Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Well, it's been a big year for us, and on the back of this big year, we've made a big decision. We're going to be taking three months off. So we thought it was really important today to come onto the podcast and share with you guys how we've come to that decision, what this year has looked like for us, and where we're going to be heading for 2025. So sit back, get comfy in whatever tickles you pickle, because we're about to give you the answers to all the big questions on living the team life.
Hey, we're Kim and Rog, and we're here to show couples how to get the best out of their relationship so they can start living their dream life together.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: We're a West Aussie couple who are living the life of our dreams. We don't entertain the word should. We think about the future as a field of possibilities and we let joy be our compass.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: We've taken the simple idea of working as a team and applied it to our marriage. And it's been a game changer, allowing us to work out what truly lights us up in life and to go after it together.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: From living in snowy Japan to starting our own house for business, we've achieved some big dreams and most importantly, we feel fulfilled and are having the most fun we've ever had.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Pick conversations from inspiring couples, thoughts from relationship experts, and tales from our own lives as we help you to gain the wisdom and skills you'll need to turn your relationship into a real team.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: These are relationship conversations for real people, by real people. So sit back, get comfort in whatever tickles you pickle, and enjoy living the team life.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: Okay, so we are coming in for our very last show of 2024, and we've decided today to run you through, obviously, a little bit of this year. Well, actually, we've decided to answer some questions that will run us through a little bit of this year, 2024. They will go over why we're taking three months off, which is news to everybody listening. We are going to be taking three months off the podcast and yeah, we're going to unpack that a little bit. And we're also going to talk a little bit about how 2025 is shaping up for us and what we're thinking about as we head into next year.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I thought at the start you were bearing the headline a bit there. We're taking three months off from the podcast, but not just that. From. From a lot of the work, from a lot of the busyness of our lives to really focus on us, focus on our daughter and come back, you know, fresh and excited and ready to get after it in 2025. And, of course, what we like to do is really work through some questions for each other. These are prompter questions we write out together, but we don't really, I guess, answer until we're live on the podcast with you listening. And again, one of the reasons we love to use prompter questions is I think these are great for all couples, for all topics and all issues, from issues to dreaming, any stage of life. And you'll see us. You'll see us do this, is putting some questions together and then asking them of each other. And it just, I guess it prompts you to have deeper conversations because not all of us are, I guess, gifted with the gift of the gab. You know, often in a relationship, some, one of the couples will be a bit better at talking. One might be the tortoise, one might be the hare.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: I think also, though, Rogers on that point, sometimes people are really great at talking, but might not be so great at actually getting to the point that they want to get to or encouraging both of you to engage in that conversation. So it's not just for people who find necessarily being really verbal difficult. It's also to help everybody to think about things a little bit differently. And we all need support to have a mindset shift. That's why it's a mindset shift. It's outside of the highways we've been operating on in our brain. And I think prompter questions, as you are speaking about, are a really great way to get us to have a little bit of a shift. Nothing too uncomfortable, but prompt, maybe the idea of thinking about things a bit differently. And I. And so, yeah, we enjoy that process. And you're right, I did bury the headline.
It is that we on a big break, and we did want to unpack that for people and why we've made that decision, because we know turning off for three months is a big deal to our audience. It's a big deal to us, but we've picked the time of year where we know that people are very busy anyway and are most likely turning off to a few things themselves. And it's the right time for us, and we have to really listen to that.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So instead of going fingernail date, we want to take a real deep dive for you into why we're having this break. And, you know, we promise we will be back. We don't want to leave you in the lurch. I know some of you really use this podcast and the ideas for some of the issues you're facing in a relationship, and then a lot of you also use it to, I guess, level up, you know, to become a team with your partner and get the best out of life. So work together. So let's get at it.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: All right, shall I jump in with the first question, Roger? Okay, looking back at 2024, what were some of the biggest challenges you feel we faced as a couple while managing the podcast and our other commitments?
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Well, everyone's busy, right? So I don't want to be like, oh, we're just so busy all the time. But we are busy. And being carers to a daughter who's non speaking has it, has a lot of challenges, is the light in our life, but needs constant support.
Everything revolves around her, and we made the decision, like, that's not, I mean, that's just not how it is. Not, not everything has to revolve around her. But we just, we made a decision as a husband and wife, as parents, to make our world revolve around her, to give her the best chance of life, the chance that she, she wouldn't get unless she got the additional support, because she doesn't have the same just advantages, or she doesn't have the same opportunity as most other kids. So we sort of mold our life around that in terms of our business, in terms of how we live, in terms of our, you know, friendships and even our own relationship. So we've had a lot going on, and one of the big decisions we made was to move house and buy a new house, sell our house. And, of course, we've got a bit of a background in flipping and renovations. So we also decided to renovate our old house. Again, we're just doing a small one, but we do it ourselves. It all takes time. I'm working with trades. Um, you know, we're taking on the half Iron man challenge, which is actually a real net positive, but, you know, physically, it's very demanding.
Is it just me or everyone just getting really sick this year? Everyone seems to have gotten this, like, uh, this eight week cold, this ten week cold. And I think that knocked us around a bit as well.
But, you know, it's like everything in life, you've got, you're busy, and then you add on things like, you know, looking for a new house, selling an old house. The change for our little one was massive. She. She works well with routine, stability, safety, and we've upended that for a longer term gain, even though in the short term, we know that's going to be hard. And so that's sort of where we're. Where we're at now. And as a couple, it's just.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: I was waiting for you to come back to the question.
[00:07:56] Speaker B: Well, I guess that's about the. It's like, this is our life, this is what's going on. So as a couple, it's really about when you've got.
When you push to the limit, when you've got nothing left to give, when literally, like, we're eating lunches in the car, trying to get stuff done, where we're too tired to, I guess, sometimes engage with each other at night when we're maybe not putting where. It takes a lot of conscious effort to put each other first.
There's been some strains there, um, where we've literally had to sort of go. And I don't know if we chose to. I think we did. To go, you and I, for the next ten weeks aren't the priority. This is during the move and the renovation and the sale of our old place, we. I think. I think we. I'm trying. Maybe we didn't make the constant conscious decision, and that's why it's been an issue. We felt very. We felt a bit disconnected. And it's funny, over the last few weeks where everything started to settle down and we've seen a bit more momentum and we've made the move and all that, that we are feeling more connected.
But, yeah, I think.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: I think that's a great. You've come to the exact same answer that I had in my head, which was disconnection. And I think it's a great example of how external stresses cause ups and downs in relationships. And you have to be really deliberate to keep that relationship a priority. And from my memory, we didn't articulate at all that we would make the relationship not a priority. We. It fell into being a secondary priority because we had other things happening and we actually consciously spoke about how we were going to reconnect and get back on track together. To have, when we say disconnected, I guess the rhythm of our relationship, naturally is to be very connected. We share a lot of what's happening with each other. We're each other's best friends. We're each other's joke buddy. And there's this rhythm of real flow in our household and communication between us. And so our disconnection looks like significantly reduced conversation. Very task focused and oriented, and a loss of connection and intimacy. And so I think once we had that conversation around, we're feeling a bit disconnected and we became more deliberate. We did the things that we knew got us back on track. We followed our little habits that were, you know, things like at night we spend 20 to 40 minutes talking in bed. I'm, every night when we're really tired and we're really busy, we didn't do that. We were like, lights out, let's go.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: Yeah. We weren't doing our morning mindset, which is our prompter questions we asked each other every single morning. Five years we went weeks without doing it. It's so funny how well this is.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: The example of what happens when those stresses come in and it happens. This is the rhythm of life. It took us a while to recognize it and have that conversation and to slowly rebuild because we did acknowledge that we had a lot going on. But I agree that was our biggest challenge for 2020, and I feel very relieved that our rhythm is coming back towards connection and our usual flow.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: Awesome. So I'll go on to the next question there since we, I guess we both addressed that one.
What's something we accomplished together this year that you're most proud of outside of the podcast?
[00:11:15] Speaker A: Oh, this is a good one. I was just listening to an audio book that was told that gave the, gave the instruction to think of your third response rather than your first because your first is thinking fast and your third is thinking slow.
So I'm going to try and follow that for now. My first response, I'm going to give both. My first response would be, I'm very proud of our move because the move is a huge deal. Two years ago, we could not have imagined moving our daughter because it would have just been too disruptive and to have managed the months and months of strategy with our support team on how we could manage that and how she would manage the loss of her very safe space, which is very important for a child who can struggle to regulate.
So I would have said that would be my first answer, but I think my third answer, not sure what my second would be. My third answer would be if I think a little bit more deeply and I connect a bit more deeply with myself, I'm most proud of us, and it's going to be cliched, but of us working as a team, we come to the end of the year and yet again through thick and thin, we have only overcome by coming back together, even with the move and the little Renault we're doing, as things have gotten more and more stressful and more and more heightened as we're depleted in resources, the only way we get back on track is when we actually say to each other, we got to be a team on this. We got to come at this as a team. And we, we do it. We do it every single time. Even when we feel the pull apart, we come back together.
And I'm most proud of that because it has become our mode of operating as a couple. We always come back together. And I think even under the strain of this year, which, which really, really did test us in a lot of. In a lot of ways, to come back together each time and really operate as a team and still be, you know, true to ourselves, future focused. Yes, we. We dropped out on some of the things we would normally do together, but as much as we could, we made time for walks, to spend time dreaming and talking about other things and talking about our purpose and staying connected to our bigger dreams, our bigger purpose, our values, and that's what keeps us on track. We know there's a higher part to our lives beyond whatever you're struggling with in the moment, and that truly does keep us connected. And I'm so proud that that's who we are as a couple. I'm so proud that that's how we continue to operate and we continue to get better and better at it.
Yeah. What about you?
[00:14:01] Speaker B: Well, I think I really just.
Was it rift jive? Jive? You can jive, rhythmic jive off you? Uh, yeah. So for me, I think it's just the fact that it shows that we, because we did put in the hard work, and this is what we've been trying to hopefully try to be teaching people the last, you know, two years, we put in the work the last, you know, not only ten years, but especially the last two, three years. And we'll talk about this soon because we are very focused on the A relationship podcast, and we've learned a lot. But so by making our relationship a priority, having as one of our values that we are a team, it's like a core to us that, hey, we're together, we're a team. It's us first has enabled us to, when things got very tough and we had ten weeks of disconnection, not just a few days, a few weeks, ten weeks of real disconnection, that it didn't break us. And I think. I think what we'll find is in the next few weeks when we're closing off a few things, including this podcast for three months and a few other things, and we'll have a bit of space and time to really look forward to the next three months and to recharge is that I feel we'll actually be stronger than ever because we've been through what we have, and we, and it was almost a proof in the pudding, or it's a testament to the fact that we had put in the hard work up front. And that's why it's so important, because, you know, when things are okay and because, you know, things are never that great for that long, but, you know, things can be good, that can be okay. They can be running along, that can be business as usual. And you think, oh, we're going okay.
So, you know, what we're saying is listen to the podcast, talk to your partner, work on your relationship, prioritize it, have prompted questions. So when things do get tough, whether it's planned or unplanned, you'll, you'll be able to, I get guess through it and get through it stronger, like we have.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: All right, I'm going to move to the break, the three month break. Roggie, why do we feel that taking a three month break is important for us right now? And how do you think it will impact our relationship?
[00:16:24] Speaker B: So a bit of a peek behind the curtain was that you came to me and just said, rog, we need, we need a break.
Something's got to give. And I think even in my head, my first reactions were always, no. Well, no, it wasn't. No, it was more like, no, but what about a, B and C? And, and you, and you sort of said, looked at me in the eye and said, no, rog, like, no. Like, I need, we need a break. And so, like, we've talked, I think we've talked about this before. And funnily enough, I used to do this in business where we call this, like, zero based thinking. Blue sky dreaming is pairing back everything to its base level. Like, in a perfect, ideal world, if you needed a break, you needed to recharge, you needed to prevent yourself from proactively, from going into the state of burnout, what would you do? And not thinking about the board, about a, b, C or D. There's no, like, a dependency to constants. It's like you figure out what the perfect solution would be and then you work back from that. What that allows you to do is to break free of the shoulds. And I think for us was like, we can't take three months off the podcast. It means too much to us, means a lot to other people as well. But then it's like we're already taking a month off over Christmas, which we did last year. Anyway, we, you know, we're going to make sure we keep our socials going. We, we care very much about our email subscribers, who we've got. We've got a lot now, and we want to make sure we still putting out some great information, education stuff for them. So we're going to continue doing that in the background.
But what we are going to do is we're not going to be recording our podcast. We're not. And even with our other businesses, we have, you know, our property business, wherever. We're really stepping back from that for a while. And, yeah, so I think for me.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: That, I think something that's important, I just want to pick up on. There was the, the conversation we had in that moment when I came to you and asked for that break wasn't smooth sailing. I came to you, I told you, I said, I want a break. I said, a big break. Not, I'm not coming to you and telling you, I said, this is serious. We're at the, we've, we're just burnt out. We were burnt out last Christmas. We haven't recovered. We haven't gotten back to ground zero this year. In fact, we've made it worse.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: We need, yeah, we took a bigger project.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: We need to slow down. And your initial reaction was no. And I had to stop and say to myself, okay, we are at an impasse right now. I'm a yes, he's a no. How do I support him to see how important this is for me and to feel safe in himself to join me in this decision? And that was a really important moment because it took multiple iterations of that conversation for you to get to the point where you were blue skydreaming. You did not go to, okay, how can we make this happen? I had to support you. And I think it's a really important moment in a conversation to just talk about for a moment, because I think, you know, in our fantasy, we think, oh, I'm going to go to my partner and share that, you know, let's do this, and it's going to be brilliant, and they're going to jump on board. But the reality is they haven't had that processing time. They haven't had that thought. All of their, like, your mind was still fixed on getting stuff done. You're very much a doer. And so I had to be, I had to take time and appreciate that you had to process that information, and we had to process as a couple what that would mean and what our I, each of our concerns were and address those together so that we could both feel safe to make a decision to move forward that would support both of us.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: Yeah. No, I totally agree with that. It's a really good point around that. You know, when you go have a conversation with your partner, you might have been thinking about it for, you know, days, weeks, months, and they've just had it on them, so they need time to process.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: I think also is you needed, you needed me to be on board. And so it wasn't a decision you felt you could make yourself. So you really needed me to see one. To see. So, so I had to put my empathy hat on, which is hard to do straight away when you're thinking fast. And, and then, and you needed me to understand where we were at. So, yeah, I thought. I thought we did it really well.
But it is important because, and I think so just the lesson to take out also is I know everyone, like, everyone has their different jobs and most people are in a position, especially with cost of living, where they can just take three months off.
You know, we, we do work in a bit of stop and start sort of industry anyway, but we still, you know, this still will impact us. This still, this is. But what we're choosing to prioritize us and our ability to move going forward and also to, I guess, bulletproof us into 2025 and beyond.
So it's really important that you do strip things back, do that zero based thinking that blue sky dreaming of.
Okay, we need to make a change.
You know, what. What in a perfect world could we do? Okay, then we can start to add in some constraints because if you can get rid of the shoulds, it's really important when you're making these decisions. Otherwise, you're really not making a change. You're not really pivoting direction. You're sort of. You're not really changing course.
Yeah. You know, making sure you make the right decisions is really important.
All right. So, sweetie, how do you think, or how do you hope that the break, the three month break will actually help us recharge individually and as a couple? And what are you most excited about during this downtime?
[00:22:18] Speaker A: Well, I just want to be clear because I know we have a carer audience as well. Our idea of a break looks very different to other people's. It's not.
When we say a break, we think of all of the things we have on our plate and we're taking some of those things off our plate for a period of time. That is a break.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: It's not pina coladas in the shunts?
[00:22:40] Speaker A: No, we're reducing the amount of demands. But the reality is, as carers, especially over Christmas holidays, when our children are very dysregulated because they don't have their usual school routine, that's very, very hard for children who struggle and need routine.
So for us, that period will actually be very much about caring for our daughter, supporting her to have the best days she can each day at home over the Christmas holidays. And that is very difficult for her.
That in terms of how do you hope the break will recharge us?
It's those extra demands that we've taken out that I think will allow us to feel focused on our daughter. And with that ability to focus, it will recharge us because we're no longer feeling strapped and unable to focus on anything and pulled in all the different directions. When you have one focus, even if that focus is still very intense, intense in its need, when you feel like you can just focus on that, it is a reprieve for your. For your nervous system, it feels very deliberate. You feel more. More of a sense of control. And I feel like that's an important nuance to explain. It's not as if we're removing all the demands in our life. We're becoming clearer and simpler in how we're addressing the most important needs in our life.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: Yeah, we're becoming laser focused on some of the key areas of our life. So with our. With our daughter, we know we've got two months of school holidays coming up over the Christmas break, and then we're also giving ourselves a month to really lead into that, to prepare and ourselves. To mentally, physically, emotionally prepare ourselves for. For being present with her for that time, to make it the best school holidays for her and for us possible, not for anyone else, just for us.
[00:24:40] Speaker A: What works for us, and I think that goes to what I'm most excited about to experience, is really us feeling more at home in our new home, and her feeling more at home in our new home. And all of us finding that sense of real, maybe not relaxation isn't the right word, but safety and comfort in this home. And if we have a holidays where we grow in that space, it's not going to be perfect. But we do get more comfort and a greater sense of safety and more ability to explore different parts of the house and enjoy different parts of the home and the way we live here. That, for me, will be a really great holidays.
All right, Roger, I'm going to move on because obviously we could talk about these things for a long time, but we did promise we would look ahead to 2025. So, looking ahead to 2025, what are you most excited about in terms of growing our relationship, our podcast, and your personal goals?
[00:25:43] Speaker B: I think for me, it's just being able to come at it with renewed energy and vigor, being able to be, you know, really concentrate on you, me, myself, and our daughter for three months, get physically Fitzhen, you know, have enough mental and emotional space to be able to hold you, even hold myself. And then.
And then actually, you know, take a bit of a, you know, take status of where I am right now, where we are right now, and then really look at what we want to do. Like, I think we've also already had booked in a couple of strategy days over that three month break. Um, because, again, like, it's not just a break, but it's actually, uh, you know, it's, it's. We want to use it as a launching pad for 2025 without too much pressure. Uh, I feel that being re energized into a brand new year, we'll be able to take on some more challenges with the podcast. I've been promising you guys a YouTube channel, and, and I'm going to deliver it next year. We've got some really cool other stuff coming out, um, which Kim's been working very, very hard on in the background. Me as well. But Kim. Does a lot of you be surprised how much Kim actually does? It's pretty impressive.
[00:26:57] Speaker A: Would you?
[00:26:58] Speaker B: I think so. What does everyone think when you're thinking, oh, when did you release that episode? It's like, but no, no.
Are you the brains and I'm the broad?
[00:27:07] Speaker A: No, definitely not.
[00:27:08] Speaker B: The brains and the brawn?
[00:27:09] Speaker A: No. If that was the case, we'd forget everything.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: Okay.
And then for us, you know, looking. I'm really looking forward to getting into our half marathon, half iron man, sorry, training, and just having time for each other. We just haven't had time for each other. So that's really exciting.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: I like that. That's good. That renewed energy is a great one, I think, for me.
I mean, I guess I'm in the same vein. You know, I love a new year. Sure. That's adhd brain just frothing on the idea of newness and new opportunity and a million different things you can do and this excitement, this little, you know, butterflies. The butterflies you get in your tummy, which are like, think of all the things that you could achieve in 2025.
But I think I'm also really excited to carry over this growing understanding I have in myself. Of what a really high quality life looks like for us, of what balance feels like for us and be really, really crystal clear and deliberate in where we put our energy and our time for the greatest outcome for us in terms of what sort of life we want, what life do we want to be living.
And for me, each year we get that little bit clearer, we get that little bit more deliberate. And I feel like 2025, we're going to be very, very clear on where our energy will go. And as a result, the things that really matter, the really big life, needle movers, they happen the way that we want them to. And I think that can look so different for everybody and for us, it probably looks very different to most people in terms of what's a needle mover for us. But yeah, that's what I'm excited about is that growing capacity. We have to be very deliberate and clear and pursue the life that we really want.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. Well, it's been a massive year for us as a couple, for living the team life. And I'm sure for you, we'll miss you while we're gone. But we'll be back in February 2025 with renewed energy and vigor. And we can't wait to hit 2025 with a vengeance.
What about you, babe?
[00:29:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I just want to say thanks to everybody that follows along and continues to comment on our stuff on socials and engage with our podcast and our monster subscriber list who are reading our emails each week, which we really appreciate. We put a lot of effort into giving you guys the best possible content. We think that will help you to make a shift, begin to make a shift in your own relationship. And we're just so grateful that you guys are interested in it and engaging with it. And we just hope you all have a wonderful break, too. A wonderful Christmas, a safe and healthy and happy Christmas and new year in whatever way that works for you guys. And yeah, we're looking forward to, to bringing more to you guys next year, to continuing to support you guys, to live your very best team life.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: You're amazing. You've just spent quality time on your relationship.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: Feel like you're on a roll. If you want more living the team life relationship insights and conversations, head over to kimandroj.com where you can find all the show notes as well as tons of other relationship goodies.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: And if you like today's episode, please hit subscribe or let another couple know where they can find us. It'll make them happy and it'll make us really happy.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: Until next time, keep on living the team life.
