Top 2 Questions to Stop Chaos in the Home [and get time back]
Episode 195
We’re back with another episode of Integrative You Radio! In this engaging discussion, the power couple, Dr. Nicole and Dr. Nick delve into the challenges faced by modern families in the ever-demanding world of parenting. In this episode of Integrative You Radio, the duo passionately discuss the challenges of modern parenting and the importance of aligning family choices with core values. They reflect on their own journey as early parents, realizing the need to prioritize connection, quality time, and laughter in their family. The hosts share how their experience in running a business has translated into valuable parenting skills, emphasizing the significance of discipline, clear communication, and teamwork in family dynamics. Encouraging listeners to identify their family's initial vision and purpose, they stress the importance of being deliberate in making choices that serve the well-being of both parents and children. Join them on this insightful journey to rediscover the essence of family and embrace a life that aligns with your unique vision. Interested in learning more about Dr. Nick & Dr. Nicole’s courses, memberships, or private work? Learn more at Integrative You . Have a quick question, Would you like to schedule a call, or just want to say hi? Text us at 732.913.0009. Our mission to innovate humans & Healthcare does NOT start and stop with us! This is why we are also dedicated to helping other practitioners in evolving healthcare too! If you are a healthcare leader and are looking to up-level your clinical + business excellence Learn more about our course membership: Limitless Healthprenuer and start boldly disrupting this industry! What you’ll learn: Rediscovering the essence of family and aligning choices with the initial vision. Drawing parallels between running a business and effective parenting skills. Emphasizing discipline, communication, and teamwork in family dynamics. Breaking free from societal expectations and creating a joyful, fulfilling fam
Topics: family, parenting, business, integrative, unknown, back, values, vision
Key takeaways from this episode
- ## Top 2 Questions to Stop Chaos in the Home [and get time back]
- Prioritize connection, quality time, and laughter within your family.
- Business principles like discipline, clear communication, and teamwork are crucial for successful family dynamics.
- Identify your family's initial vision and purpose to guide your decisions.
- Make deliberate choices that support the well-being of both parents and children, moving away from societal pressures.
Pull quotes
This is the place where you become limitless. **Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion, around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior.
We will be sprinkling in some truth bombs for our healthpreneurs so they can join us in our mission to evolve healthcare.
If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place, but buckle up, because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive. **Unknown:** This is Integrative U Radio.
Transcript
**Unknown:** Welcome to Integrative U Radio, hosted by Dr. Nick Carruthers and yours truly, Dr. Nicole Rivera. This is the place where you become limitless.
**Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion, around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior. We are also covering how those topics affect the human and family dynamics. We will be sprinkling in some truth bombs for our healthpreneurs so they can join us in our mission to evolve healthcare. If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place, but buckle up, because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive.
**Unknown:** This is Integrative U Radio. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode on our brand new Integrative U Radio. And what do we do here, Nick?
**Unknown:** We do everything here. Come on. It's where you become limitless. You left me hanging.
**Unknown:** All right, so we're, we're diving into a really important topic here, and as many of you know, we've, we've worked with families for 13 years in the integrative, uh, medicine space. But no matter what, when you're working with health, you, especially when you ask better questions, you hear a lot of commonalities unfold. And I forget how someone s- said it the other day, but they said having two kids nowadays was equivalent to having five kids 30 years ago, and it's because of the demand, the demand for education, the demand for, you know, sports, the demand for all these extracurricular activities, the, the demand for these kids essentially to be well-rounded, quote, unquote. I'm saying that in air quotes because, like, what does that even mean?
**Unknown:** Well, there's so many more opportunities because of, you know, automobiles, information. Technology, internet. Yeah, it's, it's a lot to juggle, so we wanna commend all of you just to kick this off, because we are early parents. Our son is still only a year and a half, and of course, you know, you start thinking about all the things that you're supposed to do on paper, and then you really have to sit back and start to ask the question of, what do we want to do for our family based off of why we started a family in the first place?
**Unknown:** Yeah, it's very easy. I mean, just life in general, it's very easy to get caught up in the grind and the doing, and then, you know, the next day you're just doing and doing and doing, and then all of a sudden you're beaten down and you really don't know why the hell you're doing what you're doing anymore. Yeah, and you know, we've heard it so many times that moms say, "I feel like an Uber driver." You know, dads feel like, "I go to work and I bust my butt, and then I come home and it's just doing tons of house chores," or, you know, attending different sports. And they enjoy aspects of it, but when you feel like you're running around on fire and there is not even a moment to breathe, you just feel like you're living in, in sheer chaos.
**Unknown:** Um, and it's unfortunate because we feel, as parents, that w- we should sacrifice ourselves, sacrifice our downtime, sacrifice our self-care in order to, quote, unquote, I'm kind of using air quotes, to be the best parents, to attend all of the things that we're supposed to attend, to get them to all of their different activities and educational events. And what we realize, or some of us realize, is that being a burnt-out, non-present parent that is essentially showing their burnout on their sleeve is not a great family dynamic at all. No, it's... And you know, we could go into all the pain points, and I don't know if you wanna start there, but it's really about looking at, you know, why do families exist, you know?
**Unknown:** Not too many people really think of like, why have a family? And the whole concept of a family is just to be a part of evolution, to be able to continue the growth. And when we think of evolving, which is just a part of evolution, it's to have each generation to be able to live a better life than the generation above. And that's why, you know, we're programmed, we don't realize it, but we're programmed to sacrifice our life to be able to help our children live better lives than we did growing up.
**Unknown:** But I think that, that could be a very convoluted saying. Yeah. You know, what is, what is a better life? You know, when I think about back in the day when there was less distractions, less entertainment, people were forced to spend more quality time with each other, have conversations, and, and have less distractions, and less comparison game on social media, and all of that, and, you know, uh, I, I could argue that maybe those times were better.
**Unknown:** Uh, you know, I don't really know. I'm sure every single family, every dynamic is really different. But I think what you said before is really relevant because you said, you know, w- why does a family exist? And that definition is extremely different family to family.
**Unknown:** You know, why did you start a family? And-Again, this is not a generic answer. Like, this is something to sit down and really think about and really ponder because this is dictating your pain points. Because if you started a family with the intention of connection, spending quality time with each other, going on vacations together, going camping on weekends, spending holidays together, sitting around a dinner table every night and sharing stories, sharing laughter, if that was your vision, if that was your intention, and now you're the burnt-out person running around playing Uber driver, you ha- don't even know if you washed your hair this week- ...
**Unknown:** then, you know, you, y- you're very, very distant from that vision, and that is gonna be a huge catalyst for, for pain. And you, and you probably won't even be able to be... It depends how deep you are into the pain point. You won't be able to even get clear on why you wanted to start a family because now all you're craving is to escape the pain of what you're in.
**Unknown:** So now you, you'd want your family to look even completely different to actually give you the peace and to give you all these things, but that's not why anybody originally starts a family. It's to be able to give you a sensation of what's going to best serve you, whether that's adventure, growth, new experiences, you know, different aspects of feeling love. Um, so, you know, it's, it's very important to be able to set aside time, which, you know, is limited throughout the day. But, you know, how we are able to use our time to create more space for ourselves is really going to change the quality of our lives.
**Unknown:** And that's the thing is very often when you say the words, "Take some time," to a busy parent- People freak out. Freak out. And I know that that was very much me a couple of years ago. It was like, "Screw you, I don't have time." And, but you just perpetuate the cycle, and you perpetuate the cycle until you fully break the fuck down, and then you say, "All right, now I gotta ask for help to pick up all the pieces." And, and that's the thing is that we can...
**Unknown:** We will run our households in chaos because we don't necessarily feel the threat of a, a major collapse or a threat of a major drawback. You don't, you know, go into your office or your job like a tornado, you know, with sheer chaos, wearing your heart on your sleeve, AKA your emotional disruption on your sleeve, because you know that there's repercussions for that. And we don't have that black-and-white re- repercussions. What we have is a family in chaos, a, a family in turmoil, and then we have the potential for divorce, and we have the potential for things that are very, very painful.
**Unknown:** And really what it comes down to is we need to take the time. We need to take the time to ask the really hard question: Why did we start a family in the first place, and how does that dictate what we need to say yes to and what we need to say no to? Because very often, we are saying yes to things based off of what's going on in the neighborhood, what's going on at the school organizations, what's going on with our friends group, what's going on, you know, in the community, what we think is the best avenue of education. And it's...
**Unknown:** And no matter how hard we try, it becomes a keeping up with the Joneses mindset. Well, I, I mean, yes, uh, superficially it is, and most people don't ask those questions to get past that superficial aspect of, you know, what are we gonna be perceived as instead of, you know, who cares what you're being perceived as? Like, what's, what's the internal dialogue? What are you perceiving yourself?
**Unknown:** What are your kids perceiving you as? All these things. And yeah, it's like growing up, you know, I was... I w- I wasn't really in a family of, you know, kind of look at us like that, but we were doing tons of sports, and my parents were spread thin.
**Unknown:** I remember I was the youngest, and they had a conversation with me at one time. It was like, "Hey, like, you, you can't do gymnastics anymore because we, we physically can't take everybody where they need to be at their time frames." And I remember that, like, I remember that sucked for me a lot. Um, and I didn't... I was at a age where I didn't really, couldn't understand it as much.
**Unknown:** But growing up in the Midwest, there also wasn't tons of dialogue to really explain, you know, everything that was going on that my parents were juggling, uh, for me to understand. And I think that's one of the concepts w- we realize is that we don't really, we don't treat our son like a baby. I mean, he is a baby, and we know that, but we don't talk to him like a baby. Uh, he's like a little stud, grown-up young man.
**Unknown:** But I think interesting what you said about that is, you know, parents can relate to what you're saying 'cause they're like, "I don't wanna devastate my kid by saying no." But you also said that one of the things you continued was basketball, which you didn't even like, but gymnastics was essentially, quote-unquote, "taken away," and that was something you really enjoyed. But that, so that wasn't part of the conversation. That wasn't the open dialogue a- around what are your kids passionate about doing? How can you leverage their feedback in the prio- prioritization, let alone also keeping at the forefront why did we start a family and what are the values of the family?
**Unknown:** So maybe you didn't think about why did we start a family? Because we wanted to have, you know, inte- intellectual individuals that are going to make a change in the world. Maybe that wasn't the original mindset. Maybe the original mindset was, "We wanna grow really great humans that are compassionate and have humility, and they're just, you know, they're, they're good friends in the world, and they're gonna be good parents one day, and they're just gonna be good people," according to whatever you perceive as a good person.But then you realize that, you know, in, in the values of the family, which if you've listened to us, we've talked so much about determining your own personal values, and then determining what are the values that run your family.
**Unknown:** But in your family, if growth or intellect is a high value, then you are going to choose to potentially spend money on private schools and better schools, and who are you to be judged for that? But you might not spend money on other things that other families do. You might have your kids in spelling bees and things like that to challenge their intellect more than you have them in physical sports, contact sports. So it comes down to the values of the family and the, the why of the family.
**Unknown:** And if you feel that your kids are constantly pushing back on things, and you, as the parents, are overwhelmed, burnt out, in chaos, and, and feel like they're, they're, everything is an afterthought that you enjoy, that's when you have to start asking these questions, because ha- most of what you're probably doing is not in alignment. Yeah, it's like running your personal life, running a business, running a family, they all come from the same foundation to do it well, and it's about asking the best quality questions to be able to serve that individual person, the business, or the family, and that always goes back to the values. And once you're crystal clear on those values, every single, like in business, every single write-up starts with, you know, how, how are you doing a disservice to the values of the business? Yeah.
**Unknown:** How are, how are you breaking down the business instead of building the business up? And it's like, you know, values is what's most important. So when you're doing something congruent with what's most important, you're getting the most value out of your time. So when you have a conversation with your son or your daughter, it's about always going back to the, the values of the family and their personal values, and making sure that they're both serving each other, and that's how you can make some awesome...
**Unknown:** A- actually, that's how you can formulate some amazing questions to get some awesome answers, and then from there, everybody's gonna take the most productive action for their time. And I wanna go through a couple of examples as we wrap this episode up, because I think that people learn a lot from examples. So in determining our family values, uh, one that was at the top of the list was fun, and this is one of the reasons why even in our weekly meeting that we do that's very oriented around our personal life, not our business, is what fun things are we prioritizing? And, you know, we know that if we do not have fun planned during the week, um, the weekend, that it's kind of a drag, because we're willing to work and bust our butts and do what we need to do to, to produce for the family, but we, as long as we know that there is going to be that quality time, that connection, that laughter and fun, that is extremely important to us.
**Unknown:** And one of the others is expansive challenge. So we, you know, we always joke around in the house, but we're, we're always challenging our, each other. We're challenging each other to grow mentally. We're challen- ch- challenging each other to grow physically.
**Unknown:** And a lot of things we choose to do is to challenge. Like, we're not always just wanting to go to the movies. We definitely do that sometimes so that we can have that entertainment and that downtime and laughter. When's the last time we went to the movies?
**Unknown:** I can't even remember. We don't, we don't go to the movies. But, you know, I'm saying that it's not that we don't, but we tend to prioritize things that are more expansive. Like, we love going to a museum.
**Unknown:** You know, we love to get out into nature and do a hike and show Q, "Oh, you know, let's teach you about this tree." I don't really do that, 'cause I don't really know shit about trees, but you do. Um, so we, we all have our strengths. But it, it's just we know where to say yes, and we know where to say no, and I think that that is one of the key things is you need to be a gatekeeper of your schedule. And we learned this, uh, because we've had the business, and now, like, Nick and I are fascinated every single day with how much we learned from the business that is now translating to running a household and a family.
**Unknown:** Yeah, I mean, all of, for the most part, m- I'd say at least 80% of my best parenting skills came from helping to run a business. And, and operational skills. Yeah. You know?
**Unknown:** And communication, and just everything that goes along with it. It's just like you have to be so clear on your expectations and your desired outcomes with your spouse. You need to play on the same team as your spouse. You need to be so fucking disciplined with your schedule.
**Unknown:** You have to have block scheduling done. You have to have boundaries, and you have to have meetings. Yeah. And these are all topics that we're going to cover in depth inside of our family course.
**Unknown:** Um, and of course, we're gonna sprinkle in some fun things around health of, uh, when to worry and when not to worry, which is something I'm very excited about. But, you know, overall, at the end of the day, the key things that we want you guys to take away is why did you start your family in the first place, and be friggin' specific. What was the vision? What was the reason?Why you went ahead, went through a crazy pregnancy, got pregnant, birthed that baby, and then s- did all the things to make sure that baby was growing and developing.
**Unknown:** 'Cause we all know, we all knew ahead of time it was gonna be a lot of work, and we had a very specific reason why we did it, so you need to dig into that. And- And, and not why just for the offspring, like why for you. Yeah. Why do, why do you want it?
**Unknown:** Yeah. Why for you as an individual and for you as a couple. And in addition to that is if that's hard, 'cause it is a hard question, because the first time someone asked me what is my why for my business, I felt like I was stumbling over my words, and it took a lot of time to really think about what was my why. But the other thing that might help you in this process is start thinking about all of the things that are filling the family's time that you're not excited about.
**Unknown:** You might loathe those things. You might get drained by those things. And start thinking about that, and that might help you reverse engineer back to what the vision was. And I don't want you to think like, "Oh, the vision is a fantasy, and that's not real life." We're not sitting here saying that everything is sunshine and rainbows, 'cause it sure as hell isn't, but it's a matter of getting more disciplined on where you say yes, where you say no, and infiltrating that so you can get your time back and stop feeling like a hamster on a wheel, and stop feeling like you have to do things based off of what the other families are doing, the other kids are doing, et cetera.
**Unknown:** Boom. All right, guys, we will keep it coming to you with all of the amazing family tips. We hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to comment.
**Unknown:** We would love to hear from you. We thank you so much for being an avid listener of Integrative U Radio, formerly known as Integrative Wellness Radio. We appreciate all of your support. We love your comments.
**Unknown:** Please visit us on social media as well as our website to see all of the fun things happening behind the scenes, and the new amazing content and courses that is being rolled out on a monthly basis. We hope to see you there.
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About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
Further reading
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