's also really important if you have a major life change. So if you move, if you get a new job, if you have a new baby, I know someone who just did, you should probably reevaluate to make sure that coverage still meets your needs. Did you hear that? We should probably do that.

Okay. So Modern Women is a fraternal organization. What does that mean? No one knows. No. So, Fraternal is just a really quirky word for some really neat stuff. So we don't have stockholders. We exist purely for our members.

So, and then as a member, they have access to not only these solid financial products and advice, but they also have access to educational, social, and volunteer opportunities. So for me, it was really important. I wanted to teach my kids how to give back. So they're involved in local chapters where we go and volunteer. In fact, last year in 2023, modern woodmen members across the country donated one of their most important assets, and that's their time. We logged a quarter million volunteer hours across the nation. That's amazing.

Yes, that's very cool. And, by the way, we've been around since 1883. This is who we've been the whole time. This isn't some scheme. It's not some gimmick. It's just who we are. That's really cool. The last thing is just get started.

Something is better than nothing. life insurance isn't just about paying for funerals. You can do so much for your family. As you see, I'm really passionate about it. But it really gives you peace of mind. And for me, it helps me be the mom I know I'm meant to be, no matter what life throws at us. That's awesome.

Thank you so much, Leah. Thanks for having me. I also, I'm getting super jazzed up about this. I love this so much, you guys, because I'm type A. And I don't really get, I don't see you this excited that much. It's my, like, my favorite thing we do. The other part that is really cool about this, especially if you're, I mean, actually, even if you are single, this is really cool because it gives you a really great way to plan out your entire year. Because in your mind, you could be thinking, I want to go on all these trips this year.

But I also, another goal you might write out, which is what we do, how many times do you want to hang out with friends a week or a month? We write that we want to hang out with at least a friend. group once a week but we also want to go to church every week but we also have a date night that we want to do every single week and we have seven trips that we want to do but there's also seven family reunions trips vacations holidays so if you're following here by the time you get through your entire goal sheet you have all these quantifiable like data points but things that you want to squeeze into your year, it makes it easy for you to organize it and say,

oh, well, the family Fourth of July trip actually conflicts with the Olympics this year. So which one are we going to keep? Right. And it makes it so that when you get to that point in your life, whether it's in July or August or towards the end of the year, and you look back and you say, oh, well, I really wanted to go to Italy this year.

Why didn't we do it? It's like, you know why? Because it confronts. It conflicted with all of your goals. Yeah, you've written it down. It's kind of a contract with yourself and your future self and your spouse in some ways. And it's like an accountability partner. It's also a help.

Sorry, go ahead. You got it. You got it. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Well, some of these, you'll think in terms of the entire year. So like out of 52 weeks, I want to go to church 36 times, right? Or I want to go on date night 48 times. and sometimes it helps to think from like the year's perspective sometimes it helps to think more granularly from the day perspective and think okay well I know that my mornings have been hectic because we just had a newborn and I know that I realistically when I look at my daily schedule I can't work out seven days a week so I think like three days a week is is realistic and then in that case you extrapolate to the larger

year-in perspective. But I think the majority of ours, we think from the big picture year, and then we break that down and we zoom in on that to say, okay, what does that mean? Our monthly cadence will look like and our weekly cadence will look like. And then we slap all those goals. So like every Sunday morning, we know we want to go to church. Every Thursday night, we want to go on date night. And then you're able to kind of plug and play these different goals into your

normal cadence if you don't mind what if we went through every category and gave them ideas of like what we put our goals around they can be vague

yes and this is also in the template but each of the 12 categories has kind of subcategories as well so let's just take finances for example

what is our income going to be right Sean and I own our own business. We have probably a little more flexibility on taking on more or less work. But still, even if you work a corporate job, you could take a side hustle. These are all goals that would be reflected in what do we want our goal income to be? We have goal investments.

So we want to invest X dollar amount or percentage. spending, again, you could see the value in going back and reflecting on your budgets and saying, hey, we spent X amount last year. We spent this much on traveling, this much on groceries, this much on cars and insurance. And, you know, it really kind of builds this fuller picture and also allow, it gives it purpose too when you're like, hey, you know what, we spent more than we wanted to untravel, but it was worth it because we accomplished those travel goals and we sacrificed in these areas to make that happen. So we use different software to help pull his data.

So like for sleep or physical metrics, I'll use aura ring or my Apple Watch numbers for finances. We'll use what used to be meant, but now it's kind of credit karma or monarch. There's a ton of software here for our charitable giving. We could probably talk more about this later, but the donor advise fund. has really organized our giving for us investments we have our dashboard for our brokerage income you have what nothing i it's attractive this is like your lane and it's beautiful i can't believe that i know all this so but we've been doing it for so i know uh for travel we'll go back and look at our i'm gonna keep going i we'll look at we can bounce we can

mounts here. You want the mic. We can bounce. For travel, we each write out trips that we want to go on. So whether it's, and we write out as detailed as

I want to go on two full family trips where it's just all of us. I want to go on a trip where we bring all the extended family. I want to go on a trip with a friend. And, like, just the girls, just the guys who read out that. That's great. And to debrief that or reflect on how we traveled the last year, we use our calendar.

So we'll just kind of pull up our Apple calendar and say, oh, look, yeah, we had that blocked off. A lot of them come to mind quickly. Like, we're going to the Olympics or this week's actually crazy. We got Salt Lake City, New York City, L.A. It'd be crazy. Next, third category, family. So let's see. How many times we're going to go to church together?

How many times are we going to take daddy-daughter dates? How many date nights are we going to take? How many homemade lunches are we going to make? Homemade dinners are we going to make? How many times I'm going to call my mom? How many weekly debriefs are we going to do? Are there any family traditions that we want to implement within the year? Anything that we want to protect or get rid of?

We even write down goals of like how many times do we want to be home putting the kids to bed? So that's always a great goal for us to look at in reflection to how much work we're taking on, how much travel we're taking on, because those can kind of conflict with each other. And for the holiday traditions, we literally wrote out every single holiday. So Valentine's Day, St. Paddy's, Easter, and where or what we want to do on that. we also do friends so how many how many men's group meetings do i want to attend or am i going to attend i signed a contract for that we could talk about that later men's retreats uh how many

friend how many meals with a friend am i going to have how many game nights are we're going to do yep so this is another one where we wrote goals down for how many game nights we also put a dollar amount of like what is our budget for that so that went into the finance department as well for like budgeting and spending game night actually was a fruit of our goals i remember sitting there and you so excitedly saying you want to host big game nights once a year yeah which we've been on like a six or seven month hiatus we had a child darling we got to give ourselves i'm itching to get back next is marriage so for this it's like number of date nights how we want those to look so for this year that we're looking at it was like alternating activity and restaurant we've also put within the

marriage department in previous years like how many times a year do we want to see a counselor how many times a year do we want just a husband and wife get away um how many mornings a week are we going to read devotions yeah um how many bev times are we going to have so sean and i At the end of every night, we'll take five minutes, maybe sometimes as an hour, to debrief what happened in the day. Talk about, this went well with the kids, this didn't look out for this. It hurt my feelings when you did that. We need to take care of this tomorrow. And it's just like reconvening to prevent any buildup of any sort.

Next category, health and fitness. So these are like health and fitness goals. Fitness. What's your goal weight? How many? Wait, how do you say fitness? You're saying it right. You're thinking bittness.

I was like, my brain just completely. I felt that. Things went dim there for a second. It glitched. I glitched. But yeah, any type of health and fitness goals that we have, this is always really cool for and I to see and reflect on for each other because this is how I know as a wife to best support him and vice versa. So for this year, it was I want to do a competition of my mind.

month, whether I was like go-kart, CrossFit, softball, ping-pong, whatever. How many times I want to work out per week? I wrote, I wanted to exercise. One of those workouts per week is with a friend Sean's here was, have a healthy pregnancy. Mine was to get pregnant. My goal this past year was to get pregnant and to go about the entire pregnancy in a healthy way. And that was with an astrict of like making sure I eat healthy iron levels iron levels gestational diabetes you know seventh category is philanthropy so in 2023 one of our goals was to start a foundation we wanted to visit a children's hospital a certain amount of times we wanted to do a family missions trip to Tijuana yeah um the next category for us is home like is there anything we want to do

or change at home as far as you know projects DIY remodels we said finish the curtains we said establish and agree on a clear monthly budget finish the garage gym that was last year's yeah next is faith again so this goes back to there's overlap this goes back to like family but I said I wanted to go to church three times a month. Sean said she wanted to pray before every dinner and then teach Drew the Lord's prayer, mission accomplished. Which she knows. So does Jett.

Yeah, it's pretty fun. Next up is business. So there's a lot of overlap here, but also we do this as a company now, which is pretty cool. So we will do like a full day retreat with our company and do long goals, reflections to make sure we're on the same track. but business year we just put like work retreats that we had goals around we wanted to start a newsletter any like major goals we have within you know the business department yeah and to expand on

that so like we were talking earlier zooming in zooming out or becoming more granular this is the only thing I learned from taking college calculus many times because I failed it but you know when you take the integral of something that means breaking it up into different smaller pieces yep and with all of these it's just kind of bucketing certain parts of your life that you can then break into smaller pieces that then makes it more likely that you'll accomplish it so with business Sean and I will kind of come up with the high level goals and then we'll get the company together and go through those get their perspectives and insight and then it becomes like everyone's on the same page business wise I know not everybody runs their own business but

that's how we do it and it's been fun And then the last two categories are my personal favorites. Okay. Which is personal. And this is always fun. You never know what you're going to hear from the other person on this. And from our history, I feel like this is always like, huh, didn't know that. But this also shows a lot of insight into like how I can be a supportive wife.

Andrew will say things like, I want to read a book a week. So when I see him then that year spending a lot of his free time, reading books. I'm like, oh, this is part of his goal. You know, whatever. I had a goal this past year where I wanted to get two tattoos. And you got four. I think I got more than that. I wanted to do this year, a goal of mine was to do a new vision board. So we can do another episode about that. But we do a big family vision board that overlooks like the next 20 years instead of a more granular annual. And I'll talk about that After we finish this last category of kids And personal and kids Are less quantifiable So one of mine was

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And the best part, we're ready to help you extend your summer. You know the saying the grass is always greener on the other side? Well, this summer, make sure it's your side of the lawn. Head to Rona today for 5.2 kilograms of Scott's Turf Builder Fall Lawn Fertilizer at only 1499. Build it right, build it Rona. Conditions apply, details in store, and more offers at rona.ca. I wanted to focus on transparency and grace with truth with Sean and my close friends. That's not quantifiable. Yeah. But and some of the stuff with the kids, it's less. But still, it's worth writing down because then it helps you think about, you know,

did I get closer to that or no? So with kids, it was like create seasonal traditions for our family that we then do, finish the playroom, daddy-daughter date for Valentine's Day, years worth. Helping Jet learn 100 words, finish potty training, transition drew into a big girl bed. transition jet into a big boy bed, just like little things that very easily could be forgot of. So you can kind of see how we assemble our life as we want it. You probably just got some insight into what Sean and I value

based off what we just said were, again, that's probably 10% of what we wrote down. But you start assembling your life piece by piece, and it's like pretty exciting to then fast forward five years, eight years and say holy smokes we're way closer to that than we want we um on the vision board side of things it is important i think to have like a tangible picture that makes things more clear of what these goals will look like so like you know we wanted to start a foundation what do i have in mind when i think foundation well let me let me look at the timtibo foundation and the

gala that they have yeah i want that right and it's like you start seeing extensions of your dream and so then we take these goals find pictures that represent those goals as we see them and put them on a vision board which i've included in the template um and some are just logos like of our church some are like pictures of properties but it's really i have you know hersha walker who's like this shredded 55 year old and it's like okay well i want to look like that this year but you at least see what I value and I'm aiming towards ultimately. We also will have a annual theme that we place on the year. So we say we want to prioritize our family and making an impact and everything we do.

That was 2023s. You can also, last thing, create a paragraph statement for if I achieve all these goals in my finance bucket this year, this is what my life will look like. And then it's almost like a journal entry from your future self about how things currently look fast forwarded. Was that a lot? That felt like a lot. I think it was a lot. And I really hope it makes sense. I think one of the coolest things, too, that happens when you do this is when you get to the new year or whenever you do these and you reflect on what you've done in a whole year, I feel like a lot of times you can get to the end of a year and think that you didn't do much. You didn't grow.

much. You didn't change much. But to walk through all of those, especially like in the kids department and be like, oh, Jet definitely learned 100 words. We potty trained both kids. They're both in new beds. It's like, it's a great way to look at your life and be like, I'm doing something. Yeah. I have made these, you know, milestone steps or successes. And it's really cool. It makes you feel accomplished. One thing I've learned in my doctor is that there's there is such thing as psychological momentum too and so when you know however incremental that accomplishment was when you look back and say wow we are doing something that then equips you in a meaningful way to do more things and then all of a sudden you're freaking

going for it you are it's really fun um that's always a treat to look back on yeah i'm really hoping that you guys do this because it is really cool it's really fun to dream it's really fun to like truly direct your life in an intentional way towards what you want and it's really cool when you sit down for the first time to either realize

you're living the life that you really want or you have the potential to make changes to get the life that you want. I love how you said that because it's not like there should be nothing sad about this. No. It's more just like staring reality in the face

and then also the excitement of oh wait, I want to make a change. Yeah. And I have the ability to do that. And I honestly believe that. Each of you, each of us, was put here on the earth for a reason, and we have good that we can contribute. I think it's beautiful when you have the confidence to actually go take a step towards that.

Maybe this system helps you do that. Maybe it doesn't. Whatever float your boat, go do it. Go get that confidence because the world needs you. and God put you here for a reason. So I love it. This also serves for us as some type of journal, I feel like. And there's this Japanese concept of the Masogi, the Misogi,

where each year is defined by one massive thing. And I feel like our Misogis are revealed as we do this. And it's like we can look back on 2018 and say that was the year we accomplished the NFL dream. 2019 was the year that we started our family. You know what I'm saying? It's like, it's cool to see the big benchmark thing. that happen year after year after year anyway it is um people are always surprised at how much they can do in a year but they're often overconfident and how much they can do in a day

so it's all about stacking habits incrementally day after day after day and you can achieve wild things that's all i got i don't think i have any more tangents mic drop uh that's how we Yeah. Check out the link. Sorry for my ridiculous outfit. I'll just show you that one more time. No. It just, it makes me say, I want to fix it for you. I want to take a needle to it and I want to drain it.

Don't do that, please. That sounds painful. If you have questions about this, let us know. And let us know if you want to hear our hot takes on anything else. That's all we got. I'm Andrew. I'm Sean. We're the East fam. Out.