Journey To Inner Wisdom
August-Presence and Play
Presence & Play
It’s August 2025. Wow. Do you ever feel like the days just pass? Like your mind is a whirl of lists and events and outstanding items. Like your google calendar is full, your fridge calendar is out of date and no matter how many places you brain dump, the mental load never lessens?
Us too.
We have been playing with the idea of returning to play in our lives. Getting your hands dirty, your feet wet and really seeking the joy that every moment of our lives holds. The other day, I made a “folding-machine” for my daughter. (Picture a flat piece of cardboard, with 4 folds, to help fold her laundry) Riveting stuff, yet she had SO MUCH fun putting away her laundry that day. She said it made her feel like a professional. Kids are magic like that. They can find the joy in so many places we overlook it. This is largely due to their ability to be present. What they are doing, is what they are doing. It’s what they are thinking about, it’s where their mind stays, so each bit of joyful experience is available to them.
Can we, as adults with schedules, payments, commitments, responsibilities, etc, return to play and joy through presence? Can we bring our focus back into the now, really experiencing what life is offering to us? Appreciating who we spend our moments with, our own bodies and feeling into all that makes each moment come alive?
Join us as we journey through finding presence through play this month. We will dive into tangible strategies for lessening the mental load, organizing a household, working in community with others, and much more. We will also guide ourselves back to play in our monthly connection call and work on releasing guild or judgement around resting, letting go and letting the silly take over.
Let’s get started: If you are joining us in a week on our connection call, start by working through these prompts, through journaling, audio notes, coloring or other art, or whatever works for you:
How would you choose to feel more often in your daily life?
What is something you really enjoy doing, just for the sake of doing it?
Ready to join us at a monthly connection??
Miss it this month?
That's ok, we recorded part of it for you to check out below!
Presence & Play - Our Monthly Chat
BONUS!
Practical Tools for Enabling Presence
Wow. What a beautiful month it has been so far. Thank you to all Souls that joined either of our live connection calls. It is an honor to sit in connection with you and share the wisdom that each Soul brings.
We believe in presence. We are also both working mamas of three who manage all sorts of schedules (and dogs) and we know how it feels to have a living mind map for a brain, ALWAYS. We are here to share strategies and practical routines and practices that you can integrate into your life to enable more presence as you move through your days.
Meals.
I don’t know about you, but my brain short circuits if I don’t know what my family is eating. Maybe it’s because it often feels impossible to satisfy four different palates with food that is nourishing, or maybe it’s because dinner comes too close to the end of the day for me to feel like I have ANY decision making ability left.
Either way, meal planning is my life saver. Strategic meal planning though. Extra bonus if this involves some meal prep in advance as well.
So I have a dry erase board, with breakfast, lunch and dinner planned for the week. For me, I keep breakfasts on the same rotation and lunches as well, so dinners are the only thing I really have to fill in week to week.
Dinner is the trickiest because I also have to make sure that the meal I have planned in advance actually fits the schedule of that day. Read: I don’t give myself a multi-step meal on the day we have football practice at 5:30pm. It’s just not going to happen.
Days with an activity (which can sometimes be every dang weeknight) call for meals that are ready swiftly. This is where that prep can come in . Steph and I do this a bit different. She has often planned time into her schedule to batch cook and freeze meals to have ready. I tend to double (or triple) meals while I make them another night of the week and freeze a portion for the following week. Whatever works for you.
Things like chili, soup, pulled pork, taco meat, pasta sauces are all great in the freezer. A lot of things freeze well (rice, veggies, breads, pasta etc.) to add to those listed above and having them quick and easy is a life saver on busy nights.
Having meals off of your mind is a huge game-changer for opening up space for presence.
Delegation.
This is a big one and the better you can get at it, the better it is.
For me, I have to think of it as something I am doing for my kids. Do I want them to live a life of perpetual exhaustion or borderline burn out because everything is their responsibility? NO! So I had darn well better make sure I show them, by example, how to share a load, contribute to a household and ask for help when more is needed. For my kids, I use a chore system. I don’t call them chores, but there is a list on our fridge of jobs that they are responsible for, no question. We call it a “get to do” list.
Under the things they are non-negotiabley responsible for, there is a list of household tasks that anyone can do and what it is worth. I assign tasks a dollar value (literally $1-3, but you can do stickers or treats or whatever incentive resonates with your household) This gets the kids motivated to ask for things to do and takes so much off my plate. And usually costs me about $30 a month. Well worth the expense.
Steph’s approach is a little different. Her kids each have a set list of responsibilities, and there’s an ongoing conversation in the house about how the family is a team — and teams work together toward a shared goal, in this case creating a happy, healthy home. When something needs doing, Steph or her partner will ask the kids to pitch in, sometimes with a gentle reminder that mom and dad have the privilege of working to bring money into the home, which takes a lot of time and energy, so the kids are expected to handle the tasks they’re capable of. Steph’s girls even run their own business, so they’re a little less motivated by chore money — which makes things extra interesting!
Notice and do.
Oh boy this is a big one for me in this season. I came across this concept on instagram, and I’ll share the account to our stories for you to follow if this resonates.
The concept is simple: notice and do. Notice needs around the house and do what needs doing now, rather than putting it off for later. For EVERY household member. Moms and parents are not the only ones noticing things around the house that need tidying or care of attention. Yet often it is only parents who do anything about it.
So many tasks take far less time than our brains tell us. So exemplifying noticing something and taking 5 minutes to do it right then is so powerful for our kids. When they comment on something or notice something, rather than doing it for them, empower them to see how long it takes them to do something about it themselves, right then.
Side note from Steph - If it takes more time to go write it down to do later.... just do it now!
Leads nicely into my next one:
Time audit.
Oh man this one offended me greatly when it was first suggested to me. “How dare anyone look at a person with as much going on as ME and imply that I’m probably not as busy as I think I am?” Wow.
However, for EVERYONE I have suggested this to, they discover it’s true. A time audit means for a FULL day, or even better, a full week, literally time how long your activities/tasks/responsibilities take you, only measuring active time. The moment you lose focus and check messages or zone out or anything like that, the clock stops.
At the end of the day or week, you may be surprised to find out how much time time you are spending distracted and ineffective. And you can fit so many fulfilling things into that time. Like true rest! Not arbitrary spots of rest that come while your mind is still full to the brim.
You track everything, including eating time and washroom breaks, cause lord knows those things can be far too long or far too short.
Lets' talk tabs for a minute.
Computer tabs on your many windows. I am notorious for keep multiple tabs open, and this goes for on the phone as well. Things I want to remember to come back to later, things that consistently linger at the top of my screen or appear when I start a new task on my phone and fill my mind with all the things I am NOT doing,
Tabs, just from a technical perspective, take up data or RAM or something that actively slows down the processing of your computer or phone when you have 10+ open always. Shut the tabs. Make a list in a notes app, but shut the tabs. It is very easy to navigate back to whatever you need to find.
Steph's tip's:
Have a note pad on your phone where you can write down the important tabs instead of keeping a million open. I legit only ever have 1 or 2 on my phone since doing this!
Also... create folders on your computer to put all your random stuff in so your screen isn't also full of a million little icons. This trick is from Allie Casazza... she labels them "work sh*t", "house sh*t" etc. funny and effective! rem
This goes for our minds too. Which brings me to a little concept that Steph learned from Allie Casazza - Close the Loop.
It’s the simple but powerful practice of finishing one thing before starting the next. That might look like putting away the clean dishes before you start cooking, sending that email before you open a new browser tab, or jotting down the last few lines of your journal entry before you scroll through your phone.
When we don’t close loops, our brain keeps them open in the background, which means we’re carrying mental “tabs” everywhere we go. Over time, that creates mental clutter and makes it harder to be fully present. Closing the loop clears that mental space so you can show up for the next thing with more focus, energy, and peace.
Brain dumps and prioritizing.
Maybe, like me, you are one of those people that gets sucker punched at the end of the day with your brain all of a sudden remembering a whole bunch of items that either need doing or that you intended to do today. I got tired of this, plus it lead into me going to bed feeling like I was some type of failure, remembering all I forgot.
Now, around 9:30pm I sit with a dry erase board. This board has two purposes: it has an always updating list of tasks to do. I write them on there as they hit my brain throughout the day. When I sit at 9:30, I write the following day at the top, then write down the 2-4 things that are priorities for me to do that day. That’s where I start and ensures that I know what I need to do. This process also allows me to lay my head down at night and tell myself the 2-4 things I completed that were on my list and also remember the 100 other tasks I did actually do throughout that day. That failure feeling disappears and I go to bed proud and feeling accomplished.
Such a different vibe.
We are all different Beings and no strategy is one size fits all.
Use this as a guide, a starting point. Identify what area of disorganization is causing the most stress and unrest or negativity in your life and start there.
Try something different.
I also recommend only trying one at a time. Attempting to kickstart a whole new life with many different habit changes is not sustainable for most of us. The idea is to reinforce your capabilities and your belief in yourself. So pick one. Tweak it so it suits your needs, lifestyle and personality. Then commit to it for 2 weeks. When you make 2 weeks, celebrate it! You have done something awesome and you stuck with it. Then commit to another 2 weeks.
After 4 successful weeks, add in another something new and commit to 2 weeks. Don’t forget the first habit, you’re just also adding something new.
You can do it.
And don’t forget that we are here for you.
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Come along anyway we’re figuring it out together.
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