Rosanna 0:14
Hello, and welcome to season two, Episode 12 of the relentless pursuit podcast. We’re calling this one Hello 2021.

Jordan 0:22
Hello.

Rosanna 0:22
This is the last episode of 2020. And the last episode of our second season. So thank you to all of you who have been listening during season one and Season Two and during all of 2020.

Jordan 0:34
Yeah, we really appreciate the opportunities to engage with you. So as folks have been listening, they’ve been sharing just their their thoughts, sharing with us some things that maybe we said that struck them, and maybe kind of like adding some of their own like two cents or perspectives or feedback, as well. So we’ve appreciated all those opportunities just to be able to engage with all of you. And as you listen to these, if there’s anything that stands out to you, I think one of the best things that we would recommend and really enjoy is if you shared either an episode or even a clip of something with someone else who you feel may benefit from whatever thoughts Rosanna and I are sharing with one another. And certainly any shoutouts on social media, we appreciate a great deal as well. So thank you to the many of you who have been doing that. And we’re hoping for a little bit more of that as we continue on as well.

Rosanna 1:29
All right, so what’s up ahead for these next four weeks.

Jordan 1:31
Alright, so this is the last episode of our second season. And just like at the end of our first season, we are going to go dark for about a month, and then we’ll come out with season three. So we each of our seasons so far has had 12 episodes, this being the 12th. One, we’ll take a few weeks off to make sure that we prepare everything for the next set of 12 that we’re pretty excited to bring you, too.

Rosanna 1:56
Yeah, that gives you some time in January to kind of refocus, recalibrate, get ready, and then we’ll kick off on Wednesday, February 3 with our first new episode. That’s right. All right. So you want to just do a quick recap of last week’s episode to kind of launch us forward.

Jordan 2:09
Yeah, I really enjoyed talking about last week’s episode because you you can’t have the conversation we’re about to have about 2021 without the one that we had last week about 2020. So the reflection really needs to come first. And we talked a lot during that conversation that we recorded, but also since then to just about what it was that we felt like 2020 brought to us and what we brought to it. So that was our reflection. And based on some of those takeaways that we shared with one another. We spent time over the past week really – we haven’t really talked about this together yet at all – but we’re really concentrating on what we would like to try to take advantage of in the upcoming year.

Rosanna 2:52
Yeah, I agree. As I was getting ready some of my notes for today to share. All I could think of was that song that we don’t really know the words to but plays after the New Year rings. Right. So it’s called Auld Lang Syne. So it’s an Irish song. And what that means is Auld Lang Syne is for old times sake. So the song is all about reminiscing the year that has gone by. And so we did that last week. But now we’re not going to dwell on the last year. That’s now behind us. But we’re going to move forward. And so today’s episode is really all about kind of setting goals, making a plan, having a vision for what’s ahead.

Jordan 3:33
Alright, well, let’s bring in the new year here. Looking forward to celebrating the turning of the page.

Rosanna 3:43
Here we go. You know what, there’s one thing though, that I do want to address that maybe we didn’t say last last week. And that’s what that 2020 was hard. So if you didn’t achieve your goals from last year, and you’re barely hanging on, I feel like that’s okay. Be proud that you’re still here that you’re still standing. Because sometimes that’s more than enough. And I don’t think we give people enough credit sometimes for just just surviving. It’s some people are meant to thrive and for others, it’s it’s just about survival.

Jordan 4:14
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think we can hold you know what happened this past year against ourselves. And if we are, in a, say it in a tough spot, I think we’re looking forward to like what 2021 may bring. And I really appreciated the just the conversation we were able to have with Jason Waller in Episode 10, talking about resiliency. And I feel like there’s some great takeaways from that just personally, that I’m hoping to just bring to my mindset to my attitude towards what’s ahead. But yeah, 2020 was extremely challenging for many of us.

Rosanna 4:47
Yeah. You know, this is what I love when we have these conversations because I wanted to bring up that conversation of resiliency too. Because really those three kind of takeaways for him we’re focusing on what you can control, finding gratitude for what you do have, and then finding ways and solutions to move forward. So really, goal setting is a powerful process. And it helps you to choose where you want to go. And so that’s what this episode is all about: choosing where we want to go moving forward. And just like all of our conversations, like it comes back to intentionality, like the life we want won’t just happen, you need a plan. Sometimes you need a challenge, and some accountability. So we need to cultivate our days and our time. And so that’s what today’s episode is all about.

Jordan 5:29
Yeah, yeah, like that. Because I don’t want I don’t want 2021 to dictate to me what my opportunities or limitations are. I mean, there there is an extent to which that is inevitable. But I think that we have much more in control than sometimes we are aware of, and it takes this process to really make sure that we leverage that moving forward.

Rosanna 5:52
All right. So do you want to dive into just kind of what our goals and what our plans are? Or,

Jordan 5:59
Well I can’t talk about our goals? And we haven’t we know, we

Rosanna 6:01
haven’t, I can talk about my already mine. Okay.

Jordan 6:05
Yes, but I, I’m kind of curious, like, I have a sketch right now. And I think everyone needs to know that this is a process. So we can’t just sit down and real quickly, like scribble outside. Okay, next year, I have goals one, two, and three, because it, maybe it comes like that quickly to to some of us or maybe some folks have have put some thought into it ahead of time. But for me, at least, like there is a process to it. So I consider what I have now to be a draft, you’re going to give me feedback on my draft. And I really think over the course of the next month like this is going to become more refined and more clear. Rather, the more thought I put into what’s the most feasible and what’s the most just kind of like the biggest goals that I really want to put my time and attention towards.

Rosanna 6:50
Yeah, and I think you’re right, because you’ve made some lists of some notes, I’ve made some lists, but then what we’ll do probably within the next couple weeks is kind of like go through it together and kind of see where we are individually, how we can craft that around what we want our family to like our family time and things to look like how we can help support each other. So this conversation is a jumping off point. I’ve picked some practical things that I could share with our audience that really have nothing to do with you or us it’s more about like me, and then we kind of like work those those things in but when we’re talking about setting goals, I think there’s a number of levels in which you can set goals or resolutions or plans or you know, however you want to look at it. You have

Jordan 7:31
so you have different levels to what suits you.

Rosanna 7:34
Yeah I think last year I looked at like big picture, like what certain categories bigger pictures and breaking them down into like smaller targets that I could like keep track of. So I think that’s something that people can do. You know, you brought up the questions last year, how do I want this year to look? How do I want this year to feel? So like, it could be more of like a like more setting intentions. A lot of people choose words of the year like that they want to frame everything under like a certain word. You know, I had a word last year and it was “cultivate.” And so I thought it was going to be about like cultivating my business and like cultivating, like, there’s certain things that like it fell under that umbrella. And what’s funny is like about like six months in so this was in June, I pulled out my goal planner, and I was like, This word is being used in a far different way than I had ever imagined. It was about cultivating our kids and our family and the shift and the focus of our life. And so it’s interesting to see how the, the direction I thought that word was gonna drive me, you know, just out of the things that I could not control, it kind of took a whole nother path. And so it’s kind of beautiful to kind of see how that transpired. But it wasn’t necessarily what I intended.

Jordan 8:41
Yeah. So you’re saying like everyone has really their own way of going about this? I’m sure you have. And you have a way that’s a little bit different than mine as well. And I don’t really even do it the same way twice. So the way I went about constructing my vision for 2020 looks different than what I ended up coming up with this year.

Rosanna 8:59
Okay, so do you want to start or do you want me to start,

Jordan 9:02
I kind of want you to go first because I think it’s gonna make me reflect on what I have. And maybe even I’ll modify it as we go.

Rosanna 9:08
Hey, we’re all different. So it’s all gonna look different. So I think I’m gonna start with I was thinking about those two questions. What do I want this year to look like? How do I want it to feel? And I tied that to like having a word for the year. So I just shared that last year’s word was “cultivate.” I feel like the word that I want to kind of focus on this year is the word “engage” or “engaged.” I want to be all in and with like the caveat that I want to be all in, in whatever area or arena I’m in. And however the year kind of takes us what however the nuance of the year goes like I’m just going to be engaged in whatever’s in front of me. So that means my business is booming because now people are making up for weddings and people are getting vaccinated and there’s weddings every week. I’m like, I’m going to be all in and if it means – and if it also means that my kids are home for another school. You’re and they’re going to need me like, then I’m going to be all in. And if it means something else entirely, like whatever that is, I’m going to be all in. So that’s kind of like big picture is that I’m going to be engaged. Because I think for part of this year, what ended up happening to me is, because everything shift, and I’m home, and I’m managing elearning, and whenever I felt a little, like, disengaged and distracted –

Jordan 10:22
Yeah, cuz you were still trying to function along playing A. And then meanwhile, we threw out plan A without your permission –

Rosanna 10:30
and then I didn’t change my goals accordingly. So looking back to last year, I had all these great goals, these great intentions that the first three months of the year, months of the year, I was nailing. And then I didn’t like reassess and like, plan new goals. So that’s kind of I want to be all in and engage. That’s how I want my year to look, that’s how I want it to feel. And that means if things shift, then I need to be all in wherever I can. Or wherever the year it takes me. So in having said that, I have goals, would you want me to just go and then you can just kind of go after me

Jordan 11:05
Fire away, and I’ll add my two cents accordingly.

Rosanna 11:08
So I have some business goals that I’m not going to share, I have some family goals. And

Jordan 11:12
You should share those. Or just some of those go without saying? You want to grow your business –

Rosanna 11:16
There are certain things that like, you know, I shared last week that would, you know, still be similar. But these are some specific things. And they’re based on what’s funny is they’re based on a lot of the conversations we’ve had on the podcast this year. And I’m what I’m thinking is, you know, kind of turning this into a blog post, then I’ll throw up on the blog, because people can read through it a little bit better. But, I mean, our conversations have inspired me to look at some of these specific areas. And the first one is phone usage. And so instead of adding goals and picking things up and trying to one more thing, I need less of it. You I You and I are very different. I’m always on my phone, you know that I know even just to look at me, and I’m like, Don’t judge me like I’m on my phone disengaging because I’m overwhelmed.

Jordan 11:58
If that is a goal of yours, then I very willingly support you in this endeavor.

Rosanna 12:12
So I want less of it less time on my phone, stop wasting time and work on a plan to like really like not cold turkey because like I need it for like I want to use it as a tool for my business, or is it you know, tool for this or that but to the mindless scrolling and like the incessant time on it is too much. So that’s my first goal.

Jordan 12:32
Yeah. And frankly, I’m, I’m kind of like, over like the phone too. Like, it’s just, it’s, it’s I feel like it’s just always with me, like where is Oh, it’s in my pocket. It’s like the one ring from from Lord of the Rings where it’s like, oh, I thought I put it over there? No, actually, it’s in my pocket. And like, like, it’s just always on your mind. And it kind of turns you over time like into this. And so yeah, actually, that was one of the things I’ve listed too, for myself. But I think we’ve talked about that a lot this year. So now it’s time to almost like develop a new habit that’s oriented towards your phone.

Rosanna 13:04
So I haven’t made the steps yet. Or like how I’m going to like like, maybe my phone locks itself and I can’t get it. Like, I just feel like it’s a problem. Like, it’s legitimately a problem. I am on it too much. And so that’s my first thing. And by setting that goal, I think that’s gonna allow for some of my other goals to reemerge because it’s wasting my time.

Jordan 13:23
I think so too. And it it’s distracting. It kind of steals you into this, this digital world where if you want to be engaged like this, probably not what you need most of the time.

Rosanna 13:32
It doesn’t make me stronger, or happier, or it does nothing for me –

Jordan 13:36
I have an app on my phone so I can control the devices on the network.

Rosanna 13:41
Whoo, that’s right. Yeah. Okay, let’s not talk about it.

Jordan 13:45
All right, we’ll work through the practicality.

Rosanna 13:47
So I think that’s gonna just open up a lot of time. And it’s gonna open up a lot of like, peace and clarity for me, which kind of goes into my second goal, which is I have a reading goal this year. Okay. And so the first one is about less. And this one is about more. 2020 was actually the year in the last five years that I’ve read the least amount. I just because we’ve had way more time, except there’s kids here all the time, and dogs and all of these crazy things. But so I have these kind of micro goals, which is I’d like to read six books in the first six months of the year. So a book a month, and then 20 total for the year.

Jordan 14:24
Alright, so –

Rosanna 14:25
A minimum of six in the first six months, which is a book a month –

Jordan 14:27
So you better pick up the pace because you don’t want to be stuck reading 14

Rosanna 14:31
Because of summer and whatnot. Okay, one one of my goals last year was to, like enjoy and disengage more like by your like relaxing. And so the six books I did read were all fiction. And that’s the first time I’ve read fiction and probably like three years, it’s always been like nonfiction about learning and growing. And so like, while I met that goal, just the amount of time I spent reading was a lot less and I think it was because I was on my phone a lot more. And so I think those two are related.

Jordan 14:59
Okay. Well, one of those books can be the book club book for The Relentless Pursuit Podcast Season Three.

Rosanna 15:05
Maybe. But I am going to share what I chose for my first book, okay, in case people are interested in what we’re reading, or maybe they need a book. This is called Atomic Habits. It’s tiny changes, remarkable results and easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones. So I think that’s the first one I’m going to dive in.

Jordan 15:21
Where did you get that? I haven’t seen that before. I bought it on Amazon. Okay, okay.

Rosanna 15:25
I like when Amazon packages arrive when you’re not here. Guilt-free shopping, ladies and gentlemen. All right, number three, we had a whole episode about hobbies and hustles. And it got me thinking about the fact that I feel like I’m lacking in hobbies. Although I’ve been working out consistently and I’ve even like tried yoga this year, which has been like good for me. Like, I feel like that’s like in a health category. And I wanted something like a little bit more creative and artsy, to kind of like, help inspire me. And so I thought about this a lot. I’ve researched a little bit and I think I want to learn calligraphy.

Jordan 16:00
Yes, you’d be very good at that.

Rosanna 16:02
Because, right, my graphic design background, and I am artsy, like I can draw pretty well. And it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I can take classes online, they send you a kit, they do like e-courses, and actually someone who does that actually lives like right here in Bloomingdale that I know, we’ve partnered before on events for wedding, she actually does like stationery and calligraphy. And so I contacted her and like, I’m excited. So something just for me something creative, and fun.

Jordan 16:26
There you go, and then you could use so you’re saying you could use that, like, you know, within the context of your business, but it’s really, it’s just something you’re personally interested in. And you’re like, I want to learn more. See where this goes.

Rosanna 16:36
And so I’m going to spend a little money by the kit, like do some online zoom classes, like when they have some in person ones, like maybe take one and like, find something fun to do. Instead of it always being about work or learning. Something to let go.

Jordan 16:49
You’re still learning. Well, yeah, but nice, fun, fun learning,

Rosanna 16:52
But not like because I need to grow my business or a podcast or something like that. Number four is a gratitude journal. I thought a lot about this. We’ve been talking a lot about being grateful. And I do want to extend throughout the whole year. And so I picked up another book. And this one is 52 weeks of gratitude of one year journal, and it says to reflect, pray and record thankfulness. So it’s broken up for one week of the year and it’s a different topic. So it’s not like okay, what are you grateful for today? So like, week one, rest week three, hospitality. week seven laughter week eight,

Jordan 17:23
What’s week 41?

Rosanna 17:26
Week eight is laundry day can’t wait. Week 41: trees.

Jordan 17:31
All right. So you really cover the whole gamut there. So does this count is one of your 20 books?

Rosanna 17:36
Not one of my 20 books? No.

Jordan 17:37
I would say so.

Rosanna 17:39
No, I mean, there’s things to read and things to consider. And it’s broken up by category. But I do I want to be more grateful for not just the big things, but the little things. So and it’s a good way to write and reflect and pray. And so I’m going to try it. So 52 weeks of gratitude. Target has it. Amazon has it.

Jordan 17:57
We could put a link to these on our site, in case anyone’s interested too.

Rosanna 18:01
And then the last big one I’m going to share is generosity. This one’s been on my mind a lot lately. I know some people would characterize us as generous, like will donate to causes or will volunteer our time. But I feel like and we’ve been talking about this the last few years, like we really want to, like find our cause or some causes and back them or participate more heavily. And I feel like it’s really time to do that. So I have not yet researched like what it’s going to be, but I want to commit to it. I want to commit to something outside of myself. And I want it to be more than just like writing a check. Or when someone has like a yeah, like a donation thing like or doing you know doing it –

Jordan 18:37
You should do those. It’s almost like too easy though. It’s like the problem is out there somewhere. And like you go here some money like go, good luck with that.

Rosanna 18:45
Yeah. So I want to that’s something I want to work on with you is like what can we maybe commit to what are we interested in ias maybe a family and even get the entire family involved in that? That cause Yeah. Okay. And then this is just like a little nuance thing. I have I get a planner every year, I have a commit 30 planner, and they do these things where like, you should just commit to 30 day challenges. It’s not something that has to like last all year or quarterly, but like doing something 30 days at a time. So maybe like doing maybe doing some of these together or apart but like doing something like a dry January like 30 days no alcohol or no sweets in February or committing to like, run or walk a certain number of miles for a month and you know, just like as a way to be because we are a little competitive, but builds good healthy habits.

Jordan 19:33
All right. Yeah. Actually, the healthy competition is not a bad idea.

Rosanna 19:37
So yeah, so that’s just kind of some of the things that I’m looking at. Not all of them but some of them.

Jordan 19:43
Yeah, on my list the two there’s some things I didn’t even write down because it almost like goes without saying it’s like well, I want to call my parents every week. Well, it kind of goes without saying like, I’m gonna do that. Or what was another one like, like, try to like be a better dad and find fun things to do with The kids like it, that’s gonna happen. So I don’t need to write that down. I don’t need to focus on that, because that’s already just where my natural inclination is. So there’s there’s definitely there’s some overlap. So the good news is there’s some overlap with what we’ve, we’ve both come up with. So I’ll get to those.

Rosanna 20:15
I like that. Because to me, that just means we we are growing together. And we are like minded and we’re trying to get to our final destination together. So that makes me think.

Jordan 20:26
What’s the final destination? That’s a little dark.

Rosanna 20:30
relentlessly pursuing a life worth living together! Come on!

Jordan 20:32
It’s the pursuit. It’s the journey along the way. I don’t know if there is a destination, somewhere one I really good eulogy. Okay, um, so the way I organize this, let me cover that first is that I have various, I would say categories here. But like, last year, the categories were, I don’t know more. Shoot, I’m gonna use the word categorical. It’s stupid. But it was like personal, professional, finance, you know, those kinds of categories? I don’t have those categories this year. What I did was I listed, I have six different categories. But I’ve one kind of overarching, guiding question. So let me share the guiding question that it was, “Who do I want to be in 2021?” Not what do I want to do? Or what goals do I have to set? Sometimes? Those are like the first questions that I base everything off of, but I’m looking at this conversation at the end of next year. And I want to think alright, “Who was I?” Was I the kind of person that I know, I I really feel like I ought to be. Because I think pretty often we’re not or we don’t stop to ask that question. So I wrote down two things in response to that, who do I want to be? The first one is to have an increased awareness and care of others around me. Right. And I think I can, sometimes I have so many, like goals or things that I’m working on that I just try to channel my energy towards those, to the extent that I am I lose, it’s not like I’m uncaring, but I can genuinely increase – it’s not like develop – but actually increased my awareness and care. That goes for you. It goes for the kids that goes for the extended family that goes for neighbors, for colleagues, for everyone I come in contact with, and even people I’ve never met. So we were like, talking about causes and things. So kind of have this others-orientedness to an extent that I have not demonstrated in previous years.

Rosanna 22:41
I’m super proud of you. I am like it really, I’m like, slightly choked up about it. Because you are very goal-oriented. And you’re very like focused on like, what you want to get done. And it’s never at the expense of others, but you’ve never really like thought about like maybe that caring for others is just as important as whatever that goal is.

Jordan 23:05
Yeah. Right. No one ever regrets, like, you know, doing a good, a good thing, right? A good deed, and but it’s hard to do it in the first place, because it’s putting others first.

Rosanna 23:15
I think that’s gonna be hard for you. I’m not gonna lie.

Jordan 23:17
Well, that’s it. That’s why it’s not because you’re a bad person to focus on it. Yeah.

Rosanna 23:22
Okay, go ahead.

Jordan 23:23
Alright, so then. So that was the first thing I came up with. The second thing was I want to be committed to consistently doing the things I care about and know that work. Because I mean, so many times, we’re like, Well, I know, like what I should be doing in this instance. But I don’t do that, like we default to maybe habits that we know aren’t as constructive for ourselves. And I know, I can certainly do that. So just recognize, like, Alright, like, I’m 37 years old here, okay, I know what works life, I don’t need to like, kind of play around with life anymore. Like I kind of kind of figured out like the things that work and the things that don’t, for the most part. So just almost like take my own advice and be like, No, I don’t need that. Or I do need this and actually do it. Alright, so those, those are two of the guiding things. So a lot of the things that I list are stemming off of those. So here’s my six categories that that ended up evolving into, and there’s tons of overlap overlap here. In anyone listening like I don’t, I don’t think like these needs to be like strictly like defined. It’s just just a matter of putting it down and thinking through it. So someone listening is going to be like, well, like what he puts in one category could easily go in another, it doesn’t matter. So the first one was what I want to maintain. And I feel like there’s a lot of good things, but I wrote down two in particular, I wanted to write down like working out, because this year I’ve been the most consistent with that. And I feel like I’m in a good spot. I’d like to keep that going. And our intentional times together. We I think that fluctuated throughout the year. But that’s one thing I would really like to enjoy and maintain me and you.

Rosanna 25:04
All right, all right, I’m on board.

Jordan 25:06
Alright, so the next category is things to improve. So stuff that has happened. But I would like to continue on that trajectory. One is with eating, I’ve taken a new interest. And you know, I used to like to look at people who are like vegetarians or vegans and be like, That’s weird. And now I’m now thinking like, they might be onto something. So I’m not gonna give up meat or anything like that. But I’ve been enjoying salads a great deal more. And which really surprised me. And you know, I’d like to –

Rosanna 25:32
well, when you put like quinoa, and chickpeas and butternut squash –

Jordan 25:37
I’ve been impressed with the salad world this year. Yeah. All right, this one’s a little bit more philosophical. But I would like to improve in knowing what I stand for. Right. And I think I as well as many others, can be very quick to like, have a stance on something, or to take a side or to be part of a tribe and just kind of follow along, I would like to be able to articulate to myself, I’m not thinking of that, to what extent we can engage with others, but to myself, I’d like to be able to really articulate here’s the stance, I take on like this particular issue or aspect. And here’s the reasons why. And having reasons why. I’d like to improve just with money management. I mean, that almost goes without saying, but that my attention to detail fluctuates. So I’d like to improve with the consistency of that. And another one, too, that will filter into a few others is I like to ask for advice and feedback more often.

Rosanna 26:35
Okay.

Jordan 26:37
Habits, morning routines, like, I’ve had one. So I want to like maintain and even just kind of make sure that I adhere to that. So we’ll talk maybe about more about morning routines in a different show next season. And I’ve wrote on electronics too, because I use my electronics differently than you. But I feel the same way where it’s a lot of unnecessaryness, the thing is always with me, I can just leave it and open up some mental space to engage with what is actually around me. I wrote down a few 30 day experiments as well. Right. So this is where there’s this aligns. And the idea of the experiment, I think, is just to see it’s like, let’s see what happens. Let’s see how I feel during and at the end of this. And it’s not like a year, sometimes we make a year long commitment. And it just becomes too much. And it becomes like frustrating. And then we feel like we let ourselves down. 30 days is manageable. So I did – I’m actually this is what I’m going to do January one is no alcohol or caffeine. Now, okay, I do more morning coffee. But you know, I’ll have like coffee or espresso like in afternoons or evenings pretty often too. And then I’ll often have like wine with dinner or something. But I wanted almost like see how I feel in the evenings. Because we’ve talked about that as well is like just know those chemicals kind of messing with your body at night. So I just want to see what happens, like, how do I feel? If I take out that for 30 days? Well,

Rosanna 28:10
I’m part of that is journaling about how you feel and being a little bit more in tune to your body and kind of paying attention.

Jordan 28:16
Yeah. Another thing with that is 30 days, no sweets. So I think you mentioned the exact same two things. So we can do that together. I would love you might like this one, because it involves you. I would love 30 consistent days, 30 consecutive days of having, like some quality, like just conversation with you every night. Oh, so we do it, like once a week, which I really like. But what would be like if we just did 30 days in a row?

Rosanna 28:46
Well, that’s not to say that we don’t see each other don’t talk. It’s just like the level of how deep we go.

Jordan 28:53
30 to 60 minutes before we we fall asleep. And I’d like to take 30 days just to kind of exclude you and spend like 30 to 60 minutes just writing. And that goes along with some of the goals too. So those are four experiments that I have a couple to do’s that go along with that is to I’d like to see nutritionist this year. I’d like to see a sleep specialist as well. Just like ask for advice from experts in this case and try to improve myself. And I don’t know about what yet but I’d like to take a class. All right, so you’re doing a class one class. Alright, and finally, the final category was actual goals. Right? So those were a lot of like, a lot of like lists and to dues of minor things right? It’s

Rosanna 29:36
good like things to consider things to try nothing that like you know, the even your two dues and your 30 minute or your 30 day – you know, things just kind of happen.

Jordan 29:44
Yeah. Alright, so let me rattle through these real quick. I want to do something new and surprising. I don’t even know what yet something that I would I was not really within my context of experience so far. I would like to explore the concept of goodness and to become more others-oriented. And that goes along with or would like to be consistent – And I want to wait how do I phrase this? I have consistent and surprising charity with my time, money and energy. I want to write more especially about education. Write fiction, and another vague one, my last goal, is to get obsessed with something interesting, right? just kind of let myself go and be like, you know what, I am truly obsessed with that. I don’t know what it’s gonna be.

Rosanna 30:29
Well, I like your guiding questions. I like kind of like your overall umbrella. I love what you have written for this year. I think these are all things that you’ve been thinking a lot about. And I can tell. And what is the one thing I always tell you, when you come up with your lists. There’s something I say to you.

Jordan 30:47
It’s too much. It’s too ambitious. There’s too many things I can be what’s a phrase,

Rosanna 30:51
I think I can you can do anything, but you can’t do everything. So I’m going to share that with you here live, some people are probably like, this guy is crazy. You know, some people set one goal, I want you to feel fulfilled this year, I want you to take those risks and those challenges. So we just got to make the intentional time to support each other through those things.

Jordan 31:12
Yeah. And I, I’m looking, I’m already imagining their conversation a year from now, as I’ll pull out this exact same sheet of paper. And we’ll kind of talk through how did it go? What did we change or add or take off that list as the year went on?

Rosanna 31:28
Yeah. And I think what will help maybe this year too is posting these like, we always have them written somewhere, but it’s in something that’s like closed or but like on our kitchen, little cork board or somewhere where

Jordan 31:38
I think you meant like online, so others could keep track of us.

Rosanna 31:40
– just so that we can see them remind each other keep ourselves accountable, right? Hang on the fridge every time you open it and you’re looking at what am I going to get obsessed with?

Jordan 31:48
Well, you know, what I do every year is I do type these up, and then I put them at the very top of my annual diary, annual jordiz log. And so every time I open that up, that’s the very first thing that shows up is here’s the list of things that you are pursuing this year. And then as I write about each day, you know, the question naturally comes up, how does this day match to the bigger vision that I have for myself?

Rosanna 32:13
Right? Well, thank you guys for listening this week. Thank you for being with us in 2020. And we hope that you take some time, whether it’s before 2021 kicks off, or even during the month of January. Yeah, I mean, we’re maybe you’re going to replace the time that you’ve listened to us each week for 30 to 60 minutes with some time to kind of set some goals. So you know, ask yourself, who do you want to be? What do you want this year to look like? How do you want to feel? What’s your word? Do you need to set big picture goals or small targets? Do you want to challenge yourself and your spouse? You know, what is it that you want to do? Take some time and think about it, dream about it, plan for it. Invest in yourself, invest in each other, and be intentional about cultivating the year in the life that you say you want.

Jordan 33:01
Really excited about what’s coming up in 2021. And we hope that you are as well. So thank you so much for listening today. Thank you for listening all season. And we’ll look forward to seeing you next year.

Rosanna 33:13
Yeah, Happy New Year.

Jordan 33:14
Happy New Year, everyone.

Bye Bye.

Rosanna 0:00
Hello, and welcome to season two episode 11 of the relentless pursuit podcast. Goodbye. 2020

Jordan 0:12
See ya, 2020.

Rosanna 0:15
Is that how you feel about it?

Jordan 0:16
A little bit? Yes, not entirely.

Rosanna 0:19
Well, I don’t know if I feel like fat. But no, this

Jordan 0:23
is not good riddance,

Rosanna 0:24
it’s not good riddance. So, before we say goodbye to 2020, and first time, it’ll be good riddance to 2020. I think it’s important to really consider like the idea of reviewing your year, having kind of like a year in review of sorts, because you don’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been. And so this idea of taking some time to think about the year and what’s happened and kind of what’s unfolded and what you’ve learned, the things that were good. And the things that were not so good are a great tool in helping anybody to prepare for what’s ahead in 2021. So I think that is really important.

Jordan 1:04
Yeah, and this is really the the first of a two episode series what to call it. Because as we prepare for 2021, there’s this first important step of looking back at 2020. And taking a look at really where we were a year ago, as we were preparing for this year, what transpired. And that that’s the first step. And then the second step is really like using that feedback, we’re giving ourselves that reflection to try to lay the best plan that we have for the year ahead.

Rosanna 1:38
And I know what some people are thinking like some people are very, like anti New Year’s resolutions. And, you know, is asking our audience on social media, like what do you think the last two episodes of the season are going to be? And someone even says is this is this look at Jordan and Roseanne has new year’s resolutions, you know, kind of

Jordan 1:57
making fun to figure out? Yeah,

Rosanna 2:00
but we’ve been doing this in some way, shape, or form for about five years. And I think it started once, because my birthday is at the end of the year. And then it’s like my birthday thing, or it’s Thanksgiving, my birthday, Christmas, New Years. And so we usually get some like date time around this time of year. And it transparent. I think the first time over sushi, maybe about four or five years ago. Oh, it

Jordan 2:22
was a good conversation over sushi.

Rosanna 2:24
Yeah, just we were kind of talking about right? Well, like this is how the year went like, what do you want to do? And I think it was you like challenging me like, what do you want to do this next year? Like, what’s what’s on the horizon for you? What are you looking at? And then we’ve done it like over coffee at Starbucks, like same thing, an end of the year kind of date just kind of talking through? Like, what are our goals as a family now that the kids are older, like what do we, what do we want to do? And I think we’ve gotten better at it over time, because it’s become like a practice and a habit. Yeah.

Jordan 2:49
And it always changes. And I think it adapts to just who you are at that moment in time and the way you think about things. So there’s no one set process, but we will kind of walk through our process for how we’re going about it this year. And yeah, I’ve heard the same thing where people look at New Year’s as almost like this, this arbitrary kind of date, like it’s, you know, January 1 is really just another day. And it is, but it is a great opportunity where even if it’s imagined, it’s this feeling of like turning the page, you get a fresh chapter that you can write. And so I think at some point, whether it’s inwardly whether it’s quarterly, like reflecting on where you’re at, like we had previously been having a conversation about questions we asked ourselves, and one of those questions is, are we getting closer or further away to each other and to the goals that we envision for ourselves. And so the end of the year, for us is really great time to really like intentionally explore everything related to that question. And hopefully, that helps us move closer towards one another, and everything that we envision for the next 365 days.

Rosanna 3:59
Yeah, and when I did this last year, I didn’t get this process done. It took me the entire month of January to actually like have the time to kind of sit down and formulate kind of some of the goals or some of like the interest I had for the new year. So I know a lot of people are like, well, it’s January 1 or January 2, and I haven’t set those goals, then it’s too late. And so I like that idea of like whether you do it quarterly or annually, and it’s annually in June. So maybe your calendar year is June to June or like whatever your your timeframe is like this is a valuable thing to do at any time of the year. But it took me all of January to like process through where we had been the year before and what I wanted and it took me a while to be able to name what I wanted. And so if it takes you a long time and you’re not ready to start on January 1, then start on February 4, like whatever that date is. It’s going to take some time to come up with a plan.

Jordan 4:49
Yeah. So whenever you happen to be listening to this, whether it’s at the end of the year or in the middle of the summer, maybe that’s the the first thing that we would encourage you to do is like take the time for yourself. To begin that reflection on what has transpired over the last, you know, phase of your life, whether it’s been the past year or however you define that, because that is, it seems like you’re saying it’s a really intentional process. And you can’t just scribble a few notes on a napkin one day and feel like you’re you’re set for the next year, like, almost takes this, your this mental like coming around to really understanding the circumstances and the goals and opportunities and that you can’t just fabricate that in in one quick sitting. No.

Rosanna 5:31
And I got this. It was a gold planner that a friend of mine recommended last year, she said, I think this would be right up your alley. I’ve mentioned things from it throughout some of the episodes this year, I thought it

Jordan 5:41
up let’s let’s promo this, this was an intimate friend of yours for quite some time at the beginning of the room. Yeah,

Rosanna 5:46
it’s called the cultivate what matters 2020 power sheets, gold planner. And so cultivate what matters has a whole line of things. But it gets you to basically like name, your strengths, your fears, what’s holding you back. And like it helps you to like create these goals in these different areas of your life. And so it asks you to like rate these categories in your life and where you’re at. And then looking at, like, if I rated family as a two, obviously, I have a lot of growing in that category. So then it like helps me kind of like name and then have a plan. So like name, the goal. So this is the goal, and then plan it into achievable steps and action points and things that I could not check off but keep myself accountable for

Jordan 6:26
right. And so I mean, in my process for reflection and for planning is different. So I think both this week in this conversation, and also next week’s conversation, you’ll hear just kind of some of those steps and the processes that we each have. So it is one of the things that we wanted to do with one another, like we normally do. But this time we’ll record this conversation is reflected on this past year, because I think on the one hand, a year ago, we were planning some big things for 2020. And so we have to look at what were we planning for. And then we also look at what did we actually get, and certainly every year throws us, you know, some wrenches and you know, we have to be resilient and flexible. But I think it goes without saying that this year have had some of the biggest wrenches and how we adapted to that. And the way that impacted the the best laid plans is what we want to explore.

Rosanna 7:22
Yeah. All right. So do you want to kind of dive in and just go back and forth between some of the goals you set? And if you achieve them or what they look like and kind of just dialogue back and forth? Yeah.

Jordan 7:34
Alright, so I, what I did last year was I established something Count 123455 categories, and I just have a few bullet points, there’s a lot more like reflection work that went into it. So I looked at five categories. And one of the first thing that I wanted to share was and I’m holding this up for anyone viewing this on YouTube, I have a little chart just on a notepad Remember last week, we were talking to Jason Waller and T at the very end just mentioned, like the value of like handwriting things on paper. And I don’t do that often. But I do like this time of year for a lot of that reflection.

Rosanna 8:10
That’s how I know when you’re serious is when the the logo is out. And it’s like kind of everywhere in the house for a few days. I really know you’re kind of working through something. So it’s interesting, that connection. Yeah.

Jordan 8:21
So the first thing that I’ve been reflecting on was about a year ago actually dated this. So November 2. So over a year ago, I asked myself, What would the ideal day look like because at the time, I was really trying to make the most of being a professional, and also make the most of just my role here at home. And I felt like there was so much going on in both worlds that I almost needed to like sort it out to me, like I said, How can I try to you know, pursue what’s best for me what’s best for just becoming a better professional, and also being a better spouse, and better dad, and so on. So I listed this and I’ll just read this, at 4:45am is where I wrote down, I would wake up and exercise then at six would be just my daily prep and family time. And then from seven to five each day. Well I just it’s just labeled work. from five to nine each day was labeled family. So like there’s a very clear like timestamp for like both of those things. And I think it was helpful for me just to turn one off and then turn the other one on. And then at 9pm I wrote down produce slash read slash Rosanna. So you were and then 945 was sleep. So you you were apportioned 15 minute questionable 45 minutes. And it was but but this helped, like give shape to be like okay, like I definitely want to exercise I definitely want to read like obviously I’m going to be working each day, so That’s gonna take up this amount of time. And it didn’t work out quite exactly like that, but at least starting at about that point last year. And then at the beginning of 2020, this was helpful for me to just kind of like define when I could target each of those core areas that I was trying to build into. Now, another thing that I didn’t list here, but we ended up talking about was on Saturdays, starting, I think January of last year was when it’s maybe even before that. But when I would go to Starbucks for like three or four hours in the morning, and I’d leave, I’d get there at like, maybe 530 in the morning, and work for like three or maybe four hours. And then I can still come home by 930 or 10 o’clock and have the whole rest of the day. But I feel like I had a chance to pour some time into something that I felt like I needed to work on. And that particular morning, that got squashed real quick, come March when nobody was going anywhere. And I haven’t I haven’t been back since actually. So that way of just going about like my weekends was changed, as well. But I think for for the most part, this schedule, this daily schedule for which is not very sophisticated schedule, like has stuck in some profitable ways. And I feel. And we’ll dig into this a little bit more, but I feel like that just helped me can separate the different areas without if they get blurred together, then I get a little confused and just overwhelmed by what I’m trying to do at any given moment. So that helped me just isolate and focus.

Rosanna 11:29
Yeah, and I would say that you probably this last year have been the most consistent with waking up early, especially with the intention of working out, this is the most like on it, you’ve been for an entire year, because you carved out that time starting early. So it’s you didn’t add hours to your day. You know, you don’t have 28 hours a day. So you can add in a workout or add some of those things. You just reoriented your day

Jordan 11:53
really want to do this or

Rosanna 11:54
reprioritize what you really wanted to do.

Jordan 11:57
Yeah, but you know, it also helped with that. I think there were two things that helped. One is I didn’t start I didn’t start exercising like January 1 and just like start cold turkey. Um, it can you start something cold turkey? Yeah, just out of the blue.

Rosanna 12:09
Yes,

Jordan 12:09
I didn’t just start it out of the blue. I’m actually like, just started when I was in the mood for it in December. And I’ve those of you who know me know, I have a complicated history with exercise and with working out.

Rosanna 12:24
So you made that sound way more complicated than

Jordan 12:26
it actually is. It’s, you know, you’re on the wagon, you’re off the wagon again. So this has been the most consistent year. And so I think one of it is that I just started at a point when I felt ready instead of just like ready or not January 1 is going to be the day. But the other piece of that too is that I think I backed off the expectation with that, in that I made it one like the the works were a little bit shorter. So I felt like they were more manageable in the mornings. And the second was that I didn’t, I didn’t feel like I was so had to be so strict with it that it had to be like every day for this set amount of time. If I missed a day, which happened often enough, then I’d be like, okay, like just the next morning, I’d hit my shot and get up and get back into that routine. And so the routine stuck throughout this year.

Rosanna 13:14
That’s great. So I saw I told Jake, obviously went through this planner last year. And there were seven goals that like I came up with, and they’re kind of in a variety of areas. And so some of them are specifically with families, some of them are specifically with business, and then some are specifically geared towards myself. And so I have seven here. And so I’ll just start with the first one. And it might not even seem like a goal. But for me, I realized it had to be and that was to ask for help. And so that was kind of like the broad goal was to ask for help. And then more specifically, it was like from family from friends and even from like other professionals. Because just my personality and my mentality is that like I have to do it all without asking for help. And I and I don’t ask for help even now it’s it’s hard. And so what’s great about this planner is that it like actually like walks you through like what steps you have to build in to be able to like achieve that goal. And so it asks you to come up with your goal and then it asks you why and so that’s what really took me a long time to kind of process through last January was like well what’s the reason for this goal and the y so the Y for that goal last year was like I couldn’t grow or be my best self as like a mom a wife and entrepreneur if I continue to do it alone. And like the even the more I write about that it’s like businesses don’t grow with one person doing everything all the time. So like that you do have to ask for help.

Jordan 14:42
You have to like delegate and and maybe let go of certain things but I think for you, you also are hesitant to like you almost feel like you’re putting somebody out right in your head like you’re like I this is my responsibility. I’m going to handle it. You don’t want to inconvenience someone else with Something that you consider to be your own.

Rosanna 15:01
Right. And so part of it was like in some of my, like, my mini goals to help get me there is that I couldn’t feel guilty for asking for help. Like, I had to let go of my own guilt to ask for help, because I could ask someone for help. And if they said, no, then I could accept that. And it wasn’t, I wasn’t putting someone out. But like even having the courage to ask because I didn’t want to put people out.

Jordan 15:23
So what made that I’m interested that that’s your first and I remember talking about this a while back, but what what made that you’re like the first thing that you thought of, because you almost wonder, like you, you must have felt like you You needed help, and that there’s a barrier to actually accessing it. When you’re writing that down.

Rosanna 15:40
I think for a long time. I’m the kind of person that a lot of people go to for help. And so I was taking on like the role of helping other people in a variety of ways and in a variety of contexts. And then feeling at the end of the day, like really let down that no one was like that. I couldn’t ask for help, because I’m the person that helps others. And so where does the person who helps everybody else get help? Like, I think that in my mind, it was that? Well, I must, since everybody relies on me for help, I must not need it. When the reality is I actually do I need it, I’m just afraid to ask or if I ask for help, then I’m admitting that I am not who other people think I am. And so I just I felt tired, and I felt worn down. And so I had to, like honest, be honest about that and start asking for help. And so that looks, it looks like and looked in a variety of ways.

Jordan 16:32
So how did you? How would you rate yourself on that this year?

Rosanna 16:36
Um, I would honestly give myself a five, I think I made some effort, or 300 325. No, I don’t like 10, I would say like, asking for help before I was like on a zero. And I think I’m like now at a 50%. More like, I’ll ask for help, maybe hesitant to do it, I still feel a little guilty. But like when push comes to shove, if there are no other options, like I will ask for help. But it’s still hard. So I’d like to get better at it. But I think I made some strides. What made it more difficult was then in March, everything really changed. And so you couldn’t ask for help. Because we couldn’t see people, we couldn’t rely on other people. We were relying on each other. And what we could do for our family. And so it was hard to bring in other people outside to ask for help, because that wasn’t an option.

Jordan 17:26
Yeah. And I think this year’s been a lesson in adaptation. Because I feel like a lot of what we were a lot of the ways we kind of pictured go in about our year. And I would say like in January and February, like we got a lot of like momentum towards the things that we were working towards. And I really feel like, you know, come March, it just like took the wind out of that sale so abruptly. And that, you know, that’s what I noticed, like I had a really solid morning routine where, you know, I’d work out and they’d had my my Jordans daily journal. And I would just kind of be like working through that. And it was it was like this well oiled system, you’re feeling really comfy with that. And same thing with you like just some of the things we had access to were shut out. And even once we could access those a little bit more comfortably later on it, at least for me, like it felt like it was harder to get back to where we were, or we’re still trying to figure out like what was accessible? What was appropriate?

Rosanna 18:27
Yeah, yeah, it made it tough. All right, what was your next goal?

Jordan 18:32
Okay, well, I was going to talk a little bit more specifically about exercise, we’re going to start with a win. So I’m glad we maxed that out. I had, so there’s really too many to list here. I actually I don’t think I’ve read these categories. So I’ll read the categories. So I had a professional category. Another one was financial, there was family, there was health. And then there’s just called a hodgepodge, a grab bag, but I labeled it personal, personal said, and then there’s just these bullet points underneath some of these. So another one that I had listed here was that probably October of 2019, we started, like trying to be more intentional with conversation with one another. And so that was a goal that I had written down as well. So that actually starts with word maintain, but like maintain these date night ish, like intentional conversations with Rosanna. So I think we, we have, and you can you can join me in this reflection, because you’re involved here. But I think that that, you know, in some ways, like led to this podcast and you know, gave us an opportunity to continue very similar conversations, but in a format that we didn’t really imagine when we started those. So I think that there was similarly like an ebb and flow to the consistency that we were able to have that this year. But that certainly I think we’ve become like this real core practice. of ours. And looking forward to maintaining that further.

Rosanna 20:02
Yeah. So I like that you use the word maintain and one of your goals, because I think when we do the year end review, we’re always thinking like, Okay, what are all the things I need to accomplish or start new things I’m

Jordan 20:11
not doing that I

Rosanna 20:12
need to write. And then we make these crazy lists that we don’t. But I think like a year in review, what it does is it allows you to know like, what needs to be added, what needs to be removed, and what needs to be retained or maintained. And so like looking at, like the past year, you can say, like, I want to continue to do this, I want to take this, I want to remove this from my life, or my you know, my daily routine are like, it’s, it’s more about shifting things. And I think we don’t look at enough of either maintaining or taking things away, we’re always looking at adding, but nothing is going to grow, if you just continue to add, like, if you’re planting things in a garden, and you never take out the weeds and the roots and the things that aren’t growing, and you just keep putting more seeds, like it’s not going to be healthy. And so I think that’s, that’s great. And I think we we did a good job of trying to maintain that as much as we could this year. Um, you know, that’s like

Jordan 21:06
the, like the autopilot part where we can just kind of be passing each other and, and like sharing. We call like, like, manager, info, like, Oh, you got to take the kids here. I have this thing tonight. And those are easy conversations to have, but they don’t turn that deep. So making sure that we we do have some of that, that face to face intentionality with one another.

Rosanna 21:29
And even I mean, this is funny, because it relates to the goal of asking for help, I think it was two weeks ago, the weather around here was really, it was like manageable. It wasn’t like too cold. But we hadn’t really had a really good conversation in a while just because we’re the kids are here. And there’s a lot going on always. And so I called my mom and I said, Hey, can we just drop off the kids for an hour, so we can just like we’re gonna take the dog for a walk and just talk because the dog doesn’t interrupt. And that’s what we did. You know, like, I didn’t want to ask my mom to, like, take time out of her day to like, watch our kids for us. But what it did is it allowed us to have some of that time. And and trying to

Jordan 22:05
our long uninterrupted conversation so much not late at night. Or not on the podcast is time. Right. Right.

Rosanna 22:15
So yeah, so kind of stemming off of that, maintaining that those that time with me, which I was super thankful for. My second goal was so the first one was asking for help. So again, this one is it’s just might be an odd thing. But I think it shows you like the range of what some of your goals or intentions can be for the year. It was take things off my plate by not saying yes to everything. And the reason why was because by saying no, I can focus on my goals and what’s important to me, and not the things that other people need for me. Right, like, I could be head room mom, and I could be, you know, president of the PTO. And I could be like, just right now I can’t I can’t be all those things. And it’s something I don’t want to do those things, or there’s not time for those things. Like there are times that like, when I when it feels right, I want to be able to say yes. And when I feel overwhelmed, I just have to be able to say no, right?

Jordan 23:10
And I think we used to be more inclined to say yes, or even like look for things like no one was even asking. And we’re like, yes, like, what’s the question? Just so we can like get involved? And to do that? I think that is true for both of us. Yeah, but I think we’re at that, that maybe that more even keel middle age where we don’t have to, like prove anything necessarily to ourselves or to others. As much as maybe we felt like we needed to.

Rosanna 23:38
Yeah, and my family is important to me, you’re important to me, the kids are important to me. So you know, I want to be able to see their their games, I want to be able to support you and things that you want to do. I want to be able to have some of my own leisure time to like explore things I’m interested in. And so like in order to make that work that that takes a lot of time. And so my yeses are easy. Like I know when I want to say yes. And I found just a lot of times I was saying yes reluctantly. And so I I’m more comfortable now and letting my yeses be yes. And letting my nose be nose. I don’t think I had a lot of boundaries before. And I think that just has become important as our family has continued to grow. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Jordan 24:21
Okay, I will list one. There’s a lot more to choose from, but I want to go into the professional realm here. And I listed several things just as a professional and but they all have the same theme and that is connection. Actually, one of them was eating lunch with colleagues more I flew out the window. I don’t think I’ve really eaten a good lunch with any colleagues, since I’m not in the same room when I’m meeting with people anymore. But still like this idea of and have other things listed there. But this idea of I want to say like connected like I was just isolated, you know, professionally but I feel like there are are certain habits and not just at work as in like at the building, but just within the profession, in general, certain ways that you can get connected with others, and social media is one of them. But also, like becoming more accessible and accessing, like the greater wealth of tools and have people in mind really have like the community of professionals that are working together to improve their practice. And so I mean, this struck me from a lot of the conversations we’ve had were the people who are really, at their best are not these Lone Ranger’s. They’re the ones who are like co participating with other people who are striving towards the same goal and like sharing ideas and collaborations and even like, you know, competitions and, and drama, you know, with, with those things, and so finding ways, both in person and digitally to connect with others. So I started Jordan catapano.com a year ago as a way just to for myself, just to process a lot of my thoughts and get them out there and get feedback for others. That was that had limited attention since this summer. Mainly because of the way like our whole like workflow and routine and focus kind of flew off buttes involvement even and Twitter has tons of educators on Twitter. And so just having access to like, that stream of ideas was very important, something I have done in the past and wanted to have this resurgence so that I could bring that back as a better professional a better teammate in my, my specific responsibilities.

Rosanna 26:36
Yeah, I mean, I had some business goals too. And my mind is very short. It just says grow my business. Okay. Um, and that’s because over so I started like this event planning thing, probably. It was four years ago. Event Planning, specifically, I had something before that it kind of shifted, it grew into event planning. And every I would say like, every year I say, Hey, I’m gonna grow my business. And then like, I got pregnant with another kid. And you know, like, you know, you’ve got you kind of go through that like, okay, now I’m nine months pregnant, how many events can I really do, you know, right before I give birth, or like, what happens right after and so, you know, it’s kind of been a struggle, just just to maintain and I was like, Okay, finally, you know, we’re done having kids, the kids will be in school this year. And so my big thing was like, okay, we’re gonna, we’re gonna grow and so I got a lot of headway in January, February, in the beginning of March, I set some like pretty specific goals, about how many weddings I wanted to book about how many total paid events I wanted to book and then as like one of my like side goals, one of my other goals It was really just to move outside my comfort zone both personally and professionally. And so like I opened up my social media on Instagram in the month of February last year and gained like 150 followers by like kind of being on it and doing videos and trying new things. So instead of just maintaining by like booking my repeat clients and getting some things I put myself on the not for the first time like there were specific things that I was doing that I wasn’t doing previously doing a little bit of like spending money to make money by like, you know, paid marketing and advertising and then not trying different software like honey book to like book clients and manage maintain that to like streamline my process, things that I had been afraid to try that I finally did to see if it would make a difference. And so now looking back, I’m looking back at like my stats and my numbers. Hey, did I did I booked those six to eight weddings that I said I wanted to book did I booked 15 paid events, and you know what transpired with what happened in 2020? And how that derailed part of it. And now how do I continue to set those goals for my business for 2021? You know, what is what is that going to look like? Because people were asking me all year, gosh, what does this mean for your business? Are you like is the wind out of your sails? I

Jordan 28:54
feel so bad. I remember in March and April, you were constantly on the phone and your work was like just reviewing contracts with or not the contracts with you, but the contracts for my clients with their vendors and seeing like what Plan B needed to be

Rosanna 29:09
and supporting them through that and working with them. And so what was interesting about part of the reasoning for growing my business, my why was I wanted to build a brand and a persona that transpires just like event planning, or like wedding coordination. Like I wanted it to use me like as someone with a voice and a reason to motivate, inspire and help change others. And so what’s funny is I, I don’t, I was able to do that in a very unexpected way by being there for my clients like even just their feedback of like me being them being there for them, like helping them walk through this as I’ve left them with, like really like what I wanted, who I want to be and like the legacy I want to leave and that’s to like inspire and help people and help change them to be better too. And so so many of them have said like you No, I couldn’t have done this without you. Like I don’t, I don’t know what we would have done and like, not not in a in a silly way, but you know, people who are invested in getting married and it’s kind of being ripped apart and then moving forward anyways, you know, me, you know, kind of being coaching counselor through it as opposed to just you know, looking at contracts.

Jordan 30:18
Yeah. So you had a vision for like you said, like, just transcending the the transactional nature of it’s like you’re not just performing a service. But yeah, it’s it’s like event coordinating, and, you know, life coaching,

Rosanna 30:33
I just, I want to leave people leave them better than when before they met me in some way, shape, or form. And so even I had a couple who had to cancel, postpone that ended up having a smaller ceremony. And even I talked to this client not too long ago, and she said, Oh, just so you know, like, we’re gonna have this big celebration probably in 2022. And you know, we’re going to use you again, right. And it was just like that, like, there’s a connection there. And like, we’ve established trust, and they’re still like, coming to me for advice and feedback. And like, it’s not just about like me coordinating their wedding. There’s, there’s something lasting there.

Jordan 31:07
Yeah. And I think it’s more fulfilling for you at the same time, cuz it’s like, I don’t want to just like clock in and then get paid and then clock out. But there’s, there’s care there a piece of you that you’re trying to deliver with each of those. So I think it’s it’s good to reflect on that. I mean, this year really, like shut down that it’s just straight for quite some time. So then it’s you’ve been revving your engine a little bit more. And I’ll be excited to see what next year brings with him. Yeah, I think we can continue through these buts we’re coming towards the end of our time. But I wanted to ask you like what’s, what’s the relationship you see between kind of reflecting individually on the things that you said a year ago you wanted to, to do or to be like, and then like reflecting conversationally with someone else?

Rosanna 31:56
Well, I think that’s the one thing that we talked about is like, we’re two things intentionality and accountability. So like, I set these goals last year, and it’s not like you helped me devise these, but I kind of told you what I was looking at with some good conversations. So you could kind of support me in Intertek and be like, hey, how’s that going? Or, like, are you working on that? So I think that accountability piece is good. But a lot of times the conversations that I have with you like after the fact after I review it and go through it, and like hey, did I did I meet this or not? When we talk, it helps me kind of process, like how I’m feeling about it, it kind of lets me really know, like, where I’m at, because sometimes I don’t know where I’m at. And it takes a conversation for me to like, almost draw it out of myself, instead of like being in your head. And like being like, Oh, I didn’t meet that goal. What does that mean? You know, it means I’m, you know, you kind of get down on yourself, whereas, sometimes processing it helps me understand and then even getting your insight because I trust you is helpful, too, or you point out something that I’ve kind of missed along the way.

Jordan 32:54
Mm hmm. Yeah, I agree. Like you, you kind of need both, and certainly over the next week, and we’ll talk more about our process over the next week. But we’ll, we’ll leverage both of those aspects as well. So you need to be able to think through these things on your own. But it’s helpful to have at least one other person that you can you can share them with someone to ask those tough questions. Like there’s more here that I’d like to talk about. And obviously one of those questions is like, Well, why didn’t you end up like fulfilling this thing for yourself that you started, like, what what changed along the way, or what barriers came up? In fact, actually, that’s one of the things that I listed. When I was doing my little Jordy plan from a year ago, I one of the categories was what what gets in the way of this meeting, like of my, just my ideal day, and some of the things I envisioned for myself. So I wrote down like of energy, changes in motivation, stress, which just diverts my mind away, lack of confidence, lack of direction. Or just like more, I say it like more, more fires, you know, you feel like you’re putting out fires instead of like being more proactive. So like more fires slash work, slash emergencies, slash, things like that. So I think that’s a piece of the bigger reflection and those of you listening, you need to not like, you can’t knock this out in a short 30 minute conversation. This will be the first of several conversations that we’ll have over this week, just kind of dissecting more of what 2020 brought us. There’s some other things that we didn’t really address that that did come up that weren’t part of our original plan as well. Obviously, the pandemic is kind of the the game changer with the access and the opportunities we thought we had and ended up not having. But this was a year of, I think the euphemism is like civil unrest, but like a really hard look at that’s the topic of race in America race relations, how much we know or like thought we knew an opportunity to maybe like kind of unlearn some things and and opened our eyes to to some new things. And the opportunities always been there, but You know, it’s, you know, unfortunately, sometimes takes a, you know, a catalyst to really like spur that. And I certainly felt that spur this year. And then we had an election, and those years are never comfortable. And we’re still, you know, at this time kind of reeling from that and drilling through that process. So there’s, there’s these these external elements that I think kind of end up shaping and informing the the things that we we independently plan. So I think the question is, How well did we achieve what we wanted to but also how well did we respond when something that wasn’t really in our control? Or wasn’t necessarily planned? Come up to?

Rosanna 35:43
Yeah, you know, like, we have to grant ourselves the permission to like, change our mind, to update our goals to shift our thinking, like, at any point this year, you know, some of those goals I had set for myself. We’re still in line with like, what I could manage just, you know, based on what was going on, but like, at some point, should I have added a different goal? You know, what I mean, based on, you know, what was going on around us? Or should I have modified it, and I think sometimes we’re seeing some off, we’re so like, locked in or like fixed, like, once we decide on something like it has to be that and it has to go that way. And I think that’s good in some ways, because you like lock in, and you focus and you move forward. But you know, last week with the topic of resiliency, and what that looks like knowing again, when to shift, when to back down, when to say know when to you know, move around an obstacle becomes important. So like, you know, the reason why we set these goals is to like, choose our direction. And it’s going to help us like simplify our lives focus our time. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t change that as we go along. We don’t have to be locked in for an entire year or an entire three months like we can we can let some of that change and growth happen.

Jordan 36:53
Yeah. So it’s like the core goal. I’m going to keep moving forward, how that looks, I’m going to plan as best as possible from now how that looks. But I also need to recognize that moving forward might mean something different six months from now. Yeah. So what is your process going to look like over the next week? So next week’s episode is going to be surprise, surprise, the relentless pursuit, sharing of what our goals and vision is, individually and as a family for 2021. So like I said, that, that takes some efforts to actually get down. So what does your process look like, for countering that?

Rosanna 37:32
So I think I’m gonna just look at so like you had said you had made goals for like, the categories in your life, personal professional family, like there are, you know, categories. And so sometimes it’s easier to kind of clarify that. So like, I’ll probably go through similar categories health, family, finances, career, recreation, and kind of like, right, where I feel like I am in those. You know, especially like with health, and like, you’re trying to figure out like, Where am I like, if I’m at a nine, like, I don’t maybe need to set new goals in that I just need to maintain that goal. So I don’t really have to like, kind of worry about that. But maybe focus on the areas that I feel like, are deficient or lacking, or I feel lost in to kind of help me focus and drive me forward. But I want to look at some bigger questions, too. And I think you kind of alluded to this as, what, what would you have time for? or What am I making time for? Because that’s something that’s intentional, and like something that you have to work at? Yeah. Where, where would you spend your time? What kind of people do you want in your life? You know, how would I spend my mornings or evenings? So like, things that like, get me to like, question like, Yeah, what does an ideal day look like? What do I want to get out of it? Where do I want to allocate that time? What do I want to do regularly? You know, just some of those questions? Where do I want to give my best? You know, I’m going to give in a lot of areas, but where am I going to give my best? Or where does it need to be? And how do you want your days to feel?

Jordan 38:55
So your process is really to just ask yourself a lot of those questions like almost these ideal questions where we know like, in the reality, it might be a little bit harder to execute those. But if you could kind of dream a perfect 2021 then what would the elements of that be?

Rosanna 39:11
Yeah, and that that, you know, I’m gonna take this vacation or like, buy this thing, but it’s more of like that. How do I want my life to feel? And where do I feel like how can I feel like in control, and how can I feel like I’m thriving? Yeah.

Jordan 39:24
Vacation might be a nice one to put on the list. Yes. My process is, I mean, it’s not so different, involves a lot of questions, and then taking some sincere time to really try to answer on my own. But I’m going to break out the notepad again, and really spend some time trying to look at not just what I want to do, but the guiding question for next year. It’s also going to be like, who do I want to be? And from that question, hopefully will stem you know, some of the goals and each of the different domains of life. And I know we talked about that, like the the idea of domains on this podcast a lot. And so there’s certain things we’re just inevitably going to be interacting in. And I want to make sure that I kind of have a clear picture of what seems not just ideal, but also like the most, most central to who I envisioned myself becoming

Rosanna 40:23
that has left you with legacy. That’s what is the legacy are leaving you right to your kids to your career, like, you know, it’s when you narrow it all down, like who are you? Yeah.

Jordan 40:33
And so how do you? I’m not really thinking about passing that on to others. I mean, they can they can have to like sift through what’s

Rosanna 40:38
your legacy? Like when someone says, you know, who is Jordan Catapano? What would they say? And so, if, if you’re looking at what you want people to remember from you, like, that stems from the things that you say, and the ways that you do the things that you do? And those are things that people see.

Jordan 40:55
Yeah. So I’ll be writing those down that we’ll have next week, really a sharing of some of our lists and envision, and then then you and I really have to talk about how we can support one another in that. So I’m looking forward to that element to the conversation, too. Yeah, I felt workplan when you’re 21. For me,

Rosanna 41:13
I did too. It was it was a year. Yeah, it was a year. And it was hard. And it was different. And it was harder for a lot of people than it was for us for a variety of reasons. But I think always having a plan and having some intentions has helped us to continue to move forward.

Jordan 41:31
Right. So whenever you may be listening to this. So we encourage you to take the next week to ask yourself some of those same challenging questions about who you want to be, and what your ideal vision is for yourself for the typical day, and for who you’re becoming. Picture yourself. One year from now, looking back on this conversation, who would you like to be and what would you like to say about that year? So when we encourage you to take a week to really think that through and then join us on our next conversation as you hear Rosanna and Roseanne has and I, Rosanna and mine How about our our results. And we’ll look forward to sharing that with all of you and getting as prepped as we can for 2021. See you guys soon. Bye. Bye, everyone. Thanks so much for listening to today’s show. We hope you will use this conversation as a starting point for your own. We hope you’re encouraged to think and act more intentionally.

Rosanna 42:31
If you want to learn more, you can visit our website, the relentless pursuit podcast.com where you can find notes on today’s show, plus additional blog posts and you can subscribe to our free members list.

Jordan 42:43
Please subscribe, leave a review and share with your friends.

Rosanna 42:46
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Jordan 42:53
videos and challenges. Until next time, let us know how you are taking life off autopilot

Rosanna 43:00
and relentlessly pursuing what matters

Rosanna 0:00
Hello, and welcome to season two, episode nine of the relentless pursuit podcast. This episode is called being a good follower.

Jordan 0:22
Yeah, and I like this topic because we often talk about being a good leader. And there’s so much emphasis on leadership, where are you leading? Are you developing your leadership skills, the leader in you. And even from a young age, there’s this emphasis on taking charge. And it struck me a number of years ago that we, even if we are a leader in life, we tend to spend the majority of our time as a follower in one way or another. So we should be thinking about this as well. It’s not bad to talk about leadership and assuming those roles. But I think we need to first be cognizant of how we can be a conscientious follower, what that means, where it’s applicable in our life, and making sure we’re doing a good job with that, because that matters, who we’re following and how we’re following them.

Rosanna 1:15
Yeah, you know, this whole idea of being a good follower has to do with this term called followership. And I think that what came to mind when you were talking about like, what it means or what it doesn’t mean to be good follower, it remind me of the Princess Bride. I do not think it means what you think it means. It’s like we have this like negative or negative connotation,

Jordan 1:34
Xeni accent there. Okay. Okay, so followership, so people don’t, when we think of being a follower, there’s a connotation, like, there’s a real,

Rosanna 1:43
right, like, you want to be the leader, you want to always be in charge and driving the bus. But like, there’s only one leader and it’s what’s interesting is, is that it’s the followers that do the work, like a leader leads the followers, so like, maybe gives, like vision or direction for it. But it’s those people from within that oftentimes, like build and create things that a leader would maybe not have come up with on their own or would have not developed, but it’s like those followers that are behind them that then see opportunity. It’s like we think a leader as this, like submissive subordinate people who are like subpar,

Jordan 2:19
no, you said he’s a leader. So you think a follower, someone who’s submissive,

Rosanna 2:22
right like that. We think I’m sorry, I misspoke, that followers are these submissive, subordinate people who are subpar. And that’s why you’re a follower, because you’re not a leader. Because the leaders are the ones that have it together, the leaders are the ones, you know, up front. And so if you’re not that, then you must be subpar until you’re just a follower. And so I think this episode is meant to really talk about how like followers are crucial and super important and like looking at our roles as followers, and what are some of the benefits of being a follower, right? Because it’s great to be a leader, right? Like you’re the leader of our family.

Jordan 2:55
Right? Okay. I think of it more as a, quote, leadership,

Rosanna 2:59
assistant to the vice presidents Yes, or, you know, whatever. But like, you know what, I mean, that’s like that we lead that. But there are some benefits. It’s like when I, when I’m not the leader, that I just get to go in and like, use my talents or skills without having to be in charge, right?

Jordan 3:13
Yeah, I think a lot of times, there’s this phrase, like, I want to be the guy, I want to be the one that people see on that pedestal, I want to be the one that people go to for an answer for decision or for help. And we associate that with leadership. And so and there’s a lot of good that is done through effective leaders. But I think that nobody, nobody says I don’t want to be the I don’t want to be I don’t want to be, you know, celebrated and invisible in a way that people admire, as we often associate with leadership. So then, yeah, we kind of poopoo that idea of being a follower.

Rosanna 3:47
But even in if you look at like the systems and organizations and communities you’re a part of, you’re not always the leader, but a lot of times it can’t. And if you are, if you have a good leader, they recognize good followers, and they celebrate those people. So sometimes we feel like we have to have the spotlight on us. And that has to be all about us when in fact, if you’re a good leader, it’s all about your followers.

Jordan 4:09
Yeah. I, it reminds me, I think it was rush limbaugh, who used to on on Twitter, he would sort of symbolically not be following anyone. So he had millions of people who would follow him and then you kind of look at who does he follow. And it’s zero because he you know, he is his own leader, in a sense. And I think that was kind of symbolic for him. There’s just like, it makes me think there was this account. It was basically like someone pretending to be God, the tweet of God, and He followed one person, and it was Justin Bieber. That was really funny. But yeah, we I think many of us think in that way where I’d shoot I’m not a follower. I’m going to be the leader. I’m gonna be out front of everybody else. Because we associate that with prestige. So in this conversation, that’s what I want to break down is like kind of looking at why do we have that association with leadership and with followership? And what are some of the ways we can be much more practical and realistic about our role as a follower and doing that? Well?

Rosanna 5:17
Well, and I think we addressed this in our last episode on self education we were talking about, like our careers, our culture, our society is changing. So the idea that we introduced with self education is that we continue, we need to continuously be growing and changing in a self directed manner to like continue to move forward. And I think this idea of following being a good follower and followership is also now getting some more research and some different perspectives on it, where it’s not this, you’re a follower, and you’re subpar, and you’re subordinate, and you need to be told what to do. But the definition of followership, if I can share it is it’s the willingness to cooperate, the willingness to work together toward the accomplishment of a mission or goal. It’s an essential and effective building block to build community systems and organization. So that’s not a passive role. That is something that requires buy in and requires effort. And so to be a follower is actually a very powerful thing. Yeah, if you’re utilizing it in the way of thinking about building something together,

Jordan 6:17
right. And I think you’re building yourself in the process, too.

Rosanna 6:20
Yes, I think that’s a really big part of it.

Jordan 6:23
All right. So you’re ready to go back and forth with some questions? Sure. I have several. And the more I thought about this, the longer my list became. So we’re starting to address a few of the things that I was interested in. But what is on your list?

Rosanna 6:37
So I think, obviously, this is probably the underlying question of this episode is why should you want to be a good follower? Why should you want to be a good follower? Why isn’t that you need to take the reins and be the leader? Hmm. I mean, I have thoughts.

Jordan 6:51
I have thoughts. Yeah, I think there’s there’s a range of reasons. One is I think it’s inevitable and you think about maybe maybe even before that, we’ll look at like, what are the things or people that could be followed, and we have leaders kind of built in to our life into our society, we have bosses, we have political leaders, right,

Rosanna 7:12
right at the national and local

Jordan 7:14
level. And we have, I would consider, like, some ways we follow, like, I would say, companies or brands in some way, or we can follow people who are maybe we’ll call them thought leaders, but they’re, you know, there’s this whole array of people who are like successful in their field and, and articulate or inspiring, and we could consider ourselves kind of a voluntary follower of those brands or of those people as well. So I think each of though, I think, to answer your question, you almost need to consider Well, what particular person or entity Am I following? And then we can get to Well, why it’s important to be a good follower in those areas.

Rosanna 7:56
Yeah, I mean, it kind of delves back into the conversation we had about like social media, and who we follow and why. And we follow some of those brands or some of those influencers, like whether it’s a thought influencer, or you know, a celebrity or something like that. And I think the whole point of being a follower, unless you’re not following, just to be nosy or combative, right? Like, there are some people who follow in that way. When we’re a follower, we derive benefits from someone from someone or something else. Like there’s this psychological payback that we get from them. When we follow them, we like we are fed, or we are like replenished in some way. Because, like their thoughts or their insights, or whatever it is that they’re sharing that we’re following is like we take and we digest, and it ultimately makes us better. Or gets us to stop and think like, those are when we follow the right things and the right people or the right brands, like that’s the potential there. And so if I follow you, and you post something that’s like thought, thought provoking, and it pulls at my heart, and it gets me to, like question, a belief that I have, or inspires me to want to be or do something better, like, that’s a great reason to follow someone is because they help you to get better. They help you to process where you are on this idea or topic or notion, and they’re pushing you forward.

Jordan 9:16
Yeah. So I would think of a leader even more, I don’t say tangibly, but like just more like interwoven with our life, like because we could follow people very distantly on like social media or blogs, things and they don’t even know we exist. But I’m thinking more collaboratively like, some leaders that I would very gladly follow are the ones who I would say can see clearly, there’s a particular objective or there’s a vision that they have, and they can see that and also say like they can, they can see the chessboard and have greater degree of insight than your average person in that particular regard. And so you kind of need that leader in that role. To to see the big picture to understand the game plan and to to move the pieces in a sense. And then we understand our role within that is to recognize this is the vision, this is the vision that I believe in and can get behind. And if I play my role out, according to you know, the bigger picture, then that’s going to help whatever this objective is become realized with the partnership of everyone else who’s in that.

Rosanna 10:26
Okay, do you have like a more specific example,

Jordan 10:30
I would just I think the most practical one would be at work, let’s say if you have a good boss, and I know many of us spend a great deal of time maybe not feeling as positively towards our bosses. But I think I’ve had the privilege of working with people that I respect and that I admire, because they do recognize that that, you know, when there’s a certain circumstance that arises, there is this ability to perceive angles that I would have overlooked. Or there’s a kind of a bigger scope that informs the decision making, that I am not privy to, or not, or just not as talented at perceiving. And so that’s why that person is in that position. So then I understand like, Okay, if this is my directive, then if I play this out, I can trust this leader, in that we are going to accomplish the objectives that we’ve set out to do.

Rosanna 11:28
You nailed my thought my like, second question to that there was kind of like my number two as a follow up, it’s like, Why do or don’t you follow certain people? And I think you just answer that question. In regards to it’s not just likability, right? Because we can like a lot of people and follow them, like, regardless if we’re doing it in person, or within our like community, or an organization that we’re a part of, you know, social media, but it’s not just likeability, because we can like a lot of people and like, follow them. But I think what you’re alluding to, and the key word, there is trust, it’s this person has a certain perspective, or built something that you have learned to trust, and admire and respect. And so part of wanting to emulate that, or be on board with that vision that drives you forward as well. Because we can like, Oh, I can like Justin Bieber, I can follow him. Right?

Jordan 12:19
But he’s just his leadership capacity. And you’re like, well,

Rosanna 12:22
correct. So when we talk about, like, who we follow, and what kind of follower we want to be, or like, when we, when some people like fixate on wanting people to follow them, you know, it’s not just about likability, it’s about trust in so sometimes, you really have to reevaluate, like, who you want to follow and why. Or maybe reevaluate, like, I don’t need a million followers on Instagram, like maybe the hundred and 20 that I have, are the ones that believe in me believe in my vision, and are coming along with me. And so like, that should be inspiring to know that people trust and respect you. And it’s not just a like a follow for a follow kind of thing.

Jordan 13:02
Yeah, that’s a lot of what, like what Seth Godin writes about is it’s not about the quantity, but it’s about the quality of your followers. And I would also say like, as a follower, it’s not about, you know, how popular or public your leader is your brand is, but it’s about the quality that you derive from that. Okay,

Rosanna 13:26
do you have any questions for me?

Jordan 13:27
Or Yeah, you want to join? I should just thought of a few more. Okay. I want to back up just a little bit, because at the start of the episode, we talked about this stigma being placed on the word follower. And I think there’s other ways that we do phrase it that are maybe a little bit more palatable for our average consciousness. Like we think of ourselves as maybe a student of, or we think about who we’re inspired by. But when we talk about being a follower, we don’t like that. So why, why does that stigma exist? I mean, we are natural followers in so many areas of our lives. But why does no one like to brand themselves as a follower?

Rosanna 14:12
I think that’ll do. I think that has to do with like social media. I really, like I really do like, kind of like that. Everybody wants to be in the spotlight. And no one wants to be in the back. Like no one wants to put baby in the corner, like Nobody puts baby in the corner.

Jordan 14:26
I’m important and therefore, if I’m, if using the term follower, it’s kind of declaring that I’m not as important as

Rosanna 14:34
somebody else. And there are people who, like refuse to follow certain people or refuse to follow anybody, like, you know, rush limbaugh, I’m not a follower. I’m a leader, therefore, I will not follow anybody else. Because what they have to say isn’t important. And so I think it’s the stigma of, if I admit that somebody else is as important or more important than me, then I’m not important. And I think part of this conversation is like knowing your role and your role is different in a variety of circumstances and situations like your role in relation is different based on your relationships with different people. So you can’t always be the number one to everybody. You know, like, you’re my number one, but you’re not, you’re not number one to, you know, your boss, you’re like number seven, right? Like, and that’s okay. And so but that is, that’s like your own understanding of like, I don’t have to be number one to this person. Like, it’s important that I’m number one to the person who’s number one to me, like, so. But it’s okay to like, have varying roles and relationships within those roles. And it doesn’t make me any less valuable, but you’ll lead in the position you need to lead in and you can follow in another position. And that’s just a part of your makeup and who you are. Yeah,

Jordan 15:43
yeah. And I think it’s, it’s not only okay to be a follower, but it is, like I said, it’s, it’s natural, like, we automatically are in a lot of different domains. But there’s, it’s also I would say, encouraged as well, maybe a stronger word would be disciple, right? When you think of like someone who you have like this, sort of like this leader, this mentor, and you really want to kind of study their ways and master whatever their craft is, you can say like, I’m a disciple of this person. And that is like a kind of declaring your devotion to them in almost a religious sense as well. And but we don’t use terms like that very often. So I think

Rosanna 16:23
we use mentor, right? Like, oh, I have a mentor. But in that situation, like you have one person leading the other. Yeah. And if one person is leading, that means the other person is following. But I think sometimes we feel like if we’re a follower, that means like, we’ll always be a follower. Sometimes when you’re a good follower, who is at the top of their game, under somebody else, a follower also can become a leader. And it doesn’t mean that you’re the owner of the company, or you’re the, you know what I mean, like you lead from within, and your role becomes important to like established leadership, because then you help make them better. So everyone continues to grow.

Jordan 17:03
Yeah, I want to talk about that more, too. But you remind me of a video. I don’t know if you ever saw this, but we’ll post a link to it. In our show notes. There is this video that was put out by Derek Severs long time ago. And it’s like this six minute clip of people dancing at a park. So there’s some music playing. And it starts out with just one really weird looking guy dancing to the music. And he there’s Derek walks through the what happens, and there is this guy’s completely by himself. But then what happens, there’s one other person who almost ingest starts dancing next to that person as well. And he calls that person, the first follower, and that first follower plays a significant role, because what happens then then two or three more people join, and over the course of six minutes, like eventually the entire park, what looks like hundreds of people are dancing. And he points out that the leader by himself is a lone nut with whatever his vision of the world needs to be. And it doesn’t really have momentum until you have followers. And in fact, one of the things that a good follower does is it becomes he or she becomes a leader to the other followers, because then they look at the follower for how to follow the leader. Yeah,

Rosanna 18:22
I think that’s a great explanation. I think that’s a great explanation. When somebody else sees somebody that they know or admire or have some trust in buying into something that somebody else is doing. theirs, they there is a sense of like trust and acceptance, and like letting your guard down to be a part of it like, well,

if Jordans doing this, I know Jordan, I respect her and I liked Jordan and he likes this. Oh, like maybe I should give it a look. And so yeah, you’re it’s like that, not just likability. It’s like trust, to like, join and follow. And to buy into something I think buying is huge.

Jordan 19:00
Yeah. Right. So let me ask you this question. Just as a follow up to this. Is this is what it makes me think is, Is there ever a bad reason to follow? Oh, it

Rosanna 19:12
makes me think of being a kid. The scenario our parents have said this off, if your friends were going to jump off the bridge, would you jump, you know, like that scenario of like, your friends are, you know, starting to I remember this, like in junior high school, like smoke or drink, like, just because you know, so and so does it, does that mean that you’re going to do it? And well, no, I wouldn’t do that. Because that’s not beneficial to me, that puts me in harm’s way. But then there’s that pressure to do it. So it’s, do you stay true to your morals and values? And follow something everybody else is following because they’re following it? Or do you choose to go another way?

Jordan 19:42
Yeah, and that’s what I was thinking about too. And it actually comes up in that video that I was referencing, because eventually there’s often a certain point where there’s a social pressure, almost just by like numerically there becomes this pressure and then you become the lone nut. If you are Not the one following what the rest of the group does. And that that’s one thing that I think is important for us to consider too is like, what are what are your reasons or your motives for getting behind a certain person or certain issue? Or even a company? You know? Is it to fit in? And just to, like, stay within the confines of the tribe that you see yourself in? Or is there do you genuinely see legitimacy behind what you’re doing?

Rosanna 20:30
And that reminds me of, I mean, this is like, the funniest reference to it. But if you’re on Netflix, and you’re watching the home edit, currently, you know, this phenomenon that is sweeping and clear, and Joanna, and they’re doing amazing things, and I love to watch it, right. But like, you see people, you know, like, following them, and I follow them, and I see their stuff, but I have not yet you know, spent $4,000 at the container store to buy clear containers to like, redo all of my cabinets, their system. Yeah, and mostly because like, I’m pretty neat and organized. And so I already have a system kind of like that established, would I love to spend more money to organize it and make it look just like it does on TV? Sure, but like, I’ve kind of processed that in my mind of, well, like, it’s cool. And I can follow it in terms of like, being more organized, or like setting up spaces like to know and to learn and to grow. But I also don’t feel like I have to, to be a follower, I have to completely subscribe to the method that they’re using to the tee, you know, and by by all of their containers and fill my cabinets with them in order to be organized. Like I can do it in my own way. So I can learn something from them digest it still be a follower, but not have to, like be a convert to doing everything their way. Yeah. So like, I’m letting them teach me and I’m growing through that, you know, it’s not, you know, this, you know,

Jordan 21:42
and it is hard raw, mindless entertainment.

Rosanna 21:45
And it is, you know, and they’re entertaining but right I can be a follower of without letting that completely overtake like who I am or even the my own system that I’ve built. So learning and growing through that.

Jordan 21:57
And what else again?

Rosanna 22:02
What motivates a follower to be engaged. So let’s talk about like engagement with followers because you can follow someone. And like, again, in the real world, in real life, or like on social media, like you can follow them, but I think there’s, you can follow someone because of likability. But then I think there’s a moment of engagement, like you’re at work, right? And you work for a team or a boss or an organization. And so like you’re a follower of them, because they’re over you and they lead. So you can just go to work and do your job. Same thing. You could be a follower on social media, and you could follow someone. But I think what we’re talking about with follow followership, it’s not just following. It’s not just like ability, but there’s this like notion of engagement. Yeah. And how that plays in or how that changes what followership really means, as opposed to being this subpar drone being pulled along by somebody else.

Jordan 22:54
Yeah. I think that it has couple answers that come to mind. The first one is that it’s this idea of, like, something you can get behind, there’s some idea, or innovation, or vision that when you follow you become a part of it. So I think of Apple, for example, Apple’s kind of like famous as a company for having this like subculture of devotees who just pretty much do all the selling for them. Right? And well, how did they get that? Let’s because Apple’s marketing, and its branding is all about how it is innovative, how it is different, especially, you know, going back decades of their marketing was about how you kind of break the mold and become this individual who can express themselves and get away from the machine of society by purchasing their products. And people really bought into that because both the what Apple was was doing its mentality was kind of revolutionary in that sense, trying to find the molds that could be broken to take on something new. So people who identified with that were able to become the, you know, the adopters and the press the lights of that as a brand. And so I think that’s one of the first thing that comes to mind is just having something that you really feel excited about, that you identify with, and you can get behind.

Rosanna 24:18
So is it a bit noxious, if you are a follower of a brand, or a company or a community to I mean, they say like, the best thing you can do for like a business is to like share or like posts because it costs nothing to you. It costs a little bit of time, but when you promote their business or share your experience with your business, what you’re doing is as a follower, you’re sharing that business with helps build that business. And so that’s what a good follower would do. Like if you actually buy in, if this is actually important to you, like wouldn’t you promote this, this brand or this company or this business to help them grow and thrive?

Jordan 24:58
Yeah, and I don’t think it’s up Maybe it’s to someone else who doesn’t care about that particular brand or industry or whatever. But it is, I think it is obviously helpful to whatever you’re promoting. But, you know, I think we should be cautious with that too, in a sense, where we, we really need to believe in it, it needs to offer like, some genuine value to ourselves, or, or like the product or like what we’re bringing in so that we don’t seem illegitimate and what we’re sharing with others, if you just promote everything, then people will eventually tune you out.

Rosanna 25:37
So even as a follower are being selective about who or what you follow, and how you’re promoting that,

Jordan 25:43
well, how much can you really follow anyway? Like, kind of like conscientiously like being like, devoted to and in tune with,

Rosanna 25:49
there’s probably only two or like, if you’re, if you’re being honest, right, like two or three things, right? Like in my life, what would I say I probably,

Jordan 25:57
but let’s say like, let’s say I bought a hacky sack, and I it’s my favorite hacky sack, I love it to death, so much I do all my hacky sacking with it does, that doesn’t make me a follower of that, it just means that I bought a product that I really enjoy. So I think that there’s a difference between like getting senior, some deriving some, like consumeristic value from something, and then genuinely being a follower of a person or a brand.

Rosanna 26:22
Gotcha. You have any any other questions you want to add? To the conversation?

Jordan 26:27
Yeah, quite a few. We don’t have time for all of them.

Rosanna 26:30
No, we won’t, because we’re getting close to that,

Jordan 26:33
that wrap almost time for takeaways. Okay, let me see. These are too many essential ones here. Right? So I’ll put them together. First, how do you identify someone or something to follow? And what kind of mindset should you bring as a follower to them?

Rosanna 26:54
I think that one’s that one’s a little hard.

Jordan 26:57
Or do we just automatically follow things, and it’s not a matter of choosing is just a matter of recognizing.

Rosanna 27:03
So I used to be really like selective in terms of like, I’m talking about social media here. Like who I followed and who I would let follow me because people would like request to follow me and I would always just say, No, no, I’m like, I haven’t talked to in 20 years, you want to like creep on my, my, my book face and you want to, you know, see what’s going on? Or like, what do you look like now? or What does your family look like? And I didn’t feel the need to like have these followers to follow me like if it was an empty follower. And then I would also be leery about like adding other things. And then in the last few years, I’ve opened it up a lot more, because I’m like, Well, I want people to be able to, like have access to know, like, what my business is, and to see what it is. And like, because that helps me like promote my business and, you know, starting business pages for people to follow me for like my thoughts and my expertise. And so I feel like it’s like a double edged sword where it’s like, you want to be open to let people follow you and to let people see but at the same time, like following for the sake of following does nothing unless people are engaged in what it is that you’re promoting, or what it is you’re building or what it is you want them to follow.

Jordan 28:07
Yeah. One of the things that I think about too, and you brought this up a little bit earlier was like, oh, whoever you’re following, I would say like having a dose of, of skepticism or independence in your following of them too. And I think it serves your leader and it serves you really well, because it really bothers me when someone you see this, especially with politics, but when someone says I this person who I do follow or who I voted for, I agree 100% with every little thing that they say and do. And the opposite side. I disagree 100% with everything they say and do and I talked to those individuals, and it just doesn’t seem reasonable. Because I don’t myself, like ever I agree 100% with anybody, not even with you. So agreed, how am I going to find that represented in a political figure. But I think that’s true, even beyond politics as well, where we might believe in the person who might believe in the vision, but that doesn’t mean that we have to, you know, every with every little bit everything that they do or believe everything that they say exactly. And I think that especially if it’s someone that we collaborate with and have interchange with an important role as a follower can be that check as well to say, Alright, here’s, here’s the direction you’re going, here’s how I see things, and you may or may not get your way or be able to express that but at least retaining independence within the process of following, I think is essential.

Rosanna 29:40
I love that and I think that that might be one of the most important takeaways so when we do takeaways, I would like you to reiterate that point because we think because we follow someone or because you know, we’re we ascribe to their vision. We think that we have to do everything that they do. But there has to be this filter of Oh, I follow this person because It makes me better in this arena. But I don’t. I don’t really, you know, I don’t find that to be true about this part of her life. And so like that. That’s not I’m not gonna unfollow her because of that, but also know that like, I don’t have to be just like her. I don’t have to aspire to be that thing. I can follow them because of a select portion of their vision or how they’ve done something well, that it’s not it’s not about following to replicate. It’s about following to find something good to make yourself better.

Jordan 30:30
Yeah. Okay. So I’ve more questions, but I think we’ll need to reserve those for this one. Okay, fire away. You go.

Rosanna 30:38
Oh, do one. Oh, since you’re the one that had all the questions.

Jordan 30:41
I have so many. I feel like we got to talk about these. Okay. Are there different kinds of followers?

Rosanna 30:53
I would say Yeah. Okay. I think that there are follow people will follow. I think they’re idle followers. I think there are reluctant followers, and I think they’re engaged followers. And that’s just off the top of my head, right. Like, we follow something that we’re a part of reluctantly, because that’s like, it’s like

Jordan 31:11
what everybody else is doing. Right? Right. There’s like a fit in your ear. Okay.

Rosanna 31:15
Okay. reluctant followers. What did I say? engaged, engaged, so that I think those are those people who believe in it 100% and give it their all while they’re there. And they in being engaged in like participating and like being a part of the vision, help drive, whatever it is forward. Even if they’re not the leader, they help the leaders get stronger. They help the leaders develop what comes next. And not because they need recognition, but they feel empowered. And I think that’s the biggest part of followership is that followership should make you feel empowered, it shouldn’t make you feel small, it should make you feel like you’re coming alive. Yeah.

Jordan 31:54
Yeah, I agree with that as well.

Rosanna 31:56
And what I say the idol, so there’s the reluctant doesn’t want to be there.

Jordan 31:59
Yeah, the ideal is present,

Rosanna 32:02
present, but is unsure. Yeah. And I think, you know, we fit into those categories, lads, like, I want to be here, but like they’re afraid to go all in. Yeah, they’re afraid what that means because there’s more responsibility,

Jordan 32:14
they won’t see it as a specified john, we have like all in on this end, and at least obligated, but on the other, like the stubborn donkey and the other ends, like getting dragged into it. And so you can you can be somewhere within that spectrum. And the more engaged and the more empowered You are the the further you are at the you know, the fully engaged end of the spectrum.

Rosanna 32:34
Yeah, I would agree. I think there’s so much more to talk about with this topic.

Jordan 32:38
Yeah. But Alright, let’s get to some of our takeaways, some of our applications for ourselves based on this conversation, and then maybe there could be fun follow up that we can do in future episodes. Yeah,

Rosanna 32:49
maybe. So takeaways, number one, being a follower is a good thing. And it’s a necessary thing. Like we don’t always have to drive the bus. And you know, that should like, that should make us feel happy. Yeah. Because to be in charge of everything all the time is tiring. So How nice is it dish to show up and be present without having to like worry about everything else beforehand. We can be led and we can derive benefits by following other people and it can help us grow. We don’t have to direct our growth, we can let someone lead us into that growth. The second, and this was one of my last thoughts was being a follower is about being empowered. You know, when we follow good leaders, organizations, growth is inevitable. It is and we should see that there. And I think, you know, followership has to do with leadership. So the third one would be great followers become powerful leaders. Michael McKinney is the president of a communication and company and leadership now. And he’s the author of a popular blog and he said followership, followership, like leadership is a role and not a destination. So it’s not this, it’s not this submissive thing that you will always be a follower.

Jordan 33:59
It’s not a it’s not a healthy way to define yourself as right. Like, there are some people who are leaders, some people who are followers, we’re all

Rosanna 34:06
but the truth is that we are both Yeah. What was the one thing I wanted you to remind me of, or to recap,

Jordan 34:12
oh, just about going in with like retaining your independence in the course of following as well. And so I think that’s one important thing is just remaining even minded being able to think for yourself and not let the leader or the entity that you follow, do the thinking for you or feel like you have to become them in every way, shape, and form.

Rosanna 34:30
Well, especially since we are so individual that we all have something to bring to the table. And we don’t have to be like everybody else. The part of the strength is finding that individuality within

Jordan 34:40
salutely. Well, thanks for joining us today, everybody. And we wish you happy following let us know what you think I’m I look forward to hearing from him. Thanks so much for listening to today’s show. We hope you will use this conversation as a starting point for your own. We hope you’re encouraged to think and act More intentionally.

Rosanna 35:01
If you want to learn more, you can visit our website, the relentless pursuit podcast comm where you can find notes on today’s show, plus additional blog posts, and you can subscribe to our free members list.

Jordan 35:13
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Rosanna 35:16
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Jordan 35:26
Until next time, let us know how you are taking life off autopilot

Rosanna 35:30
and relentlessly pursuing what matters

Rosanna 0:01
Hello, and welcome to the relentless pursuit podcast. Today we’re talking all about hobbies and side hustles. Nowadays, you kind of hear people talking about hustles, or side hustles. And it feels like everybody has one. But you really don’t hear people talking about hobbies anymore. And so I did a little research about hobbies, and they’re supposed to actually be really healthy, really good for you a really great form of self self care. So if they’re so good for us, why don’t we have them? So let’s talk a little bit about the difference between a hobby and a side hustle and kind of how they’re related. And kind of just dig into that topic today.

Jordan 0:49
Yeah, is I think it’s a very traditional topic, like looking at hobbies. And it might have once been more common question, like, what are your hobbies? But I do feel like that’s faded away, and maybe something we need to rekindle with ourselves. And just with our generation. Yeah, I

Rosanna 1:09
mean, they say that millennials don’t see work like past generation generations do. And so millennials being I think they like outline millennials as or define them as anyone born like, after 1980 1982. So we kind of fit into the millennial, older millennials, older millennials, so we’re better than some other millennials. We had dial up internet. So that’s really the difference probably. But like this notion of work, especially like for our parents generation, and even like people a little bit older than us work was like a place was a place that you went to work, and then you left work and you had this life. But now our generation work is not a place, work is a thing. It’s like a mentality, it comes home with you. It’s like part of who you are, you’re proud of it. But it’s, it’s like a bigger part of your identity, where it used to be that you like kind of left work at work, and then had home At home, or had these hobbies or interests or other things that you did that kind of defined you outside of that. And like you were saying, it’s like, Yeah, do we have hobbies and interests anymore? Or are we letting work kind of encompass us in a greater way that doesn’t allow for these hobbies,

Jordan 2:22
right. And I don’t think it’s what the way you define work was helpful, because it is a thing, it is an attitude. And it can happen anytime, anywhere, which in some ways can be a plus, but really changes our mentality towards other things as well. And so I think part of it is thinking like, well, if I could work anytime, anywhere, and you know, I think we think our generation has this preoccupation with productivity, and some sort of material outcome that has like some degree of value. And I think because we’re preoccupied with that, then things that are simply enjoyable for their own sake, take a backseat.

Rosanna 3:04
I think you’re right, like, we feel like if we’re going to put some time and effort into something, we need to get something out of it. Pass just like this intrinsic joy, right, like that we put in, and then we get out this many dollars worth. Yeah, right, that there’s some kind of an exchange there instead of enjoying something for the sake of it. So before we continue this conversation and kind of get deeper into it, and do some q&a is back and forth, would it be helpful to define? Let’s see, I was gonna start with a definition. To start with the definition. You want to start or you want me to,

Jordan 3:34
I want you to because I thought a lot about this, except you wrote it down. So I think you’re better prepared.

Rosanna 3:41
Alright, my note, say a hobby is an activity done regularly, in your leisure time for pleasure. Which kind of blew my mind when I read that. So it’s like, okay, there are like multiple things there. So something that you do, and you don’t just do it, like once a year, right? Like, it’s regular.

Jordan 4:00
So something some consistency towards it cracked.

Rosanna 4:03
So like you’re constantly, you know, going after it doing it in your leisure time. And it is for pleasure. So it’s not for any kind of gain. It’s just to enjoy. So I was looking at some of the attributes of that. And it says, Well, how do you know if something’s a good hobby, and they said, hobbies should be fun. If you feel energized and excited and want to do more of it, then it’s a good fit. The best kinds of hobbies challenge you to grow. Research suggests that hobbies boost your mood, help you feel satisfied and decrease stress. It’s a form of self care. Yeah.

Jordan 4:37
So there’s a lot of benefits from that. And I was reading about it too. People with hobbies tend to sleep better, they tend to feel better about themselves about life. I also read that they tend to be more successful and productive at work. So that was from an article in The New York Times and it also said Don’t, don’t start a hobby so that you can become As more successful or productive at work, the whole point is really like detaching from that and pursuing something that you have has intrinsic value for you.

Rosanna 5:08
So it’s it’s like that release where it’s Yeah, you’re not looking to gain something out of it. It’s like your body needs that enjoyment. Right? Like, just like you would like water a plant and give it sunshine, like a hobby kind of does that for us, where it like helps us to bloom where we’re planted. And we can get things out of it without actually like getting something out of it. Like that’s concrete or evident.

Jordan 5:28
Yeah. And I think that’s important to distinguish it from an interest or I think you wrote down a past time. Because there I think there’s certainly things that that interest us, but a hobby implies some degree of engagement, I would even say like physical and mental engagement in the task, rather than a more passive reception of something. Okay. So

Rosanna 5:50
when you say active, like, I think of something like I mean, maybe these are lame, but like gardening, cooking, painting, hiking, like things that you, you do, like you’re moving, you’re interacting, like you’re kind of like going out in search of it. Instead of that passive, which you mentioned, pastime, which I have a definition for that. Things that just help you pass the time. Just to pass the time. Yeah.

Jordan 6:17
So you’re not really using the time you’re just do filling it with something of no value.

Rosanna 6:22
Yeah. So like, in my mind, like just letting the time pass filling it with something with no value, Netflix, scrolling and swiping on your phone, right like those, like we pass the time with those things, but those are not hobbies. Those are not interests. Those are like time waste watching. Yeah,

Jordan 6:38
so like binge watching. A television series is not a hobby.

Rosanna 6:42
No, nor an interest. It’s just something you do to pass the time.

Jordan 6:46
Right. It wasn’t baseball did was it used to be America’s pastime?

Unknown Speaker 6:49
Yeah.

Rosanna 6:50
Because if you didn’t play it, right, you just sat and watched it, right? You watched it to pass the time. It’s not like you were like, in a guy’s you know, baseball or softball league or something you weren’t. So America’s pastime. We people watched it to pass the time. Yeah.

Jordan 7:05
And then, but I think that was surpassed by Wheel of Fortune.

Rosanna 7:10
Oh, you’re right. That is the tagline. America’s pastime,

Jordan 7:13
isn’t what they say.

Rosanna 7:15
And I’m not gonna turn on the wheel later and find out.

Jordan 7:17
Right? But yeah, so I think it’s important distinction because we’re, we’re either hyper productive, or when we’re, there’s like this, this swing, and we turn that off and turn into, I don’t know, is there a term like hyper non productive, like the the opposite, where we really become like, just so such passive recipients of entertainment, that there’s there’s no in between and hobbies seems like it’s in between where it is productive, it is engaging, but the value is in what we get out of it, and not necessarily what doesn’t necessarily have monetary value. Okay,

Rosanna 7:57
so let’s define hustle to kind of throw that in with hobby interest pastime. A hustle is a means of making money alongside one’s main form of employment or income. And so there are plenty of reasons why people have a hustle. Maybe the job that they have isn’t. It’s a job and it’s not a career. And so then they find something that they can do to kind of generate some income on the site. And I feel like a lot of people who start some kind of hustle or side hustle, do that, because they need the money, but it’s usually in like a different realm where they have a little bit more interest if they don’t have a job that they love in an area that they’re, you know, skilled at.

Jordan 8:34
Yeah, well, I’d say a hustle is different than a side hustle. Because you’re you can you can hustle in your job, you know, if you’re trying to climb the ladder, or earn that kind of income that you want to get that that title, you can hustle towards that then the side hustle would be like a second job almost that you’re trying to develop for yourself.

Rosanna 8:53
I think people use like hustle side hustle interchangeably. It’s like this thing that you do on the side to make some extra money. I think that’s that’s the point. I don’t know. But

Jordan 9:00
what I’m saying is that they’re not interchangeable, like you can hustle towards your regular career too.

Rosanna 9:06
Okay. Okay. Agreed, I

Unknown Speaker 9:08
guess?

Jordan 9:09
Well, I mean, the reason why I bring that up is because there’s, I think this fixation on doing things that are of value in the marketplace. And so whether it’s a hustle or a side hustle, you know, whether it’s your full time job or you’re part time, it is, you know, trying to quantify our talent or skills towards you know, to someone else, whereas a hobby takes that out of the equation, and it can still we can still hustle after a hobby in a sense, but we’re not worried about trying to appease someone else through it or have the market recognize our, our efforts. Okay.

Rosanna 9:49
So should we dive into some questions?

Jordan 9:50
Yeah, I have. This might be my longest list of questions here. There’s so there’s a few bullet points. Yeah, there’s there’s a lot to explore with this because like you said, it’s a fantastic form of self care. It hobbies, having hobbies is something that has been so essential for so many generations and it’s kind of evaporating from our discourse right now.

Rosanna 10:09
Okay, so let’s bring it back. Maybe Yeah, relentless pursuit of season two is gonna help us all bring back a little self care in the form of some hobbies.

Jordan 10:18
I hope so.

Rosanna 10:20
Alright, I’ll start. Here’s my first question. Do we have hobbies anymore?

Jordan 10:26
Because we mean you. Sure. Let’s

Rosanna 10:27
start with us. What’s your hobby?

Jordan 10:30
I would say yes, we, you and I do have hobbies. I am a little bit more artsy. So I know you, you hear me play the piano, that’s right over there. And so just about every day, I’m playing that until the kids clamber on my lap and like, interrupt or start pounding on the keys. But that’s something that I’ve done ever, ever since I was a kid. And I don’t worry, every once in a while, I’ll like post a clip of me playing something or the kids dancing to something I play. But it’s real. It is really like just for me, and I spent, I love it, I spent almost like two years on just like one song. Because I’m not that good. At that point. Well,

Rosanna 11:13
let’s Okay. Let’s not say you’re not that good. But

Jordan 11:16
your definition in my definition would very good piano player would entail. But it’s so but it took me I’d say like two years of like coming home from work and almost like 10 to 20 minutes a day like to master this one song that I had done. And I really enjoyed that. And I never performed it for anyone. And and I don’t care. I just enjoy doing it. And now I’m doing the same thing with something else that I’ve been working on. Like just for the last few months to the practice of the day, I find that very fulfilling. Something else that I do, and you don’t see this as much. But you have seen this as I have almost like these Shel Silverstein ask, like children’s poems that I just cracked myself up with. And I write them down. And, you know, once a while I read them to the kids. And so, you know, at some point, maybe that is something I’d be interested in sharing if any of them were. That’s just something I’ll enjoy, like taking some time to do during my downtime.

Rosanna 12:11
Yeah, those are two things that are hobbies, right? That they kind of refresh you, right? They’re like good for your soul. There’s something that you want to do like no one even no one else even really knows that you do them, but you do them with some sort of consistency. Mm hmm. You look forward to them, and you derive some joy from them.

Jordan 12:27
What’s good about you,

Rosanna 12:29
I would definitely think that like cooking and baking are hobbies of mine. You know that I love to cook, we take meal time around here very seriously. You know, the only thing that’s upsetting around meal times is that, and I will say this, like I’m a good cook. Oh, yeah. And our kids do not appreciate it. No,

Jordan 12:47
but I saw euro know how good you have it.

Rosanna 12:51
But like, you know, we’ll decide on something for dinner. And then you know, like, they’ll have a lot in my day. I’m like, you know, you know what this dinner needs? I need some focaccia, Okay, I’m gonna make some focaccia, like, I really enjoy cooking. I really enjoy baking. And dusting, like when when people come and get to enjoy that too. And hosting. And I think I’ve always liked to do that. When we do have people over I’m very intentional about like, knowing what they like. And then like even setting a table in a way in which like, makes them feel like warm and inviting. And when they ask, can I bring something I always say no, because I want them to come here and like to feel loved and to like, give them my best. And that’s why people like coming here. And so I would say that’s a hobby of mine. It’s just kind of like that entertaining, and like really planning something out like that and cooking for people and, and using my hands in that way.

Jordan 13:35
Yeah. So could you see like, I’m contrasting ours a little bit because I feel like what I’m doing people will hear is like, you have to hear the piano. There’s no avoiding it, but not really performing for anyone. But when you were cooking, like you almost need someone else to eat it. Right? You ever just make something just to make it you don’t care who eats it? Yeah,

Rosanna 13:58
I mean, how many times do I like, I when I cook, it’s I’m not really cooking for myself, I’m cooking for other people. But there are times I’ve cooked or baked something and not touched it because it’s not something that I want and will give it to other people. But I don’t do it with like, the need for people to like recognize it either. So it’s just something that I like to do. So if you’re a friend of mine or a family member, you probably get to enjoy any fortunate recipients. Right? Yeah,

Jordan 14:22
yeah, I’m glad to hear that that’s very common, especially in 2020. When people have just like develops new hobbies or new interests, then like food is one that we we all just need to eat and some people have really enjoyed not just sustaining themselves but like really like taking that on as an interest that they’ve developed into a skill. Yeah,

Rosanna 14:48
I’m, I’m artsy but in a different way than you. So I think I take a lot of pleasure in like decorating and that sort of thing. And so that’s that for really anybody else but myself, but I enjoy that kind of thing. You can look at an empty wall forever an empty room or, like, we don’t need any. But I like to, like look at a room and see what it needs and like, give it a space. I know.

Jordan 15:11
I know you do, but I don’t mind the decor either.

Rosanna 15:13
Okay, so we’ve identified a couple hobbies that we have things that we do consistently. There are other things that we do, and we like to do that we could name but those are just a few. But do you think like the average person are hobbies a thing of the past you think a lot of people have hobbies?

Jordan 15:28
According to research, hobbies are definitely on the decline. And that is the kind of goes along with this other question that I had when we started talking about like, why, like, why is that? Why do we seem to have this mentality that hobbies are not valuable, or we don’t have the time or space to be able to implement them in our lives?

Rosanna 15:53
Okay, so here’s a question I have. Okay. Is exercise a hobby?

Jordan 15:59
I did read that. Yes, it qualifies as a hobby.

Rosanna 16:03
But should that be your only hobby or your only form of self care?

Jordan 16:07
It could be okay. Okay, right. I mean, it’s it checks all the boxes.

Rosanna 16:12
I know. But like you, I, the only reason I’m struggling with this a little bit. It’s almost like right, like you, like you eat and you sleep a certain way to be healthy, you have to exercise to be healthy. So it’s like sleeping, right? a hobby

Jordan 16:24
for some people.

Rosanna 16:27
If it’s if you’re kind of focused on your health and your wellness, like exercise is a key component to that. So is doing something that takes care of you physically, is that technically a hobby? Or would a hobby be like, you know, you’re in shape? So you hike for enjoyment? Or like, you know what I mean? Like, is hitting the gym or lifting weights? Or like, like, is running? Is it a hobby? Or is that like just a form of good? self care?

Jordan 16:55
I think this is a definition. Yeah, cuz there’s this a lot of fine lines. But I think a hobby is at an intersection where there’s, there’s interest and passion, and then that those intersect to lead us towards something that is spiritually fulfilling, okay? Whereas a hustle would be similar in that it’s where you have like an interest in a passion. But that takes you towards something that is monetarily or you know, in fulfilling in the marketplace. So it’s different. So that’s why I would say exercise could potentially be a hobby. If you take an interest in it, you’re doing it consistently. And it, it fulfills you.

Rosanna 17:33
You’re not like reluctantly exercising, like, okay, so it’s something that you enjoy,

Jordan 17:37
right? It’s something that you invest time in, you invest your essay, your non religion you’re engaged in, and anything that that fits that criteria could be happy as well.

Rosanna 17:49
So then would you define exercise for you as a hobby?

Jordan 17:52
I never thought of it that way for myself. I don’t know. For me, it’s very, it’s rather begrudging. I’ve been more consistent this year than I have in the past with workout. But I would not miss it. If it were not a necessity.

Rosanna 18:07
Alright, shoot, you haven’t really asked many questions. I’ve asked a couple. Now, what do you got?

Jordan 18:14
Can Can a hobby be done for money?

Rosanna 18:21
know that it totally moves to a hustle? Well, that’s

Jordan 18:23
what I mean. That’s what I wanted to explore was like, let’s say you had just something that you do for fun on your own. And somebody offered you money for doing that same thing. So I mean, that

Unknown Speaker 18:35
happened to me

Jordan 18:36
nothing about what you’re doing changes, except that now someone has given it $1 value. Well, does that completely change what it is? Or can can? Can it still be a hobby, and still have $1 amount on it?

Rosanna 18:49
I don’t think so. I think once whatever that hobby or that interest, or that talent that you have moves into an exchange for money, it now becomes work. And it’s not just like something you do. And then it’s just like something you have becomes, it becomes a commodity, then correct, you’re trading your time for money, you’re not just doing it, for the joy of it. And then, you know, whatever you want now it’s, you know, moves into that workplace. One of the things I read basically said, like, it’s okay, it’s okay to do something for money, but then you need to pick, you know, another hobby or another interest so that you have that form of self care that it’s it moves beyond just doing it for an exchange, but then you have something else that you then replace it with, right? Like I used to like design things graphically. And I did it for fun, and then I turned it into kind of a side hustle. I was selling stuff on Etsy. And once I was doing it so consistently, and for so many clients and customers, whether it was people I knew or you know, people online, it also took away some of the enjoyment of it because it was you know, doing what they wanted, how they wanted it like very specifically, and it took the joy out of it and it did turn it into work and then I found something else to kind of replace that. So like I could still do that. But I needed Another outlet to kind of like have a

Jordan 20:01
release. So then the work really becomes for someone else.

Rosanna 20:07
Yeah, the work is not for you, for the Batman or of yourself for how it makes you feel.

Jordan 20:12
Yeah. Is this mind blowing like for our generation to think that something other than money can be fulfilling, right? I mean, but think about this way, something other when it will be more fulfilling for you than something that has monetary value?

Rosanna 20:28
Well, you you had a side hustle for a while, yeah, you wrote on the side, and you got paid very well to do it. And that kind of helped us like financially for a while. I mean, we had like

Jordan 20:38
a fantastic. I mean,

Rosanna 20:39
it was great money. And then one day, you looked at me and said, I don’t think I want to do this anymore. And I kind of looked at him. I was like,

Unknown Speaker 20:45
excuse me?

Rosanna 20:47
What do you what are we gonna do without that extra money? You’re like, Well, I mean, it’s not like we needed the money, but I just I feel like it doesn’t it used to gratify me, it used to fulfill me, it used to be fun. I don’t feel like that anymore. And so we had that conversation. And I was like, Okay, well, then I guess you don’t have to do it anymore. You know, obviously, if you need the money to eat food, I mean, then you need that exchange. But if it’s something on the side that you don’t have to be paid for. And it’s not giving you joy, you shouldn’t have to do it.

Jordan 21:14
Yeah. So that’s interesting how adding money as a factor will modify the way that we feel about him to like, perceive the activities that we’re doing?

Rosanna 21:25
Well, and then sometimes we carry on doing things that we don’t want, because we’re so tied to money. And then there’s that correlation of money and happiness, like money can’t always buy happiness, right? If you have extra time to do what you want, and that makes you happy,

Jordan 21:38
right? Well, how many times if we thought like, if only we can, like, take x like, you know, whatever we’re good at, or whatever we’ve produced and figure out a way to get paid for doing that. Would we, you know, in our in our minds think that that would make us happier. But that’s really not the case. And probably many of those instances, and we’re taught growing up, like follow your passion, follow your heart, or what’s the phrase, if you, if you do, if you do what you love for a job, then you’ll never work a day in your life. Right? We were, we were born and raised into that kind of mentality where like passion should be work, but I think it’s good to separate those pull them apart a little bit too. And think like, well work like leads to the marketplace. And it leads to money, which we ascribe some degree of value. And it’s nice to be able to hold that up to other people. Not that we’re like sharing dollar amounts or anything, but to say like, look at all the stuff that I can buy with what I earned from my hustle. Whereas maybe there’s more value in having this hobby that is internally fulfilling. And whether that’s on display or not just like allowing that to fuel us in a way that money or like other commodities camp.

Rosanna 22:54
Well on that then reminds me of you know, that other phrase where it’s like, work hard, play hard. Yeah. When you’re at work, work hard, right? earn money, you know, be able to support your family, by the things that you need, the things that you want the things that you wish for, but then play hard, like take a break, because those things refresh us and like you outside, it kind of makes us better when we’re at work. makes us better when we’re at home, because we’ve got time to kind of release and let go. More questions? Yeah.

Jordan 23:19
You want me to keep them coming?

Rosanna 23:21
Yeah.

Jordan 23:23
Okay. So my next question then is why do you think we gravitate more easily towards our screens, like you’ve mentioned Netflix, or like to our social media towards this very, like passive filling the gap kinds of engagements, rather than towards hobbies.

Rosanna 23:42
I wonder if it has something to do with like, even just not knowing what we want our hobbies to be, like, you have to really intentionally like if you’re, if you don’t have a hobby, right? And you basically you work a lot, and you’re at work, and maybe it’s even harder, you have a family, you have a wife, like you have other commitments, right? Like, how do you find time to fit those hobbies in, but you have to, like intentionally, like sit down and like figure out, okay, like, what do I want to try, and then you have to like, go out and try. And you might have to try on a bunch of different hobbies before you find like the right one or the one that fits. So even just intentionally thinking about it, trying a bunch of different ones find what fits like that’s a process. And in a generation where we lack time and we lack space. And for some of us, we lack the money to like write like people like to golf is a leisure activity, like those things are expensive. And so I think maybe sometimes that keeps people from finding something that they may like, and it’s a whole lot easier to default to a Netflix or social media or especially when those devices and those programs are meant to like pull

Jordan 24:45
it already set. So intention grabbing Yeah. And that you almost wonder what came first did the are just attention to two screens just like come first and arising kind of blackout the time that we might have otherwise. Skip to hobbies? Or are they filling in the gaps for the hobbies that we’ve given up?

Rosanna 25:07
You know, I think they fill in the gaps and easy to grab, easy to grab a screen, easy to turn something on easy to grab, you know, a phone, I think they fill in those gaps. And I think for us, and I also mean everybody is we need to just move those, like those little gaps that we find during the day into like bigger chunks so that we can enjoy something external.

Jordan 25:28
Yeah. And they can be difficult and there is almost like this, these the set of prerequisites to get into a happy I guess it depends what the happy is. But you know, if there’s a financial commitment to purchase what you know, whatever materials are implicit with that, if you’re birdwatching, you need the binoculars, if you’re painting you need the the canvas canvases can buy. Look it up. Yeah. So right. And of course, you need the time as well. And I feel like that might be even more so like, where our generation is just a little bit faulty with his feeling like we don’t have time when we have so many conveniences, and tools at our disposal, and they’ve only resulted in making us more busy. So when we finally do have an opportunity to engage with something without distraction, it’s at the end of what has been like a long day, hence the requisite energy that you need to engage and having meaningful, they just isn’t there. So it’s easier just to turn something on, watch it, or do something else that’s rather passive or absent minded and then move on.

Rosanna 26:33
Is that what we don’t have? Whether it’s time or money? Or is it what we do have, which is an excuse?

Unknown Speaker 26:40
Oh,

Rosanna 26:41
well, but I think about that, like, um, alright, so I think of my dad who’s been retired for a few years now. And I think of some of the hobbies he’s picked up along the way. You know, gardening, he’s gotten back to like, making homemade wine, you know, rich requires time and effort, but it also requires money. And he’s gotten into walking, and even jogging, you know, things that I never thought he would pick up, because now he has the time. But he’s always so impressed with our kids who all take piano lessons, and are and Juliette has just started this year. So she was five when she started now she’s six. And his only had what a dozen or less lessons, but she can play songs. And anytime each of the kids has picked up the piano, he’s like, Wow, that’s so like, how do they just, they just learned and that, you know, it kind of blows his mind a little bit. And we’ve even said, well, Dan, if you want to play the piano, you could play all you have to do is start taking some lessons. He’s like, Oh, I could, you know, I could never do that. Because it’s, you know, you kind of talk yourself out of it. When you’re nervous about trying something that’s out of your comfort zone. That’s totally something out of his comfort zone. So it’s not that he doesn’t have the time or he doesn’t have the money to pay for lessons, it’s that he has an excuse as to why he can’t do it

Jordan 27:51
steps we give ourselves these invisible barriers for why we can’t be more invested in something that might actually interest us.

Rosanna 27:58
Yeah, I can’t fish because I don’t live in an area where I can you know, go fishing very easily. I’m sure you can, it might not be a lake, but you know, you can go to the forest preserve and fish over here or you know, to the like the little local watering hole. So like, what are the excuses we’re making? Are we letting those keep us from having hobbies? Yeah.

Jordan 28:17
So so you’re essentially saying like to someone who would would say well, I would have a hobby but I’m too busy. You’re essentially saying like, no, you’re not too busy just haven’t prioritized it?

Rosanna 28:28
Yeah, I think I would say that. Um, you know, we have a dog now a puppy who needs to be walked and you and I several nights a week take turns on who goes and takes the dog for a walk in the dark in in the cold? Not like my first idea. But sometimes you’re like, were you going to take the talk tonight? Or you know, I don’t mind going because it’s like a chance to just be alone and we walk with the dog and it’s quiet and we can kind of like just think and right like walking is kind of becoming a hobby for us.

Jordan 28:57
I don’t know I think is walking the hobby exercise can be walking is

Rosanna 29:03
I think it is detaching from everything else having some quiet some solitude, right, like a time to enjoy and reflect. I think it’s a hobby. All right?

Jordan 29:12
Well, we’ll let you listeners decide if walking qualifies as a hobby or not? Let us know in the comments. Alright, so I have two kind of related questions to kind of drive this conversation from a slightly different angle. As a spouse and as a parent, as a spouse, how can we make space for one another to pursue hobbies? And as a parent? What should we be doing? If we think they’re forcing hobbies available? What should we do as a parent to foster that with our kids?

Rosanna 29:44
Alright, let’s start with the parent thing first. Because we haven’t talked about our kids in a bit, right? Um, I think it’s just giving them the opportunity to try different things. So we always let our kids choose a sport in each of the seasons, you know, whatever. They’re into up to or if someone wants to do gymnastics or dance, piano, they want to learn a different instrument, we kind of like let them get their feet wet in all of those areas, it doesn’t mean that they’re a magnificent athlete or a dancer, whatever it is, but at least they get to try it and decide if they like something. And so I think exposure to a variety of things, you know, whether it’s chess club, or cooking class, or whatever it is, it just lets them kind of find

Jordan 30:27
what makes them happy. So almost saying like, okay, as the parent, I’m gonna make you do something, here’s your options for what those some things can be. So that it’s it’s a little bit of that balance, where they’re, they’re given the opportunity, and they have some degree of choice.

Rosanna 30:42
But as parents, we know, our kids sometimes better than they know themselves, sometimes pushing them to try things that they might not ordinarily choose may be beneficial for them to kind of like, push past those excuses or those invisible barriers as well. Hmm. What was the second part of your question?

Jordan 30:58
The spouse question? So that’s a question because that’s a big piece of our show is like talking about just being supportive in our being supported by all of your relationships. So, you know, at home, obviously, with our families does, appropriately so like take a lot of time and energy, to be a good spouse and to be a good parent. So how can we work together to make space for one another, to pursue something that we independently enjoy?

Rosanna 31:25
But I feel like you just answered the question is that we have to make space for each other to have the space to enjoy what we like.

Jordan 31:32
And just do it is your boy Yeah.

Rosanna 31:35
Right. What do we what do we say? Like the questions? What What was the the title of the episode in season one? The questions that we

Jordan 31:41
asked most important questions. Most important, Episode Three, season one, everyone, great episode. Thank

Rosanna 31:46
you. Thank you for that reference. Where are we talking about? What is it that you need? How can I support you in what you want. And I think it just that comes from a place of valuing and honoring your spouse, and wanting them to be the best person they can be. And sometimes for you to be the best person you can be. You need to have time at work to help provide for the family. But you also need a release, right? You need to be here and be the dad and be the soccer coach when you need to do the soccer coach. But I should encourage you to take time, and give you the opportunity to get out to do the things that kind of set your soul on fire.

Jordan 32:19
It’s a strong way of putting it. But I don’t disagree. So you can so one of the things we can do is just be like, hey, like I noticed you haven’t done that thing that you like to do?

Rosanna 32:29
Yes, underwater basket weaving.

Jordan 32:31
Yeah. Or, you know, you You didn’t join the the softball team with the guys this year, you haven’t had Poker Night in a while or whatever that may be? Like, why don’t you do that? So almost like suggesting giving them permission to engage in that.

Rosanna 32:43
I like that giving that permission. You know, sometimes I you know, yeah, we talk ourselves out of it. But then when a spouse like says, Hey, like, I’m on board to support you with this, like, Why don’t Yeah, why don’t you go after it, it’s a good reminder that we are loved, we are supported. And we can take the time to do those things. Mm hmm. Good questions.

Jordan 33:01
What are your takeaways?

Rosanna 33:03
All right, takeaways. I think the biggest one is that life should contain moments where we can work and achieve, like, that’s one area that we can rest. Because it’s important, but then areas for us to play and have fun. So I think there’s like kind of those, those three aspects of it, where sometimes we just leave rest,

Unknown Speaker 33:24
and a play and play.

Rosanna 33:25
Yeah, achieve rest and play.

Jordan 33:27
You could do rest achieve and play and then it’s rap. Or you can rap Just remember to rap everybody.

Rosanna 33:35
And, you know, so we I mean, we could we could have talked more about like side hustles. And like, you know, when a hobby moves to a side hustle or pursuing a side hustle, but I think the biggest takeaway should be this, it’s okay to learn something for the sake of learning or to do something because it makes you happy. And not because you have to monetize it or produce something or get fame from it or admiration like you can do something that is just for you.

Jordan 34:00
So those are like external values. And but a hobby offers an internal value, which is at the end of the day, more important. Yeah.

Rosanna 34:08
And it’s, you know, a great form of self care. And so you know, just the way that 2020 has been, and how I think I anticipate 21 2021 beginning and maybe lasting for a while. I think it’s something really important that we should all take some time to think about in terms of self care and having a little fun.

Jordan 34:27
Absolutely. Well, we hope you enjoyed today’s conversation, and really looking forward to hearing about what some of your hobbies and your hustles might be nowadays. Take care everybody. Bye. Thanks so much for listening to today’s show. We hope you will use this conversation as a starting point for your own. We hope you’re encouraged to think and more intentionally.

Rosanna 34:50
If you want to learn more, you can visit our website, the relentless pursuit podcast comm where you can find notes on today’s show, plus additional blog posts and you can subscribe Our three members list.

Jordan 35:01
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Rosanna 35:04
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