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Hey there, welcome to Real Talk with Tina and Anne.
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I am Tina and I am Anne.
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Thanks for joining us.
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Today.
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We're gonna be diving into a topic that might sound a bit counterintuitive at first, but it is learning to embrace the mundane moments.
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Sounds like a weird word, doesn't it?
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Is it the way that it's written?
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You know, mundane, I don't know.
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My mouth struggles to say it sometimes, but recently I have been reminded of what's important.
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I don't know if you've been hit with this yet, or any of our listeners.
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It is always top of mind, though.
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My health and the health of my family Well, really came to the forefront when we were sick recently with the flu.
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Influenza A kicked our butts.
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It started with my oldest son, it went to myself and then to my youngest.
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Somehow knock on wood got to do that.
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My husband and my middle son were spared, but it actually hit me in three different waves.
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It was really, really wild, and so I am always thankful for my health and now that we are recovered and 100% better, always thankful for my health.
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And now that we are recovered and 100% better, it always makes me go back to being thankful for mundane moments, because it means all is well and it's something that I remember years ago, my husband's grandmother saying that be thankful for just the regular, ordinary moments, because that means that everything is okay.
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You know there's no one in the hospital, there's nobody crying.
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Just you know it's no one in the hospital, there's nobody crying.
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Just you know.
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It's just like okay, we're here and we're just, we're okay.
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But I do have to admit that embracing mundane does feel hard for me.
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At the same time, just leading up to us being sick, I started to feel bad about myself, like bored of doing the same thing every single day and just kind of wishing away the days for the warmer weather to arrive.
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So I think so many of us are used to rushing and we're striving for the next big thing and we're waiting for the extraordinary to come along.
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But I think it's important that we look to the ordinary, because I think that's what makes things come alive.
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If we could find joy and peace and meaning in the small and seemingly insignificant moments we experience every day, how great would that be.
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The small things are the things that I really remember and the things that I genuinely love and embrace about my life today.
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The mundane, the everyday things, those are the things that become core memories.
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I think, and you know, with my kids and my parents, and I can go to every little thing that my dad would do or that my mom would do, or some things with my aunts, and I'm telling you what that's, who made me, those are the things that made me who I am.
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You know, my dad.
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This was so great, but he used to always meet me at the end of my block when I was at swimming and he was my biggest cheerleader and that was a small thing.
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Some people would just say, you know, he was always there and that was a small thing.
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Or maybe that kiss that he would give me before he would go to work.
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And one of my favorite memories and this is absolutely hilarious and I just love this memories and this is absolutely hilarious and I just love this.
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Um, my dad used to, every single night when he would get home from work, he would look for me and I would hide.
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You know, I would always pick a different place in the house and he would have oh where's Ann, where is she?
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Even if he would find me, he'd still be like where is she?
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It was so cute.
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Well, he had to go to the bathroom one day before he actually started looking for me and I had hid in the bathroom under the sink.
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There was like this little um alcove or something, just this little thing under the sink, and I went in it and I see him come in.
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I thought he was going to be looking for me and then I hear him going to the bathroom.
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And so what did you do, did you?
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stay under the sink.
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In my like four year old self or however old I was, I was still really young I went, you know, I had to sneak a peek and then like stick my head out, like is this really happening?
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And so I like stuck my head out to look and see what was happening, and he happens to hit me, glance me in the corner of his eye and I hear this get out of here.
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And I was, I ran out of there so fast, but it was absolutely so funny.
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So you know what, sometimes those mundane things that you do every day, actually turns into something kind of fun or not fun.
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Yes, it becomes a memory that you never forget.
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Oh yeah, that is definitely unforgettable.
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So I totally agree.
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And I want to go back to something I said right before we started talking about this, and it was.
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I started to feel bad about myself for kind of wishing some of these days away because it's been a little bit cold and rainy where we live.
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But the real reality of it is in the daytime I feel great, there are a lot of things going on, but in the late afternoon and into the evening, when my kids have sports practices five nights a week and it's myself at home with our little guy and then one of our other kids, given the day at home with our little guy and then one of our other kids, given the day, I just start to feel like, are we really going to do the same thing over and over and over?
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Like can we play the same three games over and over?
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Can we watch the same show again?
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It starts to feel so monotonous.
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So I'm trying to change it up a little bit and if I can't just give myself grace and go through just that mundane and be happy about it because we're not sick anymore, you know it means nobody's hurt or in trouble or anything like that.
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So trying to trying to really embrace that.
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But as you're talking about that funny story, there are just a few that stick out to me.
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One of my favorite holidays is April Fool's Still to this day I love to prank people, especially those I love, and I used to get my dad all the time and the one time I covered the toilet seat with saran wrap and he didn't see it.
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And first thing in the morning he went to the bathroom and oh boy, did I get a verbal lashing.
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After that he said if I ever do that again, I'm cleaning up the mess.
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So I never did do that again, but that one, that one, definitely stands out to me.
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You remember it, don't you?
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Oh, I remember it, I do.
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And it's funny that we're talking about mundane, because I do remember several years ago it was a day in April where I was walking.
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It was just my oldest son and I and it was the best, most simple day ever and I remember it and we were just walking around the block, just being outside.
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I mean literally, that was it.
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But I remember that day just like, oh, everything is just right in the world, isn't that?
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when things feel perfect, yeah, it isn't anything going.
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Honestly, most of the time feeling that feeling that you're talking about is in the mundane.
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It really is like with my son, who I'm homeschooling now.
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I mean like we'll take walks or we'll just, you know, do something simple, and it just feels so right.
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It does.
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No, it certainly does.
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Well, let's explore how to embrace these mundane things.
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So I'll start with a question why do we often overlook the mundane?
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And to answer that, in my opinion, I think it's because we think that ordinary is something we should just pass through as we're trying to get to extraordinary.
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So, you know, one of the things I'll go back to is my really big hike in 2023.
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I hiked the Kalalau Trail in Kauai, Hawaii.
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Do I remember that?
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Absolutely.
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Did I train hard for it?
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Absolutely, but that was also a couple weeks out of my entire life.
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Will I remember it?
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Yes, but all of those little things are what make up an even bigger part of my life.
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I hope that's making sense and I think you know, sometimes we're trying to go through something as quickly as possible, maybe because it just like I was saying earlier, it feels like I'm Groundhog Day.
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You're living the same day over and over and over.
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But when we stop and reflect, we realize then that those moments are adding up.
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They're a huge part of our lives in so many ways, and they hold more value than the big events we celebrate.
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At least they can.
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Absolutely.
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I would say that, just like I talked about earlier with my dad, I mean, those are the things that I remember and will take to my grave, and the same thing with my kids here.
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It's playing a game with my kids or something like that, and I agree with you.
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There are times where my kids are watching the same show for the fifth time, or, you know, it's just feels like we wake up breakfast, school, lunch, you know, with my one son, or whatever, and you know I work on things clean the house, maybe clean the same room for the 10th time, and it does feel that way.
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But I'll tell you what.
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Going back to what we said earlier, those are the times where everything feels okay and you don't need that extra in order to be happy.
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It's okay to do those things once in a while.
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That's what vacations are, for, which you don't take vacation all the time those times are for, but the rest, hopefully, prayerfully, you can have mundane moments.
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You know, as I'm sitting here again just thinking back over memories, some of my most favorite memories growing up were with my aunt, where she and I would play Monopoly for hours at a time while we ate Tostitos it's a tradition, I'd sleep over her house and we would do that all the time and to this day.
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Tostitos are still one of my favorite things and Monopoly is one of my favorite games.
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Don't play it often because it does take such a long time, but I think what we're getting at here is the time, like the time that someone invested in you and the connection that you have, like you and your dad, your game of hide and seek.
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You looked forward to it.
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Maybe it wasn't to someone the most exciting thing, but it mattered to you and look at the impression that it left.
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Again, mundane can be magical and I think it truly is.
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So I get a daily email.
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It's called the Good Trade and it's one of my favorite.
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I only read a couple of emails, either every day or every week.
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When I say a couple, I mean two to three, maybe five at the most if we're talking weekly.
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I love reading the Good Trade because it always gives you something to chew on.
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Mundane days was the topic of conversation in a recent email.
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Was the topic of conversation in a recent email and in it I loved what writer and podcaster Katie Christian said.
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She said I sometimes fear that I'm losing myself to the redundancy and that's what we've been talking about.
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She said it's not that she feels lonely in the season as much as she feels bored, being by herself so often and in the throes of a fairly monotonous routine.
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She sometimes fears that she's losing herself to redundancy and her actions, conversations, thoughts, she says, begin to kind of blur together, and I can totally relate to that.
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But what I really loved was how she talked about next, of pondering the idea of cyclical living, what it looks like to stop resisting a life that feels and looks entirely ordinary or even mundane.
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What does it mean to choose a quiet and unassuming life?
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Are there benefits to our everyday looking the same?
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Do we cultivate patience, a stronger sense of self?
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And then she says the truth is, 99% of life is mundane and a person's life is a collection of all the moments that happen in the middle.
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I really couldn't agree more.
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Yeah, there are the big things, like you talked about, the adventures and the vacations, and we do need those.
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It's almost like it boosts.
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It boosts us and keeps us going.
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But it's those unassuming parts that fill in the blank pages and shape us into who we are.
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I love it.
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That's exactly what it is yeah, and so she goes on to talk about.
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Think about maybe one of your favorite adventure books from childhood, so maybe, where one of the main characters embarks on a brave quest and, yes, they slayed the dragon, but that was never the whole story.
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Was it In the chapters that we didn't get to read?
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Those characters returned home to their very ordinary lives, working and playing and eating and caring for their families, and perhaps then it's not just the dragon slaying that shapes us, but also the moments before and after.
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So there's all of this reason to embrace what we might be thinking, feeling or living is mundane, but it does get us to.
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It gets us not even, I don't even want to say gets us through life.
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It helps, boost us and really is the foundation, I think, of each of our lives yeah, I mean, because of how crazy my life is right now, I'm kind of craving some normal and I am finding myself doing everything I can to come back to center and I kind I think mundane for me is center and and I'm just it's more than a craving, I mean I need it and it's like sitting there with a cup of coffee, with my cat on my lap, you know, maybe watching a show, watching my kids play with laughter.
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I love listening to them.
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Downstairs we have this area where they just play and they just it.
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Just the sound of them having fun comes up and it just makes my day, it makes my whole heart smile.
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And the routine that I know and expect you know, expect that's a big one the morning routine all the way until bed, when there is not much going on except for a peaceful day, just a peaceful.
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The crazier things get, the more I reach for the mundane.
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I can tell you, the things I wanted in my childhood was the mundane of everyday swim practice, getting together with my friends, going dancing every Thursday night when I got older, with my friends laying with my animals.
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Yeah.
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I just love routine, and what it represents to me is safety.
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It just represents safety.
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Yeah, that's so good.
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I really feel like my oldest son values that the most out of our children and I think he can relate to that so much and I can too.
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It's really a funny spot for me to be in right now, as we're talking about mundane, and I say that I feel that way in the evenings because, you're right, like in the daytime it's just really weird.
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It's like day and night in my life is different, and I'm actually looking forward to hectic summer schedules with sports and things like that, just to give us more time outside something else to do.
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You know, something that is planned and maybe eventually it does get mundane, because it's the same thing.
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You know I'm watching more baseball or you know something like that, but you know things with my mom are not mundane and you know there's I'm not the most organized person when it comes to my kids' schoolwork and I feel like they bring home a million papers every single day.
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But I, I just it's I'm okay with that aspect of it and it's I don't know.
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I just I feel like I'm I'm okay with mundane sometimes and then others I'm just reaching for something to do because of just going back to that whole boredom thing, but like we were talking about getting us back to appreciating this time, knowing that it's going to pick up, yeah, should be enough in and of itself.
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Isn't it hard to just?
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sit.
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Yeah, it is.
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It's even harder for me to and I'm not sure that I've done it in recent months at all to shut my brain off and truly be present.
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That's been really hard for me.
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My brain is just going, going, going, going going and so I try to, you know, do mindful breathing and things like that to try to help calm it down.
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But I'll tell you what it just goes a mile a minute.
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You and I talked about this the other night, the other day, because we text each other, sometimes late, and you know, I mean we both have admitted that our nights can be really hard.
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Yeah, and that's when I've got our family dying.
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I'm dying, everything is really awful.
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And then I wake up and everything is fine and you know, great day.
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And then night comes, the house is silent.
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I start thinking, my brain takes over, yeah, it's over.
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Yeah, I can totally relate.
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Well, let's talk about then and we've touched on some of these things but what it actually means to embrace mundane, is it about slowing down?
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Is it about being present?
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Maybe it's about shifting our perspective and finding beauty, the small joys, the meaning that's hidden in everyday tasks that we often overlook.
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That's hidden in everyday tasks that we often overlook.
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Yeah, I absolutely do think that it's in the everyday tasks that we do overlook, and some of those tasks are just things like picking up the phone.
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And I'll tell you, I can't wait now to call my daughter, who lives in Pennsylvania, to call her every Sunday at least, or a couple times during the week to talk, and that just warms my heart.
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I need that and she needs that, and those are the kind of things that we really, really need.
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And it again brings me back to that, that safety feeling and that everything is okay.
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Yeah, well, you've mentioned that every day, things can be so meaningful, and I do agree.
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Maybe we don't see it at the time, but it all adds up, so let's dive into more.
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What are some examples of mundane moments that can become meaningful?
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So I'm thinking about the everyday acts.
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You know, maybe it's making your morning coffee or tea, or doing the dishes.
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Listen, I don't know how that can be meaningful.
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Okay, I'm kidding, my husband's chore is to do the dishes and let me tell you, it brings great meaning to me.
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It is something that warms my heart.
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It helps me feel prepared for the day.
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With all the cooking that we have to do, with food allergies, I'm like super grateful and it is a big part of I know it sounds silly, but it's a big part of why I love him, because he really does take charge of that chore and does it consistently and I need that.
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I need that.
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You know it could be maybe taking a walk.
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You know some of these things might sound so trivial, but what if we changed our perspective and we started looking at them as opportunities for mindfulness, gratitude and even creativity?
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So something I've started doing is, as I'm starting to feel bored kind of, in the monotony of things, I have started to take up watercolor painting.
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I've just yeah, I've looked at stuff that I really, really like and I have just I'm self-taught if you will, I've only done it a handful of times, but I'm actually really loving what I'm creating and I find that I'm getting more creative and it's inspiring my kids to want to do it with me.
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So it's like a mundane moment turned into creativity.
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That involved all of my kiddos and we're really enjoying it.
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We do that with a puzzle also.
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You know I love to draw and art and paint and that kind of stuff and I've been doing that with the kids and we'll all sit around the table with a bunch of paint in the middle in our canvas and we will all create and it's really fun.
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I mean, that's, that's what it's all about is coming together in something so simple and not exciting, you know, like the thrill of something, but just sitting and being calm and putting something together like a puzzle or making the ordinary come to life.
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You know I do have a a quote that's right along that topic next to my stove because I'm cooking so much that reminds me.
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You know it says teach kids to.
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You know, learn how to cry when pets and people die.
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And it talks about make you know love the ordinary, because it'll make, it'll turn things into extraordinary.
00:21:42.844 --> 00:21:44.655
It'll work itself out as something like that.
00:21:44.655 --> 00:21:45.479
It's a great quote.
00:21:45.479 --> 00:21:46.400
I probably just really botched it.
00:21:46.400 --> 00:21:48.123
Extraordinary It'll work itself out as something like that.
00:21:48.123 --> 00:21:48.663
It's a great quote.
00:21:48.663 --> 00:21:49.564
I probably just really botched it.
00:21:49.564 --> 00:21:52.788
But the gist of it is the ordinary has so much joy in it.
00:21:53.568 --> 00:21:53.829
You know.
00:21:53.829 --> 00:21:56.194
Talking about cooking, can I just mention something?
00:21:56.194 --> 00:21:59.369
My whole life I was kept out of the kitchen as a kid.
00:21:59.369 --> 00:22:04.536
No, because I always made I don't have depth perception I spilled everything.
00:22:04.536 --> 00:22:07.638
I made a mess, it was get out of the kitchen Never taught.
00:22:07.638 --> 00:22:15.487
Then I, you know, when I was trying to raise my older two, everything just I cannot.
00:22:15.487 --> 00:22:17.694
My executive functioning is not that great.
00:22:17.694 --> 00:22:20.281
I read a recipe and it just comes apart, you know.
00:22:20.281 --> 00:22:23.714
It's like well, that's what it was supposed to look like, you know.
00:22:23.714 --> 00:22:31.651
Anyway, I am finding these videos on TikTok in places where they actually have the video.
00:22:31.651 --> 00:22:34.154
I can watch it and do it.
00:22:34.154 --> 00:22:36.558
I am slaying it.
00:22:36.558 --> 00:22:48.695
I am loving this new chapter in my life where things are really crazy or whatever, and I'll just say oh, you know what, I'm going to make this or I'm going to make that, and I've been starting to cook.
00:22:49.577 --> 00:22:50.338
Good for you.
00:22:50.338 --> 00:22:51.661
It's like your respite.
00:22:52.541 --> 00:22:52.903
It is.
00:22:52.903 --> 00:22:54.325
Isn't that crazy?
00:22:54.325 --> 00:23:04.093
Because the thing that used to like I really felt that I was a failure at, I guess now I'm becoming kind of good at it in a fun way.
00:23:04.093 --> 00:23:09.642
It really is bringing a joy to my life that I didn't really think would ever, so it's kind of fun.
00:23:10.303 --> 00:23:11.163
That's really cool.
00:23:11.163 --> 00:23:12.184
I love that for you.
00:23:12.184 --> 00:23:22.634
Well, if you're having trouble figuring out how to reframe mundane your perspective on it, maybe this, maybe we can help you.
00:23:22.634 --> 00:23:26.701
So it's not exactly about seeking out excitement.
00:23:26.701 --> 00:23:28.505
It's really not at all about that.
00:23:28.505 --> 00:23:31.741
It's about changing how we approach what is already around us.
00:23:31.741 --> 00:23:45.538
So, by focusing on the details, like the warmth in the cup of coffee or tea that's in your hands, or the rhythm of washing dishes, or knowing that you're doing it because you love someone so much I mean no, does anybody really love washing dishes?
00:23:45.538 --> 00:23:52.318
No, but the act of service that you're doing, I think, is what you could find a little bit of joy in.
00:23:52.318 --> 00:24:02.814
So I'm thinking even the sounds of the birds outside, or you know, every time I hear birds outside, I think, oh, we're closer to spring, you know it's coming, it's coming.
00:24:02.814 --> 00:24:11.006
I think there's something to be said about finding presence and calm in the routine.
00:24:12.470 --> 00:24:32.394
Well, one of my favorite memories of one of my favorite aunts was that she would sit with me when I was a young child and look at a book about birds and I still have the book and look at a book about birds and I still have the book.
00:24:32.394 --> 00:24:37.143
And she passed away actually a long time ago but I would call her because I couldn't say Ruby, you know, I couldn't say her name.
00:24:37.143 --> 00:24:52.915
So she became Aunt Birdie until the day she died and I was very much an adult when she well, yeah, I would say in my young adult when she became, when she passed away.
00:24:52.915 --> 00:24:59.692
But yeah, she was Aunt Birdie until then and I still call her that when I refer to her as that.
