Freedom Lifestyle

Goal Setting Weekends with Your Husband [REVISIT]

• Sam Laliberte • Season 6 • Episode 85

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We don't just set goals – we plan adventures.

FREE DESIGN YOUR YEAR TEMPLATE - NEW

Navigating the intersection of personal ambitions and relationship goals can be a delicate dance, but it's one that Jared and I have learned to embrace. A few weeks ago, my partner and I carved out two full days to reflect, align and design our vision for next year and beyond. We set personal, professional and relationship goals. 

We laughed, argued, got uncomfortable and manifested clarity. We ended the weekend with a vision we felt aligned on and in this podcast episode share the template for success that worked for us. 

I hope you don’t follow it perfectly. I hope hearing our experience is the inspiration and motivation you need to carve out the time and design an agenda on your “own terms”  😉.

Grab your lover, business bestie or make it all about you. 

In this episode Sam and Jared discuss: 

  • Designing the agenda for a goal setting weekend 
  • Collecting an inventory of your 2019 wins
  • Reflecting on key learnings from previous year
  • Aligning on personal and relationship values 
  • Setting mantras for the new year 
  • Creating your 2020 intentions using 90 day sprints

Links: 

About the show:

✨ Freedom Lifestyle represents the movement towards freedom in life and work. We interview entrepreneurial people who've created a lifestyle of independence, that's on their own terms. We discover their version of the Freedom Lifestyle, learn how they got there and reflect on the impact its had. ✨

Speaker 1:

Well, what I liked so much about what we did is when I've tried to do this in the past I just kind of say, oh, I need to set my goals and try to block off some time and do it. But we tried to tear ourselves up to be in a really good mental and physical space to really achieve what we wanted to over the weekend and make it fun at least our kind of fun.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Freedom Lifestyle podcast series, a series that is so much more than just a podcast series. This is a movement towards freedom in life and in work, and about taking a lifestyle you know you deserve. I'm your host, sam, and I have always admired working where you want, when you want and how you want, just like my guests. I've found my version of the Freedom Lifestyle, and I'm sharing all the secrets for how you can, too. The Freedom Lifestyle looks different for everyone. What's your free?

Speaker 2:

You're listening to the Freedom Lifestyle podcast, and this is the first episode of 2024, but it's a cheat because I'm not releasing a brand new episode. I am actually repurposing one of my top episodes ever. But before I do that cheat, here's why I am recording this January 3rd Tomorrow is Thursday. I have put out a new episode every single week for 17 weeks. My birthday was September 21st. That is the episode I came back with, and I haven't missed a week since and I have kept that commitment to myself and I'm so proud of myself.

Speaker 2:

There were weeks where I felt like I wasn't ahead of schedule and I hadn't batched properly and I was scrambling, and I still did it. I said I would do solo episodes and that made me nervous and that made me question whether I'd be able to create something great, and I still did it. So, yes, this is me tooting my own horn I think that's the statement, but also me giving you permission to slow down these first few weeks, this first month whatever that is for you of this new year. I have been spending a lot of time really reflecting on how 2023 went and what do I want to make happen in 2024? How am I going to get there? Not sure, I feel like I'm close. I feel like I just need a couple more weeks of slow living, of sleeping in long meditations, inspiring, reading, planning, dreaming, before I can jump back into that execution mode of producing, producing, producing, producing. And that's just where I'm at right now, and I honestly think, if I just give myself a couple more weeks to chill, it's going to be so much stronger. So if you're listening to this, thursday, january 4th, this comes out. Thank you for listening. It means literally so much to me. I hope this gives you permission to slow the fuck down yourself, because the year will be there this whole year. All of our goals and dreams. They're going to be there. And so what can you really do to start the year strong, to make sure you are not just following to those patterns of burnout, of exhaustion, of doing all the shoulds of whatever is being asked of you, of not following your true heart and your true dreams, of saying yes to obligations? Don't start your year like that. I'm not starting my year like that.

Speaker 2:

So, on that note, here is one of my top downloaded episodes ever. It's an interview I did with my husband, jared, about the first time we ever carved out a weekend together to do a goal setting weekend. We now do this all the time. This has become a traditional jam co-creation weekend we've done every year and we've really been refining the process year after year. The more webinars we attend or inspiring creators we listen to or take their goal setting workshops, we find inspiration. Here and there we reflect on what's worked, what hasn't. In the past, we really nailed the process. So much of what you're going to hear in this episode is what we still do today. I've also created a step by step process on how I do all of this that I'm linking in the show notes. You can download it, you can follow it along and this can be your goal setting co-creation with your partner. If you have one blueprint, you're welcome. I will be in your ears with new content so soon. I love you so much.

Speaker 2:

Let's talk a little bit about today's episode. I invited Jared to come back on this show because a couple weeks ago, him and I spent two full days creating an agenda for what we would call the jam retreat weekend. That's kind of a play on our names, jared and Sam, but really it was two full days of 2020 goal setting and vision setting and attention setting to make sure that we both had that same North Star, and we had been posting about it on social media throughout the weekend, just kind of teasing different things on the agenda and how we were approaching it. And a lot of people reached out to us and asked you know what was our template and how did we go about creating this schedule? And they were interested in maybe doing something for themselves. So I know it's mid January and if you haven't already set your goals yet, you can feel that pressure and that the year's already half over, which it's not. Let's all breathe.

Speaker 2:

There's still lots of time and we believe that you can set your goals your own way, whenever you want, however the hell you want, and that's kind of what we did. So in this episode, we're are gonna share that agenda with how we designed these two days. We set personal goals, professional goals, relationship goals. We laughed, we argued with each other, things were uncomfortable, but we really just tried to manifest clarity. We really wanted to create a vision and in the end, that's what we did. We felt really aligned on how the next few years not just 2020 would look like and in this podcast episode, jared and I share that template of success that worked for us.

Speaker 2:

With that said, I hope you don't follow it perfectly. I hope that when you hear our experience, you feel inspired and motivated to carve out that time for yourself and design an agenda on your own terms. You know that's what freedom, lifestyle is all about, so I will not be offended if you put your own twist on things. I hope you do. You also don't need to be in a romantic relationship to do this. You can have a goal setting, retreat with a friend, with your business bestie, with your business partner or, honestly, you can make it all about yourself and just do it all you. This is just simply how we approached it and the way we reflected on the previous year and I think just doing it and creating the time and creating an experience around it versus just okay, a couple hours here and then a week later a couple hours there the way we did it made it a lot more memorable and we're hoping it'll help us stick to the goals a bit more. So anytime you do this for yourself, it's beneficial, whether you do it alone or with a partner.

Speaker 2:

If you stick around to the end of this episode, you are going to hear how we wrapped up the weekend a bit unconventionally, perhaps a bit controversial. Wasn't sure if I was going to share this on the show, but Jared pushed me to do it and, as a hint, it involves some magical medicine. So stick to the end, where we talk openly about what we did and the results that it had. My final note is that we recorded this episode on our final night together. Jared and I are about to be LDR again, long distance for a little bit, so it was an interesting way to spend the evening.

Speaker 2:

We didn't prepare too much. I of course, had my flow of how I wanted the conversation to go, but I kind of just threw him into it. So he was a good sport and I think you'll laugh it Some of our jokes, hopefully and it's definitely a behind the scenes of him and I and the way we interact and how that weekend went, so I didn't do too much editing. You are in for a treat here he is. Okay, let's do a sound check. How are you feeling right now?

Speaker 1:

Pretty good. I'm slightly. It's quite loud in my ear, oh my God.

Speaker 2:

Okay, is that better?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's better, yeah.

Speaker 2:

It just sounds like we're having a normal conversation now. It's already a little different than when we're talking in the live, isn't that?

Speaker 1:

better With a bit of sound in the background. I can definitely tell.

Speaker 2:

We're gonna go live Three, two, one, jared.

Speaker 1:

Samantha.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for coming on the show.

Speaker 1:

Anytime.

Speaker 2:

It's always fun to create content with you and an interesting experience.

Speaker 1:

For sure, thanks for having me.

Speaker 2:

Just so you're up to speed. I already shared with the audience that we have not prepared for this and that we're gonna kind of wing it for the most part. So if it feels like we're kind of just jumping into things they already know.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if that's the best strategy. You're supposed to tell people it's gonna be amazing before you start.

Speaker 2:

It is gonna be amazing. We've done the work by having the weekend and now we're gonna talk about what we did. Great, it's reflecting on our reflections.

Speaker 1:

Sounds good. We had a great time and learned a lot, so I definitely recommend people trying it.

Speaker 2:

And even if you don't have a partner, I think that we just did it together, because we like to do lots of things together, but I think you could totally do this on your own, would you agree? Yeah?

Speaker 1:

no, definitely, and I think, even doing it with a friend or something, I was excited to do it because it's you, but also just it's told some of you accountable to actually taking a step back and investing the hours and setting up the experience to have something meaningful which is a bit harder to do on your own.

Speaker 2:

So true, and how different was it from what you had done in the past? In terms of the agenda? It's been a couple of weeks now since we had the weekend. Do you feel like we covered everything you would have wanted to cover? How confident do you feel, after going through all of those exercises and activities, in terms of how you're thinking about your year now?

Speaker 1:

It was definitely a lot different than I had done in the past. Usually it would be like, hey, I need to set aside time to write some goals and without nearly as much thought put into creating a whole experience around it, which made it a more memorable thing to do and also something that I'm hopefully more likely to follow because we put more effort into it. I think the process of setting goals is important, but what is just as important is actually going back continually and reflecting on them and making sure you're actioning them. So I'm basically I like to write on the computer, so I did a lot of the typing on the computer while you wrote a notebook, but I'm basically going back and copying it all down into a notebook and then, when I'm doing my monthly or weekly view of what I should be working on, always going back and looking at them continually, because otherwise you just set the goals and forget them, and that's not going to get you anywhere.

Speaker 2:

OK, and is this something that you think you and I should revisit again together, or is this something we would just do next year and see how we did?

Speaker 1:

No, that's a great question. I think it seems like we're setting goals for the year but then doing these quarterly sprints, as they're called. So I think it's important that we check in after Q1 and see how far we've gotten.

Speaker 2:

Cool. And then final question before we dig into it. That I thought of was that were you concerned about anything going into this weekend together?

Speaker 1:

Well, this weekend was about setting goals for us, but it was also really about setting the foundation for the future of our relationship and having some big discussions and really getting closer and more aligned on what our future could look like this year and beyond. So I wasn't really nervous for setting goals for the year, but I was nervous and also excited for some of the other conversations we'd be having about kind of shaping what our future could look like together.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, same. I've talked to some other couples now. The reason I ask that and I guess their fear is what if you go into a weekend like this and you're not aligned and you finally have the tough conversation and you realize, oh so we don't actually want the same things? Then what? And I think for me that was a bit of a concern, but I think something that's really helped that we've reshifted our thinking lately is, yes, you want to generally want the same things out of life, but realizing that you can't predict every single thing that's going to happen and more just do you have confidence in the relationship and trust that your partner is going to be someone who's going to be there for you and support you in moments that matter and that you're going to have fun kind of going through life with. So I think, yeah, that was my concern and something that I hear from other people. I just wanted to see if that come up for you as well.

Speaker 1:

For sure, and I think those conversations are going to come up now or sometime in the future, so avoiding them isn't really going to get you anywhere, and I do think we came a long way in terms of that mentality around confidence in each other and the ability to come to a similar agreement on things that we might have started out not necessarily on the exact same page on, and I think it's really important to have the conversations and to find that middle ground, because you may not fully align, but it also is important to make sure you're pointing in the same direction.

Speaker 2:

North Star, thank you. So let's jump into the agenda, because we didn't just show up that Saturday morning and just say, hey, let's make some goals together. We were pretty thoughtful about it, had a quite strict agenda that included fitness and meditation, and even picked up the restaurant we would go to and the date night we would do, which is just us in general. But I think that's the piece that people are looking for inspiration on, and not everything that we came up with was, you know, created from us. We get inspiration from lots of different sources.

Speaker 2:

The framework that I'd been using from the last three years was incorporated. How you've been setting your goals was incorporated, and just different things. So, basically, we made a two-day agenda and the first day we allocated primarily to our personal goals, and then day two, we focus more on relationship goals and the vision for the relationship, and I think that was really helpful, because I think you go your whole life setting personal goals and that's always gonna be what's on your mind. First, going into 2020, as much as you want to think like a partnership and a union, you have those, and then also, you should know what your partner has as a target so that you can support them in that, and when you create your relationship, values and goals, you're like working together based on each other's individual goals, but also the collective. So would you kind of agree that it should go personal and then relationship?

Speaker 2:

Definitely yeah okay, so that's how we approached it. Why don't you kick things off on how we started day one then?

Speaker 1:

Turning it over to me so early. Well, what I liked so much about what we did is when I've tried to do this in the past I just kind of say, oh, I need to set my goals and try to block off some time and do it. But we tried to tear ourselves up to be in a really good mental and physical space to really achieve what we wanted to over the weekend and make it fun at least are kind of fun. So we started the day off with a bit of meditation together and then we read something called the Ford Agreements, which is a book that we had it's actually quite a short book that we had been reading over the course of the last few weeks and then discussed the chapter we read on a walk to our favorite Pilates class.

Speaker 2:

What do you think about the Ford Agreements book? Is that something that you would recommend someone to read, either with their partner or on their own?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I thought it was a quite a interesting book. I hadn't heard of it before. You had passed it along to me, and I think it has some really interesting concepts. The thing that stands out the most to me, which is something I think about a lot, is actually the initial chapter talking about the domestication of humans and the fact that a lot of us kind of go through life in a way that's not necessarily true to ourselves or intentional because of the way society has sort of trained us from early on to believe we should live a certain way. And I think it's a constant reminder to myself and whoever reads the book to really take the time and effort to think about what you really want to do and not be so swayed by what society says is good or bad.

Speaker 2:

Definitely, and I like that they use the word domestication. I think that's kind of always in my mind. I think about like animals and wild animals and to realize like, yeah, humans are wild animals and at birth that's what we are and we just do exactly what we want whenever we want, and we feel no worry about judgment and it's just all about instant gratification. And then over the years, you just start to mold and all of a sudden everyone wants the same things. Like that's not a coincidence, and I think that I'm glad you brought that up, because that was great to tee you up for a weekend. That was ultimately about being really honest about what you want and being really honest of what it's gonna take to get there, which can often mean showing up and standing up to people who are going to question it or going to try to domesticate you further so, and this domestication concept is something I think about, but it's also important to be aware that some of the things that we get domesticated to do might be the right thing for you.

Speaker 1:

Not everything society says is good is not good. A lot of it is good, and you have to filter out what is good for you and what isn't totally.

Speaker 2:

And when you said that to me, I said, yeah, I get dressed every morning and I put clothes on, and that's kind of where that is okay the next thing.

Speaker 2:

We did is something I do every year and it's one of my favorite parts of the reflection series. So there's the reflection and there's the intention setting and it's when you do an inventory of the previous year and you kind of write down all of your accomplishments and the special moments that you made in the previous year. And how I personally go through it is I'm a big Instagram user, so I go into my archived Instagram stories or my feed, and then I also go to my Google calendar because I put a lot of like work things in there and just month by month, I just remind myself what I did in January and then February and March, and there's no rules in terms of how many you list and it's impossible to not feel good about the year you just had when you realize how many things you wrote down.

Speaker 2:

Millennials love collecting experiences yeah, and that's your, one of your main reasons for using Instagram so that you can remember all your memories you had yeah, and also seek social validation so once you do that and you're feeling really good, we move on to the learning portion of the reflections. You want to guide us through that part yeah for sure.

Speaker 1:

This is actually something I hadn't done in the past and it was something that was really interesting and it's quite simple. Basically, we made three categories professional, personal and relationship and tried to think back on the year and what three learnings top learnings we had within each of those categories, and then we had a discussion together about those lessons and see soft there is any other types of insights or interesting things that came out of that discussion would you be willing to share one of your learnings?

Speaker 1:

yeah.

Speaker 1:

So one of the main personal learnings I had which actually came out of an experience I had in Peru, although along with a lot of personal work I've been doing on the topic was this feeling of everything in life will be okay and you can't really control everything.

Speaker 1:

So one of the things I had been worrying about prior to this year, as I reached my late 20s and a lot of existential angst was trying to foresee exactly how the future of my life would look like and being concerned about whether I was on track for that and trying to control how everything was was going in in a certain direction, and one of the things that I learned this year was that in the end, everything will turn out okay, and trying to control and worry about it and create all this angst is for nothing. And although I haven't reached this bliss yet, I did come a long way in terms of really being okay with letting things play out and not trying to be so rigid about having certain goals and reaching them in a certain amount of time. Although this exercise might say differently, I generally feel a more calm about how things will turn out got it.

Speaker 2:

Sarah would say surrender yeah, surrender, sarah one of my relationship learnings that I had this year was on how much your career decisions start to impact your relationship as you get later on in life. I'm turned 30 this year and really prior to this year my career was always an individual thing. I've never had a ton of pressure from my family or my friends to have a career that fit any type of mold or aligned anyone's expectations, so it was always about me. I got to kind of make decisions however I wanted.

Speaker 2:

But this year a relationship learning I had was that when you make big career decisions that impact your lifestyle like they do impact the relationship and it's something that you should talk about proactively and it doesn't mean you can't do these career things anymore, but you should just have a plan for how you're going to, you know, incorporate this changing life sounds, the relationship, how you're going to combat for the challenges that might come from it and just make sure you and your partner are aligned. You know I accepted the girls trip that caused me to travel a lot more. I did freelance for a year, which meant I made a lot less money for a year. Like these are things that, as we get older and go into our relationship. More are just gonna impact us, so that was like a big learning I had as well. That's a great one.

Speaker 2:

Okay, before we moved on to the biggest portion of our goal setting, we did another fun little exercise that's called the first exercise, where you basically think about all the firsts you had in the previous year so this year was the first year I went to Machu Picchu, or this is the first year I did Spanish school and you write those down and then you also tee up what are the firsts that I want to have next year? And by doing that, before you set your bigger goals, you kind of like get yourself, I find, in a mood of what are the goals and the associated tasks that I should be thinking about when I set my annual plan, which I'm going to let you lead.

Speaker 1:

Great what we did in terms of how we set our plan.

Speaker 2:

it follows something similar, although you don't like to call it this Because it seems like we just, it just seems so business.

Speaker 1:

Okay, ours, which is a concept created by Google in terms of how they do their company goal setting many years ago and is now sort of the standard in Silicon Valley, and our lives are kind of like startup. So why not do it? So the process is pretty simple. The first step is to basically divide your life into three categories, depending whether you're in a relationship or not personal, career and relationship and then, within each of those categories, follow this same process. The first step is within that, within each category, create two or three major goals or milestones you want to hit by the end of the year. So an example for personal might be I want to feel healthy and fit by the end of 2020.

Speaker 1:

But that's a bit vague. It's not really clear what healthy and fit means by the end of 2020. So let's get a bit more specific in terms of creating metrics that matter so you can know whether you're hitting your goal. This is the second step. So a metric that matter might be get my weight to X or only get one stomach eight per week if you're having stomach issues. You don't like that example.

Speaker 2:

Which one of us is that?

Speaker 1:

So then you have these metrics that matter, and the final step is what are some actions I can take to get there? And you can be the more tactical and specific you get, the better. So actions might be go to the gym five times per week or stop eating gluten pretty straightforward.

Speaker 2:

How would you do it in the 90 day sprints? Would you recommend?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think the 90 day sprint is actually one of the things I'm most excited about trying to implement with regards to this, because in the past I've either tried to think about things on a yearly basis or a monthly basis, and I think quarterly is a good period of time to really move the needle on specific tasks and not but not have to go and always revisit things too too often.

Speaker 1:

So how it works is you can think about things you want to do during this process over the course of the year, but then afterwards and this is something we did a week or so later, we actually said, hey, what are those tasks that we really want to do this quarter? And also thought a bit more tactically about other tasks we want to do this quarter because some of them we may not want to focus on right now. Maybe that's something we want to do in the second half of the year. So that's where that quarterly period of time comes into play, and while I'll be revisiting the tasks I say I'm going to do on a monthly basis or so, I won't necessarily be doing a full check in with you until the end of the quarter.

Speaker 2:

And realizing that you can't do everything at once and if you try to put all your goals in one quarter, you're going to get nothing done. And I think we've kind of done that in the past, so we're actually setting less goals this year.

Speaker 1:

For sure. Yeah, so we're setting a number three per life, per category personal, career, relationship because otherwise it can just get overwhelming and you end up making very small progress in all of them. And I think that's one of the things both of us struggle with is and it's actually one of my personal goals is around being able to prioritize and say no to things more, because there's so many things I'm excited about trying to improve, but realistically, you have to double down on things that are most important now. Okay.

Speaker 2:

So something we didn't do that was on the agenda which you're happy we didn't, because you actually hate this part is the digital vision board. We kind of ran out of time and basically you don't really love that. You much prefer when we do the physical vision boards where we have the big Bristol board. But my thought was, you know, we travel so much it doesn't really make sense to have one big Bristol board that you only see, you know, every couple of months and revisit it. So I thought let's go into Canva, make a cool collage and pull some images. Perhaps you can put it as the screen saver on your computer or just something that you can revisit more effortlessly to like visually see these aspirational goals. But we didn't do it, but some people might want to do that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for sure, and I think that's actually if you're in a relationship. That's a fun thing to do with your partner, which is really once you've thought about some of the experiences you want to have together in the upcoming year. Putting some of them down on some sort of vision board is kind of a fun activity to do together and to get in the zone for achieving them the following year. To close off the night, we wanted to have something fun.

Speaker 2:

Date night.

Speaker 1:

Date night. So we did nothing too crazy, just dinner and a movie, and we kind of did a little trade off. I care lots about food, sam cares more about nightly entertainment. So I chose the restaurant and she chose the movie I chose. I'll Do A Shout Out. It's nothing fancy, but it's a place called Imperfect, just by our house on Adelaide and John or so, and it's great.

Speaker 2:

Do you want to explain what Imperfect means Sure?

Speaker 1:

Basically. I mean, if people are interested, they are just like a bowl place. But what's cool is they take Imperfect produce and allow you to get unlimited toppings on your bowl for the same price, which really resonates with me. So I was excited to try it out.

Speaker 2:

Well, you don't want to talk about your $10 gift card that you almost got to use.

Speaker 1:

I was also attempting to use a $10 gift card, but Sam said it would ruin the mood to try to go through that process, since I had to go on my email and things like that. So I had to pay full price, unfortunately.

Speaker 2:

We're going to take a quick break because we're on the topic of yummy and healthy eats and wanted to give a shout out to this episode's sponsor, Calli Love. In Toronto they have amazing menu of salads, smoothie bowls and protein packed treats that Jared and I both love. I've also been attending their fitness classes a few times a week and I am so impressed by how challenging the classes actually are because the classes are small. I've had an opportunity to get to know the teachers and I always get a much better workout because they're able to give me more feedback and more personalized attention than I normally do in a large yoga class. Email me, Sam, at whatsyourfreecom to get your first class. They are free, and if you're ever stopping by for a healthy treat, just say Freedom Lifestyle to the cash year and you'll get 15% off your order.

Speaker 2:

That wrapped up our agenda for day one, taking the time to set our personal goals and reflect on the previous year. Of course, day two is now going to be dedicated to aligning on a North Star for our relationship. Again, it doesn't have to be a romantic relationship. You can get creative or you can just use a lot of these ideas and work on these dreams for yourself. Here we go. So day two was finally allocated to the relationship. How were we going to make sure we had the same North Star? How could we support each other in each other's individual goals, and how can we just set the tone about what our relationship wants to stand for? So we started day two the same way we started day one Meditation read. We actually finished the four agreements and discussed that which, again just like gets here no big deal finishing the book.

Speaker 2:

It's actually like 1% per page on Kindle. It's a very short read, so how did we kick off day two after that?

Speaker 1:

Maybe your listeners may have heard about this. It's called the LDR Activity Book.

Speaker 1:

Yeah it's pretty awesome. So luckily this book exists and we actually are co-authors of it, shout out. So we used the LDR Activity Book to do some of the activities for our relationship on day two. We didn't want to rewrite what was already a great way to build on a relationship, whether in a long distance one or not. So what we did is an activity from the book which is around your values, and this is a process where you are given a list of many different words and you go through and think about which ones resonate with you for your personal values and then, once you've done that process and discussed your personal values similar to how we already did personal planning you then come together and talk about what your values are as a couple, and those are many times quite different, and that's okay. So it's a very interesting exercise to think about what matters to you and then take that and think about what matters to you when you're together as a couple and building off each other.

Speaker 2:

Do you remember what our values are?

Speaker 1:

Of course I remember all of them.

Speaker 2:

Let's hear it.

Speaker 1:

So one of the values is definitely around adventure. Am I correct in that?

Speaker 2:

Flipping through your notes, Flipping through your notes Well, we had. So we have core values and we have aspirational values.

Speaker 1:

That's also a good point.

Speaker 2:

I think that's a good thing to note, because there's some values that we already embody that will always be there. So freedom will always be one of our values. Adventure will always be one of our values. But then we really wanted to talk about like, okay, what are the aspirational values we have as a couple and what kind of things we really want to focus on next year? So one of them was flexibility.

Speaker 1:

For sure.

Speaker 2:

Mindfulness, playfulness, vision and teamwork.

Speaker 1:

These are new, so I haven't memorized them yet. I'll be better next time.

Speaker 2:

We're going to need to come up with a process. So that was great and definitely something that I would recommend anyone to do, either in a relationship or on your own. It's good to have your core values and then have things you're aspiring for, like there are things that will always be and then there's things that you can make tweaks to.

Speaker 1:

And it's an interesting exercise because there, when the book provides many different words, you can choose as your values and you, a lot of them resonate with you. But so you end up with a list, many different groupings of somewhat similar words and you have to sift through that and really talk about what each of them means and which one is most important to you personally or you as a couple, if you're doing it for a couple.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm looking at our notes and it's just like a ton of different words and like scratching things out and categorizing them and circling them and then finalizing the list. So, yeah, it was a fun process to go through.

Speaker 2:

For sure. So the next thing we did was a dream house exercise. Jared and I, we are getting ready to officially move in together, which you know we've been dating for almost four years. We've shared space and beds. So many times You've crashed at my place, we've stayed at your parents' basement, we've stayed in hostels, we've stayed at your uncle's basement, we've stayed at my grandparents' basement, we've stayed in tents, we've stayed in Airbnb's hotels but cars, yes, shambhala, shambhala.

Speaker 2:

But we've never actually had our own place where we picked the apartment or the condor with a townhouse together and furnish it together. So it was a really fun exercise to dream up what that would look like and make like a checklist of what our must haves and what our nice to haves were. But then we actually did V2 of it, which, okay, let's take out all practicalities, forget about money, forget about, you know, location to the water. What would be the dream house look like and just like, have fun with it. And it was cool how aligned we were. Like we really do have that same vision for what our physical space would look like and, as much as we've been traveling so much this year, I'm like weirdly, very excited to create that with you.

Speaker 1:

No, definitely it's super exciting and I think that exercise is while ours was very specific in terms of we're about to embark on purchasing some sort of house or whatever apartment I highly recommend doing that same exercise, sometimes even before you do your goal setting. So, if you're thinking about making some sort of career change, can you really envision what your ideal job looks like? Or if you're in a relationship and aren't really looking for a house, can you envision what your perfect day looks like together, or week together, or vacation or some sort of thing, to really just spur some creative thinking and some fun and just get your juices flowing and have some fun, either by yourself or with your partner.

Speaker 2:

That's true. It doesn't have to be a dream house, although that's always fun.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it is always fun. People always need a place to stay.

Speaker 2:

Can you share one of your must haves?

Speaker 1:

Walk-in closet. No, just kidding, that's Sam's.

Speaker 2:

That is not mine. King size bed.

Speaker 1:

King size bed. Yeah, we also needed a two bedroom place because we both work from home, so that's definitely a must have for both of us, which, when we originally were thinking about a place, we were thinking about trying to save money and getting a one bedroom, but it's not really feasible if you're both working from home to do calls or host people from out of town at your place, which is something we definitely want to do.

Speaker 2:

Okay. Next, we did our 2020 dream travel, which is similar to this in the sense that you can do a year of okay, what are the actual destinations, what are the obligations that we already have to go to this year, but then what's like the bucket list destinations we both share and what are some things that maybe are for 2021, 2025, 2030?. So do you want to kind of shed some light into how we go about picking our destinations and creating a year of travel and creating that bucket list together?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, ours is a bit more complicated because we travel around more than most and we have to account for also Bigira, our third family member, sam's Bengal Cat, who I love.

Speaker 1:

So I, if anyone's interested, afterwards, just send Sam a message and we have like a spreadsheet which basically has each month of the year where Sam is, where I could be, and where Bigira is, and then it's also color coded to show when Sam and I are in the same place, and each also type of location is a color code, whether it's like British Columbia, ontario or some other international destination.

Speaker 1:

And basically you start from what you know, which is we had certain weddings to attend. We knew that we wanted to be in August with my, with my family at their summer cottage. We wanted to be at Christmas time with Sam's family or in Ontario, and then you, so you start filling in the gaps and then you have all this white spacing. You start to think about what could be possible and what types of trips, how much time you have. Also vacation takes you have to take into that, count vacation time and what types of trips or experiences you want to have. And then you start slotting those in and start talking, having discussions about where and when you want to go.

Speaker 2:

Which is always so fun. What's a bucket list destination? We both still have Japan. Japan, I was going to say African Safari but that's see.

Speaker 1:

Another thing is I've done it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so how do you handle? Okay, well, one person in the relationship, it's their dream location, but the other partner has already gone.

Speaker 1:

You know what that's called A first world problem A first world problem.

Speaker 2:

It is, it really is. It's a bit sad.

Speaker 1:

It's a bit sad. One of the things we are doing, because of the fact that we are working hard but also in a privileged position, is making sure that we're always thinking about how we're having impact in our lives and also how some of our actions can negatively impact the world. So an example is it's an unfortunate truth that flying Inconvenience, inconvenient truth, that flying emits a lot of carbon. So one of the things we've been doing is trying to reduce flights where possible and take other types of transportation or not have the trip and then, when we do flights, also do what's called our carbon offsetting. So calculate how much carbon are emitted per flights and donate to charities that are doing things to offset carbon. I think what we used was wellca. I did some research and as part of this weekend, we also spent a lot of time thinking about how we were doing donations, both for last year and next year.

Speaker 2:

Because that goes back to a core value versus an aspirational value of social impact.

Speaker 1:

Definitely yeah.

Speaker 2:

Cool, ok, well, that kind of wraps up the formal agenda that we had. We closed off the evening with a date night and really letting Jared take the lead on creating a really cool experience for us. There were some more difficult conversations that we were overdue for regarding what would 10 years together really look like from tough conversations like kids and family and religion and living location and career and work-life balance, and we wanted to discuss those over the weekend and originally we were like we're going to have it all teed up, all the eyes will be dotted, all the teeth will be crossed, and there was kind of an evolution. But do you want to kind of share the more controversial part of the weekend and how we approach these really difficult topics that continue to come up for us?

Speaker 1:

Sure.

Speaker 1:

So, as a disclaimer, I am not recommending anybody try this, and nor the use of any sort of illegal substances, but one of the things I had heard and had learned about over the course of the past year or so, listening to different other podcasts and doing some reading, was the power of certain substances to help open each other up, to having conversations without judgment and from a place of love and really teeing couples up for having difficult conversations in a way that you wouldn't normally potentially be able to.

Speaker 1:

What was actually good that we had done prior to going into this was we hadn't just saved conversations for this time, but we had actually, over the course of the previous weeks and months, really been having difficult conversations.

Speaker 1:

That weren't easy.

Speaker 1:

We definitely came to stand stills at times on some of these topics, but kept persevering and kept an open mind, and one thing we did at the end of the weekend was both did a bit of MDMA, which people might sometimes think about as like a rave drug, ecstasy and probably, if you've tried it, may have done it in that setting, but I had learned from others personally and through different types of content, the power of using that in a more controlled setting with your partner to really open each other up and have not only a really interesting and cool great bonding experience, but really have those conversations from a place that you might normally otherwise not be able to do.

Speaker 1:

And we had actually expected to have a lot more deep conversations during that time but, as mentioned earlier, we teed ourself up pretty well and when we did this and had these conversations it was more just reconfirming the commitments and the stances we had landed upon earlier and overall it was a very positive experience that I'd recommend for others, under controlled environments, with prior experience and also a lot of prior learning about what could and couldn't happen during that time.

Speaker 2:

And you had approached it by giving me a little card. During happy hour I made us a round of spicy margaritas our favorite signature drink and you had a really fun card with a list of all the different activities we could do as part of this heart opening experience and journey we were about to go on and it included things like ecstatic dance, breathwork, going on an evening walk adventure in Toronto. We actually went to the Miracle in Osington Christmas themed bar. What were some other things?

Speaker 1:

Massage.

Speaker 2:

Massage.

Speaker 1:

Open-ended conversation.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I would also recommend that Just having a little something planned, but then not be so rigid Like now we're doing this.

Speaker 1:

Now we're doing this.

Speaker 2:

It should really just be like what do you feel to do now, babe?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and if anyone's interested, I'm happy to give them any more tips or advice, but definitely if you're thinking about doing something like this, it should be taken very seriously. A lot of preparation was done prior by both of us and we didn't take it lightly. We were both nervous going into the experience and did it in a controlled setting from sources that we trusted. Yeah, so don't just kind of these things can be dangerous, so there's risks involved. So something to consider, but also something to be definitely approached with caution. But overall we had a very positive and interesting experience, Not something that we do regularly because for a variety of reasons, but something that we might consider doing again in the future.

Speaker 2:

And the whole weekend. I think we really took a holistic approach. I think we can wrap up with just some pro tips on what we think worked really well, and I think it was that it wasn't just about goal setting, it wasn't just about heart-opening, drugs and kissing and having love chats. It was very thoughtful from beginning to end and we did fitness classes and we were intentional about the meals we had. We made one of our favorite recipes and we did this experience at the end and we set the mood and we had incense when the time was right and we lit a candle when the time was right and we put on our twinkly lights when the time was right. So I really think, just like teeing yourself up for an experience that breaks the script, and if you can leave your existing space and leave your apartment, that's even better for us. We didn't want to spend money on the physical space. We just did our best to turn our existing apartment and make it a bit more magical.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, those are all great tips. I'd also just say, while we had the time and energy and previous experience in goal setting under different means which meant that we could kind of elevate this experience, don't let the fact that we put all this time and effort into doing it. If you don't have that time and effort, that's OK. Creating any sort of experience with your partner or your own, just thinking about your future goals and what could come, is positive. So don't necessarily get bogged down by feeling you need to have incest and all those things, although I'd highly, highly recommend it because it really made it an amazing experience. Anything can help depending on where your starting point is. So I always recommend people thinking about their futures and setting goals, because you actually really never know what can happen when you put your mind to it.

Speaker 2:

And if you could pick one word to describe how you're feeling about 2020 after going through this experience, what word would you pick?

Speaker 1:

Blast off.

Speaker 2:

Is that one word? I think yeah, I have clarity. So I would say my word is clear.

Speaker 1:

It's a good one, I think. Crystal clear Wow.

Speaker 2:

That's two words. Are we going to end on that?

Speaker 1:

I don't know. I thought you have to do rapid fire.

Speaker 2:

That was it. Thank you so much, Jared, for coming on the show. It's always a pleasure to have you Pleasure is all mine. Listeners love hearing from you. Things should be in a good sport and always be my partner in crime in these intentional weekends. I don't know who inspires who, but I think together we're both half neurotic, half free spirits.

Speaker 1:

For sure. This was a lot of fun. Find me on Instagram or Facebook.

Speaker 2:

Until next time, enjoy your freedom. Thanks so much for listening to the full episode. I love being in your ears every month and, even though I'm going to now take some time to reset and replan the podcast, I rarely go 24 hours without sharing something on my Instagram stories, so if we're not already following each other, I'd love to connect there. Yes, I follow back. My handle is Sam LaLiberty. I'm so happy. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.

Speaker 2:

Laliberty, I'm super easy to find and on my account I'll share tips about how you can live the freedom lifestyle. I often go behind the scenes on my own digital nomad journey the good, the bad, the truth, the ugly. I'm about to go traveling for five weeks Mexico and then Costa Rica, so there'll be lots of learnings in that process. I'd love to take you with me. And then, who doesn't love self love and quotes? I'm a sucker for those, so that's kind of my content mix. If that sounds like something you're interested in, hit me up on Instagram. Let's keep in touch while I give your ears a bit of a break. And until next time, enjoy your freedom.

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Sam Laliberte

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