Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to the Happy Stack Podcast, where we explore the science and strategies behind creating a happier, more fulfilling life. I'm Terianne Richards and I partner with organizations to address the root causes of burnout, disengagement, and stress, equipping leaders and teams with the tools they need to thrive, both organizationally and personally. Each episode we dive into practical habits, insights, and strategies to help high performers like you level up from the inside out. Let's get stacking.
Welcome to the Happy Stack Podcast. Today's episode is one you won't want to miss. I'm joined by the incredible Robin O'Grady, an international speaker, fitness industry leader, and corporate culture specialist who has dedicated her career to empowering individuals and organizations to achieve sustainable wellness. Robin's passion for making wellness attainable shines through as she shares simple, actionable strategies that help leaders and teams thrive. In this episode, Robin takes us on a journey through her career, from her early days as a fitness instructor to her work today as a speaker and consultant, helping businesses revitalize their culture and boost productivity. We dive into why wellness is often overlooked by high performers, how to prioritize it without feeling overwhelmed, and Robin's unique 3A's framework to start small and stay consistent.
So grab a cup of coffee, settle in, and get ready to stack some happiness with us. Let's dive in.
All right, Robin, thank you so much for joining me as a guest on the Happy Stack Podcast. How's your day going?
[00:01:47] Speaker B: So good. How about yours?
[00:01:49] Speaker A: My day is fantastic.
Listen, I'd like to start off by asking you a bit about your journey. Obviously, there is something about the journey that you've had prior to today that sparked your interest and your passion for wellness and for leadership, and it's shaped the work you do today. So if you could, could you kind of take us a little bit back and share with us that journey?
[00:02:14] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. I have always been very active. As a kid, I was really, really active. I was not a sports kid, but I just was outside, running, jumping, playing all the time. And so as I progressed, I had jobs that were also highly active and I worked in hospitality for a long time and I was on my feet for 12, 16 hour days and it never phased me. And my husband and I, we got married and then we decided we were going to have kids. We realized at that time that maybe the hours that I was working were not really conducive to a family. So I thought, I'm going to get a day job and it's going to be amazing. I'm Going to work Monday to Friday, only 9 to 5. And this was like the dream at the time. I bought. And so I got an office job and it was horrible.
And not because of the work or the people, but because I can't see sit for eight hours a day. It's just not in me. It's not who I am as a human being. So I did that for two years. But while I was doing it, I realized I need to put. I need to add something else here to get rid of this extra energy that I'm carrying. And so I joined a gym. And I had never done that before. I'd always just been really physically active just out in the world. And I was going to classes at 5 in the morning and then at lunchtime I would go out rollerblading or walking, talking or just something to get out of the office and move and move and move. I just needed to move and move and move. I was getting crankier. I wasn't being the best wife and it's just not my nature to. To be stationary.
So this was a really good realization for me. The Monday to Friday thing was cool, but it wasn't really as amazing as I thought it was going to be. But through all of my life as a leader, I was always pushing the next boundary and building the next thing and doing thing. So it was really not that difficult for me to transition. And so I got pregnant while I was working there for my with my first son who is now turning 22 in May. Crazy. And at that time I went through and I got certified to become a fitness instructor. So I transitioned everything over to that role after I had my son and that quickly moved up the ladder into management and became the director of the group fitness in that space after a couple of years. And my husband said to me at the time, he's like, can't you just go like be an instructor and do nothing else? And he's like, do you have to be the boss? I guess so. I guess that's just my nature. I just have to be the boss. And so leadership has always come quite naturally to me. I was always the trainer. I was always moving into management. I was always doing that role. And so those two things connected for me so well in that time. And I had. It was such a beautiful sort of like blossoming of my career while I was also blossoming my family. And so those two things just came in together and became such a nice connection with each other. And so that's sort of the background of what brought me to those two worlds. And then, since then, I realized in the fitness world that in the gym, I'm preaching to the choir. I'm talking to people who are already there. And so I stepped out to become a professional speaker on wellness and leadership, which are the two things that I'm so good at and that just progressed into this next phase of my career now as a consultant and a professional speaker, still working in the fitness industry. So that's like the short little snippet of like, over a decade or almost 20 years of stuff.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: So I love it. So, I mean, so wellness is a term. You know, we. We talk about wellness.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: It's.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: It's kind of all the. The. The raise, the raise, the rage. And we talk about it a lot in terms of. Of health and, you know, avoiding burnout and, you know, reducing stress and all of these things. But when you think of leaders and high performers who are juggling. Juggling, like, endless demands, and there's just so many things that are happening to them.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Are you seeing sort of what I think the statistics potentially are showing us is that it kind of comes off as maybe more of a luxury or a. That'll come next Monday, or it's something that I'll get to versus individuals making it a priority. Do you see that in the work that you're doing?
[00:06:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I really. I mean, I really do. And I think that the prioritization of your health is something that needs further discussion with most individuals, because we prioritize work and we prioritize being busy. And I'll speak to North America because that's kind of where we are and where it's most prevalent, I think, honestly, in the world, is that idea that being busy is the sort of badge of honor to wear and that your whole life, encompassing the work that you're doing, becomes the most important thing. And we forget about. I have a friend who's a speaker who talks about play, so we forget how to play. We forget that this body that we have is the only one we get. And so the idea that making a priority of taking care of it is secondary to anything else is crazy. But my industry has sort of created a space that has created that problem. The people who are really trying to help have actually made the problem a little bit worse. Not intentionally, of course, but what's happened is we've made too many options. It's complicated. It feels overwhelming. And that's where people shut down.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Almost the sort of the death by too many options. Right. Just which option is the correct Option, which one's the right option? So I mean, I'm certainly agreeance with you on the consideration that this is it. Like this is my body, this is all I have. And if I'm going to grow my business, my career, make impact in the world, I kind of require this vessel to be in tip top shape. I know that and I think most individuals know that logically. Right?
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it does.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: It doesn't seem to though, sit with them in the way in which they're making their decisions on a regular basis. And, and so I think maybe potentially one of the answers is yeah, we've maybe made it complicated and, and there's too many options. But is the potentially you're, you know, you're out there, you're having these conversations both in the fitness realm and also in, you know, getting in front of leaders and, and their teams and speaking about wellness and leadership as, as sort of an aligned tool, if you will. What are you hearing about the reasons or the excus to why individuals are not prioritizing this part?
[00:09:32] Speaker B: Yeah, the thing that I see the most, it's twofold. So overwhelm is one. So you know, it just, it's like you said, death by many. Right. And so overwhelm is, leads to shutdown. I think that's, that's well known and established.
The second thing that I see a lot is that it takes an emergency to sort of bring it to the forefront. So a heart attack or an injury or something occurs that becomes an emergency. And so there's a, there's an old saying and then I'm sorry, I don't know who said it, so I apologize for not quoting it correctly to the person. But there's a saying that is if you don't take care of your wellness now, you will be forced to take care of your illness later. And so that happens. It happens. I see it every single day.
Busy is the biggest excuse I would hear if you, if we're calling it excuse. But the biggest reason that, that people put out there for not being able to do it and busy would be the top by far. I'm too busy. I'm too busy.
So my goal and my strategy for that is to find ways and to implement ways that are within your busy schedule already. It doesn't have to be this big task. And the reason we see the January rush to the gym and then the March drop off from the gym is because people take it on as this enormous task. They think they have to change everything all at once. They think they have to go to the gym six days a week and change their entire nutrition plan. And then all of that becomes, becomes way too much to manage. It would for anybody, honestly. And so then instead of scaling back, they just go, I don't have time.
So they end up back where they started, frustrated. And then they, they call me and they say, well I, I did this and it didn't work. And so we have to reestablish. What does it look like? It doesn't have to be this massive life change.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: It's kind of like that all or nothing mentality. And I mean I'm you kind of preaching to the choir here. Like I certainly in all aspects of my life, you know, over the course of my, my years of being here on earth have had an all or nothing mentality. And I find it a struggle to remind myself that the wins are made in the micro goals and the micro changes and micro movements. Right. And not in the all or nothing.
So if you were having a conversation with sort of a client on the other, other side and they said, listen, I'm busy. And they too are an all or nothing type of personality where you know, they're hitting the gym six days a week, january first week of January and then mid February, March, they're starting to fall off. What would be that one strategy that you would give them to undertake now, not Monday, but now to start implementing self care wellness strategies so that this vessel that they have that is allowing them to live the life that they live is actually cared for?
[00:12:53] Speaker B: Yeah, it really comes back to, I like to use three, the three A's. I find that if people can connect to just something that they can remember, it's a lot easier.
First of all, there is no one strategy. Oh, did I lose you there?
[00:13:08] Speaker A: I'm here, I can hear you, I'm just. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: I'll keep talking while I'm working my camera here.
The one strategy that I see happening a lot is the first thing they have to do is accept and they have to accept that they do have the control and that they are in charge of what is happening for them. And so if they can't accept that they are the ones who are controlling it, then they'll continue to excuse themselves and make mistakes and find other ways to not do it. So the very first thing that each of us has to do is we have to accept that we are actually the person who's in control of it. It's our job. Nobody's going to do it for us. And it really comes down to just making good choices that are working for us each, each every day. But knowing that that comes from us. From us. So come back to yourself and say, okay, this is important. I'm responsible for it. And let's take a look at that. So once you can accept that, then you can move on to the next phase. Because the unfortunate thing is there are millions of options, but no one single option is for each person. We have to figure out what the next thing is that is for us. So the next step is to assess. And so I'm busy. I'm very busy. If you know me, anybody who's in my circles, they will tell you that Robin is busy. This is no secret. This is not a new thing. I have a ton of things on my plate. That's my choice. Like you, I think leaders are, are that way. But I also prioritize my health. And so that has actually become part of my life and my business. But that came from taking an assessment and saying, what can I do? Maybe the beginning of it is before I get out of bed in the morning, I'm going to take a nice big full body stretch and I'm going to roll my ankles and I'm going to roll my wrists before I actually put weight on them. And then that's it. That's all I'm going to do. I'm going to try to do that for six weeks and just see how my body feels with that one thing. Great. Then maybe we add another thing. I'm talking simple.
Get back to the most simplistic thing that you can. Your assessment is going to tell you what that might be. So that example is for somebody who maybe is feeling a little bit tight, right? Their back hurts, their body hurts every day. If that's happening to you, then maybe this is one small, simple thing that you can do that will get you back into feeling a little bit better in your body. A little bit better. We're not looking for miracles here.
Maybe nutrition feels like something that you want to work on. If that's the thing your assessment might say, I know that I don't get enough protein in the day. We are in North America, we are over educated on these items. We know the things that, like you said, logically we're pretty clear about what is supposed to happen.
And if you come to me and you say, I'm doing the Atkins diet or I'm doing the, I don't know, whatever, 20 other diets that are out there, the Paleo diet, you know, I'm just going to Say I never am going to say to you. And no person in my industry, if they are listening, should say a judgment on that thing.
What I'm going to say to you is, how's that working?
How do you feel? That's part of the assessment. Because you know what? Some people thrive on the paleo diet, some people thrive on intermittent fasting, some people thrive being a vegetarian or a vegan. If you're thriving, who am I to tell you different?
So we have to assess and stop. We have to shut out all the noise of all of these other people who are telling us what we should do. And we need to ask ourselves, do I feel good doing that thing?
And so we accept we're in control. So all those other people out there, they're not the boss of me. And leaders, you love that they are not the boss of you. You are only the boss of you. So they are the boss of you. No, you are the boss of you. Right? So accept your control.
Then assess what is actually working and what isn't.
If you people say to me all the time, oh, I eat late at night, I don't care if you eat late at night, what are you eating? Is it working for you? Maybe you worked until 9:00 and you didn't eat dinner and you need to eat at 9:30. This is going to make or break your entire health. These are just little things that people are, are stating out there that work for somebody or they're selling you something. They're no, stop that. Go back into your own body, get in touch with yourself and ask yourself what is working. So that's assess.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: I like that you're saying that because I think that there's a reality to just utilizing, you know, that intuitive nature of, of what's real. I, I think by in part, every single human who's listening to this right now knows innately what either the next right move is, which parts of their behaviors and their actions and their habits are working for them, which ones are working against them. But most of us don't take that time to sort of pause and analyze those questions. Right? And so I like that this sort of process you're taking us on is a to accept. And that part makes sense because I think before you can change anything, you need to accept and then to go into an assessment mode, introspection if you will, to figure out if the things that you're doing or not doing are working for you or against you. So I'm enjoying this flow. So teach me the third a awesome Yay.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: The other part about assessment leads you into the third A, because part of the assessment is to make some decisions. And again, we're looking at micro. Like you said, micro. I like that I'm going to steal that word from you. We're looking at micro changes. Small, small changes. The body and the brain are only capable of accepting a certain amount of change at a time. We cannot throw everything at it at once. So pick one thing and commit yourself to that thing. And then we go into a. Which is act.
Now. You have to do it. So we thought about it. We've, we've. We've mulled it over. We've gone into our bodies. We've decided what's going to make us feel better. Okay, friends, let's go. Now you have to do something about it. Okay.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Because, like. Yeah, nothing happens until something happens.
[00:20:24] Speaker B: That's right. And you do this in your businesses, and you do this for your teams, and you do this every day for other people. I know you do, because I know leaders. I know exactly what's happening. It is time for you to take that and put it on yourself. Turn yourself around and do the work. This happens by first getting it into your calendar, friends. Because I happen to know that if it isn't in your calendar, you're not going to do it. I know that for a fact.
So get it in your calendar. Yeah.
Once it's in your calendar, you are not allowed to bypass it now. So if you say your commitment is to take that stretch in the morning or say we'll go a little bit bigger. My commitment is that every day when I get home from work immediately, I'm going to go for a walk. And that walk is going to be from here to here. Great. It's maybe 10 minutes. It's maybe half an hour. It's maybe an hour. Whatever is actually actionable by you and commit to yourself three days a week. And then if you get four, bonus. If you get five, bonus. But three is your commitment. Make it attainable. Smart goals. You all have heard that before. This is not new information for you. We're just applying it into a different space.
So my walk is my commitment. If I don't do it on Monday, because sometimes the world does explode. Sometimes it does. But I've committed to Monday. I don't do it on Monday. I'm not going to remove that from my calendar or bypass it in my calendar. I'm going to shift it forward.
So if I've committed three days and it was Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, it has now become Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, because that Monday exploded. But my commitment to myself is just as valuable as any commitment that I make to my team or the people.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: That's so, so huge. And you know what I love about this, like, the. The psychology of. Of change and just human behavior is there's this thing I teach called the success cadence. And it's called. It basically goes, I said it, I did it, I said it, I did it, I said it, I did it. And confidence is truly built over time by keeping promises to ourselves. So whereas this has a lot to do with, obviously, self care and. And wellness and all of that. But the reality is it's. If you set an intention and a goal that is important enough for you to put it in your calendar, then, gosh darn it, you need to make it happen. Because that's actually how you build that confidence in your ability to exponentially grow in all other areas of your life.
[00:23:02] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, once you've made that commitment, own it. Own that commitment to yourself. But again, I cannot express this enough because we are overachievers and we are trying too hard to do too much. And that is what's bringing us, you know, you talked about earlier, burnout. That's what's getting us there. And burnout sneaks up. It attacks you from behind. And so we need to make sure that we are just setting something up that is actually actionable if it. If by mistake. Okay, by mistake, I put too much. I added a little too much.
Your next step is not to wipe it off the calendar completely. Your next step is to ease it back without guilt, without feeling bad about it. Give yourself the grace to say, oh, I just went a little too far. Let's just pull that back. And again, like, what would that look like?
[00:24:07] Speaker A: Give me a tangible example of some goal. Somebody went sort of maybe so far one way. And instead of erasing it or removing it as that potential, you're. You're kind of pacing it back. What. Kind of. Paint the picture for me of what that looks like.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: Sure. I'll use the January to March gym thing again because it's so familiar for people.
When I talk to people that they come into the gym in that big time of the year, they say to me, oh, I have to come six times a week, Five times a week. And I say, oh, you have to. Who said that? Who told you that? Where did you get this from? And they probably got it from some article or some trainer or some person told them that in order to get the results that you want, you've got to go five or six days a week.
Then you realize, okay, I'm trying that. And you do that wholeheartedly with all of yourself in January.
But then your kids are missing you, your work is falling off the table, you had a meeting. Oh my gosh, I have a meeting. How am I going to get this both in? I can't manage this five day a week schedule.
Most people, the majority of people just stop. They just don't go to the gym anymore.
Why would we not just say, okay, five days a week is clearly not working for me? I'm going to take that back to three. I'm going to take that back to two. If you're going to the gym one time a week, that's one time more than you did last year.
That's better progress over perfection.
[00:25:47] Speaker A: I like that. Let's, let's chat a bit about. I know you've talked about how wellness can improve productivity. Right. Like, we're sort of preaching to, you know, leaders, entrepreneurs, potentially individuals with teams. Right. And, you know, and we're, we're kind of pushing this idea of, hey, it's important for you as a leader, as an entrepreneur, as a human, but it's also equally important for your team because it improves performance, it improves productivity. As you've spoke to, can you kind of talk us through how to make that connection for them? Because I know most individuals, most organizations are looking at everything from an ROI perspective, right? Investing in wellness strategies for their team. Well, that, you know, that doesn't sound all that exciting. You know, we need our numbers up and we need our bottom line to be improved. And so make that connection for me in terms of why wellness and productivity actually potentially go hand in hand.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it does. There, there is no, like, consideration of this being a. Maybe it does. It's, it's just a fact. The research is clear. You can find research everywhere. Just go look. It's very clear. Imagine yourself and you just woke up and whatever time that is. Okay? Because I also want to say that not everybody works actually well in the nine to five category. Some people are night people like me, Some people can't sit. Like, I have to, I have to be moving around and running around and doing things in order to be productive. Everybody is different there too. This is where the problem comes in, is we're all different. And so we're trying to implement, and what I see in, in buildings is we're trying to implement strategies for the whole. If you implement one strategy of Your team will probably be perfectly fine in that strategy, but others are not. One example of that. Just as a quick tangent, and I won't take it too far, but I worked with one client who put in a $10,000 gym into their building. Sounds amazing. On their website, we have this incredible wellness strategy. We put this 10, you know, it's such a big thing that they were able to use in their marketing to say that they have put this implementation in. And so great. That sounds wonderful on paper, but when I went in to work with them and do an assessment, my question to them was, what is the uptake of that gym?
Who's using it? What was it to 2%.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: Gosh.
[00:28:33] Speaker B: 2% of the people that worked for their company were using the gym on a regular basis. Basis, which is actually in line with the stats of people in the wild who, who are being active and using a gym on a regular basis. 2% is actually very, very in line with what you would see in, say, Alberta.
So it's a lot lower than people think. I'm sure that number is shocking to you.
It was to me when I first heard it.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: So, yeah, if you have asked me what I would have guessed, I would have said like 40%.
[00:29:11] Speaker B: No, it's so low. It's so low.
And even if we're generous, there are people that are active outside of a gym setting. You know, they, they work outside or whatever. They're. They're active in other ways. Even if we were generous, it's still less than 10%.
And so it's, it's devastating to me as someone in this industry.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: So in that case, then, you know, this is an organization that, obviously a decision that wellness was important to them. Implementing a wellness strategy was important for them and their people.
So they went ahead, made the decision, spent $10,000 on this to only get a 2% uptake. What would you have recommended they do differently?
[00:29:56] Speaker B: Yeah, so that's, that's where we have to come back to the individual need. And so as leaders in your space, it is critical that you have an awareness of what your team actually believes wellness is first.
If you're not assessing that and what this, what this company did is that they made the decision at a, at an upper level meeting. So the upper management made the decision, implemented. They did a great job of implementation. It was a beautiful gym, was gorgeous. I would work out there. It was beautiful.
But what they did not do is they did not poll their staff. They did. They took no time to have conversations with their team members to Ask them what wellness meant to them or what they felt wellness was. So for example, myself, if I'm working in an office, when I had that job, that office job for two years, my wellness strategy that I implemented for myself was to go to the gym at 5am and to go out at lunch and make sure that I was getting out as much energy as I could by being active in my non working times. While I was working at my desk, I would have regular get up and goes from my desk, so go get a coffee, go to the bathroom, go talk to a peer. And through the day I would have to get up multiple times from my desk because at that time, it was a long time ago, there was no such thing as standing desks. But I would have to get up back and move in order to be more productive. If you were to tell me or to force me to sit at a desk for eight hours straight, my productivity personally, Robin herself would go into the tank for sure. No question.
Underneath, even right now, as I'm talking to you, my leg is bouncing, I am moving.
I'm so sorry about my camera, but if my camera you would see my arms are flying and flailing everywhere. This is who I am as a human being. So for me that would be my wellness strategy would be able to get outside. So a gym might work for me, it might work for me, but I would much rather be out in the fresh air if I have to be in an office all day. That's personal.
My peer who sat beside me, her wellness approach would have been a little bit different. And she doesn't mind sitting at a desk all day. That doesn't bother her at all. But if she is not taking care of her nutrition throughout the day, then she sees her productivity drop. So I know you leaders out there screaming at me and going, well, what are we supposed to do if 20 people need 20 different things? How are we supposed to accommodate that? That's, that's the big ask. As leaders, when you go out and have that conversation with your team, there will be things that cross line with each other that you can put together a strategy for the whole, which it may include multiple things. Maybe you have an a la carte menu. Hey team, this is our a la carte menu of wellness strategies that we've put together for you. You get to choose. So and so is taking a four day work week. That's their strategy. This person here gets an extra hour in the afternoon to go sit outside and work on a laptop instead of sitting at her desk. But each Employee gets to pick and choose. This is just one option, but there's lots of different ways you can do it.
So each team member has to have a say so that the leaders can then go back to their upper level meeting. Because that's important too, that you sit down as a leadership team and make the decisions for the whole from a strategic perspective. Also considering how much is going to cost the company, you know, we've got to put those numbers. Those numbers have to be part of that conversation. And that's what I do is I go into these companies and I, and I work through that with them. The strategy session.
[00:33:47] Speaker A: I love that. I love that. So talk to me a little bit. I want to bring this to a little bit of a, maybe a personal level for you and ask. You know, you love to dance. You're into the aerial arts. I mean, I've watched you and seen you on, on the socials, handstands. Like the stuff that you do is just awesome. And then you're also a professional speaker, so you obviously practice what you preach, right? In a huge way. What's one thing you do to stack your happiness on a day to day basis when life is sort of feeling like it's throwing you a couple curveballs?
[00:34:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you. That's a great question. Obviously, physical outlet is my, is my thing. So physical outlet is, is really the thing for me. But I do, I do the same thing that all of you do. Leaders. I do the same thing. I overload my schedule. I, I do too much, I pack it on. And people say to me all the time, how do you do all the things that you do? You know, and in the moment I'm like, I'm good. Not always. Right. Sometimes I look at my schedule, I go, oh God, what have I done? I'm in trouble, you know. And so over the years, I used to be, I used to be much worse at that. So over the years I've learned to. My husband's gonna laugh if he, if he watches this, but I've learned, I've actually learned to say no to things. So I do say no now more than I would. I balance, I'm very intentional about balancing what my physical schedule does look like. There was a period of time where I was doing a lot of physicality, but it was all the same. So I was finding myself injured and overuse and not in a good way. So I've built, you know, different types of physical things in like yoga, mobility, those sorts of things to make sure that my body is really well Cared for.
I educate myself constantly on what is the best thing for me. I, it is part of my research every single day. So if I'm going to talk to you Happy Stack Podcast, then I am going to find out like you researched me. I'm going to research you a little bit. I'm going to find out about you. If I'm going as a professional speaker to speak to a company, I'm going to find out everything I can about that company so that I can speak to them. Well, I also look at myself and I, and I take time in my week, every week to look at the schedule ahead of me in the following week and to make sure that I have created a balance for myself and to shift things if I have to. Sometimes you've overplugged and there's nothing you can do about it and you just gotta push through. But when I see that, I've done that because sometimes you're booking months and months ahead and you think, yeah, yeah, no problem, no problem, no problem. You build all those things in and then you get to one day and you're like, oh, oh, I really did it for that day. And you can get through that day. When I look at next week, I will then say, okay, this couple hours on the Tuesday after my crazy Monday, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna block that time.
So I make sure that I have and, and I work from home most of the time now, so I will take that time and not look at my computer, not be on, you know, any sort of, you know, device, sit down, have a coffee, have a drink, read a book, talk to my son, whatever the case may be, things that are going to fulfill me and give me some space. I'm clearly an extrovert, so people fuel me. But I'm also aging.
And so as I'm aging, I'm finding gracefully. Thank you. I'm finding that me time is, is also valuable to me now. If in my 20s you would have asked me, I would have said no, I don't want to ever be alone. But now, now I'm like, oh, I, I like that. 20 minutes, an hour, just me sitting by myself.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I like that when I'm speaking.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: I also make sure a lot of times the conference runners, they'll ask you if you want to share a room with another speaker or something like that. I say no. I say no. So, so there are things now that are just non negotiables for me and I know that that's not going to make me feel good. I'm not. Not as much of a people pleaser as I used to be. I say no a lot more now than I used to.
[00:38:03] Speaker A: That's awesome. What's the one message or piece of advice you would hope our listeners would take away from this conversation? Like, if you were to sort of like, create a Coles Notes version of like, this is what I want you. I want this to land with y'all and, you know, walk away with it, what would that be?
[00:38:20] Speaker B: Please start small.
Remember that. That this is the only body that you have. That's it. You don't get another one. And if you're young, it feels like it's invincible. It isn't. I'm telling you it isn't. But I know you're busy. I know you have not got a lot of time. So just choose one small thing and start.
That's it.
Beautiful.
[00:38:50] Speaker A: Okay, I'm going to do some lightning round questions just so the viewers and audience get to know a little bit more about you as a human. And obviously, we'll make sure that all your tags and all your links are at the bottom of the show notes so that they can follow you. So question number one. Morning person or night person?
[00:39:07] Speaker B: Morning for sure.
[00:39:08] Speaker A: What's your favorite way to unwind after a busy day?
[00:39:14] Speaker B: I go work out.
Exercise.
[00:39:17] Speaker A: Exercise is her thing, folks. I don't know if that's landed with you all.
[00:39:22] Speaker B: I'm a crazy one.
[00:39:24] Speaker A: What is the best piece of advice you've ever been given?
[00:39:27] Speaker B: Oh, God.
I've been given. So I have had some really incredible mentors.
The best advice I would say is go back to you. Look at yourself. If you have a fight with somebody, stop blaming. Stop putting it out on them. Come back to yourself. What could you have done better? What could. What could you have done better? That's it. You are the only person.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: Love that. We get the caught. You're the common denominator in all situations. So, yeah. Go back to yourself.
[00:39:56] Speaker B: To yourself.
[00:39:57] Speaker A: Come to yourself. Love that.
[00:39:58] Speaker B: Love that.
[00:39:59] Speaker A: What's your favorite book or books?
[00:40:01] Speaker B: I love Little Women. I've probably read that book 10,000 times. Really?
[00:40:06] Speaker A: I've never read it.
[00:40:09] Speaker B: Oh, you have to read it it. And then please message me once you have.
[00:40:12] Speaker A: I shall. I shall.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: Make sure you have some tissues nearby. You're gonna. Oh, really?
[00:40:16] Speaker A: Am I gonna cry?
[00:40:18] Speaker B: Just. Just one part.
[00:40:19] Speaker A: Okay. All right. I am a crier. FYI. Okay, if you could keep only one habit for the rest of your life, what would it be?
[00:40:26] Speaker B: Movement.
[00:40:27] Speaker A: Movement. Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing your words, your advice, a little bit of your journey and your story, and I'm wishing you the most of happiness.
Hey, thanks for listening to the Happy Stack Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who could use a little extra happiness in their life. Let's keep stacking those wins together. See you next time.
