Freedom Life Journey Podcast

Jamie and Ruthie know from experience what burnout looks like. In this episode they share how  saying no to the crazy is so worth it. 

In this episode, Jamie and Ruthie discuss the messages sent through marketing, the meaning behind the advertisements during the most magical time of the year.

What's Christmas really about? It's definitely not about retail therapy. Gain insight and encouragement to do Christmas differently this year. 

Jamie and Ruthie talk about the importance of thanksgiving and share insights on practicing an attitude of gratitude.

Resources mentioned in this podcast:

Brene Brown "The Gifts of Imperfection"

Why Travel: In this episode. we talk about the value of travel. 

Why is travel a part of a freedom-filled life? 

Travel is important to us as a couple and as a top value for our family.

Before we were married, travel was an important thing for us as individuals. Once we were married travel was more difficult but we cleaned up our consumer debt and slowly started to travel.

We began traveling regularly in 2013. Before they knew how to travel as a family, Ruthie took her father to Israel for his 80th Birthday and Jamie went to Spain with his uncle and walked The Camino de Santiago.  Now we have taken over 50 family trips in the last 5 years.

Roger Whitney, The Retirement Answer Man Podcast: The number one thing people want to do when they retire is travel.

bob goff’s book “Love Does”. 

Speaking to your spouse about how important travel is for you: 

What are the reasons you’d like to travel?

Why would you want to travel?

We travel to connect with people in a deeper way.

We travel to enhance our children's education as we homeschool.

We travel to live our dream, live out of our heart and be true to what God's placed in us.

Where does travel lie on your list of values?

If travel is more important to you, how can you make it happen?

We can do this in 35 years or we can get creative and do it now with our children as a family.

Featured Resource: How to have your best family trip ever! Guide. To download go to  www.freedomlifejourney.com/resources

• Accept the challenges when working from home with children.
• Tap into your network for support. 
• Be strategic when delegating care.
• Include the children in your work.
• Discover ways to support each other as husband and wife.
• Know when to step back.
• Approach this as an experiment. 

If your marriage doesn’t experience conflict you may be headed for trouble. This sounds like an oxymoron. Avoiding conflict or dealing with disagreements may lead to resentment and deeper hurt.

Patrick Lencioni says "Great relationships are built on the ability to disagree". He speaks about doing conflict well in his presentation of The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team: 

https://youtu.be/inftqUOLFaM

When share our struggle or our issue with our spouse in a healthy way, we allow the relationship to grow. The healthiest and strongest relationships disagree, argue or maybe even have a bad day of tension with limited communication. But they make an effort of preserving the marriage by taking through the issues and keeping them from growing roots of resentment.

Here are 5 steps to dealing with conflict:

1-Take ownership. It’s easy to point the finger and find fault. The least you can do is begin by accepting your feelings. For example: “I feel sad/disappointed/ confused, etc. about what happened earlier today.”

2-Don’t fester. Get it out in the open as soon as possible. This may mean talking with your spouse but we’ve had days where it’s been very hard to have even a small window to speak. If so, here are other options to getting the issue out of your head: pray, journal, call a trusted friend or mentor. Text or leave a note- with caution.

3-Let it go- Now that you’ve taken responsibility and some action, it’s time to move on and let it go. Forgive your spouse.

The way to make conflict a natural part of your marriage is by taking it seriously but dealing with it swiftly and casually if possible. This is called normalizing. Good marriages have conflict regularly and in a healthy way.

In this episode, we're introducing ourselves and sharing what values anchor the Freedom Life Journey Podcast, who we are for and what topics to expect in upcoming episodes.

This show is about helping you discover what freedom looks like for your family. Are you looking to build more financial freedom into your life? Maybe you want to work from home so you can spend more time with your family. How about adding more margin into your life? 

Topics to be discussed in future episodes:

• ways to leverage talent you already have
• agreeing with your spouse on a compelling vision
• getting rid of debt and building wealth
• working remotely
• how to travel with kids
• becoming location independent

This is the podcast where we peel back the layers on what it takes to build a life of freedom and flexibility so that you can begin on your own journey.