#1149 - The 2025 Family Reboot: Using The WISE Approach

Published Jan 12, 2025, 6:00 PM

Justin and Kylie kick off 2025 with a powerful discussion about resetting family life using their WISE Family Reset framework. After experiencing burnout in 2024, they share personal insights about slowing down and making intentional changes for the year ahead.

Quotes of the Episode:

"We're not striving for perfection. We're striving for small, incremental changes." - Justin Coulson
"It's not about getting more things done. It's about getting the right things done." - Greg McKeown

Key Points:
- The challenge of feeling constantly busy but not productive
- How burnout affects family dynamics and personal wellbeing
- The importance of creating space for personal reflection
- Introduction to the WISE Family Reset framework

The WISE Family Reset Framework:

Work out what matters
* Create personal space for reflection
* Understand individual and family priorities

Implement tiny changes
* Start with small, manageable adjustments
* Avoid overwhelming yourself with too many changes at once

Sync as a team
* Get everyone involved in the planning
* Create buy-in through collaboration

Encourage, don't nag
* Focus on positive reinforcement
* Have important conversations at the right time
* Avoid being the "police" when it comes to rules

Resources Mentioned:
Book: "Essentialism" by Greg McKeown
Website: happyfamilies.com.au

Action Steps for Listeners:
1. Schedule some "escape time" for personal reflection
2. Identify one small change to implement this week
3. Plan a family meeting to discuss priorities for 2025
4. Practice encouragement instead of nagging

Do you ever find yourself stretched too thin at home or at work? Have you ever felt like you're overworked but not fulfilling your ptension, not using your strength, not being utilized the way that you want to utilize your life. Do you ever feel like you're really, really, really really busy but not productive, not getting the things done that need to be done. Do you ever feel like you're constantly in motion but never getting anywhere? What if your family could start twenty twenty five fresh, a complete reboot, a full restart. Hello and welcome to the first episode of the Happy Families podcast for twenty twenty five. It's real parenting solutions every day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. We are Justin and Kylie Coulson. Kylie, a fresh start for a fresh year. It sounds so good.

At the end of twenty twenty four, I wasn't hiding the fact that I was really struggling.

On the podcast. You sounded like you completely goes.

Out, completely burnt out, to the point where the only solution I saw inside was it literally to throw life out the window. Everything, every component needed to go, and I just wanted to curl up in a ball and hide in a corner and not come out for a week or two, maybe three.

Yeah.

So it's interesting how, in spite of all of that emotion and the way we were feeling, what a new year offers that clean slate. The visual for me is getting that new, clean diary, blank pages everywhere for a whole year, and we get to determine what fills the pages. And so, in spite of how exhausted I felt, a couple of quiet weeks over Christmas and the New Year break have been everything that I needed and a new diary to reset and get set for twenty twenty five.

At quieter Christmas than we have ever had, and it felt so good. So the real question is how do you get that refreshing start to a new year. Hopefully your break's been wonderful, but that's what we're going to talk about on the podcast today.

As part of our reset, we decided to read a book together. It's a book called Essentialism by Greg McEwen.

We used to do this years and years ago. We lay in bed each night and read to each other and it was wonderful. So we've rebooted that and I love it.

This is actually a book you've already.

Read You Love It, one of my top five books of all time.

And as we were having discussions towards the end of last year about how we wanted the next year to be, as you were.

Linging on by your fingernails.

I kept saying, I just need things to slow down. I can't keep running this fast, and you said, but what does that look like? And in my mind, I'm looking at this big to do list and nothing I can take out of it. I can't give away any children, I can't I can't stop doing the podcast like there was just there was nothing that I could stop doing. And as we've been reading this book, there's been a handful of quotes that have really jumped out at me, and this one is just so profound. If you don't prioritize your own life, someone else will.

Yeah, and that's someone who's usually about knee high and maybe waist high. If you've got teenagers, they're probably taller than you.

And that was the big trap for me last year, because there were so many moving parts and so many new things for us to work through. I was allowing all of those other agendas to crowd in and take up the space without me first, prioritizing my needs.

And then you've also got that agenda where I was going to say, the kids have got their own agendas, and I guess they do. Sometimes their agendas are leave me alone. I just want to I don't know, like I'm writing a book about teenage boys right now, so I want to use a terrible example. I just want to stay in my room and vape and play video games or something like that. I mean, that's a kind of a dark example. But our kids have got their own agendas. They want to do their thing. They want to stay out, well.

They just want to watch another episode in their show, or they want to swim in the pool the time, you know, instead of helping or doing any number of other things that you've got on your agenda.

And it derails everything that you're trying to do. And you've got the best of it. Your agenda really is to give them the best life possible, and they seem intent on derailing that because they don't want the best life possible. They want to watch DV now or eat junk food now. And so we keep on trying to do more and more and more and more. And this is why we need a fresh start.

I remember when our kids were a lot younger, I was going to the gym with my friend each morning, and we had these conversations regularly about the fact that you know, she'd come home and she'd have a shower and get into a normal clothes and get on with the day. And I found that if I had a shower and I changed, I didn't have the same motivation level to get through my big to do list. And so I would stay in my gym clothes and my sneakers, and I would tell you, the only way I can get through to if I have my stack as on, because I have to keep running.

I remember you saying that, and you would say, I literally run to the washing loan. I literally run to the laundry. I literally run to the kitchen. I literally run to the car. And if I'm in my gym gear, it just makes me more energized and keeps me moving, which is not really what life's supposed to be.

In essentialism, he actually says it's not about getting more things done, it's about getting the right things done.

So after the break, we're going to break it down four things to restart the year, to freshen it up. We call it the Wise Family Reset, Kylie. A fresh start means stripping back to essentials. Our Wise Family Reset is going to help everyone to do that.

The biggest thing I struggled with towards the end of the year was a feeling or a lack of feeling in control.

Yeah. Yeah, it's called burnout and literally meaning you don't have a sense that you have any agency or control over your life.

And so the idea that we can be intentional about what we say yes to helps us to feel more in control. We can get the right things done the right way at the right time, and we can find joy in the every day as a result.

It sounds like a fresh refresh. It sounds like a fresh start. The Wise Family Reset is really simple for things, and it's an acronym. That's what it's called, the Wise Family Reset. W stands for workout what matters. I stands for implement tiny changes. S stands for sync as a team, not as in sync like the Titanic, but SINC as in get on the same page. You just s sinc as a team and the EMU later in the year, that's right. The E stands for encouraged, don't nag so let's break this down, go through each of those one by one. The w workout what matters. This is the Wise Family reset. Work out what matters has two elements.

I think it's so important as an individual and especially as you know, the mom and dad of the family, to actually work out what matters most to you as an individual and as a couple before you include the children's processing into that equation.

At the end of last year, several times I said to you, Collie, what do you actually want? Because so few people can articulate what they want, and you couldn't. You were unable to tell me what you wanted full stop. End of story. And eventually after about a week and a half you said it's one of things, slowed down and said, all right, well, we've got to work on understanding what that looks like, what that means. That's why we pulled this book out. But the Wise Family reset working out what matters, creating personal space, escaping, having time to think. There's this part in our brain called the default mode network. It's associated with thinking and guess what in today's digitally charged world where we are so burdened and so busy, and then when we use our downtime to stare at a screen. The DMN, the default mode network, which is so important for developing identity and asking the big questions and having that escape, it doesn't get a chance to turn on the way it's supposed to. Like once upon a time when there was nothing to do, you know what, you did nothing, and the DMN, the defaut mode network in your brain would switch in and go, hm, there's nothing to do, which means now I get to ask myself the big existential questions like why am I here? And what do I want? And how am I going to make a contribution on what's my purpose? And all that sort of stuff. So when we pick up a screen and play a game, or we pick up a screen and scroll our socials, what we do is we disallow the DMN from kicking in, which means that our brain never gets the downtime it needs to think about the big questions and allow us to feel like we are rested. I'm turning into an anti screen kind of person because it just doesn't let us shut off, which exacerbates and amplifies the stress and the burnout and the fatigue. You've just said, to work out what matters you need that personal space. I'm going to go further. I'm going to say you need to escape. You need to escape, even if it's for a few hours, so that you can just do nothing, just let your brain do what your brain is supposed to do. It's incredible what it will come up with. But there's two things to work out what matters.

So the second part of this is that while it's really important for us as individuals to work out what matters most, we actually need to bring the family in. They need to be a part of this process as well, and together we get to work out what's important for our family.

Sometimes you'll have the answer beforehand. That's why you create that personal space and have that escape and figure it out. But sometimes even though you think you know the answer, you sit down with the family and say, hey, what matters here, and they give you something that you were not expecting. And it's really important to be open to that. It's a new opportunity for us to get that fresh start. What you thought was necessary, it might only be necessary for you, it might not be necessary for the whole family. Alternatively, the family could just be completely deluding themselves. They could be fully to Lulu, I thought I was so gen olf when I said that, and they need your prefrontal cortex to step in and say, well, you know what, those things are important, but this is the stuff that matters most.

I think if the family's really struggling to come together with this and work out what matters most, one of the most important questions you can ask them is when has it felt great in our family?

Beautiful?

Yeah, when has it felt great?

What were we doing?

Then you can narrow down what you were doing in those moments and what it was that enabled that moment to feel great.

Wise, family reset. Once you've worked out what matters, implement tiny changes.

So often we have this clean slate and we want to change it all.

It's like when you say I'm going to get fit and healthy, and so you go on the diet and you join the gym and you.

Want to lose twenty kilos in a day.

That's right, and you do day one and you kind of well, you wake up on day two and you can't move and you're hungry and you're having sugar withdrawals, or maybe you've given.

Up a and you eat a block of chocolate.

He cover, it's too hard. I don't want to do this, So we want to start small. When you do it yourself, and especially when you do it with the family, say okay, so screens are an issue, or bedtimes an issue, or mornings are an issue, whatever it is, what's one small thing that we can work on this week to make it better. It's just one small thing. We're not going to do the whole lot, which is going to pick on one thing and when we get really good at that, then we'll move to the next step. So Number one, workout what matters. Number two, implement tiny changes.

Number three is we sync together as a team. We actually pull it all together, and we work together as a team. We create a plan and then we're able to implement that plan as part of that process.

It's really about being on the same page. If you sit down as a parent and say, right, this is what we need to do to make our family function and the kids aren't buying in, it just feels horrible. It doesn't go well. Whereas if everyone's got some input, everyone's involved in the development of the plan, everyone's involved in the conversation, everyone is in agreement that yeah, this is something that's worth working on. That's how you sink as a team. Wis w workout what matters, I implement tiny changes, s sink as a team and the last one encourage nag.

So how do you do this in practical terms? How are you seen by your children as an encourager and not a nagger.

Let me start with what not to do. Don't point fingers. We have talked about this often at home. You're not the police.

You're not the police.

You're not the police.

You're not the food police, you're not the you're not the homework police.

Almost please or whatever it is, or the bedtime police. You are the parent, and there has been an agreement reached. But usually if you step in and start pointing things and say, hey, I thought we agreed, Hey, what are you doing that for? Hey we said we wouldn't do that, everyone feels judged rather than loved. I don't think that hate is the opposite of love. I think judgment is, and judgment shuts down relationships, that ruptures them, It stops conversation. It's just not helpful. So rather than doing that, you've got a couple of options. Option number one is you notice it and then later that day, in a totally different context, maybe on the edge of their bed. That night, you sit down and say, hey, we've been going pretty well, but today there was a couple of slip ups. What did you notice and see if they can identify it and say, I'm not getting you in trouble. I know you're doing your very best, but what do you reckon we can do tomorrow to make sure that doesn't happen again. In other words, let it slide in the moment, because the moment doesn't matter as much as the learning that can come from it later on. If you do feel like you need to step in in the moment because there's been an agreement made, we're having a fresh start everyone, you can just smile and say, hey, guys, fresh starts. Or you might let's say, I don't know. Let's say they're on their screen and the screen really needs to go off. You might simply say, I don't want to be the nag. I know that you know what we've agreed on, so let's see if we can come up with a solution here. Because what's happening right now isn't what we agreed to on Saturday or on Sunday when we had our family meeting. And if you've got a ten year old like ours, she's going to look at you and go but it's not and have a big sook and you can say, I know it doesn't feel fair. I'm going to give you a minute to have a think about it and then we'll talk about it again then. So you're letting the emotion go out of the moment. You're not putting pressure on them. And usually what the kids do is they go, mum more, Dad has left the room and we did make that agreement, and a minute or so later they'll usually turn off the TV or they'll do the thing they're supposed to do. Those the two ways that I would go about it. Every now and again. You've got to step in with force. Every now and again, you've got to step in and just be the big, tough guy, the parent. But when that happens again, you talk about it later. It's about the conversations that happen later. We're not striving for perfection. We're striving for small, incremental, implemented improvements.

I think the way that comes to me at the moment is just realistic expectations of our children. When we're trying to implement new things in our lives. Even us as adults struggle with that. It's not something that we get perfect right away, and our children and are going to be the same. And so just like a new year provides us with this beautiful clean slate, this new beginning each day provides us with that.

A fresh start for a new year twenty twenty five, here we come. Have that family meeting with the kids. See how it goes, the wise family recess it, work out what matters, implement tiny changes, sink as a team, Encourage, don't nag. The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media. We would love it if you would leave us a rating and review. Those five star ratings and reviews make it easier for other people to find the podcast really makes a difference. So for a brand new year, could you help us out? Could you give us a five star rating and review Wherever you listen to the pod, it genuinely makes a really big difference. If you would like more information about making your family happier, we've got all the resources you need at happy families dot com dot au.