Kristi is a writer and mom with a unique perspective on the world. We first met when I was the director of Millennial Engagement for Monsanto. She was working for a dairy checkoff program while also being a dietitian and college professor. Kristi has always been supportive and inspirational, helping many, including myself, to push the envelope and take our careers to new heights. She recently left her job to explore new opportunities and started a Substack called "Noticing," which is a must-read for anyone interested in bits of wisdom about parenting, relationships, and being present in the moment.
In this interview, we delve into Kristi's journey, her insights on life, and the pearls of wisdom she's gathered over the years. From her experiences in agriculture to her support during my transition to entrepreneurship, Kristi's story is filled with valuable lessons and inspiration. Whether you're looking for advice on raising children, maintaining a good relationship with your spouse, or simply being more mindful, this conversation offers something unique and impactful. Tune in to hear Kristi's story and gain a fresh perspective on navigating life's challenges.
Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
6:17 - Where does Kristi come from?
13:41 - Can you give a young person perspective?
23:47 - How to properly apologize
33:39 - Being "in it" as a parent
38:35 - Presence vs fear of nostalgia
44:54 - Polychronic vs monochronic time
53:28 - Teaching your kids empathy
1:01:28 - The biggest challenge with diets
1:15:49 - Adding molecules to our food
1:21:15 - Where to find Kristi
Kristi's Substack - https://substack.com/@kristispence
Kristi's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristispence/
Connect with us!
=============================
IG: ➡︎ / legacy_interviews
===========================
How To Work With Us:
===========================
Want to do a Legacy Interview for you or a loved one?
Book a Legacy Interview | https://legacyinterviews.com/ —
A Legacy Interview is a two-hour recorded interview with you and a host that can be watched now and viewed in the future. It is a recording of what you experienced, the lessons you learned and the family values you want passed down. We will interview you or a loved one, capturing the sound of their voice, wisdom and a sense of who they are. These recorded conversations will be private, reserved only for the people that you want to share it with.
#Vancecrowepodcast #legacyinterviews
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:00:20
Speaker 1
if people don't
00:00:00:20 - 00:00:03:21
Speaker 1
take your advice, it's because they don't want to be you.
00:00:03:23 - 00:00:13:09
Speaker 1
And so, like, that can be hurtful when you're the person that's like, I love you so much. I want you to be just, you know, I want you to be able to get past the problems that I had.
00:00:13:09 - 00:00:20:07
Speaker 1
tell them in the moment when I get it wrong, like try to apologize in the moment. And I think that's been pretty powerful.
00:00:20:07 - 00:00:32:21
Speaker 1
You know, as, as dietitians or, you know, any sort of health practitioner. I think it's super important to listen to your patient to find out where they're at and, and what they might need to be able to be successful.
00:00:32:21 - 00:00:42:10
Speaker 1
And so for some people, that might be a much more rigid diet type concept. And for others, it might be that they need to give themselves permission.
00:00:44:02 - 00:00:53:02
Speaker 1
Howdy. I'm Hannah New Inch Wonder, a production lead at a soybean seed facility in central Illinois. And you're listening to Advanced Cool podcast.
00:00:53:02 - 00:01:15:13
Speaker 1
Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. Christy Spence, a writer and mom who has a unique perspective on the world, joins us today. I met Christy back when I was the director of Millennial Engagement for Monsanto, and she was working for a dairy checkoff program. Uniquely, she was not only working for this checkoff, she was a dietitian and a college professor.
00:01:15:15 - 00:01:36:07
Speaker 1
And when I talked to people that worked for Christy, I heard some of the best praise I've ever heard. Given to a boss. People said that she was supportive and inspirational, innovative, and helped them take their careers onto trajectories that they never imagined. I kept in contact with Christy, and because we were in agriculture, we kind of stayed in the same orbit.
00:01:36:09 - 00:02:03:19
Speaker 1
She offered me a lot of support, particularly when I was pushing the envelope as the director of Millennial Engagement. And so when I finally decided to head out on my own, I called Christy among just a few people to ask for their advice and where they thought I should go. Christy was so supportive. She mentioned that she often shared the talk that I gave to her college students every year, and it was just one of those things that gave me the inspiration and courage to go out on my own.
00:02:03:21 - 00:02:25:18
Speaker 1
Now, a few years later, Christy has recently left her job and started looking around for what's next. She called me up to talk about it, and the only piece of advice that I had for her was, you should really share the pearls of wisdom and insight that you've had throughout the years. I know that it's helped me, and I know many, many people that have worked around you that felt that same way.
00:02:25:20 - 00:02:55:02
Speaker 1
So not because of my advice. Christy was off on her own, but she did start a Substack and it is called noticing. And it is a must read for me because it has all sorts of little bits of wisdom about raising your children, having a good relationship with your spouse, and really just being present in the moment. I'm excited for you to listen to this interview because it's a little bit different, but I think that it will hit you in a way that you just don't have very often.
00:02:55:08 - 00:03:25:20
Speaker 1
So I'm excited to get to this interview, and we're going to get there in just a moment. But I have a couple of things that I want to, cover with you. First, we have started a brand new podcast called the AG Tribes Report. We show it at 630 at night. It is a live stream, podcast where I bring on a co-host that represents one of the many ag tribes from throughout the United States and even Canada, to talk about what is the big news that is impacting the culture of agriculture.
00:03:25:22 - 00:03:49:09
Speaker 1
This has been a huge success and I'm really excited to be doing it. It's 30 minutes. It is high, fast paced show, and you can either catch it on the live stream at 630 on ECS, YouTube or Facebook, or you can listen to it the next day on any of the regular podcast apps you catch us with. So I'm really excited about that, and I hope you will check out the AG Tribes report.
00:03:49:11 - 00:04:22:18
Speaker 1
Another thing that I wanted to share with you is that the fall and winter speaking season is heating up. My calendar has gotten so full that I've actually had to turn down a couple of speeches, but that doesn't mean that every weekend is full. Right now people are asking me to come give a talk called Changing Minds. This is a talk about how you can have great conversations with people and how that impacts them, whether it's an older adult that you're getting to tell your stories to, or if it's somebody else that you've really known that you've had to have a deep conversation with them.
00:04:23:00 - 00:04:48:05
Speaker 1
We talk about many of the insights that I've learned through legacy interviews, but also just in my world of being an interested person. What can you learn about how to become better at starting conversations about interacting with people, listening so that they can feel really deeply heard, and how to handle some of the tough situations we get into where you don't know what to say or how to get out of kind of a messy conversation.
00:04:48:07 - 00:05:15:00
Speaker 1
People have given me wonderful feedback on this, and I am really excited to spend the fall and the winter traveling around to give this talk. If your group would like me to come, this is perfect for families or young farmer organizations. Then go to Vance Baucom and check it out. You can always hit the contact page. Tell me a little bit about your event, and we can have a conversation about if it's going to fit for, for both of us.
00:05:15:02 - 00:05:19:18
Speaker 1
All right. So without further ado, let's head to the interview with Christy Spence.
00:05:19:18 - 00:05:25:03
Speaker 1
Christy Spence, welcome to the podcast.
00:05:25:05 - 00:05:57:18
Speaker 1
So, Christy, you are somebody that's a little off the beaten path from our who we interview on the show most of the time. But one of the reasons that I've had you on is because I think there are very few people that I'm interested in how they parent and how they've done it. But as you and I have gotten to be friends over the years, and I've gotten to read your writings that you've been publishing over the last few months, I was like, this is a great person for me to have a dialog about the things I'm struggling with, the things that they have struggled with, because I think anybody that's listening right now must
00:05:57:18 - 00:09:39:19
Speaker 1
think at some point, there's no way it's this hard for everybody else. It's only this hard for me. And I would like to talk a lot about that. But before we get there, why don't we talk about how you came to be writing a regular Substack and, kind of who you were before, you started this kind of new life you have going on right now.
00:09:39:21 - 00:09:57:18
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, I remember when I was preparing to leave. What was at the time? Bear. But I had been working for Monsanto. You were one of the people I called to be like. Hey, I'm thinking about making this move. And, it was. I remember how supportive you were. And also, like, just open to being like, what are you thinking about?
00:09:57:22 - 00:10:19:01
Speaker 1
And so when when it came time and you were thinking about leaving, it was, it was just a really interesting thing because I think a lot of times people can't leave the situations they're in, until they know what the next lily pad is that they're hoping to. And I was in the position, and you were in the position where you were like, I don't exactly know what that is.
00:10:19:04 - 00:12:27:17
Speaker 1
This may be a wildly bad idea, but I sense so deeply that I need to do this that, like, I can't get it out of my head. And so I know the the fear and the excitement and all of the things that are mixed together with what you're going through right now.
00:12:27:19 - 00:12:44:14
Speaker 1
Yeah. Carl Jung talks about how, You know, you can't really force yourself to read a book you're not interested in. you can read the words and certainly, like, when you're a student, you know, you shouldn't be like, oh, I'm not interested. I'm not going to read this. But like, for the most part, you have to be curious.
00:12:44:14 - 00:13:07:07
Speaker 1
And it's something like deeper than just your rational, intellectual self saying, I should probably read this. It's got to be like, there's something here that if I can discover what it is that they know this is going to help me somewhere, and it's this, it's this, like amazing. I often describe it as like, walking on clouds, like where you're just jumping from one puffy cloud to another as you're reading.
00:13:07:07 - 00:13:24:10
Speaker 1
It's not difficult. You don't have to be like, all right, I gotta stop what I'm doing to go read. You're just like, oh, here's an opportunity for me to go discover these things. And I think that when we are aware that that can occur, that you're, I call it the demon. Right? The inner voice inside of you that you don't control.
00:13:24:12 - 00:14:52:23
Speaker 1
Then you have, it leads you to places that you couldn't rationally have gotten to.
00:14:53:01 - 00:15:09:11
Speaker 1
Yeah. I've been in in a in a back and forth conversation with a good friend of mine named West. And, he's been talking about, you know, I see my son and I see things that if he would just, like, take a little bit of my advice, he would not be having some of the challenges that he's having.
00:15:09:15 - 00:15:39:14
Speaker 1
And he's like, it's so hard because, you know, you want to make it easier for them. And we kind of had this back and forth. And the best advice I've ever gotten about mentorship came from a guy that, was a, you know, a convicted felon. His name's, Wes Watson. He's this huge, musclebound dude. Like, not the guy that you would go up to being like, hey, tell me some advice about, about, giving advice or, you know, and he said, you know, if people don't take your advice, it's because they don't want to be you.
00:15:39:16 - 00:15:56:19
Speaker 1
And so, like, that can be hurtful when you're the person that's like, I love you so much. I want you to be just, you know, I want you to be able to get past the problems that I had. And then when you take it in terms of a child, right, this is a this is a person that doesn't even know that they can choose who to become.
00:15:56:21 - 00:16:24:05
Speaker 1
They're just present in the world. And so it's really hard to say how much of what I'm giving them is going to shape them. Like, right now I'm at the stage of like the most important thing I can do is hammer in manners that that this is just the way that we behave. But like advice is virtually not good at all.
00:16:24:07 - 00:17:39:20
Speaker 1
What manners are important to you guys? What do you guys focus on?
00:17:39:22 - 00:17:55:02
Speaker 1
So I record these legacy interviews. And one of the questions that I ask, towards the end, particularly a family, is a big emphasis for these people. And generally, if somebody bought you a legacy interview, that means you did have a pretty close knit family. And that question that you're talking about, like, what does it mean to be a Spence?
00:17:55:02 - 00:18:18:21
Speaker 1
What does it mean to be a CRO is something that, some people really think deeply about, and some people, it just emerges naturally. Right. And I think in the ad community there, everybody says we were hard working, right? That's that's something they all want. But the other things of kindness and, you know, are we you know, like in my wife's family, we complete what we start.
00:18:18:23 - 00:18:30:19
Speaker 1
And you see how much that's been drilled into those, those my wife and her sisters and how much that influences what they do day in and day out. Because they finish with they start to almost to a fault.
00:20:17:02 - 00:20:33:02
Speaker 1
I mean, I think it's great. And the ownership. I mean, if you're going to live out values, you have to feel like they weren't just. You know, that you are somehow inhabiting them. You don't necessarily need to be the one that came up with them. But to be able to have the guidance inside of there in my family, what I'm discovering.
00:20:33:02 - 00:20:57:17
Speaker 1
So I have a almost four year old and a little one that just turned two today. And, and so but one of the things that I was doing was my, my oldest really responds to stories. So we tell stories about different people. And it didn't take very long before I was like, oh, I can't tell Uncle Dan stories because she's going to go tell Uncle Dan's stories and his opinion of whether or not that was true.
00:20:57:19 - 00:21:14:17
Speaker 1
But I also have all these other stories. So I have like, I tell stories about when I worked on a ship and we talk about silly Charlie and silly Charlie was this guy. He's a real guy. that he just he was always forgetful. And even though he was, like, really nice and happy, he broke things all the time.
00:21:14:22 - 00:21:34:15
Speaker 1
And what I didn't realize is, as I'm telling these stories, then later, my daughter would be like, that's what silly Charlie would do. And so now she doesn't want to be like Silly Charlie. She wants to be something else. And storytelling is a way of imputing values has been really powerful, and I'm going to just continue to do it as much as she'll absorb.
00:21:34:15 - 00:21:55:18
Speaker 1
I'm going to try and put out there.
00:21:55:19 - 00:21:57:15
Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:22:53:02 - 00:23:15:16
Speaker 1
Yeah. That's actually exactly how I came to the storytelling was that my daughter was like. Tell me when you were a little boy. And I told her these stories, and you see, like, I think, like, oh, these are kind of boring, or they don't make me look that good, but just an absorption of it. And I see it in legacy interviews, too, because you have these people that are, you know, in their 60s, early 70s and they tell me these stories.
00:23:15:16 - 00:23:40:06
Speaker 1
And I always say at the beginning, it's really easy to tell stories where you did everything right. The more important stories are the ones where you didn't make the right decision and you fell down and something happened. And the letters that I get from people about legacy interviews are oftentimes like, I finally became an adult today because I realized that my parents didn't know what they were doing when they were raising kids either.
00:23:40:06 - 00:24:52:11
Speaker 1
And now I see that, and I don't feel as bad about the mistakes I'm making. It's just from my kid eyes, they seem like they knew, you know, that there was a thing as an adult, and an adult means you make all the right decisions.
00:24:58:07 - 00:26:43:00
Speaker 1
Yeah. They're defensive. Yeah. Of course. Like, Yeah.
00:26:43:01 - 00:27:03:21
Speaker 1
My. My wife, stopped me one time from, making my oldest child apologize to the younger child. And she was like, look, if you force the apology, all they're doing is they're figuring out, like, what it is that they have to do to get around the this obstacle. But they're not actually, you know, apologizing. How do you feel about that?
00:27:03:21 - 00:27:21:08
Speaker 1
Do you force your kids to apologize?
00:27:21:10 - 00:27:22:13
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah.
00:27:22:15 - 00:29:35:12
Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:29:35:14 - 00:29:55:07
Speaker 1
Yeah, I, I think the thing I ultimately apologize for is something I did not expect would be, a problem for me. But it has been a challenge. And that is losing my temper. Like, I, I'm, like, generally a very controlled person, and I would say I had before having children literally gone years without ever raising my voice.
00:29:55:09 - 00:30:13:14
Speaker 1
And now you have your kids like my, my wife and I both run our own company. So there is always stress, like at any moment of the day and in the weekend, like I could be working and it would have a material impact on my family. And so sometimes you're sitting there and you're like, why am I dealing with this?
00:30:13:14 - 00:30:38:10
Speaker 1
Like, why are you guys yelling? Why are you, you know, crying about things that are that are like, clearly not something I can solve. And, that's the point where I wonder, are other people under this much stress like, and is this new or if if my wife and I were a one, you know, one stay at home parent would they be having this much stress and this much pressure that they, you know, blow their stack?
00:30:38:12 - 00:32:43:01
Speaker 1
What do you think?
00:32:43:03 - 00:33:04:06
Speaker 1
Yeah. You you have, in your writing, one of the reoccurring series that you talk about, which I. It really resonates with me. Is this concept of being in it and like, it's it's, you have one of your opening early stories. I remember you talking about how many Rudolph's did you do? And you were talking about how many times did you sing Rudolph the Red-Nosed reindeer to your child as you were trying to get them to sleep?
00:33:04:11 - 00:33:29:21
Speaker 1
And that hit me right between the eyes, because we had that with our first daughter, where as soon as she was born, she was an uncontrollable child for nearly two years. Right. So this is just constant stress where you're going from two hyper productive people, my wife and I, really productive to now being completely at the mercy of this terrorist who at any time can start screaming and crying and there's nothing you can do about it.
00:33:29:23 - 00:37:13:08
Speaker 1
And when you described it as like, you just as like being in it, I, I got it. So tell me more about being in it.
00:37:13:10 - 00:37:33:18
Speaker 1
Yeah, I like I'm. I hate children's songs. And I, like the just the, like, quirky nature of them. And a couple of months ago, I was driving my daughters to school, and, like, they're both advocating for the song that they want. And I realized, like, wait a second. Like, there will come a day when they'll be like, dad.
00:37:33:18 - 00:37:55:05
Speaker 1
Like, stop paying attention to us. We want privacy. We don't want to listen to it. You want to listen to we don't want to sing. And it made me like, stop and be like, all right, what do I like about this? And like, just to just to be able to be focused on the fact that they are giggling with glee about talking about Uncle Dan in a garbage can.
00:37:55:07 - 00:38:15:13
Speaker 1
And so, like, I have a thousand things to do, but if I miss that, it's gone and you don't get it back. And the challenge so that like, becomes kind of an obvious thing, right? You're like, okay, I should be present, but the challenge that I faced is I don't want to be present for fear of being nostalgic.
00:38:15:15 - 00:38:33:03
Speaker 1
Right? For fear of being like, oh, well, I needed to absorb all of that because I think that's what leads people to taking obsessive photographs. You know, where where instead of actually being there, you're pulling out your phone to be like, I really want to remember this. And so all of their memories are seen through the lens of a camera.
00:38:33:05 - 00:42:15:20
Speaker 1
So what's the balance between being present and being afraid of nostalgia?
00:42:15:22 - 00:42:34:07
Speaker 1
I love this, the the, the and the thing that you're talking about. Being present with your kids or being present really? At any time. Like if you are around somebody that is being present with you, you cannot help but feel it, right? Like it is a truly powerful thing. And actually, I was just talking with my editor about this the other day.
00:42:34:07 - 00:42:55:16
Speaker 1
Like, I think that one of the things that makes, doing these legacy interviews super valuable, even more valuable than the actual recording, is that there's a person or a couple that is sitting there, and the person listening to them has literally no other motive other than listening. I'm not a therapist, so I'm not trying to fix them.
00:42:55:22 - 00:43:17:19
Speaker 1
I'm not an attorney. So I'm not like looking for like, what is the legal ramifications of this? So it's so seldom in life that you're ever with somebody that they are like, I'm going to listen to what you're saying. And I'm oh, you used a word that was really interesting. There belong. so I'm, I'm going to actually touch on that word and all these things are going to unlock.
00:43:18:00 - 00:43:33:17
Speaker 1
And so for me, like, it's, it's it's been amazing because this is the first time I've ever had one of those, you know, if you do a job you love, you'll never work a day in your life. I have to work a lot, so I'm not quite there yet. But like the, the listening part of it allows you to.
00:43:33:18 - 00:44:54:20
Speaker 1
Because being present with somebody, there's literally nothing else. I that's like it.
00:44:54:22 - 00:45:15:08
Speaker 1
We. Time is is absolutely something that we impart on our children. Because in like, there's a concept called poly chronic and monochromatic time. So poly chronic is island time. It's where if you and I are having a conversation, it would be absolutely absurd for me to look at my watch and be like, oh, it's 1:00 time to get up and go do something else.
00:45:15:08 - 00:45:33:00
Speaker 1
And, but in monochromatic time, the industrialized world, if I tell you, hey, I have to leave at one, you're not going to have any ill will towards me. I'm going to be able to shake your hand and leave. And it's like, oh, that's expected. But poly chronic focus is way more on relationships. So it's like, I am going to be here.
00:45:33:00 - 00:47:23:09
Speaker 1
You and I are going to walk together. If it takes longer than it should, then we'll get there when we can. But you can't run in industrialized society that way. But you can run a tribal society that way. And so we are teaching our kids the sort of time that they're going to need to be successful. But it is definitely painful because I think the natural state is poly chronic.
00:47:23:11 - 00:47:46:18
Speaker 1
So you talked about play. I think, like there's. I'll just speak from my own experience. we're at the place where I am, like, the children should be playing with each other and by themselves more. But when we have them in the daycare, we have two. We're running two businesses. We we can't be watching them. And so part of that is, well, I want to and my wife especially wants to be with them.
00:47:46:19 - 00:48:21:23
Speaker 1
But like how do you facilitate children to get to the place where they are like, I can go outside and I can find something to do, like, and at what age is the right time to start pushing them out of the nest in that way?
00:48:22:01 - 00:48:22:20
Speaker 2
Oh.
00:48:22:22 - 00:48:26:07
Speaker 1
A couple more years of this.
00:49:40:07 - 00:50:07:21
Speaker 1
It's, really refreshing to hear that about the idea that, like, you don't have thoughts that are more than a sentence and a half. You know, my wife one day was like, she was. She was like, well, you know, everybody needs my attention. And I was like, a little grumble back. And then I was like, actually, no, that's true, because we lived together for ten years, and I have this sounding board of this person that I can explain very complicated ideas to and get her feedback and get her input.
00:50:07:23 - 00:50:26:19
Speaker 1
And now all of a sudden that's put in a woodshed, chipper and, and just, you know, just gone. And so this is probably the area where the most stress gets created. It's like we're trying to have dinner the way that we did when we were just just the two of us. And now you've got two kids that are vying for both parents attention.
00:50:26:21 - 00:51:17:21
Speaker 1
You've got dad who really wants mom's attention, mom who's got 100 things going on. And like the pressure of that seems, oh, like like, what are we doing? This can't be the way that people live, that they're under so much stress.
00:52:54:14 - 00:53:15:02
Speaker 1
You know, one of the things we talked about earlier was about the models and advice. Like trying to give your kids advice. And I remember when you were first starting to think about, hey, should I do some more writing? And you were like, I have these models I talk about with my kids, and some of you're my favorite writing that you do is those models, because it gives me a way to think about something, differently.
00:53:15:02 - 00:55:59:21
Speaker 1
And you did one about, the, your boys putting the other one in a box, you know, in assuming that, you know what they are thinking. Can you talk about that box? I think that's a really good model for people to understand.
00:55:59:23 - 00:56:19:06
Speaker 1
Well, what I think about that box metaphor is it answers a problem that's so old. It's like, biblical that that concept of, You're never a prophet in your own land, right? Where your own family you may like. And I think this happens in egg all the time. So you've got a young person that wants to come back to the farm.
00:56:19:06 - 00:56:45:07
Speaker 1
They have new ideas, they have ways to change and update things. And everybody looks at them and says, oh yeah, you're always coming up with the next new thing. And so they don't really listen to you what you're saying. And I think that, like even you, you write, I'm not sure if it was in the same article or if it was in a different one, but you ended up talking about how judgmental you are on your own change and kind of putting yourself in a box, so to speak.
00:56:45:07 - 00:58:54:13
Speaker 1
So you're like, if I want to change, but I can only change within these box parameters. What have you learned about yourself and change?
00:58:54:15 - 00:59:14:05
Speaker 1
For me, the only change that I'm ever able to make is through the idea of a heuristic. So, like, when I get out of my car, I take all the trash out of the car, and therefore, there's never any trash in my car. And that's the only way I can keep my car clean is if I have that rule and I follow it.
00:59:14:07 - 00:59:35:08
Speaker 1
And I find that, when I'm on the upward, I kind of feel like my, my wife is, like, doing well, not doing well. Right? Like, as far as, like, like not doing the habits. And as you take on more heuristics that help you get better, say it's the way you're eating, how you're handling your cell phone use or whatever.
00:59:35:10 - 01:01:07:23
Speaker 1
but then you stack too many heuristics on and then you, like, hit some point where like, can't keep up with that and then you start going down. Do you experience this?
01:01:08:01 - 01:01:29:20
Speaker 1
Yeah. And the challenge that I have is like, if you stack those up and then you're like, I can be flexible with myself, or I can be understanding. Then, does it let go? I think this is the biggest challenge with, diet. And, you know, I want to I mentioned before we started that I wanted to talk about nutrition and, and kind of the advice world that comes from that.
01:01:29:22 - 01:01:55:15
Speaker 1
I have come to the so there have been, a couple of times in my life where I've gone for several years, 4 or 5 years, or have been very, very healthy. And then you have a period where chaos, you know, invades and the plane goes down. And I think the only way that I have ever been able to, have a diet that works is for it to be, almost religious in nature.
01:01:55:17 - 01:02:22:13
Speaker 1
Not saying that it's got to be divined from God, but like these are the rules. And like as long as I follow these rules, good things happen. And when I leave the rules, when I sin, then things, you know, go, go down. But this is like the opposite of the advice that the nutrition world is giving. They're they're much more like be, you know, kind to yourself and, you know, don't don't don't be too restrictive.
01:02:22:14 - 01:06:55:05
Speaker 1
I think there's something, I don't want to offend you here, but I'm going to just say, like, I think there's very something very motherly about that that isn't actually accurate. What do you think? Is this something you've heard and and, like, I don't know, where are you at on that?
01:06:55:07 - 01:07:16:02
Speaker 1
Yeah, I, I I think there's a very good explanation. One of the things that I've observed is, you know, there are some people that they're not even alcoholics, but, like, I will say this for me, like, if I don't drink, it's not a problem. But if I sit down with my father in law and have a bourbon, then I want to have four Bourbons, right?
01:07:16:02 - 01:07:35:08
Speaker 1
And I wake up the next day and I've got a hangover. I didn't do anything stupid. I didn't drive, but like the answer, the the if the answer to the question of should I have a drink is yes, then I always go too far. And so the the, the best way for me to handle that is just to be like, well, I just don't drink.
01:07:35:08 - 01:07:57:19
Speaker 1
That's, I just don't drink. And so the same thing is true with food. Like if I have these rules and, and like you had said, rules for me are not hard. They're like, the harder thing for me to do is to be like, oh, I'm going to have four crackers, right? Because when I have four crackers now, I want eight crackers, and after eight crackers when I eat the rest of them.
01:07:57:20 - 01:08:17:08
Speaker 1
And so to me, this movement that has happened in the nutrition world has been, I they're alienating, I think maybe would even be an understatement, because I think that there's like so much advice about being kind to yourself that when you put it in the sense of, there are a lot of these people are dealing with people with eating disorders.
01:08:17:08 - 01:11:18:19
Speaker 1
That makes a lot more sense to me, because I'm very much like, don't be nice to the convict. Put him in the penitentiary and he's going to be really, really happy four months from now or six months from now. As he has, he sees the progress that he wanted to see.
01:11:18:20 - 01:13:30:02
Speaker 1
How much do you think, is known about nutrition science? Do you feel like, we've got it pretty nailed down, you know? Oh, we're at 50% knowledge and 50% clouds. Or we know 1% out of 99% to know.
01:13:30:04 - 01:14:02:11
Speaker 1
Yeah. I think in that vein, I think there is a very interesting study that I like, studies to be done. but I don't think they are right now, and that is that based on genetics, I think where your ancestors are based on a latitude largely determines what foods are right for you. So if you were way, way, way up north, a very high fat, low carbohydrate diet is probably the ones that your families, you know, your ancestors thrived on because in Norway, you know, there's not that many grains that you're going to be able to eat.
01:14:02:11 - 01:14:23:21
Speaker 1
You're not going to be able to eat the fruits that you have. But then if you go to the more like equatorial, latitudes, now all of a sudden you have people that all the time, carbohydrates are all around them. And so we're going to, I think, discover that people based on where their ancestors are from determines what your diet should be, because that's what what is.
01:14:23:21 - 01:15:40:05
Speaker 1
Right. And I think like the idea of the blue zones are probably directionally accurate. But it's probably like people whose ancestors come from this area thrive on this diet, as opposed to this is the diet that we should all be eating to get to being centenarians.
01:15:40:07 - 01:16:00:02
Speaker 1
Yeah. And in that. In that regard, I think, like, the I, I when I heard this, at first I was very, like, suspicious of it, but I think that it's probably true now, like, we know a lot about things like magnesium. And what you pair magnesium with determines how much does it get absorbed into your body? Does it break the blood brain barrier?
01:16:00:03 - 01:16:26:16
Speaker 1
Does it, you know, help with sleep? Or is it, you know, being absorbed through your skin? I think that we will discover that a lot of things in preserve gives and, things that we were using to stabilize food. When you're looking at it individually, it's like, oh, no big deal. When we study this, it's fine. But when you put it in a network of foods, now all the sudden it's being absorbed in a way that changes your hormonal balance.
01:16:26:21 - 01:17:27:16
Speaker 1
And like I don't say that to scare people, but I think it's just a reality that as we've added molecules into our food, it's doing things we can't know about because it's maybe just a small switch that it's turning on and off. But done over 20 years could have really pretty big ramifications.
01:17:27:18 - 01:17:46:17
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, I think it makes it really, really hard to have great rules that you set and you say, oh, I'm going to do this for the next 20 years unless it's working for you. Right. But like, I think I think one, your body changes over time. So the amount of carbohydrates that I could eat in my 20s is radically different than in my 40s because of how much it impacts your glucose, your blood glucose.
01:17:46:17 - 01:18:10:06
Speaker 1
But, yeah, I think like this is one of those things that will discover things about cholesterol that'll totally change. And should you have two glasses of wine, but it makes it very difficult. If knowing, is what makes you, feel confident in something which I, you actually wrote about the concept of reciprocity and, like, and how much you can know and how do you know something.
01:18:10:08 - 01:21:00:09
Speaker 1
So maybe as one of our closing out concepts, talk about that, that idea of reciprocity and your son's desire to know how a math problem works.
01:21:00:11 - 01:21:44:02
Speaker 1
Well, I think there's an example of, how great your writing is, because I read that. I don't know it. I don't know, several months ago, six, six months ago, and still remember it. And so if people are interested in reading about some of your musings that you're putting out there, where would they find what you're putting out there?
01:21:44:04 - 01:21:55:01
Speaker 1
Well, I think it is a wonderful contribution to the world. It is one of the few things that I read regularly. So I'm so grateful you were willing to. Come on. Thank you. Christy. Spence.
Speaker 1
if people don't
00:00:00:20 - 00:00:03:21
Speaker 1
take your advice, it's because they don't want to be you.
00:00:03:23 - 00:00:13:09
Speaker 1
And so, like, that can be hurtful when you're the person that's like, I love you so much. I want you to be just, you know, I want you to be able to get past the problems that I had.
00:00:13:09 - 00:00:20:07
Speaker 1
tell them in the moment when I get it wrong, like try to apologize in the moment. And I think that's been pretty powerful.
00:00:20:07 - 00:00:32:21
Speaker 1
You know, as, as dietitians or, you know, any sort of health practitioner. I think it's super important to listen to your patient to find out where they're at and, and what they might need to be able to be successful.
00:00:32:21 - 00:00:42:10
Speaker 1
And so for some people, that might be a much more rigid diet type concept. And for others, it might be that they need to give themselves permission.
00:00:44:02 - 00:00:53:02
Speaker 1
Howdy. I'm Hannah New Inch Wonder, a production lead at a soybean seed facility in central Illinois. And you're listening to Advanced Cool podcast.
00:00:53:02 - 00:01:15:13
Speaker 1
Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. Christy Spence, a writer and mom who has a unique perspective on the world, joins us today. I met Christy back when I was the director of Millennial Engagement for Monsanto, and she was working for a dairy checkoff program. Uniquely, she was not only working for this checkoff, she was a dietitian and a college professor.
00:01:15:15 - 00:01:36:07
Speaker 1
And when I talked to people that worked for Christy, I heard some of the best praise I've ever heard. Given to a boss. People said that she was supportive and inspirational, innovative, and helped them take their careers onto trajectories that they never imagined. I kept in contact with Christy, and because we were in agriculture, we kind of stayed in the same orbit.
00:01:36:09 - 00:02:03:19
Speaker 1
She offered me a lot of support, particularly when I was pushing the envelope as the director of Millennial Engagement. And so when I finally decided to head out on my own, I called Christy among just a few people to ask for their advice and where they thought I should go. Christy was so supportive. She mentioned that she often shared the talk that I gave to her college students every year, and it was just one of those things that gave me the inspiration and courage to go out on my own.
00:02:03:21 - 00:02:25:18
Speaker 1
Now, a few years later, Christy has recently left her job and started looking around for what's next. She called me up to talk about it, and the only piece of advice that I had for her was, you should really share the pearls of wisdom and insight that you've had throughout the years. I know that it's helped me, and I know many, many people that have worked around you that felt that same way.
00:02:25:20 - 00:02:55:02
Speaker 1
So not because of my advice. Christy was off on her own, but she did start a Substack and it is called noticing. And it is a must read for me because it has all sorts of little bits of wisdom about raising your children, having a good relationship with your spouse, and really just being present in the moment. I'm excited for you to listen to this interview because it's a little bit different, but I think that it will hit you in a way that you just don't have very often.
00:02:55:08 - 00:03:25:20
Speaker 1
So I'm excited to get to this interview, and we're going to get there in just a moment. But I have a couple of things that I want to, cover with you. First, we have started a brand new podcast called the AG Tribes Report. We show it at 630 at night. It is a live stream, podcast where I bring on a co-host that represents one of the many ag tribes from throughout the United States and even Canada, to talk about what is the big news that is impacting the culture of agriculture.
00:03:25:22 - 00:03:49:09
Speaker 1
This has been a huge success and I'm really excited to be doing it. It's 30 minutes. It is high, fast paced show, and you can either catch it on the live stream at 630 on ECS, YouTube or Facebook, or you can listen to it the next day on any of the regular podcast apps you catch us with. So I'm really excited about that, and I hope you will check out the AG Tribes report.
00:03:49:11 - 00:04:22:18
Speaker 1
Another thing that I wanted to share with you is that the fall and winter speaking season is heating up. My calendar has gotten so full that I've actually had to turn down a couple of speeches, but that doesn't mean that every weekend is full. Right now people are asking me to come give a talk called Changing Minds. This is a talk about how you can have great conversations with people and how that impacts them, whether it's an older adult that you're getting to tell your stories to, or if it's somebody else that you've really known that you've had to have a deep conversation with them.
00:04:23:00 - 00:04:48:05
Speaker 1
We talk about many of the insights that I've learned through legacy interviews, but also just in my world of being an interested person. What can you learn about how to become better at starting conversations about interacting with people, listening so that they can feel really deeply heard, and how to handle some of the tough situations we get into where you don't know what to say or how to get out of kind of a messy conversation.
00:04:48:07 - 00:05:15:00
Speaker 1
People have given me wonderful feedback on this, and I am really excited to spend the fall and the winter traveling around to give this talk. If your group would like me to come, this is perfect for families or young farmer organizations. Then go to Vance Baucom and check it out. You can always hit the contact page. Tell me a little bit about your event, and we can have a conversation about if it's going to fit for, for both of us.
00:05:15:02 - 00:05:19:18
Speaker 1
All right. So without further ado, let's head to the interview with Christy Spence.
00:05:19:18 - 00:05:25:03
Speaker 1
Christy Spence, welcome to the podcast.
00:05:25:05 - 00:05:57:18
Speaker 1
So, Christy, you are somebody that's a little off the beaten path from our who we interview on the show most of the time. But one of the reasons that I've had you on is because I think there are very few people that I'm interested in how they parent and how they've done it. But as you and I have gotten to be friends over the years, and I've gotten to read your writings that you've been publishing over the last few months, I was like, this is a great person for me to have a dialog about the things I'm struggling with, the things that they have struggled with, because I think anybody that's listening right now must
00:05:57:18 - 00:09:39:19
Speaker 1
think at some point, there's no way it's this hard for everybody else. It's only this hard for me. And I would like to talk a lot about that. But before we get there, why don't we talk about how you came to be writing a regular Substack and, kind of who you were before, you started this kind of new life you have going on right now.
00:09:39:21 - 00:09:57:18
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, I remember when I was preparing to leave. What was at the time? Bear. But I had been working for Monsanto. You were one of the people I called to be like. Hey, I'm thinking about making this move. And, it was. I remember how supportive you were. And also, like, just open to being like, what are you thinking about?
00:09:57:22 - 00:10:19:01
Speaker 1
And so when when it came time and you were thinking about leaving, it was, it was just a really interesting thing because I think a lot of times people can't leave the situations they're in, until they know what the next lily pad is that they're hoping to. And I was in the position, and you were in the position where you were like, I don't exactly know what that is.
00:10:19:04 - 00:12:27:17
Speaker 1
This may be a wildly bad idea, but I sense so deeply that I need to do this that, like, I can't get it out of my head. And so I know the the fear and the excitement and all of the things that are mixed together with what you're going through right now.
00:12:27:19 - 00:12:44:14
Speaker 1
Yeah. Carl Jung talks about how, You know, you can't really force yourself to read a book you're not interested in. you can read the words and certainly, like, when you're a student, you know, you shouldn't be like, oh, I'm not interested. I'm not going to read this. But like, for the most part, you have to be curious.
00:12:44:14 - 00:13:07:07
Speaker 1
And it's something like deeper than just your rational, intellectual self saying, I should probably read this. It's got to be like, there's something here that if I can discover what it is that they know this is going to help me somewhere, and it's this, it's this, like amazing. I often describe it as like, walking on clouds, like where you're just jumping from one puffy cloud to another as you're reading.
00:13:07:07 - 00:13:24:10
Speaker 1
It's not difficult. You don't have to be like, all right, I gotta stop what I'm doing to go read. You're just like, oh, here's an opportunity for me to go discover these things. And I think that when we are aware that that can occur, that you're, I call it the demon. Right? The inner voice inside of you that you don't control.
00:13:24:12 - 00:14:52:23
Speaker 1
Then you have, it leads you to places that you couldn't rationally have gotten to.
00:14:53:01 - 00:15:09:11
Speaker 1
Yeah. I've been in in a in a back and forth conversation with a good friend of mine named West. And, he's been talking about, you know, I see my son and I see things that if he would just, like, take a little bit of my advice, he would not be having some of the challenges that he's having.
00:15:09:15 - 00:15:39:14
Speaker 1
And he's like, it's so hard because, you know, you want to make it easier for them. And we kind of had this back and forth. And the best advice I've ever gotten about mentorship came from a guy that, was a, you know, a convicted felon. His name's, Wes Watson. He's this huge, musclebound dude. Like, not the guy that you would go up to being like, hey, tell me some advice about, about, giving advice or, you know, and he said, you know, if people don't take your advice, it's because they don't want to be you.
00:15:39:16 - 00:15:56:19
Speaker 1
And so, like, that can be hurtful when you're the person that's like, I love you so much. I want you to be just, you know, I want you to be able to get past the problems that I had. And then when you take it in terms of a child, right, this is a this is a person that doesn't even know that they can choose who to become.
00:15:56:21 - 00:16:24:05
Speaker 1
They're just present in the world. And so it's really hard to say how much of what I'm giving them is going to shape them. Like, right now I'm at the stage of like the most important thing I can do is hammer in manners that that this is just the way that we behave. But like advice is virtually not good at all.
00:16:24:07 - 00:17:39:20
Speaker 1
What manners are important to you guys? What do you guys focus on?
00:17:39:22 - 00:17:55:02
Speaker 1
So I record these legacy interviews. And one of the questions that I ask, towards the end, particularly a family, is a big emphasis for these people. And generally, if somebody bought you a legacy interview, that means you did have a pretty close knit family. And that question that you're talking about, like, what does it mean to be a Spence?
00:17:55:02 - 00:18:18:21
Speaker 1
What does it mean to be a CRO is something that, some people really think deeply about, and some people, it just emerges naturally. Right. And I think in the ad community there, everybody says we were hard working, right? That's that's something they all want. But the other things of kindness and, you know, are we you know, like in my wife's family, we complete what we start.
00:18:18:23 - 00:18:30:19
Speaker 1
And you see how much that's been drilled into those, those my wife and her sisters and how much that influences what they do day in and day out. Because they finish with they start to almost to a fault.
00:20:17:02 - 00:20:33:02
Speaker 1
I mean, I think it's great. And the ownership. I mean, if you're going to live out values, you have to feel like they weren't just. You know, that you are somehow inhabiting them. You don't necessarily need to be the one that came up with them. But to be able to have the guidance inside of there in my family, what I'm discovering.
00:20:33:02 - 00:20:57:17
Speaker 1
So I have a almost four year old and a little one that just turned two today. And, and so but one of the things that I was doing was my, my oldest really responds to stories. So we tell stories about different people. And it didn't take very long before I was like, oh, I can't tell Uncle Dan stories because she's going to go tell Uncle Dan's stories and his opinion of whether or not that was true.
00:20:57:19 - 00:21:14:17
Speaker 1
But I also have all these other stories. So I have like, I tell stories about when I worked on a ship and we talk about silly Charlie and silly Charlie was this guy. He's a real guy. that he just he was always forgetful. And even though he was, like, really nice and happy, he broke things all the time.
00:21:14:22 - 00:21:34:15
Speaker 1
And what I didn't realize is, as I'm telling these stories, then later, my daughter would be like, that's what silly Charlie would do. And so now she doesn't want to be like Silly Charlie. She wants to be something else. And storytelling is a way of imputing values has been really powerful, and I'm going to just continue to do it as much as she'll absorb.
00:21:34:15 - 00:21:55:18
Speaker 1
I'm going to try and put out there.
00:21:55:19 - 00:21:57:15
Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:22:53:02 - 00:23:15:16
Speaker 1
Yeah. That's actually exactly how I came to the storytelling was that my daughter was like. Tell me when you were a little boy. And I told her these stories, and you see, like, I think, like, oh, these are kind of boring, or they don't make me look that good, but just an absorption of it. And I see it in legacy interviews, too, because you have these people that are, you know, in their 60s, early 70s and they tell me these stories.
00:23:15:16 - 00:23:40:06
Speaker 1
And I always say at the beginning, it's really easy to tell stories where you did everything right. The more important stories are the ones where you didn't make the right decision and you fell down and something happened. And the letters that I get from people about legacy interviews are oftentimes like, I finally became an adult today because I realized that my parents didn't know what they were doing when they were raising kids either.
00:23:40:06 - 00:24:52:11
Speaker 1
And now I see that, and I don't feel as bad about the mistakes I'm making. It's just from my kid eyes, they seem like they knew, you know, that there was a thing as an adult, and an adult means you make all the right decisions.
00:24:58:07 - 00:26:43:00
Speaker 1
Yeah. They're defensive. Yeah. Of course. Like, Yeah.
00:26:43:01 - 00:27:03:21
Speaker 1
My. My wife, stopped me one time from, making my oldest child apologize to the younger child. And she was like, look, if you force the apology, all they're doing is they're figuring out, like, what it is that they have to do to get around the this obstacle. But they're not actually, you know, apologizing. How do you feel about that?
00:27:03:21 - 00:27:21:08
Speaker 1
Do you force your kids to apologize?
00:27:21:10 - 00:27:22:13
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah.
00:27:22:15 - 00:29:35:12
Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:29:35:14 - 00:29:55:07
Speaker 1
Yeah, I, I think the thing I ultimately apologize for is something I did not expect would be, a problem for me. But it has been a challenge. And that is losing my temper. Like, I, I'm, like, generally a very controlled person, and I would say I had before having children literally gone years without ever raising my voice.
00:29:55:09 - 00:30:13:14
Speaker 1
And now you have your kids like my, my wife and I both run our own company. So there is always stress, like at any moment of the day and in the weekend, like I could be working and it would have a material impact on my family. And so sometimes you're sitting there and you're like, why am I dealing with this?
00:30:13:14 - 00:30:38:10
Speaker 1
Like, why are you guys yelling? Why are you, you know, crying about things that are that are like, clearly not something I can solve. And, that's the point where I wonder, are other people under this much stress like, and is this new or if if my wife and I were a one, you know, one stay at home parent would they be having this much stress and this much pressure that they, you know, blow their stack?
00:30:38:12 - 00:32:43:01
Speaker 1
What do you think?
00:32:43:03 - 00:33:04:06
Speaker 1
Yeah. You you have, in your writing, one of the reoccurring series that you talk about, which I. It really resonates with me. Is this concept of being in it and like, it's it's, you have one of your opening early stories. I remember you talking about how many Rudolph's did you do? And you were talking about how many times did you sing Rudolph the Red-Nosed reindeer to your child as you were trying to get them to sleep?
00:33:04:11 - 00:33:29:21
Speaker 1
And that hit me right between the eyes, because we had that with our first daughter, where as soon as she was born, she was an uncontrollable child for nearly two years. Right. So this is just constant stress where you're going from two hyper productive people, my wife and I, really productive to now being completely at the mercy of this terrorist who at any time can start screaming and crying and there's nothing you can do about it.
00:33:29:23 - 00:37:13:08
Speaker 1
And when you described it as like, you just as like being in it, I, I got it. So tell me more about being in it.
00:37:13:10 - 00:37:33:18
Speaker 1
Yeah, I like I'm. I hate children's songs. And I, like the just the, like, quirky nature of them. And a couple of months ago, I was driving my daughters to school, and, like, they're both advocating for the song that they want. And I realized, like, wait a second. Like, there will come a day when they'll be like, dad.
00:37:33:18 - 00:37:55:05
Speaker 1
Like, stop paying attention to us. We want privacy. We don't want to listen to it. You want to listen to we don't want to sing. And it made me like, stop and be like, all right, what do I like about this? And like, just to just to be able to be focused on the fact that they are giggling with glee about talking about Uncle Dan in a garbage can.
00:37:55:07 - 00:38:15:13
Speaker 1
And so, like, I have a thousand things to do, but if I miss that, it's gone and you don't get it back. And the challenge so that like, becomes kind of an obvious thing, right? You're like, okay, I should be present, but the challenge that I faced is I don't want to be present for fear of being nostalgic.
00:38:15:15 - 00:38:33:03
Speaker 1
Right? For fear of being like, oh, well, I needed to absorb all of that because I think that's what leads people to taking obsessive photographs. You know, where where instead of actually being there, you're pulling out your phone to be like, I really want to remember this. And so all of their memories are seen through the lens of a camera.
00:38:33:05 - 00:42:15:20
Speaker 1
So what's the balance between being present and being afraid of nostalgia?
00:42:15:22 - 00:42:34:07
Speaker 1
I love this, the the, the and the thing that you're talking about. Being present with your kids or being present really? At any time. Like if you are around somebody that is being present with you, you cannot help but feel it, right? Like it is a truly powerful thing. And actually, I was just talking with my editor about this the other day.
00:42:34:07 - 00:42:55:16
Speaker 1
Like, I think that one of the things that makes, doing these legacy interviews super valuable, even more valuable than the actual recording, is that there's a person or a couple that is sitting there, and the person listening to them has literally no other motive other than listening. I'm not a therapist, so I'm not trying to fix them.
00:42:55:22 - 00:43:17:19
Speaker 1
I'm not an attorney. So I'm not like looking for like, what is the legal ramifications of this? So it's so seldom in life that you're ever with somebody that they are like, I'm going to listen to what you're saying. And I'm oh, you used a word that was really interesting. There belong. so I'm, I'm going to actually touch on that word and all these things are going to unlock.
00:43:18:00 - 00:43:33:17
Speaker 1
And so for me, like, it's, it's it's been amazing because this is the first time I've ever had one of those, you know, if you do a job you love, you'll never work a day in your life. I have to work a lot, so I'm not quite there yet. But like the, the listening part of it allows you to.
00:43:33:18 - 00:44:54:20
Speaker 1
Because being present with somebody, there's literally nothing else. I that's like it.
00:44:54:22 - 00:45:15:08
Speaker 1
We. Time is is absolutely something that we impart on our children. Because in like, there's a concept called poly chronic and monochromatic time. So poly chronic is island time. It's where if you and I are having a conversation, it would be absolutely absurd for me to look at my watch and be like, oh, it's 1:00 time to get up and go do something else.
00:45:15:08 - 00:45:33:00
Speaker 1
And, but in monochromatic time, the industrialized world, if I tell you, hey, I have to leave at one, you're not going to have any ill will towards me. I'm going to be able to shake your hand and leave. And it's like, oh, that's expected. But poly chronic focus is way more on relationships. So it's like, I am going to be here.
00:45:33:00 - 00:47:23:09
Speaker 1
You and I are going to walk together. If it takes longer than it should, then we'll get there when we can. But you can't run in industrialized society that way. But you can run a tribal society that way. And so we are teaching our kids the sort of time that they're going to need to be successful. But it is definitely painful because I think the natural state is poly chronic.
00:47:23:11 - 00:47:46:18
Speaker 1
So you talked about play. I think, like there's. I'll just speak from my own experience. we're at the place where I am, like, the children should be playing with each other and by themselves more. But when we have them in the daycare, we have two. We're running two businesses. We we can't be watching them. And so part of that is, well, I want to and my wife especially wants to be with them.
00:47:46:19 - 00:48:21:23
Speaker 1
But like how do you facilitate children to get to the place where they are like, I can go outside and I can find something to do, like, and at what age is the right time to start pushing them out of the nest in that way?
00:48:22:01 - 00:48:22:20
Speaker 2
Oh.
00:48:22:22 - 00:48:26:07
Speaker 1
A couple more years of this.
00:49:40:07 - 00:50:07:21
Speaker 1
It's, really refreshing to hear that about the idea that, like, you don't have thoughts that are more than a sentence and a half. You know, my wife one day was like, she was. She was like, well, you know, everybody needs my attention. And I was like, a little grumble back. And then I was like, actually, no, that's true, because we lived together for ten years, and I have this sounding board of this person that I can explain very complicated ideas to and get her feedback and get her input.
00:50:07:23 - 00:50:26:19
Speaker 1
And now all of a sudden that's put in a woodshed, chipper and, and just, you know, just gone. And so this is probably the area where the most stress gets created. It's like we're trying to have dinner the way that we did when we were just just the two of us. And now you've got two kids that are vying for both parents attention.
00:50:26:21 - 00:51:17:21
Speaker 1
You've got dad who really wants mom's attention, mom who's got 100 things going on. And like the pressure of that seems, oh, like like, what are we doing? This can't be the way that people live, that they're under so much stress.
00:52:54:14 - 00:53:15:02
Speaker 1
You know, one of the things we talked about earlier was about the models and advice. Like trying to give your kids advice. And I remember when you were first starting to think about, hey, should I do some more writing? And you were like, I have these models I talk about with my kids, and some of you're my favorite writing that you do is those models, because it gives me a way to think about something, differently.
00:53:15:02 - 00:55:59:21
Speaker 1
And you did one about, the, your boys putting the other one in a box, you know, in assuming that, you know what they are thinking. Can you talk about that box? I think that's a really good model for people to understand.
00:55:59:23 - 00:56:19:06
Speaker 1
Well, what I think about that box metaphor is it answers a problem that's so old. It's like, biblical that that concept of, You're never a prophet in your own land, right? Where your own family you may like. And I think this happens in egg all the time. So you've got a young person that wants to come back to the farm.
00:56:19:06 - 00:56:45:07
Speaker 1
They have new ideas, they have ways to change and update things. And everybody looks at them and says, oh yeah, you're always coming up with the next new thing. And so they don't really listen to you what you're saying. And I think that, like even you, you write, I'm not sure if it was in the same article or if it was in a different one, but you ended up talking about how judgmental you are on your own change and kind of putting yourself in a box, so to speak.
00:56:45:07 - 00:58:54:13
Speaker 1
So you're like, if I want to change, but I can only change within these box parameters. What have you learned about yourself and change?
00:58:54:15 - 00:59:14:05
Speaker 1
For me, the only change that I'm ever able to make is through the idea of a heuristic. So, like, when I get out of my car, I take all the trash out of the car, and therefore, there's never any trash in my car. And that's the only way I can keep my car clean is if I have that rule and I follow it.
00:59:14:07 - 00:59:35:08
Speaker 1
And I find that, when I'm on the upward, I kind of feel like my, my wife is, like, doing well, not doing well. Right? Like, as far as, like, like not doing the habits. And as you take on more heuristics that help you get better, say it's the way you're eating, how you're handling your cell phone use or whatever.
00:59:35:10 - 01:01:07:23
Speaker 1
but then you stack too many heuristics on and then you, like, hit some point where like, can't keep up with that and then you start going down. Do you experience this?
01:01:08:01 - 01:01:29:20
Speaker 1
Yeah. And the challenge that I have is like, if you stack those up and then you're like, I can be flexible with myself, or I can be understanding. Then, does it let go? I think this is the biggest challenge with, diet. And, you know, I want to I mentioned before we started that I wanted to talk about nutrition and, and kind of the advice world that comes from that.
01:01:29:22 - 01:01:55:15
Speaker 1
I have come to the so there have been, a couple of times in my life where I've gone for several years, 4 or 5 years, or have been very, very healthy. And then you have a period where chaos, you know, invades and the plane goes down. And I think the only way that I have ever been able to, have a diet that works is for it to be, almost religious in nature.
01:01:55:17 - 01:02:22:13
Speaker 1
Not saying that it's got to be divined from God, but like these are the rules. And like as long as I follow these rules, good things happen. And when I leave the rules, when I sin, then things, you know, go, go down. But this is like the opposite of the advice that the nutrition world is giving. They're they're much more like be, you know, kind to yourself and, you know, don't don't don't be too restrictive.
01:02:22:14 - 01:06:55:05
Speaker 1
I think there's something, I don't want to offend you here, but I'm going to just say, like, I think there's very something very motherly about that that isn't actually accurate. What do you think? Is this something you've heard and and, like, I don't know, where are you at on that?
01:06:55:07 - 01:07:16:02
Speaker 1
Yeah, I, I I think there's a very good explanation. One of the things that I've observed is, you know, there are some people that they're not even alcoholics, but, like, I will say this for me, like, if I don't drink, it's not a problem. But if I sit down with my father in law and have a bourbon, then I want to have four Bourbons, right?
01:07:16:02 - 01:07:35:08
Speaker 1
And I wake up the next day and I've got a hangover. I didn't do anything stupid. I didn't drive, but like the answer, the the if the answer to the question of should I have a drink is yes, then I always go too far. And so the the, the best way for me to handle that is just to be like, well, I just don't drink.
01:07:35:08 - 01:07:57:19
Speaker 1
That's, I just don't drink. And so the same thing is true with food. Like if I have these rules and, and like you had said, rules for me are not hard. They're like, the harder thing for me to do is to be like, oh, I'm going to have four crackers, right? Because when I have four crackers now, I want eight crackers, and after eight crackers when I eat the rest of them.
01:07:57:20 - 01:08:17:08
Speaker 1
And so to me, this movement that has happened in the nutrition world has been, I they're alienating, I think maybe would even be an understatement, because I think that there's like so much advice about being kind to yourself that when you put it in the sense of, there are a lot of these people are dealing with people with eating disorders.
01:08:17:08 - 01:11:18:19
Speaker 1
That makes a lot more sense to me, because I'm very much like, don't be nice to the convict. Put him in the penitentiary and he's going to be really, really happy four months from now or six months from now. As he has, he sees the progress that he wanted to see.
01:11:18:20 - 01:13:30:02
Speaker 1
How much do you think, is known about nutrition science? Do you feel like, we've got it pretty nailed down, you know? Oh, we're at 50% knowledge and 50% clouds. Or we know 1% out of 99% to know.
01:13:30:04 - 01:14:02:11
Speaker 1
Yeah. I think in that vein, I think there is a very interesting study that I like, studies to be done. but I don't think they are right now, and that is that based on genetics, I think where your ancestors are based on a latitude largely determines what foods are right for you. So if you were way, way, way up north, a very high fat, low carbohydrate diet is probably the ones that your families, you know, your ancestors thrived on because in Norway, you know, there's not that many grains that you're going to be able to eat.
01:14:02:11 - 01:14:23:21
Speaker 1
You're not going to be able to eat the fruits that you have. But then if you go to the more like equatorial, latitudes, now all of a sudden you have people that all the time, carbohydrates are all around them. And so we're going to, I think, discover that people based on where their ancestors are from determines what your diet should be, because that's what what is.
01:14:23:21 - 01:15:40:05
Speaker 1
Right. And I think like the idea of the blue zones are probably directionally accurate. But it's probably like people whose ancestors come from this area thrive on this diet, as opposed to this is the diet that we should all be eating to get to being centenarians.
01:15:40:07 - 01:16:00:02
Speaker 1
Yeah. And in that. In that regard, I think, like, the I, I when I heard this, at first I was very, like, suspicious of it, but I think that it's probably true now, like, we know a lot about things like magnesium. And what you pair magnesium with determines how much does it get absorbed into your body? Does it break the blood brain barrier?
01:16:00:03 - 01:16:26:16
Speaker 1
Does it, you know, help with sleep? Or is it, you know, being absorbed through your skin? I think that we will discover that a lot of things in preserve gives and, things that we were using to stabilize food. When you're looking at it individually, it's like, oh, no big deal. When we study this, it's fine. But when you put it in a network of foods, now all the sudden it's being absorbed in a way that changes your hormonal balance.
01:16:26:21 - 01:17:27:16
Speaker 1
And like I don't say that to scare people, but I think it's just a reality that as we've added molecules into our food, it's doing things we can't know about because it's maybe just a small switch that it's turning on and off. But done over 20 years could have really pretty big ramifications.
01:17:27:18 - 01:17:46:17
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, I think it makes it really, really hard to have great rules that you set and you say, oh, I'm going to do this for the next 20 years unless it's working for you. Right. But like, I think I think one, your body changes over time. So the amount of carbohydrates that I could eat in my 20s is radically different than in my 40s because of how much it impacts your glucose, your blood glucose.
01:17:46:17 - 01:18:10:06
Speaker 1
But, yeah, I think like this is one of those things that will discover things about cholesterol that'll totally change. And should you have two glasses of wine, but it makes it very difficult. If knowing, is what makes you, feel confident in something which I, you actually wrote about the concept of reciprocity and, like, and how much you can know and how do you know something.
01:18:10:08 - 01:21:00:09
Speaker 1
So maybe as one of our closing out concepts, talk about that, that idea of reciprocity and your son's desire to know how a math problem works.
01:21:00:11 - 01:21:44:02
Speaker 1
Well, I think there's an example of, how great your writing is, because I read that. I don't know it. I don't know, several months ago, six, six months ago, and still remember it. And so if people are interested in reading about some of your musings that you're putting out there, where would they find what you're putting out there?
01:21:44:04 - 01:21:55:01
Speaker 1
Well, I think it is a wonderful contribution to the world. It is one of the few things that I read regularly. So I'm so grateful you were willing to. Come on. Thank you. Christy. Spence.
- Intro
- Where does Kristi come from?
- Can you give a young person perspective?
- How to properly apologize
- Being "in it" as a parent
- Presence vs fear of nostalgia
- Polychronic vs monochronic time
- Teaching your kids empathy
- The biggest challenge with diets
- Adding molecules to our food
- Where to find KristiKristi's Substack - https://substack.com/@kristispenceKristi's LinkedIn:…
