This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 036 / When Your Family Plan Goes Out The Window

Episode Date: November 18, 2020

This year has basically raised it’s middle finger at all of us who are control freaks, planners, recovering perfectionists and doers. If anyone is still on track or sticking exactly to the plan they created for 2020...I would fall off my chair. This episode is about how to flex, pivot and adjust, when your plan goes out the window. I’m going to share what Jay and I have done and are doing, not because I think it’s inspirational, but because it’s REAL. I know this feels like a very difficult time to plan. But like so many things, doing it when it’s difficult is probably more important and impactful than doing it when it’s easy. Sometimes life knocks you off course because there’s an even better plan for you. This is Woman’s Work To hear the original episode on Family Planning Ep 003 click here: https://nicolekalil.com/podcast/003 To learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast, visit us at NicoleKalil.com

This episode of This Is Woman's Work is brought to you by me and the This Is Confidence virtual course. If you want to build, grow, or keep your confidence, this course is for you. It is designed to meet you where you're at and get you where you want to go. With 15 videos by yours truly and a 40 plus page guidebook, I deliver my best coaching so that you can apply this in your life immediately and with lasting results. And when you enroll, you get lifetime access to our online community where you can engage with me and other women committed to being confident in our lives. I'll share tips, ideas, tools, and even failures. You'll get information and insights

I won't share anywhere else. Companies and individuals pay thousands of dollars for one day of this information. And I'm offering it to you for a lifetime for $497. To register, visit NicoleKhalil.com and click on the online courses section or text confidence to 55444 and invite your friends.

I'll be waiting to greet you in our online community. Thank you for listening to today's episode of This Is Woman's Work. I'm Nicole Kalil, your host, and I am tickled that you're here. And let's be clear, I do not use the word tickled very frequently, but that totally represents how I feel that you've taken the time out of your very busy life to listen to something that I have to say. It's mid-November, which means the holidays are coming. And we're starting to think about things like gifts and holiday cards and holiday meals and spending time with our family and how we're going to holiday meals and spending time with our family and how we're going to make it through said time with our families without having them turn us into lunatics and end of year goals and results, possibly even New Year's resolutions. And if

you've been listening to our show, you know, it's also about the time of year where Jay and I set aside a day or two to do our annual family planning. We typically go on a retreat. We make it super special. And this is where we take all of the great concepts we've learned from doing so many business plans year over year, and we apply those concepts to our relationship, our personal finances, our parenting and family goals so that we go into each year feeling aligned. We make decisions in advance so we're clear on our choices and what matters and what's important before emotions, reactions, or fear gets involved. And ultimately what we're doing is we're creating a life by design, not by default. We've done this for many years now, and it's truly one of my favorite events. It's one of the most favorite things that we do in our relationship. I look

forward to it. And every time we do it, we strengthen our relationship. We feel more connected. And I walk into each year more confident both in myself and in us. If you want to learn more about this family planning or personal planning process and what it looks like, you can go back and listen to episode three titled Family Planning. And you can also download our agenda, the one that Jay and I use, for free from my website. Just visit nicolekalil.com forward slash resources and click on the Family Planning Guide. I also want to point out if you're listening and you're single or you're a single parent,

I'd still recommend doing this process. Just throw out the parts that don't apply to you or make some tweaks in the agenda and the language, or even consider doing it with a friend or a close colleague or another family member. You do not need to be married to have a plan. And frankly, I wish I would have done this sooner, both on my own and with Jay once we got serious in our relationship. So there's great stuff in episode three and on the agenda, but this episode is not about repeating what I've already shared. This episode is about how to flex, pivot, and adjust

when the plan, frankly, just goes out the window. Because let's be honest, 2020 gets the gold medal for plan disruption. This year, it feels like has basically raised its middle finger at all of us who are control freaks, planners, recovering perfectionists, and doers. Frankly, if anyone is still on track or sticking exactly to the plan they created for 2020, I would fall off my chair. So I'm going to share what Jay and I have done and are doing, not because I think it'll be inspirational, but because it'll be real.

Here's the good, bad, and the ugly about personal planning when you need to scrap the plan, deal with ongoing uncertainty, and you feel like you're in a never-ending game of, I don't know, hot potato or taboo, and you've reached the point where you just literally want to beat the person who's holding the buzzer. So from that place, let me share a few things in full disclosure. First, we let uncertainty make us think that we couldn't or shouldn't plan. Like, it all seemed a little pointless with so many things unknown. Sitting down and talking about what we wanted for the year or the quarter or the future, it seemed so big when we were trying to figure out how to make it through the hour or the day,

especially at the beginning of the pandemic. Also, we let ourselves believe that we didn't have the time and maybe more so the energy, or it wasn't as important as all the other day-to-day decisions and distractions and things that we had to deal with. And so we put our planning process to the side. We didn't do it in June, our mid-year plan, the way we normally would. We didn't do our quarterly update. From March to July, we simply didn't do it. We became reactive versus proactive. We are focused on our daily logistics and just trying to make it through without hitting a wall. And I'll be honest, I think circumstances for sure, not just this,

but not doing this, I think also created some distance between Jay and I. And it had us both feeling like we were sort of going through the motions. Now, I believe our saving grace during all of this was that we did have our plan to fall back on and the shared values and agreements we've made in the past about things like money and finances and our parenting priorities. Because we had done this for so many years, it became ingrained. It became a little like second nature. And without having to have a conversation, we were able to fall back and trust some of those agreements. So some examples there, I handle our day-to-day finances. And because of the conversations we've had in the past, I was able to adjust and redirect and purposely save some money, even though we didn't do our

plan. So for example, not eating out, not traveling, not spending so much money on entertainment, we were actually able to save some money based on that. We also, without discussing it, stuck to our spending boundaries. We only spent from our spending accounts. We tried to make sure on Fridays to review our Amazon cart and not go crazy. We created schedules that valued both of our businesses because we've had so many conversation

out about our goals and our dreams and what we're trying to accomplish and the risks that we want to take and the things that we want to accomplish year over year. We both value each other's businesses. And so as the pandemic hit and JJ was home from school and it wasn't perfect, but we were able to create schedules where Jay sacrificed some time. I sacrificed some time. We, we, you know, worked it out. So one of us was kind of paying attention to JJ while the other person had the freedom to work.

And we did that with a measure of equality because we both value each other's businesses. We didn't have to have a great big discussion around it. We also focused on taking care of each other and what was best for JJ, going back to the values that we've talked about with each other so many times. Again, please don't think that this was easy or that we didn't have our moments or get in some fights or have those times where we hit a wall. The truth is that not prioritizing and sticking to our personal planning, it did create some distance. It had consequences. It had us both having times where we felt like we were

going through the motions. And it had me fall back on an old pattern of self-sacrificing and then getting mad at people for the sacrifices I chose to make. Over the summer, this played out. I made the decision to scale back with work and to really be engaged with JJ. And I am not saying that I regret that decision or that was the wrong decision. What I'm saying is I made it in a silo. I decided that it was the right thing to do without having a conversation with Jay about what was important, without doing our family planning process. And then about midway through, I started to feel a little resentful. I started to feel frustrated that I didn't have time to invest in my business. I started feeling like

I was trying to get a ton done in a really short period of time. And I started taking that out on Jay because it looked like from where I was standing, he had all this extra or more time than I did to work. And again, this is an old pattern of mine that I went into without any conversation or agreement from Jay. And so that's an example of the downside of us not having our conversation and our planning retreats. But what I will tell you is the fact that we have done this before, that we had done it in the past, it helped. It mattered. None of the tactics, details, or assumptions of our plan at the end of last year really applied to this year, but the conversations, agreements, shared goals and values, and knowing what really matters became like a lighthouse.

It's something to guide us when things were dark and stormy in life and ultimately prevented us from crashing into the rocks or getting shipwrecked or whatever. And if I'm going down the ship lighthouse analogy, there was plenty of swearing and drinking on my little pirate ship. But the work that we'd done, the planning that we'd done very much was a lighthouse for us. And it operated as that without us putting much effort in for several months. In August, though, we regrouped and prioritized. It kind of, like I said, midsummer, I started losing it a little bit and we hadn't had these conversations. And so we asked for help. My sister and brother-in-law, who are the most amazing people, agreed to take JJ for the weekend. And we went for two nights. It was our anniversary. So we combined our anniversary

with our family planning. That's how much we love doing it. And we sat down and we regrouped. And here are the, some of the things that we're doing now, some things that are helping us to adjust, pivot and regroup when faced with things we can't control like pandemics, elections, school, where to live. Oh my gosh, did I tell you that we sold our house during all of this? Either amazingly smart decision or we're complete morons. It is yet to be determined. But we're also thinking about things like where we'll spend the holidays and what work will look like in 2021 and if we can even travel. So with all of those unknowns, here are some things that we're doing that is working for us. First, we are focusing our planning on shorter, more frequent timeframes. So rather than planning for a year and having

quarterly checkpoints, we're planning for a quarter and having monthly checkpoints. We are also making our planning meetings shorter and more frequent. They're still planned, like we still have time carved out, but we're trying to do two, three hours instead of half days and two day meetings. And we still try to make it special, like order in a special meal or have a glass of wine or a bottle of wine or whatever the case may be. But we can't make it the event that we used to. So shorter and more frequent meetings. Our agenda still works, but we're not going through the whole agenda every time we meet. We're just honing in and zeroing in on what's important for right now. We've had to come up with new rewards, mostly not travel related. Most of our rewards in the past are designed around a trip or a getaway. And so how do we

still create experiences? How do we still reward ourselves? That was a new topic of conversation. We had to come to some agreements on that. Another thing is saving has become an even bigger priority. So we had communication around that. And we even set up a little bit of a reward on saving. So example, we have our monthly budget to pay our bills and utilities and all the stuff, right? And then we have a certain amount of money we save every month. We increased that a little bit. And then at the end of every month, if we've paid all the bills, saved what we should, and there's any left over, we get to divvy that extra amount. And we decided to do it in three funds. So Jay's spending account, my spending account, and our travel

account for the future. And so it's incentivized us to not go crazy spending or online shopping or buying things we don't need just for the sake of it. And it's given us a little bit of a reward or mechanism to make sure we're doing that in the right way. It's changed how we give each other what we need. For me, it's become even more important that I have some alone time or some space. I'm an introvert and being at home with everybody around all the time has made it more obvious and more apparent to me that I need that. Jay needs more time where he can be with people or do evening work or work out because he's one of the most disciplined people I know. And he's even needed more time to travel

home. We're actually living in a different state right now. So Jay is flying back once a week, every month to be at work and be with his people. And we had to come to some agreements about how that was going to look. And ultimately, what is really making the biggest difference is focusing both of us individually and together on practicing gratitude, giving grace, getting creative, and asking for what we need. We had the conversation and have given each other permission to ask for what we need. That doesn't mean you'll always get what you need, or the answer is yes. But the conversation, the asking, the coming and meeting in the middle, that has been so, so important to us during this time. I've shared some examples from Jay and I, because that's what's true for me. But as always, take what resonates with you and throw out the rest. Grab a friend, a close colleague, another

single parent, if you'd like to do this with somebody but you're not in a committed relationship. Or do it by yourself, for yourself. I know this feels like a very difficult time to plan, but like so many things, doing it when it's difficult is probably more important and impactful than doing it when it's easy. And you, being imperfect but whole, valuable and worthy, and your life, no matter how messy, uncertain, or challenging it may be right now, you and your life get to have a plan. You still have the opportunity to dream, to hope, to believe. You still get to have a lighthouse. Have your plan be your lighthouse. But know there's still an ocean of opportunities and choices out there. And sometimes the universe knocks you off course

of your plan because there's a better plan and an even brighter lighthouse out there for you. I'd ask you to reconnect to what's important to you, to your family, to your relationships. And even though it may be hard, start developing a plan because this is woman's work.