Meet Katie
I am the founder and creator of a podcast, really a micro podcast, two-ish minutes a day called Everyday Happiness, finding Harmony and Bliss, and I create all kinds of fun things.
But before I got into happiness and just trying to find the clarity in life, I, was an attorney practicing law in Washington DC for a number of years.
And then before that I was just a small-town girl. I grew up in a town of 2006 people in the middle of a cornfield in Minnesota. Followed my dreams to be a lawyer, met a boy, ended up in Washington, DC and now I have two kids and we live right outside of Washington DC.
What do you do when you are stuck on the hamster wheel as a mom?
Have you ever felt like you have 272 things to do on your to-do list and you get 270 of them done, but you beat yourself up for the two that you didn’t?
I was just running on this hamster wheel and there’s all these analogies, right about walking the tight rope, spinning all the plates, juggling all the balls, and being on the hamster wheel, right?
It had been how I was living.
The Creation of Intentional Margins
What were we trying to do?
What was important?
Why were we on this, path we call life?
When you look back and you’re like, if I’m sitting on the rocking chair and I’m an old lady, what do I care about?
What am I going to be most proud of?
When you open a book and it’s fully justified you know exactly what you’re going to get.
If you think your to-do list are all the words,
and the margin of that book is your intentional margin.
- It’s the best part of life.
- It’s the best part of your day.
- It’s the juiciest, most exciting things, the things that you really care about.
How do we make sure that our to-do list doesn’t go into that margin?
When we flip the page in the book, we know what to expect.
It’s still fully justified, right?
But what happens when one line goes out into the margin, or three lines or every paragraph is justified differently?
It starts to feel, random.
And randomness causes overwhelm.
And that’s what I was feeling and I just wanted to create a structure that was flexible, but allowed me to just know that there were margins that I could identify, margins where I could live in my fullest, most abundant.
Finding Harmony is possible!
How do we find harmony between our to-dos and our priorities? It’s the yin and the yang. When they’re together, they’re in complete harmony and balance. But when you pull them apart, they’re completely out of balance.
They would not stand up on their own right yin yang.
So how do we find that harmony? I was just searching so desperately for clarity around harmony and intentional margins came to be.
IMPACT METHOD
IM – Intentional Margins
The I and the M in the word impact is for intentional margins.
And it’s asking ourselves,
What is our North star?
What matters most right now?
I can be busy and be balanced if I’m doing the things in the right order, in the right amount of time in this season, right?
We get to pivot. We get to have seasons.
So how do we show up for ourselves? What does that look like?
P – Priorities
And then next is the P for priority,
It’s this idea that we get to identify our priorities and we get to live our life on purpose!
It’s so exciting because then it’s
what matters most to you.
That’s really what we’re asking ourselves.
What do we care about?
What’s lighting our hair on fire?
If I were to say a priority for me is my marriage, how do I prioritize my marriage?
A = Action
then I go to the A step, which is action.
There are a million ways to do anything.
Decide what actionable step will work for you in this season, right now, to get you to your goal, to your priority?
If my priority is my marriage and I’m thinking about I could do a lot of different things, right?
- I could do a weekend away every quarter.
- I could do date night on Thursday nights.
- I could, prioritize coffee at 9:00 AM after the kids get off to school.
It could be anything.
You get to decide what that works for you.
C = Calendar
What gets calendared gets done!
We have to solidify our willingness to prioritize what’s important.
Where am I going to make time in my calendar to prioritize the action?
Is it Thursday night, date night? Is it on my calendar.
T = Timely Evaluation
The very last step.
Timely evaluation of the priority, the action, and the calendar.’
Are we matching and reaching our intended priority, or do we need to pivot or recalibrate?
Is this working?
Did I pick the correct action to fulfill my intended priority?
Was date night the thing that actually helped me achieve a stronger, deeper connection with me and with my spouse because marriage was my priority?
So what if date night wasn’t it?
Maybe it really is just 10 minutes of coffee chat with my husband connection three times a week.
Maybe it’s a weekend away, once a quarter, whatever it is.
If we don’t ask ourselves if what we’re doing is working, how do we know?
So we have to ask, is this working?
Here is a powerful question!
How do the people I love, feel loved by me?
How do my kids feel loved by me?
By asking these questions she was able to discover that her kids found family dinners stressful, but really appreciated family breakfast time. It set them up for a successful day.
How to connect with Katie!
Instagram – @EverydayHappinesswithKatie
Website is katiejefcoat.com and that has all of the things!
PDF she mentioned and other wonderful resources.
Her Podcast, which is short and sweet, is called Everyday Happiness, finding Harmony and Bliss