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Vibrant Happy Women

Happy Bit: Celebrating Your Hard Work

Vibrant Happy Women

Jen Riday

Self-improvement, Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Education

4.8671 Ratings

🗓️ 7 September 2017

⏱️ 5 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Growing up on a farm taught me the value of hard work; however, I've worried life in suburbia hasn't instilled the same work ethic in my kids. Life has converged to help me focus on work ethic, and I share our experience laboring on Labor Day as a family.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey there, Jen here, and this is a happy bit. I grew up on a farm near a tiny little town in

0:06.2

Southwest Iowa called Fontenelle. My parents had cattle and pigs, corn and soybeans, and my dad and

0:13.2

mom made sure that my two younger brothers and I learned how to work. Work ethic was their number

0:18.6

one value. I remember many a Saturday morning, probably every

0:23.3

Saturday morning. My dad would graciously let us sleep in until 7 or 8 a.m. And then there'd be a

0:29.6

knock on our bedroom doors and he would say in his deep voice, get up. It's time to work.

0:35.2

We didn't question our dad. So we would go out and do everything from helping

0:39.3

to move pigs to cattle, picking up rocks in the field, putting in fence, picking up sticks in the yard,

0:46.8

helping with the garden, mowing the lawns, helping in the flower beds. You name it, we worked hard.

0:53.2

Well, all of that work paid off. My brothers and I all know how to work,

0:57.4

and we accomplish a lot because of it, and we take pride in our ability to get things done.

1:02.4

Well, a number of things have caused me to think about how well I'm teaching my kids that work

1:07.5

ethic I learned as a child, and I've come up lacking. On Monday, we released the episode

1:12.9

where I interviewed PJ Jonas, and she's a mom of eight, and they are homesteaders. They like to grow

1:18.7

a lot of their own food, and they have a goat farm, and that episode really focused on

1:23.5

teaching kids to work. And if you listen to that, you'll notice I was really intrigued. I feel a bit

1:29.4

of panic over the amount of time my kids spent on their screens and how they're a little bit

1:33.7

entitled because their friends are all paid to mow the lawn mom. I don't know how to reconcile

1:39.6

kind of a suburban lifestyle with that work ethic I learned on a farm. Is it possible? So I've been thinking

1:45.2

about that. Well, also I got my hands on a new book this week. It's called Make Your Bed,

1:50.0

Little Things That Can Change Your Life and Maybe the World, by William H. McRaven. This guy was a Navy

1:55.9

seal for over 30 years. He was amazing, had an amazing career. And in the book, he talks about

...

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