The Official Greenfield Family Q&A Podcast: Parenting, Cooking, Traditions, Legacy-Building, Family Game Nights & More!

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

I really don't think people understand the power of a peaceful home, the stability of it, and what it brings to your children and to your husband.

How do you force screen time? Rules. We just don't. We instead focus on educating about the consequences and focusing on what's important in life. And if you're purpose filled and focused on what's important in life, you don't need rules.

It'd be a little weird to me if the world knew that you're the son of the dad who ate a raw testicle, but other than that, it's pretty good.

Help, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Hey, for everybody listening in, you've got the whole Greenfield family right here. Because it's finally happening. We decided we. It's happened before. I feel like we've been able to herd all of us cats together before and get down in front of the mics, but, you know, I'm. I was supposed to be in Austin, Texas, all week this week and wound up kind of hurting my knee and having to stay home. And we decided we wanted to sit around our giant dining room table here, which is made. What's it made out of again? I forget. Tarred pine, obviously. It's wood. Pine. Faux wood. It's a giant pine table. Maybe even later on, we'll get to talk to folks about some of the cool functions of family dinners and rituals and routines we have around this table. Although I just made it sound like we sacrificed little baby birds or something on tables. Not those kind of rituals, but we have some good times that happen here at this family table. And we decided we'd sit down and record a podcast for all of you. And we put out a post on Instagram and on Facebook asking you for questions that you would want to ask us if all four of us Greenfields were just sitting around answering your questions as a family. My wife, Jessa. Say hello, Jessa.

Hi there.

Of. I don't know, 18 of. We used to have, like, a membership inner circle for the Ben Greenfield website. Remember that? A long time ago, when I realized it wasn't a good idea to, like, go into business. Business with your wife.

Yeah.

At least not for us. No.

It works for some people. Didn't work for us.

But you guys have probably seen Jessa before, like in the cookbook and online on some of my Instagram posts.

And I very. She gets seldomly maybe once in a while.

Yes.

Appear.

I Think you actually have an Instagram channel that you post like once every few months too?

Like a year.

Yeah, yeah, because people follow you, but you have.

Sorry if you're my friend on Instagram and you're disappointed because I don't do.

Anything with the Twitter account that posted once in 2004. And then of course, river and Taren say hello. Guys, I gotta figure out the pretty link that we'll make for this podcast. Sometimes I make it up while we're recording. What should we tell people to go to for the show notes? BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Best family in the West.

That's way too long. Greenfield4. Greenfield the number four. Because there's four of us. So go to Greenfield4 if you want the show notes for today's podcast. Because every time we talk about something, I have a. I have a crack team on the other end who, who keeps track of everything. And any books we talk about, any audiobooks, any podcasts, any resources, anything we mention, those will be available@BenGreenfieldFitness.com the number four, river and Taryn. You guys want to quickly and shamelessly plug your podcast too? People dig shamelessly or shamefully.

Okay, go. Greenfields.com It's a food podcast. We make lots of cool, cool foods and recipes.

Food, yeah, it's fun. I know. Makes my life good. I always eat well on the days you guys record those podcasts, eat new recipes. So we. Anyways, like I was saying before I got sidetracked on Instagram and on Facebook, I put out a post where we asked for all of your questions and we got some good ones. So in today's show, we're basically gonna reply to as many of your questions we got. Literally got hundreds of questions, but we picked like, I don't know, probably a dozen or so of them. And some questions. Jess will probably be talking more, some river and Terry more. Hopefully me, not so much because I talk all the time on this podcast and I get sick of it. And before we get going, I should also open my. My Zevia. Of course, everybody always thinks this podcast is sponsored by soda, but it's just me drinking my. My guilty addiction. 0 sugar caffeine free stevia flavored Zevia. I interviewed them once. You know, I interviewed the CEO. His name was Patty. Interviewed Patty way back in the day because I wanted to know if these cans have metals in them and where they get their stevia and if it's actually. And it actually is pretty good stuff. Like it's not like fake healthy Food is actually kind of healthy.

Nice.

This totally sounds like a sponsor.

Favorite flavor of Zevia. Go root beer. It's ginger root beer, isn't it?

It's the only one I like, but I don't like soda.

Ginger root beer with coconut vanilla ice cream is actually a pretty good root beer float.

I don't. Yeah, I don't really like sod very much, but root beer would be my favorite.

And we'll warm up. We'll warm up. Since we're on the root beer float question with one. One other warm up question for the podcast and we're going, what's everybody's favorite dessert?

Ice cream.

Ice cream. No, but like more specific. Like moose tracks. Ben and Jerry's, Chunky monkey, Avococo.

There's one that we had in Italy. It's called sweet milk.

Mmm.

Oh, Sweet milk flavored gelato.

Yeah, it's really good.

It's just like honey and milk.

I don't know. It's really good, though.

It's so unfair that you get named a dessert that people have to go all the way to Italy to get.

One more that we also got. Where did we do this?

You're really chewing your gum, babe.

Sorry, I should take my gum out.

I don't remember where we did it, but it was another type of gelato, but it was a honey gelato. So there's like honey film.

Honeycomb gelato. I remember that. Also.

Land of milk and honey. That's what they should call that.

Yeah, mine's gonna be. Mine's gonna be the gluten free carrot cake that you guys make me on my birthday and on Father's Day.

What about the apple crisp?

The apple crisp was pretty good too, but that's a new one, so I haven't quite decoded how much I like that compared to the carrot cake, but I like it a lot. How about you, Taryn? You were honeycomb.

Probably like a ginger snap cookie.

Ginger snap cookie.

Mine's tough. It's probably something my mom makes. She's probably black bottom pie, which nobody would even know what that is.

Or Carmenopolis.

What is black bottom pie?

It's like a vanilla chiffon on the top and then there's like this really dense chocolate on the bottom. And it's a pie. It's really good. And you'll never ever get your hands on it because my mom is the only person I know who makes it. I've never seen it anywhere else.

I'll bet I could Google black bottom pie.

It won't Be like my mom.

A bastardization of that recipe somewhere. Yeah, that's actually a great segue. Which I thought. Which I never knew what segue meant, because I'd see this word when I'd read spelled S, E, D, G, E, W, A, Y, and I'd read like, sedge away. Is that like a scooter, or is it like a. Like a form of transportation? And then I realized it's the same word that I use all the time in my own vernacular.

Transport you to a different conversation.

Yeah, it transports us. It. It seems like it gracefully transports us to the first question of the day, which is, what is a quick and dirty summary of our family history? Like where. Where we even come from? Well, I mean, not dirty like that. Even though, I guess, I don't know, maybe the part about making is a little dirty.

Ranchers.

Not dirty.

Not dirty. Okay, so quick and dirty summary of our family history. Jessa and I met in second grade. Sunday school.

Yes. Well, I think it was third, actually.

You had a crush on me for a week. Yeah. Yeah, for a week. Because then what happened?

I'm a jock, and you were a nerd, and it just wasn't going to work out.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Mom was a jock.

I got bored.

Mom was a jock, dad was a nerd. Which is kind of like. It's not flipped around now, but I would say if people were to look at us, they'd probably think I was more of a jock than you. Even though you're way better of a jock than me. I guess. Try really hard at sports. And Jessa doesn't. Yeah, I'm kind of like nerd jock. And Jess is. Jess is. I don't know, a jerd.

I just.

Jock queen.

I just do it.

Yeah.

Like they say.

Nike, second grade, Sunday school. We went to the same church. And even. Even though, like, she decided that I wasn't cool once she realized that, like, all I did was play violin and chess and read books, and I really wasn't. Wasn't a ladies man. Yeah, it was very romantic. Anyway, so we knew of each other, and then at University of Idaho, like, we. We knew each other's families kind of sort of, and would see each other occasionally. But we started hanging out together in college at University of Idaho, when we were in lifeguarding class together.

Yes.

And we really weren't attracted to each other, like, romantically, but we realized we kind of liked hanging out.

Yeah.

And I was working as an intern at the strength conditioning facility, and I would see Jess Every day there, lifting, because she ran for the track and field team. And we started, like, studying together and hiking together and hanging out together.

We had friends that were dating, too.

We have friends who were dating, and we were just kind of besties. Like, we just hung out a lot. And then over the course of, like, probably a week and a half, I started to fall for your mom. Like, I. I actually started to find myself physically attracted to her. I remember one night we all went out to a play with some of our friends, and mom was there, and she was wearing, like, a nice little red skirt and white top. She looked all sexy. And I was sitting by her, and I'm like, I remember. And I was like, oh, geez, I think I'm. I think I'm falling for this girl. And I was attracted to you. And then I was, like, kicking myself after we left the play for not. Not hitting on you. And then. And then the next night, same thing. We all wound out up at a movie theater with a bunch of friends. And it was this old movie. It was Alien movies. I still remember what it's called. It's called Evolution.

It was terrible.

Yeah, it's the worst movie ever. And so.

So I'm not even joking.

We got, like, halfway through that movie, and I did, like, the pinky lock on mom. Like, I just, like, snuck my hand over and kind of. Kind of rubbed my pinky on hers and grabbed it. And then she latched on. And from there on out, it was game over. So we were tethered from there on, we were tethered. We had our tongues in each other's mouths by the end of that movie.

Grandpa taught it to you.

So anyways, with his pinky. We dated for, what, like a year and a half? And then we got married. And then I graduated University of Idaho with my master's degree. You graduated a year before me.

When we got married, we were 21. Both had one year of college left, and then you went and got your masters.

So we got married when you're 21. And then I got my masters in that last year that we. That last year, Idaho, right after we got married. And then I moved. I moved up to Post Falls to work in hip and knee surgical sales. Mom stayed back in Moscow, Idaho, although she eventually moved up to Post Falls to join me, because it's hard for a newlywed couple to not even be living in the same city together. And I worked at that job for, like, less than a year. Hated it. Started getting back into what I'd done all through college.

Changed your mind about medical school?

Yeah, it changed my mind. I wanted to go to medical school, which I had planned on and everything. And I just decided I love fitness, I love physical culture. Like this is what I want to do is physiology and biomechanics and training people and nutrition. So that's what I did. And that's. And then, so mom moved up to Spokane and we lived in Spokane for how many years before we had river and Taran?

Like three or four.

Yeah, three, I think. Yeah, we lived in Spokane and then we had you guys when we were 25, which I highly recommend to any.

How old I was 27.

27. I'm doing the math though. You said it was three or four years after we were 21.

Yeah, no, we lived in Moscow two years or a year and a half. Then we moved to Spokane and it was three or four years then.

Okay, so it was like. Yeah, yeah, like four or five years after we got married. Yeah, it was, it was like a week after I'd raced. It was a week after I'd raced one of my first Ironman triathlons. And I, I think we conceived the very first time we actually like tried to conceive without birth protection. And what's that, what's that oh, ticking noise? That's from my knee. I got a PEMF thing on my knee. And so anyways, I thought maybe since I just raced an Ironman, I was gonna have a bunch of messed up genetically modified sperm and we'd have some crazy three headed baby. We had twins. I'm wrong.

Your first Iron man was after they were born?

No, I said one of my. No, it was, it was my first Ironman.

This is funny.

Yeah, I had my right. But we conceived a week after I raced.

Yeah, they were okay, they were like.

Three months old when you did Iron Man. Right, I did the Iron Man. And the next week we were like, let's to have a baby.

No, you didn't do the Iron Man.

Yes. Okay, so, so now this is. I, I guarantee, okay, I guarantee I race the Iron man and like a week afterwards, something happens. We decide we want to have a baby.

Something happened.

That's all I'm.

But we wound up with two babies.

Yes.

Okay, so this, the answer to this question is getting really long. So we promise. We promise. Quick, quick, quick and dirty. Okay. So anyway, so we had river and Tarim. And then when we were living in. In. Well, we were living in Liberty Lake. And then when we had river and Terror, we moved to Spokane Yes. And then we have lived in Spokane ever since. And for about a year after river and Taran were born, I was continuing to work, managing all my personal training studios and gyms and everything. And then I decided that I wanted to move into the house and spend more time with you guys. So I started doing a lot more what I do now, which is like speaking and podcast and writing, and just kind of reinvented this whole new job for myself. And really, that's. That's what I've done ever since. And our family just kind of grown along the way, but that's where we came from. Was Jessica kicking the back of my chair in Sunday school?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And that's the Greenfield family history in a very, very brief nutshell.

Very brief.

Now, I thought this question was really good, but it's basically somebody wanted to know what our key rituals and routines and comings and goings are. And I thought this was a great question, because our whole family, about a month and a half ago, did something really magical. Even though we've always really valued traditions, everything from family dinners to what we do for Christmas or Thanksgiving to, you know, just little things. Our morning meditation and devotions and evening meditation and devotions and story time and family games, we'd never actually really kind of, like, systematized.

That solidified something.

Yeah. Into like, a playbook. A playbook for the Greenfield family, which I think is a great idea. Right. In the same way that a business might have a logo and a brand and a slogan and a mission statement, why not have that same type of thing for a family? And we met this guy named Rich Christensen. Really cool guy. River and Turn. You guys were recently on his podcast. Super cool dude.

This is the podcast. It was like a.

He has, like, a video show. Yeah. Folks can Google him, or I'll link to him in the show. Notes Rich Christiansen. And what he specializes in is he takes families together and he helps them develop everything from. I mean, we went down to his cabin in Salt Lake, even though they do a lot of this work just online with people, but everything from, like, each family member's spirit animal and color and logo and what values that the family holds dear. And then we weave that all together into a mission statement and a log and a crest and, like, this whole playbook that says, okay, when the kids are eight, we do this. When they're 16, we do this. When they'rE 25, we do this. And it's. It's really cool because. And we have it now as a word. Document. We're getting the big crest that we designed over the fireplace. But it's a great way to develop this deep sense of legacy for a family. And as a part of that experience, we did have a chance to sit down and think about, okay, well, what do we do right now that we feel has really bonded us or formed us as a family as our key rituals and routines and habits that we hold dear? And so I thought we could share a few of the ones that we have found to be really helpful for our family to kind of like, maintain togetherness and tradition. So the first one is when we wake up in the morning.

Oh, meditation.

Yeah, meditation. That's probably the first time that we actually come together as a family.

Yeah.

Because up until that point, you know, I get up usually like, you know, anytime between 4:30 and 5:30. Mom's lazy ass stays in bed till like 7.

I'm actually up. You just don't know 7.

You stay in bed for a good hour after me. But granted, I take an afternoon nap and mom doesn't. So that's. I always tell myself that takes. I'm gonna force her to get up with me. Plus, I like my morning alone time. Mom knows that, like, if mom gets up at the same time as me, I've got my blue light blocking glasses on and I'm walking through the house after her like that. I, I turn off the lights and. Yeah, I don't have. Yeah. So the, the house is dad's domain early, early in the morning. But usually when everybody's up and everybody's kind of like had their coffee or fed the goats and chickens or. Well, you guys don't do coffee. But mom and I often do. We come together as a family. Typically sometime between about 7:30 and 8am dad gathers the family and that's the first time that we have an official structured thing of the day in most cases. I've talked about it before on a podcast, but we meditate together or listen to a song or sometimes we listen to a really uplifting song. Yep. Sometimes we'll go through like a chapter from our spiritual disciplines handbook, which is wonderful. You know, this morning's. What was this morning's on?

It was on like hourly.

Like, like having times of the day. Kind of like when we're in Dubai and we hear like the, the bells go off and, and you know, and that, that's for like the, the Islam religion. And everybody, you know, bows to the, to the. I think it's the north, the, in the west. Hopefully. I'm not totally messing up my description of this, but. But they have certain times, like certain direction prayer times. And that's what this morning's lesson was about. It was like, try this for a week. Like have an alarm go off at whatever 7am noon and 6pm that reminds you to just stop and say the Lord's Prayer, for example. But we go through these disciplines each week. But most mornings we just meditate. We use the spiritual disciplines journal. We write down what it is we're grateful for, who it is we want to pray for or help or serve that day. We play the meditation bells and we breathe and we do some tapping and some gratitude. And then we finish with a prayer and then a giant family hug. My favorite giant family hug. And then that's. That's how we start the day. And sometimes we'll have a quick family meeting about, you know, when are you doing this, when are you doing that? What's the plan for the day? When are we having dinner? Who's cooking, what's for dinner? And then we kind of all like scatter, like, you know, to the four corners of the planet, doing all of our things all day. And then what happens at. Even. Even though it's not like we're total ships in the night because dad works from home and we're all, Mom's a homemaker and river and Taran are unschooled. So you guys are at home a lot of the time. And so we're all kind of seeing each other and still have our own. Yeah. And catch ups. But then at the end of the day, and I think this is really important for a family, we all come together at the end of the day. Some families do this for breakfast. Others will have a lunch together. But we have these big family dinners. And that would be the second thing that comes to mind for me. In addition, that morning meditation is like our big family dinners. What happens at the family dinners, guys?

We start like Bible, like reviewing what we read for the Bible today or memory verse or something like that. And then we sing a song most of the time, not always. And then we do a prayer. Usually dads like finish up cooking or something, but we pick out games.

Gets all his sauces.

Gets all his sauces and stuff up.

Usually these days dad does the meats and somebody else does the sides and.

Someone else is taking out sauces.

Yep. We put out a great big old spread of food. And then what do we do? Game.

A lot of times we play games.

It's a lot of games.

But we like games.

We have a massive game closet. Yeah.

I'm not sure which one our favorite is.

And we're always buying new games. Like, like our family rarely buys movies. Like the thing that we just will. No, we rarely watch movies. But. But the thing that we just like, don't even think about budgeting and don't even think twice about spending money on are probably books and games. And we'll buy a game for like 25 bucks from Barnes and Noble or Amazon and it'll be like the best 25 bucks we spend all month because we'll just. Just have this game that we gather around and laugh with and play. And it's kind of cool because nobody's thinking about being on their phone during dinner. Nobody's thinking about what they got to do next after dinner. We're just all immersed in laughter and. And also. Excuse me, I was thinking about this. I'm belching my. My Zevia soda. Game theory. This idea that like, because I've watched you guys, river and Terran become really good at stuff like logic and rhetoric and math and reasoning and argument just via game theory. I mean, even, even logic. Like if your unstable unicorn is in your stable at the beginning of your turn, then XYZ activates. You know that. That's all logic. Semicomputer programs work, but it's in a very fun learning environment. And so we spend. We typically eat dinner around 7 or 7:30. And we're usually not done playing games till like 8:30.

And sometimes.

Yeah, sometimes later if we play like, you know, what's that new game we're playing right now? Fort. You know, for example, like a longer game.

I didn't. I still don't get that one.

You'll get it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You'll pick it up. But that's the cool thing about games too is there'll be some new game that looks super intimidating that you're like, there's no. I'm ever going to learn all the rules and how to play this. And within a week you feel like you've grown new brain cells just learning this new game. So it's great for bringing a family together. It's great for learning. It's great for, for game theory. And I think that's another big thing that brings our family together. That's a definite keeper for ritual or routine. And then occasionally we'll, we'll like say, oh, let's watch MasterChef or let's try. And then afterwards we're always like, why do we do that? Watching tv Sucks. During dinner, we just like to play games.

Yeah.

And then what about after dinner? Kind of bookend.

Everybody cleans up together sometimes literally a.

Bookend, because we're reading books and basically, let's see, we clean all the dishes, go upstairs, and then we all meet, usually in our room, and we read some sort of book. I think during Christmas, we read A Christmas Child.

We're not incredibly consistent on story time, but we like to, when we can find a good book, have story time when we find a good book. And it's difficult to find a book that's, like, a really good book to read together. But, yeah, like, the Boy Called Christmas was a really good one. He read over Christmas. We have a whole bunch of collections of short stories. You know, like the Book of Virtues. Who wrote that one? William?

Oh, it's a compilation, Bennett.

Yeah, it's a compilation, but it's assembled by someone.

There's a lot of strange poems in that.

I find the sweet spot. Usually if you can find a story that you can read in, like, 10 to 15 minutes or a longer book with chapters that take, like, 10 to 15 minutes to read, that's kind of a sweet spot for a story.

Grandma Annie and Grandpa Dave got you out of one. That the Wild west one. That one was interesting.

That was a good one.

Stories of the Wild, Wild west and Half Magic.

I just think, yeah, Half Magic was good. I think it's great for families to have, like, a collection of books that you can just grab and read at night. And we don't know how much longer we'll keep doing that. We had that discussion on Family Hike a few weeks ago. I asked river and Terry, I'm like, are you guys sick of dad reading your stories at night? He said, not yet. I said, okay, well, I'll keep asking you that. When you say we don't do it very often, though. Yeah, we haven't been doing it too.

Much lately because the book's got to speak to us.

It's easier when there's a season coming up like Christmas, and you're just, like, going through a Christmas book together or something like that. So I would say maybe like 40% of the time we do a story, but almost all the time, we do a song, we do a prayer, we get out our spiritual disciplines journal again and do the evening part of that.

Which is what guys like, basically, like, reviewing what you did for the day. Like, what you did good, bad, what you're about, your purpose.

No, not what you did bad, but what you could have done. Better what you failed from, what you.

Could have done better, but you learned from.

And where were you most purpose filled with your life? Yeah. And so we've got our morning meditation, we've got our evening meditation. We have our family dinners. And then I would say another couple of things that come to mind for me would be almost every week we'll have some type of gathering at our house where we have a whole bunch of people in the community over. New friends, old friends, family members. We'll do a barbecue, we'll cook stuff up. Sometimes it's potluck style. Everybody brings something. And that's pretty cool to be able to not only serve others and share what God has given us with others, but also it's a really, really cool way to meet new people and to foster community. And to me, I don't know what you guys think about it, but I just feel like, you know, we've been doing that for probably like four years now. And we started doing it even more intensively during COVID And it's just kind of like a cool way to bring people together.

My favorite was the popsicle party.

Yeah, they. And a lot of times we'll do themes like music or we got a new karaoke machine. So the next one's karaoke or, you know, wear your funny socks or funny hat. But yeah, doing themes is kind of fun for these family dinners. So I would challenge folks listening in. You know, if you don't have some kind of like a. A group gathering at your home, you know, on a regular basis, it is kind of cool to bring people together. And it's different than the family dinners when you have a whole bunch of other people.

Yeah.

What else we have? Well, you know, that's okay. We're going to get through as many questions as we can. We have a family prayer board. We keep one big prayer board on a whiteboard in our pantry where anybody that we've said we're going to pray for, we pray for. And a lot of times those prayers are part of our morning prayers or evening prayers. Yeah, that's another one. Family tennis.

Yeah, that's fun.

Yeah. One to two times a week, we have a certain evening where we go out and we play family tennis. Typically before dinner, a lot of times dad will put some on the smoker or in the suv and we all get in the car and pile in, drive 10 minutes to the tennis court. Sabbath day, like, that's a big one for us. Every Sunday is more like rest, relaxation, Frisbee, golf, hiking, cornhole, you know, hot tub, you know, whatever. Seems to be, like, a little bit more relaxing. I would say that, like, some of those things we've just rattled off would be.

Those are, like, our daily.

Weekly. Yeah. And then when we travel. When we travel, what are the two things we try to do when we travel? That's like a Greenfield thing or in a new city or new.

Gelato.

Well, gelato. That's one, but I didn't know that one. Yeah, that's a. But escape rooms is what I was thinking of. We usually will always try and hunt down an escape room in whatever city we're in, and then a cooking class, like, especially if we're in a different country. That's like, the Greenfield thing is when we go to a different country or different city, we try to find the local escape room and the local cooking class.

Yep.

The last one we did was in Holbox. Holbox.

Holbox.

Holbox.

Yeah, Holbox, Mexico.

Holbox. Something.

Yeah.

Something with an H and an X. Yeah.

And so what we do with Rich Christensen in this Greenfield family playbook was we just mapped out, you know, what are the rituals and routines that river and Taryn might want to do with their children growing up. Growing up. What do we do at Christmas? You know, like, in terms of, like, the Christmas Eve dinner, the Advent calendar leading up to Christmas? You know, what presents get open first on Christmas morning. What do we eat on Christmas? And having that kind of mapped out for each holiday. And then the logos that we can put on hats and T shirts for family reunions when we got a billion grandkids gathered around.

Yeah.

I mean, each of you guys got to have a half billion kids for us to have a billion grandkids.

Just do the math.

I would say just spitballing our answer to, like, some of the key rituals and routines that. That have been meaningful to our family.

Yeah. And a lot of them have stemmed from traditions and rituals that have already pre. Existed from our families, like my family and Ben's family. And so.

Right. And. And every family, which is the point.

Of writing it down, is. Is so that it gets passed down and not forgotten. I think it creates a lot of, like, unity and a little bit of pride of where you've come from.

Yeah.

Like, to not forget that kind of stuff and. And realize that it's been passed down by people. Some people you've never met and some people that you hold real dear.

Yeah. Yep. And. And so I think that really, the. The main thing I would love to get across to our listeners is, you know, this idea of not just kind of loosey goosey, having at the back of your mind what type of things your family might do together, but actually having, you know, it might. It might sound almost like too systematized or too cold and scheduled to actually write these things down. But it is important.

Like, I think it's really important for young kids, too, because I was like it. They're all trying to figure out, like, their place in life and what, you know, trying to figure out how to wield their strengths and whatever, you know, and sometimes it can come out in, like, anger and aggression because nobody's paying attention. But when you have these things in place where they really do feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves, it's. I think it's really healthy for kids to have that because it's. It's a security thing.

Yeah. Every business has like, a playbook and values and branding statements and mission statements all written out. And I think that not enough families do the same thing for their families. So I would challenge our listeners to think about, you know, doing something similar. And I'll link to that guy's. I don't have any financial affiliation with him or whatever, but that Rich Christensen guy, he does a really good job with this stuff. So any does do it with him, you don't have to, like, go to Salt Lake and do it with him in his cabin. Like, he's got it scaled online, too. A little book he sends out. It was pretty fun. So a lot of people are curious about Jessa and about river and Taren. So. Typical day in the life of Jessa Greenfield. Typical day in the life.

Oh, geez. I feel like it changes pretty regularly, but. And seasonally it's very different. What I do in the summer is way different than what I do in the winter.

Yeah. But, like, what do you do when you get up? What time do you get up? Do you have any morning routine?

So I get up between six and seven, not seven, like Ben said, but I'm just quiet. And I generally stay in my room. And I will. A lot of times I will wait to come down before my coffee. I'll do my prayer time. I'll come down, have coffee and then kind of put on some incense and nice sauce music. Because I really like this idea. And I think. I mean, it's not just women, but I think women are the kind of the curators of the home. Like, they really set the stage and the mood. And I think that's really important in the morning. So I put on soft music and put on incense because I want our day to, like, start off.

Yeah. You make the home a really nice, pleasant place to be.

Well, I like our kids to wake up to that. I don't like, you know, just this. This is one thing I really do not miss about you boys going to school is getting up in the morning and just rushing like crazy people to get to the bus stop. It's just so chaotic feeling, and I don't feel like it's the best way to just, like, ease into the day. So I really like. Yeah. Setting the stage for the day. And that's one of the reasons why I like to pray before I come down. Because I feel like I am in a much better spiritual place. All my cares and all my worries have been, you know, brought before the Lord and not to my family. Not that my family can't help me in those areas, but, you know.

Yeah, I. I get jealous of you sometimes because you can. You. You're, like, up in the bedroom and I'll walk in on you. A lot of times you have earplugs in, but you have this, like, special, like, spiritual meditation devotion chair. And sometimes you're up there for, like, an hour and a half.

It depends on the day.

Deep with God every morning.

Yeah.

So. So special.

That's how I start. That's how I start my days in prayer. And then I come down and light incense and, you know, get the music going. And then if the boys haven't gotten up, you know, within the half hour, I will be like, okay, it's time to get the day going. We gotta get started.

But half hour is that it doesn't.

Happen as much anymore. You guys are actually really better. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you have your sunrise alarm clock. Well, we'll get to river and Terrence Day later, so. Keep going, Joseph.

And so then a lot of times, I'll just poke around the house and tidy up things because I like. Like, I like. I'm a clean person. And. And peace and cleanliness are, like, really important to me. So I'll just. Anything that didn't get taken care of the night before, I'll take care of. And then the boys and I will go out to the animals and we'll take care of the animals. We have a pregnant goat right now. My money is that she's gonna have her babies today. So that could happen.

Could happen. During the podcast, we made bets this will be the first podcast. Background noise of a goat in labor.

I said Saturday I said today. So we've been going out and you know, working together, which I really like doing with my, with I think it's great to do with kids just in general is rather than bossing your kids around and telling them what to do, like going out and taking them out and doing it with them and learning with them. So we've been learning with toffee on training, training her on a milk. She's a tough, stubborn goat. But getting her on tough Toffee, Toffee. Getting her on the goat stand or the milking stand and you know, fondling her basically and getting her comfortable with that. And so that's been like a fun thing to learn together and I'm really excited to see the fruits of that and what will come of that because we've worked on that for so long and I know that it's going to be good. Even though I had a dream last night, I think I was a little stressed out about it.

So you meditate, you pray, come down to the incense music, go out with river and Terry and take care of the animals.

And then a lot of time river and Terry and I will have breakfast together. I know because Ben's humming around, getting things ready for the day.

I'm not like a group breakfast guy. I do a quick smoothie. River and I will do emails and you guys do more like a proper breakfast.

Yeah, we normally have breakfast together and then that's when our, all our paths kind of part and we just, you.

Know, I think a lot of people think or wonder if you're like in the morning, if you're like timing your intermittent fasts and doing your supplements and your biohacking.

I'm not at all like that.

No, not at all.

I'm actually very yoga. Yeah. But even that's not scheduled. Yeah, it's just whenever I get randomly.

Go to a hot yoga class, I.

Mean it means a lot to me. So I do squeeze it in.

So it's not like yoga does you mean?

Yeah. And so if something means something to me, I will do it. But if it's, if it's just kind of like, yeah, I, I should do more of that. If there's a should in front of anything, I definitely don't like to do it. So I'm not a very scheduled person. I'm my, I'm an artist. So I, that's my personality too. So I'm much more free flowing and you know, I'm trying to get into this supplement thing, trying to take my vitamins that's been really hard for me.

I tried, I try not to be the person to remind you to do that kind of. Of stuff.

I really am trying to do.

Shoemaker's wife wears no shoes, as they say. But you wear your shoes sometimes.

Yeah, but it's just. Yeah, it's a lot harder for me to remember those kinds of things because it's just not. Like I said, it's not. Even though my health is important to.

Me, people want to know, though, like. Like, do you. Do you work, Work like are. Or like, how would you describe to people what it is that you do if someone. Okay, you know, sit next to you on an airplane? What do you do? Like, what's your mission in life?

My mission in life is to serve my family. And that's. That's it. And that sounds so simple, but I don't think it's not. I don't think people put enough emphasis on what that means for the rest of the world. And the end for myself, it's. To me, it's super fulfilling when I see my kids and my husband fulfilled in their work, and I can, you know, do things that make that possible for them.

Yeah, yeah, It's. It's. It's kind of that idea that I think women, especially in our day and age, are expected to have a career or encouraged to go out and build a company or, or join a company or generate income. When, in fact, you know, when it comes to one of. One of the things that a woman can do that, that, last time I checked, although there's some controversy about this now, no other being on the face of the planet can do is to bring forth children and new offspring into the world and then equip them and empower them to go forth and be impactful people that change the planet. And I think a lot of times women feel like staying at home and just being with their children or educating their children or influencing their children is like a cop out that you've. That you've given up and that you're just like, at home, whatever, barefoot, and you're dressed hunched over a kitchen grill.

That's the deal, though, I think. I think you could. I think you could think that way. But to me, it's the power of ruling over your spirit rather than your spirit ruling over you. You know, it's like you take ownership. Like, there have definitely been teas where I do laundry, and I'm like, oh, my goodness, this is insane. These kids, like, wear five outfits a day and go through five towels and you know, there definitely are days like that. But then I have to think about, well, I'm really grateful for the two legs that go in these pants and for the little spirits that fill up this home. And you know what I mean? I'm like, I was like, you can definitely be a housewife and be begrudging and hate it and resent your husband and your kids and all those things. I'm like, you could definitely do that. But I, to me, it's. I don't know.

You.

You have, you have the choice, I guess.

Yeah.

And. And you really do have the choice. And I, and I said, I. There are days where I definitely fail. There are days that are really great. And, and like I said earlier is like, I really, really don't think people understand the power of a peaceful home, the power of a intact home, the stability of it, and what it brings to your children and to your husband and, or your wife or whatever. However that dynamic looks for others, there is no price tag you can put on that.

It's priceless.

It's priceless. Thank you. It is priceless.

Price tagless at least, because then we're.

Putting out these young people into the world who have security and peace and a firm foundation and that's. We need a lot more of that, in my opinion.

So you are mostly here during the day? I'm here a lot when you leave, you know, a lot. You. But I get a lot of tennis.

I don't just sit and serve my family all the time. I play tennis.

Tell people, Tell people what you do during the day.

I love to play. I love to play tennis. So I'm on a tennis team and I'm the youngest one. They're all retired women, which is hilarious because I get they. Some of the things that come out of their mouth are shocking.

Like what?

Just women, older women just talking about sex and wine and I'm just like, wow, I never thought that would come out of my mom's mouth.

It doesn't.

It doesn't. Exactly. So it's just funny when you. Yeah, it's just funny. I love, I love playing with my older ladies. They're fun. And I do yoga and I do, I love to garden. So I spent a lot of time doing that. I, I'm getting better at canning. I love to ferment, so I like to, I like to be self sufficient. I like to do things for myself.

I spend a lot of times, like, kind of like preparing in the kitchen, fermenting and soaking.

I like to know how to do things that like, like if things went sideways, I know that I have all. Yeah, I am equipped.

Yeah. You do a lot of hiking. You do volunteering? You do?

Yeah.

Tell people about that.

I volunteer at a place here in Spokane for crisis pregnancies. A lot of times young girls or girls in bad home situations or bad relationships that need to be protected from their boyfriends. And then also a lot of times there's men involved and they try to equip those men to be supportive of a crisis pregnancy or of an. Perhaps an unplanned pregnancy.

Men. Men who could step in and be a father.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's not just about the women and the babies. It's also about men. Because I really believe that if we can intact and have an intact family, that's the best. That's the best thing we can do for society. And then also my opinion, if they have. God, that's even better.

What about in the evening? Do you have. Obviously we explain to people what we do with like, like dinner and you know, our families all together. So that's what you're doing in the evening. But do you have any special. You know, because we have again, a lot of people listening, like the biohacking, the evening routines. Like, do you have things that help you sleep at night? Do you have wind down routine? Do you have things that are. That are non negotiables for you in the evening or on a regular basis that you do as nighttime activities?

Not really. Magnesium works really great for me.

I mean, do you.

I know that's so boring, but.

Chili pad? Nope.

I don't use anything. I honestly like. And this is part of like my personality is I don't like to be dependent on anything.

Yeah.

Like, I don't want to be dependent on having to have a glass of wine, even though I love wine and I really do enjoy it. I also don't. I mean, I also like to be dependent on coffee. And I'll take periods of time where I will just totally cut those things out of my life to make sure that I am actually in control and not the other way around. I don't like to have to have a chili pad that put me to sleep. If I want to be cold at night, I just stick my feet out at night.

You know, it's like I. I actually appreciate like, I think that in like the biohacking community. Well, let me put it this way. Like I've had people come over here who are just like, their world's gonna. And go to hell in A handbasket. They don't have, like, their blow dryer in the morning or like their special sleep app to put them to sleep at night. And I think that. That it's a. It's a laudable goal. Like, even though it's fun to have all these tools and toys and technologies and hacks and supplements that help life be better for you, you should be able to go off camping in the wilderness and just, like, have a blanket, even though. And a knife and just be able to just chillax when you guys sleep.

In those debris hut things that. I don't know if I could do it.

Well, that's a survival thing.

I know. I didn't like it warmer than you think it is. I don't. It's not the warmth. It's like all the pokey things and.

Well, for people who don't know what a debris shelter is, when river and Taryn and I go out and we're just doing like, no tent camping, we'll spend like four or five hours basically building a giant shelter that's a bunch of bark and dust and dirt and padding on the bottom. Like, and then very low. Yeah, yeah. And then it's covered. Let me finish. Covered with a bunch of branches. And then there's like palm fronds and bark, whatever else we can find on top of that, and then a bunch of dirt. You're basically building like a giant human sized squirrel nest. And when you all climb in there and you're all bundled up together, it's actually surprisingly warm.

I could do it. I just would not prefer it.

As a matter of fact, last time we did it, we were out way up above Sandpoint, Idaho, and it was like a super cold night, and I had to get out of the debris shelter and sleep under the stars because I was so hot between river and Terran.

So we're like, yeah, really warm.

So. So kind of, kind of leading off on that question, Jessa, people want to know, like, if. If you find meaning and joy and purpose and passion or how you find meaning and joy and purpose and passion and. This is going to sound maybe wrong, some people, but just like being at home all day, like, how do you even just, like, find purpose in that?

I find purpose in it because I believe that God has loaned these children to me. They are not my own, but he has entrusted them to me. And so to do that, well, that is one of the greatest callings I can have. I mean, I don't just bird children into the world and not care for them. And like, in a way that I know is meaningful and really full. So caring for my family and, and then also my husband, like being able to, for him to have confidence in me to care for our family. So like when he leaves because Ben travels, you know, like, knowing that things are gonna remain intact, like our, you know, meditations and things like that, like, I want my husband have full confidence in me to be able to continue all of this is happening here with, along with a lot of other help, we have a beautiful people who help us here at the house. I'm not doing everything, but, you know, I just, I, I, I want my husband to not worry when he leaves. I want my children, I want my husband when he comes home to just long to come home. Like, I want home to be like.

You don't mean when I come home work? You mean, like if I'm out traveling?

Yeah. I want this, our home, to be a sanctuary. I want it to be a place that is like, like people want to come back to it. It's, it's comfortable, it's peaceful, it's joyful. There's gratitude. We all work hard. You know what I mean? Nobody's slacking off here. We all have things that we're working hard at, like, you know, and I like growing things in my garden because it provides for my family. It's amazing to be able to give that to your family. Like, that's amazing to me. So, yeah, I just like to give. I'm a giver.

I can say just, just objectively from my standpoint that, I mean, your, your days are so jam packed with just like it's random making this home an amazing and beautiful place and being with river and Terran that I would say, like, you know, the, the only loss of purpose or loss of passion or loss of joy would be derived from you feeling as though you weren't doing what all the other women are doing and building a career and working on your webpage.

I've done that and I'm okay with not doing that.

Yeah. And like, I think it's again, like, I think that sometimes in our society the importance and vast meaning of being a mother and a matriarch and a homemaker is sometimes something women feel like it's not what they're supposed to be doing, when in fact it is probably the most important and most meaningful thing that a woman can do.

And honestly, like, my prayer is always like that. My, my kids will grow up into these mighty men of God who love him and, and forsake the world and seek after God. And the only way that that is ever going to happen is if they learn it from me and my and you. And if we're not constantly growing, our kids aren't growing. And so even though I'm a stay at home mom, it's a constant growth and constant progression. You know, I was like, the way I dealt with stress three years ago is not how I deal with stress now. And that should, I'm hoping, is apparent to people all around, you know, so you, even though you're at home, you're constantly learning and you're constantly growing. And it's not like you're just this stagnant like person who just folds laundry and cooks meals. I'm like, I spent a lot of time growing myself.

You do fold a pretty darn good towel though. Tell us very symmetrically. Well, I, I want to make sure that we have a chance to address like, like some of the other questions as well. So river and Taryn, you got a similar question. What, what's like a lot of people like, what's this whole unschooling homeschooling thing look like? And not only that, but you know, what, what's a day in your guys's life look like? You know, kind of similar to our mom explained like, like how does a typical day look like for you? Even though I know it's not the same same. Just like dad's day isn't the same every day. But what are some staples that you would say really define what your day looks like as far as like, you know, when you get up, how you get up, what do you do when you first get up? You know, what are some of the things you do during the day? What do you eat? A lot of people want to know like what kind of things you eat. So fill us in on what a typical day in the life of river and Taren looks like. I know you guys are sharing a microphone, but I'll let you figure that out.

It starts usually like at 6 o' clock when our alarm clock, that's like a, it's like a bird alarm clock and it goes off.

Sunrise alarm clock. Yeah. Which is great. Gradually. I think that's great, especially for gradually waking up. If you do need to use an alarm, like the gradual light that's, that flows in from the alarm clock.

So like six o' clock. And then like I get up like kind of slowly just because I don't like getting up really straight away. So I take like 10 minutes like snuggling the Dog. It's kind of stretching and stuff. And then usually it's like Bible reading to, like, 6, 36, 40. After that, kind of like, read your.

Bible while you're laying in bed snuggling with the dogs.

After that, just like, kind of do whatever you want. It's also a big part.

It's a big part of your life.

Yeah. Do whatever you want really to. Like, we do meditation, and then usually after meditation, sometimes before we do the animals.

You mean the meditation that we talked about that we all come together and.

Do as a family, and then it's like breakfast, and then we start school.

And what's breakfast look like for you guys?

Breakfast. It's a Dutch baby, which is like a sugarless, awesome pancake thing that's like, not like a pancake, but it's, like, also, like, at the same time, very.

It's a very eggy, proteiny.

Yeah.

Pancake.

And we have a lot of eggs. So usually something that would do when.

You have too many eggs or too much milk.

You guys are a real big, like, eggs, bacon, what might be considered to be. Versus Dad's weird superfood smoothies. Like, if people saw it on the table, they'd be like, oh, yeah. It's like a traditional American breakfast, except without the orange juice and toast and chocolate. Chocolatey cereal. Sourdough bread. Yep. Yeah. Occasionally magic spoon cereal you guys do. If you do do cereal, which is occasionally more of like a snack, magic spoon or overnight oatmeal.

Like, you do that sometimes It's. It's leftovers. It's just, we like breakfast stuff, so it's mostly breakfast things are also leftovers if we don't have time.

And then between breakfast and, let's say, lunch, just using meals as an easy way to kind of partition the day for you guys, even though, again, it's very different from day to day. But what are some of the key activities that you guys are doing during a day of, like, unschooling, meaning. And I've explained this before, I've got big podcasts on unschooling. But essentially, very, very quickly, the best way I can describe it is that homeschooling, which is how I was raised, typically involves. You've got a set curriculum, you're sitting around the kitchen table all day with books, taking tests, learning. Essentially, you're doing the equivalent of what someone might do at public school, but at home, and then sometimes going to activities or group learnings with other homeschoolers in the community. Whereas unschooling It's a lot more of just like doing life and learning from life experiences with still a little bit of curriculum thrown in, like math or Spanish, like you were doing this morning. But for the most part a little less structured and a little more experiential based. Right, so. So what are the type of things you're doing between breakfast and lunch?

Lots of unschooling. Usually planned classes are in the morning. Planned classes?

You mean like if you are gonna do like a math class or a Spanish class, those are taking place in the morning.

It's like, it's like plan classes, homework and art. And then lunch is usually like a, like some sort of sandwich or leftover. Most of most lunches are like leftovers or sandwiches. We like our sandwich or like a dip with like some like crackers. I don't know what the crackers that we have now, but yeah, so it's usually like things that we just have that we're just gonna whip together real quick. And then we go outside and like go outside, play with dogs, play with friends for something for like 30 minutes and then we come back in.

How do you guys even have friends if you, if you don't go to school? People wonder.

Otto and Gavin, who come over and they help.

Their daddy said those are your only friends.

No, they just come over. We still, we're still from swimming school that we used to go to that week.

Yeah, friends from, from school that you've gone to in the past, friends from church, jiu jitsu friends, tennis friends. What else? What are the other places you see or hang out with your peers?

Yeah, tennis, jiu jitsu, church, old school friends, people. People that come around from the house, people from Moscow, cousins, People down the road.

Yeah, you guys are with other, other peers or kids your age just about every day in some sense or another. It's just you're not like sitting in a classroom with them. You're just kind of organically seeing other kids. Whether it's at a, at a jiu jitsu or a tennis class that you're at, or whether it's, you know, people swinging by the house to play or other people are homeschooled or unschooled in the community who might have similar schedules. You can hang out during the day. I feel like you guys actually do see a lot of, a lot of other like, peers. Yeah. And then, you know, for you guys, what are some of the main activities that you would say you learn from? You know, whether we're talking about like kamana and wilderness survival Stuff like that or you would consider to be kind of like part of your education that aren't just like math or Spanish or learning from a book or online.

Usually a cooking class is like. Yeah, podcast is pretty. Yeah, you learn a lot. And it's. We paint murals on our wall. Oh yeah, lots of painting. We like painting and drawing and stuff like that. Kamana, like you said, which is like.

Explain to people what kamana is.

It's a awareness thing where you can do sit spots or animal tracking or it's basically, basically learning. It's learning like the analog world through like forests and animals.

And so it's a whole series, like a multi year series of wilderness awareness, wilderness immersion and wilderness survival. And your guys is facilitated by the Twin Eagles Wilderness School. So you have like calls every month with the guy who runs the school. You go out there sometimes for camps and classes and then you have these books where you go out like tell people for example about the sit spots that you do.

Basically a spot in the. Yeah, it's like a spot in the forest where you kind of like, you know and like you try to stay really quiet so you can like see animals or see how your spot is changing. It's basically being just like being in like a place that's special. Then that. So you can see like the changes and what like the forest is doing, observing. Even if it's not the forest, it'd be like the middle of the river. I wouldn't advise that.

And what are some of the other things that you guys are doing? For example in the afternoon that you would consider to be like learning or education or school based activities?

Sports is also. Yeah, sports is in the afternoon, like tennis and jiu jitsu and then we have youth group on Wednesdays. That's not exactly sports, but games. Yeah, but we do music in the afternoons, sports in the afternoons. Any like catch up work or reading work or homework that we have to do too sometimes.

How often are you reading at night?

Lunch, morning, night.

How many books a week would you say you guys read?

Depends.

We have a lot of books that we reread a lot. So I'd say we have a lot of comic books that we like reading. Like Tintin and Calvin Hobbes and Asterix.

Yeah, you guys are into both. Both creating graphic novels and comic books and reading them.

Depends on the size of the book, if it's a graphic, depending. I probably read like two, three graphic novels a week. But like chapter books, I read like one a week so probably four books a Week.

I would say you guys are probably reading like probably a good two hours a day.

Yeah, easily.

Easily. Yeah. Which, which is about what, you know, Dad's usually reading about two to three hours a day. How about screen time, social media phone? Like people want to know. People are always like, how do you limit social media in your home? Or how do you encourage healthy eating in your home? I mean, if I could speak to that. I use my phone for work a lot. Like everything from the social media apps that I need to use or emails I need to send to my team. I probably use my phone more than anybody else in the family for business. I joke with people. I don't really know what people are referring to when they say they scroll through a feed or look because that's a foreign concept to me to actually just open my phone and open up a feed and scroll through it. Like if I open up my phone, it's almost purely for utilitariative business based purposes and work. Mom is usually like, you know, music or listening to an audiobook or something like that. And river and Taren each have itouches that you guys use for your podcast, for photography, for listening to music occasionally. But our family are used to use of phones has always been very purposeful and mindful. And they're like, we don't have any screen time rules in our house at all. There is no rules on TV watching time, there's no rules on video game time, there's no rules on phone time. But the thing is like our family has never really been a priority that just mindlessly consumes content or looks at screens. And so there is no rule, there's no like hours. Look at screens as much as you want, but understand that the amount of time that you spend on those or how you use them is time. Like how you spend your days, as we were talking about this morning, is how you spend your life. And we really don't have a lot of rules in our house. People think that we're like, don't touch that, it's got gluten in it. Or you get one hour a day on the screens. We basically, like Jess and I have always had the parenting approach of have a very purpose filled life in which you are self actualized and love what you're doing so much that other meaningless things that distract you from that aren't even attractive to you and then understand the consequences. You know, like river and Tarrant understand that if they eat a whole whatever Pizza Hut pizza, they're gonna feel like crap. The Next day, they've seen, you know, we've taken anatomy and physiology, but, like, they both know that if they walked in here with a large Pizza Hut pizza, which I don't. It's totally up to them if they want to just punish that whole thing and follow it up with a pint of bed and Jerry's. There's no root. Like, Dad's not going to walk in and say, no, don't eat that. Just like, yeah, do it, but here's how you're going to feel tomorrow. Or same thing with, like, phones. Like, neither of you guys have a phone, but you both know if you wanted a phone, like, right now, Dad's told you, like, yeah, take your money. Go. Go buy a phone. Use it responsibly. It's your budget, and it's totally up to you. You guys also know that if you. If you wanted to go downstairs after this podcast and watch TV the rest of the day, there's no rules. You guys could totally do that, but you don't, because I think, A, you kind of understand how that could potentially turn into an act of just kind of wasting your life, because how you spend your days is how you spend your life. And B, like, that's not what mom and dad do. At the end of the day, we're, like, playing family games and reading books. And when Dad's got downtime, I've got a book in my face. And if I'm whipping my phone out and just, like, scrolling through my phone, it's not for, like, I'm doing work on it. And so, yeah, we, we really, like, people are surprised because we have. We have a surprisingly low number of actual nutrition rules. And I was like, don't eat this, don't eat that. And it's more. It's more concepts of, oh, well, this is just what we do. We eat healthy food. We don't burn our eyeballs out on screens all day. But there's no, There's. I can't think of many hard and fast rules in our home that, that go beyond just like, you know, the ten Commandments, like, don't murder, don't lie, don't steal. Like, like, those are the kind of things that are rules in our home. But, you know, aside from that, like, we got so many questions about, like, how do you get your kids to eat healthy food? Like, how do you force screen time rules? We just don't. We instead focus on educating about the consequences and focusing on what's important in life. And if you're purpose filled and focused on what's important in life. You don't need rules for all the other stuff.

Plus, I think I'd like to speak a little bit to the eating. Our kids have always been allowed and involved in the kitchen, which I think was super formative for them. Because when they were young enough to peel labels or take stickers off of produce or wash produce, they were always invited to be in the kitchen with us. Like that wasn't an off limits thing. And honestly now they, they cook almost all their own meals. I don't even have to cook a lot of them other than dinner. And then we do breakfast together. But always allow like always allowing them to be a part of or they're contributing to.

Right. Understanding food.

Yeah.

Like when you, when, when we go out to a restaurant, for example, you know, and let's say we go to Wild Sage and you guys get polenta fries. This isn't some foreign object in front of you. Like, you know what corn is, you know what polenta is. You understand that, you know, some corn is GMO and some corn is non gmo. You understand all the subtleties of that. Wonderful. What's the spicy berry sauce that they bring out with it or the lavender butter? It's. It's like the best way I can describe it is if you can sit down in front of any meal and kind of understand how to reverse engineer that and what went into it and how it was created. Because you spent time in the kitchen creating. Food becomes something that you're not afraid of. Food becomes something that you understand when it comes to. To knowing what it may or may not do to your gut, to your cells, etc. But a big part of that is just freaking cooking from an early age. Just like understanding food doesn't come from packages and containers. Like make it from scratch. I think that's the best thing that we've done with river and Taran.

Yeah.

Is they've just learned to cook from scratch and they understand what's in food. Isn't just like this mysterious thing.

Yeah.

Well, and that was, that was always like really important to me specifically because I was like, if you don't teach your kids how to cook and eat, like that's like basic self care. Like if you can't cook for yourself, you can't eat for yourself. And then you are at somebody else's whim and they can put whatever the heck they want in there. You know, it can be the cheap stuff, it can be the good stuff, whatever. So like if you. It's just like anything if you want to, you have to learn that stuff to care, be able to care for yourself. And so that was always very, very important to me, that they would always, that they knew how to cook and that they, you know, could do those things for themselves. Because when they get out from under my roof, they're gonna have, you know, all kinds of things available to them. And I want them to like, feel confident enough and they like the kitchen.

To be able to produce, teach a person. It's like with fitness, right? So people who are working with a personal trainer their entire life either a, are doing because they dig the motivation and being able to outsource and not have decision making fatigue and just wake up in the morning, know what workout they're supposed to do. But an ideal scenario, and this was always my mentality when I was doing a lot of personal training with people and still do. I'd rather teach a person to fish. I'd rather say, okay, well, you know, this week you need to do a, a hinging movement, a squatting movement, a pressing movement, a pulling movement, some mobility, some VO2 max, some mitochondrial work, and some lactic acid work. So if you didn't have someone to write out your workouts for you, you kind of sort of know what you're supposed to do. And it's the same thing with food. It's like, yeah, you should be able to just like open up any diet book or cookbook on the face of the planet and automatically know or at least know pretty quickly, oh, this is going to agree with me. And this could be useful and this could be tasty and also healthy. And if you've, if you start, whether you're a child listening right now or a parent, like, if you just start to begin to make things for yourself and make meals for yourself in the same way, if you start to program some of your own workouts, like, you're gonna be able to decode that a lot more quickly.

Kids are more likely to eat the things that, that they've made, like because they just are because they get excited about it. Kids do really like to be in the kitchen. It's fun. And when they make something, they're generally more likely to eat it, right?

Yeah.

Right. And so, you know, I think that people could probably kind of see the type of things that river and Taren are cooking and discovering and learning and educating other people about in the food environment if they were to go, you know, shameless plug go to go to listen their podcast@gogreenfields.com I think this is also going to be podcast on Go Greenfields as well. So it'll be, it'll get cross posted on both those platforms. But. But yeah, I mean, so many people are curious about the, the rules and how do you get the kids to do this and how do you keep them from doing that? It's not about that. It's about empowering with the knowledge of both what goes into any given activity, whether it's screen time or social media or food, and also the consequences of the wrong decisions in that department rather than setting up all these rules, which of course creates. And I don't think there's a mystery to anybody. Forbidden fruit. Like if we're sitting around the dinner table, you guys and dad, mom bring out our glass of wine and say, you guys are not allowed to touch alcohol until you're 18. It creates a totally different mental scenario than if dad pours you some of the wine, a little shot glass and says, taste this. This is a Bordeaux from the western side of France. It says from this organic farm. And here's a little QR code we can scan and actually see where it came from. Here's some of the tasting notes. You taste that. It's not like you're gonna sneak a bottle of wine away from our wine cabinet when you're 16 and go get drunk in your bedroom because you've never had wine before. It's like, you know, it's all about, you know, just, just having a deep, intimate relationship with your food from an early age. So I know we're getting close to the amount of time, but we're going to, we're going to rapid fire a few of the questions. Okay, rapid fire. River and Terran. Do you take any supplements? And if so, what supplements do you take?

Fish oil. Fish oil, Glutathione. We're going to take stress movers.

Liver capsules.

Yeah, liver capsules. We have. Yeah, we take on aminos.

Yeah. And then stress mover. We had like a nutrigenomics analysis recently with a doctor or with Terry Cotton Cochrane and she recommended a few different supplements to you guys based on your nutrigenomics analysis. But yeah, like you guys take lion's mane because both you and dad need help with making more brain derived neurotrophic factor. You take glutathione to help with some of the glutathione pathways that we discovered your genetics need help with. And then you take liver just as like nature's multivitamin.

Yep.

I think those are the main ones that you guys just like real whole food. Yeah. And then you, like, dad, you wake with a giant mason glass full of really good water. So let's see. Another. Well, maybe kind of a rapid fire. Somebody asked this I thought was interesting. I saw this come through twice. Is it weird living in a family where some of your life is in public? Like having a dad who's a social media guy or who's, you know, you know, on videos and stuff or TV or you're out in public if somebody knows who your family is. How does that feel for you?

Well, it's not like you're, like, videoing us sleeping or something. Yeah, it depends. Yeah, it's.

Well, we are. You just don't know.

You don't know everything, so it's not like, that bad.

But I guess life. Life as a public figure or life living with a family that. Because not every family is just, like, sitting around doing a podcast on a Monday that a bunch of people are going to listen to. Like, do you think it's weird to, I guess, be known to a certain extent or be a part of a public family?

It's a little weird. It'd be a little weird to me if, like, if the world knew that you're the son of the dad who ate a raw testicle. But other than that, it's pretty good.

Testicle boy.

Well, now they all know.

Now they do know because of you.

You let them all know.

Yeah. Well, if you're helping people, then it's. Yeah, it's not stupid.

Yeah, it's weird for me, like. Like when we're. Like, last time we were in Las Vegas, we couldn't walk through any casin. Somebody wanting, like, a photo or to stop and ask me a question or something. And that's still super weird for me when I'm going through an airport and somebody, like, walks by me and takes my book out of their bag and wants it signed. Because, like, for me personally, I set about to do what I do to, like, take information that I thought was really cool. And whenever I come across stuff, I'm like, oh, so many other people should know this. I got to tell them somehow. And so I did the podcast and blog to do that. But, yeah, it's weird for me, especially being, like, a private, kind of introverted guy. Like, when people know who I am, like, that's. It's still. It doesn't annoy me. It's just weird. I'm like, how does this person even know who I am? This is just so.

Yeah.

Odd that you Know, because I don't work on my business in a sense of like wanting to be seen by a lot of people as much as put a lot of helpful information out there. Yeah, it is kind of. I don't know. What about you, babe? Is it weird for you?

Oh, I, I mean for river and Taryn, I'm like, that's all they've ever known, so.

Yeah, that's true.

It's not, I don't, you know, you don't know what you don't know and you know, you know. And we don't know a lot of people. It was, I think it was hard for me at first because my dad had. He was just such, you know, like such a quiet, humble person. Not that you're not humble, but I mean you would not. You know what I mean? And so that's what I grew up with. He would go work, my dad was a rancher, he would go ranch and he'd come home, we'd have dinner, you know, and it was just a very normal, very, very traditional family. So it was hard for me to kind of come into all of this with you initially.

Yeah.

And I was. And so because to me just did not trans. Like that's not what I grew up with. And so I was just kind of like, what is this? Who are these people? Who are these people? You know. Right. So I grew up with a very. Yeah. Just different.

Yeah. But I mean even from the time we got married, you know, for me being just like a personal trainer in the local community, we'd be eating dinner and people would come up and like look over my plate and be like, oh, what's Ben eating? Right.

Yeah.

Hey, you have fries on your plate. What's going on there? And you know, it's. I think, I think it's always been that way to a certain extent. Like not knowing anything. That's super different. Like your husband has always been like travel around the world doing races and bodybuilding and all this. So sometimes it's just like the norm of what you became accustomed to. But, but for me it's, it is weird just because I'm not like an actor or something. It's not my desire or prime goal to be a well known public figure, but it just kind of happened as a result of putting information out there. So. Yeah, I don't think it's weird as much as it's just, I don't know.

It just, it took me a while to get to and just kind of be like, yeah, yeah, why do people care?

Yeah, all right, here's another one. And you know, this. This one be a good one to wrap on because I actually have to go get an MRI on my knee here in a little bit. But what is it that you guys think allows our family to be. To be in a good mood? Like, we get that comment a lot. You guys seem like you're in a good mood. You're happy, you're joyful. Like, we don't seem like we're like a sad family.

Or.

Or we, We. We kind of seem like we're savoring life quite a bit. What would you guys say allows you to be happy and joyful or makes you feel as though our family is a happy family?

God, Doing what I love to do.

Drawing. Yeah. Yeah.

I would self actualize God.

Yeah. I was like, I don't know. I just feel like there's always so much to be grateful for and to be joyful for. I was like, I don't. I mean, and it's not like we haven't had hard times. I'm like, I don't want people to think that at all. It's like, it's not like we don't, well, maybe ever get down or have a hard time.

I just thought of this. Maybe it would be a good way to. To kind of like. And it would also be a nice way to put a bow on this podcast. Maybe we should just read people what our Greenfield family mission statement is because. Would you guys be game for that? Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. Maybe. You want me to read it?

Yeah.

Okay. So. So I'll read you guys our mission statement and we'll kind of leave you packing with this, but we'll put all the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com greenfield the number four. But I would say us having a mission statement and being really connected to these elements of our mission statement, I think for me, that's what fuels us, keeps us happy and. And just gives us almost like confidence and an inner knowing that everything is going to be okay because we know why God put us on this planet. Okay, so here's how our mission statement goes. You guys want me to do it?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. Here. You got it in front of you.

Okay.

I know.

We are the Greenfields. We. That's actually old cartoon. We are the Greenfields. We live to faithfully shine the light of God's love and Christ's sacrifice to the world by savoring and sharing his creation. We believe in the absolute truth of God's word and commit to daily immersing ourselves in the wisdom of scripture, prayer and communion with God. We are lovers of life and savor all of creation with the spirit of curiosity, adventure, lightheartedness, community building and sharing our joy with everybody. Knowing that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. We know that each of our blessings are gifted through grace for us to steward, to share and to enjoy with an abundant spirit of generosity. In all of our relationships, we prize, prioritize, and commit to love, sacrifice, forgiveness, radical honesty, transparency and truth. We know that we are uniquely created in God's divine image and called as makers to intelligently create beauty that shines forth his glory. Our yes is our yes, our no is our no. And we are dependable leaders who endure and persevere through all, learning to be content with a spirit of gratitude and peace, no matter our circumstances. We embrace in a spirit of full humility our interdependence and need for deep present connection with our ancestors, our community, our planet, and our legacy. We fully trust that as fruits of our faithful obedience, God's promises and blessings will extend to our family, our children, their children, and a thousand generations beyond, so that the knowledge of the glory of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. And that's. That's our mission statement. So, yeah, I think for me, it's just like knowing my purpose, being connected to God and then having, like, we were talking about earlier, all these little rituals and habits and routines from, like, you know, there were a few we didn't talk about, like, mom and I always pray together before we fall asleep at night. And then our morning meditation and our evening meditation and our family hug in the morning and our family dinners, like, those are little things that just stack that build up. And I think the times when I feel most down or least connected from my life's purpose is when, like, I've been traveling a whole bunch and all those little rocks that hold our family together throughout the day kind of get neglected or aren't as consistent a part of daily routine. Yeah, that's about the only time I feel as though there's like a hole in my soul, like, kind of a disconnect. But, man, when. When we're doing all the kind of little things that we share with folks today and just weaving that in, like, I just feel like it's hard not to be happy.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah, I agree. Yep. Well, any last statements anybody want to throw in there? No, no, no. I hope. I hope this has been helpful for people and not just us, you know, shooting the so called shi at around the kitchen table. But again, if you guys have questions, comments, feedback, stuff you want to hear that maybe we didn't talk about like river and Taren and Jess and I will go look at the comment section after and all of us can pipe in and reply to you guys. But just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Greenfield4 that's Greenfield number four. And thank you for listening in. Everybody. Say goodbyes. Goodbye.

Bye.

Have a good day. All right, everybody. Later. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, protein performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.