Work and Play with Nancy Ray

Hello and happy June! Today is a full and exciting episode because I have some updates for you for the Summer and it's a book club episode, which are always my favorites. This book kind of has a funny story with it—which I'll get to. We are out of school, we're getting used to new rhythms with all the kids home and I've got some fun Summer episodes coming up. Lots to talk about today, but today's book is called The 4 Disciplines of Execution and it was a doozy of a business book. There was a lot in there, but I'm really excited to simplify it and kind of translate it to how we can apply it to our work and our homes. It's going to be good. For the full show notes, head to nancyray.com/podcast/161 Resources from this episode: The Four Disciplines of Execution, by Chris McChesney Nancy Ray Book Club The 12 Week Year, by Brian P. Moran

Welcome to May is for Mama's, when every episode in the month of May is dedicated to all you mamas listening with topics and conversations specifically designed for you! Today, we have the privilege of hearing from my friend and mama mentor, Renee Swope, who is a wife and a mama of three and an author and speaker and she loves Jesus so much! We are going to be talking all about her latest book, A Confident Mom, which is the perfect fit for my book club and May is for Mamas. You can get all the details about the updated 2022 Book Club at nancyray.com/bookclub. I am thrilled to talk about one of those books today with the author and Renee is just such a treasure of a friend to me. She's so wise and I love that she is ahead of me in the motherhood journey, she has so much to offer. You are going to love our conversation, I can't wait to share it with you today. For the full show notes, head to nancyray.com/podcast/160. Resources from this episode: Work & Play Patreon A Confident Mom, by Renee Swope Nancy Ray Book Club Waymaker, by Ann Voskamp The Hard Good, by Lisa Whittle Milk Frother ReneeSwope.com Affiliate links have been used in this post! I do receive a commission when you choose to purchase through these links, and that helps me keep this podcast up and running—I truly appreciate when you choose to use them!

Welcome to May is for Mamas, when every episode in the month of May on the Work and Play Podcast is dedicated to all you mamas listening. Today, I am continuing my conversation with my dear friend, Shay Cochrane. She's a wife, a mom of two girls. We tackle all kinds of topics and I just couldn't leave anything out so I decided to split it up into two episodes. I hope you enjoy the rest of our conversation! For the full show notes, head to nancyray.com/podcast/159. Resources from this Episode: Work & Play Patreon Social Squares Dollar Street Financial Peace for Kids The Coaching Habit, by Michael Stanier The Creator in You, by Jordan Raynor Lies Girls Believe, by Dannah Gresh LMNT Affiliate links have been used in this post! I do receive a commission when you choose to purchase through these links, and that helps me keep this podcast up and running—I truly appreciate when you choose to use them!

Welcome to May is for Mamas, where every episode in the month of May is dedicated to all the mamas out there, with topics and conversations specifically for you. Today, I'm chatting with my friend Shay Cochrane, who is a wife and an entrepreneur, and a mama of two daughters. She owns Social Squares, which supplies elevated stock images and digital marketing education for female owned online brands. Her vision as a creator is to enable more women to find greater success, sharing their ideas and businesses with the world, and she does all that in just 16 hours a week! I love how she models her life and her parenting and I have loved this conversation with her today. We jumped into some hard stuff like, what it looks like to raise daughters in 2022—body image, style, confidence, work ethic, technology, teaching your kids about money. You are going to leave this conversation with some really practical parenting conversations and decisions, as well as some solid encouragement to keep up the good hard work we are doing as mamas. For the full show notes, head to nancyray.com/podcast/158. Resources from this episode: Work and Play Patreon Social Squares

This is the epitome of combining Work and Play for mamas there's work to be done. Plenty of it. Folding clothes, meal planning, unloading the dishwasher, picking up toys, tackling the junk drawer, cleaning out the pantry, cleaning up the kitchen and on and on and on. Well, why not turn those work items that are not optional in our lives into some play? The magic missing link for you could be using a timer. When you set a timer before tackling a task, you turn it into a game. And before you know it, you're trying to beat your personal best and the kids are actually helping and using the timer, too—and it's really kind of fun! Today's episode for May is for Mamas is all about using a timer in motherhood. This is going to be fun. For the full show notes, head to nancyray.com/podcast/157. Resources from this episode: Work & Play Patreon Time Timer Affiliate links have been used in this post! I do receive a commission when you choose to purchase through these links, and that helps me keep this podcast up and running—I truly appreciate when you choose to use them!

This is the first episode of May is for Mamas, which is one of my favorite things I do on the podcast every May! Each episode this month will be made for the mamas listening and I hope it will be a mix of uplifting, helpful, encouraging, and maybe even a little lighthearted cause we all need that right now. This first episode is all about speaking scripture over your children and how powerful that can be for your kids and for you. Today is also the day I'm launching my Patreon page(!), which I'm so excited about. You can head to patreon.com/workandplay to get access to a community of like-minded friends who are Work and Play listeners like you and for as little as $1 a month, you can help keep the Work and Play podcast going. I'll occasionally have discussion threads or polls or exclusive episodes just for those of you who decide to become patrons. But even if none of that exclusive content or community interests you and you just like the Work and Play podcast as it is, and you want to support it and help me bring it to you, Patreon is the way to do that. So head to patreon.com/workandplay and know I am so genuinely grateful for your support. For the full show notes, head to nancyray.com/podcast/156 Resources from this Episode: Work & Play Patreon! The Power of a Praying Parent by Stormie Omartian Parenting by Paul David Tripp The Shaping of a Christian Family by Elizabeth Elliott

Today, I'm veering off the normal podcast course and I'm breaking a few rules and I just want to share some of where I am in my own work and play and how that affects this podcast moving forward. I'm really excited about where I'm headed and I want to be very honest with you and take you along in this journey with me. I value you, I'm grateful for you listening, especially those of you who listen every week. I'm so, so grateful and I'm excited just to share my heart with you today. For the full show notes, head to nancyray.com/podcast/155

Today, I'm going to share my two favorite work habits and that is: how I start my workday and how I finish my workday. I'm just going to go ahead and put this out there—they're pretty nerdy. Some of you are probably going to laugh and be like, I'm never going to do that, and that's fine, but they've worked for me and I really like them. I'm trying to get back to them after this fourth baby, it takes a little bit to kind of get them in your system again, but I tell you what, when you can rock these routines, your workday is amazing. For the full show notes, head to nancyray.com/podcast/154. Resources from this episode: Two Second Lean, by Paul Akers Deep Work, by Cal Newport Affiliate links have been used in this post! I do receive a commission when you choose to purchase through these links, and that helps me keep this podcast up and running—I truly appreciate when you choose to use them!

We all have tension in our lives. And a lot of times that manifests itself in anxious thoughts and just feeling like we can't get our heads around something or we can't move through it and that's just part of being human. It's just part of living life and this isn't the episode that I had planned for today, but it's the episode that God put on my heart. So I'm just going to talk about tension and anxiety and how to get through that, how to get past it, how to get through to the other side. I'm going to share some practical things that I've walked through in my life very recently and I'm going to share the things that helped me get through it. And then at the end of this episode, I'm just gonna to be honest and share a little bit about what's going on with the podcast and what you can look forward to in the coming weeks and months. For the full show notes, head to nancyray.com/podcast/153.

There's something about meeting regularly as a family that brings you together, not only in a practical way—which it does—you can talk about the calendar and your schedules and your plans, but emotionally you can connect and you can share things you're looking forward to or problems that you're having and I didn't have this growing up. We didn't meet regularly as a family, but it's something that we've started to do recently and it has been such a joy. Today I'm going to share with you the simple outline that we follow for our family meeting and I hope it's helpful to you. For the full show notes head to nancyray.com/podcast/152. Resources from this episode: Positive Parenting Solutions Affiliate links have been used in this post! I do receive a commission when you choose to purchase through these links, and that helps me keep this podcast up and running—I truly appreciate when you choose to use them!