297: The 1 Shift That Will Change How You Show Up for Yourself and Your Family

[00:00:00] Tiffany Sauder: A life that only reacts to everyone else's priorities, eventually runs out of energy. A life built on clear priorities creates room for both ambition and generosity, growth and service, progress and presence. Clarity comes first, and when clarity leads, time finally begins to work with you instead of against you.

[00:00:23] Tiffany Sauder: I am Tiffany Sauder, entrepreneur, wife, mom to four girls, and a woman figuring it out just like you. If you're tired of living a life of have to and finally ready to build a life of want to, then you're in the right place. Come on, let's go Build your Life of And.

[00:00:47] Tiffany Sauder: Hello everyone, and welcome back to the first solo show of 2026. I'm recording this in 2026. It actually feels kind of strategic to have waited so long because I feel like the thoughts I wanna share with you are like so poignant and so relevant. And so right now for me and my producers are sort of, I think might wanna strangle me because I'm super late on this one.

[00:01:09] Tiffany Sauder: But anyway, I had a great break. Really took like mostly two weeks off. Kept some email going, but that's about it.

[00:01:15] Tiffany Sauder: You guys know if you've been listening, we're in transition. We're living with my in-laws right now. And so this was very much a strange holiday and I feel like I give my family and I give myself so much credit for just letting the gap exist.

[00:01:32] Tiffany Sauder: Like I feel like I did a good job of being like, yeah, it's just gonna be different and I'm not gonna go into every single like experience and interaction. And evaluate it based on like, well, it's not the same as it usually is. Like, you know how that can kinda like get your head spinning. So anyway, I give us like, I give us an a, I don't know, I'm just like really happy with how we showed up for each other.

[00:01:55] Tiffany Sauder: I feel really happy that we were like really present. I only forgot. One present, and I got Sam a scale for Christmas. She's in the room, so that's an episode for another day. My daughter was like, you got her a scale. It's so weird. I also got one for myself. But anyway, we're not talking about that today. I just think it's really funny.

[00:02:17] Tiffany Sauder: I was like, that's how you know I really love you. No subtle messages. It's just actually very cool and one of those things you wouldn't really buy for yourself. So anyways, that's not what I'm gonna talk about today.

[00:02:28] Tiffany Sauder: What we wanna talk about in the format of this may be a little different than my normal solo shows, which is like me just chatting and sharing top of mind.

[00:02:37] Tiffany Sauder: But I got a text message from a woman the, I dunno, in the last six days, and it said to me, I. Tiffany, in so many words, I want 2026 to be my best year yet, and I know you help women get the most out of their time. Do you have any like time management tools or spreadsheets or apps that you recommend that I use?

[00:02:59] Tiffany Sauder: And I sat on this text for several days because my first reaction was, that's the wrong question. And then I was like, well, that's not actually a very helpful response. What is the right question to be asking and why is it that that is the question that our brain goes to is like, how do I manage better?

[00:03:20] Tiffany Sauder: The thing I already have is like our first place we go and we don't stop and back up and look at 10,000 feet and say, but is what I have in the jar to manage even what I want in the jar. Does it fit in the jar? Is it where I actually wanna put my time and money? Is it gonna move me towards my goals?

[00:03:42] Tiffany Sauder: Like it's not just about time management, it's so much bigger than that. So for some reason over the last few days, I have like. Thought I've written a bunch of stuff. I've just like, I, I don't know, sort of just like forced this, this stuff out of my subconscious, intuitive, experience oriented brain and pushed it out into like, I don't know, three to four pages.

[00:04:08] Tiffany Sauder: It's almost like a little book chapter. On this topic, and what I wanna do is read it, which sounds boring, but I also wanna annotate it like as I go through it, almost like author's notes, and we'll see how that goes. And then at the end, I sort of put myself in your seat and said, well, if I were, if Tiffany, if I, Tiffany, were giving this presentation to an audience of women, what likely would be their questions following this?

[00:04:36] Tiffany Sauder: I don't know, 10, 15 minute little. Soliloquy, I'm gonna go through this vignette. What would be their questions? And so then I'm gonna like prompt myself with some of those questions.

[00:04:46] Tiffany Sauder: And what I hope this helps you do, and honestly what it's helping me do is say like, how many times have we started the year and said, this is gonna be the year.

[00:04:57] Tiffany Sauder: Like this is gonna be it. Like I can see it, I can feel it, I know it's in me, I know it's possible. And then we get. Into the year, and we lose sight of that so quickly. And I have gone through my own failure cycle with that so many times. And one of my life observations is that people write books and create content on the things that are very acute to them.

[00:05:20] Tiffany Sauder: And often if they're very acute to you, you are not naturally good at them. And my most extreme example of this is the founder and CEO of Zappos who ultimately committed suicide, wrote a book on happiness. Because happiness was so elusive to him as a result of that, it was so acute. Does that make sense?

[00:05:41] Tiffany Sauder: Like when, when it's elusive, when we can't get it naturally, we spend so much time thinking about, well, how could I capture this, bring it into my life, activate it, make it real, make it true. And for me, this is like one of those topic areas where I can be easily distracted. I can go into servant mode, I can get excited about new ideas, I can get tired.

[00:06:05] Tiffany Sauder: I can start tomorrow. I can, you know, like not do the things I intend to do because something else looks more fun. And I don't know if those things feel real to you, but that's definitely been me in the past and it can still be me today if I'm not really careful about bringing these things into captivity.

[00:06:22] Tiffany Sauder: So. So I'm gonna read some of this. We're gonna talk about it together as if we were just like chatting over coffee. And, um, then I'll, I dunno, kind of put my question hat on and we'll go from there. So, all right, here we go. Okay.

[00:06:35] Tiffany Sauder: So kind of the tension is, is it the time management or is it about better priorities?

[00:06:45] Tiffany Sauder: So maybe being intentional with your time isn't about a better system. But rather first, knowing what it is that you want, not just kind of want, but what are those things that your soul craves to see and do and achieve and love at the beginning of every year? The same question shows up sometimes quietly, and sometimes with a lot of urgency.

[00:07:07] Tiffany Sauder: How can I be more intentional with my time? It usually comes dressed as like a practical question. What planner do you use? What app keeps you organized? How do you plan your week? These questions are reasonable, helpful even, but they're almost never the first question that needs answering because being intentional with your time has some to do with how we manage it, but far more to do with whether you understand what deserves it.

[00:07:34] Tiffany Sauder: I'm gonna say that again. Being intentional with your time has some to do with how we manage it, but it has far more to do with whether you understand what deserves your time in the first place. So we often start with what deserves our time by setting goals, right? New Year's is a great big goal setting time of year, but goals are the destination.

[00:07:57] Tiffany Sauder: Priorities are the bridge. Okay? Goals are the destination. Priorities are the bridge. I wanna spend a little bit creating some shared vocabulary around these things. Most of us can easily articulate goals. You've maybe even written them down, coming into the year, lose weight, grow your business, make more money.

[00:08:12] Tiffany Sauder: Be more present for your kids and your family, or for yourself. Get healthier. Learn mahjong. Write a book, like these are destination things. Goals are destinations. Goals. Tell us where we want to go. Very normal, very easy, but priorities determine whether or not we ever get there. Think about priorities as the bridge, literally the bridge between your today self and your tomorrow self.

[00:08:38] Tiffany Sauder: It connects them the structure. Your decisions, your energy, your money, and your attention travels across. Like in my head, I literally picture the Golden Gate Bridge, like I'm on one side of it. This is my today self. My tomorrow self is on the other side of that bridge, and my priorities are what I gonna connect them.

[00:08:59] Tiffany Sauder: They're gonna decide, and what am I gonna spend money on? What am I gonna spend time on? Who am I gonna hang out with? What am I gonna read? What's gonna occupy my energy? Priorities are what? Determine that they're in service to your goal. They're in service to your future self. But goals oftentimes by themselves are not actually actionable.

[00:09:18] Tiffany Sauder: Lose weight. I can't sit here in this chair and like, eh, grunt hard or something and lose weight. You poop. Then you could, but you know what I mean? That's such a gross example. But that's who I am. But like you can't make your body lose weight. But if your priority is. This many steps a day, the steps will move you towards are in service to your goal of losing weight.

[00:09:44] Tiffany Sauder: That makes sense, the difference between the goal and the priority. Without that bridge even the most compelling goal remains simply aspirational.

[00:09:52] Tiffany Sauder: When priorities are unclear, decisions default to convenience, urgency, or other people's needs and priorities around you. When priorities are clear, decisions become simp simpler, even when they're hard.

[00:10:07] Tiffany Sauder: I'm gonna say that again. When priorities are unclear, when you haven't decided exactly what it is that you need to do every single day, week and month, that are in service to the goals, in service to your future self, then decisions for your time and money and energy and capacity, default to convenience, urgency for what other people need from you.

[00:10:32] Tiffany Sauder: When your priorities are clear, when you know exactly the things that need your time, energy, attention, and money in service to your future self in service to your goals, then decision becomes simple. 'cause you have a filter, yes or no, yes or no. Yes or no. Even when the decision is hard, it's clear. So what happens?

[00:10:52] Tiffany Sauder: What is the cost of having undefined priorities? This is what quietly happens when we haven't named. Our priorities. When we haven't gotten clear on these things, other people's priorities begin to take precedence. When we don't know what to do with our time, other people's ideas and expectations for our time begin to become what we do.

[00:11:10] Tiffany Sauder: Not because anyone is malicious, not because you lack discipline, but because time is generous when it isn't protected, when you have not decided at all what you want to do with any minutes or hours of your day. And it's this sort of generous, endless sense of, yeah, sure, no problem. Because you're not understanding the opportunity cost of that minute as it relates to your ability to be able to deposit it into something that is towards your goals or deposit it into something that is neutral to or detracting from your goals.

[00:11:44] Tiffany Sauder: When you have not decided what it is that you want to do, then it's easy to say yes to everybody else. If nothing is clearly marked on the calendar as yours, those minutes and hours will be filled often by good things, sometimes by necessary things, and frequently by other people's needs. I'm gonna say that again.

[00:12:06] Tiffany Sauder: If nothing is clearly marked on the calendar as yours, those minutes and hours will be filled always. Often by good things, sometimes by necessary things, and frequently by other people's needs. And I'll also say frequently by distractions like TV and social media and just sort of like this, like weird lulling your brain to sleep kind of filler activity.

[00:12:30] Tiffany Sauder: When we haven't decided where our priorities are on our calendars, our time gets absorbed by lots of other things. A like easy way to think about this. If you've decided this year that you have some fitness goals and you've decided how many times you're gonna work out, I would ask you, have you decided exactly where on your calendar it's going to go, and have you accounted for the accessory minutes that it takes to get to that goal?

[00:12:56] Tiffany Sauder: And I think I'll do a secondary episode on some of the stuff, but have you actually looked at. This is when it's gonna happen. So it's locked in stone. It's like as serious a commitment as any business meeting on my calendar. If your kids roll outta bed and say, Hey, mom, will you take me early to school on Wednesday?

[00:13:14] Tiffany Sauder: Which is a morning that you've decided you're gonna work out. If you haven't put your time to work out on your calendar, it's easy to say yes because you kind of forget. You go to your calendar and say, oh, it looks like I'm available, but you're not available. You've decided that. That's the minute. Those are the minutes that you're gonna spend working tired towards working out so that you can work towards your goal.

[00:13:35] Tiffany Sauder: So I've told my kids before, I don't mind if you go, I just can't take you. So if you can get a ride, if a friend can pick you up, if your dad can take you, if your older sister can take you, incredible. No problem with you being there. It just doesn't work for me to take you. So I'm sure it's a good thing that she's going to do, but a better thing for me to do is to keep my commitment to myself.

[00:13:56] Tiffany Sauder: Because when I do that, I get to live to try to be 102, and if I get to live to be 102, then you know that's better for her if I'm around, at least I think so. So you get the idea of if nothing is clearly marked on the calendar as yours, if you have not put your priorities physically on the calendar and said, this is me protecting, this is me claiming moments, minutes, and hours that are moving me towards my priorities.

[00:14:22] Tiffany Sauder: Because when I'm working on my priorities, those are moving me towards my goals. Then we can get distracted by other people's needs and just distractions that take our attention. So over time, this creates a subtle but dangerous pattern. You stay busy, but you're disconnected from progress. And this is where I think we get to this place of exhaustion and burnout where I am so busy, I am so stimulated, I am so in demand.

[00:14:48] Tiffany Sauder: But I feel so invisible in my own life, and so as a result, I start to feel disconnected from any sense of progress because I'm not feeling progress in my own life. I'm only facilitating progress in other people's lives. And that's what can happen as women for sure. As moms for sure, as leaders, for sure.

[00:15:13] Tiffany Sauder: I wanna take a quick moment to thank my partners at Share Your Genius. For the past four years, they have been an incredible part of my journey behind the microphone. Share Your Genius is a content and podcast production agency that helps leaders and brands bring their message to life. So whether you're trying to find your voice, develop a content strategy, or get your leader behind a microphone, they're gonna help you make it simple, strategic, and impactful.

[00:15:37] Tiffany Sauder: And so when we get into this mode where we are only in a place of activation by other people's stimulus of our time and not of our own. We feel like we are treading water. Best case, standing in quicksand. Worst case because we're feeling no sense of real progress from all of the outpouring of time and energy and waking up early and staying up late and spending money in all of the things because we are not a customer of any of those resources in our lives.

[00:16:06] Tiffany Sauder: We're simply pouring ourselves out to everybody else. Another way to say that, I guess, is that movement replaces momentum and eventually frustration sets in, or as I was just saying, burnout being pissed off at everybody. Feeling like, oh my gosh, I signed up for all this, but I hate it. Not because you don't work hard, but because the work doesn't seem to move you forward.

[00:16:28] Tiffany Sauder: We can get stuck in this mode of operating where service becomes the default setting. Attention is especially familiar to people who have built our lives around service. I just said this. Leaders, parents, partners, caregivers, people, others rely on over time. Something powerful and complicated happens in these roles.

[00:16:50] Tiffany Sauder: Being available becomes our identity. I'm gonna say that again. Something powerful and complicated can happen when we are in these roles of leader, parent, partner, caregiver, and that is the availability becomes our identity. We answer the call, we make it work, we figure it out, and eventually the people around us and we train them to internalize an internal truth without often realizing it, and that is that she is available.

[00:17:20] Tiffany Sauder: And when you've consistently been available, responsive and accommodating, that becomes the unspoken agreement. So when you begin to protect your own priorities, it feels disruptive. Right? When we've been in this mode of Whenever you need me, I can be there. Oh, practice got out 10 minutes early. No problem.

[00:17:37] Tiffany Sauder: I can be there. Oh, you forgot your thing before school. Oh, no problem. I can drop it off. Oh, you need to stay late. No problem. I can accommodate. Oh, you need me to run last minute to pick up something? No problem. You need me to wrap that gift you forgot to do. Oh, no problem. You need me to like call the school.

[00:17:53] Tiffany Sauder: No problem. Like. It becomes this on demand thing where we lose agency over our time because we've decided or we've defaulted, to saying being a good mom, being a good leader, being a good wife, being a good partner means I have to be always on available, and that's not true. So when we suddenly decide that we wanna create goals that have clearly linked priorities to them, it starts to create some friction.

[00:18:27] Tiffany Sauder: We're gonna talk through that now. So eventually, I'm gonna start kind of back up a little bit. Eventually, the people around you realizing an internal truth without realizing it that she's available. When you consistently been available, responsive and accommodating, that becomes the unspoken agreement.

[00:18:43] Tiffany Sauder: So when you begin to protect your own priorities, it can feel disruptive because it's like, what do you mean you're not available? You're always available. That's how this works. Not because you've changed your values, you still want to be a good mom, partner, spouse, leader, but because you've changed the structure.

[00:19:04] Tiffany Sauder: So here's an important reframe. When there's friction in this, it does not mean that you're doing something wrong. It means you're doing something new. Friction does not mean you're doing something wrong. It means you're doing something new.

[00:19:14] Tiffany Sauder: And when priorities shift from being implicit to explicit, resistance can appear implicit, explicit.

[00:19:20] Tiffany Sauder: I love these words. Implicit means it's implied. I never said to you I'm always gonna be available, and you never said to me, you're always gonna be available. We just implied it. It's how we behaved. We've intuited it. When we move to explicit, it's an explicitly defined agreement. I have told you this is when I can pack lunches.

[00:19:40] Tiffany Sauder: If you're not, if your lunchbox isn't in the kitchen, then I don't pack your lunch. I'll pack lunches at 6:30 PM Monday through Thursday. If you want your lunch packed, I'm happy to help. If you don't have your lunchbox there, no problem. I'm not mad at you. I'm just not packing it. That's an example of, mommy, will you pack my lunch?

[00:19:57] Tiffany Sauder: Sure. Anytime morning before, two minutes before the bus comes night, before 10:00 PM after practice. Like anytime in the hours between you getting home from school and going to school. That's a broad range of Mom. Will you pack your lunch? That's an implicit. Expectation or is it become an explicit agreement, which is totally so would love to.

[00:20:20] Tiffany Sauder: When I'm cleaning up dinner, I'll pack lunches. Everybody needs to have their lunchboxes emptied and ready for me to refill at 6:30 PM That's an explicit agreement, right? Do it or don't do it. I'm not mad at you. If your lunchbox isn't down there, it's just the consequences. Your lunch packed again, still not mad at you.

[00:20:36] Tiffany Sauder: It allows me to still do the thing. Help you pack your lunch without being on demand. 'cause I'm not going to be, 'cause I have other things. I'm trying to move forward, but it hasn't changed my values. As a mom, I wanna be hopeful. I, how can I make life easy for you? You've got a lot going on. Let me make it easy.

[00:20:51] Tiffany Sauder: I know the fridge, I know what's in there. I can make quesadilla faster than you can. Happy to help. Just not on demand. I'm happy to help at a specific time that I've defined and you can participate or not participate. You're not in trouble if you don't. That makes sense. It's like how you move from implicit to explicit.

[00:21:11] Tiffany Sauder: But when that happens, resistance can appear. It can sound like disappointment. It can sound like confusion. It can sometimes look like pushback, but this doesn't require us to get defensive. It requires us to step into our skills to lead. And leadership always begins with clarity.

[00:21:29] Tiffany Sauder: The first thing we need to do is do two things.

[00:21:32] Tiffany Sauder: Share your priorities. Boundaries are far more effective when they're understood. When the people around you know why something matters to you, they are more likely to respect the limits around it. This isn't about asking permission. It isn't about asking for permission, but it's about inviting others into the context so that they understand where it's coming from.

[00:21:52] Tiffany Sauder: A no without explanation feels like withdraw or a no without explanation. Just feels hard and annoying and like rejection. But a no with clarity and explanation feels intentional.

[00:22:03] Tiffany Sauder: So back to my example about packing lunches, which is so silly and simple. If you suddenly say, no, I'm not pack your lunch, it's like, what?

[00:22:12] Tiffany Sauder: Like we just went from you're gonna pack it always to No. Like, that feels weird. But what you can do is sit down with your family or find your thing. It's just never a big thing. It's all these like thousands of little things that we're like, I don't know. It feels too big, is to say, Hey, one of my goals this year is to become the healthiest, ver, healthiest version of myself so that I can live to be 102, so that I can be as long as possible for our family and for you kids.

[00:22:38] Tiffany Sauder: That's my big picture goal. One of my priorities is to get 8,000 steps a day, and to be able to do that, I need to be able to take 2,500 steps after dinner and before I pick kids up for practice. So I need a period of time about 25 minutes after dinner to be able to go out and take some steps. So, so that I have time to do that, I'm gonna move the time that we pack lunches to anytime in the evening to six 30.

[00:23:06] Tiffany Sauder: That's what I'm gonna pack lunches. So if you'd still like for me to pack your lunch, then please have your lunchbox emptied in the kitchen by six 30. Here's where I'd like you to put it, and I'll pack everybody's lunches that are there. BTW. This is a fictitious example because I don't pack my kids' lunches, but you get the idea.

[00:23:24] Tiffany Sauder: If my kids listen to this, like mom does not pack my lunch, I'm not saying, I'm not saying I pack your lunch, they pack their own lunches. But this is just a very simple example of saying, I'll pack it anytime in the evening to this is exactly what time. That's what I'm trying to get you to understand in a very simple way so that I can.

[00:23:39] Tiffany Sauder: Pursue my priorities, which is health or reading or writing a book, or whatever the thing is that you want to do. Wanting to give an example of going from an always on demand availability to a very specific way that I can be accessed and available so that I can still serve you because my values of the mom have not changed.

[00:23:59] Tiffany Sauder: Just the way in which I'm behaving it. The way in which we're interacting is gonna change and evolve so that there's also room for my priorities in progress. That's number one. Share your priorities. Encourage you to do this in every season. Sit around the the table as a family or start with just sharing your priorities with your spouse as a place to get confident and to exercise this muscle, but it gets everybody on the same page in a way that is like shared and makes you feel like a team in such, in such an encouraging way.

[00:24:32] Tiffany Sauder: The second one is to moon from on demand to agreements, and I was just kind of going through this, but every close relationship operates on a system, whether it's spoken or not. If you've always said yes, immediately handled things whenever asked or made yourself available at at any hour, that is the system.

[00:24:51] Tiffany Sauder: Always on, on demand system. The good news is that systems can be redesigned. Service doesn't have to disappear. It can move to a way that the service is delivered, that it's sustainable. Here's some examples, and I just gave you one, but instead of, I'll do this whenever you need it, shift to here's how and when this gets done.

[00:25:09] Tiffany Sauder: The outcome remains, but the delivery changes. This move from reaction to design creates space. A space where priorities can finally coexist. A space where priorities can finally coexist. I'm repeating that because your priorities need to be able to coexist alongside your family's priorities. For those of us that have spouses and kids that we're, you know, raising and a like, you know, all the things, priorities can finally coexist.

[00:25:40] Tiffany Sauder: But there's one more reality that I think is worth naming, and it's when you say a bigger yes to your priorities, it may mean saying no or not now to people who were used to your availability. And that can be uncomfortable, especially if you're wired to anticipate needs or avoid disappointment. But guilt is not a reliable indicator of misalignment.

[00:26:03] Tiffany Sauder: Often it's simply the residue of an old agreement being renegotiated. Instead of absorbing that tension silently bringing it into the open name. What's changing? Acknowledge what's hard. Invite collaboration. What once felt like loss can become learning? What, once felt like guilt can become growth. What once felt like either or can become and, and this is where the and is built a life that only reacts to everyone else's priorities.

[00:26:33] Tiffany Sauder: Eventually runs out of energy. A life built on clear priorities creates room for both ambition and generosity. Growth and service, progress and presence, and the planner comes later. Clarity comes first, and when clarity leads, time finally begins to work with you instead of against you. There's something about me that kind of gets emotional when I read these words about and, and I guess it's just proof that.

[00:27:03] Tiffany Sauder: This is what I'm supposed to be doing with my life, but this is where the and is built a life that only reacts to everyone else's priorities, eventually runs out of energy. It's like this incredibly amazing thing about being human a. That living a life entirely in service is actually the one that makes us run out of energy.

[00:27:27] Tiffany Sauder: It's like so interesting to me, but when we build an and when we make space to prioritize ourself, there's room for both ambition and generosity. I mean, I want to be an amazingly available mom and that means such different things today as I, we have teenagers and a five-year-old, like they available looks very different to that.

[00:27:50] Tiffany Sauder: Kid, a 16-year-old versus a 5-year-old. I have to be incredibly intentional and strategic about the time I use to make sure that I continue to feed my ambition because that is much as much who I am as a person as I am. The person who wants to be a mom, I'm like stuck in my head of like, being a mom is a role and being ambitious is more of a value.

[00:28:16] Tiffany Sauder: But like I have the desire to care for my kids. I have the desire to be present for them. I have the desire to help them grow, to be there, to make it softer when they fall. And I also have the desire. To have impact on the world and to be ambitious and to build things and to grow. And those things have to happen at the same time because without one or the other, I would not feel whole.

[00:28:44] Tiffany Sauder: And I think there's just something so beautiful about the fact that when we decide to master the toolbox of bringing the, and together it is when we get to experience life. In a way that I think we don't dare believe in this modern age. And I'm so done saying that being burnout and being tired and being reactive, and being exhausted and being overwhelmed, these crappy words that we use to talk about how life feels and the 21st century, I'm just like so done with it.

[00:29:21] Tiffany Sauder: And there's these, they're hard but simple. Principles that when we decide that this is gonna be our fight, getting these things into captivity, getting these things into our lives, getting these disciplines and reframes and vocabulary into our lives and into our families, into our friends, into our communities.

[00:29:40] Tiffany Sauder: Imagine the potential that we can unlock in humanity. I don't know. It's crazy to me. So I don't know. That's where my brain is going. I realize these are my words and I'm being impacted by them, and I don't know, but. It's just, I think in the new year I've like our house is under construction and there's kind of this like part of me that's like, I see these like under construction signs in my life right now.

[00:30:07] Tiffany Sauder: There's something about me that feels like a lot of my life is under construction. Like some things are just, I don't know. I don't know why I don't even know exactly where to go with that, but I just feel like it's just sort of this under construction and the power of. Our priorities, the power of where we put our time, money, and attention is a really, really, really big deal because it becomes the life that we build and it becomes the person we become and that becomes who our family is around and who our coworkers are around, and who the people that we lead are around.

[00:30:38] Tiffany Sauder: It's a really big deal. It's a really, really, really big deal.

[00:30:45] Tiffany Sauder: If you listen to my 2025 recap episode, you heard me talk about how 2025 was a year of testing, and 2026 is a year of scale.

[00:30:54] Tiffany Sauder: So we are really excited in 2026 to bring to you our Life of And program. You can participate this as an individual if you want to. If your corporation has an employee resource group, or if you're part of an organization like Women in Construction or Women in Insurance, something like that, that is looking for, that is looking for quarterly content, then this Life of Event program is totally for you.

[00:31:18] Tiffany Sauder: So here's how it works. Quarterly, you'll have access to me speaking virtually. We'll have two dates per quarter where you can do that. So I'll present for 30 to 40 minutes. We'll do some audience interaction, q and a, um, and we'll do some live solving together. So once a quarter you have a chance to see me live virtually.

[00:31:36] Tiffany Sauder: If the dates I've chosen don't work for you, no problem, we'll give you access to that on demand for 30 days afterwards. In addition to those sessions, I have discussion guides so that you can go deeper and apply what I'm talking about to your life specifically. And I'll have supplemental resources like, Hey, look, listen to these podcast episodes.

[00:31:54] Tiffany Sauder: And best of all, you'll also get complete all access to the Life of And academy. Think about this as like my digital textbook. It's our virtual course digital course, where you'll have lifetime access to every tool inside of the Life of And framework. I have videos and worksheets and downloads and all kinds of resources that you can access so that if you wanna get all the way into the deep end of Life of And with me, you have all those tools at your fingertips.

[00:32:21] Tiffany Sauder: So quarterly sessions, supplemental discussion guides, and then a deep dive if you wanna go into it, into the Life of And academy. If you go to our website, there's a link in show notes, you'll see a pricing grid, a little overview of what the program is. But we are excited. Our goal is to invite 10,000 women into this program this year.

[00:32:40] Tiffany Sauder: So if you have a corporation that has an employee resource group. Head of HR that you think that I should contact, oh my word. It would just be such a gift to me if you would connect me. We are investing a lot in making this, uh, a great experience and we're really excited to scale one of the things that we've tested in 2025 and we would love for you to come along with us.

[00:33:00] Tiffany Sauder: So thanks for listening and if you're interested in our Life of And program Lincoln show notes. And, uh, Sam, or I will connect with you from there. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll join us.

[00:33:12] Tiffany Sauder: I'm gonna run through a couple of these questions that I wrote down. Again, I was saying if I was asking myself the question of this was a live talk, what questions might my audience ask?

[00:33:24] Tiffany Sauder: I would much love for this to be a real conversation, but here I am on a podcast mic by myself and there you are in your car on a walk listening to it by yourself. But I was thinking what might be the questions are, and one of them is, how do I figure out my real priorities when everything feels important?

[00:33:41] Tiffany Sauder: I think this can be a place where we get really stuck is we just wanna do it all, be it all. And the truth is, in trying to be it all we are, none of it. And so the first is really believing that, that in trying to be all of it, that you actually become none of it unless you have time for all, whatever your list of all is.

[00:34:00] Tiffany Sauder: But I know that as I started to get into this place of prioritization and getting really clear, it does take some pruning so that the real fruit can grow. Our church actually did this huge SER series, sermon series on this idea of pruning. And obviously we see it in nature that when you cut the small branches, it gives more food and fuel to the main ones.

[00:34:23] Tiffany Sauder: And that is the word picture I want you to have in your head. When you think about your priorities, I think most of us know intuitively like what are the most important things in this season, in the context of everything going on that you have to do? And I think sometimes our real priorities are hard things that we've been avoiding for a really long time.

[00:34:46] Tiffany Sauder: Our real priorities may be that I need to pay off $20,000 of credit card debt. Our real priorities might be that we need to go to marriage counseling. Our real priorities might need to be that I need to get unstuck in something. Our real priorities might need to be that I need to forgive someone. So I think we all have an inner knower.

[00:35:07] Tiffany Sauder: Of what the real priorities are. And sometimes those real priorities are not the glamorous ones that we're willing to talk to our friends about. And so that would be, I guess my first thing I would say is like, what are your real priorities? The things that are taking so much capacity and energy that if that problem was fixed, it would release.

[00:35:25] Tiffany Sauder: An enormous amount of capacity and attention to be able to do other things. I've, I've shared in my own journey when my husband and I were going through a season where our marriage was really, really hard. It was like, if that was the only thing we fixed, the amount of energy it would give us back to not walk into the house and have it be hard, not spend Saturday annoyed with each other and crying to like not spend all of this energy on this relationship being so broken.

[00:35:54] Tiffany Sauder: Was gonna give us so much capacity back. And so sometimes the real priorities are things that first are broken and they don't sound like building a new, exciting life in the new year. Once you fix that stuff, then you do get to move onto things that are more about building. But sometimes I think at first it's about fixing things.

[00:36:13] Tiffany Sauder: The other thing that helps me on the priority game is I have a not now list, and this is a list of things that my adventure heart, my learner heart, my. I don't know, like she wants to do cool things, heart. What's some of her ideas? Because I have to remind myself that I have 365 days this year. I have four kids that really need me.

[00:36:36] Tiffany Sauder: I has, I have a husband who is in a season where his career is very demanding and I'm essentially running a startup with Life of And, and supporting two other business leaders with Share Your Genius and Element Three. That's a lot of things to do. So the idea that I'm gonna have capacity to go, like play pickleball five times a week, join a Mahjong thing, like do something at the country club, volunteer in the high, like the high school, like I'm probably gonna need to say no to one of those other things if I'm gonna add.

[00:37:06] Tiffany Sauder: Something big and new in my own time. I just don't have the time for it. So I have a not now list. So I would encourage you to park some things that are in your heart or on your, like someday I want to, and put it on your not now list. That doesn't mean never, it's just maybe right now is not the right time.

[00:37:24] Tiffany Sauder: Maybe now is not the year. Maybe you're not. Resourced well enough. Maybe you don't have the time quite yet. Maybe you've gotta get to a different place in your career. Maybe I, I don't. Maybe you need to get your kids all into school so that you've got some different hours available. Maybe. I don't know. Or maybe 2026 is the year to run for something because I.

[00:37:43] Tiffany Sauder: I don't know. For me it was like in the family plan, family planning world. It's like, we're gonna try to have a baby next year, so this year we need to go do our Europe trip. Like maybe this year is the year for some things because there's some other stuff coming down the pike. So look at your priorities in the context of actually your life and ask yourself and maybe your spouse or your mom or a friend and say, are the things I'm trying to do, does it seem to fit?

[00:38:08] Tiffany Sauder: Because it needs to be able to, because if I told you I have four kids that are really involved. I've got a, a husband who travels and all this kinda stuff and I say, I'm gonna write a book and go on a 50 city book tour. If I told my friends that, I hope they would ask me questions like, how are you gonna support your family when you do that?

[00:38:25] Tiffany Sauder: Have you thought through those things, Tiffany? 'cause those are really realities with what it looks like to say yes to that in this season. You have to check the context of your life when you're looking at priorities. So those are my thoughts and priorities. What if the people in my life resist these new boundaries?

[00:38:47] Tiffany Sauder: I actually just had a conversation with Brian Kavicky about this. It wasn't a boundary, but it was growth where he told his family they were gonna move, they were gonna move from their childhood home, and his kids like threw a fit, like kind of, and they're like grown kind of like, no, this is their childhood at home.

[00:39:01] Tiffany Sauder: You know, this is ground zero. We have all these memories here. And he was kind of like, we're moving. Um, so I think sometimes with our kids, we have to remind ourselves. They're children. They have less life experience, less wisdom, less lived experience. They know less than you do, and sometimes you just need to be the parent and you need to say, I'm sorry this change is uncomfortable for you, but this is what we're going to do and I promise it's going to be better.

[00:39:27] Tiffany Sauder: So sometimes I think you just need to stop reacting to everybody's feelings because their feelings are determining your outcomes in life. At least for me, I'm not okay with that. That's one. The other thing I would say is take it slowly. Maybe don't introduce like 20 different areas of change in a week.

[00:39:46] Tiffany Sauder: That might be kind of a lot of change for everybody to absorb. So I would be really strategic, like one every three weeks or something like that. Or to tell your family we're gonna test something. I'm big on the test. We're gonna test it for six weeks, and I wanna ask you right now how are things going?

[00:40:03] Tiffany Sauder: And then in three weeks I'm gonna ask you how things are going and then in six weeks I'm gonna ask you how things are going and like put it on your calendar and ask 'em how things are going. They say it takes 21 days to establish a new habit. And so like strategically in three weeks, it's like this is kind of just the new normal kids are malleable and, and I say people, I'm talking about kids and I think if it's spouses the same thing.

[00:40:25] Tiffany Sauder: Can we test this and can we see if you see a better me and whether or not the values in which I wanna show up for you have been compromised as much as you think, and then be open to new ways to solve it. There are lots of ways to solve for a new explicit agreement. Doesn't have to be the first thing that you try.

[00:40:45] Tiffany Sauder: And just like at work, we test and try and resolve and change as we get new feedback and information. Think about your family the same way. Just test some stuff. But also don't let their first resistance be like, oh, okay, alright. Like it's not your job to make them okay. Like they will be okay and say, I'm so willing to resolve this.

[00:41:04] Tiffany Sauder: I'm so willing to look for a way, or, this is win-win and sustainable for both of us. So can we try this and see how it's going? So I'm thinking spouses and kids life resisting these new boundaries. If it's friends, if it's other communities that are resisting your boundaries. Then, I don't know. I hate it when people say like, just leave what's not serving you.

[00:41:28] Tiffany Sauder: It's like, I don't know. But maybe some of those places you might need to augment with some new relationships that are more in keeping with some of the boundaries that you wanna put in place. So for example, let's say one of the boundaries you wanna put in place is like. To not drink in 2026. And you have friendships that mostly revolve around, revolve around like going out or wine nights or something like that.

[00:41:53] Tiffany Sauder: If you find that they're just like not respecting that new boundary, then maybe you find people who are more in keeping with your new life choice and you spend a little less time with them. Or maybe you find a alcohol free wine and you do a tasting or something like that. So again, I think it's like.

[00:42:12] Tiffany Sauder: Testing is to me, has kind of been a really key part of the boundary thing.

[00:42:18] Tiffany Sauder: The last question and then we'll close out is what if my priorities change mid-season? Do I renegotiate again? A hundred percent, yes. Your priorities needs to fit inside of the context of your actual life. So for me. 2025, I hired a new trainer.

[00:42:36] Tiffany Sauder: I've been a lot more intentional about my eating as it relates to like this age, my age, and eating to support my hormone health. And just like, you know, suddenly like you can't just eat and breathe and you're 45. Everything is hard actually. Not everything is hard, but I think to age intelligently, I'm trying to learn a lot about that kind of stuff.

[00:43:02] Tiffany Sauder: And so I, my early 2025 self had some pretty aggressive goals for the back half of 2025, and then we decided to put our house on the market. We moved over Thanksgiving, we're going through this big renovation, our family's displaced, all this kind of stuff. And so, you know what some of the goals that I thought I would be able to achieve when I was planning in January, 2025, I did not get all the way there.

[00:43:30] Tiffany Sauder: Uh, through the back half of 2025 because the context changed. Holy crap, we moved. I had this huge project to run. It was super, it was super distracting and it took capacity for me, so guess what? I did not abandon my effort, but I certainly went slower for a season. And then the holidays. So we got through the holidays and now Ashley, my trainer, and I, were like, okay, now we're in our new normal, at least until April when we move.

[00:43:55] Tiffany Sauder: So we can lock in and push a lot harder because my context has settled down. So 100%. When the context of your life, when there's a season that gets shook up, when there's a surprise that happens, just don't abandon it. Reorient your priorities. Like go back to my bridge. I still have the goal. I'm still headed that way.

[00:44:17] Tiffany Sauder: I'm just traveling on the bridge trotting a little slower than I was able to in the first half of 2025, but she's getting back up to speed. So that's how I picture it In my head. It's like, am I running? Am I walking? Am I like crawling on my knees? Maybe. Maybe things have to sort of be paused because stuff got wild.

[00:44:35] Tiffany Sauder: That is part of building a Life of And in the context of real life. We don't get to sort of like sideline and be like, geez, I wonder what would happen if I was on the planet by myself. Probably. I would do amazing things and I could get there so fast. I didn't have to pack lunches and make beds and do all the things, but I get to do those things too alongside all of these amazing professional opportunities and that's a Life of And so this is where my heart and my head is just like really focused right now.

[00:45:05] Tiffany Sauder: I hope this episode has been. I dunno, challenging to you helped you think a little bit more deeply about even what I mean when I say we are gonna build a Life of And, and I think what I hope you take away from this episode in particular is that it is actually only in protecting our priorities that we are able to give in near abundance.

[00:45:30] Tiffany Sauder: So thank you for joining me for another episode. Of life at. And if this episode has connected with you, I would just ask you to share it with a friend. It's the fastest way that we grow the show when you share it with a friend and tell them, oh my word, I love this. So if that's the case, please share it with someone you love.

[00:45:47] Tiffany Sauder: We would love to invite them into our community. And I hope that you take the time to really set some intention for 2026 and translate your goals into some priorities so that we can all walk the bridge together. Thanks for joining me and I'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to the Life of And.

[00:46:07] Tiffany Sauder: This is your weekly reminder to keep making bold choices, saying clear yeses and holding space for what matters most. As always, if you like this episode, I'd love for you to drop a review and share it with your friend. It's the fastest way that we can grow the show. Thanks for joining us. I'll see you next time.