Thoughts as We Enter the New Year!!

Wow!! 2019!

I hope you all had fun ringing in the New Year. We stayed in and enjoyed some friends visiting from out of town! It was the perfect night!

As I reflect on the last year I am reminded of a podcast I listened to a few nights ago while cleaning the kitchen. Side note..do any of you guys do this…man it sure makes cleaning more fun! lol

Anyway…who here remembers Dax Sheppard?? He is a fav of mine from the greatest show on NBC, Parenthood. In fact I begged Jeff to name our 3rd boy Dax.  But Kullen is a prefect name for our 3rd cutie! 🙂

Dax has a podcast called Armchair Expert with Dax Sheppard. This was actually the first one I had ever listened to and I thought it was so valuable!

Dax is married to actress Kristen Bell and she was on as his guest. I have to say, I am so impressed with her!! I wasn’t really sure what the content was about when I started the podcast but I was pleasantly surprised at the wealth of knowledge Kristen has.  Really great insight that I want to take with me into the new year and I wanted to pass along to you for what it’s worth! Click here to listen to the whole episode.

Dax was highlighting some of Kristen’s strengths as a person. One he touched on is her amazing self esteem. This really struck a chord with me. Kristen touched on how her self esteem doesn’t grow because of her accolades. It stems from her helping others. Especially listening to others and asking how she can help.

I was so moved by this idea that so many of us are out striving for self esteem by success. Getting a promotion, earning more money, having perfect behavior from our kids, a bigger house or better car. I dont think all these things are bad things, I just think if we place our self worth and self esteem on only these material things, that is where we can go wrong.

What if we all started looking at growing our self esteem by helping others??!! What a better place we would live in, right? And let me tell you, I am not saying this is how I do it. This is how I WANT to do it! This podcast made me really think about the changes I want to make and my family can make in the coming year.

We all want high self esteem for our kids right? I know that is something that I totally want to instill in them. Maybe serving others more will help that for our kids. It allows them to see the needs in the world…because lets be honest, most of our kids don’t have many needs. Basically all of their needs are so easily met.

“Comparison is the thief of Joy”

In today’s world we have access to compare ourselves to millions of people on social media and it can be a slippery slope! I just loved Kristen Bell’s ideas of how to keep that in check in today’s world. She talked about how all she wants for her social media is to make others smile and if there is an account on social media that is not doing that and only bringing out negative emotions, simply unfollow. I know it seems like duh, wouldn’t we just unfollow people that are making us feel worse about ourselves…but do we really do that? I know sometimes I continue to get sucked into someone else’s life on social media when maybe I should just unfollow.

When I started this instragram account and blog I was nervous to put myself out there. That was probably what held me back the most. As I look into the next year with my blog and social media, I truly hope to make you smile or inspire you. If I am not doing that for you, please unfollow. That last think  I want is negative energy in your life.

Use Social Media for Good

Social media can be a positive place if you stick to these rules of unfollowing. It can bring so much good if we use the platform in a positive way! I hope you will continue on this journey with me. I am exited to bring some different content to the blog and IG. I am thinking about some major organization projects, date your spouse ideas, and of course more decorating! If there is something else you would love to see more of, please leave me a note in the comments below!!

Happy New Year!!

xoxo,

Erin