Ever feel like a failure? It’s not your fault. As so often happens, society has taken something empowering and turned it into something toxic.
Life often feels really heavy and like we have to do too much or risk not being enough. Over the years, the positive belief that “you can do anything you set your mind to” has morphed into the burden of “you HAVE to do everything or risk personal failure.” This belief can lead to lower self-esteem, anxiety, depression and burnout.
In the episode of Unboxing It, we talk about division of labour, how women are still responsible for most of the domestic labour (ugh), how men are also being pushed to always do more - and there’s a little bit about Indian food in there too for good measure.
Links and resources related to this episode:
Research article : Couples’ Perceptions of the Division of Household and Child Care Tasks: Are there Differences between Sociodemographic Groups?
Episode 10: Education doesn’t always have to look the same
Meet the Tiffin Lady
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Want more of Lara and Rowan?
Rowan is available for speaking engagements, and Lara has coaching spots available.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Lara: Doing everything is exhausting, doing everything when you said burnout before, because stopped taking care of ourselves. We're just taking care of everything else and everyone else, and that's not really a happy life for most people. Hey, welcome to another episode of Unboxing It. I am Rowan.
And I'm Lara.
[00:00:43] Rowan: And we have got a really interesting topic, I think today. This, came off the wall in your office, right, Lara?
[00:00:53] Lara: That's right. I've got a big list of topics that we've been collecting so that we can keep, having these weekly conversations that everybody gets to listen to.
[00:01:02] Rowan: Yeah, my problem is that I will come up with one and if I don't text you about it right away, I forget about it, I completely just goes in one side of my brain and like out the other side of my brain. Is that, is that a thing? I think that's must be in one ear and out the other, but you know what I mean?
[00:01:17] Lara: It works all the ways.
[00:01:18] Rowan: So our topic this time is. When do we go from, you can do anything. You can be anything that you want to be. You can do anything you want to do to, you have to do everything and you have to be good at it.
[00:01:39] Lara: And. You can do anything was new. I think when we were kids, like that wasn't a thing.
Our parents and the generations before were even told you can do anything. They're like you, need to get a job and support your family and. Stop dreaming. Big life isn't like that. And then we started telling people they could do whatever they wanted, which I think in some ways was great. But also in some ways has led us down this path that we're gonna talk about with the need to do everything.
[00:02:10] Rowan: Yeah, I think back in the day I love saying back in the day, and every time I say back in the day, I'm older than the last time I said it, which makes me so happy. we're Gen X. So like, you know, back in the, boomer years or back further, you know, you had people who were told, yeah, your purpose is you are going to grow up and you're going to help on the farm, and then you're going to take over that farm, for example.
That was the case. In agriculture for a really long time. The expectation was you would probably do what your parents do, and in other situations it was you're going to do what your family expects of you. So it would be, you know, you're gonna go become a doctor, you're gonna go be a teacher, and then women were further limited.
You're going to stay home and raise children, or you're going to get very limited schooling. And so this is why things really started to change over time when feminism became more prominent. Women especially we're then told You can be anything you want to be, but. I think the problem has been you can be anything you want to be, but you still have to be all those other things too.
[00:03:19] Lara: Yeah. So now we opened up. Beyond teacher, nurse, and secretary.
[00:03:26] Rowan: Yes. Teacher, nurse, secretary, mother is what women were allowed to do.
[00:03:30] Lara: Yeah,
[00:03:30] Rowan: that was pretty much it. Oh, phone operator sometimes that sort of secretary
[00:03:34] Lara: There you go, phone operator.
[00:03:35] Rowan: Yeah.
[00:03:35] Lara: And so now you can be anything you wanna be, and if you think back to the way things used to be, but this is even before we experienced, I think it's like the men.
Went to work. You wanna be a company man, right? Like the goal is to work somewhere till you get your gold watch. 'cause you spent 30, 40, 50 years working there and then you retire. And , the men, theoretically didn't need to worry much about how the home ran. And then women started.
Going out and doing more things and getting more degrees and having the same kinds of jobs as men, and then who is gonna take care of the home and the kids, and the cleaning and the extracurriculars and all
the things.
[00:04:22] Rowan: Yeah. And I think. the answer to that is still women for a large part of society on top of having a job.
But I have seen that in the younger and younger generations, younger millennials and that sort of thing. We'll find some studies and put them in the show notes, but you are seeing more of a division of labor, but that's very new because in our lives, and I will say this as a trans man who's transitioned later in life.
So I did live that life of a woman with children for years and years. I had to have a job. And I also, not that my partner wasn't supportive or not that, you know, she didn't help out kind of help that she was a she, I think, but not that she didn't help out, but , because I worked from home, also did a ton of other stuff in the home, right?
I did a lot of cooking, I did a lot of cleaning and. In an ideal situation, I think you would either divvy up that labor as perfectly as you can, or. You would hire out to do some of that stuff because you're busy and your time is valuable. So when you are not working, you want to be spending time with your kids or you wanna be, if you don't have kids, and even if you do have kids, you want to be doing some extracurricular activities to make you happy.
You want to be maybe making art or watching movies or going out or whatever. But when you are working a full-time job. Then working other jobs on top of it, like childcare, like cleaning and cooking and shopping and everything else you have to do. And that growing list of things that keep stacking up because you're too busy to get them done.
That is very overwhelming and can lead to things like burnout.
[00:06:13] Lara: Yeah, because even when it was more divided and women were taking care of more things while they were at home. If we also look back historically at what it was that they were doing, like we have a lot of stories about, you know, they kicked their kids out in the morning and said, don't come back.
Still nighttime, like it's not like they were as hands-on as we're now expected to be. So on top of the fact that we're taking on all these other roles, the societal expectation of how involved you are with your children and how much you need to do to make sure that they're well rounded human beings and how many activities they need to be in.
And then you need to do attachment parenting. And you need to, you need to, you need to, you need to. the expectations of what parenting looks like has increased, so we've just increased the need to do more in every part of your life without like, where's this extra time and capacity supposed to come from?
[00:07:14] Rowan: And this is not just limited to women. Now that I've transitioned the social media algorithms have recognized that I am a man. So they are just pumping me full. Of male influencer content, which I have a really hard time watching most of it, but curiosity gets the better of me sometimes, and I will watch some of it just to see what it's all about.
It is just as toxic on the other side, if not more sometimes, and one of the things that I have found is ridiculous. So rather than putting. Emphasis on, you also have to be a great parent. For example, you also have to make sure that you cook nice meals. No, no, no, no. For men, it's more you gotta get up early.
It's rise and grind time, brother. Right? So it's like you gotta get up, you have to work out right away. You have to eat really, really clean. You have to have a really chiseled body. Take all these supplements, you know, you're lifting weights and you're running pretty much every day.
and that is all before work. You know, you gotta meditate. You gotta do your stoicism. That's a really big thing with the younger guys right now, is this whole stoicism philosophy that's really made a comeback recently. but not necessarily the good parts of stoicism. 'cause I'm not, not opposed,
[00:08:37] Lara: Tell me more. What do you mean? I'm not on guy TikTok.
[00:08:42] Rowan: So stoicism it's, you know, you've heard the term being stoic.
[00:08:45] Lara: Yeah.
[00:08:46] Rowan: Right. So, Stoicism is a really, really old philosophy. There's a lot of really old philosophers, people you would know who, you know, back in, ancient Greece time, ancient, , Roman times, where, they talked a lot about.
Being more logical, taking your emotions out of things, thinking logically and so there's nothing wrong with that as long as it does help to remove some emotion from a situation so that you can look at it logically, but it is being taken. To this extent of, well, like a lot of things, , this, toxicity where you shouldn't have any feelings in anything. You should be really, really strong all the time. And so it's perpetuating this, toxic masculinity that we're seeing where men should not have feelings. Men need to be the providers, men need to earn lots of money. And so this is what's coming, you know, it's no longer good enough.
To have a job that pays you an okay amount. Have a partner that you're happy with, that you get along with well, who you love, , you know, maybe have children if that's what you want, and, to take care of yourself in ways that work for you. No, no, no. Now. You have to be an alpha male in charge of everything, master of your house.
And I'm using that term deliberately because that is a term that often comes up very dominant, very,very in charge. And everyone in your house listens to you. it's a really gross. View , on masculinity that is resurging. So it is taking that idea that you have to be everything rather than be what works for you and accept that you can't do everything or be everything or be super fit or you know, whatever it might be.
[00:10:31] Lara: Yeah, I'm sure. I was just thinking if people could see my face as you're describing this, like it is very much like, ugh agh
[00:10:39] Rowan: Yeah, it's gross. It is really gross. Like just coming from the other side of things too, and looking in, I can understand why men are feeling so much pressure right now. And I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, because you're also not allowed to show your feelings at the same time.
You can't be emotional 'cause that's weak. You can't cry. It's like we're going back to, you can't cry because it's weak, and I am happy to have people call me on this and say, that's not entirely what it's about. Like please feel free to get in touch and let us know what you think of all of this stuff because I am very new to it.
But from the experience of somebody who has lived. As a woman, and I have a lot of women friends still. I have some male friends as well. It screams run away. This is really bad. It just doesn't feel right at all.
[00:11:32] Lara: So, I mean, basically what we're saying is every single human being is being set up for failure and.
Having to do more than we should have the capacity to do and to always feel like we're not enough and we have to work harder and harder and do more and more and more. And that sucks.
[00:11:52] Rowan: Yeah, that's what we're saying. I am noticing it I keep wondering like what started it? And I have some theories. I mean, for one, number one, capitalism, right?
The more you can make people feel bad about themselves, the more that you can sell them things that you can promise will make them feel better. I think that is at the heart of a lot of these things. If you are, I'm gonna go back to the, Alpha man who is trying to get up at three 30 in the morning and get himself ready for life.
If you can't sustain getting up at three thirty when you're going to bed at 11 o'clock, 'cause you're working a job and a half and you have a life outside of that. Eventually you're gonna be looking for shortcuts, and what is one of the things that an influencer can sell you? Well, they can sell you maybe a very quick breakfast, a powdered breakfast or something that you can throw in, make a smoothie or whatever, and it takes you no time at all, and that means you have half an hour that you can sleep longer.
That's just one example of a lot of the ways that I think capitalism plays into this, but I think the other thing that started happening. Is we go back to school and we have done, an entire education episode that I think people should listen to. It's really a good episode that talks a lot about the faults in more conventional schooling in Western culture.
But this one thing has always gotten to me and it is that, you know, a child goes to school and they come home with a report card. Their parents look over their report card and there are some things a child does well in and some things that the child does not do well in. That's normal. we're all like that.
We all have strengths and we all have, I don't wanna call 'em weaknesses, but things we're not quite as strong at, perhaps.
And yet in the school system. , you know, the parents will now go in, and talk to the teacher. Maybe the teacher requests, a meeting or something and it's like, well let's talk about Jacob's poor math marks.
Like he's really struggling in math. He only has, a 62 in math, which is still a pass, for example, but it's on the lower end. how do we get that grade up? you know, oh, Susan's not very good in gym. Well, how do we get her to be more athletic?
And we are already setting the bar to be really high for our children to excel at everything right from the start. So how does that not then become, I have to do everything later?
[00:14:27] Lara: I have to do everything and I have to be really, really good at everything.
[00:14:31] Rowan: Yeah.
[00:14:32] Lara: Because there's a difference, right?
Like there's some things that I can do that maybe I'm not great at, but if I have to be really good at everything in order to measure up, that's a lot of stress.
[00:14:43] Rowan: One of the. Interviews that I watched a few years ago. It was, it was at least 10 or 15 years ago, they were having this discussion because it was becoming more of an issue.
I think it was a CTV documentary, CTV being a network here in Canada. And they interviewed one of the media personalities who was an anchor. I believe I can't remember who it was now, but it was, one of the main sort of women anchors of the news.
And she said, I'll never forget this. She said, women are taught that we can have everything so we can have a career and we can have family, and we can have all these other things. And that is true, but we can't necessarily have them all at once.
So she had figured that out. She had figured out that in order to have a very successful career as an anchor where you have to be in the office all the time, you are working really long hours.
You are constantly on your mind. You're getting emails, you're getting calls about things even when you're at home. That means that you may not be able to be a very hands-on parent. So she had learned that probably the hard way, I would assume, and that if she wanted to be a more hands-on parent, she had to take a step back from that very demanding role.
But that is something that. Women are encouraged to do sometimes and sometimes not encouraged, but it's more socially acceptable for women to do that. Can you think of a time when a man has actually done that?
[00:16:19] Lara: I mean, heard stories, Do I know somebody? No.
[00:16:24] Rowan: No. I don't know anyone either, right?
I don't know a single man who is like, , I know it does happen. Yeah. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I would say I know several women who've done this. I personally know several women who took a step back in their career. Who put the brakes on it. Who did not accept the next promotion, who did not do the next thing because their children were young and they wanted to be there for their children.
I don't personally know any men who've done that, I don't think.
[00:16:51] Lara: Yeah. And in fact, it's something I did both when my children were little and as my children are teenagers, which is probably a whole other conversation. we can have at some point about, if we wanna go into children. But the teen years take an awful lot of energy as well.
It's not just the little ages, but certainly it's something that I did. I remember when I was pregnant with my first and my family doctor said something to the effect of. Families where at least one parent is working part-time are the ones who seem to be doing well. And when families have two parents that work full-time, it's too much.
And I remember being a little bit like, I don't know, taken aback or grumbly or like, that's not true. But like have to say in retrospect, I agree. Like I don't know how some of my friends with. Two full-time working parents throughout the entire, life of their children's manage. And I think it's partially because I struggle with fatigue.
So maybe I have less energy than some people to do things. But overall, I think there's a lot more going on and. Doing everything is exhausting, doing everything when you said burnout before, because stopped taking care of ourselves. We're just taking care of everything else and everyone else, and that's not really a happy life for most people.
[00:18:13] Rowan: I. Have often thought that as well. So I've been really privileged to be able to work. When I did work full-time, I was working full-time from home when my children were little, which is its own set of challenges. Yeah, for sure. Also. I was the only one who would take a sick day, right? Because my spouse was working outside the home.
There were more demands in terms of meetings and meeting deadlines usually than my work. So it made sense. But yeah, like whenever the kids were sick, whenever there was, you know, my children two varying degrees, had some mental health challenges when they were younger, which as I. Said on previous episodes, I have an anxiety disorder, so the apple does not fall far from the tree.
. Right. I mean, these things are genetic. We know that. So, you know, my children also struggled in their own ways and someone had to be there for them as well. And that speaks a lot to the teen years. You were just Discussing there, where, there are some challenges that crop up.
So It is a real challenge to have this idea that you're supposed to perform at a certain level in all of these different ways. It's a challenge when you are trying to build a career, but you can only give so much. But my friends who did work full-time, both of them, some of them did really well, like really, really well, but they also had Family support a lot of times. They had grandparents who would step in or they had, siblings who would step in, or they had, maybe like older children who could go home with the younger children after work. there was, quite often there's that extra support and that is another thing that we have really in Western culture.
Poo-pooed. Is this idea of the multi-generational living situation or the multi-generational support system. When our parents get older, we don't tend to move them in with us, and they don't tend to live with us. Before that either. And we tend to put them in a retirement facility
right. And sometimes you need to do that. Like I think there's a lot of reasons to do that, especially if you have someone you know has some cognitive issues or whatever. There's Everyone's at a different place, so I'm not saying that with judgment, but I'm saying that we don't. Have that established thing that I hear a lot about in other cultures where you have these multi-generational households or you live right next to your parents or you live next door to your sister or whatever it might be, where you can get that extra support because the idea truly of two people with children working outside the home full time.
Factoring in commuting, factoring in extracurricular activities, that the children might have afterwards factoring in sick days, factoring in doctor's appointments. that is going to test your resilience in a way that most people don't realize until they're in it.
[00:21:14] Lara: Yeah. Living in community, I think I wish there was more of that.
I think that. Sharing some of the work, right? Like, I would love and my husband makes jokes about me talking about commune that I would love to live in, but like the idea of having people close by to help with like communal , cooking or other things I think there's such opportunity to start thinking about not living in these silos anymore.
Not always just doing everything alone. This is definitely a theme through a lot of our episodes about, hard work is better. I don't need to ask for help. I can do it by myself. Comes up in a lot of how we live our lives. We're doing it all by ourselves a lot of the time. The other piece is, are we going for what we want or are we following the path of success
Society has told us makes sense for us. We need to want the bigger house, the promotion to be, the executive if we can. We need to want, certain cars we need to want. A certain looking life, and a lot of people don't stop and say, Hey, do I want that? And this is something I talk about in my book, you're Not lazy because people don't ask themselves, do I want a really simple life and therefore I'm going to do things a different way because it feels like that's not choosing a simple life, it feels like failing at success.
[00:22:47] Rowan: The other thing I think it's being talked about more now and I think it's important that we talk about it, is do you want children? Or is that an expectation that somebody else placed on you, your parents or the movies you watched growing up or just societal expectations, you know, your church or, whatever it might be.
Right? Like there's this idea that we're all supposed to grow up, find somebody, fall in love, get married and have babies, and that is not the path. That a lot of people want to take. And as somebody with five children between me and my partner, I love my children. They are just the baseline of my joy.
They are just the most amazing people in the whole world. But I wanted children. I actively chose to have them. I remember because I got pregnant at 19 with my first one. And my partner at the time and I had a big discussion about whether or not we were going to have this baby and we did choose to have the baby.
When I made that decision, I made it knowing I had other options and I was very grateful to have those other options and every child that I had, I had three children adopted one and one is my stepchild. And every single child that I've brought into my life, I have made the conscious decision to do so.
And it is also equally okay to not want to have children and to want a life that is different than that. And in fact, I will just say between Lara and myself, we have enough children that some of you, we've replaced some of you. So it's, it's okay. We've already done the work for you and you don't have to.
And you're welcome. And if you would like to say thank you, you go right ahead and drop us a line.
[00:24:35] Lara: It's true you know, I've always hated the idea that people say if you don't have children, you'll regret it later. I really, really, really, really wanted children and still found it exceptionally difficult at a lot of parts of time.
So, yeah. You don't have to always go for the same cookie cutter looking life. That being said, society wants you to have children because they're afraid of not having enough people to replace the population or to. Make money to fill up the pension plans. Like, the renewal of the population.
I'm like, why don't we just have less people? But the powers that be don't like that idea at all.
[00:25:15] Rowan: Yeah. We're so overpopulated as it is. Also, there's this little thing that is not so popular these days called immigration and there are a lot of people who would love to come to. Countries and become citizens and work help pay those taxes and fill up those pensions, right?
Like it is not our personal responsibility. To do everything. So if career is really important to you, if social outings are really important to you, if travel is really important to you, and the idea of having a child, or many children in my case, would impede that to the point where it just seems, you know.
Like it just won't fit. That's okay. And good on you. And also as somebody who adopted a teenager, should you ever feel later in life, you're like, well, , I'm 45 and like, I don't want a baby but I, I would like to maybe experience that, you know, you can adopt an older child and it can be a really wonderful, fulfilling experience.
And again. Cookie cutter. It's not where it's at for everybody. That's all right. And if it lowers your stress level and you get to be happier in this one beautiful life, you have Bravo.
[00:26:28] Lara: Mm-hmm.
Because as much as. The whole world seems to be telling you you have to do everything. You don't have to do everything.
There are things that you can just choose to not do, right? You can choose to have a different looking life. You can choose to not prioritize all of the things all of the time, and society may not always make it easy to do that. Like there's certainly a lot of stuff going on, including. The need to make more money because of
like there's, so many things, right? Like understandably, with the cost of things, people have to work more. Yeah. But we get to s top and ask ourselves what we want and make sure. Again, so much of this is making sure we're not doing things because we think we should, because we think we have to, and asking ourselves if we want to, asking ourselves what the ways are that we can make life easier.
How can we work with other people to make life easier? I really think that focusing on the fact that you just have to do it and it's gonna be hard, but hard is, good. Makes us unhappy, and if we can just find the little ways to find some ease and to find choice that we really want, then it's worth doing.
[00:27:44] Rowan: Look, I love cooking, so for me, coming home after a long day and making myself something yummy to eat is a joy. But for a lot of people. That idea is just exhausting, right?
[00:28:00] Lara: torture. We
call that sheer torture. The idea of it is what I going to say, it might feel like to some people,
[00:28:09] Rowan: right?
And I'm like, oh, cutting up vegetables, you know, some onions. I mean, ironic 'cause I'm allergic to raw onion, but all of this creating this beautiful experience. I love that. So that's not an area that I'm probably going to. pay someone else to do like, but maybe for you, Lara, like you, if you could, maybe you would.
Hire somebody else to batch, cook a bunch of meals for you. Like there are people who hate cleaning their home and they're like, you know what, I get this one weekend. I work all week. I'm tired when I come home, I don't have time to clean. And then Saturday morning I wake up and my place is a mess, and then I have to clean and then I can't go out and do the things I want to do, and I just want a day off.
And they will hire someone that is where they will put their extra little bit of money. They'll hire someone to come in, every week or two and clean their house. Right? Like I think that mentality, I never subscribed to that when I was at home with the kids. 'cause I was like, well, I should have time to do all of this.
I should be able to do all of our grocery shopping. And all of our cooking and all of our cleaning and all of the laundry and all of the yard work and this and this, and it's like, no. 'cause I just burned myself out right now. Not everybody has the funds to, pay someone else to do some of that stuff.
But if you do, and the only reason you are not doing it is because you tell yourself you should be able to do it all. Do yourself a favor and figure out what it is you really don't wanna do and see if you can get someone else to do it for you.
[00:29:44] Lara: have you seen the Tiffin lady on TikTok? Do you know what I'm talking about when I say that?
[00:29:48] Rowan: No, no, no. I have no idea.
[00:29:49] Lara: So there is a lady who lives in India in Goa, who gets a Tiffin service. So what a Tiffin service is is. You know those stack well, you may not know, but there's these stacked metal, lunch boxes.
[00:30:03] Rowan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:30:04] Lara: So it's like different layers and then it's kind of clipped together.
So that's the Tiffin box. And in India it's not uncommon to have a Tiffin service where whether it's every day of the week or several days of the week, they have their Tiffin meal delivered to their house So this lady has been posting her daily tiffins on TikTok, and I am like. Can't wait every day to watch what she gets as she opens it up.
So there's a couple of reasons that I'm telling you this. Number one, she's apparently been getting a lot of comments about, like, so you don't cook, maybe you should cook. Like, why are you like just outsourcing all of this? But like, the cost in India for that service is like, $5 a day or something for her and her partner to eat.
In my opinion, if that were available to me in my neighborhood, I would be doing it for every meal all of the time. Like, I am certainly happy to have somebody else cook me amazing food that I don't have to make, and all I need to do is wash out the containers and give them back to you. Like, absolutely, why are people trying to shame her for hiring out that service instead of doing it herself?
[00:31:15] Rowan: Yeah, the judgment when you do decide to say no to something and outsource, can be immense. I say this as somebody who used to judge, because I did know some other stay-at-home parents who paid someone to come and clean, at the time, I, again, remember I had my first baby at 20 years old, so I walked into this parenting thing where I was like.
I've gotta be the best parent there is because everyone's going to judge me because I'm so young. So I have to be really, really, really good at it. And I went excessively on the opposite side, so I insisted on cleaning everything myself, even when occasionally we did have money for someone else to do it.
So the idea of someone else hiring out for that outsourcing that. . I judged very harshly because I would've judged myself. So a lot of times when people are judging for those things, it's because. They have an internal battle going on.
[00:32:14] Lara: Absolutely.
[00:32:14] Rowan: Or maybe they really love cooking and they just don't understand why you wouldn't do it.
Or not. Everyone's good at cooking either, and that's okay. Like I can walk around my house and go, okay, I want to get this, I can make something outta this, this, this. Okay, great. And just whip something up. But that's a skill that I just happen to have that not everybody has. And the other thing is when you talk about cost, just staying on this food thing for a minute.
We waste so much food as a society. So when you have a fridge full of fresh food that you bought with the intention to cook it all and eat it all, and half of it goes bad, it would probably be more affordable to have a tiffin lady.
[00:32:57] Lara: I agree. And I will say that I Googled and I found a Tiffin service in Ottawa.
It doesn't get delivered to my house. I have to go pick it up. So it's not quite as convenient. and apparently even though there are Tiffin services in Ottawa, they're not very well used. So it's not common, but like I was like, this is amazing. I am gonna have Indian food in my fridge most of the time.
And I'm so happy for it.
[00:33:25] Rowan: Did you Google that while we were talking?
[00:33:28] Lara: No, no.
[00:33:28] Rowan: Oh,
you did it before. Oh, okay. Okay. I was like wow, you did it fast.
[00:33:32] Lara: No, no. I have been going and picking up these Tiffins, the last couple of weeks. So I'm going like once a week, maybe twice a week to pick something up.
and I have multiple people in my family who really enjoy Indian food. And so it's been lovely and I have done other things like this from like, I used to do the boxes where you cook the food, that was one way that I didn't waste food because for whatever reason, if we received it that way, we made it and then there wasn't all these extra ingredients that would go bad.
Otherwise I do. I get stuff that goes bad all the time. And that is not better.
[00:34:08] Rowan: Yeah. I think it's really cool that you're doing that and I think people will have this question and I almost asked it and then I decided not to ask it. I was going to ask, what are you gonna do with all your spare time when you're not cooking?
because immediately in a capitalist society I'm like, oh, that's so that you can spend more time working or cleaning or whatever. But no. No, it is also totally cool and okay to outsource something and use that time to rest and do something you want to do. Lemme say that again. Lemme say that again.
It is okay. In fact, it is more than okay to take that time to rest and do something you want to do
[00:34:53] Lara: because resting isn't lazy.
[00:34:55] Rowan: Resting isn't lazy. You're really big on that, and I love you for it because you will remind me of that. I think at least once or twice a month.
[00:35:07] Lara: Yeah.
[00:35:07] Rowan: Yeah, and I mean, I might get to the point where, you know, I'm opening this, coffee shop and wine bar with my partner and we are going to be swamped because we're not hiring right away. We're gonna hire a few weeks or months in, right? So we're gonna be working seven days a week. The, wine bar part won't be open every evening.
So we're gonna, have some days when we're home in the evening, but we're gonna be exhausted. And as much as we both love to cook. That is probably not going to be something we're gonna wanna do very often For a while. We're gonna be really, really tired and at that point I might be looking for my own Tiffin lady.
[00:35:44] Lara: I think you should. I think you should.
[00:35:46] Rowan: Yeah. 'cause I love Indian food too, and my wife, as soon as you said it, I'm like, that's what I need to do after this, episode. I need to go and get some Indian food,
[00:35:54] Lara: Google tiffin service.
[00:35:57] Rowan: Mm.
[00:35:57] Lara: My understanding is that they're easier to find than most people think.
Just 'cause we haven't heard of them doesn't mean they aren't there. But again, this is all the same thing. It's all around. You don't have to do everything. You get to choose what your priorities are. At a certain time in your life. And if right now it's work and that's good with you, but then you're going to say, you know what, I'm gonna hire out for food.
If you're going to do it in different ways, because you can't afford to hire it out, but like, just think about what your options are without thinking. You have to do everything to measure up.
[00:36:31] Rowan: Stop comparing yourself to others too, . we've said this before, but it needs repeating. I think over and over and over.
Most of the time when we are comparing ourselves, we are comparing ourselves to whether we know people in real life or not, or comparing ourselves to what we see them share online. Because most of our social interactions right now are on the internet, on social media apps, and that is a curated version.
No matter how honest the person is, no matter what's going on in their lives, there are things they're not talking about. They are sharing highlights. They might be good highlights, they might be bad highlights, but they're sharing highlights of their lives and you're missing all of the in-between. So somebody might be like, you know, stayed up all night and, you know, batch cooked, all my meals for the next week, which is a great idea, by the way, if you have the energy and inclination to do it.
And then you start thinking, well, you know, this person has a really demanding job and they have children and they have a dog and they have, you know, a parent with dementia and they still managed. To stay up and do all this batch cooking, or they still manage to get to the gym every day or whatever it might be.
You might not be, and in fact, I would argue, are probably not seeing the level of overwhelm that person is experiencing and is just doing their best to try and manage it. So. you are seeing, maybe let's go with the gym thing. You're seeing someone who goes to the gym every day because they really want to be fit and , they wanna show off their toned body or whatever it might be.
What you might not be seeing is that that is how they're managing their anxiety, or that is the one little bit of time that they're carving out for themselves every day and they just wanna fall apart. Or they cry in the parking lot like you don't know. So. Don't assume that everybody else is doing better than you are, and you have to keep stepping up.
[00:38:25] Lara: Also, remember that. Just because you see different people doing different things doesn't mean you need to do all the things. So if you see somebody going to the gym every single day and you see somebody else doing batch cooking or cooking from scratch all the day, and somebody else taking their kids to five different activities in a week and somebody else going on, you know, great vacations, we have a tendency to think that we should do all of those things.
And like that's not. Possible you know, or it's not easy in a way that would make most people happy, right? So we're not saying, oh, okay, well, , the reason that I'm not going to the gym every day is because I'm cooking from scratch all the time, and I'm doing this other thing. You think I need to now measure up to all of these things.
And so it's really about understanding your capacity, asking yourself what's important to you, what your priorities are, and just knowing. Everything isn't the goal.
[00:39:21] Rowan: Great advice. this has been a really good discussion and a reminder to me that I don't have to run the seven errands I have on my list today.
Maybe I can do three of them. And rest.
[00:39:35] Lara: Perfect, because Resting isn't lazy.
[00:39:40] Rowan: Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to send us your comments, send us your questions. We love to hear from you. We really, really do. It's great to see so many people are subscribing and downloading this podcast. It's really starting to take off and whatever we can do to make this a pleasurable and meaningful.
Few minutes of your time every week is what, oh, that sounds like people pleasing. But listen, whatever we can do within our boundaries to make that a wonderful experience for you, we want to know. So thank you.
[00:40:16] Lara: Have a great week.
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