001: How to Get Your Family Out of Survival Mode

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Sometimes as families we face circumstances that feel overwhelming. Even normal day to day family life can feel overwhelming at times. In these strained moments we often find ourselves in survival mode, just trying to get through the week, or the month, or the year.

In this episode, Ben and Rachel talk about what it looks like to be in survival mode, and how to get out of survival mode, even in the midst of difficult circumstances, by shifting our focus to our family’s values.

Show Notes:

Defining Survival Mode

• 07:16 Ben: First I want to define survival mode. A few days ago I asked the chat room at the seanwes Community what survival mode is for them, and I was surprised and also wasn’t surprised by how many of the answers centered around financial things. I think about survival mode from an emotional or relational standpoint, but it absolutely makes sense that when we’re experiencing financial strain, that would influence our emotional and relational state.
• 08:09 Rachel: Survival mode for me is the opposite of being intentional. One of our philosophies is, “Children will do better when they know better.” We accomplish this by taking opportunities to teach them when they make mistakes instead of jumping into correction. When I’m in survival mode, I have a much more difficult time being intentional about teaching.
• 09:13 Ben: I think back to the time when the twins were born. We already had 3 children and jumped into having 5. For the first year after having the twins, it felt like all we could do is survive. Another time that comes to mind is when I was an interim worship pastor for a local church, and I was working sometimes three or four nights out of the week while you were watching the kids. As far as I knew, everything seemed fine, but you were having to put the boys down to bed by yourself, which is the most stressful transition in our home, and you finally woke me up to the fact that you were going crazy.

When we do not define our own values, we will tend to default to values others have defined for us.

• 12:48 I’d like to share some of the feedback I got from the Community. Steph Lewis said, “I suppose my survival mode is neglecting health, friendships and extended family, snapping at the kids, being stressed about money, and worrying that I’m not giving my children the quality time they deserve.” Gabriel Chipeur says, “Survival mode for us was when our second child was born. Our oldest went through a big backlash due to lack of attention and my husband was working out of town for 5-7 days at a time. I had clients and work to get done and the baby decided he didn’t like to sleep for longer than 30 minutes at a time.” If I’m trying to give a solid, one-size-fits-all definition of survival mode, it would be this: Your circumstances are so overwhelming that it forces you to go into auto-pilot. Unfortunately, you can’t always foresee all of the variables that cause us to go into auto-pilot. Maybe auto-pilot isn’t such a bad thing though.

“Auto-pilot” Can Be a Good Thing

• 17:43 Ben: The reason we use auto-pilot is because we don’t have the mental processing power to account for the complexity of every situation. Out of necessity, we build these automatic responses to certain input. Whether you feel like you’re thriving or surviving, auto-pilot is necessary and natural. The thing that makes the difference is the instructions we give the auto-pilot. If you give the auto-pilot of an airplane bad instructions, it could potentially fly into a mountain. If you give the auto-pilot good instructions, it will get you to where you want to go. The bad instructions can come from a lot of different sources. Especially in places where we haven’t purposefully made a decision of how we will respond, we will default to what we were brought up with, what we see our peers doing, what we see in culture, or to the path of least resistance.
• 19:54 Rachel: We go on auto-pilot so we can be more intentional in other areas.

Thriving Comes From a Focus on Values

• 20:01 Ben: When defining what it looks like to thrive as a family, I want to shift our focus away from our finances and our job, and I want us to focus on our family relationships and the life that we experience through them. It’s a difficult shift to make at first because it feels like the money or the job is what is dictating how we should feel about everything else. If we want to reverse that process, we must place our focus on our values. Rachel, you originally approached me with this idea. Can you describe where that idea came from?
• 22:13 Rachel: We had gone to a family retreat where they talked about family values, and I had also just finished reading a book about values and thought, “Yes, this is something we need to do.” On the way home from that retreat we talked through these questions:
  1. Who do we want our children to be?
  2. Who do we want to be as parents?
  3. What is important to us as a family?
  4. Who do we want to be as a family?
• We answered those questions and came up with about thirteen values that we decided to condense to twelve. We brainstormed practices for each of the values and explored each of them month by month for a year.

When we focus on the negative, we tend to experience more negativity.

When we focus on the positive, we experience more positivity.

• 24:09 Ben: An example of one of our family values is “We Value Play.”
• 24:20 Rachel: For the month we explored “play” we just played together. Every night after dinner that month we would go out together and play a game with the kids. Every weekend that month we would go to the park, or the zoo, or a museum. Another example of one of our family values is “We Build Dreams.” For that month we spent time together talking about our dreams and how we might make those dreams a reality.

How to Define Your Values

• 25:40 Ben: I want to talk about how we define values for ourselves. One of the first questions we asked was, “What are some things that we know are already important to us?” Many of our values came from that. Another question we asked was “What are some things we are not expressing as values right now, but we want to build into our family?”
• 26:12 Rachel: These values are a framework for our family. We aren’t always accomplishing those things. We’re in a difficult season right now because we just had a new baby, so we aren’t fully expressing our values, but we have this framework to go back to when we can.
• 26:42 Ben: I definitely don’t want for anyone to feel overwhelmed. This seems like a big task, but this is not going to happen overnight. It is meant to be a gradual thing. As you ask the questions and choose your values, don’t get too specific. Try to limit yourself to about ten or twelve, grouping more specific ones into broader categories if necessary. Once you’ve written down your values, don’t try to tackle them all at once. Choose the one that is most important to you and focus on that one for a month. When we did it, even taking one for a month felt like a stretch at times.
• 28:28 Rachel: Some of the practices within those values ended up not working for us on our first run through. That doesn’t mean that we discard those practices, we just don’t let ourselves feel bad for not working them in. One month we were trying to write thank you notes to each other every Thursday and it didn’t always happen, but it’s something we’re working toward.

Define Practical Actions You Can Take To Express Your Values

• 29:12 Ben: Don’t just let your values live in a conceptual state, but add some practical actions you can take in order to express those values. Let these actions be things that you are actually capable of doing. Maybe one of your values is giving, but you don’t necessarily have the money or time to give to charity. Look for other practical ways you can express the value of giving that fit within your current set of circumstances. Try to limit yourself to two or three practical things per value.
• 30:37 Rachel: Those practical things will change as our children get older. It’s good to allow those practices to be flexible and evolve with us.
• 30:48 Ben: The focus is not on the doing of the practice. The focus is on trying to grow in the specific value by building new practical habits, so that when we do go into auto-pilot, our auto-pilot is operating from better instructions. The actions are about building a framework that allows us to respond to our circumstances from values that we’ve defined for ourselves.

Let Exploring Your Values Become a Normal Rhythm for Your Family

• 31:48 After the first year, we cycled back through and took our values one month at a time again. It was very freeing knowing that even if we didn’t do a great job with one of the practices for a specific value, we were going to have a chance to do it again. When we make this a rhythmic thing for our family, it gives us an opportunity to talk about what works and what doesn’t work, and it also helps us to continue building that muscle.

Family values are a framework into which your family can grow, and are not intended to put you in chains.

• 32:38 Rachel: Sometimes when I have practices and goals, I want to try to meet every single one of them. It’s not possible to do that. One month our value was, “We Listen Earnestly, Always.” Our kids talk so much. There was no way I was going to be able to listen earnestly to every single word that came out of their mouths, but the spirit was there. I was able to listen earnestly when it really mattered.
• 34:07 Ben: How does focusing on values lead to thriving? I go back to this idea that when you focus on your circumstances and on the negative things, you’ll tend to experience more of that. When we define and practice our values, we are building muscle memory so that as we experience difficult circumstances, instead of focusing on the negative circumstantial things, we are able focus on one another and allow our family relationships to thrive. The life that comes out of deeper, more connected relationships also spills over into other areas like our finances and our job.
• 36:17 Rachel: You and I just did this for our marriage too, so it’s not just a family framework. You can practice operating from your values by following and applying this principle in your marriage relationship, business, and many other areas of your life.