Uncommon Freedom

How to Conduct a Family Energy Audit: Balancing Life for Uncommon Freedom

• Kevin Tinter

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Is your family's busy schedule leaving you stressed and overwhelmed? In this week's episode, Kevin and Bekah share their strategies for conducting a family energy audit to achieve greater balance and harmony.

Drawing from their experiences as entrepreneurs and parents of four, they discuss:

- The concept of energy givers and takers in family life
- How to evaluate your time allocation
- Aligning your activities with your family goals
- Practical steps to implement positive changes

Kevin and Bekah offer actionable advice on juggling work, family, and personal commitments while keeping faith and family at the center. They share personal anecdotes about family activities, serving in the community, and the challenges of parenting.

Whether you're a busy parent, entrepreneur, or simply feeling overwhelmed by life's demands, this episode provides valuable insights to help you thrive, not just survive, in your family life. Join us for a conversation that will inspire you to approach your family's energy management with intention and purpose.

Get your FREE copy of the Uncommon Freedom Energy Audit HERE!

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Speaker 1:

Hey everyone, welcome to the Uncommon Freedom Show. I'm Kevin Tinter and with me as always, is my amazing wife and co-host.

Speaker 3:

Hey everyone, I'm Becca Tinter and today we're diving into a topic that is close to our hearts and crucial for every family striving for balance in this hectic world and you know, balance is a word that I'm not I don't love, just because I don't think everything gets the same piece of the pie. So I would say those striving for harmony.

Speaker 1:

I love that. You're a genius, that's right, thank you. We are talking about why you need a family energy audit, and we've been talking with some other people recently, and it's just abundantly clear that what we're going to share today is something that every American family needs, whether it's just you and a spouse, or there's kids in the house, maybe even grandkids. This is going to be an awesome tool, and we're also going to teach you how to do this. If you're feeling overwhelmed, juggling your career, your business and family life, this episode is for you.

Speaker 3:

And truly, if you're just by yourself, we can each do this exercise individually. It's just the more people involved in your family, the more complicated life gets, and so it is helpful to do it with those that you do life with day in and day out. So we're going to explore practical strategies to help you thrive as a family unit, not just survive. So grab a pen and paper. You'll want to take some notes on this one not just survive, so grab a pen and paper.

Speaker 1:

You'll want to take some notes on this one. All righty, let's start by a quick little intro to family energy audits. Let's define what a family energy audit is, and we would say that it's basically writing out your current family schedule so you can see what you are actually spending time on, right your current commitments. Yes, this is your expenditure of your time. Just like when you're trying to figure out a budget, you're going to actually track, gather all your receipts, look at your credit card statements, checking account statements and actually see what you're actually spending your money on. This is in the same thing when it comes to health. Right, when people want to make a change, one of the first things they can do is actually track, and the mere act of tracking things creates an extra level of awareness.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. I 100% agree with that, and it's so powerful because so often we make assumptions or we have a perception about how things are going but we don't have a really. We've talked about this when we talk about relational issues. But there are the facts and then there are the stories we tell ourselves. And when it comes to where we're spending our time, the facts are what is on our calendar, what we commit to and have to show up for. And many times you know, I know, for us, we start with like, okay, we only have a few things on the calendar and then all of a sudden things get added on by other people, other members of our family and things like that. And the more people you have in your family, the busier your schedule gets. So, as a reminder, we are a family of six, ages seven to 17. Everyone's living at home. Still, we work from home and we have a lot of moving parts. Some of you have bigger families, some of you have smaller families. The bottom line is it can get very, very busy.

Speaker 1:

Sure thing All right. Do you want to talk about why it's so important for your family to do Absolutely I mean we were saying, just like finances, most people have no idea where they're spending their time.

Speaker 3:

It's interesting even because we also run a home-based business, a health coaching practice, and one of the common things is people feel very busy but they're not always productive. So it's actually really helpful, in addition to tracking your health, your finances and your time, to also track your work time and what you do with your work time, because a lot of us give ourselves a lot of credit for what we do and if we actually took an account of it, we would realize how much of it was productive time or, as a family, how much was healthy time that we're spending on certain activities, and that's what we're talking about today. So it's going to be a wake up call and likely a reality check for most of us.

Speaker 1:

And most people. When they do this, they're going to find that they're spending less time on high leverage activities than they think they are and they're probably spending a lot more time on just low leverage activities or almost wasted time Like go look at your, look up your screen time for the last week and it'll blow your mind to see how much time you spent on apps and things like that that aren't really moving you forward at all.

Speaker 3:

All right, and actually, before you move on, I know that one of the things that we've talked about in our business a lot is how do we, you know, how do we find more time, get more time, manage our time? And the truth is, if you can learn to multiply time, that is phenomenal. But before you can even get to the behaviors, the habits and the systems for multiplying time, you have to audit your time. And we're not talking just about hours on our schedule. We're also talking about our energy, which is a big part, because a lot of time management is actually energy management. You know, when you're doing something you love or something that's very productive, you might feel amazing doing it, but we all have the drains and drags on our energy and sometimes we spend way too much time on those things because either we've committed to them or we're not even aware of them. So we want to take a good account of that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and everything that we talk about on this podcast for the most part is ultimately driving people towards creating a life of uncommon freedom, is ultimately driving people towards creating a life of uncommon freedom and we've been massaging this recently and really uncommon freedom is thriving in every area of life so that you can reach your God-given potential and maximize your impact on the earth. And as Christians, we think of that as a kingdom impact, as God's kingdom on earth impact. And so when you think about that, how do you apply? How does that apply to family? It's how do you help your kids not just yourself reach their potential, you know, how do you build the work ethic in them? How do you help them develop and like, discover and develop their skills and abilities, the things that they're likely to want to do to feel like they have purpose in this world and to just be able to have a kingdom impact as a family, not just as an individual.

Speaker 3:

Yep, I agree. So number two is the importance of managing family energy. So first we talked about kind of what a family energy audit is, but now we're going to talk about the importance of managing that for a family, and so we want to talk about energy givers and takers in the family life, and another way to say this is anchors and engines. What I love about discovering this for ourselves within our business context, within our friend group, church group, community group, is that it's not only valuable for ourselves, but it's really important for our kids to learn this early on. We talk a lot about associations.

Speaker 3:

In your book you talk about running with lions and it's important to understand how we receive people as well as activities. So that's kind of what we're talking about here is there are activities that drain us or give us energy, and there are people that drain us and give us energy, and it's important to have an awareness of both. We can't necessarily control all of those things in our life, but we can sometimes manage how much of it we let in when we let it in, and I think even part of what you were mentioning before about lifestyle design is teaching our kids, as well as ourselves, how to have healthy boundaries with people.

Speaker 1:

Great. So we also want to talk about how energy management can reduce stress and improve family dynamics. You know, one of the biggest things, the biggest problems that we have in America today is that we are just too stinking busy. Big fan of Dr Kevin Lehman, who's a parenting expert, and he talks about the fact that one of the reasons our kids are burnt out is because they have so many activities.

Speaker 1:

You know, typically, you know I don't know what the average is, but there's a lot of american families where their kids aren't just in one sport, they're in multiple sports and they might not even experience a sabbath because they're doing sports and activities every single day of the week. And the truth is it's not really healthy for them. The benefit that you think they're going to get from teamwork or whatever it might be, the know, the athletic discipline, is being outweighed by just the fact that they don't have any balance in their life. And you know, this is also why there's a lot of mid-teen athletes that are actually burning out when potentially, if they hadn't been worked so hard, they actually maybe could have gone further and farther. But you know, kids are experiencing burnout, which is something that was as rare in children as diabetes used to be, and it's now unfortunately commonplace.

Speaker 3:

So and it could be, you know, musical or dance or oh yeah, art classes, we're not any extracurricular as an athlete I love sports. But I remember growing up in club sports weren't really a thing growing up. So we if we played for our school, we practiced with our school and that was kind of it, and then we had seasons on and seasons off.

Speaker 1:

Nowadays kids are doing things year round and they're playing on multiple teams and traveling to opposite corners of the country to participate at a very young level and there are some benefits to some of those things, and if they fit with your family, it's fine.

Speaker 3:

But we've also seen families drain their finances and use all of their family time and energy to support things like this, really in an out of balance, out of harmony way, and so we just want to encourage all of us to take account of that and see if it's serving your family well.

Speaker 1:

So, when it comes to managing energy, we really want to encourage you to help your kids, your family, evaluate if you're spending time with the right friends, with the right family and the right teammates.

Speaker 1:

You know the reality is there might be some teams that are just a downright negative influence on your kids or even you. I remember there was a it was similar to the Boy Scouts that an activity that I did for about a year or two with my dad. My brother, dave, and I did this and it was kind of fun, but I remember my dad talking about the fact that all the other dads, all they wanted to do together was go out and drink and, and so we decided to end our time in that activity. I don't even remember what it was called, uh, but that would be an example of realizing, like, maybe the activity is good, but the people you're spending time with aren't necessarily good for you, and so it's just really important to realize, you know, we've had, we've had friends through the years where you realize, man, yes, they're my friend, but when I leave I actually feel like my cup is less full because maybe they're just very negative versus some friends.

Speaker 1:

You leave you're like holy smokes, I feel energized, right, and the reality is we want to live a life where we're managing energy and we're intentional about it and we're spending time. You know, and of course goes without saying, we all have those family members. That are the energy anchors and you know sometimes they're unavoidable. But you also want to put some barriers in place, or with boundaries healthy boundaries to be able to minimize and make a plan for how you're going to handle those types of energy anchors.

Speaker 3:

Yes. And then when it comes to our kids and I'm reflecting on, you know, some of the activities we've had them do or stay in or repeat. It's been a lot of times because of the culture that's created in that activity, especially in sports. That's where most of our boys spend time and it's because of great associations with you know, the right coaches and the right players and their families and people that we can do life with. It's where you kind of build your village of like. How do we find the connections to spend long term time with people, allow our kids to go over to their house or them to come to our house, or it leads to youth group connections. Church and youth group are another activity where, again, we're looking for the right people to speak into our kids and being really conscious of that and teaching them really to learn for themselves, because we're not going to control that once they hit the teenage years, and so we're looking for them to be discerning in that area.

Speaker 3:

So, let's talk about the biblical perspective of stewardship.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we talk about stewardship all the time and we know that God expects us to steward our time, our talent and our treasure. And the reality is the things that families are involved in. They take time and a lot of it is also developing helping your child develop their skill sets and things that are part of their talent. And then the other piece is the financial aspect, where you know there are we've met and known a lot of families that the extracurricular activities are a financial burden and the reality is, most of the time that probably isn't a good decision for you. If it's creating extra stress financially, it's time to scale back, find a more affordable version or maybe just take a break for a season. Maybe you need to take a year off and go build a side hustle. A year off and go build a side hustle and that a year later that side hustle can pay for way more than you ever thought possible and the stress is now completely gone.

Speaker 3:

You know when that actually takes me back to. You know when we were developing our coaching practice way back in 2011, 2012, probably 2012. Yeah, you were in on the business. You wanted to build it with me. You were a full-time police officer no longer really working overtime, but still working at least 40 hours a week and we made some fundamental decisions, knowing that we were on a path to build income to bring you home.

Speaker 3:

That was your desired outcome, and we knew that it was going to take getting lean in our time and lean in our finances to do that, and it was something we just decided to go all in on. So we cut back on our own extracurricular activities. Our kids were young enough that we weren't running all over the place, but I think if we were speaking to ourselves today, wanting to do the same thing, we would have had to balance out not having our kids miss out on things, but also saying what could we say no to for this next season, which for us, was about 18 months that would allow us to build a life later that we would be so grateful for, and we did it in 2012, right, wasn't that the year that this happened?

Speaker 2:

2013?.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, where we said no to a lot of extra things and we lived very lean on our finances and we were able to bring you home. And that's the life we live today. We work together, we parent together, we have a lot of time together. Our kids have had stay-at-home parents really most of their lives, and it's because of the decisions we made 10 years ago, 11 years ago.

Speaker 1:

The other benefit of taking a break is a lot of times you think you enjoy things because you're in the routine and then you take a break and you don't go back to them, and the fact that you're not going back as a reminder, oh my gosh. I was actually spending a lot of time on something that wasn't as important to me as I actually thought that it was Like. For me, that would have been softball. I enjoy it and I would like to do it again at some point, but it was something we did every summer. It was fun, it was enjoyable. I still really miss it.

Speaker 1:

But at the same time, I've found other hobbies that that I'm able to do during the school day that don't require, you know, because a nighttime hobby for you and I were having to go to a softball field one or two times a week, um, you know, at night, like that would be a major disruption for the family, um, and and so it just was taking a break. There's gonna be some things you take a break. You're like, oh man, I really miss it. And there's gonna be others where you take a break.

Speaker 1:

You're like oh I'm actually okay without it, and so it can be good from that standpoint sometimes we just need perspective by stepping back for a little while.

Speaker 2:

Uncommon freedom is a game changer, not only for the focused leader, but also for the rudderless sojourner seeking direction. When Kevin talks, I listen, I lean in and always leave a better man. As the wisdom of Proverbs 3.13 states, happy is the man who finds wisdom and the man who gains understanding. I want to warn you in advance to prepare your spirit for a heart and mind shift as you read this book. I have learned that conviction comes when the heart is open to change. As I read this book, I was moved on several occasions to evaluate my personal life and make course corrections. This isn't just a book. It's a manual for creating godly leaders who we desperately need today and especially as our children walk the earth in, whatever it looks like 10, 20, 30 years from now. Who knows that? We need leaders who embody these things? Because not only do we need people who are healthy and wealthy and have the right heart, but we need people who know where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

Speaker 3:

All right. Number three is really the steps it takes to conduct a family energy audit. So here are a couple of the practical like hey, step one, step two. Let's go through these because it's not complicated, but you're going to want to do the process well if you want to have a good understanding of really what's on your family's plate.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So the first is to identify energy givers and takers, so list common family activities and categorize them as energy givers or takers and then discuss how we'll talk about how you can involve all family members in this process. So one of the things we want to be careful of is that there's some things in life you do and they're not fun, and so we're not saying that you want to create an environment where your kids think, oh, everything is going to be fun, everything is going to be an engine. That's not the case. But at the same time, it's important to evaluate what is the best way for me to serve, what's the best activity for me to be in?

Speaker 1:

You know, just as an example, you know, plugged in our church, we typically serve once a month. Yep, for me, greeting is not like, I'm not an extrovert, and so greeting is an energy draining activity. Where I'm on the worship team, I love that. You know I'm a semi gifted guitarist and being on the worship team energizes me, and we bring our kids along with this and we give them options on hey, like, we want you to help, but we don't tell our introvert oldest son hey, you're going to be a greeter on Easter Sunday when there's hundreds of extra guests.

Speaker 1:

And so I think, just doing the audit and look at the activities your family is spending time on and then talk about, are these energy givers and energy takers? When it comes to family activities like hobbies or things that you do as a family just for fun, maybe you ask each of your kids, list out some of the things you do and find out is this something you enjoy or something that you could really leave behind? And if there's something that everyone really could do without, then get rid of that and focus more of your time on doing the activities.

Speaker 3:

Or it might've been something that was great for a season and then, like, the age of your kids changes and it's not such a good fit. Something that was great for a season and then, like, the age of your kids changes and it's not such a good fit, or you might find a better or different way to do it. So, for example, boating you know we started in 2020. It's an enjoyable family activity. I would say for me, boating was more of an energy taker than giver, even though I love being on the water. It was the before and after, like the setup and the teardown, so to speak. For you, I think it's more of an energy giver and you were willing to sacrifice the 45 minute drive there and back.

Speaker 3:

So all those things meant like it wasn't my favorite thing to do, even though when I was actually on the water with my family I loved it. But one of the things we did to pivot is we eventually sold the boat and stopped paying for you know the expensive slip and things and we rented or what's it called.

Speaker 3:

It's a boat membership, so when we do go, we reduce some of our drag. So now we don't have to spend 30 minutes getting the boat prepped when we arrive and 30 minutes or so, you know, putting it away. So we've reduced some of that drag. We don't boat a lot right now, but it also means we're not we haven't overly invested financially to where it's disappointing when we don't go. So I would say that was just a way to learn to do it differently. So number one is to identify the givers and takers of energy, and don't forget it's not just activities, it can also be people. So this isn't like you make a list of the people that suck in your life, but it is good for each of us and our children sometimes to say to ourselves like which people do I spend a lot of time with that are not good for me in the long term? And if it's just like you know, well, these are the kids I go to school with. That's fine no-transcript.

Speaker 1:

The team that your work puts together. If you don't necessarily enjoy hanging out outside of work with those your coworkers, maybe it's creating your own team and assembling, you know it's the perfect opportunity to upgrade your circle. Run with lions and you put together a softball team of other families, you know, if it's co-ed other couples that you like and that have an edifying marriage, versus just taking whatever you can get. So it's about being intentional.

Speaker 3:

We're going to do that someday, maybe if we're not too old to play softball by the time we get done.

Speaker 1:

If you're in the Gilbert Arizona area Parenting. We're taking applications for competitive people who are very rusty, but we're competitive. If you suck, please don't apply.

Speaker 3:

And if you're a superstar, we're probably not qualified to play with you.

Speaker 1:

But we'll take you on our team.

Speaker 3:

I had another thought on that Exactly. Oh, I was also thinking when it comes to people who are anchors, engines, energy givers or takers, this isn't like well, I'm not going to spend any time with people that need me because there are. There are assignments in our life, especially as Christians. There are people that we are called to speak into, spend time with love on, serve, and that may not be our favorite activity, but it might be something we're called to do or appointed to do.

Speaker 3:

I think that you can still manage the amount of time you spend with that person. But we're not saying like I'm selfishly only going to spend time with my three favorite people for the rest of my life. But it is something to take to have an awareness of, because sometimes what we do is we spend time in these scenarios or with these people, but we don't know why we don't feel great when we're done. We just say, like you know, I'm grouchy when I get home from something or I'm biting my family's heads off because I just did a couple of coffee dates with people that honestly sucked the life out of me, you know. Whereas if you start to pay attention, then you say like hey, I have 30 minutes or 45 minutes, or I would love to chat with you for 15 minutes instead of giving you 90 minutes of my in-person time. So you start to figure out how to spend that time carefully, like a bank account.

Speaker 1:

Preach it sister.

Speaker 3:

All right.

Speaker 1:

All right. The next step is to evaluate time allocation.

Speaker 1:

I jumped right ahead to that so basically, we want you to assess where your family time is currently being spent, and so this is, you know, sitting down looking at your calendar. We've been talking a lot about using an electronic calendar, whether it's Google or something else that's shared. Uh, the great thing about that is you have a record of what you've been doing. If you utilize it, like when I'm trying to remember when do we do something, I just go to my calendar, I search and I can find it, it's pretty cool, Um, so it's a great way to incorporate that into your audit. And then we want to make sure that our time allocation truly aligns with our values. So this is where you might look at how much time you're actually spending on TV. There's a benefit to just unwinding, but the family enrichment that happens watching TV together versus playing a game together or swimming in a pool together or whatever it is that your family you know playing pickleball, whatever it might be, isn't going to be the same.

Speaker 3:

Number three is to analyze the impact on family goals. So we're talking about family goals and how activities contribute to or detract from your goals. So now let's talk about serving.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so one of our goals is to serve monthly at church. We went through a long season where we just weren't at the right churches where it made sense. Our kids were at an age where it didn't make sense. But we want to serve once a month and some people might serve weekly.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, there's some amazing families out there that are, and if you can do that, that is incredible because churches need that kind of volunteer. It's just for us, with our family schedule in life. We decided what we can do and commit to long-term, and not just short-term, is monthly.

Speaker 1:

But the other thing is this is where we talk about calendaring. So you know we look at a couple months out and I let you know. The worship team leader know this is when I'm available, they schedule me and then we all do it together. So you serve in the nursery the same day, so that we're killing two birds with one stone, because it's a busy Sunday and then we let the kids know we're serving as a family on this day.

Speaker 1:

But you know, we've had some challenges with our kids working, getting scheduled, even though on the front end we said you're not working on Sundays. You know getting scheduled on Sundays and we're okay with them working if it doesn't conflict with church. But it was regularly conflicting, so we had to lean in a little bit. But uh, you know, just understanding, you know what are your goals. You know we've talked about we haven't formalized this, but we like taking missions trips as well, and so we've planned some of these. We put these on the calendar with the kids. You know we think it's really important for the kids not only to serve locally but to get outside the country, uh, just to have a better appreciation.

Speaker 3:

Well, and Carson's about to be 18. And I mean he's done a number of service activities in the time he's been part of our family multiple trips to Mexico to build the trip to Kenya. Um, I'm not sure if there's other things, but specifically the house building in Mexico is pretty regular, you know, like feed my starving children.

Speaker 1:

Feed my starving children, which is a great local thing that we can do.

Speaker 3:

Oh, and then we've you know, worked within the foster community taking kids shopping and things like that.

Speaker 3:

So you know again, in his lifetime we could always do more, but we've definitely at least once a year done something as a family to serve others, whether it's locally or abroad. There's definitely different things. You know, we as entrepreneurs have more flexibility in our schedules, but we're also just, I think, because we started our marriage more with the what we were aiming for and our intentions. We've been pretty intentional about how we set our family structure up and gotten more clear over time. And it's not that other people are doing it wrong. I just think other people just kind of like life happens versus being yeah.

Speaker 1:

And the only reason that we've done it is because we're intentional about it. I think there's some families that naturally do it.

Speaker 3:

Our life is very busy and some family members serve way more than we do, you know.

Speaker 1:

But if we didn't, if we weren't intentional about it, if we didn't calendar it, it wouldn't happen.

Speaker 3:

So okay. So step four is to create an action plan. So this means having strategies for increasing your energy giving activities. So what do we want to do more of? Who do we want to spend more time with? And then reducing energy, taking ones. And, specifically, what's nice about analysis of your life, I think, is when we do our year end review, which we're coming up on and we're going to do an in-person event, I believe, in December, and we're going to talk about this more and more as we share this with other people because we want more people than just the few people that did it last year with us to go through this year end reflection guide.

Speaker 3:

But one of the questions I believe is like who do you want to spend more time with and who do?

Speaker 3:

you want to spend less time with? What activity do you want to? What activities or activity or hobby do you want to spend more time on? What do you want to spend less time on? So we do that on a yearly basis, but you can't just do something once a year and expect it to actually work out for yourself. So the strategies for both energy giving and energy taking is, first of all, delete the things that are energy taking if possible, or reduce it.

Speaker 3:

We've talked about this before. I think it was Darren Hardy who talks about the rule of twos. There's the people you can spend two days with, there are people you can spend two hours with and there are people you can spend two minutes with, and sometimes we confuse those and sometimes people change. So if we have people that we used to be able to do two day trips with and we've started to spend time together and it's taking energy from us, they might become someone we do a two hour meal with or vice versa, and then calendaring our rocks. So as far as our action plan for you and I, a big part of it is every year going away together and saying we're going to take three family trips and we're going to commit to those and then also when we want to do more energy giving activities. It's checking in on those daily, weekly and monthly.

Speaker 1:

And it's calendaring, you know a lot of times, people like you're like well, if it's important, it'll just happen. And the reality is, if it's important, then schedule it to ensure that it happens. And this is why we calendar our daytime, our retreats, our dates with our kids.

Speaker 3:

Quarterly retreats.

Speaker 1:

monthly dates, Different other things Like we don't have to calendar church because that's an automatic given for us, but my monthly poker game that gets calendared every single month. These are things that are energy giving and they're important enough that we calendar them.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely and really. You can tell where your priorities are by your bank account and your calendar.

Speaker 1:

Bam. All right, let's give some practical tips for implementing changes. The first thing is to sit down and discuss upcoming schedule, and the other thing is, if you're going into a busy season, just share the light at the end of the tunnel. We've had to do this with our kids at different seasons and it's really helpful to say, hey, this is what we have coming up for the next four, six, eight weeks, whatever it might be, especially if it's outside of your like kind of the normal routine your family expects.

Speaker 3:

You know like we travel occasionally and then sometimes we travel close together. It's not intended, that's not our favorite. We like to spread it out for the sake of our kids but, just giving them a heads up. Hey, we've got two trips in a row or we're leaving right after we get back from fall break. So heads up on that, they've gotten very used to it.

Speaker 1:

But next thing is to delegate tasks effectively within the family. So you want to look at what makes sense based on the child's skill level and ability, their schedule. Just as an example, one of the things that our kids do every single morning is unload the dishwasher. And we have one child who's more of a morning person. They get up, they get everything done quickly. There was a season when he was unloading the dishwasher and now we have another child whose school start time is much later. So now we have that child doing the dishwasher. So, um, the there was a very short season. We had our child who is the least likely to get up on time doing the dishwasher and it just created unnecessary stress. So instead of like initially, it was like oh, we're going to rotate through, so everything's fair, and we quickly realized this doesn't make sense and so we kind of assign chores based on what makes sense with the child's personality.

Speaker 3:

We're going to parent you the way I like to say it is we're going to parent you uniquely instead of equally.

Speaker 3:

Yes, I mean we do try to parent similarly when it comes to, you know, discipline, rules, guidelines, privileges, yada yada. But the truth is, everybody is so different that, instead of trying to do it equally and perfectly, it's like it's unique based on your abilities, your skills, your age, your maturity, yada, yada. Okay, and then the last part of like the practical tips would be to the importance of regular check-ins. Anytime you want to improve something or measure it, you want to have a regular feedback loop, and so, for us, a lot of this is our monthly and our quarterly double debt time with our kids, where we take them out together, both of us with one of our kids, and just say, hey, what's a pulse check? How's life going? How are we doing as your parents? How are you doing on your goals? How can we make improvements? Same thing, when you and I go away together once a quarter for our quarterly retreats, we get that time away.

Speaker 1:

All right, let's wrap it up by talking about the benefits of a well-managed family energy system. So bottom line is you're going to have less exhaustion and more harmony. So a lot of times you know the fights.

Speaker 3:

Who does not want more of that?

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. The fights that happen between couples are when we're exhausted and tired, and a lot of the strife caused in our families and your family is just because you're running ragged and you're exhausted.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's right. So if you implement these ideas, we would love for you to share with us how it impacts your family. So if you take the energy audit, give us some feedback. We would love to know how it helps or maybe what you've discovered about yourself. So really start your own energy audit, you know this week, and then share those experiences or questions with us on social media.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and that's a wrap for this episode, and Kevin is currently blocked on social media, so if you haven't heard from him or seen him lately, he is in jail, for we don't.

Speaker 1:

I created a new Instagram account, so I am, instead of the, kevin Tinter. I am Kevin Tinter. Okay, on Instagram, take two I have one post and it's my photo. Okay.

Speaker 3:

Rebuilding season for you. Yes, you can find Becca Tinter on Instagram and Facebook, and so, if you will, at least tag us or Uncommon Freedom. We have our own business page on Facebook, of course, so you can tag us there.

Speaker 1:

All right, friends. That is a wrap for this episode on family energy audits. Remember, managing your family's energy isn't about perfection, for sure. It's about making intentional choices that align with your values and faith and pivoting when necessary.

Speaker 3:

Exactly, babe, and I know it can feel overwhelming to start something new, especially when you're already juggling so much. But let's make a commitment to take that first step, even if it's just a small change, because it can make a big difference in your family's life.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and if you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend who might be struggling. We know there's a lot of families that are trying to figure out the back to school routine. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast for more insights on living with uncommon freedom.

Speaker 3:

And thanks for joining us on the path to uncommon freedom. We will catch you next week All right friends.

Speaker 1:

please subscribe to the podcast for more insights on blending entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial mindset with intentional living. You can follow us on social media. We are on Instagram, primarily, and Facebook, and you're going to find daily tips and inspiration from us there. You'll also find us on YouTube lots of shorts as well as our video podcast. And then please, if you enjoy this podcast, please leave us a five-star review and share us, and remember to subscribe on YouTube as well as whatever podcast platform you're listening to us on.