Nov 8, 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…
[00:01] Welcome back to balance redefined. I am Connie Sokol. I'm so excited again to have you back for more. I am. Seriously every time. Excited.
[00:09] Even though I say that I'm happy, excited, thrilled, It's really true. I love this.
[00:14] So today I want to share with you some things that we learned as a family-three particular things that we learned as a family by taking our particular fall break that we have during our school year and doing a what I call, "connect vacation."
[00:29] I wanted to do something special with my children. This here is my goal that I want to share with you the ideal, the apex that I think most parents have, which is they want to take some time off, be with their kids and do something that's meaningful.
[00:48] Do something that's connecting to something that makes a memory that's very memorable and it's not like at Christmas.
[00:54] We always say, "I'm so tired of giving them toys and things that they are going to throw away, they don't remember the month that they even got it, so tired of stuff and themes and materials..."
[01:03] I really want to make more memories. I am big on that. If you know my staff, I'm always talking about memory makers and that's why at Christmas time what we do is we alternate years between a trip or something that we make a memory and then maybe getting a few selected things on the next Christmas so that we kind of alternate it.
[01:22] Well, what I really wanted to do was do some kind of humanitarian service. So this is my vision. You know, how you as a parent, it's almost like when you decide, "Oh, I want to like have a musical family, and it's going to be great."
[01:35] I've got another podcast on that and you should listen to it because it's hysterical, honestly, because of the situation. Not that I'm terribly funny, but the situation was funny...
[01:42] But you know, you have this vision of how you think you would like things to go.
[01:46] And then there's the reality and there's a lot of humor in that.
[01:50] So it's okay. "It's all copy," as Nora Ephron says, but what I really wanted was this amazing experience to connect all of us together. What I really wanted was to have a sort of family trip that didn't involve screen time a whole lot. So we connected together emotionally.
[02:08] And the second thing that we did good is that we just did something good and the kids would feel that goodness of doing good.
[02:15] Now these are good kids and they do good stuff all the time. It's not that they don't, but I mean in a focused, clear way that "Wow, we did good."
[02:22] And then of course I wanted to have fun. I wanted to have it be just fun, fun, fun. I don't think we as parents have enough fun with our children and I think they feel that way too.
[02:32] We kind of squeeze the fun out of life after the age of 32...
[02:36] So anyway, number four would be to, like I said, "Make a memory."
[02:41] So here's my vision. I want to connect, do family time, do good, have fun, make a memory...This is all the dream of fall break all in four days, right? No biggie, totally doable.
[02:53] But the problem is that my sweet children did not catch that same vision...
[02:57] So I had seen this information about some different humanitarian services, and I'd always wanted to do them.
[03:06] Then I was at the school during the Halloween parade where all good things happen. I'm standing talking to a mom I didn't know. We get chatting. Turns out her boy is in my boy's class and we connected on that. And then she mentioned that what they do is this foundation for children.
[03:20] It's called a Child's Hope Foundation. And they do trips to orphanages across the world, mostly in South America. And I was like, "What? That's fantastic."
[03:30] Well, the thing I loved about this one is it was very affordable. Lots of the ones that I was checking out for $2,000-$3,000 a piece for a person and that's before you even get there. This one even included how to get there. So this one was only $340 at the time and I'm sure it's still there right now...But $340 per person that is so doable and the conditions were a lot like...you know, in our church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We have girls camp.
[03:55] So if you can imagine like a camp experience, there's wooden cots, kind of bunk beds in a building, you know, it's like that. It's that kind of an experience.
[04:04] And so that looked really doable...
[04:06] So I thought, "This is fantastic."
[04:08] I was on fire, came home and shared it with my kids. They were not on fire. I will just say that.
[04:12] You can imagine because the kids are thinking, "it's our fall break. We get to chill out. We won't know anyone."
[04:19] We knew no one. In fact the gal from the parade even wasn't going. I found that out later because they do so many trips, and she had had a family tragedy that happened, a family emergency on her side and so that she was not going to go down...
[04:33] So you know, we really weren't going to know anyone at all and the group was going to be smaller this time and only about 20 people. And that means that the work that they do down there would be things like construction projects, painting and fixing and landscape if we need whatever.
[04:48] That means that all the work is going to be done by a lot less people. And then of course there's the drive there. We were driving 10 to 12 hours to get there. And then of course that includes in the four days, then the time to get back. So you can see the problem.
[05:02] So long story short, I'm trying to sell this to my kids and they're like, "[snore]," you know? I mean, they're great kids, but they were just like, "Well, it sounds like a really great thing," i.e. "Do we have to do this right now?"
[05:15] This particular vacation, I prayed about it, felt really good, peaceful, and I thought, "I think this is a good thing. Let's move forward."
[05:24] So I got all the things we needed, all the documentation, everything in place, smiled, we did a little family night with the orientation, we said, "we're going to be great," we'll have great snacks, and went forth in faith, right?
[05:39] So here's the three things that I learned and they were phenomenal, phenomenal things. I would do this experience again in a heartbeat. It was, spoiler alert, fantastic. It was. It was just what I wanted and needed it to be.
[05:55] These things that I learned is what made it so, in case you're looking at doing something like that for yourself...
[06:00] This is not a sales pitch on this. I get nothing for this from these people. They don't even know I'm doing this podcast, but I want to share the things that we as a family gleaned from this because it was so purposeful and magical.
[06:14] First, the first thing that we learned was from being with the children, the actual children in the orphanage. There were about 80 there that people just leave on their doorstep.
[06:22] They have people who have children from drug lords. I mean they have everything. They have special needs children and a house that's just for the special needs. I'm not going to share the exact orphanage because it kind of protects the children, but it was truly amazing to see how well cared for those children were and how well adjusted they were.
[06:43] It was amazing. I thought it was gonna be a sad experience and it wasn't.
[06:45] I mean it was of course, because they don't have families. They're going to age out all of those things. But the director had actually adopted several kids who had started to age out.
[06:55] I mean, they're just amazing people and he himself was a child that was in that orphanage. He then left and got schooling in the United States, came back and is running the orphanage. I mean, just the most amazing people.
[07:07] Anyway, what we learned from those kids was they did not push back. They did not. They did not. They did not have any diva kind of attitude. They did not have any, "I don't want to be with you," or anything.
[07:25] I mean, here's these people coming in that they don't even know...
[07:27] We learned not to push. We learned not to get in their space unless they were comfortable with that, unless they wanted that.
[07:34] We simply offered to be there and offered to play with them on the swings, and offer to play with them and have a fiesta. But they did not need to do anything more than that.
[07:43] And my kids saw that these children, and they don't call them orphans, they call them children, these children, they were blessed by just...my kids were able to just be with them and we all could just be.
[07:58] And it wasn't like they were a charity case and it wasn't like we had some agenda. We just could all be, which was wonderful.
[08:04] And the second thing that I learned from these children was their ability to make the best of whatever came to them and still to be kind.
[08:12] You would think in a situation where you didn't get all the presents that you wanted or all the fun things that you knew other kids were getting that if they're suddenly presented that these kids would be a little greedy or desperate.
[08:19] These things were things that we've all brought down.
[08:21] Nobody told us what to bring, what we just brought some things. We particularly brought a couple of scooters. We brought bubbles, sidewalk chalk, sticker coloring books, sticker books, crayons, and things like that.
[08:31] My daughter went ahead and sacrificed. She had a long-board and a penny board that was very meaningful to her.
[08:38] But I was super proud of her because she, with a little encouragement from mom, she was so good. And at the last she brought it down, they were very meaningful to her. She'd earned those. And they were, they were special to her.
[08:50] But those kids took turns and shared. The most meaningful part me was we had brought these little boxes, you know, the nine 99 box legos you can pick up at Walmart and we brought those down, a couple of those for the boys or the girls, but the boys were the ones who wanted to play with them.
[09:05] I from years, you know, having four boys, I had years of training with Legos. I sat down and played those Legos with them. I helped to build them in my poor Spanish trying to eek out, "Donde el bano?", trying to come up with something that would help with the Legos and translate.
[09:23] But I actually did pretty good and we'd say, "listo," and "seguro," and "bueno," and anything that ends with an o sound. I just kind of stuck that on the end of everything.
[09:34] Anyway, and I was helping them. It was so cool that they were just dying when I pulled those legos out. They were so excited and everybody wanted to kind of hoard them at first.
[09:43] This little boy came up to me and he was kind of tugging my hand and he was pointing to the Legos and he was like, you know, basically saying, "Me gusta." That he wants to try it and "Quiero," and whatever. He wanted to try it.
[09:53] And I was like, "Te gusta?" which is I'm sure not even right. But anyway, so getting the idea and the other boy who originally had the Legos, he was like, "Nah nah!"
[10:02] He was not letting go for love or money...
[10:05] But this little boy kind of looked at me and I said, "Por todos. Por todos." and trying to get across that this was for everyone. And this sweet boy, he took one moment and you could see, oh, he was thinking.
[10:16] He was thinking hard. Then he not only opened the box up to this little boy, but he actually showed him like I had been doing with him. He showed this little boy how to put the pieces on. So what I was having them do was find the pieces in the pile and then showing them where they could put them if they didn't know, and then they would actually put it on. So I wasn't doing it for them.
[10:40] He was doing that for this little boy and he kept doing that. It was the sweetest, most tender thing where he didn't have to do that.
[10:47] He could have hoarded it technically, but he actually was doing that sharing.
[10:50] Oh, that was just a tender moment for me...
[10:52] One other tender moment with the kids was, this little boy, I will not say his name, but we pulled out bubbles and he squealed with delight about these bubbles. I mean, not just, "Oh, this is so fun," but he SQUEALED with delight.
[11:11] My kids have never made that sound over bubbles because, you know, we get them at the dollar store and they're super available. So bubbles have lost a lot of their novelty.
[11:20] But this little boy was just thrilled to the nines about these bubbles. And it just made everyone laugh and rejoice and feel joy. And we found ourselves finding joy in those simple things in our lives as well.
[11:33] It was so fun when we came home and I took my first real shower...
[11:37] Those were my kind of bubbles. I almost squealed in delight on that one. So you know, it's all relative. So that was learning from the kids. That was the first thing. We can always share no matter what little we have, we can always give. We can always share, we can always bring somebody else into joy or gifts that we have.
[11:54] And then not to push, just let those connections be. The second thing I learned was from the others that were in our group, they were amazing, amazing.
[12:04] You know, statistics show in any group of 20 people, you're going to have 10 percent that complain, 10 percent, that don't work, 10 percent that you know, the 40 percent that are just mainstream, and then the 20 percent that do everybody, do all the work, and do everything kind of the go-to backbone people.
[12:19] Anyway, I don't know what all the percentages add up, you know what I'm saying? Give or take. So they were all amazing. They were all workers. They were all kind. They were all clear what they were sharing and wanting to do. They were all helpful. It was truly incredible.
[12:35] We had assignments for breakfast and even when it wasn't their assignment to help clean up, they would help clean up. I mean there were just that way and very low key about it. Very Meek, very humble people. Strong, wonderful, amazing. But just very humble.
[12:50] Particularly what I learned is that there were two men in the group that were lawyers and here on their off time with their family coming down and doing this as lawyers. Now I know I'll throw in a lawyer joke, right? But I have to tell you, these two men were salt of the earth and my daughter and those two men, when we got there, they asked for different talents that people had.
[13:13] They said, "We want to do a mural." They're really big on murals there. And they said, "Who has artistic talent? Well, my daughter, two of them have great artistic talent." I truly am the mom that is like, "They are so good." These two men had had artistic experience.
[13:26] Now the one was a lawyer and the other one was a marketing guy that actually had, as I'm thinking about it, that there were two lawyers, but one was a lawyer that was doing art and another one was a marketing guy and then he also had majored in art, so these two men took my girls under their wing and they went into this room, this big house thing that had people coming in and out.
[13:46] It was very open and they had toddlers on the one side and people to care for them and stuff.
[13:51] So it was all open...
[13:51] They respected my daughters' talent. They ask them questions, ask them what they thought would be best to do, ask them how they thought was best to approach it, treated them like adults in their thinking, in their abilities.
[14:06] It was beautiful.
[14:08] This one daughter is the one that gave up her longboard. She was the one that was the most anti to go and she'd be the first to tell you.
[14:14] Even the day that we're driving, she's like, "Do we have to?" You know, just making no longer short of it that she did not want to go do this.
[14:24] Well, these good men, they asked her opinion. She said, "Well, I think we should do a Marvel theme. What about doing the superheroes and all of that?" Well these kids, turns out they love the avengers, love the whole Marvel thing.
[14:37] So these three artists and then my daughter, the youngest one, she went into the preschool area, and she did like a cityscape with skyscrapers, and stuff like that. That was more along her level and flowers and in airplanes and stuff like that.
[14:49] She did a beautiful job and with a couple of other little ones in there to do that like you know, 12, 13.
[14:55] Anyway, my older daughter, that's 15, she is accompanied these two men, and they are taking their time, and talents to teach her. She is learning from these masters and they are asking her opinion.
[15:05] How do you think that made her feel? How do you think that grew her self-esteem. How do you think that made her confidence grow in the knowledge that somebody felt she could absolutely do it and that person was not her mother? Right?
[15:19] So they did this incredible mural. They had the Hulk holding onto the Cape of Thor with his big hammer and lightning coming out. This is on the wall like almost life size ironman, and then my daughter did Spiderman and Captain America and they were incredible including Lion Heart. Absolutely incredible.
[15:38] These men, even though we thank them profusely, they will never know what they just did for her. She got done with this experience and said, "I could totally do this again."
[15:46] Not that she wants to do it any time soon, but she said, "It was amazing."
[15:50] It was great and she loved it. So my thanks go out to these men who took the time to make a difference, not just in the kids in the orphanage, but the people that were there, my own girls, and they did that for others. It just wasn't my kids.
[16:03] Everybody was making an influence and a difference on other people's families.
[16:08] And then the third thing that happened was for my own children.
[16:11] It was a thing of beauty to see us all pulled together as a family in a situation that was unique and different than what we were ever used to.
[16:20] The dust was everywhere, the showers that were iffy, we had to reconnect a hose, yet you couldn't drink the water, so we had bottled water. We had to, you know, threatened everyone with their lives to not drink it.
[16:30] Just the different things...walking all over to get to places and we shoveled gravel.
[16:36] I mean we're talking two mountainous piles of gravel. We did painting. We painted this big building and it was awesome watching how that worked.
[16:48] I watched them, you know, we're all, we're painting the building and we're all problem solving and they're giving their ideas of what we can do.
[16:54] My oldest daughter was with me and we're like, "Okay, well we could use the picnic bench as a double, as a ladder and here we can do this, and we can use this and put paint in cups, and then we can paint the pillars."
[17:03] That way everyone's throwing in their two cents. I'm watching my kids, they're working hard, they're getting up early. They're making breakfast, and meals, and making it for 20 people. They're connecting with these kids. They're playing with them and even though they can't speak the same language, they're learning some different words and short words that they can share.
[17:22] My sweet daughter who didn't want to be there the last night we held a fiesta and she was like, "Can I go back to our room so I don't have to?"
[17:29] You know, the room is like cement floor and wooden bunks, right? With sleeping bags. And I said, "Well, if you can hang and play with them for just a few minutes, I totally understand. You've given your all this whole week."
[17:40] And she even stayed through the fun time to finish this mural at the very last of the last day so that they could have it done before they left.
[17:47] She had just been amazing...
[17:48] I turned around and saw her dance with those kids. She was dancing with the dog that I told her not to pick up because they all have fleas, but she was totally enveloped and invested in these kids and in this experience it was pretty amazing.
[18:04] I have a video just in case I ever need to use it of her doing this.
[18:09] My other daughter, my youngest, she is a dancer. She just gave those kids permission to get out there and dance and have so much fun.
[18:16] And one of the women there, one of the wives, she came down with her husband and what? That was the one that was a lawyer...
[18:22] She said, "Let's do the electric slide." So we put it on...
[18:24] We were teaching them the electric slide if they want to join in.
[18:28] It was just magical. It was just the most wonderful thing. My kids learned that they could work hard and they could do hard things. They could talk to kids that didn't know the same language.
[18:39] They could get up earlier than they ever thought that they could and do all of these life skills that they didn't imagine they could do.
[18:46] And then the last thing I learned was that when you have those good desires to go forth, do something good, and try to make a difference, of course you get back more than you ever imagined.
[18:57] It was still a fun vacation. I'm telling you, these people know how to do this right. We still went to the beach for a day and we all got to play. The kids played in the water, and they all made friends with each other and with all the families that came.
[19:12] Then we had a soccer game, big championship soccer game with the orphanage kids and all the families that came, the adults. Of course they creamed us solid.
[19:23] We went shopping in a nearby town and we bought up all their Mexican vanilla so we can take it home as Christmas gifts.
[19:30] We went into these shops, and they were so thrilled to have us for the commerce. Then we got to eat at beautiful places, some that were on food network's top places to go that were somewhat nearby that we could go to and have this wonderful food and then local food...etc..
[19:45] Oh my goodness. I can't even tell you the deliciousness of the local food. This quesadilla that they stuffed with vegetables and shrimp and the special kind of cheese. It was just...
[19:56] I mean, my mouth is watering, just thinking about it.
[19:59] So guess what? My kids thought, "Okay, we're going to go down and do good." And guess what? They were blessed for those good desires that they were pulling up from the depth and they were blessed. Beach shopping, amazing food, fun.
[20:14] And then the cherry on the cheesecake, the cherry on top, which was this memory maker of the connections they made with these kids of this orphanage.
[20:24] Seeing that they made a difference and did good and being able to say we really saw them. I kept thinking of that talk of "Behold," and I've mentioned that before by Rosemary Wixom, but they really looked in their eyes...
[20:37] The main thing that they could say is, "Como te llamas?" And so they could ask all their names and that's what they could know and that's how they could relate and it truly was a thing of beauty.
[20:46] So I saw in this experience, if you've ever considered doing a humanitarian trip or something like that to have this kind of experience with your kids, it met all of those goals that I had for us.
[20:58] It meant that we connected and had hardly any screen time just on the drive there and back. The drive by the way went beautifully just so you know.
[21:07] We were able to do good. We were able to have fun. We're able to make a memory that everybody enjoyed. It truly fulfilled all of those things. I know that we made a difference in those kids' lives. I know it because I saw it.
[21:19] So if you're interested in this, I will give you information. Like I said, they don't even know I'm doing this...
[21:23] It's ACHF that's a as in apple, c as in cookie, h as in happy, f as in friend-ACHF-and it stands for achildhopefoundation.org or just look up a child's hope foundation and you can look it up and it's a beautiful website, has all the information on the trips they take and how it works.
[21:42] They have a video orientation and that's what we do with for our family night. It was truly amazing. We will be going back and we will be supporting their efforts.
[21:50] I saw the blood, sweat and tears from the people who put that on and spearheaded it and the founders and they were amazing. One of them that came down, he was one that was a basically a cofounder and from my understanding anyway, he was just right in the mix, shoveling gravel, doing everything that needed to be done.
[22:07] No debo, that kind of thing, like not playing much, he's more whatever. He was just in the mix. Everybody just grabbed something and dug in and did what needed to be done. So really beautiful people are involved with this. So, so grateful.
[22:22] Hopefully you've gotten some ideas today. Again, if you don't do this one, I so encourage you to check out something that is like this and next vacation, whether it's Thanksgiving, Fall Break, Spring Break, make a memory...
[22:35] Make it where it's a connect vacation and ditch a lot of the screen time and be able to really truly see one another, and see the difference that you can make as a family. And I hope that you'll take that invitation.
You got it. Thanks for listening and remember to rate and subscribe. And if you are feeling the need for real balance in your life, get your free 3-Step Life Plan, and get started today! Just go to conniesokol.com/download.