I'll be honest—I almost took this book off of my reading list this year, because I felt like it was cruel and unusual punishment to myself to read a book about sleep the year that I would have a newborn baby. BUT I'm really glad I read it anyway, because it's helping me now in pregnancy and it will help during that newborn phase, as hard as it's going to be, as well as prioritizing sleep for our whole family for years to come.

I get pretty nerdy today—fair warning!

In a lot of ways my work has really been simplified for me. I have been forced to be really strategic and simplified with my time and my plans. Today, I'm going to share ways that I took things off of my plate, got organized and really simplified my work and my goals this year, and moving forward.

While I was running my photography business and my team, we had to get an email system in place and I turned my inbox into a little game. Over the years I have put a lot of disciplines into place and match that up with this little game that I play and all of that has really helped me to get control over it and not feel as overwhelmed, but instead, feel more like an #EmailNinja.

Today, I'm going to teach you how to be an Email Ninja, too.

I'm so excited to welcome Rachel Cruze back to the Work & Play Podcast! We're talking about the why behind your money—why we think or behave the way that we do when it comes to our spending, saving and relating to money. And most importantly, how we can continue to dream with our money when it feels like life might be a little out of our control.

Booker T. Washington's life story has impacted me so deeply. I can honestly say, this is one of those books that has changed me. I hope you'll listen in to his inspiring story, my top three takeaways, and I really, really hope that you're going to pick up this book.

When we feel overloaded by too many decisions, our ability to make good, clear decisions decreases, which is called “decision fatigue”: basically we just get so tired of making so many decisions. It doesn't matter how strong or smart you are. Your brain just says “I'm done today.”

I want to ask you simple question and let you in on a few ways that I'm trying to actively eliminate decision fatigue In my own life.

I decided to start off 2021 with my friend Chrystal Evans’ new book called The 28 Day Prayer Journey after experiencing all of 2020. After my talk with Chrystal back in Episode 080 (which was fantastic, you should go back and listen to it), I just knew in my heart, this was the way I wanted to start off this year, and I am so grateful I did.

I'm doing something different today! In celebration of the 100th episode, I asked you all on Instagram for 100 questions to answer, and I'm really excited just to have fun and allow you guys to get to know me on a different level. A lot of these are personal, a lot of them are lighthearted, a lot of them are fun and hopefully some of them you'll find helpful to you and your life. Believe me, you want to listen to the end.

Today's episode is a recap of the very last book in our 2020 Book Club: Parenting with Love and Logic. We read it in December. It was highly recommended to me by so many friends, and it's already proven to be such a gift in our own family and my own parenting. I hope today's podcast will be super practical and helpful for any moms and dads listening.

I was talking with a friend the other day and she asked me the question, what are you fighting for this year? And it took me a minute to answer her, but after a pause, I finally said, “You know, I think I'm fighting for fun.” I know that might sound trite or silly, but I'm realizing it's—it's not that silly, it's actually necessary.

Today I'm going to be sharing with you seven ways that you can build trust with those around you and how I'm going to be working on that in my own life.

Today, I'm going to talk about how we don't actually know what 2021 is going to hold, but how we can approach it with wisdom.

Today, I'm going to share three extremely simple prayers that I pray. You have my full permission to take them with you and use them for the rest of your life, and I hope that they bless you.

My friend Reagan has a heart of gold—you'll see in our conversation, just how amazing she is. And the whole reason I interviewed her is because she took the Contentment Challenge to another level. She and her husband, Jeremy gave up shopping—get this—for the entire year of 2020 to pursue a greater life of contentment and eliminate debt. I think their story and how it all turned out is going to inspire you like crazy.

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of surface, trite, make-it-what-you-want-it Christianity. I want the real God of the universe. I want what He has to say, even if it's hard to hear it. This book showed me the practices that we can do as believers to welcome Jesus into our very real lives and to hear His very real voice a little bit clearer. I'll be honest. These disciplines, they aren't easy. They are not for the faint of heart, but they are good. And they have changed me.

Today, I'm going to be sharing all of our favorite Christmas traditions. And sharing this is really just to encourage you to make time for the most important things, and hopefully just to invite you into our family for a little bit in sharing how Will and I have brought our different sets of our own family's traditions and made them our own.

So when I became a mom, during that newborn phase of life, it was very hard to determine which way was up or down. The Lord taught me this simple practice. It doesn't take a lot of time, but still to this day, it speaks straight to my heart and it grounds me. It's simply focusing on one word throughout your whole day.