Jillian dives into reader questions that explore topics we’ve covered in season 1 of Everyday Courage.
For Season 1, our big overarching idea is really how to craft this best life, this most amazing life, and be really intentional with our New Year’s, and our goal setting, and our habits, and our mindset, and just all the fun things.
Let’s take a closer look at these questions!
Dealing With Cyclical Times Of Life
Rachel wrote in to ask for tips on how to power through cyclical times of life. At some points, her interest and willpower just drop away. She has noticed that everything in her life seems cyclical, even the things that she normally enjoys.
Jillian often deals with cyclical times of life herself. That’s part of the reason that episodes in this season talked about leaning in and allowing yourself to drift when you need to.
I try to keep my baseline success as a human metric very low. So anything above that is flexible and it’s winning.
Whether it’s her workout routine, healthy eating, or relationships, she tries not to overcommit to the maximum. In fact, she tries to commit to the smallest amount of time.
As our financial freedom has grown, I’ve been able to customize this more and more into my professional life as well.
Jillian couldn’t imagine sticking it out at a routine job from 9 to 5 for years. As a seasonal person, she has learned to lean into certain things when necessary and sticking to a low baseline at other seasons of life. Find the baseline and balance that works for you.
Creating Common Goals With Your Partner
Paul asked about how to create goals that both you and your partner can be excited about.
Creating common and compelling goals with your partner can be a challenge. In fact, it can be tricky and discouraging to focus on what you both want to do in a single year. Instead, try to think about what you would like to do as a couple over the next decade. With a clear picture of your long-term joint goals, it can be easier to work together on the smaller pieces of the puzzle.
It’s a great time of year to do it because we’re starting a brand new decade. So if you’re like here’s what we want to happen in the 20’s of our life, as in like the 2020’s, just pick a couple of things. And then you can kind of reverse engineer those few big, exciting, compelling goals.
How Much Structure Do Our Kids Need?
Nicole wrote in to ask for advice about her daughter’s school situation. Currently, her daughter is enrolled in a prestigious but stressful school. Although she has developed a lot of new skills academically, the stress is taking away from her personal goals. Her hobbies include writing fantasy novels and exercising more. Additionally, she feels alienated from other students at the school due to the competitive environment.
Nicole’s daughter has the opportunity to transfer to a less vigorous school where she already has friends and feels like she would fit in better. However, she is worried that transferring school will be like backing away from a challenge. How should Nicole and her daughter determine whether or not to make the switch?
Jillian can emphasize with Nicole about this dilemma. Many parents struggle with the idea of keeping their kids in extremely rigorous environments. The structure can be helpful to push the students to succeed in the short term.
But in the long term, we slowly are transitioning from, you know, high school to college, to where you’re going to have less structure to push you, less structure to make you successful. And as you go into your job, you might have less structure again.
Since real life is less structured, Nicole’s daughter will need to make the transition at some point. It might be a good idea to find a middle ground between no structure and intense structure to help her make the transition more smoothly. Since she seems like she has built the skills she needed to learn in this rigorous environment, then she might be ready to start making the transition to adulthood.
Finding Common Ground
JP asked Jillian about how to set goals with your partner when some of your goals seem like complete opposites.
In most marriages, you will have some similar goals and some opposite goals. That is just how things tend to work. For example, Jillian and her husband are very different people. They do have values and interests that overlap, but most of their interests and hobbies are different. She loves motivational stickers and he loves classic cars.
While it’s important to work on shared goals, it’s also important to acknowledge, you know, we’re different people and we’re going to have some different goals.
When Jillian and her husband did the “Be, Have, Do” Exercise, her husband wanted a classic are to take to car shows. So they worked together to set a budget and he made it happen.
I think its that balance of finding things that we are on the same page about, making sure we make progress for that. But also finding space for us as individuals to really lean into the things that are interesting to us and are passions for us. And little bit of time and energy and money for each of those.
Find Your Courage
If you have been enjoying these episodes and want to dig deeper, then check out our Everyday Courage workbook. The free workbook can help you to take these ideas and turn them into action. Let’s create your best year ever!
Related Episodes:
- How Action Creates Identity with James Clear
- Find Three Compelling Goals for the Decade
- Investing For Beginners: Pick An Account And Go For It With Amanda Holden
In this episode, Jillian recommends Tiller. Tiller puts your financial life on a spreadsheet that automatically updates with your daily spending, transactions, and account balances each day. Try it free for 30 days to see if this is the tool that can really help empower you with your money this year.
