The Lazy Genius Podcast - #383 - What’s Saving My Life Hall of Fame

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

We do What’s Saving My Life episodes regularly, just about every quarter, and I find the practice helpful, light, enjoyable, and necessary to keep me rooted in my season. But today is a little different because it is a Hall of Fame episode. Remember, this is my personal list. This is not supposed to be replicated. Hear why these things are on my list to help you make yours, but by no means should our lists be the same. Helpful Companion Links Pre-order my new book The PLAN or ask your library to consider carrying a copy once it releases in October. Episode #145: How to Hire a Housecleaner Merlin Bird ID app Sign up for the Latest Lazy Listens email. Grab a copy of my book The Lazy Genius Kitchen or The Lazy Genius Way! (Affiliate links) Download a transcript of this episode. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Today is episode 383, the What's Saving My Life? Hall of Fame episode. Holy moly, I am so excited about this. So we do a What's Saving My Life episode on a regular basis, just about every quarter. And I find that practice to be so helpful and light and enjoyable and necessary to keep me rooted in my season. And y'all enjoy it too because the What's Saving My Life episodes get super high downloads. But today is a little different in that it is a Hall of Fame episode. There are 10 things that are Hall of Fame status as they regularly save my life. And I love that I did not have to force 10 because, you know, like 10 is a fun round number. No, there are 10, like a clean 10. And I love them. Now, are there other things that save my life?

Of course. But without these 10, I'm basically a shell of a human. And we're actively trying to avoid a shell existence, right? Now, remember, this is my problem. personal list. This is not supposed to be replicated. I'm not saying that everyone else should have these 10 things. I mean, a couple of them, maybe. But this is my list. So hear why those things are on my list to help you make yours, but by no means should I always be the same. This is not a pressure-filled list. This is a, I don't know, inspirational, illuminating, just something to listen to while you're folding laundry. Let's jump in. First Hall of Fame item that saves my last. paying for house cleaners. I have done an entire episode on this topic. So if you're interested in

kind of how it works and the breakdown and things to think about, have a listen to episode 145. I realize that this is not something available to everyone, nor is it prioritized by everyone. And that's okay. Depending on your home, the number of people in it. If you have pets, the amount of time available to you, all kinds of things, hiring someone to regularly clean your house might not be in the budget or of interest at all. I do not want anyone thinking that this choice is a better than situation. Okay. For me, hiring someone to clean my house every other week saves my life. I hate cleaning. I mean, most people do, I suppose. But I do not get the satisfaction so many seem to from like a job well done. I really don't. I like the feeling

when I'm done and I can be disciplined and do it. But I do not get like a cleaner's high, just like I don't get a runner's high. I'm not saying those highs are made up, but they do not happen in me, knowing that every two weeks, the floors will be mopped, the bathrooms will be cleaned, and shelves will be dusted. It takes such a load off. And one of the benefits I enjoy outside of just, you know, having a clean house is that it helps us as a family focus on like, regular maintenance cleaning, which feels smaller and doable than big cleaning. We also have a built in time to regularly tidy those places where stuff builds up since everything has to be kind of baseline tidy in order for the cleaning itself to happen well. And we do that every two weeks.

I would give up a lot of things before I gave up hiring a house cleaner. It is a massive contributor to Kendra being a full person. All right. the second Hall of Fame thing that regularly saves my life is my day off. No matter your faith background or practiced religion, I think we can all agree that the God of the Bible was onto something with this whole like, remember the Sabbath thing. Taking a full day to rest is so good for us. And it's definitely not something that is upheld in our hustle culture.

And since most people work and then have to clean the house, and be a grown-up, and do grown-up things on the weekends. Or if you have kids, you're taking them to their things on the weekends, which is not restful. Or if you're home with kids, the weekend is just more the same. It is genuinely hard to find a couple of hours, let alone an entire day to truly take off. Okay? So I recognize with my whole heart the gift I have and being able to do this as my own boss, for one. but I take Fridays off of work and I cannot imagine it any other way.

Now, I'm back in mom mode once the kids get off of school, but we also try to do takeout on Fridays so I don't have to cook or if it's cooking, it's something really fun like homemade pizza. Even still, Fridays are sacred to me. Because of this book launch season that I'm in last week, I had to record an interview on a Friday because there was just no other time to do it and it threw off my whole day. Now that's okay. I'm not going to die. But I saw in real time the value of preserving that day off.

I don't make a point. I don't do anything. I don't do anything on that day. Like it is so important because y'all at my core, I'm like, I'm not a very nice person. I get so cranky and snappy when I'm not taking care of myself and tapping into things that are bigger than I am and taking a day to just sit and read and walk and do whatever I need to do. to get back to feeling all the way like myself is essential for Kendra to be like a kind present person. It's also fun and like a nice thing to have available to me in this season of life I'm in. So I will take it.

Okay. The third Hall of Fame thing that saves my life is music. I mean, I have a tattoo on my arm that says the line from the sound of music and I will sing, not I will. and I'll sing once more. Singing, playing music, listening to music, even writing music. All of it is so critical to who I am as a person. If I had, okay, if I had to look at music, movies, TV, art, like making art, and even books, and had to choose only one to the exclusion of all the others, I would choose music for real.

that is how critical it is to me. I would give up books for music and y'all know how much I have books. Music can change my mood on a dime. It's how I process feelings. It makes me feel good. It's a way for me to express creativity. It's a way to connect with people by either like sharing music with them or making music with them. It is genuinely my favorite thing and I would be devastated without it. Do my really intense playlist make more sense now? I hope so. All right. The fourth Hall of Fame thing that regularly saves my life is taking a lunch break. I've talked about this so many times. But a few years ago, my therapist was like, girl, you need to take a lunch break. I was working through lunch. I was eating fast, eating scraps. There was just

nothing pleasant or fulfilling about my regular lunchtime. Now it is protected at all costs. In fact, I keep making my lunch break longer and longer on days that I can. Like, I love my lunch. I stop. I listen to music or a book while I'm like making food. I eat food that I love. I read or watch a show while I eat. I take a nap after. I don't think about work at all. It is critical. And one of my least favorite parts of the summer, honestly, because I don't get a solo lunch break where I'm not having to think about like other people and other things. So lunch break, love my lunch break. The fifth holiday. fame thing that regularly saves my life. Actually, before we do that, before we do that, I want to make this quick point here. So I know some of you don't get a lunch break, right? If you're home with kids,

you don't get a lunch break. If you're a teacher, your lunch break is like not, there aren't solo lunch breaks available to all people. The reason that this is important for me is because it is something every day where I have like a little stretch of time to just do what I need. And that can happen other times of the day. So if you're like, man, I don't have a lunch break. that's a bummer and I wish you did and also is there another place during the day where you can take a few minutes where it's just for you. That's sort of the broader purpose of that lunch break. So if you don't have access to one, that's my encouragement. Okay. The fifth Hall of Fame thing that regularly saves my life. Is anything having to do with birds? Anything having to do with birds? My Merlin app,

which so many of you love now too. Merlin, like the wizard, you play it like you press a button, and it listens to the bird song and tells you what the birds are. It's so amazing. My Merlin app, my bird feeders, watching all my birds every day. Our freight yard has become like a bit of a hot spot, a bird hotspot, and I cannot deal with how much fun it is. We have cardinals who are super mean.

We have bluebirds who are also mean, but I feel like are fighting for deeper reasons than the male cardinals are, so I root for them more. We have tufted tipmouses and Carolina Rends and song spares and chickadees, which are my favorite, and a ton of house finches who visit the feeder as a family, like it's a holiday table. We have junkos and warblers and the occasional goldfinch, which is also very exciting. My favorite thing is to sit on the porch, which I get to do now because it's not so aggressively hot. And if I sit there long enough, like reading or just being quiet, the birds will come to the feeder right next to me.

They'll fly right past my head. It's a bit terrifying, but like mostly in an exhilarating way. I have definitely become a stereotype, but I love my birds. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon.

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regularly saves my life, which is the newest member of the family, is drawing and painting faces. This is maybe the most centering thing I can do in the quickest amount of time. I get out my sketchbook. I do a quick contour drawing where I don't lift the Sharpie because I love the strong lines of a Sharpie. And I do a whole face in one line. And then I do like a quick two or three color watercolor painting. If I'm feeling super off-killed, and I need to reset my whole self quickly. I paint a face, which turns into painting four or five usually. It goes so quickly, but in such a freeing way.

And now I have filled like five or six sketchbooks with faces over the last four or five months. There's nothing like it for me. I will definitely take my brushes with me when I go on book tour. I might not have much time to do anything, but in those moments in the airport or the hotel room, when I need a quick like wind down, painting a face is going to be. to be the best idea. Best bang for my buck. The seventh hall of fame thing that regularly saves my life is repeat meals and grocery rhythms. Sometimes this feels like a rut, to be honest, but in general, the predictability of our dinner situation is a huge lifesaver for me. We have the same

list of about 25 to 30 meals that we just eat on a regular basis with the occasional new one thrown in, and I just keep making them. I buy the same groceries. I prep the same foods. I plan the same dinners in similar order to deal with like produce not going bad. And my kids still tend to have the same reactions to those meals. Ben hates spaghetti while Annie and Sam love it. Ben loves pork and mushroom rice bowls while Sam tolerates it and Annie thinks it's from the depths of hell. We have five people in my house and my goal with any dinner is three out of five. Three out of five people like it. I feel like that's winning. But the biggest win is that in this busy season of parenting and two working parents and three kids spread out in age and personality and need

automating dinner this way while boring is so helpful all right the eighth hall of fame thing that regularly saves my life i can't believe i have not tripped over regularly yet is the the least surprising item if you have been here a while and that is reading reading of books i love to read holy molly Every part of the reading life makes me happy. I love, you know, reading, like actually reading in any way I'm made available to me. Although right now I am showing a strong preference to physical books. I love organizing books, choosing books from my shelf, choosing books from like Book of the Month or ArtVark, shopping at used book sales, talking about books with other people, listening to reading podcasts. I am just, I'm all in. I'm all in. Now sure, I have seasons where

reading falters a little, where I hit a rut, where I cannot seem to match my mood with a book I choose. But to me, reading is like pizza. Like even when it's bad, it's still pretty good. Okay, the ninth Hall of Fame thing that regularly saves my life is my friends. And no, my family is not the 10th thing. I love my family, more than anything. This is not a list of the things that I love the most. It's the list of things that regularly save my life. And in the season of parenting, my family, my children in particular, they drain my energy more than they fill it.

And that's okay. It's also okay for our experiences to be different because they will be. But I'm just saying for the record that family, no matter what it looks like, can matter more than anything while not being high on the list of things that make you feel like yourself. I'm just normalizing that for us. Just normalizing that. Okay, back to my friends. And cause counts as a friend, by the way.

So my friends are the place where I could be like the cleanest version of myself. I don't mean clean like appropriate. I mean they don't see me as multiple things or multiple roles. I'm just Kendra. And maybe I'm overcomplicating it a little in my own head, which I tend to do with most things. But the simplicity of friendship matters a lot to me. and is incredibly life-giving. My friends are exactly what we want friends to be with you, for you, ready to help, ready to celebrate, ready to do nothing. I put this in the acknowledgments of the plan,

but I honestly feel like the embarrassment of riches in my bones at the friendships I have. And I think that Largeretermain helped me name that even more in her book, The Life Council that came out a couple years ago, when I started to realize that not all friends had to look the same, that not all friendships had to lead to the same place. It really freaked me up to see my friendships for what they are and appreciate them even more in that place. I just feel really lucky, like genuinely lucky to be loved and cared for and cheered on by the people in my life. And because I'm such a relational person, their presence is essential. And I know that people, like, in fact, I'm married to one of these people, I know that there people who would be fine without friendship being a critical element to life. I am not that person.

And I just feel super lucky to have what I need in that area. And it saves my life on a very regular daily basis. And then the 10th Hall of Fame thing that regularly saves my life is my faith. Now, I don't talk about that much here, but it really feels disingenuous to talk about what saves my life without mentioning the thing that to me literally does every day. I'm a Christian, which is a vibe right now. Let's be honest, we need better PR. But I know that without my faith and the purpose and the love that it brings, I would not be the person that I am. I often get asked how to move from being like super uptight and controlling, which I used to be, it still can be sometimes, to releasing, like, some of your power, being more balanced, being more lazy genius, right?

And I think that there are multiple ways a person can experience that shift and they all take time. Therapy is a big one. But for the day-to-day moment-by-moment times where I personally want to access softness and be kind of myself and others, where I learn to let go on my plans and I pivot around things instead, all of those movements for me are dependent upon my faith and my belief in the presence of the Holy Spirit inside me. Now, will I tell you that you need the same in order to like figure out a good meal plan or an afternoon routine? No, ma'am, that's dumb. But in the spirit of naming what really does save my life and being honest about that with all of you, knowing that this is a beautiful safe space that we've created where all kinds of people can

gather and believe in the same core principles of kindness, contentment, and starting small, no matter your worldview, I feel like it's right to just share that with you today. Like, Jesus saves my life. And there you have it. And those are the 10 Hall of Fame things that regularly save my life. All right, before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week, it's Jennifer Kelly. Jennifer writes, my husband and I share a walk-in closet with more than one rack. That means anytime we wear something, we have to take it off a hanger. I got tired of going through each rack to find empty hangers while doing laundry. So I designated a rack that had space and started putting all the empty hangers there. So they were in one place.

It saves me time hunting for hangers while putting away our laundry. And it made it so easy to just reach into the closet for a hanger whenever I need one. Y'all, this is another super simple idea that for the person using it makes all the difference. This might not see. like a huge deal in your own life, you just get a hanger. But when you are living with something day in and day out, and it's just like the tiny as bit annoying trying to find a hanger, like finding a tiny solution to make it less so, I'm telling you, it impacts your entire day. And the more you pay attention to those tiny annoyances and solve them with smallness and kindness, the more life will start to feel less chaotic. One small step, baby. So thank you for sharing this idea with us, Jennifer,

and congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. If you would like to be considered for the lazy genius of the week, email us your idea at hello at the lazy genius collective.com. This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi, an executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fisher, and Angela Kinsey. The Lazy Genius podcast is enthusiastically part of the Office Ladies Network. Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production.

Thanks y'all for listening. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter. and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra. The plan comes out in three weeks, and I'll see you next week. You ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that.

More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life, because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me,

but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.