20: Are You Empty Calendar Rich?

Broke is Boring

 Welcome back to Broke is Boring. And today we're gonna talk about being empty calendar, rich. So I'm at your house. I wake up early earlier than everyone, and checking out your calendar the other day on your refrigerator, and guess what? Next week is completely empty. I know, because I actually don't have anything going on.

So I take this video and I say, do you want to know what true wealth looks like? And then I show your empty calendar and I say, this is true freedom. This is true wealth. There's nothing on my friend's calendar next week to which your response was, okay.

So what are we doing next week? But I loved seeing this on your calendar. You could be busy and you're just not. You know what, the things that are on my calendar, they're all trips. Like the week, this week it says Bakers are here. That's what's on the calendar.

No, and and you have some haters on social media saying IU Well, she uses a digital calendar. Actually, no, I don't. I actually don't. I first, I don't like the digital ones because they stress me out and I don't want all the notifications of all these things I have to do. I feel like. A digital calendar controls me and I feel like I control a paper.

One. When I, when I had my office you know, I ran four teams whenever I was in Denver and I was so intentional with my calendar because if I was in my office, I was going to get drive by conversations and questions all day long. So what I did was I blocked time in my calendar hour meetings throughout the day

to get my own work done. And so you, if you're looking at my calendar to schedule something, a secretary or whatever, it just looked like it. I was just so busy. Oh, dude, I was listening to oldies in my, in my office, actually being productive instead of talking to humans.

I mean, I think that time is the ultimate freedom out there and finding a way to hack the system where you can live the life that you wanna live. Like it's a nice sunny day, let's go to the beach. Hey, it's gonna rain. Let's go to a movie, or let's make forts at home with our five-year-old. Like when, when you're in control of your day and your life, like there's just so much inner peace in that.

Our society really does over schedule us reward that overscheduled life. You know, when you, you meet someone and you say like, oh my gosh, hey, how are you? What do they say? Oh my gosh, I'm so busy. I'm so busy. Like it's a badge of honor. Ew. The cool part about this phase of life is that emptiness in the calendar.

That openness to being able to say yes when something cool comes up. So life doesn't have to be scheduled. The beautiful parts are actually usually not. And I have a, I have a a thing to tell you parents who over schedule your kids. Stop it. Stop it. Stop. Please. You are only running yourself out. I have so many friends who say, oh, we have soccer tournaments on Saturday, and each kid has is on their own league.

So the parents are splitting up whose goes where, and we have dance Monday, Wednesday, and violin on Tuesday and all these ridiculous things. It's like. You are running your kids ragged and you're run, you're burning yourself out. And of course like have 'em do something fun, but don't do it just to fill your calendar.

Do it because they really wanna be there and you really love watching them light up doing something that they love. There's something that the Europeans have figured out that I think the Americans haven't, and that's they just want their kids to be kids. And Americans like clinging on to, oh my God, my kid's really good at dance.

I have to go put them now in every dance thing and every dance competition team and all these things to, to have my kid have that one thing that they're perfect at and like, just let them be eight. Like, just let them be five. Right? Like, our son right now is super into. Karate, like he's very into ninjas and all of those things.

And so I thought karate would be an awesome choice for him to kind of channel some of that. And he is thriving and loving it, and we're allowed to sit in the back. So I always, it's like my favorite hour of the week. Well, and he'll, you know, do his jab cross and look at me and smile to make sure I watched it.

You know, I will go to the ends of the earth to get him in for right. But that's because we want to, not because we feel obligated to have our kids be busy too. I hope I didn't hurt your feelings. It's just my opinion, but just take care of yourself. You are allowed to hurt feelings whenever you say stuff like that because I think sometimes people need to hear something like that, that they're not surrounded by anyone who says it's okay to live differently.

It's okay to have an empty calendar. Perhaps you are allowed to say no to everything in your life. That is not a heck yes. So that's how we live life now. And so we also have a, an empty calendar. I actually looked at my calendar for this week. It says Maine. Main, main, main, main, main on every day. There's nothing else not taking calls.

I'm focused completely on being surrounded by lighthouses and lobster and friends and this morning friends and masks on to wake me up on my birthday. So I am. A huge advocate for finding a way to live life through time, wealth. You don't have to be a millionaire to live this life. That walk we took this morning was freaking free.

I, I'm obsessed with , if it's not a heck yes, don't do it. Mm-hmm. I read that in a book about a year ago and that just stuck with me and it really rewired my brain because, especially as a recovering people pleaser, like I just always wanna do what's better for other people and accommodate my own life and schedule and energy levels.

To make other people happy. And in the last year I have just stopped doing that. And if it's, if it's not personally benefiting me or my family or my energy level, then like I just don't, I don't participate. And it is so freeing. And that means having an empty calendar. Yeah. So I wanna go back to the scheduling your kids, because you know, when you meet people and they say, you say like, Hey, how are you?

They talk about that being busy, but then they also. Go right into complaining about all this crap. They signed their kids and their family up for they have Tuesday dinners from five to 5 22, and that's the time that their family's together. And it's always rushed. No, come on. Life has potential to be so much more beautiful than that.

And busy is a choice. Busy is a choice. I love it. So. If you're coming up with a task for this, whenever I'm have coaching clients and they're saying like, oh my gosh, I'm so busy. I, I don't even know where I'd find time to do that. I say, you always have time for the things you make time for, so go make time.

We all have that same time. It's just who's using it in the, the way that's right for them. So the task is actually to say no to something this week. It's okay. It's okay. You might hurt some feelings, but you have to be true to you and your calendar and protective of your time. We don't know how much is left in that hourglass, right?

So you have to live life on your terms. It is okay if that ruffles some feathers along the way. If. And look at your week ahead and decide if you really, if those things like you really wanna do them, like what of, what things on your upcoming calendar are actually completely unnecessary, and it makes no impact if you're participating in that or not and cut it out and then restructure that time for self care doing something you really enjoy.

Doing something extra special with your kids. There's a quote I love that says, the only people that remember how hard you worked are your kids. It's not your boss. It's not your manager, it's your kids. So remember that as you're making these late night commitments and extra things going on in your career, it's your kids who will remember that you did all that extra work.

Filling your calendar is, is doing nothing for you. I love that we have this flexibility to be able to say. Hey. Oh my gosh, the sun's shining. We should go take a walk right now, and it's a Tuesday at noon. When Mark and I were having our Friday morning dream sessions when we lived in Japan, we would have our coffee dates before work and we would kind of say, okay, like if we had nothing to do today, what would it look like?

Fast forward to five years. What does our life look like if, if we're. Completely ready to just take on the day. And Mark's dream was to be able to mow our grass in his pajamas on a Tuesday. Well, fast forward to today, and you think I'm mowing my grass. You think he's mowing grass? It's because our dreams got bigger.

Our calendar got more empty, our lives got more full. And so that is possible for you. You just have to be conscious of it. You can't have an empty calendar. By running on autopilot, it, it is with intention, especially as Americans. So you know what your tasks are. Go make it happen.

 Thanks for listening to today's episode of Broke is Boring. Make sure to follow the show, leave a review and share it with a friend who is done being broke too. You can find us on Instagram at Broke is boring and we'll catch you in the next episode. Thanks for being here.