HOW TO CONFIDENTLY MANAGE YOUR LIFE AND YOUR TIME | CHRISTY WRIGHT

CHRISTY WRIGHT [0:00]

And so, often women, in particular, we sit back, we wait until we're ready. We wait until we have all these certifications and degrees and someone gives us permission to go do the thing and we have 100% of the qualifications before we apply for a job. Listen to me. Say yes before you know-how.

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CAMILLE WALKER [0:23]

So, you want to make an impact. You're thinking about starting a business sharing your voice? How do women do it that handle motherhood, family, and still chase after those dreams? We'll listen each week as we dive into the stories of women who know. This is Call Me CEO.

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CAMILLE [0:43]

It's the question I get more than any other, how do I balance my time? I mean it's the whole premise of why I started this show for was sharing successful stories of women who are building business and managing their life at the same time. Well, today's guest, Christy Wright, has just written a book called Take Back Your Time: The Guilt-Free Guide to Life Balance. And I am here to tell you that you are in for a massive treat.

Christy Wright is the co-host of Dave Ramsey. She is also the creator of Business Boutique and believes in confidence, strengthening faith, and becoming the person God created you to be. This episode is packed full of notes that you will just want to capture and write down and see forever because they are full of so much power and passion and love for helping others. I'm so thrilled to share it with you here today. This is Christy Wright.

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CAMILLE [1:38]

Welcome back everyone to another episode of Call Me CEO and I am thrilled that you are here today because you are all in for a massive treat. We have Christy Wright, the author of Take back Your Time, co-host of The Dave Ramsey Show as well as the developer and owner of Business Boutique and many other amazing things like her own show, The Christy Wright Show. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us today, Christy.

CHRISTY [2:03]

Yeah. Thanks for having me. This'll be fun. I'm excited about it.

CAMILLE [2:07]

I am too. And I have to tell you, I've been doing this show for a while now and your book showed up on my kitchen counter. And my husband came home and he was taken aback. "Where did you get that book? How did you get that book? That's not even available yet." And I said, "I'm actually interviewing her." And he was like, "What?" It was like I had finally made it in his eyes because Christy Wright is going to be on my show and he's like, "Wait. Can I listen? Can we do the debt-free show?"

CHRISTY [2:37]

That's hilarious.

CAMILLE [2:38]

Yeah. And so, he actually knew a lot more about you before I did. He'd actually talked to me about you before because he knew that you had done the Business Boutique. And he said so much of what you do and the way you view the world is in line with each other. And so, I'm just so excited to have this conversation with you.

CHRISTY [2:55]

Well, this is awesome. You tell him I said hi and thank you. That's so fun.

CAMILLE [2:59]

You're welcome. I will. He'll be so excited. His name is Paul Walker. So, the fact that you know his name.

CHRISTY [3:04]

I love it.

CAMILLE [3:06]

All right. Well, I want to take us back a little bit into how you ended up where you are now. A lot on this show is paving that path finding your purpose. And I know that from reading your book and also looking at your show that you really believe in following God's purpose for you. And I love that message that each of us has a divine path and that we can get there if we listen to those cues. So, please tell me about how you got to the position you are in now and how you are able to discover that path.

CHRISTY [3:33]

Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you for asking, and thanks for again having me. Well, I'll share a story with you and this is something that doesn't have to do with my book, Take Back Your Time, but it does have to do with pursuing your purpose, which is what you're talking about and I know you're really passionate about.

So, I guess it was about 12 years ago, I started working for Dave and I started as a project manager. And I was in charge of all the kids' books and piggy banks and Bible studies and all the kids' stuff and the publishing department. Now at that time, our company had 250 people. It has over 1,000 now. So, it was much smaller. We didn’t have any Ramsey Personalities. It was just Dave Ramsey and he was the man, the brand, the owner, the CEO, all the things.

Well, in the fall of 2009, I've been here just a couple of months. And then, into the spring, I actually inherited this arrangement partnership between our company and this outside conference. And what the circumstances were was that Rachel Cruze, Dave Ramsey's daughter, who was in college at the time was going to graduate college in May. She was going to come onboard on our team and work for her dad's company and she was going to be the face of the youth and team market, the face of the youth and team brand and products and so on.

The guys in our department had arranged for her to go speak at this conference that summer and she attends. And so, I inherited the arrangement. I began all the logistics and working out all the details and so on. And two weeks before Rachel was supposed to go on the road, I get the travel schedule in the conference and it was a disaster. It was two and three connections. You were in an airport 18 hours a day. You were going to New York to California to get to Texas. It was terrible. And this was 20 dates, all summer. 20 different cities all over the country, okay.

So, I had to take this travel schedule to Dave Ramsey, the CEO and her dad, and get it approved. And I take it to him and again I've been at the company six months. I'm 25 years old. I'm a baby. I don't even know what I'm doing. And he's like, "Yeah. She's not doing this. This is way too much. This is crazy. This travel schedule is terrible. This is more than we agreed to. Essentially, you can go back and you can tell them that she can do 10 of the 20 dates, but not all 20 and they can pick which 10."

So, I go back to the company, to the conference and I talk to the guy. And I'm a fit the suit in my pants kind of girl, so I just make it up as I go. I hadn't really thought through how this conversation was going to go. So, I deliver the bad news. I'm like, "I'm so sorry. She can do 10. Good news. You can pick which 10, but she can't do all 20 and I'm so sorry." And he said to me, "Christy, what am I going to do? I don't have her booked for 10 keynote presentations. I have her booked for 20. What am I going to do with those other 10?" And I said, "I'll do them." He said, "Can you speak?" I said, "I think so."

I'd never spoken in my life, never. I did not ask permission. I did not get in any approvals to do this. Looking back, it was so audacious. But what happened was I went on the road that summer and I gave the keynote presentations at 10 of those dates. At every other event, I went to another city and met Rachel there and I ran her AB. So, I went to all 20.

And at the end of the summer, that fall, our company identified a need for more speakers because Dave Ramsey was turning down 30,000 requests a year. And so, they created what was known at that time as the Ramsey Speakers Group and it was five men and two women. Me and Rachel Cruze were the women. I was just slid into that group, no audition, no interview, no application. And I became a speaker for our company and I did that for five years on the side in addition to my full-time job of doing project management until that eventually turned into what is now The Ramsey Personalities. And I full-time speak and write and coach and help women start business and also help them in other areas like personal development and life balance and so on.

But the reason I wanted to share that in light of your question about how I got started doing this is I think it's such an important message for your audience and that is this. In that moment, I just solved a problem. I said yes to the opportunity before I knew how to do it. I didn't know how to speak. I didn't have any right to be doing that. And I think that's such an important lesson because you will learn how to do something by doing it.

And so often, women in particular we sit back. We wait until we're ready. We wait until we have all of the certifications and degrees and someone gives us permission to go do the thing and we have 100% of the qualifications before we apply for a job. Listen to me. Say yes before you know how. You will learn how to do the thing by doing the thing. And that has certainly been my journey and I think there's such a great lesson there that hopefully empowers people to try things even before they know how to do it perfectly because you'll learn how to do it by doing it.

CAMILLE [8:19]

I love that. I think there's a percentage somewhere that says that if men know how to do something by 40%, they'll say yes and women it's something like we have to be 85% or more.

CHRISTY [8:32]

Yes. In job applications, that's exactly what that is.

CAMILLE [8:34]

Oh my gosh. So, I love that that you just have that. You solved the problem and you figured it out as you went along. And I know that that's a big part of what you talk about in the book is gaining that confidence and where do you find that confidence. In that moment, where would you say that you grabbed that confidence from? What experience have you had where you thought, "I'm going to do this anyway?" Is that something you'd practice through your life or was that a new thing in that moment?

CHRISTY [8:59]

Well, it's a great question. I love that you asked that. I do think there are some personality styles that tend to be more risk-averse, more fearful, more sit back, just more nervous. That's for sure. In general, research says that women are more risk-averse. We don't want to make the same mistake twice. We're more timid. Men are not. They're more confident. They're like, "I got this. I got 20% of the skills. Sure. I can totally rock this job." And so, there is some of it in our gender, some of it in our personality style, and so on.

But the great news is that confidence is a muscle that can be exercised and strengthened like any muscle. And so, while I may have some aspects of my personality that make me more of a risk-taker, I wouldn’t say I'm super confident in the sense of like, "Yeah. I'm going to nail it on something I've never done before. I don't know. I've never done it. I'm scared just like you or anybody, but I'm willing to try." And that's what makes the difference, being willing to try, being willing to try and succeed, being willing to try and fail, being willing to try and experiment, being willing to go for it even though you're not sure how it's going to work out.

And I think that courage of being willing to put yourself to do something even despite your fear while you're scared is the pathway to building confidence because I was absolutely terrified when I walked on that first stage. I said, "Yes. I'll speak. I'll do those speaking events." And when I was on that first stage, I was scared out of my mind like I was shaking in my shoes. I was sweating. I was so nervous. I was like, "What are you doing? How did you even get here? You're not supposed to do this."

But I just faked it. I just faked feeling confident. I was like, "Hey, y'all. I’m so excited to be here." Lie, bald-faced lie. I was not excited. I was terrified. But the difference is after I faked it and I acted confident, I acted excited, I acted the way I wanted to feel, over time of acting this way, that confidence became authentic and I actually felt confident. I was no longer scared because I had two speaking events, five speaking events, five years of speaking events, a decade of speaking events. I've done it before. I can do it again.

But you don't have that proof when you're doing something new, when you're doing something for the first time. So, in those moments, you really do have to do it scared. Don’t wait until you're not scared to do the thing you want to do. You do it while you're scared and in doing it, you fake it until you feel it. You put yourself out there. You try the thing even if you're shaking in your shoes. But then, over time of doing it, you actually build authentic confidence.

But it wasn’t because you had a special gene. It wasn't because you just woke up one morning ready. It wasn't because someone gave you permission. It was because you were willing to take action despite your fear. I tell people all the time the antidote to fear is action. Nothing will silence your fear of doing the thing like doing the thing, so go do the thing. Walk on the stage. Launch the business. Apply for that job. Put yourself out there. And when you survive, because yes, you will, you're building authentic confidence a little at a time. And then, that's what makes the real difference, but it's overtime. It's not overnight.

CAMILLE [12:02]

I love that. What advice would you give to women who are listening who have been in the home and are entering the workforce again? That's a question I get a lot is, how do I gain that confidence when I haven't been in that world for so long and I'm going into it and I feel so raw and vulnerable? You've gone over a lot of that and what we can do, but is there any specific advice that you would give to her? What would you give advice to her who is leaving the house and feeling like I don't even remember who I am anymore? How do I get back into this? What would you say to her?

CHRISTY [12:35]

Yes. I love that question. And I actually had such a relevant conversation with my really best friend, Jenny. So, she and I, we use an app called Marco Polo video chat back and forth. Yes, all the busy women love this because you can just whenever you're free and then catch up later. So, she sent me this Marco Polo and she was talking about she was stressed because she wanted to go back to work. Her two kids were at school three days a week and she decided she was going to go back to work. And she was trying to get her resume together and trying to get all of her applying for jobs, searching for jobs, all that and she was really overwhelmed.

Exactly like you just described, she said, "I've lost my confidence." This is a girl that is hard-driving, type A, super high achiever. She was the public relations director for the entire of Nashville for seven years and the seven years of Nashville just blowing up. Okay. So, she just went home to be with her kids four years ago. She was in this period of time that was the center of Nashville blowing up and Nashville has become such a big popular city now. So, this was a girl that had so much career experience and still she was telling me, "I've lost my confidence. I just feel like I'm nervous." Exactly what you're saying.

And she felt some pressure from other friends or other people. Depending on the job posting, she appeared a certain way. She put all these official language on her resume like, "I'm this that and the other, all these fancy 10-dollar words." And all this to really put forward this appearance that she's so impressionable, this, that or the other.

And I told her, I said, "Jenny, the things that make you unique and hirable and desirable and sought after are the things that are true to you, not putting forward some appearance that you think or buzzwords that you think people want to hear on a resume." And so, I said, "I want you to think of all the things that were your strengths when you did that job that you love. What are all your strengths that you bring to the work that you do that you had then and you still have now by the way? Think about those and highlight those in a way that you would describe them."

Because I think what happens is when we get out of the workforce, we begin to question who we are. We think we've changed into someone else just because we changed a million diapers. You changed diapers. You didn't change yourself. Listen, you're still in there. You're still smart. You're still capable. You still have those skills. So, remember what those are. Remember what you loved. Remember what you know how to do and then put that foot forward.

The best analogy that I would give you is this. So, I heard an interview. This was months ago where Gretchen Wilson was talking to John Rich and John Rich was telling this story of before she came to fame or anything. They were sitting on his couch and there was a music video back when music videos were a thing. And Shania Twain back in her heyday and she was just being beautiful and perfect singing one of her hit songs and whatever.

And Gretchen Wilson said to John Rich, "I'm not going to make it. I'm not going to make it in country because if you've got to be that, well, I’m not that. She's perfect. And she's beautiful. And if you've going to be perfect and beautiful, I'm never going to make it. I'm just a redneck woman." And he said, "Don't hide that. In fact, put a magnifying glass on it. You put that out there because there's a whole audience of women that are just like you that need to see you, hear you, will relate to you that would never relate to Shania Twain." And they sat down and wrote Redneck Woman, which launched her to fame.

And so, my advice to Jenny in light of that is put a magnifying glass on what's actually you. Don't try to be someone else. Don't try to even be what you think the workforce wants now. You be you because you're still you and you still have skills and talents and gifts that you bring to the work that you do. So, remember that woman that did those things.

What were those things that made you light up? Remember those things. Write them down. Remember that you still are that. And then, put that on paper and put that out there. Don't try to sound like someone you're not or be someone that you're not. You don’t need to be anybody, but who you are and you're still in there. You've changed a lot of diapers, but you're still you.

And what's so funny, what's so fascinating because I have definitely felt this feeling like I'm losing myself. Man, I've felt like that at seasons of life. I've felt like that in different jobs. You really feel it in mother. And so, that's actually why I wrote my devotional last year. It's Living True: 40 Days to Get Back to You because we feel like we lose ourselves.

One of the things that I've noticed is when you feel like you lose yourself, all that it takes is doing one thing one time for you to remember. You don't have to do it for a decade, one day. If you're a writer, write one piece of work, one blog, one article. And as you sit down at the computer and you put your fingers to the keys and you channel that creative energy and you weave those words together like all that you can, you will feel this wash over and you go, "There you are. There you are. You're still in there."

So, whether it's going to church for the first time when you haven't been in a decade, you're like, "Oh, God. How it good it feels to be at church." You go for a run for the first time when you're a runner and you haven't been running for three years, "I forgot how good it feels." It might be really, really hard and you're sweating because your muscles are weak but, "Oh, it feels good to tap back into who you are because yes, you're still in there. You're still in there." You've just got to remember and do it one time and then watch how that reignites that connection with that part of yourself. And it will come to life and it will get easier and easier for you to channel that and move forward with those gifts.

CAMILLE [18:03]

That's so powerful. Everything you say, I'm like okay. We can be done right now and that's enough to just chew on and live through. And what I love most about your book is that it's so segmented into actionable steps of really defining what matters to you and the purpose behind how you're spending your time and how to make it not just this arbitrary idea of how do I create this "balance," but how do I make it so that it really matters to me?

And one thing that I love more than anything is I recently got through a period of time where I was writing a course and it was very involved. It was very heavy and I told my husband, "I said this is a season. It's like I'm running a marathon. I just need you to show up for me. I don't want it to be like this forever. Just show up for me in this season. Just let me be there and I know it's going to be crazy. Just be there with me."

And so, it was so funny because when I was reading your book, I was like, "Hey. This is what I've read in Christy's book because it says that you go through seasons that are stressful and it doesn't mean you're out of balance. It just means that this is a time where you have to hunker down and really attack whatever this season or the project or whatever this thing might be and that's what I was trying to explain to you." He just looked at me with this side eye and he's like, "Yeah. I heard her say that on the radio too."

CHRISTY [19:27]

He's like, "Dang it. You're right."

CAMILLE [19:29]

It was so validating because I think a lot of times as women, we do multitask by nature. We have a lot of things going on that we naturally are trying to check off things in our home, school, family, business, life, whatever, and that there are periods of time that can feel out of whack. But I love that your message is that that doesn't mean you're out of balance. It just means that you're in a season where that's what's going on and you don't have to beat yourself up about that. Just knowing that there will be times where you can open back up to be more family-focused or more health-focused or whatever that might be. So, for those who are hearing this for the first time, please explain to them what you believe in seasons and how that evolves to a balance in your life.

CHRISTY [20:14]

Yes. From the very first how I became a speaker just trying to solve a problem, my heart is just to solve problems. And so, when I wrote my devotional last year Living True: 40 Days to Get Back to You, it was out of what you're saying. I've lost myself. So, that was a problem I wanted to solve. The number one problem that I had heard about for the last ten years is how do you balance it all? I've heard that more than anything else even more than business questions that I've spent six, seven years coaching women to start and grow business. And the number one question I get is not a business question. It's how do you balance it all?

And so, because I'm a problem solver, I just couldn’t let this go and certainly out of my own need of having three kids in six years and having a full-time job and now I'm in a seminary. I got a lot of things going on. So, I thought, "Okay. I need to solution this for myself and for my audience. I want to solve this problem for people." And what I found is that we are asking the wrong questions around balance. We say, "How do you balance it all? Is it work-life balance, work-life harmony, work-life integration?" I’m like, "These are all nice words. It still am not helped by this. How do I manage my Tuesday?"

Practical, tactical steps of how to fix the core issue of why I feel out of balance in the first place, why do my audience, why do people feel like something's not right? Because we juggle all the balls. We spin all the plates. We walk the tightrope perfectly. We multitask and we're super-efficient and super productive and still feel out of balance.

And so, to me this is a different issue. And so, I wanted to redefine this because if we think it's a 50/50 split, we set ourselves up to fail and we still feel out of balance if we try to do everything for an equal amount of time. We set ourselves up to fail and we can still feel out of balance. And so, I thought, where does it come from? What are we really seeking and how do get there? And so, I redefined them. In my new book which we're talking about now, Take Back Your Time: The Guilt Free Guide to Life Balance, I define life balance as this. Life balance is doing the right thing at the right time.

And when you do the right things at the right time, you actually feel that sense of balance that you've been looking for all along and it turns out it's less like a perfect split of your calendar and it's actually more like peace, being confident in your choices when you say yes to this thing or no to that thing, shaking the guilt and actually finally being proud of how you spend your time. What a concept.

And so, I laid out this path in the book and it's five tactical steps to balance, five steps that if you do this, you will be creating your own version of balance in your life and the length that I've put this through, which you're referring to in the book is through your season because your season will determine what your version of balance looks like. Your season will determine what's important to you and what's not important to you. And I think that this is a topic that we don't talk about enough. I think that we do not consider our season near enough and it has a massive bearing on what's important, what we should spend our time on, and even what our life looks like.

And so, for example, when I was 16 years old, what mattered to me was who I was riding to the football game with on Friday night. What mattered to me when I was 23 was building my career. What mattered to me when I had my first child, Carter, was figuring out how to adjust to being a mom of a baby and a newborn and what does this even mean? What mattered to me this summer was taking Fridays and going to the lake and what matters to me right now is getting this book out to the world. So, what season you're in, life stage, what season with your kids, what season with your work, what season even in a calendar year. My summers look different than my falls and they should.

And so, what I want people to do is I want people to consider the season they're in and the way that I would define that just to be super specific here is think of the main areas of your life that take up a lot of your time and energy. So, your family is one. Your health would be another. Your work may be another and you may have others, for example. But if you're going through a really tough season with your kids, that's going to drastically have a bearing on what balance looks like and what you're able to do. If you're going through a season of issue, diagnosis, recovering from surgery, that has a major effect on what you're able to do, what you even want to do, what you even care about in that season.

And so, what I want people to do is consider the season you're in and then follow the steps to balance in that season. The steps really briefly are step one, figure out what matters. If you're going to do the right things at the right time, you need to know what the right things are for you. So, you decide what's right, right now. What's right for me in this season? So, decide what matters. Step two, stop doing what doesn't matter. When you cut out all the stuff that doesn't matter to you, and I help you do that in the book, you make a lot of room. You open up a lot of time for things to do. Step three is very tactical, create a calendar that reflects what matters. And so, those things that you identified in step one, they need to go in the calendar if they're going to happen. Even things like alone time, reading, date night, these need to go in the calendar if they're going to happen. And that's just a tool to help you. You can make it look like however you want to. Step four is protect what matters. It's all about setting boundaries and saying no. And step five, be present for what matters. And so, that's to help you focus your thoughts on what's in front of you, which sounds pretty simple.

But even if you create the most perfect schedule in the world, if you're not present for it, you miss it and you still feel guilty. So, I love to walk people through these five steps in a new season considering their season is the lens that they look at this through. And then, when you do that, you really are doing the right things at the right time. You're shaking the guilt. You're proud of how you're spending your time and you are actually enjoying your life. And I think that has powerful implications in every area of our lives.

CAMILLE [26:05]

Absolutely. And I think more than ever we are faced with so many options and so many distractions. And I polled my audience and asked them, what was the number one thing that they wanted to ask? And they said that they wanted to know how do I deal with the guilt that comes when I'm putting effort into my business when I know I need to be putting focus there, but I feel guilt for not being with my kids? What would you say to that person?

CHRISTY [36:30]

Here's the problem. And I talk about this in the book, so this is going to be familiar to you. Here's what we do. We either don't define success. What I mean by that is, let's say, someone has a business and they want to put time into their business. If you don't define how much time you want to put into your business, then it's a moving target. So, you never feel like you put enough time in it.

So, if you say, for example, I want to work on my business 20 hours a week. Let's say, it's a side business and they're going to do 20 hours a week. Cool. You decide in advance. I'm going to work my business 20 hours a week. And then, you block that time. So, you've chosen that time that you're going to dedicate to your business.

That's the first step is defining what success looks like, defining what your goal is, so it's not like no matter how much you work, it's never enough because you never defined success. So, what's a good amount of hours you can feel good about? Yes, this is the right amount that I'm going to decide. So, decide in advance.

The second piece of it is we focus on what we're not doing. And I talk about this in the book so much, but it doesn't matter if it's with our time, if it's with our to do list, if it's with the way we view Instagram. Here's what we do. We've got 50 things on our to do list and we do 47 and we feel guilty for the three. We're focused on the negative. We're focused on what we're not doing on our calendar. We're focused on what we're not doing for those times. We're focusing on all the nos. We're not focusing on the yes, the things we said yes to, the things we did well.

So, I noticed I did this years ago. When I was at work, I would be thinking about my kids, "Oh my gosh. Are they okay? Am I a bad mom? Did I forget lunch? Did I miss field day? Am I the worst? Am I going to scar them for life?" Then I would go home and I would be thinking about work, checking my email, looking at my ozone. I missed that deadline. I forgot that writing project.

Let's go ahead and acknowledge if you live your entire life focused on where you are not, then, of course, you feel guilty. You're living your whole stinking life looking through the rearview mirror of what you're leaving behind. You're missing your life and it's a choice. You can simply flip your focus and that means you look through the front windshield instead of the rearview mirror. That means that you be where your feet are, wherever you are, be there and you allow yourself, force yourself to be present in the moment that you're in.

What is happening right in front of you? Right now, Camille, what time is it? 2:30. My kids are getting out of school. They're going to swimming lessons. I could be stewing about that, "Oh, it's a new class. It's a new teacher. Are they okay?" Yes, they're okay because I made arrangements for them to be okay. I'm not thinking about them. I’m here with you and your audience. And I am fully present in this moment and I'm not thinking about anything else. And when I go home tonging, I'm going to ask my kids about swimming lessons and I'm going to play with them on the playground. And I'm not going to be thinking about this interview or emails or anything else.

When you flip your focus to be present in the moment, you not only shake the guilt of all the things you're not doing and all the places that you're not, you allow yourself to experience the moment you're in while you're in it. And research from Harvard shows you actually even enjoy it more. Research shows that we are happier overall when we are present in the moment that we're in. Your mind is designed to be present with your body. And in our world, when you've got social media, you've got technology, you've got wandering thoughts, you've got guilt nagging you from every direction. It is hard. It is hard to do, but you can.

You can redirect your thoughts over and over again as many times as needed to focus on what's in front of you. So, truly what I do now when I leave the house in the morning, I flip the switch in my brain. I'm looking towards work. I'm thinking about work. I’m getting excited about work. I'm planning work. I’m focusing my thoughts on work. And when I drive home, I'm thinking about my kids, focused on my kids, redirecting my thoughts to what's in front of me.

I love how my friend Tony would say, he said, "Always driving to somewhere that I love." When I'm driving to work, I'm driving to somewhere that I love. When I'm driving home, I'm driving to somewhere that I love. What I love about Tony's perspective is he was focused on what he was going to, not what he was leaving behind and this is something that's a choice that we have.

You are in control of your thoughts. You're in control of what you focus on. And if you live your whole life focusing on what you're not doing, what you didn't get to, the things you're falling short on, then you will feel guilty. But I want to challenge you. That is a choice to focus on that. You can instead focus on what you're doing right, focus on what you're saying yes to, focus on the 47 things you did knock off your to do list and focus on how you're rocking it in your business and you met your goal of working those 20 hours. It's a choice in what we focus on and what we think about. And that's a choice I want to help women make the right one.

CAMILLE [31:03]

Wow. I just want to clap, yes. What I also loved is where you talk about choice, you talk about the confidence in saying no and I loved the part of the book where you talked about talking to your friend Jenny and you talked about our to dos and her looking at her to dos as a linear line. They were holding equal weight and importance and you showed her, "No, it's more of this cone-shaped upside-down triangle where your focus needs to go first to what's most important to you." Can you describe to your audience what that is and how did you come up with that that you were able to at such a young age, where did that come from? I need to ask. Is this something that you learned in church?

CHRISTY [31:47]

No. I honestly don't know, Camille. Maybe God and his goodness just gave me some insight in that moment. I do think that I have a very common-sense perspective of life. And so, to me it's just logic. It's like you've got to know what makes the cut. But it's funny when you say I look back and I'm like, "I don't know. I don’t know." 99% of the time, Jenny was pouring into me and my crazy self. And in this moment, this one shining moment of insight, I was able to help her.

Here's what we do. We all still do it. So, women are really bad about it. Women are the worst actually, way worse than men. So, we view everything that we have to do on a horizontal line. So, everyone who's listening right now, just imagine the horizon. Everything is created equal, so you just plot gots. I've got to go to church. I've got to go to work. I've got to work out. I've got to look good. I've got to cook dinner. I've got to make lunches. I've got to pay bills. I've got to reorganize the attic. I've got to make a potluck meal for the kid's kindergarten class. I've to do that email, everything. You can hear even when we rattle it off.

When we rattle off the things to do, we're rattling them off as if they're all important. They're all on an equal playing field. They're all created equally and they're not. They're just not. Paying bills is not the same equality of importance as reorganizing your attic. One of these has to be done. One does not. Feeding your children is not on the same playing field as making homemade cookies for everyone in the neighborhood, which you don't have to do by the way.

And so, we are absolutely the worst at prioritizing. Prioritizing simply means to list things in order of importance, a hierarchy. First, second, third. Another way to put it, we use the triangle example. The other way if you imagine that everything is on this linear line. You just flip the line where now it's a vertical line. It's a ladder. Picture a ladder. It's a list with number one, number two, what's number three and so on.

Now I wanted to give one quick call out. I don't know if we have any people listening that are people of faith, but I will say I hear this a lot in the Christian world, but anybody can be guilty of it. Often, people think of priorities as this fixed thing, this concrete thing, this set it and forget it thing. And I hear my Christians saying this all the time. Any time I talk about priorities, here's what they say, "Well, my priorities are God, others, self" in that order. And I'm like, "That is beautiful. That is a fantastic Sunday school answer. That is very impractical for real life time management of how I'm going to manage my Tuesday."

So, what we need to understand is there are two types of priorities. Yes, we all have or should have a list of priorities, which is permanent and fixed or at least in my fixed, which means when push comes to shove and all hell breaks loose, this is what matters most. So, if the world was falling apart, I would leave my office, go grab my children and try to bring us to safety if the sky was falling. I’m not going to do an interview if the sky was falling. Thankfully, we don't actually operate in that environment 99% of the time. The world is not falling apart 99% of the time.

So, those we set aside and then we do a set of flexible priorities that are more current, more relevant, more specific to the season we're in, the week we're in, the day we're in, and what's going on at that time. So, for example, one of my priorities that I wrote down for the spring was I want my children to be able to swim. That is very specific. It's specific to the season of the year because summer's coming up. It's specific to our season of our life because they're four and six and they're able to be able to now, but they haven't yet learned. It's specific to my desires and my values because we're around water a lot. So, that's very specific. It’s not God, others, self. It's like I want my kids to swim. Okay. That's a top priority.

Well, then that dictated my calendar. Every Friday, I would pick them up from school, take them to the YMCA, and get in the pool and start doing swimming lessons. This summer, I enrolled them in multiple swimming lesson classes. And now, Camille, they are swimming like fish, jumping off the high dive. That didn't happen by accident. It happened because I created priorities. In that season, that reflected what mattered to me and I aligned my time with it. Now, would I have rather gone to happy hour Friday after noon at work? I sure would. I sure would have. But what mattered most was getting my kids to swim. That was one example.

But in any season, you need to identify what is most important, second most important, third most important and here's what's great. When things fall below the line because they will, your time is finite. Things will fall below the line. You can rest assured that the right things are falling below the line. The things falling below the line are reorganizing the attic, not making potluck, not making homemade cookies for everyone in the neighborhood, the things that were ideas that popped in your head that you no longer have to beat yourself up for not getting to because they're actually not important.

And again, we're not focused on the nos. We're not going to focus on all those things that fall below the line and beat ourselves up for it. We're going to look above the line and go look what I did well. Look what I got right. I did the right things at the right time. My kids are swimming. My work is done. My kids are fed. This is the success today and I'm going to be proud of what I did right instead of guilty for what I did wrong. And again, it's the choice we make.

CAMILLE [36:54]

Wow. That's really powerful and I love that you talk so much about what we've done right and really appreciating the time that we have been given and the things that we have done. And I know that a lot of the things you talk about confidence and finding that God-given purpose and that path for yourself and I'm curious about you have so much, this message that you're offering and giving and I feel like it's needed more than ever because as mothers and especially as working moms, we are put in scenarios that have never been on the forefront before with our children literally growing up with the cellphone in their hands and being in scenarios where we have a lot of choices and a lot of opportunities to say yes when perhaps the answer should be no. What is it for you in your life that has held you to a point where you are now defining this is my purpose and this is the trajectory of what I want going forward? What is that vision for yourself and what you hope to do in sharing that message?

CHRISTY [37:54]

I love how you said vision because our brains are wired to visualize things. Dr. John Delony, who is one of The Ramsey Personalities, he's helped me with this even in conversations with my spouse. He says, "What do you want to do this weekend?" And I say, "Stay home." And my husband says, "Yeah. Let's stay home." And I think, "Yes, we're going to stay home and do a million projects around the house." And he thinks, "Stay home and hang out on the couch and watch football." We're like, "Why did we miss each other?" But we visualized what stay home meant, so we said stay home.

But what's interesting is our brains do visualize things. And so, since our brains are wired to visualize pictures, we think in pictures. That's what I want you to do. When you think of the season ahead and when I say season, I tend to lock mine into three seasons. So, fall, spring, and summer and they fall over my kids' calendar. Thyer also fall over my work calendar. My work is slower in the summer, so I could take more time off. It's crazy in the fall and so on.

So, actually when you begin a season, whatever the seasonality of your work or your family is, you think what do I want it to look like? Actually visualize it. When I would visualize my summer, I visualize I'm on a lake every weekend. I visualize taking Fridays off. I visualized being outside and really taking it easy. I visualized a summer of fun, of rest, of ease. If you visualize that, then that will inform your calendar because I'm not then going to take that vision and turn it into 500 commitments. "Oh, we're going to sing up for travel baseball and we're also going to say yes to every birthday party. And we're going to do summer school and every camp every summer."

Instead, I sign my kids up for two camps, maybe three. And then, the summer of 12 weeks, so it's like one week on we'd have camps. We had some stuff going on, but not a lot. I took no commitments the weekends, so we could go to the lake. I took no commitments on Fridays, so I could take the day off and just do whatever because that was in line with my vision.

But if we don't visualize what success looks like, like we were saying earlier, if we don't visualize what we want this season to look like or even this week or even today, what do I want this day to look like? Then what will happen is we run really hard. We try really hard. We work really hard and we end up at the end of the day, end of the week, end of the season, absolutely exhausted and we have no idea if we did what we wanted to do, if we did what was right because we never defined success. You can't achieve something you never define.

I do coaching, for example, women in business. And I begin every coaching session with, "What do you want to get out of today?" Because if I don’t ask them what they want to get out of today, if I don't force them to define success of our session, we're just going to talk for 30 minutes or an hour and feel good and connect and man, we had fun and we laughed. Afterwards, I don't really know what we did. She doesn't know what we did. I don't know if we ever added value.

So, visualize what you want this season to look like. Visualize what you want this week to look like and we know it won't' be perfect. Things will change and they can and they should. And I talk about how to adjust in the book when that happens. But I think there's a big piece of this of just visualizing what you want that to look like. This fall, I visualized this fall. And this fall, my vision for it is hard work. I want to get this message out there. I want to say yes to every opportunity that I can. I want to work long days.

Here's a great example. There was one day a few weeks ago where I had a satellite media tour in the morning, which means I get here at 6:15 in the morning, then I worked all day and my normal day and my normal meetings and video shoots and so on. And then, that evening we did a live stream event from our studio back here at 7:30 or at 8:00 at night. I left at 9:00 that night. I had gotten in at 6:00 in the morning. That was a long day.

Now if we're not careful, we will take a day like where I decided in advance that was right that day. That was what we were trying to do in this season. The priority of this season is to get this book out in the world and help as many people as possible. But if I'm not careful, if someone's not careful, you'll look at that day that you planned and decided it was right and then you go, I'm a bad mom. I didn't see my kids today. You assess and evaluate and give yourself a report card on your parenting on a day when work was the priority or you take a vacation and give yourself an F on your work.

We're always focused on what we're not doing instead of just like what we're talking about when you decide this is what success looks like and you do it, be proud of it. Acknowledge it. I could go home that night at 9:00 and go, I rocked it today. I had energy from 6 in the morning to 9 at night. I fulfilled every commitment I had today, which was right today. I did the right things at the right time. I'm proud of me.

And that's a very different framework than focusing on what we're not doing and feeling guilty for where we're falling short. So, I think we have to define success, but then we do it. When you work the 20 hours on your business or you work the 16-hour day or you are going all in at work on a fall season or whatever that is, be proud of it. Don't miss that you decided to do that. You decided that was right. You did it. And so, you have permission to be proud of that. That's going to help you shake the guilt. And the opposite is also true. When you're with your kids, be with them and be proud of that as well.

CAMILLE [43:09]

What a good formula. And I think after listening to you, that visualization and how you're saying to practice that and put that into play, a question I think you're also asking is what do you want to feel like? What do you want to reflect on and what's that feel of your life and your home and your week and your day and how do you fit that into that season with that list that you've created, which is so, so powerful. I want everyone to read this book. I feel like it's exactly what we all need, not just women, everyone, because there are so amin demands coming at us. And I feel like the pandemic really afforded us the opportunity to take a closer look at how we've been spending our time and also evaluating maybe these things can fall. And maybe I don't need every child signed up for three different activities because how am I feeling now? What is that season becoming?

So, I would love for you to share with our audience where they can find you, how they can take part in reading your book. And also I noticed you have an event coming up for your Business Boutique, which is very pertinent to my audience as well. I'd love for you to share that.

CHRISTY [44:15]

Yes. Well, thank you so much and thank you for having me again. So, christywright.com is where you can find out about anything I'm doing. The book is available anywhere books are sold. It launches September 14th and then October 14th to the 16th, we have our Business Boutique event here in Nashville and that's just three days of incredible speakers where we give you all the things that you need to start or grow your side or small business. We talk marketing, sales, money management, fear, all of the things that we struggle with in business sometimes. And so, you can find out more about that at businessboutique.com. The book is Take Back Your Time: The Guilt Free Guide to Life Balance and that's at christywright.com or anywhere books are sold.

CAMILLE [44:54]

So powerful. I have one more question for you and it's one of those questions I like to ask a lot of our guests is what do you hope your children are learning in watching you do what you do? What is that legacy that you hope that they gain from watching you and your life's purpose?

CHRISTY [45:13]

Well, one of the things that's really fun about parenting is you get to define for your kids, you get to define things any way that you want to because they don't know any better. So, it's like you could just define things and they don't have to take it against. So, my oldest son Carter, he's now six, but he asked me years ago. We were having a conversation about work. His vocabulary was limited at that time, but I think I was leaving to go to work or he was asking what work is or something like that. And I said, "Work is what we do to help people." And that got imprinted in his mind.

And so, still to this day, if you ask Carter, "Why do people work?" He says, "Oh, we work because we help people." I just love that beautiful definition because I don't want my son to think this is something that I have to do. I’m addicted to my work. You've got to have a paycheck to put meals on the table. Oh, no. I do this because I love it because I want to help people. I feel called to help people. And so, I wanted to define that for them and I want them to discover how do they want to help people? And oh, by the way, we're going to call that work.

CAMILLE [46:15]

That is so beautiful. I love that. Thank you so much. It's so clear that you're doing what you love and that your heart is in helping people. And I'm so grateful that you were on the show today. Thank you so much.

CHRISTY [46:27]

You're awesome. Thanks for having me.

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CAMILLE [46:27]

I hope you enjoyed today's episode as much as I did interviewing her. If you would like to connect and join the conversation, please do so. Join me on Instagram @camillewalker.co as well as @callmeceopodcast. I want you all to talk about this. What does it mean for you to prioritize and how do you find ways to really make time for what matters most to you?

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you've found it helpful, please share it with a friend. That is how this show will grow and it means the most to me that you are here spending your time with me with so much else going on that you have to balance. I'll see you next week!

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