The Ground Space is Part of Your World Space with Katie Stone

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1:02You can visit LittleSleepies.com and use promo code GoodNight for 10% off your first order. Hey, it's Zach. It's really helpful. And I have been thinking a lot about you. You know, last month I did that shenanigans episode. And a lot of you responded to my call for shenanigans by calling me on the hotline and telling me all about your weird shenanigans. I love this so much. I love this symbiotic relationship that weirdly helpful is predicated upon and I want more of that. Yeah, I want your shenanigans, but just in general, what do you find weirdly helpful? What are the weirdly helpful things you do in your life? Call me on the hotline and share them with me. 844-935-2378-844-935-2378. If you don't know what you're really helpful things are, you should do what the shenanigan

2:06guru Rebecca Garza Bortman did. She asked her friends what her really helpful thing is. And they told her shenanigans. So what do your friends think your weirdly helpful thing is? Ask them and then tell me 844-935-2378. Okay, so on to today's guest who I connected with immediately. Probably because it felt like she and I have the same spirit guide. Mr. Rogers. I'm Katie Stone. I'm the executive director and producer of the Children's Hour. And we're a kids public radio show. We air on over 300 stations around the country. One thing that became clear to me as soon as we started talking is that Katie is just a big kid. That's what I want to do when I grow up. And here's her weirdly helpful thing. Every day I get down on the floor, no hands, and I stand up from the floor, no hands,

3:07and I do this several times every single day. And I do it for a lot of reasons. One is just because I can, and it's also a fun party trick. The other is it actually does make you more flexible physically as you're getting older. And I'm a bit older than you, Zach. I'm 57. And I've watched people who are past my age lose this ability to get on the floor. Even people, you'll hear 60-year-olds say, oh, I don't get on the floor. Yeah, I can't get on the floor with my grandkids, for example, stuff like that. Yes. And I have been determined for now a couple decades to never let this happen to me. So I do this every single day. And it's not perfect. And everybody stands up a different way from being on the floor. I have my own balance thing. It kind of depends on the shape of your body and how your weight is carried. But I highly recommend it for keeping your flexibility, but also a lot of cool things

4:12happen on the ground. And we will miss them in life as we get older. So many things from mushroom foraging where you really actually need to get down on the ground to, as you said, playing with your grandkids. And it's just about staying flexible and reminding your body that you still have the same skill sets you've had since you were a kid. So keeping that up, sitting criss-cross applesauce and then standing up. And yeah, I think it's a really simple, easy way to keep yourself inside your body and keep full functionality of your body. Do you remember what compelled you to start this? I have always done it my whole life. And at some point, I did it in front of a bunch of friends and people were blown away. And we're saying, asking me like, wait. You just didn't use your hands at all. And I said, oh, I never used my hands. And then I realized, well, people just need this modeled for them so that they can see

5:14it, so that they know that they can do it too. And many of my friends are now doing it because they saw me, but they couldn't at first. They actually had to use a hand. So I highly recommend starting it as soon as you can if you're young, like you are. Start today. I'm going to. You won't actually. I don't want to do it right now. Yeah, I'm going to just. Okay, this is actually cool on video. So because we're just going to pop up. Okay, yeah, we're going to pop up. I'm going to come down. I have to move my chair here. So I'm going all the way down to the ground. Hello. Hi, I'm Matthew. Listeners, if you want to see us try to do this, go to Instagram. Weirdly helpful. Hi, I'm down here and I'm sitting Chris Cross applesauce, but now I'm going to stand up and look. Okay. Let's see. No, you did it. No, I did it. Oh, try again. Okay. Okay.

6:15You did it. But that's not easy. Oh, it gets easier. No, it gets so much easier. No, but I, when you first said it, I'm like, all right, what's the big deal? But no, that's a challenge. This is a really great core challenge. It's good for your body. But really, remember, the goal isn't just like to be cute, although that's always nice too. It's really to give your whole world flexibility that the ground space is part of your world space too, and it can be yours. The ground space is part of your world space is probably the name of this episode. The ground space is like a little poem. I like that. But so much happens on the ground. I mean, what are your favorite ground level things to do? Oh, well, gardening is obviously a good one. I hike a lot. So I like to take breaks when I'm hiking, and I like to sit down, and sometimes I like to sit on the ground. I camp a lot. So getting up and down is important.

7:15I fish. I fly fish. You're so cool. Well, I mean, you do the things that are fun. Yeah. You can do the things that are fun. Yes. Yes. Because you know what? No one's going to do the fun things in life for you. Like you really have to look inside yourself and say, what do I think is really fun? And what do I really enjoy in my life? And then do them because there's no time like today to start doing fun things. Really? Injecting fun into a situation is up to the people who think of the fun. Amen. Amen. Yeah. What's your other thing? You know, my other little secret. And it's great we're talking today. We happened to be meeting on the day that is the 34th anniversary of my last first date. Oh, wow. So 34 years ago, I went on a date with a guy and he was wearing purple pants. What material? Cotton.

8:16And cotton purple pants and a pink shirt. And to be fair, I was wearing rainbow leggings. So we were a well suited person. Yeah. You knew before you even talking to a... Well, when I saw him get out of his truck in his purple pants, I must say I was deeply moved in a deep way. Like, this is the kind of guy like, who wears purple pants. But here's the thing that we've done. We have a very happy marriage. It's been a long time. We have a whole bunch of kids and got through all the raising kids. There's four. Okay. Yeah. So. And they're all grown-ups now. But here's the thing. After the break, the thing that Katie attributes to her relationships longevity. That's coming up after the break. First, are you having fun with weirdly helpful? If so, will you become a weirdly helpful patron today? For 10 bucks a month, you can get a mug with a bunch of weirdly helpful prompts on it.

9:21At any level, there's a list of five bucks a month. You can listen to the show without ads. Then you can ensure that more weird help is going to come your way for months and years to come. This is my favorite thing in the world to do. Will you help me keep making this show patreon.com slash weirdly helpful. Katie Stone's relationship advice. Coming right up. I'm so pleased to say that today's episode is brought to you with support from Schedule 35. Schedule 35 is the first trusted consumer psilocybin brand with nationwide reach in the US. They make microdosing accessible, approachable, and precisely dozed backed by educational content that helps people understand exactly what they're taking and why. I've been experimenting with microdosing for the first time in my life with help from Schedule 35. I'm really enjoying it. I can report first hand that my experience with Schedule 35 has resulted in improved focus,

10:22creativity, and mood. Schedule 35 is the most trusted consumer psilocybin brand in North America. Products include capsules, gummies, teas, and chocolates designed for both microdosing and recreational dosing. Every product is precisely dozed and ships with a beginner friendly guide, discrete shipping across Canada and the US. All customers are age verified 19 in Canada, 21 in the US, and receive an invite code once verified. Add 15% off all orders with code weirdly helpful at schedule35.co. That's 15% off at schedule35.co and use the code weirdly helpful. I'm back with Katie Stone.

11:37Here's her weirdly helpful advice which might sound obvious, but actually implementing it consistently. That's where the goal is. Date night. We have a date every single week and we did even when we had little tiny babies and here's the thing that I learned. Date night is cheaper and more fun than divorce or therapy. Like therapy is good. I'm not going to say therapy isn't good, but it is way more fun to have a date. We went on a date and we still go on a date every single week and it led to so many things. One thing it led to was an expectation that our children had that we would have our date every Saturday night. That was just embedded in their lives. Even now our kids will call us up and ask us, what are you guys doing on your date? That's so cute. What did you do this past Saturday? We took our date on a Friday and we went to a soccer match with some friends of ours

12:38and tailgated and partied with them. So fun. Kids don't always have to be alone. There are sometimes with other people. We sometimes would go to parties and it would be our date night, but we were clearly on a date with each other. Most of our dates are things like this. We take a picnic. We go to the mountains or we go somewhere beautiful and that's it. When we had kids, we had our babysitter hired for a five-hour guarantee. The babysitter knew that they were going to be paid for five hours even if we were only gone for three, which we never were. We were always gone for five. We had another rule. Never talk about the kids on date night. That's so good. Because it's so easy to do the logistical, we got to figure out what we're doing on Tuesday because both kids have that thing. Oh God, that's such a good thing. Or you've had a hard week with your kids? Something terrible happened. If you're in my situation, one of your kids was in trouble at school and it's stressful

13:38and you're trying to process all that stress. We would have this day. It did all these magical things. One was, another one was that as the week was hard, I would have this kind of anchor of fun that I knew was coming up in my life every week. On really hard weeks, I'd be like, Saturday is coming. The other thing that I did not know until many decades later of doing date night is that now we have this whole library of things we love to do together. That is, like it creates a choice. So now, years and years later, we have so many different things we've done together on these date nights. Sometimes one of us chooses, sometimes the other chooses, sometimes it lands at our lap what we're going to do on our date night. As a result, there's just dozens and dozens of options for us of things that we know are

14:38really, really fun for both of us because that was always the goal to have fun. Go have fun. Go dancing. Go do something that makes your life more fun. Increasing the fun. And here we are, married over 30 years, totally enamored with each other. Really honestly like each other as dear friends and that's huge. So cool. Thank you. Oh, I love you guys. Oh, please. I love you too. Come visit. You know, being generous with how much you love people, such a thing. You know, the root of happiness really does come from feeling a sense of belonging and purpose and when you are free in loving people, even people you don't know very well, you just let yourself feel that love for them. It really does make you a happier soul. Totally. Hi, I'm Rick Rubat. And I'm Royce Yudkopf. We're professors at Harvard Business School and co-hosts of the Chart Topping Podcast Think

15:42Big Buy Small. If you want to become an entrepreneur, starting a company from scratch isn't your only option. You can buy an established, profitable, small business, step in as CEO and build on what already works. This path is known as acquisition entrepreneurship and we've spent over 15 years helping hybrid business school students explore. On the new season of Think Big Buy Small, we bring those lessons to you through candid conversations with entrepreneurs, investors and industry experts. Together we explore every stage of the journey from finding and financing the right business to closing the deal, meeting the company and eventually selling it. Whether you're actively considering business ownership or simply curious about a different route to entrepreneurship, Think Big Buy Small can help you take the first step. Follow Think Big Buy Small on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Man, I could talk to you all day but I have a 1230. This is so fun. Thank you Katie.

16:42I really love talking with you Zach. Thank you. Come visit us in New Mexico. I want to. I want to. Katie Stone runs the Children's Hour radio show. It's a weekly, internationally syndicated kids public radio program and podcast. It's educational. It's sweet. It's really fun for kids. We're starting to listen before bed. If you're an educator, you should check out the Children's Hour shorts. This is a brand new podcast series designed especially for educators. Each short engaging episode features highlights from their award-winning programs paired with ready-to-use learning guides and hands-on classroom activities that make teaching easy and fun. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.