Sep 19, 2018
Hi everyone! This is Connie Sokol, and you're listening to Balance Redefined Radio. I've spent over 20 years teaching people how to redefine what balance really is, meaning a more purposeful and joyful life.
They’ve paid off credit cards, lost weight, organize their homes, and created a meaningful life plan and they've managed their time, changed habits and experience greater success both at work and at home.
So now I decided to take the plunge and help about 100,000 new people who want to redefine balance in their lives. People ask me all the time, “How do I go from an overwhelming and chaotic life to more purpose and organization and joy?”
That's the reason why I'm doing this podcast, to give you trusted answers and create a space where you could find balance. My name is Connie Sokol and welcome to Balance Redefined Radio…
Welcome to Balance Redefined, and I am podcasting right now. If you haven't listened to the other ones, I am podcasting for my friend's basement apartment…
We'd been evacuated for the pole creek fire. We were evacuated on Thursday. It has burned 70,000 acres. It is one of the worst fires, actually the worst fire in Utah history and it is now the number one fire concern in the nation and has been upgraded to federal status and we have all that federal health that's coming in, but it is.
It's threatening homes, has been threatening homes for the last two days and it is. It is out of our hands as to far as far as what actually can be thoroughly done.
All the firefighters are doing all they can. They have been incredible…
Four hundred and 50 firefighters last night at 10,000 are expected today.
They are cutting lines, fuel lines all the way down in certain areas to try to protect the homes. They have been tireless and incredible in what they have done in fighting this fire and the horrible red flag conditions that have been present. High winds, the drought, the underbrush that is just prevalent up in the, in the forest, it's been truly a nightmare, sort of convergence of factors, but they have been incredible and how they move forward.
And I talk in my other podcast, hidden blessings about the organization of things that has been stellar…
That as far as from what I understand, what I have seen and experienced as a person that's been displaced and, and all of those things, it has been so incredible and smooth and clear and understandable and citizens have been patient and kind and helpful. It's been amazing.
So what I want to talk with you about in this particular podcast is lifesaving routines because as I alluded to in my other podcast I talked about in our community and then in my church the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints we have this particular...we have women, you know, an organization within our church that's, there's the men that are watched over and stored and their stewardship over and it's called the elders quorum and some other things there.
And then we have the women. It's Relief Society.
And that's what we call it, just because if I throw out those terms then you'll know what I'm talking about. But with this, the, the women... we had spent the last couple of years, and the person that's over that relief society (president) had been over making sure that we had emergency preparedness and I mean thorough and so helpful.
This is like, her lifeblood is doing this. And we were so prepared that as I mentioned, and I'm not gonna go into detail here, but when we had the call to evacuate, I literally walked in, grabbed my emergency binder by vital documents tub and my scrapbooks and boxes and we were out the door.
I had everything I needed, absolutely needed and was ready to go. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
And I want to talk about that today with those routines, these life saving routines. I want to ask you, and I'm not going to be dramatic about this, I just want to ask you in your soul, if you were told right now, get out. If like I texted my, my leader, “What should I do?” And she said, “Leave. Get out right now.” This is a real deal. What would you do? What would you take?
Who would be the first people you call?
What would be the things that you would need to wear? What would you need to have on hand?
These were things that went through my mind and I remembered this thing that my, this gal that had told me, my Relief Society President, her name's Terry. I remember her saying, “You want to have this prepared because in an emergency your mind is in a fog.”
“...Like it, it does weird things. It sort of shorts out and you'll grab one shoe, but forget the other, like those kinds of things.”
And I thought that's so true. I grabbed my little makeup bag but it didn't have any foundation in it, right? So I mean small, silly thing.
But of course I had an event that night that we had prepared for an interfaith women's event for close to 300 women, and were we going to cancel it?
We were way down south. It didn't affect them. They've made all their sacrifices to be there. Was I going to cancel it? Was I going to cancel my part in?
That was I going to let everybody just dropped that and so all of these things come into play and your mind can't really focus and even though I felt very calm and peaceful and focused, there were things that were dropped that I didn't realize that were dropped because your mind is so focused on survival and making sure that you're surviving.
It's really an incredible experience and that's why I wanted to share this with you in real time because I hope that whatever I share with you today will help you in dealing with whatever crisis you might be dealing with now or especially in the future that you will be prepared because there's that scripture.
“If you are prepared, you shall not fear,” so that you will not fear. I can tell you right now, in three days since Thursday, uh, it's Saturday now, I have not feared. Not once. There had been a few moments of tears where I have thought about the magnitude of what could happen to people in their homes and and things that could occur like this, sorry, but when I don't focus or think about it, so we're moving on.
When I don't think about it, I am good and not once in those feelings it's more of a sadness and a loss, but it is not a fear I have not feared and as a mother, a single mother of children, I have four of them with me. Then I know that that is exactly what they need.
They need a mother who is not afraid and who knows what they're doing...
Now, on the second part, I don't know so much about that, but I need to make sure I show that I know what I'm doing so that they can feel confident, that mom does know and even if not, she's moving forward. That's when you need to give to my children and that's what life saving routines will do for you.
So back to that question, what is it you would take? What is it you would put on and wear and taken that initial moment at that moment, I grabbed a tub, dumped out the laundry and put in clothes for each of us.
Just a quick underwear and shirt, pants, whatever. Dress, and through in wipes, and that little bag of makeup, and the dress that I knew I'd need to wear for that Reboot Event it was called “You got this,” reboot event, and shoes, a curling iron and just things that I knew we'd need for right now because it was just pre-evacuation status.
It was for right now that I knew that we needed. Now I didn't know that we weren't gonna be able to go back. Right. But I knew that we had everything we needed to function for that day and for the next couple of days after I had it in the car and I could get it at the store.
So I encourage you to consider, as I'm talking today, write down some notes of things that you say, “You know what? This is what I think I would need to bring her. I would need to do, or I would need to call or whatever.”
Jot these things down. Don't worry about having it in a beautiful plan where it's all laminated.
Don't worry about that. Just write things down that come to mind and you can go back and organize your thoughts later. The main thing I want to share with you before I share a couple of these thoughts is that it works.
I was given a real view and lens and understanding that this works…
What I teach to women and balance redefined women and men, what I teach to families, what I live, what my community did and my church did for being able to do these emergency preparedness things. They all worked.
Sometimes you're doing this stuff and you're thinking, oh, it's a pain and I'm doing food storage.
Like how exciting is that? Not.
And you're doing carpool. You're doing all these things. You got busy lives, right, and you're thinking, I'll get to that. I'll get to that. It all matters and it all works.
Even if I didn't use my exact emergency tubs that I used for, if we had to evacuate and I needed the meals and I did whatever, I still had those file drawers in my mind and soul and I could retrieve whatever pieces I needed in the moment to do the things that needed to be done with clarity, with joy, with confidence, with energy.
So I want you to know that this works. It cemented for me that what I've been practicing, what I've been teaching and what people have been teaching me worked. So let me share a couple of those things.
The two main categories that I'm doing right now are. The first thing is predictable rituals.
That's what I call them now. When I say rituals, I’m on not talking about some kind of a weird thing that you're doing, you know, on some sacrificial thing. I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about these daily practices that we put into our lives, so maybe I'll call it predictable practices.
That's probably a little bit more across the board feeling and it's not in having this sort of vision in your mind that I don't want, so these predictable practices are those things that your children will be able to take and your, your spouse, your extended family members will be able to take heart in and feel confident in because these are things that you're doing on a daily basis.
These are things that are rhythms in your life, rhythms that they, that happened when they get up in the morning, it's good morning, loves they come down and there's some breakfast, wait out on the counter. Or even if it's a breakfast burrito in the microwave, it's just a predictable practice.
They know we have in our home, I have these things that we make, we call them scripture strips and so we have scriptures from different scripture, um, cannons and we have them on strips, colorful yellow, golden strips, and we put them in a cookie jar.
And then every morning we pull a scripture stripped before they go to school and we say, okay, let's read the scripture and what does that mean?
And they cannot say Jesus loves us because that's all they would say everyday, so they have to actually get a thought out of that and wow, first thing in the morning, it sets their whole mindset on that spiritual plane and opens that up for them to have any kind of spiritual download during the day.
So not that they necessarily do or they even think that they do, but I as a mom, belief they do. So that makes me a stellar mom. So that's why we do it. So again, that's a predictable practice. Then we have family, we have the family prayer in the morning before they leave.
We have family prayer at night. We do this before our meals. These are predictable practices. We have scripture at night that we listened to. Now I have to tell you, last fall, when I talked with my kids, I said, “What is a way that we can study scripture? Because I know, I know studying scripture matters. I know it creates a protection to us spiritually and even temporarily, I know that it creates this spiritual force that opens us up to blessings and protects us from certain things. I know that it does that no matter who's reading it.”
And so I know that it's important, but, you know, try to get your kids excited about scripture. Reading okay, right?
I've been doing this for years and we've like about condo fisticuffs and scripture reading, right?
That, I mean, well, you know, wars are in the Bible, so there you are. But anyway, so I said, “Okay, family, what do we want to do? How do we want to do this?” And we said, “Let's listen to scripture at night.”
Now in my mind I'm thinking, “How loser is that?” Like we're just laying there listening to scripture, you know, there are tuning out, you know, they're not really listening. Most of the time they're getting one thought and they're like, okay, put that in my back pocket in case mom asks, but we did it. And do you know the Canon of scripture that we're reading? We're almost done.
It's September. It's almost been a year and we're almost done with that Canon of scripture just by reading it. I mean listening to it at night, what I thought was so lame when guess what?
We added on listening at the fire pit outside and we added on being able to have a yummy herbal tea and having a snack or cuddling on the bed. So we've added these things.
Again, it's been a predictable practice. Doesn't mean we've done it perfectly, but we've done it. I would say my, you know, I'm a b plus or so about 80 to 90 percent of the time and I have to tell you these things.
Oh, the other two that I wanted to share was a family council. We have family council, we have family night on Monday and we have family councils especially about like our schedule for the week or about things that were going to do trips.
We're going to take what we want to do for the weekend when different things come to us are unexpected. I say KC Family Council and we get the family by and I help them to get their opinions, want to know what they think is the best way to do something and then move forward.
So family council and the last thing was gratitude…
We emphasize gratitude and our home, and I'll tell you, sometimes it's through clenched teeth.
I'm so grateful that you picked up your room even though your bathroom looks like something's going to come out of the toilet. Right? I've tried to practice gratitude and try to help them to say it in a kind way like, “Oh, if you were saying that your sister is total annoying and frustrating, maybe you could say, wow, she's not being as helpful today as she could be.” Right?
And you know how well that's gone over...
Like it's not like they jump up and there they're carrying a basket of daffodils to each other, but trying to be practicing gratitude. Okay, so predictable practices.
I have to tell you, this works. This works in this crisis. I have to tell you, we've been displaced.
We went to a friend's house for a couple of hours and then we went to our friend's house that we're at now.
We're in podcasting and this tripod is sitting on top of my son's Lego box. As I'm sitting on her bed. You can hear lawnmowers outside... we are, we are displaced.
And yet we are doing these predictable practices.
We had family council last night. We had, we'd been having family, scripture and listening, and it's been soothing and comforting.
In fact, the place we chose last night happened to be this beautiful section of scripture that was just perfect of the savior actually surrounding the children with this protective fire.
Isn't that incredible? Like the chances of that are, you know, unreal…
But it was, it was amazing to be able to go through that and we all felt comforted and we even had a community united prayer last night at 8:00. I mean, that's these practices that are working.
We've talked about gratitude. We have family council about what we want to do with this, where we're staying and we don't know how long we're gonna stay.
And so we had a family council and said, “You know what, let's make it our home. Let's go to Walmart today and let's go get some stuff and we'll just get some plants, will get some cute little things and just a few. Just things that make us feel like we're at home and let's make our home where we are.”
These are predictable practices. This has made all the difference. It has kept us calm. It has kept us focused...
It is kept as in tune with God and remember, whatever that is for you, higher power, the universe, whatever. It's kept us in tune and open to receiving his gifts and his love.
So that's predictable practices. What are the predictable practices in your life, in your family's life?
What are those that your children can count on when trouble comes, because now is the time to do them. When the skies are clear, when there isn't smoke, literally billowing over a mountain range. When the skies are clear, is that time for you to do it? Now we know that fire is still burning. We know it's burned. Seventy thousand acres.
We know we're still not in our home and we don't know if we'll ever be able to go back, but we have faith. We have faith that we will. We have faith that those firefighters are doing all they can.
We have faith that we can pray and there's nothing more we can do. There's nothing they want us to do to go down and help so we can pray and I gotta tell you...
I have another podcast that talks about what happened at that reboot event and why I chose to go there and the blessings that came out of that, but I have to tell you the power of prayer is real and so this predictable practice gives my kids and myself as a life tool belt to be able to turn to during these moments and whatever that is for you. My kids are going to have…
One of them is getting ready to leave home. She's already had an experience of being out on her own for the last three months. She was nannying in France and she had to turn to prayer and to these spiritual practices that she knew and have been using in our family, so these predictable practices are real and they work, so write down three to five predictable practices that you think will be key in your family and they don't even have to be quote unquote, spiritual.
I wake my children in a joyful, happy matter every morning. I do...
This is something that I've made a promise that I will greet them with joy and love. After that, all bets are off, but I greet them with joy and love and how do I get responded to have a more minutes. I'm so tired, right? It doesn't matter.
I greet them with joy and love, and then after that, it's their choice how they're going to face today, so predictable practices, three to five. What are those things that you can feel are gonna need to be put into play in your family that will also help you through a crisis?
The second piece of this is regular routines. This is so crucial. This is a little different than predictable practices. Those are more of those touchy feely, got to have that spiritual, intuitive feeling, groundedness, right?
Regular routines are the day to day pragmatic things. These are the things that need to happen. I've got a snack laid out for them when they come home from school now, not every single day, and it's not like it's out on pinterest. Right? It's not like that.
Put a little cheese and crackers and some grapes. Okay, we're good. Or some yummy quito cookies or something like that. It's not like I have this big gourmet fair, but they have a predictable routine and they know I'm going to get a download of their day. Okay.
Your life may be different. Maybe you work full time right, and you're not there. That's fine. Get rid of the guilt and set up a regular routine that you can say, this is how this flows so that they know when you're going to be there and how it's gonna roll.
So the thing that struck me with this regular routines, it was so tender I cannot even express to you...
So here we've gone and stopped at a friends house just to sort of re retool and have a few hours and then we came here to my friend's basement apartment, which the space, I swear it was left open for us because she'd been looking for someone to be in here and haven't found someone yet and we're able to just come right in.
So it's, you know, it's in one of these beautiful older homes in Provo.
So we're down in the basement and it's one of those, it's like she has a, she has a daybed, kind of like a fold out couch kind of thing and then she has a bed in the other room but it's a little bit minimal, you know, as far as like actual furnishings and things and she hasn't really moved forward on it.
So it's not like it's all like incredibly, you know, decked out and things like that.
But it is lovely. And she has, she goes, come, I've got beds, I got linens, I've got, I've got whatever you need. Got Towels. So we come in here and we were not prepared for the sweetness.
That was awaiting as we come in at this time, it's Friday, that's yesterday and it's September 14th and it's my daughter's birthday, so my 18 year old turned 19 during this whole melee.
Right. In fact when it hit midnight from the Thursday, the Friday, her and I were still up and we were the only one's awake and I had a cupcake from the event, the reboot event that you got this reboot and I had brought up a couple of cupcakes for the kids up to the room and I had one cupcake left and so she pulled up on her phone.
My daughter pulled up a candle that was lit on the phone and she put it right by the cupcake and I sang happy birthday...
To her it was the most tender experience…
I posted about it on Instagram, but it was the most tender experience. So here it's her birthday. Right. But it's kind of getting shoved back in a little bit at this melee.
So we go to this friend's house, then we come to here to this basement apartment. We walk in...It's at night. What's time was it like...I don't know what 8:39 at night. We're tired. I haven't showered. I, I'm really needing to just like get everybody set and get them where they need to be in trying to keep all happy and positive…
We walk in and this good woman, we come into this basement apartment and she has the bed is made up like Ikea. I'm going to post pictures of it with the little rose pillows, and the turn down comforters, and we go into the kitchen, and we opened the fridge, and she has snacks, and yogurts, and drinks, and goldfish, and bottled water, and milk.
And then we look on the counter and she set out breakfast items and paper plates and there's cops in their spoons. She did, I mentioned is a mother of nine.
She's also going to school and it isn't until later that I found out that she has an assignment that she didn't know it was due by midnight and it's like by now it's like 9:30 or something at night.
And she is talking to me like she's got all the time in the world!
We go into the other rooms. She has got the bathroom set up beautifully. We go into the hallway and she's got a little “Happy Birthday.” You know those little letters that say happy birthday hanging on the wall. I literally was almost in tears. Can I tell you that is a regular routine? She set up our home. That is what I'm talking about.
A routine. What are the routines that make your home run like a home? We came in, we had bathroom things, we had towels, we had a place to sleep. She even had a little pad and a sleeping bag and a steamed Lightening McQueen pillow for my six year old son all set to go.
It fit all of us…
Everything that could have been considered was considered for our comfort. She had created a working home and she said it took her only about an hour. I'm like an hour. I was dying. That's an hour. She could have been doing her stuff. And she said, “I did it with a cheerful heart.”
She said, “I considered it a joy.” Isn't that so her? I, I just, I can't wait. I'm going to have to interview her. You got to meet this woman, so I just want you to know this is what we came and were greeted with.
She had set up our home so quickly that we were able to then put our stuff away and get ready for our predictable practices our scripture, our prayer... I'm getting notices the whole time on the fire and I'm able to just move through it because all of these things are set.
So think in your mind, “What are some of the regular routines?”
Food, how do you do your groceries so that there's food in the house and there's things for this kind of a situation where you would have paper plates, you'd have extra in your pantry. Doesn't mean you have to have a huge pantry. Doesn't mean you have to have this extensive food storage, but what's in your food pantry?
You don't think that I'm writing notes on this. I have these things in my house, but now I know when someone is a refugee, these are some of the things that they need right off the bat.
When you're in crisis, these are some of the things you're going to need. How can you set up your home quickly? You need a space for the bathroom stuff.
You need a space for being able to have the toothbrushes and the toothpaste, the whatever you need for your evening, like taking off your, your makeup or whatever. Wipes. Definitely need wipes.
You need a place for the food and the kitchen. We didn't have a dining room table or anything in here and she said, wait a second, I've got this old table out in the hallway, so are in this closet.
So we went to the closet and yet was an old card like flip table thing, you know, and she's like the top. It was kind of ripped the melamine or whatever it was was ripped and she's like, I'll get a table cloth.
We set that table up with this cute little checkered cloth.
Boom. Four chairs done for folding chairs.
Done are eating space is set up, so now we have a wash cleaning space, we have a food space in the kitchen, we've got food now we have our sleeping spaces, we've got those set up and now we have our eating space together as a family.
So can you see these routines? How predictable this is because guess what those regular routines are, where do you eat and when? When do you shower? When do you bathe? When do you grocery shop? When do you do your laundry? When do you do your cleaning as a family, where do they keep their things?
All of those regular routines matter and having a routine, and I'm loving this because I teach women how to do this simply and easily to do the cleaning, the deep clean, the daily do's, how to do their laundry quickly and streamline it, how to do their, their organizing of their bills and things like that and streamline it.
How to make it so it's total so you can take it as you go, oh my goodness, am I having such a validation of the things that I've been teaching women for 20 years and how important this is because in a crisis, it doesn't matter if you're being evacuated or if you're staying at home and you're just experiencing a health crisis or something.
You are able to in that moment, recreate your home environment wherever you are, and that's what we did in the most beautiful thing to close this up. This morning I woke up and I walked out into the other room where the kids were sleeping and right there on that makeshift table with that tablecloth.
My daughter had set up for the table ready for breakfast. Was that the cutest thing? We watched these scripts for videos and we watched one on ruth and it.
It was showing depicting when ruth left with her mother in Law Naomi and how she went with her and they went into Satan's old kind of rundown home. That used to be.
I was imagining it used to be their home, but they went in at night and it was just kind of a sort of a scriptural depiction of what it could be like and so ruth has Naomi go to sleep because Naomi's elderly and ruth works through the night to clean and tidy this, this really poverty stricken home.
There's hardly anything there, but she makes it all nice and pretty for when Ruth and Naomi wakes up in the morning and I looked at this table that was set up for breakfast and I'll post it on social media and she even put a little block that I got at the reboot event that you got this women Reba reboot.
We got a little block, the three founders from one of the founders, mothers that said, you got this. She had found it at a bookstore and so I had thrown that into the tub to take with us when we left the hotel and she put that little block on the table.
So I stood there staring at this beautifully made up table with paper plates and spoons and little napkins in the paper.
The plastic cups and this little block at this at the top of the table that said, you got this beautiful. That's regular routines. That is the power of my friends have these life saving routines. It creates calm, it creates order. It creates peace. It creates continuity. It creates security.
It creates regular rhythms that children and adults can rely on so that their energy can be used for dealing with whatever comes emotionally and whatever may come physically that is unexpected.
So I implore you to write down what are three to five of those predictable practices and what are three to five of those regular routines that you can get working to a b plus degree in your home right now to create without a crisis.
That calm assurance, confidence and and consistency. All right.
Stay tuned for more and have more podcasts and things I'm learning from this Pole Creek Fire experience and hopefully you're learning some great things to remember. You got this with Balance Redefined.
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