Episode 48: The Structure Spectrum- From Chaos to Control

I wanted to share a little glimpse into our morning this morning .

It might sound familiar in some parts , some of it's unique to diabetes , but I think well , I just had my last episode about diabetes and kind of hit home the point that we all have things that are unique to our family , that , whether they're medical or emotional or just situational , I think maybe leave ours as diabetes , but leave it fill in the blank for what

you could relate to this in your own life . But yeah , so it might sound familiar because you might have actually felt overwhelmed as well by some curveball that life threw at you . As you guys know that my daughter has diabetes , which means that our life requires a lot of regular maintenance and planning for that maintenance .

And this morning it was a tough reminder of what happens when I am not on top of our schedule . I missed some crucial diabetes maintenance . How about this . I missed realizing that , like the runway before it became urgent to stop everything was , I missed that runway .

So then it just turned into an urgent situation of having to pause all of our morning routines to change our insulin pump , to charge a couple things that I won't get into the details of . But it became urgent because I missed the runway and it made everything else come to a screeching halt . This morning and gosh , there was such a ripple effect .

All three of my kids ended up getting to school late and our morning was filled with a lot of high emotions and tears . And then I was late for my coaching meeting that I had after it and the lady was so gracious and kind .

But here's the thing I have learned to grow through those moments , because maybe , like a year or two ago , I really would have gotten stuck in shame that it was happening , but shame would have wasted my energy that I want to give to my kids having their emotions .

I feel like sometimes getting stuck in shame is like putting a hole in your emotional energy bucket . So I actually want to keep that energy to give out to my kids rather than letting shame steal it , you know .

So instead I was like I'm going to be curious and I was reflecting on the drive back , after I dropped off the children and no one's crying and I walked people to rooms and I talked to the front desk and got an excuse for medical . All those things happened which I knew , which helped shame not take over .

But on the way home I realized that how much of that chaos could have been avoided if I had actually planned better and stuck to my plan .

And I realized that when I don't prioritize my time management , I have strategic daily rhythms that I have built because of learning from situations like this in the past that when I miss it and I don't prioritize it , there's a very , very real emotional cost for my whole family .

The good news is that I have actually built this muscle of planning from my journey with habits . It's been slow over years . Some of you listening might be more like naturally good at this . I'm not a type A personality , so this has been like a slow growth for me .

It's been like years of , like you know , doing two pound weights where maybe people can do 10 pound who are type A off the bat . I had to do two pound forever before I built to like five before I've built to 10 . Now maybe I'm doing 20 , whatever the metaphor , I had to do two pound forever before I built to like five before I've built to 10 .

Now maybe I'm doing 20 , whatever the metaphor you want to do .

But it was a real slow process for me , like turning a battleship , but the habits and rhythms that I've built that have worked for me , that are just , I think because I'm not type A , it's more unique to be simpler and not as rigid or intense , and then also like life focus , I found a lot more time management resources were kind of more professional business

ended versus like I think family life needs a way softer container for that . So anyways , I took like the , the habit , the habits of time management and that I've developed over the first , the last couple of years , and that's actually what a lot of my mini course that I've just I've been talking a lot about .

It's out now the link's in the show note If you're listening to it . Before November 6th I'm offering a bonus group coaching call if you buy it , because I want to actually help guide people through it .

I love courses but I've noticed that people can buy them and not use them , so trying to help solve that point , I decided to do a group coaching session to answer people's questions , to give them a little more insight , to point them in the right direction and then have some accountability to actually do the course and buy it .

So , anyways , I just realized how important these time management tools and habits are for me . So I made the course around it because I wanted to share what I've learned . And I would say it's like a simple course , like if you were an expert time management and you have this dialed in , this probably isn't for you .

But if you're someone who's like maybe had it in seasons past but kind of feel I think of it like your rhythms feel wobbly . So I always said that I was a hot mess . So if you're in that category , awesome , this would be helpful .

But if you're just kind of in like how did it pass , something happened and everything feels wobbly , I think this course would actually be really helpful . It's simple but they're powerful strategies that help us me doing the habits help us as a family , avoid the unnecessary chaos .

And I was just thinking of this morning being such a great picture , because even I think the reality of chaos is actually it costs . There's a relational cost . So my relationship with structure was that I valued relationship . So how I saw it modeled growing up .

Actually , this is fresh on top of my mind because my Habit Mastery course this week , one of the exercises as I lead people through like a little sozo around structure , because usually there's like a spectrum that people are on . If you think about a spectrum there's an extreme on both ends . So I leaned on the extreme .

I'm going to oversimplify it just to get the mental picture for you and this spectrum and your relationship with structure . There are people who worship it and I think that's , like you know , 10 on one end . The worship's an extreme .

Obviously , I think the people who are on that end of the spectrum have found , you know , like almost have been able to manufacture , the reason they love it so much and cling to it so strongly is they can manufacture their own sense of safety through controlling that structure gives them Okay . So that's one end of the extreme .

And then the other end of the extreme was my end , where we avoid it at all costs . So that comes from .

That is chaos and whatever reason you're at that end or either end like there can be a lot of reasons people are on , wherever they're at on the spectrum and remember so worship it , be one extreme and avoid it being the other extreme there are going to be . Most people are going to fall somewhere in the middle .

You are not at the extreme but I would say , like the leaning towards , I really , really like structure and it's my tendency . You'd be more towards the worship it side or the no structure , or I just can't figure it out or find it that you'd be more on my end of the avoided at all cost .

But I think the reality for me is one of the reasons in this little sozo around structure , which is sorry I should explain . In my church we say sozo but it just means kind of like doing some heart work , emotional healing around some of your thoughts about a topic so specifically around structure it's . The reality is that most of us don't have a textbook .

We could give you a textbook answer of what structure is meant , but we have our own in our own life , experience and relationship or structure .

We've actually have our own definitions and that has come from some learning , like most of us saw it modeled some way , or we had an experience or we learned to use it this way as a reaction to whatever we experienced growing up or in high school or middle school .

So recognizing , like how maybe skewed our perception is , and then like bringing it back to like , oh God , like what is heaven's intent with structure , like what's the Lord's perspective , like a healthy , beautiful , like how , what was the gift structure was meant to be with , to be to us , and it's cool , cause , like that would be the middle , that would be the

perfect , you know , center of that spectrum that I'm talking about , that we'd aim for , center of that spectrum that I'm talking about , that we'd aim for .

And so what I'm going to say is , on my end of the spectrum , one of the reasons I realized in doing this heart work I had avoided habits and structure for so long was because I saw it modeled and again saw it modeled , and then also my little girl learning like I watched people and then decided at eight or six that this is what it meant .

So it's not necessarily accurate , it's just my experience , my perception .

I saw that people who use structure it was rigid , it was a form of control , it was trying to get me to do what they wanted , and that they valued their structure , like what I saw is highly structured people valued that over me , over relationship , and I then made it this such black and white , like um paradigm in my brain where you either chose relationship

or you chose structure . That could not coexist . So that's kind of where I why I ended up like never , purposely trying to be a hot mess . But on the avoid side of structure is because I was like , oh , I am so relationally oriented that if I have to choose , I'm going to choose relationship all day .

But the reality was , I feel the Holy Spirit , just as I've done the work and sat with God about looking at my big picture relationship with structure .

I'm like the reality is living in chaos and not being planned means that I'm often in survival mode and I'm often reacting to life , which that actually has a huge effect on relationship , because I'll avoid it Whatever the routine structure is , you know , like this morning's example with Audrey's diabetes .

Okay , for the record , I did not avoid that this is talking about old Jenna , but until you can't avoid it . So my examples would be like three weeks worth of dishes or no one can sit on our couch because it's become a laundry couch . It's the real estate for where all our clean clothes live .

That would be like my old self in the avoiding it until , oh , we don't have any more clothes . Now we have to actually do the laundry . I'm sorry that my kids want to play . I'd rather watch that movie .

We got an invite to dinner but because I've avoided structure and the ease that maintenance is , I now have to pause and it is costing my relationship something . I'm totally talking with my hands right now . It makes me laugh when I do that , because you cannot see me , you can only

hear me , anyways . So the reality is like oh , I had underestimated the cost of living at that extreme of no structure , of the chaos , the cost of chaos on my relationship . So now I found this beautiful . I would not say I'm perfectly healthy .

I'm still on a journey of coming out of structure avoidance , but for me , I think , wherever you're out on the spectrum , I'd like you to think where did you learn that ? What was your perception ? Where did you see it modeled ? That caused that end . I actually want to have one of the girls who was on the call . She had a beautiful .

She's more on the worship end of the spectrum and when I was talking about why she got on that end or how people could end up . I wasn't speaking directly to her . She was saying she realized that Early on , in a very chaotic childhood , she learned she could manufacture her own safety and comfort with structure .

So then it became her favorite tool because it was the way she could keep herself safe in a really not safe home environment and I felt so much empathy . So I think the reality is either extremes there's a ton of empathy because there were strategies that we developed based on what we saw and they helped us for a season .

But I think you have to kind of time like seasonally , oh I feel the Holy Spirit , and in different life , like chapters in your life reassess , oh , is that definition serving me or is it actually costing me more than I'm realizing ? Am I not actually counting the cost of my current , slightly skewed perspective relationship with structure ?

So just if you're listening , super simple , like Lord , what is your definition ? What is heaven's perspective of structure ? How is it meant to support life ? And I love the analogy I go back to is like how much structure is found in nature ? But it's so flexible and it's bendable and it actually supports and promotes life , which I had never seen .

So that was kind of where my definition was missing was that it was not this rigid form like how crops grow and babies form and the weather changes . It does happen on a calendar year for thousands of years , but it is not as rigid as October 1st .

It will change to 70 degrees and it'll decrease by two degrees every day until we hit November 1st and then that's when we get rain , two inches a day . That level of structure would be on the worship control side . It's not how the Lord we can see it modeled around us side . It's not how the Lord we can see it modeled around us .

So , anyways , just encourage you to spend a little time , if this resonated , to just self-reflect on that spectrum of structure . Where do you land ? How'd you get there ? What part of your definition is feeling-based versus maybe logic-based ? How did you see it modeled ? And then ask the Lord like what's the right perspective of structure ?

And then I always walk away with a little aspiration , something I explain more in my masterclass , but for the point of this podcast it just means like a hope statement . And then I use something that psychologists call a bridge statement , which means I'm in process . But this can be true now .

So I would say like , for instance , my little aspiration around my hope statement , around my relationship with structure is I'm on a journey to discover the gift that structure was intended to be to my life . So I'm like , oh , gifts are good . I think about scripture where he's like what good dad gives his son a rock when he's hungry ?

I'm like , okay , my perception is that structure is a rock . But I think I have the wrong perception , because you wouldn't give me a rock when I said I'm hungry , you would give me food . So for you , just go on a journey , see where you're at .

And if you want some help in realigning your habits to not feel chaotic or not feel over controlled , I would say for sure , grab my mini course , that Habit Reboot . It's pretty reasonably priced , it won't take you a ton of time . The goal is just to , like a lot of us , you don't have to reinvent the wheel .

You can go , look at what has worked in past seasons , modify it for the factors and schedule of this current season so that you build something that works now . You don't need a whole new life . You can actually just revive some of your routines that have worked for you in past seasons .

So if you are feeling tired , feeling like you're putting out fires all the time and want more peace and want more predictability and more rhythms in your day .

You should totally grab my little mini course and I think you could reclaim some of your time and build habits that support kind of the pace and emotional energy that you want in your house , in your home , versus reacting to what happens , like I had to do this morning . Anyways , yeah , so I hope you have .

I'll put in the show notes , I'll ask , I'll put those questions that I was posing to you about your relationship with structure , um , and so that you can think about them or journal them . Just Chat chew on them with jesus is what I think of it . I'm like I'm just gonna put this in the crock pot marinade . It'll be ready in 97 hours .

It'll be real tender for me to think about . Okay , you guys , I hope you have a great week . Bye .