Self-Stewardship, Not Self-Improvement: What If This Year Is an Experiment?

The start of a new year often brings resolutions, pressure, and quiet disappointment when we don’t live up to our plans. But what if there’s a different way to begin?

In this episode, we propose an alternative to self-improvement: self-stewardship. Rather than fixing or optimizing yourself, what if this year became an experiment — a chance to see whether caring for the self you’ve been given actually leads to more freedom, presence, and life?

We explore what it looks like to tend to your interior life with curiosity instead of pressure. We reflect on how small shifts in attention, care, and responsibility can quietly reshape not only your own experience, but also the way you show up in relationships — including family life.

This conversation is an invitation to begin the year without urgency, guilt, or grand promises — and instead, to stay long enough with yourself to discover what’s truly life-giving.

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If this conversation resonates, we invite you to continue the exploration with us. Our upcoming free webinar offers space to look more closely at how self-stewardship and relational healing intersect, especially within family dynamics.

You can find out more here: https://unmeshed.online

And for those longing for deeper, ongoing accompaniment, our daily mentorship is a place to heal and practice this way of relating to yourself and others with support, clarity, and presence.

You can find out more here: https://adrianandshae.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello and welcome to Living the Third Way. We are your hosts, Shay and Adrian, and well, happy New Year, everybody. I always find it funny, you know, there's always a part of me that thinks that the new year I'm gonna wake up the next day and everything will be different. But turns out when you have a teething baby, you still wake up about 17 times in the middle of the night, and you still wake up tired the next day, and January 1st is no different than December 31st ultimately. And I'm still tired, but we're here. And how are you feeling today, Adrian?

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Well, I'm right there with you. Sleep in the same bed, so it's usually about the same. This is neither here nor there. I felt great all the way through the morning, and then I don't know. That lunchtime lull hit, and um the energy levels dipped. But we're coming back around. And so we want to talk about the new year. We want to approach it from maybe a little bit of a different angle than we normally would or than we're used to.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Yeah, it's always around this time that I mean we can expect it. You know, everybody's talking about New Year's resolutions and what they're gonna do differently this year, and there's even still those parts of us, those hopeful parts of us, that this is that this is gonna be the year. This is the year I'm gonna get fit or I'm going to make my first million, I don't know. We wish, right? Um, but we want to propose, what if this new year isn't about fixing yourself, changing yourself, all of a sudden becoming a different self? But what if this new year can be more about experimenting? Experimenting with something that we can call self-stewardship. And letting that experiment help you discover whether actually caring for yourself, the self that God has entrusted to you, actually leads to more freedom, more presence, and more life. You know, this is something I particularly am excited about, a different way of approaching the new year. And so, yeah, we want to propose this and we want to talk about it here today. And maybe, you know, for those of you who want to journey with us throughout this year of this experiment, walk through this together.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

And you know, for as many times as we hear about the culture being at odds and us being so divided, I also think that there's a lot of hope. Because if you look at even some of the secular therapy culture, and we're definitely inundated in that, and yeah, sure, there's always the danger of being stuck in your echo chambers and in your in your small little world. But at the same time, there has been a lot of good and curious language and just approaches to the self that I think overlap quite well with a Christian worldview. And so we want to take some of that and we want to look at how those are coming together, taking in some of those things from the regular culture, secular therapy culture as well, and look at it in more detail and take a look, like Shay said, at a different way of approaching the new year. So, what we're gonna talk about off the top so you have a rough idea of what we'll what we'll cover. We want to talk about the problem with New Year's resolution. The New Year's resolution has a me problem and it's on notice.

unknown 3:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

We're also gonna look at what it might be like to treat the new year as an experiment. I think in general, when you think of the idea of an experiment, it's being open and curious about the results without manipulating or forcing anything, but just seeing what comes out. And then we want to look at self-stewardship. How is that different from the way in which we might have been forcing or looking at ourselves with strong expectations, particularly in in the in terms of making resolutions?

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Yeah, and even like what's the difference between self-stewardship and the thing we hear about so often, self-care.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Definitely. We definitely want to look at that and kind of offer a little sympathy for the devil. Like what is good and then what is also what can be improved upon that to make it more authentic and more fully human. Um, and then we want to give a little bit of a reframe with a unique flavor of one of our favorite people, servant of God, Luigi Giussani, and give a little bit of a reframe from what he offers. And then experiment a little bit with that question. Why is self-stewardship worth it? What's unique about it? And as always, we do want to veer off a little bit into the family dynamics lane and just talk about that. How does that apply here? And then give some practical steps. How would we start? What are some markers of going about this new year in a different way? So let's start. Shea, New Year's resolutions. I for one have uh I used to make them all the time. Then there was a time when I just decided to not make them because hey, if you don't try, you can't fail. No one can hold you accountable. Amen. I I I know that game quite well.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

I think it's great. We are called every day to begin again, every moment to begin again. It is a beautiful thing that the the idea of a new year is a really tangible opportunity for us to do that. The new year offers us this hopefulness that something could be different, something could be better, we could change. I don't want to throw any of that away because I think that's good. Like we are, as human beings, we are called to continually grow and progress and become. But we wanted I want to talk about like why the idea of resolutions so often actually don't work for most people. I think there are there are a certain category of people and personality types that it really works for. But I find for myself and for many of the people who are drawn to, you know, working with us, there is a pattern, a defense, a personality type, a woundedness that actually gets in the way of resolutions doing, you know, what we want them to do and producing what we want them to produce. We want to be clear that when we set resolutions, they don't fail because we're lazy or we lack discipline. It's often because we've actually built them on this sense of pressure. And we have adapted different strategies in our bodies and different defenses in our bodies to actually resist that kind of pressure because we needed to survive, you know? And so these resolutions that we set and the way that we actually think about them and the way that we approach ourselves in relationship to these resolutions, and if we're not sticking to them, if we're failing, like the criticism that comes in, like that's where we shut down, and that's where these resolutions tend to fail.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Yeah, and so the way the way Shay described it, that sense of survival, that sense of operating a certain way within a relationship that's learned. And a lot of times is confused with or fused with this idea of, well, that's just who I am. And a lot of times these are these can have really, really strong benefits, but when they're fused in us so much, they also can become counterproductive because we lose sight of difference between who we really are versus how we perform, how we show up, how we get along, and what we do in order what we've learned to do in order to get along. So we become, we become very rigid. I've had that problem. I've had the issue of of black and white, all or nothing thinking. And a lot of times that leads to very high expectations, and you can't always meet them. And so disappointment is very real. Gosh, it's like I'm talking about myself, but uh, but also a lot a lot of a lot of people that we work with too, they they they know what comes after disappointment is this isolation, self-contempt. I failed. And that naturally leads to a feeling of defeat and quitting. And so the way that we approach change very often is just a repeat of old relational patterns that are particularly focused around how we perform and how where we think we we have our value.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Yeah, and so of course, of course, it's like a a no-brainer when we set these resolutions and we come in with these high expectations of ourselves and this high hopefulness that are really when you think about the difference of like what didn't like what magical thing didn't actually happen between you know when you went to bed on December 31st and when you woke up on January 1st, like you're still you, but all of a sudden, all of a sudden you have these high expectations that like my life is gonna change overnight. Understandably, you probably can't keep up with that, and you've learned how to navigate, you know, these experiences of disappointing others. And so when you you realize like all of a sudden, like I'm just gonna feel disappointed, it really makes sense. You know, I like that you said Adrian at the beginning that like eventually in my life I just kind of stopped doing New Year's resolutions because I didn't want to have to face the disappointment, the inevitable, the inevitable disappointment. And I think so often, like that is actually the move. Like, I've been there, I'm in many ways, you know. I still am trying to figure out where I'm actually still doing that in my life, where I'm just avoiding something rather than looking at it and seeing, like, actually, can I approach this differently? Is there a different way that I can go about working towards growth, working towards becoming closer and more aligned with who God created me to be, that isn't so rigid, that isn't so intense, that isn't so critical and self-condemning, but that works with my nature, that works with my patterns, that works with the ways that I've learned how to operate and how to feel safe when making a change and secure in that. Yeah, you know, an experiment rather than a resolution, like a hard and fast resolution, like can we just experiment?

SPEAKER_01 10:41

I want to talk about a little bit of a bugaboo of mine, and some of this I can admit is also rooted in some of my one of my parts that still likes a black and white solution. My brain likes to keep things energy efficient and just say either good, bad, and it's hard to hold nuance. Um But I have a little bit of a, like I said, a bugaboo about this idea of becoming the best version of yourself. It's a small thing, but the more I sit with it, the more I realize that what I what I actually really prefer is this idea of becoming more fully yourself. You are already good. You are not that much different. Like at your core, at your root, you are not much different than that adorable baby that you were at one point. And all of your humanity is the same. But we have this weird feeling that we just have to keep. You can look at it in two different ways, right? I gotta stop start cutting all this stuff away, or I've gotta start building all this stuff on, right? I have to look a certain way, I have to have a certain job, I have to meet these markers in order to be this best thing. When in reality, that's already there. And so we're inviting you, we're also inviting ourselves, because this is not the easiest thing to do day-to-day. We're inviting you to commit to not becoming a different version of yourself, not becoming the best version of yourself, but testing a different way of relating to yourself.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Yeah, I think sometimes we can. I know, okay, let me let me just not speak abstractly. Let me talk about my own experience.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Nice, I like it.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

And and what this is like for me. I have a tendency, as I think many people do, but I'll talk about myself here. I go on Instagram and I see these, let's say, influencers that are literally their pages are designed to make me want to be more like them. And so I can say that I want to, like, there's a part of me that wants to be this homemaking, homesteading mom. And there's other this other part of me that wants to be an entrepreneur, that wants to build this business and serve you, you know, as the listener here and as the people that we work with. And I can feel torn and say, like, well, I need to commit to one of these versions of myself. Like, one of these is going to be the best version of me. But what if all of that is some in some way who God is calling me to be? And there's like a new way that I need to look at that of like, how can I integrate all of these things and become like the unique me, you know, that that that I already am. But I keep trying, like I keep covering up the unique version of myself by trying to look more like these different people on Instagram or you know, wherever. How do I become more me? And I think that's that's what we're proposing here at the experiment.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Yeah, and I I think um a lot of times when we talk about those reactions that Shay has, and let's not have any illusions. I'm not quite, I'm not quite as online uh as Shay is, but I think we have that conversation here and there, and it is definitely easier for me as a as an outsider to notice how often this isn't, I'm not, I don't think I'm blowing your mind telling you that the comparison game generally ends with a sense of black and white. Did I succeed or did I fail? But the reality of it is, like a lot of times I I tell Shay, this isn't the clearest of guidance, but it's like be you. There is no one, there is no one else like you. There is no one else as unique as you. And sometimes all of those, all those outside expectations and the way that people are, they just put this pressure on you not to be with yourself, not to work out of what you know, what you've experienced. What if you ask I tried this thing. What happened? How am I feeling? How did this speak uniquely to me? And I will right away just try to diffuse this. That sounds selfish, doesn't it? Me, me, me, me, me. Um, that's not all bad.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Yeah, and I I think something else that is really uh striking me about what you said there, Adrienne, is like the comparison game can also numb you out in a helpful way a lot of times to to what or at least on the surface it feels helpful. Um, in the immediate moment it feels helpful. If you are keeping your attention focused on somebody else and how far your life is from aligned to theirs, you know, you don't have to focus on yourself actually. You focus on the gap between where you are and where they are, and not so much on where you are. You're kind of like focused on the in-between. And I think that's a way of surviving, you know, because sometimes it can actually be really hard to actually stop and slow down and look inward and look at the self and ask this question like, do I like myself? Do I love myself? Do I like where I am here today? Am I comfortable? Does it make me anxious? Am I tense? There can be a lot of feelings that come up that we would rather stay really, really far away from. And I think I think that's important to know like acknowledge, you know, before we dive into like what is self-stewardship is actually like there are a lot of parts of us, there are a lot of parts of me that are really resistant to self-stewardship because it actually requires me to stop and reflect and look inward. You know, instead of like Adrian was just saying, like, instead of asking, did I succeed or did I fail at this thing or how much further do I have to go to get there? We're asking, like, well, what happened? How did I feel about this? That can be hard. Oftentimes we go blank and we're like, well, I'll just scroll on my phone until something comes up, and then we just forget about it. Like, that's normal, that's common. It's really hard, but it is also the one thing that is required for us to actually make forward progress and growth toward becoming more ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Yeah, I think of um I had a friend of mine who in those moments where you know he would get either stuck on his phone scrolling or kind of numbing out, watching TV. And eventually he would just hit this point where he would just, he would just turn it off or like throw his phone across the couch and be like, what the hell am I doing? And it's really jolting. And uh, I would even say with myself, or if you catch yourself scrolling, it's really helpful to to anticipate that. Like it's really easy to get lost in that, and there is this sort of jolting sense of but getting hit by quote unquote reality. And then I gotta step away from all this content with which I was just distracting myself. And I just want to say it's hard. That transition is just it's like getting slapped in the face. Now here's reality, now here I am, and now I gotta be with myself. Ugh. It feels like a lot because it's a deep transition and it's really hard. And so we want to talk about self-stewardship and look at it from a positive, from a positive light. What does self-stewardship look like without being navel-gazing or just selfish self-involvement? Uh one could say maybe the negative side of self-care. Because self-care is actually not all bad, but self-stewardship is a much better reframe for it.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Gosh, I have like so many thoughts right now in my head. Um, but going back to what you said a little bit ago, Adrian, about like, doesn't like this feels selfish. I shouldn't think about myself this much. I think there's a couple of things there, right, that are worth just paying attention to. You know, one, like what what both Adrian and I have kind of been alluding to here is like the difficulty of turning toward yourself, the the pull toward numbing out, scrolling, distracting ourselves, like it is worth asking, like, what might it be that I'm afraid of facing inside myself? What might it be that that makes it easier to want to numb out or scroll or distract myself? But then also like returning to this question of like, and is it even right for me to like be thinking of myself so much? Shouldn't I be just thinking about other people? I think with so many things, there is a both and there. It is true that when we are freely, you know, giving ourselves to other people, we actually do find ourselves in that. But when it's a compulsion to give ourselves because we think that's what we're supposed to do, we aren't doing it from a place of self. We aren't doing it from a a rooted, grounded, you know, gift of self.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Oh yeah, and it's it's almost like Shay knew this friend of mine, and she definitely didn't. We were living in different states at different times uh when this happened. But that was actually the thing that that I was thinking of too. Because yes, the distraction, not quote unquote a good thing necessarily, but I think Shay nailed it there, was actually my friend's reaction of that anger and that sense of, I need to be doing something. I need to accomplish these things, I need to go to do my job, I need to be productive, I'm just wasting my time. Okay, perhaps there's something true there, but there was also this compulsion to always be to be doing, to be earning. Like his value was if he was, yeah, attending to his business, attending to his workout, uh, you know, cleaning the pool, cleaning something, or whatever. Uh also this inability to be with himself. And I know that sounds nebulous, and it's uncomfortable to make that transition, like I said, but that's a really good observation. It's not just about I'm not numbing out, so I'm good. I'm productive, so I'm good. There's more to it than that.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Yeah, and it's it's so hard. Like this is such a tricky gray space because none of those things are bad, right? Like all those things that Adrian's friends might have just named that I he like should have been doing rather than scrolling, like those are good things. But our hope is that this experiment of self-stewardship, we actually get to a greater place of clarity regarding like what actually is God calling me to do? How is God calling me to step outside of myself and to give the gift of self? But we can't actually know that. Oftentimes we're just like floundering and guessing, you know, you know, what are we supposed to do? But like if we actually get clear on like self-knowledge, we can get clearer on like what is God asking of me. And so I think like that's what we want to, we wanted to define like what do we actually mean by self stewardship? It's not a checklist of things to do, you know, like we might think of self care as. It is more of a posture towards life, more of a posture towards the self, more. Of a posture towards others. Self-stewardship, you know, it might look like paying closer attention to your energy and your needs. If something is bothering you, can we get curious about why and what's going on and what we need to adjust? If we have an emotional reaction to something, can we get curious about that rather than immediately correcting it or numbing it down? Can we start experimenting with different rhythms of life to see like what actually gives me most energy, what actually gives me most clarity, what actually allows me to show up in my life more fully. Not what rhythms make me more impressive or what rhythms help me align closer to that, you know, to that person who told me like what their 5 a.m. wake-up routine is every day, but like what actually works for me to become more of who I'm supposed to be.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Yeah, I remember this triggered a memory of coming across something that Jordan Peterson was talking about. And it was a lot like this. And he was talking about, uh, should I do the impression?

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Maybe not.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

I'm on the fence here. But he said, spend the day paying attention to yourself. I don't, that's not good. Um, spend the day paying attention to yourself, but in a more Canadian Jordan Peterson voice. And and he basically delivered this. And at the time when I heard it, I just remember thinking, what the hell are you talking about, man? I'm not gonna do that. I'll I'll get on board with some of the ideas, like, make your bed, sure. Okay, I get it. That's that's useful, but I am not going to be with myself, whatever that means. It was that uncomfortable. But there is a benefit in taking time and doing a lot of my own healing work and going through the process of being accompanied and having someone walk me through what this actually looks like, it became a whole lot easier to understand because I still had this feeling of okay, I feel like I'm being self-absorbed, I feel like I'm navel-gazing, but what I'm actually being called into is that self-stewardship. And actually, within that self-stewardship is the correct approach or a better approach to life, which is actually responsibility. And it's a responsibility for your life, it's a responsibility for your personhood, but not one that you create, not one that you generate, not one that you're fully in control of. It's not self-created, but it's something that has been given to you as a gift that demands, like demands careful tending and attention. And that's what I want to say is that you, dear listener, and everything that you've been given, all those things require care and attention and curiosity rather than this forceful approach.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Yeah, and I think it's worth interjecting here that that's that's sometimes the place that we get the most hung up, especially for those of us who who maybe haven't had the experience of somebody relating to us in a way that reflects the gift of your life and the deservingness of care and attention and love.

unknown 25:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

You know, if we haven't had the experience, if we haven't encountered another person who revealed to us that our life is something worth caring for, that our life is something worth giving attention to, it makes sense that that wouldn't come naturally to you. You learned how to relate to yourself by witnessing how others related to you. And so I think especially for the people we work with, the idea of self-stewardship can be really off-putting. It can be really disorienting because it is so counter to a lot of what you've probably experienced in relationship with other people, and therefore what you've experienced in relationship with yourself. But, you know, what Adrienne is kind of coming to here, you know, this idea that no, your life is not something that you create, your life is something that you are given. You know, not to put extra pressure on any of those of you who might already tend toward, you know, over-responsibility. There is a sense of responsibility over the gift of your own life. Yeah, as Adrian kind of mentioned at the beginning as he was going through, you know, what we were going to be talking about today, we we we haven't talked about one of our our spiritual fathers in our life and in our in our marriage and in our work, who is uh servant of God, Father Luigi Gisani. He has played a very important role in our in our spirituality and in our relationship and just the way that we the way that we try to live. Um something he speaks about frequently is that the self is a gift, that your I, your personhood, in other words, is something that's been entrusted to you. It's not something that you create or invent. And that, you know, the attention to yourself is actually an act of morality rather than an act of indulgence. And that neglecting the self is not true humility.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

Yeah, uh I think a lot of that really comes with having received or having had your own dignity modeled and reflected back to you. And then it becomes possible to take care of a thing. Because that word responsibility is often misinterpreted. And it's just a weight. A lot of times it's in this case, my buddy just having this and a lot of a lot of people that we work with have this sense of anxiety, this need, this sort of disquieting urgency. I need to be doing more. I'm doing something wrong. I should be more accomplished. This day has been an absolute failure. And if you really sit with that, that's not operating out of a sense of tending the garden. That's more of a sense of this dang garden better produce, so I better just cover it with um Roundup.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

Miracle Grow.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

Yeah. And uh and as we know, Roundup and Miracle Grow, they certainly work, but they also miracle grow third elbows and second noses and cause some pretty disastrous results.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Yeah, and I think uh to some to sum that up, you know, if your gift, if your life is a gift that's been given to you, then caring for it, it's not selfish. It's actually a response of fidelity to the incredible love that was shown to you in receiving this gift, you know, being given this gift. Ultimately, like you aren't the owner of yourself, you are the steward of the self you've been given. This is something that comes up often in in parenthood. This might be its side tangent, but like our children are not ours. We simply are the stewards of their development as they become the truest versions of themselves that God created them to be. And the same is true of our own life. And something that somebody said to me not too long ago, um, as we were kind of just talking about this whole idea, is that, you know, when we're looking at the priorities of our life, and so often mine are really out of order. You know, mine are make sure, you know, all of my work is finished. Once my work is finished, then I can I can take care of my family, and then I can take care of myself. And and that's like so backwards. That's like the exact opposite order that things should be. We can we can think that taking care of ourself or focusing on ourself is selfish, but the reality is is ourself is the indwelling, the dwelling place of God. And so when we actually attend to ourself, we are attending to our relationship with God. We are aligning ourselves with him and creating an atmosphere of clarity, of peacefulness, of of safety, of security, of uh peacefulness, you know, that allows us to actually hear God and relate with him in the innermost dwelling place in our hearts and in our souls. And that, like when she said that, I was like, oh, yeah, that's what I was saying. She was like, oh, I think this is what you mean. And I was like, sure.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

That's exactly what I meant.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

I go, that's really beautiful the way that you phrased it, and it's so true, you know, that actually caring for ourselves is prioritizing our relationship with God.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

And I also think that just hearing it that way too, yes, there is an increase in the sense of responsibility in caring for something that is good, and sure, there may be some gravity there, but also there is like a calming down that comes with the idea of realizing you can't do everything for your kids. There is a real sense with certain parents that we work with who have this deep fear and idea that like, oh my gosh, if I don't get my kids on the perfect track, if I don't set them up, I mean a lot of times it's it's pretty, it's actually, it's very much this. Like, if they're not good Christians, that's on me. Well, they are their own selves. The responsibility, the stewardship, only goes so far. Aren't we fortunate that it's only ourselves that we get to or have to steward?

SPEAKER_00 32:31

But even there, you know, I think that that that there's something worth um inserting there is that, you know, there is a limit to our ability to actually steward our children's lives, because eventually they, you know, you know, we're forming them until they're able to do it on their own. And there is also a limit to our ability to steward ourselves too. There is a place where actually we cannot we cannot create something for ourselves, we cannot uh generate ourselves. Like that is something that only God can do. You know, there is even a point in our own self-stewardship that we actually have to surrender to like I need your help. Like, I need your grace. I cannot do this. And that that isn't giving up, you know, that isn't like caving, that isn't weakness, like that is actually true, like that sort of vulnerability and humility is actually true strength to know that I can't actually do it all on my own. And and I think that that's the difference between like again talking but going back to like resolutions versus this self-stewardship is like a resolution is trying to do it on your own, and self-stewardship actually paves the way to realizing you know, because you become so self-aware that you're like actually I can't do it on my own. Um, and I really, really need.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Yeah, I think that's really liberating. I I really do. And I think what I what I hear underneath the underneath the underneath is that you know, based on our Christian worldview and our faith, that's there's the good news that we actually can't do it on our own, but we've been given someone recently just came into the world who has taken that upon his own shoulders. We don't just need a savior, we have a savior. And it's not all on us. I think that's a real gift.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

This is the place where the experiment really comes in, you know, and I this is something else that has been really formative for both, I mean, for my spirituality, and I I don't want to speak for him, but I think for Adrian's too.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

No, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

But the the philosophy that Gisani has proposed, and um the the walk of faith, you know, that the movement that followed his philosophy is called communion and liberation. And a part of, you know, their approach toward toward people and toward you know living the faith and walking the faith is actually just this idea of like, which isn't so different from Christ, you know, it's just like come and see, you know, go, try it, see, verify, does this actually mean something in your life? Like it's not like blindly accepting the faith, but it's actually like, does this resonate? Does it do what it has proposed to do in your life?

SPEAKER_01 35:37

Yeah, and I'm I'm I'm already eagerly jumping in, talking over Shay, because I I just made me think of someone that I work with who has this, it's a really common question where people people want to do something good, people want to give back and then experience a sense of guilt of like, I feel good about it. Is that okay? Do I should I should I want validation? Well, if I wanted validation in doing this deed for someone, does that does that sort of denigrate it a little bit? Should it be completely selfless? What does it mean to be completely selfless? It gets overwhelming, but I think one of the gifts that we've gotten by by doing this work from this uh personalist personalist perspective from Jusani is this invitation to really look into things and validate. And to look at verify. Verify. There you go. First you gotta verify, then you can validate. Sorry. I meant to say, yeah, verify. Um, but to look and to verify.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Yeah, so I think when we're looking at like the experiment, the 2026 experiment of self-stewardship, which guys, I'm I'm not joking you. This is this is my work. I literally proposed this podcast episode to Adrian because I was like, I just want other people to join me in this because I need support. Um, so hey, email me if you wanna, if you want to join along, let's let's start a group, let's start a powwow, because I want to verify does this actually work? Is taking myself like prioritizing my self-stewardship and therefore, you know, my relationship with God, is that actually going to improve my life? You know, is that actually going to bleed out into my marriage first and foremost, and then my my motherhood and my friendships and my entrepreneurialship and my work ultimately. Like, if I completely flip my entire life on its head, I know that we were talking about how we shouldn't pressure ourselves to do that overnight just because it's January 1st all of a sudden. But I I don't want to approach this as like if I fail, then I have to give up, or you know, if I mess up or if I prioritize things wrong, then it's all over. Like I want to approach it like an experiment. And I want to recognize, hey, what is it that caused me to fail today? You know, what is it that caused me to put my my work ahead of, you know, me taking a walk or something? You know, like I want to get curious about myself and I want to get curious about does this actually work? When I take better care of myself, am I actually more patient? Do I show up with more freedom? You know, do my relationships feel less tense? Do I recover more quickly when things go poorly? Am I less resentful? I really want to figure these things out for myself. And I I want to invite all of you on this journey with me. I'm pulling Adrian into this, whether he likes it or not.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

Yeah, you know, like it or not, I'm along for the ride. But I I also have been along for the ride for a little bit. And I know we're saying, we're saying this like we're inviting you in, like we've never done this before. This has been a part of our lives in one way or another. And I can speak to my own personal experience a little bit. Um Shay and I do have go figure, different approaches to things, and um I've had the the great opportunity to be an only child, just kind of with myself more. Took a lot of time to figure out what I was into, what I wasn't into, um, and all that for better or for worse. But I certainly had struggled in the past about just this dynamic between, well, am I being selfish and pursuing certain things? Am I feeling a compulsion to do certain things? Um, as okay, let's be more specific. Fitness things. Um, I'm a big fan of bikes. I'm a big fan of getting out, as a friend of mine likes to say when he texts me. He says, uh, I wouldn't be surprised if you were knee-deep in a stream right now, but when you get a chance, text me back, give me a call.

unknown 40:12

Right?

SPEAKER_01 40:12

Those are all things that engaged in, but I've also wrestled with them. And even entering into our marriage, there was a time when uh maybe some of it served as a as an escape, but little by little in approaching these things with a sense of more of self-stewardship, and looking at what does this do for me? I realized there were some there were some places where I definitely was overdoing it. But it was also okay to realize that these things are good, that these things do something for me, um, particularly in my masculinity, that when I'm done, when I come back and I've sweated it out, or I've just, you know, I've gone and done battle with a fish and I've won, or heck, sometimes lost, I'm motivated. I'm energized. And then also had the curiosity of other times of thinking, well, when I went out and did these things and I came back just and something's off. Like, what happened there? And that that had I've learned over time to approach these things with a curiosity rather than this black and white. I need to do this, you know, dad needs his alone time. It's not quite that. Um, and I'm still learning. This is still nascent for me, so I get to be part of the challenge. I I want you guys to know is whatever Sheikh called the 2026 year of self-stewardship experiment. Oh, the 2026 self-stewardship experiment. There it is. Oh yeah. Um, I'm in it. I'm in it with you guys because there's still a whole lot to learn and a whole lot more for my own self-stewardship.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

Yeah, and I think I I'm so glad you went, you got kind of practical there of like what you know, what are these things? I think it's important for us to understand, like, hey, what are like we're talking about it, it's still kind of abstract. Like, what are the tangible things? Like, what does self-stewardship look like? And I and for me, you know, I can only talk for myself. And for you listeners out there, you know, do some reflection, you know, spend a couple days just saying, like, what do I already know that energizes me and helps me be more present? And how can I seek to introduce more of that into my life or get curious about if I if nothing comes to mind, like how can I start exploring with experimenting again, you know, with what does bring energy to my life. But for me personally, I know that for a long time in my life I was pretty avid journaler. It's important for me to get my thoughts out. There, I have so much more mental clarity afterwards and um practicing movement in a variety of ways and mindfulness. And in the last couple of years between moving and motherhood and starting a business and all of the things that are going on, like I have been so resistant to doing those things. I and I haven't even taken the time to slow down and be like, whoa, why? You know, what's going on? What's what's keeping me from that? But for me, you know, that's that's where I'm gonna start. It's not gonna be some grand big thing, but I'm gonna start by getting curious, you know, when I sit down and open my journal, what makes me say, like, well, maybe I'll just scroll for a little bit, you know, before I write, or maybe like what makes me say, like, oh, I should sweep the floor? What is keeping me from doing that? What am I afraid of finding, you know, when I put pen to paper and or slow down enough to move my body? You know, what what's happening there? And if I push, not not necessarily if I compassionately um engage with that part of myself and allow it to step aside so that I can engage with journaling or going for that walk or working out or you know, whatever it might be, does that improve my life? We also want to recognize, you know, as our focus again is family wounds and and how those wrapped are wrapped up a lot in resolutions and. And the pressure we put on ourselves and the fear of failing and disappointing, you know. Why might this experiment of self-stewardship benefit you more than resolutions, especially in regard to these sort of learned patterns? We're just coming out of a big holiday season between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and perhaps you're feeling a lot of different ways about, you know, if that went well or if it was the same old, same old, or if there was a massive rupture and you're recovering from that, you know, wherever you find yourself right now. The question we can ask ourselves now is like, how can we get ourselves in a position? How can we work to try to get ourselves in a position that next year looks a little differently? People find themselves surprised that when they interact with their family, when they interact with their parents or you know, whoever it is, whatever relationship it is, from a from a more grounded and confident place, that the interaction actually shifts. Thing things change. And it isn't because the people that they're interacting with change. It's because they themselves have changed. I mean, I know this has been true in my life.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

Yeah, definitely. And um, I've been looking for a place in which to insert this little story, and I'm I'm going to to deliver it as appropriately as possible. Um, I just keep thinking this moment where I I've just I worked with someone, this client of mine, of whom I am so insanely proud, saw some of this play out. It's a slow process and it's very relatable to myself as well. But having this person really struggle with this desire to just fix things, to be more present to family, to be more present to children, to get it right. And so my my client works so hard. Podcasts and books and looking for advice, researching and trying. And we talked a lot, and a lot of this whole this whole idea of self-stewardship, it went over his or her head. My being selfish. Are we just talking about me? This is stupid. This is self-indulgent. This can't be, this can't even be of God. I'm just, I'm just, it's just, I'm just focusing on me. But little by little, there were these moments gently encouraging this person to say, what if you spent, I'm serious, one minute every day of this week, one minute, okay. If you don't have it, you may not. 45 seconds. Just paying attention and asking the Lord to be with you in these moments that were difficult for you. Invite him in. Be curious and with humility. Just ask him to reveal something to you, to accompany you through this. I can't be there with you, but he can. And you know what? We just kept coming up against the wall over and over and over and over and over again. And then one day, my client said, Oh my gosh, it happened. I just realized something. Like I genuinely expect things to change for myself. I just expect the change to be instantaneous. I expect myself to get it right. I have such high demands of myself. That's not realistic. That happened for the first time in his or her life. We're not done. There's more work to be done. But how huge is that? That's possible. But that's not possible if you demand that of yourself. And so I'm just I'm just a bullion. I wish. I wish I could just call him or her out and be like, hey, I'm so proud of you. You're doing great work. I can't do that, I won't do that. But I am.

SPEAKER_00 47:56

Yeah, that's that's so beautiful. You know, I think that is to some, you know, listening, it might be like, that feels so small, but if you actually think about that and you embody that, like, that is a huge, huge belief shift. You know, that's a huge understanding of like self-awareness that like breaks through. Actually, it's okay. Actually, I'm okay. I can be patient with myself. You know, our hope, my hope, you know, for this year is is that to have this spirit of generosity and patience and and I would say curiosity, if I were to interject.

SPEAKER_01 48:37

I mean, honestly, an elevated true version of self-care. And that's self-stewardship. And you know, it's not about getting it perfect. If you try to get it perfect, you're gonna quit. Um, and if you get it perfect on the first try, that's amazing, and I'm so happy for you. That's so good. Um it can happen. The stars can't align. But for the 99.9% of us, for everyone else, didn't get so lucky if we can stay attentive long enough to ourselves to learn something true about ourselves and to become more fully who we are.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

Yeah, so our encouragement to you, this is what we'll be practicing, certainly, for the next couple of weeks, just just pause. Notice notice what activities drain you, notice what activities energize you and restore you. Pay attention to how you're speaking to yourself, you know, that that inner voice and what it's saying to you and even the tone of how it's speaking to you. Experiment with your sleep and the way that you pray. You know, if you have a prayer practice that just feels or that you feel like you should have, but you've not been able to to actually like keep up with, like, can we try something different? What if it doesn't have to look the way that you believe it's supposed to look? Experiment with being in silence. Experiment with the way that you're nourishing your body and just observe. Just observe what changes. And again, you know, why not speak to the part of you that might just cause you to go blank or numb out in the face of any of this, you know, and you're like, yes, this sounds like a great idea. And then we close this podcast off, and you're like, oh, never mind. Like I don't I don't even know where to start. Like, what am I supposed to do? I can't pay attention, you know. Like when you try to turn inward, and that part is just like maybe tomorrow. Uh want to normalize that. Want to let you know that you're not alone. I've been there a million times, and I'll be there a million times more. Do you expect that don't be hard on yourself when that happens or tell yourself, okay, well, it's just this must just not be for me. Even be curious about that part that's showing up that's wanting you to put this work off, or just to put that attentiveness to yourself off. There's a reason it's there, and it's likely because attentiveness to yourself has been something foreign. But that doesn't mean it has to be something you have to go another year without.

SPEAKER_01 51:16

I love it. Yeah. And I guess if we were to end it on a pithy quote, which we'll try to do. So you don't need a better version of yourself. You need a true relationship with who you already are. I love it. So, Shay, if we wanted to work on ourselves, become a more true version of who we already are, but want a little extra help, what else can we do?

SPEAKER_00 51:45

Well, as you might know or maybe not, if you're new to listening to us, we we do provide one-to-one mentorship to kind of help you through those sticky places. You know, if if you do find yourself keeping wanting to try to do this work, but also that part keeps coming in and numbing you out and pushing you towards distraction, chances are you need somebody else to help you experience that attentiveness. Again, you know, there is a limit to our ability to even steward our own lives. And we have to recognize our limits and recognize when we need somebody else. God doesn't just speak to you in prayer. He, you know, we just celebrated the incarnation. He became man so that you could experience him in real relationship with another human face. And so we can offer ourselves as that the other human face and help you through that step, help you give that, help you receive that relational experience of attentiveness and care that should have always been there, but for whatever reason, you didn't receive. That doesn't mean you don't still deserve it.

SPEAKER_01 52:58

Oh, Shay, that sounds so good. I'm gonna sign up. But what if I'm not ready, what if I'm not ready for that? But you know what? The holidays, they came, they went. It was pretty tough. Help me. Help me find a better way to deal with just the difficulty that I'm having with family and with my own self.

SPEAKER_00 53:26

Yeah, totally. We do, we are hosting a couple live masterclasses workshops throughout the next month to to help navigate some of those tougher relationship dynamics, especially within families. So please join us. We want to provide what we can. If if one-to-one mentorship isn't for you right now, you know, give yourself the opportunity to just receive some some support, receive some encouragement, receive a little bit of education in regard to what to do, how to navigate that, and to also hear a little bit more about some other ways that we can accompany you even outside of one-to-one mentorship. We will link in the in the show notes the description our website where you can you can go adrianandshay.com to look at our one-to-one mentorship offering. We will also link our uh the registration page for our webinar if you want to join us for that. And we look forward to hearing from you. And again, if you want some accompaniment in this 2026 self-stewardship experiment, please email us, reach out. We're doing it, I'm doing it. Would love to not be alone in it. So tell us how it's going for you.

SPEAKER_01 54:47

Guys, thank you for joining us. Thank you for considering joining our 2026 SSE. Until next time, God bless you. Look forward to being with you again as we continue to live the third way.