S2E1 - New Year New Me - The Finding Home Podcast

Hey everyone, welcome to the Finding Home podcast. I'm your host, Caleb Hanshaw with the Wild Country. And we are back. It is February of 2026. We had a long break over the holidays. Um, the reason why is it was really, really important for us to lean into some things. I know that a lot of you have heard of the term New Year, New Me, uh, and I regretfully say that I've always kind of made fun of myself when I got into that mindset. Like gyms are going to be packed in January and then they empty back out in February. So maybe you have shared those same thoughts with me. Um, let me know so I don't feel that bad. As I was praying, I felt the Holy Spirit speak something into me that said, you know, this may be the one time of the year where everyone is actually thinking the right way. Because there's a little ingredient that comes at the end of the year that maybe we are lacking in for the, the rest of the year, and it's this ingredient called hope. There's a powerful scripture that says, hope deferred makes the heart sick. So without hope, your internal world can be very sickly. So I encourage you, it's not too late to, to get with your family, or get, you know, in prayer and think about the rest of this year. A mentor of mine from afar says, "You either get better or you get worse. There's no in-between." So how can we get better the rest of this year? So we took some time off, we sat with our kids, and we actually made a vision board. We wrote out a couple things that we wanted to accomplish because we just felt weight on it. We felt that it was time to go after certain dreams that we've always had, do things we've always wanted to do, build a business that we've always wanted to build. And because those dreams we felt were going to unfold this year, it demanded some change. We really had to address a lot of bad habits that wouldn't give room for a new business or wouldn't give room for, for a new culture within our home. And today, as the first episode of 2026, I want to talk about a couple of those things. And I don't want to focus so much on my personal story here. I think we can get caught up on, um, yeah, this is my life, this is what I've done. And honestly, you don't really care. Most people don't really care, um, What I want you to focus on is how you can relate. Maybe I will speak of a habit and you're like, oh man, that really hits home with me. I think I do the same thing. And then take that and turn that into action. Turn that into how can I improve or break that habit or introduce a new skill or a new culture in my job, home, family, career, whatever it may be. So before we talk about those things, before I become an open book and just share everything, um, that I'm doing wrong and that I'm working on, I hope it inspires you to, uh, to change as well. Before I get into all that, I want to talk about this podcast. With much prayer, we are going to branch out in the Finding Home podcast. I think everything that we do is centered around this topic of finding home, and we'll talk about that in a second. Um, but there's other things that we would like to talk about. I know this podcast has mostly been about theology. It's mostly been about our journey, you know, leaving the church and finding homesteading and finding permaculture design and building community through those lenses. And that's all good, and that's not going to go away. It's, it's in the very fabric and DNA of who we are. But there's also room to talk about things that we're really passionate about, and there's 6 total. And I want to, I want to share all 6 with you in my dream journal right here. Number 1, theology. We've talked about theology. I am going to bring on new voices on this podcast. Hopefully there's some that you're familiar with, and I know there's going to be some that you're not familiar with, and we're going to have good discussions. Maybe we'll have disagreements, maybe we'll have agreements, who knows. I'm excited to have those conversations. I, I have some of my heroes that are scheduled to be on the podcast this year. Number 2, homesteading. This is their community, this is their tribe. We got into homesteading from hearing a whisper from Yahweh, had no idea what it was, had no idea how to grow anything, and that really changed our lives and brought us into an amazing community that we really want to share with, with those that we love. Number 3, permaculture. Most the The most of my family around me don't understand what that word is and what it means. And I'm excited to open up a new world for those that don't know what permaculture is, to take the time to talk about it, to learn from it. Permaculture is more than designing a landscape. If you were to Google it and you got a definition, that would probably be what it says. We're, we're designing landscapes based on science and nature. I have found it to be more of a philosophy and an act as well. You can use things in permaculture to implement in the design and flow of your ordinary life without even seeing a vegetable. So I'm excited to talk about permaculture and how it's changed my life. Number 4, business. I love business. I'm guilty of that. I'm guilty of watching TV shows about the process of business. I love listening to people in business give, uh, classes and master classes. I, I love that. I love taking courses. I love to learn. I love learning all the principles there is to know about business because I believe entrepreneurship is the key to building new economies, building strong communities, and in this new age that we're in can really build family, especially if you're building a business that's people-focused and people-centered. The next one is health. That was one of the big things for 2026 for us. We have known a lot about the food system, about healthcare, about natural ways to, to get healthy, and we did not steward that knowledge in the best way. I'm reminded of Spider-Man, which says, "With great power comes great responsibility." And I believe we have failed the people that we know, our family, in releasing some of the knowledge that we do know about health. And the theme of that is my wife is just going to talk about Healing me. I know that some of you know my wife's personal story about recovering from mold toxicity and going through a lot of different issues in terms of mold, and, and she's been very open about that. She wrote a book, um, Reading Between the Vines. If you haven't read it, you need to get it. It's amazing. The last chapter is my favorite because it really paints the picture of of what that meant, of going through that hardship. But we know a lot of stuff, and embarrassingly enough, we haven't followed our own advice. I have fell to the temptation of convenience, not being available to cook good food, so I find myself in drive-throughs or gas stations And enough's enough. I— for what we want to build, we cannot afford to not practice what we know or practice what we are going to be teaching. We have to be authentic in that. There's too many voices out there that are not practicing what they preach. And how do you disguise in between all the mess, right, of what's legit or what's artificial. What's AI? What's a real voice? Is this post that I'm seeing, is that actually from them or did it come from ChatGPT? You know, we're in an age where authenticity really needs to steer our boats. So it's a new segment on the podcast called Gut Check, and it's really my wife pointing out things in me, and we're going to walk slowly. She'll be able to share some things about her life. I'll be able to, to give you updates on how my health journey is going, and we'll get to bring some really cool voices on the podcast that we personally know, or some that we've reached out to that have a gift and a grace to, to flow in natural medicine, um, natural health care, or just diet nutrition. And then the last one is probably my favorite, probably one what drives and motivates me in terms of service is mentorship, is coaching. It's one-on-ones. It's giving, you know, motivational talks. I am passionate about helping people find the next step, whether that's in your business or your marriage or your personal life, your finances. I love to be that person that kind of tries to help you figure some things out. It's one of the worst feelings in the world not just to only be stuck, but you have no clue on what direction that first step even is. So a big part of what we're going to be doing is, is mentorship. Hey everybody, Caleb Hanshaw with the Wild Country, and I have an announcement. This month, February 2026, we have launched the Wild Country Online Community. Uncensored. What's the uncensored mean? Well, we get to talk about anything, anything and everything. Things that may get flagged or things you won't be able to see on YouTube. What are you going to find on this community? You're going to find online workshops on how to homestead, how to design your home, how to build your community, how to be entrepreneurial. Maybe you just need some mentorship. We're going to have weekly Q&As where you get to ask your questions, get the answers that you're looking for. My favorite part of the community We'll hop on a Zoom and hopefully some in-person events in 2026. So if you think that's for you, look at the link in the show notes and we'll see you on the community. So talking about habits, there are certain health habits that I've developed over my life that it— I just don't have room for them in 2026. One was a phone addiction, you know. Constantly scrolling or having the urge to, you know, doom scroll or consume. It's about consumption with me. I don't think a phone is bad. I think that overly consuming things can be deadly. I do. Um, you heard that in the last one of the last episodes of last season, just about the dopamine levels that it messes with your dopamine baseline, that you're unmotivated. And you're not getting what you want ultimately from, from those things. So I would catch myself, you know, even watching something on TV and not being able to focus because I needed to be on my phone. I need to be multitasking, right? We, we kind of praise people that are able to do that. Well, maybe it's an addiction. For me, it was food. Unhealthy relationship with food. Uh, it, it comes from poor planning, uh, convenience, just, you know, finding myself in a drive-through or a gas station. Um, and also mindset. One of the biggest issues that I had was I would reward myself a cheat day, right? This is very common, very common in the, the workout world. It's very common, um, people that are dieting, trying to, to live right. We are rewarding ourselves with food that we like. So mentally what we're saying is we're doing good suffering, so we're going to give ourselves something good. So we relate that food with— for being, being good, and it's really not. We know that, and we can't be teaching people how to farm or to live their life in a, in a way of wholeness without doing it ourselves. We have to be authentic. We can't afford not to be authentic. One of the biggest issues that kind of gave way to other bad habits was my schedule. It was chaotic. There wasn't one. I couldn't tell you what I did every morning. I couldn't tell you what I did every evening, when I ate, when I worked out, when I played with the kids. My schedule was so chaotic. That I found myself always in catch-up mode, trying to catch up, volunteering for things that really took a lot of energy and wore me down. And then one of the, the last ones was, you know, consuming television. We set time in the evenings, my wife and I, when kids would go to bed, we'd watch either a YouTube show or watched one of our favorite shows, and we, we designated that as quality time, and that's not quality time. So how, how did I tackle some of these in 2026? For my health, I introduced a good morning routine. That is, I wake up, I drink a concoction. Sometimes it doesn't taste very good. It's going to rehydrate myself and I get in a cold plunge. Used to cold plunge all the time, and I just gave myself excuses not to do it anymore. You know, bags of ice were expensive, so we invested— I invested in a, in a chiller where I don't have to buy ice, and that's a big part of, of my morning routine. Aside from all the health benefits that cold water exposure gives you, The number one thing it does for me is psychological. It involves my dopamine base level. Once I do something I really, really don't want to do, I never wake up like, oh, I just love the cold plunge, let me get in it right away. I always have this inner war like, hey, why don't you don't do it this morning? Just wait, do it tomorrow. And when I do it, when I get over that and I do it, I win the whole day. The whole day is just set my my dopamine spike goes up, and then when it comes back down, it levels out higher than it does before. So I'm extra motivated. After I do that, I get up, I do a workout— that could be a bodyweight workout, could be a kettlebell workout— and then I, uh, read, read my Bible. I pray. After that, I do my hygiene stuff, right? Because you don't want to be the stinky guy. You want to have good teeth. So I do that. I get my meal together for the day. I go out the door and I get to the office around 6 AM. And between 6 and 8 AM is all dedicated to personal and professional development. I'm either watching YouTube, reading books, taking a class. Now, if you're on YouTube There's a lot of things on YouTube that teach you things. I don't want you to consume entertainment. I want you to do something that's teaching you something, that's challenging you, that's sharpening skills, it's introduced— introducing new philosophies or challenging your paradigms. Another way I'm growing personally, professionally is I'm making myself read one book a week, and I have never done that. I think I've read I don't know, 20 books in my life. And now I'm going to hit 52 this year, and I'm on par to cream that number. It's been a really, really good pivot. I read a lot of theological books. I read a lot of books about business. I read a lot of books about philosophy. I'm also starting to get into, you know, some books that spark wonder. I just finished some of the Narnia books, and I'm, I'm just beside myself that they didn't make a movie about the first one. It's completely awesome. Another thing we realized is I have too many clothes. I need to min— I need to minimalize a lot of things in my life in 2026, and that, that will be a process, trying to, to be a minimalist. I gave away 75% of my clothes and just let them go. And I replace them with, you know, non-toxic fabrics. I— my undies are wool. I have wool undies. So it's either wool, it's cotton, linen. My sock game is improved dramatically. You know, when you get to a certain age When you're in high school, you want, you know, the— for me, it was those sexy ankle socks. You want the too much sock, right? You showing too much sock, you're old and you're grandpa and you wore New Balance. Once you get older, it's like, can I just find two socks, right? But my sock game has improved. I have wool socks and they're beautiful, nontoxic. So to close this out, why, why is all this important? Because if we're really going to define home, all these things matter. All these 6 pillars matter. The way that you live your life, the way your health, your social life, your business, your gifts, your dreams, your— all, all of that, all of that matters. So what is home? Home is, as you have heard, where the heart is, right? It's where you— where your heart belongs. It can be in a, in a house, it can be an actual building, an actual structure. It's the place that you want to cancel plans for, right? I, I hope that they call and cancel on a Saturday night so then I can just stay in my PJs and be at home. There's homesick feeling. I just can't wait to get to the place where I feel the most alive and the most where I belong. So it could be an actual place. It can also be a person. You can find your home in your family, in your children, in your wife, in Yahweh. For me, it's, it's in my faith. That— and the beautiful part about that is wherever I go, I'm home. And home can be places. It can be, you know, Appalachia. It can be where the mountains are, the Rockies. It can be where the ocean is. It's that feeling where if I'm here and I feel the wind on my face and I'm seeing what I'm seeing, this is where I feel safe. It can be in your identity where you finally wake up to the unstuck feeling where I know who I am. I know who I belong to. I know what I'm supposed to do. I know my gifts. I know my talents. I know my opportunities to serve. And then it can be in community. You've always heard the phrase, "I have found my tribe." I have found that sense of belonging. It can be a church, it can be a sports team, it can be an online community like we have. The point about finding home is that it's the place where you're not broken. It's not the place where you're afraid. It's a place where you are the most authentic self. Healing, pursuing, and ultimately achieving wholeness. And that's the, that's the key. In a world of AI and artificial conversations, you never know what's fake and what's real. You never know when someone's social media status is if they've wrote it or not, if you, if you're reading a book that was made by the, by ChatGPT, or, or if it was made by a real person. And that matters. We have to be led by our authenticity. So this is what the Wild Country is about. We've been dreaming about this. We've even— we even created a Facebook page 6, 7 years ago, but this year is officially— we're being active. We're going for it. 2026. We started this in February this month. Uh, this means I'll be speaking at a couple places, be able to share what I know. Um, We'll be doing some, some short films, creating some content, teaching about homesteading and permaculture, showing you what permaculture is all about. We launched an online community. It's absolutely free. I'll probably put a commercial somewhere in this so you can have access to join that. What do you have to lose? Join it for a month and see if you like it. We'll be giving free stuff on there, free knowledge. Weekly Q&As, check the link in the show notes for that. The biggest change that we have found from 6 years ago to now, even, even last year, was we wanted to build Wild Country so that we could make money and be financially free and live the life we've always wanted to live and help a lot of people. Problem is, is that was out of order. The biggest difference, and it's the most freeing difference, is We just want to help a lot of people. It's missional based, it's people focused. There's been people in my life that really shaped that in me, and I'm, I'm grateful for that. So now that it's missional focused, it doesn't matter how many listeners we have, it doesn't matter how many viewers we have or subscribers that we have or friends and followers. What matters is that we steward well the people that Yahweh entrusted us with. Whatever sphere of influence that we have, we will steward it well. We will help the one person that's in front of us. We will help the one person that we have the opportunity to. One person at a time. And that is the most freeing thing on the planet. And the last part, on top of all the things that we're doing, we started a nonprofit called the Wild Country Fellowship. What is this? It's a workforce development program. We want to give people jobs. We want to incubate businesses. It could be coffee shops. It could be a brick-and-mortar place. It can be a farmer's market. Whatever it is, we want to provide jobs and train people, but not just give them a job. Give them the skills where they can go into that place of belonging that I'm talking about. They can find home. And that's a nonprofit. With that, we're building a barn that we can have meetings in, and these meetings can be trainings, these meetings can be prayer, worship together, we can eat together. I wouldn't call it a church plant, I'd call it a community plant. It's going to be on a site that highlights permaculture, highlights homesteading, because that's just who we are. And if that's not your cup of tea, that's okay. We don't have to only be friends over the things that I enjoy. But if it speaks to your heart and you want to connect over it, go to our website. All the links that I've talked about are in the show notes. Let's get together. Let's talk. Thank you for listening to the first episode of season 2. Now, the new— here's the new format. We're not just releasing one episode per month, we're releasing something every week. It can be a podcast, it can be just some motivational talk that I'd like for our listeners to hear, um, it can be anything we really want, right? You'll hear from me, you'll hear from my wife, you hear from a lot of people that we've reached out to and that have agreed to come on and bless our community. So I'll see you then. Good morning.