A LOT with Audra

Ep10
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Audra Dinell: [00:00:00] Hey, happy Monday. Welcome to a lot with Audra. This is our 10th episode, and I thought I would do something light and fun and fresh to celebrate our 10th episode. That's gonna be out on March 10th. If you're listening to this, the day that it comes out. I just thought that was so serendipitous and I wanna have a little fun.

So we're gonna talk about 10 fresh ideas. To cultivate joy in your life this spring and why? Well, I don't know. I love listening to podcast episodes that are like this, but also I get so [00:01:00] excited about the big, deep, meaty, meaningful things in life. But I also find personally so much joy in all the little things.

So while this podcast talks a lot about the bigger, deeper things. Today's episode is gonna be a little lighter, and we're gonna talk about some of the smaller things, some of the ways that we can cultivate joy in our life this spring. And I don't know about you, but I love a fresh start. So I love a brand new season, and spring is one of my favorite because it's my birthday

quarter, I guess birthday season. Birthday month. My birthday's in April. Spring is when I celebrate my birthday. But also, you know, there's just new life after a long cold winter where we're hibernating, we're sleeping more, we're spending more time inside. The weather's chilly. Everything's cozy. I love winter, but by the time we hit February, I am ready for [00:02:00] spring.

And I love just that fresh start that like. Chill in the air that starts to warm the way it smells outside. Hmm. My A DHD brain loves novelty, so I'm really, really good at finding little ways to bring joy into my life because my brain is just constantly seeking those things out. So I wanna share 10 thoughts for you.

10 ideas. Take 'em or leave 'em. Take some. Take all. Take one. Either way. I hope that you find something worthy in this episode that just infuses a little pep in your step this spring. Okay. So the first way I think we can bring joy into our life this spring is by refreshing our morning routine. So. I don't know about you, but I love morning routines.

I really love hearing how other people start their day. I love listening to podcasts about it, following social media [00:03:00] accounts, about morning routines, but at the end of all of it, I love to collect this information and I'm just so curious about how other people start their day. I always boil it down to what works for me and what works for me now because I've had many different morning routines over the years, depending on the season of life that I'm in, and I always find like a fresh season or a fresh quarter, a great time to revisit what am I doing with my mornings?

How am I spending my mornings? Are they setting me up for the day in a way that serves me? I love to give myself permission to make my morning routine feel good. So in the past, I have been an early morning exerciser, even I'm remembering before we moved back to the Midwest, I was in a really great routine of going to bar method at 6:00 AM on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then 7:00 AM on Saturdays, and then that was my morning routine those days.

The other days I'd wake up. About the [00:04:00] same time, I think, but I'd pour myself a coffee and I would journal and do some other morning activities before my family woke up. Now, this season of life, I am a person who wants some. Space in the morning. I don't want a prescriptive morning routine. So in the past, something prescriptive, like a list of like, here's the things I'm gonna do would help me.

But for some reason in this season of life, I am just really into having like. Loose, luxurious mornings, and when I say mornings, my alarm goes off at five 30 in the morning. My kids are early risers. My husband is also an early riser and works out a couple of mornings a week. But I like to wake up at five 30 and my hope and I laugh because it truly is a hope, is that I get an hour to myself in the morning and I wanna let the dogs out.

I wanna make a cup of coffee. I wanna do my bathroom things, obviously, first and foremost. And then I just [00:05:00] wanna sit down with whatever I'm currently into, whether that be a nonfiction book that I'm reading, or a fiction book that I'm reading, or if there's something on my mind and heart, I journal.

Oftentimes I will. Open up a podcast and listen and pause it often and just you know, contemplate and journal. So I really like my mornings right now in this season to feel spacious. So that's my first tip. Refresh your morning routine regardless. Of if it looks anything like mine or not, just think about what you need in the season.

When I get a full hour to myself in the morning with my cup of coffee finished before my family wakes up, you know, with an hour to just myself to, to my brain, you know, I feel so filled up and so ready to take on the day. The second thing I think we can do to infuse some joy into our lives this spring [00:06:00] is to examine the way we're exercising.

And what I'm doing currently right now is thinking about how I can take my workouts outside. So I will do more walking in the spring than I obviously did in the winter. We have a dog who is. Eight months old. She's a black lab. Her name's Willow, and she's adorable and super naughty, and that girl needs some walks.

So as I'm examining how I want to take care of myself physically, how I want to incorporate exercise into my schedule. I have committed to doing more outdoor walks, and I have an Apple watch that I've had for years and I don't really wear it very often because I just cannot stand one more like buzzer ding.

But somehow it has magically stopped buzzing or dinging me, and I yet now use it only to track my steps and. Like, obviously someone should look at this and help me get it figured out, but I was just like, oh my gosh, it's magic. It [00:07:00] stopped dinging me. Something has disconnected. So I've really liked wearing my Apple watch and looking at my step count, which is something that I hadn't done in the season before.

Sometimes on my walks I will just depending on the time of day and depending on what's going on in my world. Sometimes I'll listen to a podcast. Obviously I'm a big podcast listener. I've mentioned it a couple of times. Sometimes I will just go and get space that I need to just think and be, and that can be a challenge too.

But it is a challenge that I want to give myself. I wanna give myself space to just be and listen to the birds and enjoy nature. Other times I'll meet friends for a walk. So this afternoon I actually have a walk scheduled with my best friend. And that's how we're gonna spend time together this week.

Another thing I think we can do to bring joy into our lives this spring is to incorporate little treats, and I don't necessarily mean treats that you can eat, [00:08:00] although those are fine too. I'm more mean little pops that you can add to your day that you look forward to. So this might sound silly, but in the winter, like I love to go to bed early.

I love to just be cozy. Sometimes I even change into my PJ's like right at the start of the evening, which is not something I, I really do much of anytime else in the year. So in the winter, like I love those little cozy treats that, just tell me it's winter, get extra sleep. In the spring, I think of other things, and some of these things could be taking my kids to the park after school.

So my youngest just turned six and he got a drone for his birthday. Thank you mom. My kids have been having so much fun playing with it. And so it's like, deciding to pick them up from school and saying, Hey, let's, we're gonna go to the park. Little fun things like that. Also, I love buying new soaps [00:09:00] or candles that have a seasonal smell that I like at the turn of every season.

I'm also really into those poppy drinks. And spring is a fun time for them because they've got a lot of fresh flavors. I'll also pick up like a new magazine that is spring inspired. I currently subscribe to Magnolia. My husband loves it just like I do and also kind of makes fun of me for it. But listen, I'll find him picking it up and reading it at night before bed,

I love to just dive into the seasons through magazines. They're such great ways to just get a quick little hit of reading in and not have to be fully immersed in a book. Because articles are so quick and easy to read, and it's like, we're not using our phones. We're not using, you know, air pods, we're using our eyes and just enjoying an article.

It feels like revolutionary right now, I [00:10:00] guess 2025. We're reading print printed words anyways. So I'll pick up a fun magazine also. I'll look forward to a show or. In the spring and summer and fall, my husband and I love to enjoy evenings and mornings together on the porch. So sometimes we'll bounce between if we're really into a new show together.

We just finished shrinking on Apple TV and it was awesome. I I love that show so much. If we're not doing that we'll, enjoy a drink on the porch at night and just relax once the kids are in bed. I also love the turning of the season and a little treat being like starting a new planner. So the planners that I use are quarterly and so it always feels so great to block off some time on my calendar.

I try to do it during a weekday when I know I can have focused time and my family's gone and just carve out time to fill my new quarterly planner out and then bonus. If [00:11:00] I'm at the end of a notebook and I get to open up a fresh new notebook. So right now I'm opening up a notebook that a friend gave me for Christmas a few Christmases back, and I've been waiting to finish my last notebook, and it just feels like such a little treat to get to open up this fresh notebook that's been waiting for me.

So I don't know what treats you could think about in your life, but these are just little pops of something that is gonna make you look forward to the new season. Another thing. So this is the fourth idea I have for you, is if you're in a relationship plan some fun date nights. Okay? If you're not in a relationship plan.

Some fun friend outings. So I've always heard, you know, people recommend if you're a married person have weekly date nights and you know, my husband and I go on dates, we spend time together. But we've never been really committed fully to weekly date nights, sometimes biweekly. But this year, 2025, we have committed to weekly date nights.

And I will tell you, it's so fun to look forward to that, to know that it's on the [00:12:00] calendar on a regular basis every single week. And we've planned some super fun things. We're looking forward to going to a new restaurant that's a few hours away next month. We're taking a cooking class this weekend.

We've done concerts and shows. Just planning date nights has been really fun. So right now we have date nights on our calendar for about the next month. And, you know, we always coordinate sitter or family care and just get it all lined up and I find myself looking forward to this and looking forward to like, oh, okay, the next two or three weeks are planned out.

How fun. So I would encourage you to do that. The fifth idea I have for you is to try out the Fair Play system with your family. So Fair Play is a book written by Eve Rodsky, and it's all about the ways that we divide and conquer domestic life [00:13:00] as a couple. But really what I've done is brought my kids into it.

So my kids are six and eight. You know, the chore stuff is starting. Consistency is something that we all struggle with in my house. Especially those of us who have a DHD in my household. And so I thought it would be fun to bust out. She has actually, the book comes also with a card game that you can buy.

And so I busted out this card game, it's called the Fair Play System, right? And went through all the cards and there's instructions in the deck on how to do it, but basically it was like, here's all these tasks. Which of these tasks apply to our family? Like pet care? Yes. We have a dog. So pet care applies to our family.

Aging, ailing parents. No, we're not in that boat right now. So we're gonna put that card aside. So what we did is we took out all the cards and talked about who typically does these in our family, and is this person gonna do it again in this next season? The reason I did it with my kids this time is because they're getting to the age where they can [00:14:00] totally take some of the cards.

So my youngest, who's six, has challenged himself to take the dishes card. And so we are working on how to do dishes together and we are choosing to pay our kids some chore money if they participate in these chores. But we made it more fun than it has been in the past because in the past, you know, we've done chore charts and, you know, always trying to figure out what works, but

we pulled out this fair play game and it was more interesting to the kids, like they wanted to say, you know, I said, raise your hand. You know, if this is something you think you wanna do, and I love my kids. One of 'em was like, yeah mom, I wanna do the calendaring system for our family. And I was like, love you.

Not gonna happen yet, but trash, yes, you can do trash. Anyways, so this is cultivating a little bit of joy in my life right now, because while I know there's gonna be much training, it's not like it's gonna just get the dishes off my plate, but [00:15:00] we are gonna have some shared language. We're gonna have some shared like purpose.

Hey, you know, remember the fair play game? This is what you know, you chose. And we just did it by month. So we did it for the month of March. So it's going to be a good way to connect with my kids, help them build these skills that they're gonna need as an adult. And just a fun little refresher for our family.

Okay. The sixth way I think we can infuse joy into our life this spring is to give ourselves permission to slow down. This is so challenging for me because I genuinely wanna say yes to all the things. I mean, I'm an extrovert. I love doing all the things. Of course, I wanna be a people pleaser. So I have to fight that urge.

But like in general, when I say yes to things, it's because I really do wanna do them. Not because I feel necessarily [00:16:00] some sense of obligation or that someone's gonna be mad at me if I say no. I wanna do all the things. However, I know I can also burn out really easily even doing things I love. And so this spring to me is a perfect time to just give myself permission to slow down.

To say no

To remember that every yes I say to something is a no to something else. I love seeing my calendar with a little bit of space on it. I am getting to do more content creating these days, and that's so fun. And also comes with the need to have a calendar that has some space for me to think in it. And as I mentioned in one of the previous episodes, my business does slow down a little bit in quarter two.

So if yours does not, if you're in an uptick, this might not be the tip for you. But when you have a season and make sure you do have a season where you can just say, okay. I am gonna pop off [00:17:00] the hamster wheel for a little bit and just slow it down. I'm going to eat, sitting down. I'm gonna take my dog for a walk every day.

I am not gonna block my calendar back to back to back. I'm gonna make sure there's 30 minutes in between each appointment, something like that. I am really looking forward to giving myself some space and permission to slow down this spring. The seventh thing that we can do to infuse joy into our lives this spring is to have fun playing with our wardrobe.

I love building Pinterest boards. I have a board for each season and I update them. As needed or about every year. But I also really love this time where it's like winter to spring, we can bring in a lot of layers. I just love Pinterest.

It's like, not social, but a great place to like spark my creativity. Whereas some social media channels, you know, it's like [00:18:00] all about the connection and staying up to date and expressing yourself. What I love about Pinterest is it just feels like, a sweet space to get some

inspiration and be creative. So I love creating boards and looking at what do I have in my closet? What am I gonna bring out that I haven't worn in a couple of months? And creating a Pinterest board that will help me come up with new creative ideas of how to wear what I already have. Maybe it helps me identify a couple new pieces I want for this.

Season based on the outfits I'm pinning, but I just love diving into my style in the transition months. If you are in Wichita, we have an event all about this in Wichita, Kansas on Thursday, March 27th, it's called This is Her, and we partner with. Bradley Fair Shopping Center, and we're going to be talking about the art of styling.

We're bringing in a personal stylist. We're working with Lululemon [00:19:00] on athleisure. It's gonna be a really fun event that helps spark some creativity and how you can bring some joy into your wardrobe this year. And more than that, really how you can show up on the outside in the way that reflects the inside.

So I just think using your clothes and style is just such a great way to do that. Okay, number eight, organize something. I know so many of you out there are like me and love, love, love, love to organize. Right now my desk is a hot mess and it's like I don't have time to organize it and make it cute and do all the things.

My bookshelves have gotten crazy. I hosted my son's sixth birthday party for my family and just took the books that were lingering on my bookshelves that weren't like styled and just shoved them in the drawers and like, I need to clean those babies out. So spring, spring cleaning, right?

Spring is such a fun time to organize and feel fresh. Okay, so the ninth thing I wanna share with you is to [00:20:00] commit time to a hobby this spring. So earlier in the year, Gretchen Rubin, who is an author I followed for decade plus. Came out with this challenge to read 25 minutes a day in 2025.

And in the past I had always had book goals. I'd always wanted to read two books a month or 24 books a year. And typically I get to somewhere like between 18 to 22. And this year I flipped that on its head and started reading 25 minutes a day this year and 2025. And what I found is it got me reading more and more, and I'm not even really tracking my time anymore, but I'm noticing that I can very easily read.

Two fiction books a month, and then one nonfiction. So the first month in January, I read a business book. In February I read a parenting book. And what I love about devouring these sort of like personal development, self-help professional development, just development based action [00:21:00] oriented books. One by one is that you can actually apply the content a little bit more than if you're just flying through them.

So I have loved flying through these fiction books. I love to read and I'm always getting sucked into a story. I've read so many good books this year, I have to say in March I'm reading Let Them by Mel Robbins. I love her. And at my business, the thread, we are doing a book club on Let them, but that doesn't start until May.

And I tried to hold off and I just can't, so I'm doing it. It's happening in March. So commit time to a hobby. Make time for something that you love. Pick up something new, whether it's pickleball or gardening. Last spring I got into gardening and to be determined how well that turned out. I mean, I'm gonna be honest, I don't think it probably turned out very well, but we, we will see what comes back up this year.

But it was just so fun to research and just be a learner and a beginner again, [00:22:00] and dedicate my time to something. New and productive and something I was interested in but had really no experience in. The last idea, I wanna leave you 10 things. On March 10th that we can do to bring joy into our life in the spring, which is starting next Thursday, next week, is to make something new for dinner.

I have also gotten into cooking a little bit, and I will say, especially when we just did the fair play card game with my family, I am not the cook. I do not meal plan, I do not grocery shop. I do not make the meals on a regular basis, but I have started to, you know, make treats for gatherings or take one meal a week.

And it's just something so fun that I look forward to. How this brings joy into my life is I get. Recipes from magazines or my favorite bloggers who [00:23:00] are on Instagram. These amazing women who cook these beautiful looking meals on Instagram.

And I try something that I think I can do that might be a little bit of a stretch. So I I use Real Simple magazine and mark the pages, like flag them a little bit. If I'm like, oh, that's a recipe that I think looks good and I think I can make it because I pretty much know what all the ingredients are.

And I think we own all those things in our kitchen. And then I'll just put it to the calendar and I'll tell my husband, okay, I'm making dinner on this day. And it's just so fun to do something new. Those are my 10 ideas. I hope that you found something interesting and valuable. I know again, I love listening to podcast episodes like these that are seasonal and just other people sharing ideas.

I think it's really important that we are pursuing. Purpose and meaning and living and building this intentional life. And I also think it's really important that we're just sprinkling in moments of magic, [00:24:00] moments of joy and lifting ourselves up. As much as we can along the way because the road can be hard.

Things can be challenging, especially when we're pursuing things that we are passionate about, things that we care about, things that are meaningful, and so giving ourselves these little infusions of joy, whether you take any of the 10 tips I shared or come up with your own, I think it's really important for our.

Wellbeing for our mental health, just for something to look forward to in the day. That is super easy and attainable. Okay, I hope you have a great Monday. Enjoy this last week of winter. Spring is next week, and if there's anything in this episode that has resonated with you, I'd love if you would just share this episode on social media.

Share what you are taking away from it. Tag me. I would love to thank you if you do that, [00:25:00] and I'll see you next week.