00:00:00 Leah Remillét: Hello, balance bestie, it’s Leah Remini. This is the Balancing Busy podcast, and in this episode, I want to connect three things that at first are going to make absolutely no sense together. A Ted talk about creating joy through objects. The latest research on helping our kids embrace and accept responsibility, and a woman dancing in her kitchen on Instagram.

I think when you see how these fit together, it changes how we help our kids embrace responsibility and how we experience adulthood ourselves.

THE TED TALK ON JOY

So to kick this off, we need to go back about a month. When I watched a Ted talk by Ingrid Fatal Lee on Being Joyful. essentially, it’s this idea that joy can be designed through things, which seems sort of different than what we often believe, which is that things don’t make you happy.

It’s something more transcendent, which is true. Clearly there is truth in this, But her argument is that we can curate more joy in our lives, in our experiences through color, movement, playfulness, sensory nostalgia.

And it gets you thinking about how we can often treat joy like a reward after productivity. This is definitely a me problem, I have a tendency to be that personality where fun. reward has to come after the work is done.

I think there are good lessons in that until I take it too far, and I definitely have been known to take it too far. my husband and I couldn’t be more opposite. He is absolutely the attitude of let’s play first and work later, and I’m completely work first, and then we could probably find more things to work on, and it’s gonna feel so good to get so much done.

The truth is, I actually find joy in work. I get true joy and satisfaction out of crossing a bunch of things off. I think it’s fun, but I have to understand that that is not the same thing for my family.

But as I watched this Ted talk, it sparked so many thoughts and ideas in my mind about little things that really do bring me more delight. Maybe that’s the right word.

I love scents like smells, and so I will be a little bit indulgent, and buy dish soaps that smell incredibly good and are really natural Same thing with laundry detergent, lotions or candles.

And when I get that whiff of smelling the delicious dish soap as I’m doing the dishes, it really does bring me delight. So that’s kind of this idea that we can curate more of that around us to infuse more joy into our lives.

As I think past the things that smell delicious. There are so many other items that I have curated that truly bring me delight.

I wear these beautiful little stacking rings that are my daughter’s birthstones, and they represent each of them when they serve their missions. And it’s my little token to remind me to pray for them and just be so proud of them.

And pretty soon my son is going to serve his mission. And I’ll add that third little stacking ring.

These were a gift from a dear friend and they are truly a treasure or my office gadgets. I purposefully buy all the things I can in my chartreuse highlighter yellow.

It can be a little hard to find them, but it’s very exciting when I do. Or brand new. Dishtowels does anybody else feel like that?

I love how happy I am when they’re up on the rack and they’re new and clean and fresh. these seemingly silly little things, When I curate them together, I have to confess, they delight me.

They bring me more joy. I’ve shown you my spice drawer before.

It’s in the twenty one day Balance challenge, and every time I open that drawer, still years later, it brings me so much delight, so much happiness.

So her Ted talk really inspired me to find more ways that I could curate more joy and delight in my life through little special things that just bring me happiness.

And what I love about this is I don’t know what’s going on for you right now. As you listen to this.

I don’t know what kind of season you’re in. but no matter where you’re at, there are things that make you happy and you can surround yourself with those things to give yourself a bolster.

And if you’re doing great, you’re going to feel even better. But if you’re aching right now, it can help you there, too.

EMERGING ADULTS AND RESPONSIBILITY

So that’s the Ted talk. And now I want to bring you about a week back where I listened to three different podcasts because I was specifically looking for one guest.

His name is Doctor Larry Nelson, and he specializes in the concept of emerging adults, which is that age between eighteen and twenty nine and basically helping them thrive.

He’s a BYU professor who I actually learned about through my daughter, because she’s in his classes, and she was telling me all these things. I got excited, I wanted to learn more, and I was like, hmm, maybe he’s been on podcasts.

To my delight, he has.

So I’m going to back up and tell you what an emerging adult this term, what it means. it’s where they’re young adults, but they don’t really feel like an adult yet. It’s this in-between.

And Doctor Nelson talks about how we have much later marriages now. Women on average get married at twenty eight men on average at thirty.

So you have this delayed independence and it’s lasting for about a decade. This is where there’s still a lot of reliance on mom and dad in all forms.

And the research is showing that some reliance having support from family is actually incredibly beneficial. But too much, of course, is not going to be a good thing because they’re not learning their own capabilities, competence and confidence.

What the research is showing is that our kids are leaving the nest, but they’re not necessarily launching because they’re really hesitant.

there are of course a lot of reasons behind this, and this is multifaceted. But one of the reasons that I want to suggest to you is that we have made adulthood look really heavy.

We have not done a good job of making it look like it’s something that you want to graduate to.

And I think about the messaging with motherhood. There are these messages about sacrificing your identity.

Think about when we glorify and talk about incredible mothers. We talk about them sacrificing their wants, their needs. putting themselves last.

And there is truth there. You know it, I know it. We’re moms, okay, we get it.

But that doesn’t have to be the whole picture. And in fact, it shouldn’t be.

and I get it if young women are looking going well, I have my own dreams. I have my own ambitions. But to be a good mom, I have to give everything up.

And obviously, yes, there are sacrifices for motherhood and it’s a beautiful, amazing privilege. But I haven’t given up my identity.

If anything, I have found it in motherhood.

So then you have for the men. There’s this pressure. They need to be the provider.

They need to be able to figure it all out. I mean, a college degree is no guarantee of any kind of income so did we accidentally make adulthood look completely unappealing?

the last thing I want to say about what I was learning from these different podcasts with Doctor Larry Nelson is that true confidence is cultivated and refined in responsibility.

There is a surface confidence, which is where people tell you you’re great and you feel great for a moment, But it has no depth. It’s very shallow.

Real confidence comes from capability. And the only way that you become capable is by being stretched, You have to actually live it.

THE INSTAGRAM MOMENT

So there’s the first two things now to bring you to my third, which was last night, I found myself alone in the house and I decided to do a little scrolling.

But here’s the funny thing I was scrolling one specific person’s Instagram. I came across one reel from her. I went to her account and I just binged.

It’s Lindsay Gerke She is so cute and fun. she just brings joy.

And I was having the best time watching real after reel.

In fact, I bet she woke up the next day and she’s like, what in the world? This Leah Remini liked how many of my posts because I was smiling, laughing, I even cried.

Her content is silly and playful, but also real and honest.

As I was watching Lindsay and her adorable reels, I realized that I was caught up in what she was sharing because somehow adult joy has begun to feel surprising because we rarely see it modeled.

There’s this quote by Marjorie Pay Hinckley that I’ve always loved.

She says the only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache.

And I’ve thought of that so many times because there are moments. You know what I’m talking about.

Where you have a choice. Maybe you’re about to escalate an argument with your spouse, and there’s this moment where it could diffuse.

You could choose to laugh, or you could choose to hold on to the anger, and it’s just going to escalate.

So I want to be clear. I’m not suggesting that we pretend that life is easy. We’re not going to be in denial, But we do have a choice here.

THE PERSPECTIVE SWITCH

last week I shared about the bad day and I highly encourage you.

If you didn’t hear that episode, go back and listen to it because I think it is so helpful not just for you, but in helping to give your kids tools so that they can get out of the spiral faster.

At the end of that episode, I gave you an invitation for seven days to practice my perspective switch to look at the same facts, but give them a completely different story.

But this week, as I think about these three different events and I connect them together, I realize we don’t just need this for bad days.

We might need this for adulthood itself.

the Ted talk reminded me that joy must be intentional and that I can infuse more joy, into the normal, everyday, even mundane.

my podcast quest with Doctor Larry Nelson, got me really thinking about our kids as we’re raising them and sending them off, and that, we might be making adulthood look really unattractive.

And if that’s the case, we need to look at what we’ve been modeling.

And then last night I had fun watching Lindsey and all of her joy and her hardship coexist.

THE INVITATION

And this is my question. Have we as adults started creating a story, a narrative that the general day to day is heavy, it’s hard.

It’s busy, it’s go, go, go and to do lists and what’s for dinner and a whole lot of things that are real.

But with a flip of a switch, we can change that story from something that goes from to full to full filled to being present and fully alive in moments that, even with their simplicity, are worth celebrating because we get to have them.

Do you know how many times kids laugh a day? About three to four hundred times.

And you know how many times adults laugh a day? The average is fifteen times.

And if you’re considered a happy adult, it’s more like forty times a day. That is a twenty x difference.

And we need to work to close that gap.

And the good news is it’s going to be easier than you anticipate, and we can build it in a way that does not add more to your to do list.

Because this is balancing busy. I know you’re busy, so I want to invite you this week to take what we did last week, which was the perspective switch, and I want to elevate it this week with you.

We’re going to start with a good old fashioned brain dump.

Just sit down and either in the notes app in your phone or on a piece of paper. write down every idea that you can come up with that is easy.

We need simplicity here, but also infuses fun.

I’m talking car karaoke on your way to dropping the kids off at school, or dancing while cooking or something that we used to do Saturday mornings when the kids were little, We would start blasting music through the entire house and announce Saturday Dance Party, and everyone would wake up.

We’d have a big dance party, have breakfast, and then do chores, And I’m also talking about things that are just for you.

Maybe a favorite mug that truly brings you joy, or a favorite candle that smells incredible.

What are those things for you?

You’re going to dump them all out.

And I have more ideas to help you.

So another thing that I did when my kids were small, I cannot explain to you how much this helped me be fun, mom, while also being really easy to orchestrate because I didn’t have a lot of time.

So all of those ridiculous fun holidays I would go through.

You just do a Google search and I’ll have a link in the show notes, and I would look up all the silly fun holidays that would be easy to connect for us, and I would put them into my calendar.

So I have the month of March pulled up.

Let me give you a few fun examples.

World Compliment Day maybe you have some sticky notes and you and the kids each write random compliments, and you go stick them on car windows as you’re running into the grocery store.

Now we’ve connected service, kindness, and something fun.

Or I want you to be happy day. Obviously we could do something fun with that.

March fifth happens to be Learn What Your Name Means Day.

That is really easy to sit down and be like. You guys, it’s Learn Your Name day. Let’s find out what each of your name means and you look it up.

March nineteenth is Let’s Laugh day.

So maybe you decide that day you’re going to serve dinner in a really funny way where everyone has to use their hands, but it’s going to be really hard, and you’re going to watch a funny movie, and you’re going to play that game where you stare at each other and you try to make the other one laugh and you see who laughs first.

Just silly, fun things that really don’t take much effort but make a big impact.

Another one that I looked for all the time was food days.

So for example, March twenty fifth is Waffle Day.

Perfect. Guess what we’re going to be having for dinner?

Or March twenty eighth is something on a stick day?

I mean, talk about the easiest dinner ever. You’re welcome. Corn dogs are served.

and the way I would utilize these is I would just go through.

I’d look for all the holidays that I thought could work for me, and I would pop them into my calendar.

Now, I knew I wasn’t going to get to all of them.

but sometimes I’d happen to look and go, oh, this works perfect.

It’s this kind of food day and I can easily make that happen for dinner.

It can also be as simple as just changing things up every once in a while and saying, we’re going to have a picnic dinner on the floor tonight.

It’s fun and it’s silly, but it doesn’t have to take more effort or time for you.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

In the beginning, I think I would have said that joy doesn’t need justification.

But now I’ve realized that joy isn’t just justified, it’s our responsibility to model it.

Ultimately, my hope is that you’re going to take three things from this episode.

Number one is that you deserve joy, and it might be a lot easier to grab than you previously thought.

Number two is that our kids need to see us enjoying life, smiling, laughing, having fun.

They need to see that adulthood is an upgrade. It’s something to embrace and celebrate.

I love being a mom and a wife and having my business and getting to have the opportunities that I do.

And yes, of course they come with responsibilities.

But you know what? I’m proud of those two.

I think adult life can be our best chapter.

So last week, I asked you to flip the perspective switch.

On bad days, you have a bad moment And we talked about how we can shift that story this week.

I think we need to start thinking about flipping the entire switch on adulthood.

Let your kids catch you enjoying your life, let you catch you enjoying your life.

So I hope you will brain dump out an amazing list and that you start doing those things.

Start showing a happier, more enthusiastic, more genuine way of living right away.

Because this just might take us from balancing busy to genuine bliss.

I’m going to have the Ted talk, Lindsay, Instagram, all of the different things in the show notes so that you can go down this rabbit hole with me if you want.

Let’s start unapologetically getting caught enjoying life more.

Hide Transcript