Have you realized yet how little is actually talked about? Truth bomb time! Join Dawn and her guests as they have honest open conversations about the shit we wish we had been told, the things nobody wants to talk about or are too scared to talk about. Feel seen, heard, understood and not alone while learning some hands on strategies for your own life
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57 - Ally Stone - We Aren't All Meant To Be Business Owners
Episode 58
Monday, November 4, 2024 • Duration 59:35
Why you would want to listen to this episode…
On the surface, entrepreneurship is a glamorous thing. To the untrained eye, it’s an endeavour that gives absolute independence and freedom. Surprisingly though, it’s not all it’s cut out to be. Today, Dawn speaks with a fellow entrepreneur and a powerhouse in her own right - Ally Stone. Ally and Dawn are here to debunk myths and bring light to the misconceptions about entrepreneurialism. Yet all the same, they look back on this crazy path they’ve been on with utmost gratitude. After all, being entrepreneurs helped forge them into the people they are today. .
Who is this for…
For anyone who’s ever been curious about the life of an entrepreneur (along with the stuff they don’t tell you in workshops), this episode is for you. This is great for those wanting to get into entrepreneurship, this episode is a sobering look at an industry where perseverance is the true name of the game. Thanks to this episode, you may find out whether the hustle is for you! However, it always bears repeating that whatever job we may have, our worth as people should never be tied to our occupations.
Guest Bio
Ally Stone has been a partner and leader in the hospitality industry since 2005. During that time, she was integral to developing 15 successful businesses and teams. As Director of Culture and Leadership Development, Ally mastered a deep understanding of what it means to be truly connected as a leader and how that drives the success of any business.
She bases her leadership style on what she has come to call “Inspired Leadership.” the approach elevates team thinking beyond everyday problems and obstacles, building instead on quality in group and individual connection for lasting effect. This has created a culture of engaged, emerging leaders in her organization that many admire and emulate to this day.
Ally has worked with thousands of leaders from all levels of organizations. In 2022 Ally was awarded the Transformational Leader Award by The Universal Women’s Network and recognized as The Most Inspiring Leadership Development Company by A. I. International. Ally is also a certified Meditation Teacher, a Heart Math Resilience Mentor, and an ICF Certified Coach working towards her Master's Certification.
She is active and loves yoga, biking, hiking, and spending time with her two dogs.
Dawn Taylor is the professional ass-kicker, hope giver, life strategist, trauma specialist, and all-around badass. Dawn's journey into helping others heal began when she took her personal recovery from the trauma she experienced in her life into her own hands. While at times unconventional, Dawn’s strategic methods have helped hundreds heal from traumas such as issues related to infidelity, overcoming addiction, working through PTSD from sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, as well as helping cult survivors thrive. Dawn’s work has empowered entrepreneurs, stay-at-home moms, and CEOs alike to be superheroes in their own lives. Having completed thousands of hours of training from many professional programs, including the Robbins Madanes Training Institute, Dawn’s blunt honesty will challenge your thinking, broaden your awareness, and help you achieve the outstanding results you are worthy of.
Get to know Dawn on a deeper level through her book! Order Here
P.S. I Made It, is a powerful story that grabs you through its lack of pretension and honesty. Every page reveals another layer of curious wonder at both Dawn’s life and the power of hope that moves within each of us. Dawn’s hope is that you use this book as a resource to deal with your struggles. Share it with someone who needs it. We all want to feel like someone understands what it’s like to suffer through something and – come out the other side. She describes her life as “horrifically beautiful and beautifully horrific.
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This podcast (including any/all site pages, blog posts, blog comments, forums, videos, audio recordings, etc.) is not intended to replace the services of a physician, nor does it constitute a doctor-patient relationship. Information is provided for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. You should not use the information on this podcast for diagnosing or treating a medical or health condition. If you have or suspect you have an urgent medical problem, promptly contact your professional healthcare provider. Any application of the recommendations in this podcast/website is at the listener/reader's discretion. The views and opinions expressed are those of guests and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or policy of Dawn Taylor, The Taylor Way and or its Associates. The before mentioned are not liable for any direct or indirect claim or loss.
Transcript
Dawn Taylor
I am your host, Dawn Taylor. And today I get to talk to you, one of my dear friends, Ally Stone. If you don't know her, you need to. This woman is a powerhouse. She has been in the hospitality industry since 2005. She's developed over 15 different businesses and teams. She, there's not even words like, she is the leadership queen. We'll just put it that way. Um, has led massive teams. I'm talking like 750 people-style teams and does it from her heart, does it from her heart, but also with massive success. She is very big on helping people overcome everyday problems, obstacles, building instead of quality in group and individual connection for lasting effect. She's very big on culture, having engaged emerging leaders in organizations, and she's on stages. She's coaching, she's doing all the things these days. But in 2022, she was also awarded the Transformational Leader Award by the Universal Women's Network. Holy Monday mornings I'm talking too fast And was recognized as the most inspiring leadership development company by AI International. She's all the things. She is just all the things. And let's dive into today's amazing topic. Ally, welcome to the show. And what do you wish people were talking about?
Ally Stone
Hey, Dawn. Uh, yeah. I'm excited to be here with you today. Oh, what do I wish people were talking about? I wish people were talking more about being an entrepreneur. Um, I think there's a myth out there that entrepreneurialism is the answer. And I think we can chat a lot about this. Um, and being an entrepreneur myself, you know, building and scaling a massive organization, understanding what that takes. Um, I see a lot of people kind of missing some of the understanding of what actually goes into that. So I thought that might be a fun conversation today.
Dawn Taylor
Absolutely so and the other piece of that is not everyone's meant to be an entrepreneur. So let's start with your journey. So, you're like this badass boss, even though I hate those terms in really like, building scaling companies.
Ally Stone
I kind of fell into that too. So it's a really interesting story because I believe we were 22 years old when we first became entrepreneurs, my husband and I buying into the original Joes franchise. So uh, it was quite the adventure. Uh, I always say I have an MBA in business, but just kind of like, you know, the Hard knocks school of life and scaling and growing business over 17 years. I remember there were points, uh, through that journey where my husband and I would look at each other, like, almost panicked and be like, is one of us going to go to school? Somebody needs to get an MBA. But there was no time for that, right? Um, so it was just, we were just in and, you know, original Joes when we first bought our first shareholder in the Terwilliger location over on the South side, close to both of our homes. Um, there was four, I believe, four original Joes at the time. And by the time we were done with the franchise and I was done, uh, they had 98 locations in Western Canada, and we had 17 under our organizational belt. So, uh, it was a wild, wild journey. Yeah, but also so grateful for it.
Dawn Taylor
So right now to date, how many do you still own?
Ally Stone
So there's 12 in our partnership group and there's a few different partners in there. So at this point I don't work with or in Original Joe's anymore. So I'm just a silent partner. Um, and yeah, there's a new group running it, uh, which have been amazing. I think that, um, you know, maybe one day we moved to sell it. I don't know, maybe there's an opportunity for somebody new to kind of do what my husband and I did and go through the process of kind of building an organization or jumping into an organization again. So, I'm all about opportunity for people, too. But we are talking about entrepreneurialships, not for everybody.
Dawn Taylor
And that's I love that. And having been in the restaurant industry for a lot of years myself and not having thrived at it, right, did amazing. Owning a single restaurant but then in the franchise world did not thrive like that was not my jam. I know how much work that is and how intense and insane that is. So let's talk about hey, both of us are a little crazy, and I'm saying that in like, the best way. Not like we need to be, like, medicated crazy, but, like, we're both risk takers. We both are okay with that. We're both resilient. We both are the type that are like, we'll figure it out. We'll just go with it and we'll figure it out. And we don't want a lot to hold us back. But I remember a conversation. It was probably four years ago. It was in Covid. And my husband, he's like, I think I'm going to start a company. And I was like, oh, okay. And I've always been the entrepreneur in our house. And he's always had like the more stable job. And I remember sitting with him and if he's listening to this, he's going to laugh because he knows exactly where this is going. But I was like, do you even know what all goes into running your own company? And it was in an area where he had massive expertise. He easily could have done it. He could have done the work. But I was like, no, no, no, you could manage. I don't think you understand the ownership piece. And he was like, what? And I said, well, for every hour that you're out there working in the business, you probably need 1 to 2 working on the business. And he's like what. And I said so not only are you going to have to like go run the piece of equipment, I said but you're going to have to figure out like the financing to buy it. And where's the money coming from. And all the insurance and the licensing and the contracts and the bookkeeping and the banking and the marketing and the bonding and and I started just like mapping all this out on a whiteboard for him. And I was like. Who's dealing with all of that? Because you're on site 12 hours a day, for ten hours a day. And I said at first, you can't afford to hire a staff to do all those things. So are you going to do all that? And in an amazing husband way, he's like, well, no, you and your team can help with that. And I was like, no, no they can't. Like, no, no, I'm not running your company for you when I have my own and my own team.
Ally Stone
Yeah. It's so true though. We totally, if you have traditionally worked for other people and let's, let's just, you know, rip the Band-Aid off, it's not a bad thing to work for somebody else if that's where your heart lies. Yeah. If you're happy doing that, if you love contributing to a team, if you love the security and the stability that comes with working for an organization, working for somebody else, great, right? You don't have to be an entrepreneur. But what the point you're making is so true, because I might even say it's higher the working on the business, especially to get it started and even to get to work in the business, you have to figure out how to market it, how how to get people to come to you before you can even do the in the business part. There is so much on the business part. Right?
Dawn Taylor
Well, and it was just an interesting moment because like I have worked with businesses for years like you have, we do very, very different things within working with companies. But, like, I have talked to business owners for years, and I know there's somewhere I've been like, I think you need to not own a company. And they're like, what do you mean? Or someone who's wanting to start a company? And I'm like, if you don't have this innate drive and motivation and self, you have to be a self propelled machine. Right.
Ally Stone
It's not always easy like even you and I, I will openly admit I struggle with that some days. So I'm not going to make that assumption for you. But some days I get up and I'm like oh I want to do this today. But you have to, right? Once you take that leap, you have to or nothing happens.
Dawn Taylor
You totally do. And I think there's this idea out there from the outside. Right. And and with that, to finish off the conversation with my husband, we had this conversation and he realized he really wanted nothing to do with that. He wanted to go to work and come home. He didn't want to think about it evenings, weekends. He didn't want to have to put all the extra hours in the hustle. And have that instability. And I remember the conversation vividly, and I looked at him and I said, you know that that's okay, right? And he said, what do you mean? And I'm like, everyone's idea of what they need for structure and security, or what their priorities are or or what drives them is totally different. Right. Some people need community in a different way. They need coworkers. They need to leave their house. They need that. They need the structure of the paycheck every other Friday because they can't handle not getting that paycheck every other Friday. Right. Like to have to work so hard for it and hustle so hard for it. And it was a very interesting moment for him, of realizing what all goes into running my company and having team members and having all of that and, you know, doing the management I do. And like, with you. Right. Like people from the outside watching can they totally could just be like, oh, they make it look so easy. And it's like, oh gosh,
Ally Stone
I've been getting that a lot lately. Like people are like, oh my gosh, you there's you're having so much success with the inspired leader. It looks so amazing. And I'm like, oh my God. I'm like never sleeping. It's like intense. Like growth is just, it's great. But it's also super draining and I'm just exhausted and trying everything to fill my cup and take care of myself so that I don't burn out in the process. Right. It's wild. It's a wild adventure.
Dawn Taylor
It totally is. No, I wish that more people talked like this. I was with a friend yesterday. We were buying clothes. She needed something for doing a presentation that she's doing. And I said, here, let's go to one of my favorite stores, and I'm going to help you put some outfits together, because she struggles with that and we're finding stuff. And the manager came over and offered me a job. And I was like, yeah, I might bring you my resume. And my friends liked me. She's like, sorry, you're going to get a job at a clothing store for $15 an hour. Like, I do. I'm like. And she just cracked up laughing. And I was like, yeah, I actually might. And she went, what? And I looked at the woman. I was like, could I just do like four hours a week? And she went, yeah, if that's all you want. She's like, you 100% could. And I was like, it’d be fun. It would be fun. That's entrepreneurialism. I think I might, you know, what is this is my announcement. You might see me in a clothing store in South Bend to comment in the future. But I was talking to her as we walked out and we went for lunch after. And I said, you know, there's a lonely aspect to being an entrepreneur that people don't see. Yes. We're surrounded by people. Yes, we're surrounded by clients. Yes, we're surrounded in networking rooms. Yes, we're surrounded by, you know, other professionals in similar realms or worlds as us. But it's really lonely often. Yeah. And there's a pressure attached to it. Right. There is a pressure attached to the work that we do. And I don't know if you find that the same. It's like when you're networking, there's like this in the back of your mind. You're constantly like collaborations and selling and clients and you're in work mode. So a lot of your peopling is not the same as if you were just going to an office and hanging out with people. And we were talking about it and I said, you know what I loved? And she goes, what? And I said, I just got to help random strangers, and you feel absolutely beautiful in their bodies and help them figure out how to structure clothes and do all these things on a plus sized body that they never would have gotten. And I got to help people in a totally different way where there was like zero pressure. And I just got to love on people. And I said, and it wasn't exhausting. Like it was actually just really fun. And, you know, to see someone standing there with tears in their eyes because they felt beautiful in what they're wearing or like I was like, I kind of like that. I kind of want that. I kind of want this, like, get out of my house for, you know, eight hours a week or whatever it is, and then I get 50% off clothes. So it's just gonna be super fun.
Ally Stone
That's your entrepreneurial ism there because, you know, you can really capitalize on the the clothes. You get first dibs on everything new that comes in. It's amazing.
Dawn Taylor
That could be my clothing budget. I know I'm laughing at myself saying it, but I really think that these are the parts and pieces that no one thinks about. Mhm.
Ally Stone
Circling back I think, I think that um I think this is a good way to describe it. Entrepreneurialism is shown in this bright beautiful light right now. Like you're riding around on your motorcycle and your Ferrari and you're getting on your tail. You're traveling the world. I have no time to travel right now.
Dawn Taylor
Like it's not a thing.
Ally Stone
If I was still working with Original Joe’s, for sure, I'd be spending a month in Hawaii. Like I do a lot of things, uh, to create this business and to create this, this life for myself. Right. And so you have to, one word in that as you were talking, it was really coming up for me was, uh, resilience. Right. And so I often think about that. I think for me, resilience used to mean actually just posted about this this morning, something like this all is coming up right now. Um, resilience for me used to mean pushing through the hard stuff, getting through. And to me, the evolution of that now means like being with the hard stuff, being present and open to get, not even to, to be with, to move with the hard stuff as it shifts and changes in your life. And if you're not able to be resilient, if resiliency is a tough thing for you, entrepreneurialism is going to be very hard because there are a lot of like on the daily, right, things come up and you're like, oh shit, how am I going to get through that? Or like total pivot, right. And that's just like the reality of it. And so if you're not able to embrace the challenges, the things that come up, the obstacles that get in the way and have the mindset to be like, okay, what does it take to get around this? How do I keep moving forward? That's when I see entrepreneurs like I use the term cut and run or be like, okay, I just can't do this and throw their hands up in the air. And I also find that really sad when that happens too.
Dawn Taylor
I think it is. I have often looked at business centres I've seen over the years and wondered, how did nobody in their life ever be like, hey, is this actually what you're meant to be doing? Is this what you need right now? And there have been times I was talking to a friend a few years ago and it was like, so go get a job. And she was like, what? I'm like, the J word is not actually a sin. It's not less than. It's not any of those things. It really isn't. But I do think in this world of toxic positivity and social media and like you said, this laptop lifestyle mentality that everybody has in this dream, nobody's being realistic. Nobody's talking about the fact that when you turn into an entrepreneur it might shift your friend group. Because people around you aren't going to understand that you don't have as much time. That it might, that you're going to outgrow some people in your life at times, and that that can be very, very hard, that you are going to be very lonely, that you're really pushing uphill a lot of the time. And I know people might be listening to this and being like, oh, but if it's an alignment, it's all going to flow. No, that's not realistic. That's not realistic. That's not what running a business is. That's not what running a business is. And I've owned many over the years like you. Right. Like we've both owned a lot of companies and dealt with a lot of staff and a lot of things. And some days are just actually hard. I was talking to a group of young entrepreneurs, like, 20 years younger than me, last week at a networking event, and one of the guys looked at me and he goes, do you just ever have a day? And I said, were my resume’s up on my laptop? And I'm on Indeed searching for a job. And he looked at me and he goes, are you serious? And I was like, tell me, an entrepreneur that hasn't done that in the last week, and I'm going to call them a flat out liar. And he starts laughing. And I was like, I don't know, an entrepreneur. If they were being brutally honest, that has not had a moment in the last week or the last month where they've been like, I could just get a job. Do you know how much money I can make with a salary? I'd have guaranteed paid holidays?
Ally Stone
Oh my gosh, I get the LinkedIn jobs, you know, because they're like and I'm like, oh, that's really interesting. But then also because I'm an entrepreneur, I think about it and I think, oh yeah, that's not actually what I want for my life. That's actually out of alignment for me. And so there's kind of two camps here. Right. And I think what we're kind of playing around with in this conversation is like, if you're listening to this today and maybe you are an entrepreneur or you have the j-o-b or whatever camp you're in, you know, ask yourself if you feel authentic, if you feel we use the word alignment, if you feel whole in what you're doing every day, and if you're feeling misaligned or disconnected, you know, you need to first ask yourself if that's about you. Um, but maybe it's something, maybe there's something in what you're doing that's not, like fulfilling a piece of your life's purpose or your reason for being here. And if that's the case, well, number one, you could look for another job. Number two, you could think about a business, but still take the time to really understand what you want before you make those jumps, not just because of, you know, the social media or this, like, idea of this perfect life, right? Because it actually doesn't exist in either scenario. And I think that's important to point out.
Dawn Taylor
Okay. Thank you for that because it's it's so true. And also there's times in life where we actually need the structure and security. Where it might not be that it's about what makes us happier or what feeds our hearts or whatever, but it's like, no, right now I just need to pay my damn bills. Mhm. And that's beautiful. There's nothing wrong with that. It is so interesting. We live in such an entrepreneurial city, you and I. So Ally and I live in the same city. And I heard a statistic a few years ago that was saying, like, there's more entrepreneurs in Edmonton than anywhere else in North America per capita.
Ally Stone
I didn't know that. Wow.
Dawn Taylor
That we're known as the Hustle City where, like, everybody has a side hustle, everybody has a business, everybody has something going on. And I think that that leads to this belief that we all need to have something going on, right?
Ally Stone
Yeah. It's the herd mentality maybe I don't know. And you see your neighbor on both sides. It has a side hustle and it's running a business and is making good money. You start to say to yourself, well, why can't I do that? Right. But the real question is, do you actually want to do that?
Dawn Taylor
Yeah. Well and do we? Right. Like, do we want to do it? I've always said like the day I wake up and I'm like, no, no, I think I'm good. I'll just go get a job. Like I have no issues with that at all. And I've had times in my life where there was a time quite a few years back, my husband was super, super sick and I had a full time job at an accounting firm, and then I owned a bookkeeping company on this side, and I was doing books for a couple companies, and then I was also like going to a bar from 4 to 8 every morning, and they'd lock me in the safe because it was a dangerous place. And Grand Prairie. Yay. And they, I literally sit there and do books, like I had multiple things on the go, because at that point in my life, it was just, how do I survive?
Ally Stone
For sure.
Dawn TaylorHow do I survive this moment? How do I get through this moment? And I wonder if we dropped our egos, if we dropped our egos and stopped attaching our worth to our companies, our worth to our jobs, our entire identity to these things. If we wouldn't have all the companies shutting down, we wouldn't have all of that going down because we'd have more people going, hey, yeah, maybe I do need to partner with someone. Maybe I do need to walk away from this, or shift or pivot this, or do this completely different. Or hey, maybe I do need a part time side hustle right now because my business isn't where I want it to be. And that's okay.
Ally Stone
Yeah. And it's like not getting caught up in this dream. Like that was what was going through my head as you were talking there. Like, because we get caught up in this like dream and even if it's the job and the job isn't paying us what we need, and maybe again, we need that side hustle, um, this alternate reality facing reality and being like, okay, this is what's actually happening around me right now. This is where we're at. This is where we're at financially. This is what I project into the future. Make a plan around it. I always say, like, when I'm working with clients, I'm always like, you have the power to choose what you want in your life. I think the biggest and saddest thing we ever do is give our power away to someone or something else because of a belief or an ideology or something we see out there, like we actually get to create our realities. Now that is some of the power of entrepreneurialism too, from my perspective. But that is just my perspective, and I don't expect other people to see the world the same way I do. Right?
Dawn Taylor
Oh, not at all. I was I was talking to a client of the day, and he's irritated because he's making just over minimum wage, doing labor work. And I went on Indeed. And like in five minutes, I was like, hey, dude, this other job, it's like five minutes down the road from you because it's not a pretty job, okay? Like it's an ugly job, but it's also easier physically on your body. Still doing labor work. I was like, is paying $47 an hour? Yeah, because they can't find people. Yeah. And he was like, oh. It's like, so stop bitching and just go apply. And he started laughing at me and he goes, seriously? And I forget whose statement it was, but it's like you're not a tree - move. You're not. If you and I went into a room full of entrepreneurs from the 20 year olds that are just starting out and in the early stages of the big dream, right. And bumping up against the first obstacles because we both have been those people and up. If we were to ask people like, do you actually love owning a company? Or do you just love what you do? How many people just love what they're doing and hate the actual owning a business piece of it.
Ally Stone
Quite a high percentage. I mean I work with those people. I always talk about getting back to doing what we love and understanding. Like, did you start this business because it was something that was going to enhance your life and make your life better and is there perspective in that? Is that something that's potential, in my words, aren't coming out right? Is that something that's possible in the future or is it not? And like you just keep saying like it's okay. Right. But it comes back to like coming back to reality and not living in this place of, uh. It's not like, okay, so I'm on the fence about this because we have to have a sense of optimism, a sense of belief, a sense of hope, a sense of faith that things will work and happen. But then there's also this piece of reality that we need to bounce back on and be like, okay, like so I really want to take the inspired leader to this vision. But reality, my current reality is here. And so if I want to take it there, what is it going to take? And I always talk about reverse engineering or business. I don't know if you do that with clients, but I think it's such a powerful process when we can be like, okay, what's the vision, now let's work backwards. What's it actually going to take to get there? Because I think we don't often sit down and do that work. Um, and I think when the entrepreneurs are sitting around saying they hate their business, it's because they have no idea what the potential steps might be to actually see that vision come to reality. Um, I'm doing a mastermind group down in the States right now with these women, and they're new entrepreneurs. And the first question I say is, do you have a business plan? 99% no. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, we need to talk. Because really, like if you don't have an idea of where you're going, how are you ever going to actualize those steps to get there? You're just going to be flopping around making decisions, hoping you make the next best right decision, instead of making a strategic decision to move forward more into alignment as to where you want to build this business. And this is probably when we see entrepreneurs cut and run, because they're so sick of taking steps that don't produce any forward momentum for their business, right? Um, but it does come down to a lack of strategy and a plan, which I know is your specialty.
Dawn Taylor
Well, and it's it's funny, years ago, I was sitting there, my husband and I were talking, and I was like, I don't have a sellable business. And he's like, no, you don't. And for all the coaches out there, sorry, you guys, you don't have a sellable business. You don't. It's not a thing. You've created a job for yourself. Congratulations. You don't have a sellable business. So if this is your retirement plan, you need to start investing in other ways. Not trying to be harsh, but let's be perfectly blunt about it. And I was like, so instead of investing more in specific areas of my company, I was like, I want to invest outside of my company in a totally different way. And we got some opportunities to like, so I own like Basin Rovers that I rent out to oilfield companies. My insurance company is always like, sorry, what? I think that's a different policy that doesn't go under life coaching. And I'm like, nope, no it doesn't. I need an equipment policy. But it was looking at it totally different because when I looked at my company, I was like, how do I build up assets in my company that I can use to sell at a later date, that A will either build a residual income, or B will be an asset that I could sell at a later date. That's not going to lose its value. Right. That was part of my business plan, that is part of my business plan, right? I don't look at this company. The Taylor Way is not my exit strategy. Right. So the income that comes from it needs to go into something that can be that retirement exit strategy.
Ally Stone
Absolutely.
Dawn Taylor
And I think even just that it's not that I'm not a dreamer or I'm not a believer or I'm not a big thinker or whatever, but it's also acknowledging I'm very realistic on my capacity. Right. With what I can mentally, emotionally, physically handle. Of the work that I do. Of what time I'm willing to put into it, of the fact that I demand that I get at least four weeks, a year of paid holidays. Right? Because I'm like, if I'm not getting vacation time, then I am not doing this right. Then I should just go have a job where someone will pay me to take holidays every year. But it's really figuring that out. And then what you have to do to get there. And you're now responsible for that as an entrepreneur. So let's make the correlation back because we're talking about the difference between the job. Right.
Ally Stone
So, if you have a job your employer might be investing for you. You can probably, you know all different things right. Like employee share whatever. Right. All of these things benefits, whatever. Um, you don't that doesn't exist for you when you become an entrepreneur. So you actually, when we talk about working, uh, on the business, there's a whole other arm that people often don't even think about. I was at a conference a couple of weekends ago, and uh, Megan Keltner was speaking. She's Canadian. I've always really looked up to her. She's built really incredible businesses. She lives out in Ontario. I believe it's the Academy of Culinary Nutrition, and I've seen people take the program and come out. And she has a business model. She teaches them on the other side. And I've seen people be really successful, and they've always been like, what is she teaching these young people coming out to run this business, right. And so anyway, she does this keynote, she comes on the stage, she says, I, I ran my business for 16 years, and this year, I shut it down. I made enough money to retire. And I'm 44 years old. And I was like, okay, you have my attention. And so she started talking about how all through all of the years of building that business, she did not care. I mean, it was obviously important what her, uh, like net was, but what she was more concerned with was what was she investing and what was she banking? And I was like, oh, that's so powerful. If we started to think that way, even if you only had, let's say, a $500,000 a year as opposed to $1 million a year, but you banked, you know, 60% of that 5000, and you had $1 million a year, and you only banked, you know, 10%. Okay. Well, at the end of the day, you're not any further ahead. Right? So it's all about the strategy and the way we're thinking about running our business. And again, nobody is making these decisions for you. And so you have to have the ability to be like this is what needs to happen. And then make yourself do it. Don't get all excited when the money comes in the bank and be like-
Dawn Taylor
Yeah, but that's the hard part. And that's the part that no one talks about. Yeah, I remember calling. I remember calling my husband one time from bed and he was in the kitchen making coffee, and I was like, I can't get ahold of Dawn. Can you tell her I'm sick today? And I were like, pretend that I was like, phoning in sick for my old job. And he just started laughing and he was like, seriously, Dawn, damn it, I just want a boss. I can call in sick to one, right? Well, we just won this once. Like, just call in sick. Yeah. Mental health day. Right. And he just laughed and he's like, so move all your stuff and have a sick day. Yeah, that's one of those things that I've really learned how to prioritize over the years. And honestly, from 20 some years of owning companies and burning out hard multiple times and everything else is when I look at my calendar some of the days, said, man, I wish I could take a vacation. I wish I could take a day off, but it's just not feasible. And I was like, if you don't, your body will for you. And I was a young entrepreneur and I said if you don't learn to prioritize taking a day once in a while and not feeling guilty at taking a day off. Your body's going to learn how to take time off for you. You're just going to get really sick.
Ally Stone
No choice.
Dawn Taylor
Yeah. And he kind of just like, looked to me with my eyes and I said, but think about it. I said, even in a job, you're, they're like, they're forced legally to give you a lunch hour. Yeah. They're forced to give you coffees. They can only work you so many hours a week. They have to legally give you time off. So what makes this entrepreneur is that like, if you can't at least get like 50% of that happening, why are we entrepreneurs?
Ally Stone
Yeah, for sure. And it's part of the slog. Right. So we talked about all the hours of working on the business versus in the business. And it's like where do you find balance and all of that? Okay. So I want to ask you a question because you popped in with the questions. So, you know we're having this conversation around entrepreneurialism. Should you be an entrepreneur, should you not? If somebody's listening to this and they're thinking about being an entrepreneur today. What would you say to them? What would you tell them to look at before making that big life decision to become one.
Dawn Taylor
So, I'd ask them immediately what is their level of security they need. So on a scale of 1 to 10 like what. Where was their hustle factor? So, if I'm like hey you need to come up with $5,000 in a week, do you know how you could do that. Do you have any ideas on how you could figure that out or how you could do that? And that question alone would tell me a lot. Because if they're like, uh, I have no idea, then you should really pause and think about it. And don't just jump in. But also I would say look at what structure and security you need to have in advance. Because if we are living in just a scared place and you're going into being an entrepreneur in a place of fear, you're never going to thrive because you're terrified. So, what is your level of structure and security you need? One being I absolutely need none, because I can fly by the seat of my pants and always figure it out. And if I have to, like, go pick bottles and ditches to pay my bills, I'm fine with that because I have no shame. Ten, being I need to have like six months of money in a bank account at all times to make sure that I can pay my bills, that I feel safe, that I feel secure, and I panic. If there isn't a certain amount in my bank account, you probably need to be like a 4 or less to be an entrepreneur. Or even a 3 or less because there's so many parts of it. Very few entrepreneurs thrive in their first business. Often we have to do 2 or 3 or 4, or you have multiples going on, or there's 100 different things at one time. And what is your risk, right? It’s that risk-reward factor you pay with. And the other big one is like how well do you deal with shame and feeling like a failure? Yes. Right. Like or the. No. I always talk about the no. Because you're going to get a lot of no's 100%. How well do you deal with that? Yeah, right. Can you walk into a coffee shop and ask someone embarrassing questions and not care? Yeah. Could you walk through them all dancing and singing at the top of your lungs and not actually give a shit if someone's looking at you funny? Because if you can handle all those things, you probably could make a pretty decent entrepreneur. Yeah, but if you are so scared that you're going to fail, or so scared that someone's going to look at you funny, or so scared that someone's going to judge you. You're not setting yourself up for success by being an entrepreneur.
Ally Stone
You're not.
Dawn Taylor
And how well do you ask for help? How well do you ask for help? Are you okay with somebody giving you feedback? Are you okay going to someone and being like, help. I don't know how to do this. And I'm not thriving at this. Like, I always laugh that I know what I'm good at and I know my lane, but my gosh, am I really good at being like, I suck at this. I need support, like no shame, like I'm like that. That's just actually not my forte.
Ally Stone
Yeah, yeah, yeah for sure. And yeah, a couple things are coming up for me in that too, and they're very similar. I just frame them a little differently. I always say there's at least a two year window where you don't know what the F is going to happen.
Dawn Taylor
No idea.
Ally Stone
What is your capacity to navigate that to your window where you have no idea? Like no idea. Yeah, right. And then the other thing too is like you were talking about the dancing through the mall and whatever, and it's like a no or like the feeling silly or the shame when that comes in. What it does is it stops you in your tracks as an entrepreneur, if you can't navigate it, and if you cannot navigate it, when you stop, your business stops. And so it becomes this start. Stop this, like, gas pedal off, pedal on pedal. And it's really challenging for entrepreneurs. So it's like, I hate the word thicker skin, but it's like building a bit of a thicker skin and being like, it's okay, right? Like, I'm not everybody's cup of tea and I'm not going to be. And that is reality. I got a pretty hard no last week on something. Um, there was a woman that was referred to me. So I run like a higher level women's leadership mastermind group. It's a year-long commitment. It's a bigger commitment. And so normally, I don't even advertise this. Um, it's usually through a referral or whatever somebody comes in. Um, and so I had this conversation with this woman, and I could, I could tell she wasn't the right fit, and that was okay. Um, but by the end of the conversation, it was just she was just like, oh, yeah, no, it's a no. And I got off and it was a little like, oh, you know, and feeling like a little, a little like down about it. But then I just took a breath and I was like, Ally, you got to move on with your day like that That's your reality. And she wasn't the right fit. And it's okay. And I wish her the best. But this is what you're doing and you're making an impact and you just need to keep going. Right. Or I could have got stuck in it. I could have wallowed in it all day. Nothing else could have happened. Right. And I had a really successful day because I didn't let it take me down.
Dawn Taylor
No. And I think that's what people really need to look at it and think about is what that looks like. But also we were talking about, like, the being realistic thing. Yeah, the amount of people that are like, oh, but I want an eight figure business, I want a seven figure business. And I'm like, yeah, do you even know what that looks like? Do you have any idea what that would entail for you to do that? Well, no, I'm going to just build an online course and sell it. Do you know how hard it is to actually build an online course and sell it?
Ally Stone
How many online courses are there out there right now? Oh my gosh. Oh my God. I can't even like, begin to imagine the amount of money Kajabi rakes in every year.
Dawn Taylor
Oh right. And that's like, what was the business model like? Totally. Well, what is the percentage? It's like 4% of people that buy an online course ever actually do it.
Ally Stone
Yeah. For sure, for sure. Right.
Dawn Taylor
And I've done it is the thing. Like I've been the person who's like I'm going to build this course and it's going to be amazing and it's going to go so far. And then I was like, well, that sucked and tanked. And we just put thousands into that and nothing. But that's that whole pivot piece. That's that whole like, I'm not going to have shame. And I'm just like, well, I guess that wasn't my thing and move on. But I think that's where we actually need to be realistic. Is anybody and everybody out there is going to try to sell you on the fact that you can have an eight figure company and you can do this and you can do that and know most people can't. Yeah.
Ally Stone
The only way you have an eight figure companies, if you figure it out for yourself, I always say business is not black and white. It's actually it's actually quite gray. And it's different for each of us, and it's based on our personality and how we're willing to show up and the commitments we're willing to make. And that then dictates where we're at.
Dawn Taylor
So what would you tell someone who wants to be an entrepreneur? Oh my goodness. We turned the question back on you. What would you say?
Ally Stone
Well, I think first I would ask them why. Like what it is. What what has gotten in their head? What is the idea? What is the business? Then I would ask them what that means to them personally with the bigger mission and vision is like how? What's the impact they plan to create if somebody wants to like make widgets as an example, I don't know. I'm really just pulling that out of thin air. Somebody wants to make widgets and they don't have a why or a reason for building that company. I think it's going to be really hard when things get tough. So I think having a vision like for me, like I want to impact 1 million women. And so when things get tough, I'm able to be like, yeah like, think about the impact you've already made. Think about the clients that you work with. Think about the experiences you've had. I know this is a really crappy day, but this is what's going to pull me through. And I think this is very true in life, too. I think a lot of the principles in business can really be related to our lives. And then, um, yeah, I would definitely ask them those things and I think I would also. We kind of already talked about these, but talk about the runway. What is your runway like? How much time are you willing to commit to this business before you like - peace,I'm out! I can't do this anymore because that's a really short runway. You might not want to do it right. Like, what is your actual capacity to commit to this business when people start saying, oh, well, I plan to have another kid in a couple of years. And it's like, okay, well, like we need to just talk about what the priorities are going to be in and like, it's okay. But you need to recognize that if you start this business, you're not just like you said, it's not necessarily especially if it's a coaching business. It's not necessarily a saleable business. Even if you build a business that could be saleable at one point, it's not going to be in 2 to 3 years. Highly, highly unlikely. That's like 2% of businesses. Yeah.
Dawn Taylor
You've got a good runway on that one to actually get to the point where you have a sellable business.
Ally Stone
Yeah, and so, you know, if you're like, okay, well, I'm going to have another baby in a couple of years and I'm going to, you know, I'll step back or somebody will run it or I'll sell it. And it's like, okay, well, these are all really big what ifs. And, you know, to plan your life around that could be really challenging. Right. And so I don't necessarily, um, try to talk people out of either direction. I really just try to help them explore what's like in their heart so that they can make that decision for themselves, because, well, it's a really big decision.
Dawn Taylor
So it's like a huge decision.
Ally Stone
I've been in your house and your entire lower floor is dedicated to your business. You have given up half of your house to this beautiful business because you love it. And literally, that also says a lot about your commitment to what you're doing, right? Who else is willing to make that commitment right. And so I think that speaks a lot to I will say, our actions speak a lot louder than our words too. And so, you know, ask, you know, what has been your commitment to your career in the past? When things got hard in your career, how did you show up? Is it important to you that you have nights at home with your family? Because that's not always going to be the case, right? So, um, I do believe we can create an integrative experience. It just has to look different and we need to think differently. But things have to change. If you want to do that, it will never look the same. So I think that's important to recognize.
Dawn Taylor
It's never going to be a Monday to Friday, 8 to 5. No. And I think that not enough people talk about that, or it's people that talk about how they have the perfect work life balance and that it is a Monday to Friday, 8 to 5. But they're lying about the level of success that they have or the money that they're making or what that looks like. So then we buy into it thinking that we're going to make hundreds of thousands of dollars on a Monday to Friday, 8 to 5. And then when we don't, we feel like a failure. And I think there's not there's not a lot of transparency. There's not a lot of transparency in what's actually going on in people's lives, in their businesses. It's what they're showing out there and they aren't being super honest about it. And so you really need to look at that. And one other interesting one that was just coming up when you were talking is if you have an idea that you think is amazing, 99% of the time, you are not your ideal client. So that might be a widget that you need to use and that you love and you think is the world's greatest idea. But you need to find someone outside of yourself to do some market research for you to be like, is this a widget that's actually a thing? Is anyone actually going to want to buy this? Is this a problem I'm actually solving with the said widget? Because your friends and family are going to be like, oh my gosh, this is an amazing widget. And they're all going to tell you it's the best damn widget they've ever seen, and you're going to make millions. And oh my goodness, we're all going to buy all the widgets for everyone we know. But when the rubber hits the road, nine out of ten of them are never going to give you a penny.
Dawn Taylor
It's your closest people in your world that will never eat at your restaurant. It's the closest people in your world that will never buy your book. Yeah, they'll never share your posts. They won't
Ally Stone
And they don't. And so you need to learn really quickly that that's actually not your market. And that's also a hard, hard thing to navigate when you start a business as well.
Dawn Taylor
But navigating that, that's not, they're not your ideal market. They aren't your market. So if they're not sharing your stuff and they're not sending things out and they're not doing what you're expecting of them, it doesn't mean they don't like you or that they don't love you or that they don't support you. They probably don't know how. Or it's because they're not your market. And to be able to separate that, to be able to lower our expectations of the people around us and separate that. I remember, um, 2019, I wrote a book and it was really interesting the first time that, you know, people that had been telling me for years, I needed to write a book and I'd be like, oh my goodness, did you get it? And they're like, oh, no, I don't like reading. And you're like, oh, damn it, I know what you're like, thank you. Right. And it was so funny. Like I was glad at that point. Even I could take it like, you know, and just laugh it off and be like, oh my goodness, for real? But it's still to this day when someone will say something and I'm like, didn't you read my book? And they're like, no, should I have? I'm like, no, no, you shouldn't have done that. So, I love you. Thank you for not supporting that. Right. But to be able to not take that as a personal offense or a rejection or any of those things. And it's just actually humans being humans.
Ally Stone
And one thing I'll say about that on the counter side is that building a business, while we don't want to lose ourselves in it and have it become our total identity, it's also a very personal thing, especially when you put your name on it like your name is on your business. Our businesses are us. We're not selling a widget. And so it does actually become quite personal. So it's like navigating that journey of our own. Maybe it comes back to resiliency, our own inner work, our own inner understanding of who we are and how we want to show up in the world and being confident in what we're doing, irregardless of what the outside world perceives it to be, is very important in a forward momentum and the level of success we have, because again, it can come back to that start and stop thing that I was talking about, right? Our mental health can start and stop our business quite quickly as well.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, absolutely. So one of my biggest pieces of advice that I would give to someone, and even if they're in this already and they're like, I don't know if I want to be doing this. Stop giving a shit about what anybody and everyone else thinks and do whatever you want. If you are that passionate about your widget, go sell the damn widget. Right. But get up off your couch and go sell the damn widget.
Ally Stone
Yes, yes.
Dawn Taylor
Realizing you have to put the work into it. If you have a business and you're like, I am so sick of the hustle, and I'm just sick and tired of it, and I don't ever want to network again. And I don't ever want to have to sell myself again, or my services, or my restaurant or my store or whatever. Then stop. We don't actually have to torture ourselves for the rest of our lives, but also figure out your worth outside of your business so that your worth does not equal your balance sheet or your profit and loss statement. And that you are you, with or without the business.
Ally Stone
There's so much more to life, right? This is just a fraction of it now. Yes, we spend a ton of time at work, but you're really pointing to me to like the authentic journey. And do we always make a decision in life that is successful and like, brings in all this joy? No. Like that's part of the condition of being human, part of the journey. And like when we can just embrace that. And if you start the company and you're like, I freaking hate this, that's cool too - just own it.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, I got it. I have for sure multiple times.
Ally Stone
I think there's like this important, uh, piece. I don't know that we're trying to articulate it, that we're kind of talking about today, but it's just that, like, if I was to say it in like a couple words, it's like, you do you but make sure you take the time to know you before you do you, so that you're happy with the decisions you make in life, whether they're successes. I don't really use the word failures a lot, whether they're successes or opportunities or whatever. Just enjoy the life that you're living so that when you are 90 years old, when you're 95 years old and you're sitting on that rocking chair of your life and you look back, you think, yeah, I started that business and it sucked. And I closed it and I went back to my job. And I'm happy with all of it because I'm glad I had all of the experiences I wanted to have in this life. And I think that's the most important thing.
Dawn Taylor
You know, the business that I sucked the most at is literally what brought me this one. So. I wouldn't, I wouldn't be doing what I was doing had I not sucked so bad at that one.
Ally Stone
Yeah. It's an opportunity.
Dawn Taylor
Literally it was a woman from Vancouver who was this amazing restaurant business consultant. And I bid on a session with her at an event, a women's event I was at because she intimidated the hell out of me. Actually, I just saw her a few months ago or about a month ago, and I was there. And she still laughs at the story. And I sat in her office and she's like, what are you doing? She's like, you light up talking about helping people. She's like, you're doing so much of it on the side. She's like, why are you owning restaurants? And my very first trauma client was from one of my vendor reps that had flown in to come and see me about stuff. And we sat in a coffee shop and she cried about her daughter. And her daughter was one of my very first major trauma clients. And her testimonials on my site, I wouldn't be where I am had I not done that business, but also been so bad at it.
Ally Stone
Yeah, for sure. We gotta suck to get somewhere. Like nobody starts out great at something. When we learn to walk—
Dawn Taylor
We fell on our faces in our asses a million times. Sometimes before we ever finally figured it out. I know nobody started off running a marathon. I don't know why. As adults we expect something different, but that is actually the process.
Ally Stone
That's part of the experience of being human, and it's part of the beauty of life. Like, what a beautiful story, right?
Dawn Taylor
So, find a person too, like, Allie and I have bonded over work and life and husbands and health and all the things. Right. But find some people. Find some people that you can have brutally honest, open, real, raw conversations with that won't just pacify you. And won't just yes woman or yes man you. But they will actually challenge you on things.
Ally Stone
Yeah. It's so incredibly important. Yeah. I remember the first time I kind of started to create that circle around me because I was encircled by yes people, and not in a bad way, but I was like, I need to be challenged in my life. And it was so uncomfortable. It's brutal. But man, did I ever learn. Wow. I learned so much about myself. Like, I wouldn't trade those moments for anything. And so now, in the days which I'm uncomfortable most days in my career and in my life, um, I say - this is important, that I'm uncomfortable because as soon as I'm comfortable, I'm in the status quo. I'm not learning, I'm not growing, I'm not evolving. And those are things that are really important to me. And so, yeah going back to this, like if you're listening, what's really important to you in your life? I know that I'm clear about that. So I make myself uncomfortable. That's part of the experience. Yeah.
Dawn Taylor
Ally, this was a fun conversation today.
Ally Stone
Yeah, it was good. It was good. We didn't get into my traumas, but that's okay. Next time, if you want, we'll do another one.
Dawn Taylor
We'll do another one. You know what, though? I think it's at a time when people are struggling, when a time when business owners are struggling. I think this was the conversation that really needed to be had. Yeah. This is airing at a time of year where we're going into setting new goals for the new year and figuring out what we want to do next year and all of the excitement around that. And with that, I think you need to ask yourself some of these questions and if you want change, but also to give yourself the permission that maybe you don't actually need to or want to be an entrepreneur.
Ally Stone
Yeah, and that's okay.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, the day I'm done, I'm getting a job for sure. Yeah. I mean, for years I'm like, one day, one day I'm gonna wake up and just be like, I'm out, I'm going to get a job. Chad always laughs about it. He's like, no, you won't. You're still going to be working when you're 90. And like, yeah. Probably.
Ally Stone
Oh, it's amazing. It's a good journey.
Dawn Taylor
Part of the fun of it all. Ally, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being part of this conversation and for being a resource, being such an amazing leader and mentor and resource for women and business, people and business, and for what they're trying to do and where they're trying to go.
Ally Stone
Thanks, Dawn. I'm really grateful for the conversation. Today was awesome. Thank you.
Dawn Taylor
So for those of you listening, you can find Ally in our Show Notes. She's everywhere. She's an amazing conference coming up at the end of or in September, so we will have all of that in our show notes located at the TheTaylorWay.ca. So you can go check that out if you need any of her contact information. It's also going to be there and pretty, pretty. Please take a minute to actually ask yourself if what you're doing is what you should be doing right now in your life. Thank you, thank you, thank you again, Ally, for being here. And for those listening, check back in two weeks for another fun episode. Talk to you guys later.
56 - Kat Halushka - The Ugly About Immigration
Episode 57
Monday, October 21, 2024 • Duration 47:42
Why you would want to listen to this episode…
Kat Halushka lived the days of her youth in Russia yet eventually found her way to Canada. On paper, the concept of immigration is nothing out of the ordinary. However, immigrants like Kat encounter uphill battles in a new world that’s completely unique to them. In today's compelling episode, we have the privilege of hearing from Kat as she candidly recounts the challenges of assimilating into a vastly different culture. She eloquently expresses her deep appreciation for the heartfelt embrace and support extended to her by a warm and inclusive community.
Who is this for…
Whether you are an immigrant who’s assimilated into another culture or someone living in their home country looking to understand the immigration experience, there’s something to learn from and empathize with Kat’s story. We hope to spread the message that above all else, we should treat everyone with kindness regardless of their country of origin.
Guest Bio
Having grown up in Russia, Kat approaches business and life with a unique perspective from most people. After moving to Canada, she did what everyone else was doing and worked at a ‘solid’ 9-5 job doing tech support. One day, when she arrived at work, something came over her and she realized: I am wasting my life.
She knew she was meant for more than working at some company that didn’t appreciate her, especially since she felt like she was making no difference in the world. So she quit her job and took a stab at starting her own business and built a 6-figure marketing agency from the ground up in less than a year.
Eventually she sold that agency to step into her true passion – helping entrepreneurs start and grow a business that supports the lifestyle they desire. She can see people’s potential before they even believe they have any, and she uses that to help them create a high impact life and business.
In the last 3 years she has been on over 200 stages and generated over 1 million dollars of revenue through these stages.
Guest Links
Email -
48 - Dr. Jody Carrington - The Lonely Epidemic and The Search For Happiness
Episode 48
Monday, April 22, 2024 • Duration 49:57
Why you would want to listen to this episode…
Dr. Jody Carrington has seen the scene play out many times in her sit-downs with her clients. They all seek to be happy. After all, who wouldn’t want that for their own lives? However, many people interpret happiness as the only good emotion a person should ever experience. Dr. Jody and Dawn both believe that life is more than just happiness, and it’s the experience of other emotions that make our humanity whole. In today’s episode, they dissect what it truly means to be happy and what difference it has over being satisfied, fulfilled and complete.
Who is this for…
For anyone who has struggled to make sense of the complexity of human emotion, it can be difficult to juggle everything - good or bad. As these emotions pass through us, we’re sometimes left with more questions than answers. This episode of The Taylor Way Talks is for those of us who are after the recognition, regulation and control of our emotions as we make our way through life’s highs and lows.
Guest Bio
Dr. Jody Carrington is a renowned psychologist sought after for her expertise, energy and approach to helping people solve their most complex human-centred challenges. Jody focuses much of her work around reconnection – the key to healthy relationships and productive teams. As a bestselling author, speaker, and leader of Carrington & Company, Jody uses humour, and all she has learned in her twenty-year career as a psychologist to empower everyone she connects with. In her latest book, Feeling Seen, she dives into what it takes to reconnect a disconnected world. Jody’s message is as simple as it is complex: we are wired to do the hard things, but we were never meant to do any of this alone.
Everyone Comes From Somewhere Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/everyone-comes-from-somewhere/id1
47 - Jo Peters - When Is Enough Enough?
Episode 47
Monday, April 8, 2024 • Duration 56:21
Why you would want to listen to this episode…
Jo Peters is a woman who wears many hats. She is a coach, speaker, author and TV show host. But most importantly, she is proudly a woman. In all her years of existence and with all the years of experience she's had, she knows that societal expectations are through the roof for her and her fellow women. The game may be rigged but Jo is here to prove that women can make their own rules and forge their path to success. In this episode of The Taylor Way Talks, Dawn discusses with Jo the freedom one can achieve with knowing when enough is enough.
Who this for
In the hamster wheel of life that we're forced to run on endlessly, it can be hard to figure out when enough is enough, and in turn, when we've finally had enough. This could lead to burnout and affect our mental health, vigour and connections with people even without realizing it. Though this episode primarily focuses on the female perspective, people from all walks of life can learn something valuable from this episode. If you are someone who has always wanted to live life your way and free yourself from people's unrealistic expectations, then this episode is for you.
About Dawn Taylor
Dawn Taylor is the professional ass-kicker, hope giver, life strategist, trauma specialist, and all-around badass. Dawn's journey into helping others heal began when she took her personal recovery from the trauma she experienced in her life into her own hands. While at times unconventional, Dawn’s strategic methods have helped hundreds heal from traumas such as issues related to infidelity, overcoming addiction, working through PTSD from sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, as well as helping cult survivors thrive. Dawn’s work has empowered entrepreneurs, stay-at-home moms, and CEOs alike to be superheroes in their own lives. Having completed thousands of hours of training from many professional programs, including the Robbins Madanes Training Institute, Dawn’s blunt honesty will challenge your thinking, broaden your awareness, and help you achieve the outstanding results you are worthy of.
Dawn Taylor has kicked all sorts of ass in her lifetime. She’s beaten death, and helped clients all over the world make improvements in their lives in different, meaningful ways. However, this doesn’t mean she’s invincible. She still very much has her own fears, ones that she’s struggled with almost daily. On today’s episode, we are joined by Dawn’s right-hand woman, Jenny Ryce, as the two reminisce about their amazing vacation together. More than just a vacation though for this was where Dawn learned to face her fears and conquer them.
Who is this for…
Fear is a very human emotion. It can sometimes be there to protect us from harm. However, when left unchecked, fear can end up crippling us and keeping us away from things. With that in mind, this episode is for those who are looking for a nudge in the right direction when it comes to conquering their fears. It’s never too late to stand up to your fear and it’s never too early to take action so you can live the life you want.
About Dawn Taylor
Dawn Taylor is the professional ass-kicker, hope giver, life strategist, trauma specialist, and all-around badass. Dawn's journey into helping others heal began when she took her personal recovery from the trauma she experienced in her life into her own hands. While at times unconventional, Dawn’s strategic methods have helped hundreds heal from traumas such as issues related to infidelity, overcoming addiction, working through PTSD from sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, as well as helping cult survivors thrive. Dawn’s work has empowered entrepreneurs, stay-at-home moms, and CEOs alike to be superheroes in their own lives. Having completed thousands of hours of training from many professional programs, including the Robbins Madanes Training Institute, Dawn’s blunt honesty will challenge your thinking, broaden your awareness, and help you achieve the outstanding results you are worthy of.
45 - Andrew Hovelson - How We Are Screwing Up Our Kids
Episode 45
Monday, March 11, 2024 • Duration 01:00:58
Why you would want to listen to this episode…
As a father to three kids and a youth coach, Andrew Hovelson takes lifting up the next generation seriously. However, as he’s begun to notice in life, modern-day marvels like technology, social media and current-day philosophy and life lessons seem to be messing up our kids. In this episode, Andrew tells us how he believes we should support today’s youth and give them both the practical skills and the mental fortitude they need to push forward in life.
Who this is for
Imparting knowledge to young people and giving them the time and space to grow through their trials is no easy feat. As adults, some of us can be impatient and even be insensitive to what they’re going through. With that in mind, this episode is for those who wish to know more about how to navigate being more involved with the youth in their lives.
About Dawn Taylor
Dawn Taylor is the professional ass-kicker, hope giver, life strategist, trauma specialist, and all-around badass. Dawn's journey into helping others heal began when she took her personal recovery from the trauma she experienced in her life into her own hands. While at times unconventional, Dawn’s strategic methods have helped hundreds heal from traumas such as issues related to infidelity, overcoming addiction, working through PTSD from sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, as well as helping cult survivors thrive. Dawn’s work has empowered entrepreneurs, stay-at-home moms, and CEOs alike to be superheroes in their own lives. Having completed thousands of hours of training from many professional programs, including the Robbins Madanes Training Institute, Dawn’s blunt honesty will challenge your thinking, broaden your awareness, and help you achieve the outstanding results you are worthy of.
Dawn Taylor hosts renowned Canadian painter Giselle Denis on the podcast. They explore Giselle’s career as an artist and how her passion for art combined with hard work and will power gave her the necessary drive to succeed through years of struggle to gain recognition.
Giselle shares an analogy that has guided her life as she was able to realize success: the analogy of starting her journey as an aircraft carrier on the ocean carrying far too much and moving too slowly. She streamlined her life’s boat by removing distractions and things that weren’t serving her so she could move with more agility into artistic success.
Dawn and Giselle discuss why Giselle believes it’s of the utmost importance to be yourself in whatever you do and not strive to copy someone else’s success. Giselle explains some of her early art career struggles and why she doesn’t coach other artists. The episode is a unique portrait of the hard work behind a prominent artist.
About Giselle Denis:
I connect to people in a unique way through my Live Painting Experience. Art has always had a way of breaking down barriers. Time and again it has provided a place where strangers can find common ground and open the door to communicate with one another. I paint Hope. My message is Hope. My story is Hope and my vision is all about Hope.
I have a goal to raise $1 million for charity. My live painting for charities has raised over $765,000. One of my paintings sold for $50,000 for Little Warriors. I donate 100% of the money raised through my paintings.
I couldn't be happier doing what I love and sharing it with the world. Thank you for reading and for showing interest in my journey.
For our episode today, we will be talking to Tess Jewell-Larsen. Tess is a woman who was raised with the philosophy of getting as many things done as quickly as possible and “sleeping when you’re dead”. While this is a mentality that would undoubtedly help with productivity, it can also lead to burnout. She shares with us how she ended up on the path to mindfulness and is here to spread the idea that rest does not make us weak, but it’s what we need to make ourselves even stronger.
Who this for
In our meeting-filled and workload-centered world, it can be hard to set aside time for ourselves. However, as this episode proves, we can all use some rest in our lives whether it’s ten minutes to destress or even a whole day of sleeping in. With that in mind, this episode is for those of us who deserve to unplug from the fast-paced hustle and bustle of life, which may very well be all of us.
About Dawn Taylor
Dawn Taylor is the professional ass-kicker, hope giver, life strategist, trauma specialist, and all-around badass. Dawn's journey into helping others heal began when she took her personal recovery from the trauma she experienced in her life into her own hands. While at times unconventional, Dawn’s strategic methods have helped hundreds heal from traumas such as issues related to infidelity, overcoming addiction, working through PTSD from sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, as well as helping cult survivors thrive. Dawn’s work has empowered entrepreneurs, stay-at-home moms, and CEOs alike to be superheroes in their own lives. Having completed thousands of hours of training from many professional programs, including the Robbins Madanes Training Institute, Dawn’s blunt honesty will challenge your thinking, broaden your awareness, and help you achieve the outstanding results you are worthy of.
42 - Paul Young - I Was A Piece of Garbage: Finding My Healing
Episode 42
Monday, January 29, 2024 • Duration 01:04:22
Why you would want to listen to this episode…
Today on Taylor Way Talks, we get to speak to Paul Young. While the world knows him as the author of the groundbreaking best-seller The Shack, today he gets to talk to us as an MK - missionary kid - born from having a third culture, as well as a man of God who tries his best to make sense of the world. Paul believes that the love of God can come even from one’s darkest moments and in the most thorough processes of deconstruction and today, he gamely shares his revelations with all of us.
Who this for
Paul by his own admission has lived an imperfect life. Yet, he’s persevered and risen above it thanks to the belief in a perfect God. For anyone who’s ever questioned their faith and the purpose of God in their lives, Paul’s story is an inspirational look and one that could help us to be more introspective. Furthermore, for anyone interested in what it’s like growing up as a missionary kid and being exposed to various cultures, this episode gives us a glimpse at that very unique life.
About Dawn Taylor
Dawn Taylor is the professional ass-kicker, hope giver, life strategist, trauma specialist, and all-around badass. Dawn's journey into helping others heal began when she took her personal recovery from the trauma she experienced in her life into her own hands. While at times unconventional, Dawn’s strategic methods have helped hundreds heal from traumas such as issues related to infidelity, overcoming addiction, working through PTSD from sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, as well as helping cult survivors thrive. Dawn’s work has empowered entrepreneurs, stay-at-home moms, and CEOs alike to be superheroes in their own lives. Having completed thousands of hours of training from many professional programs, including the Robbins Madanes Training Institute, Dawn’s blunt honesty will challenge your thinking, broaden your awareness, and help you achieve the outstanding results you are worthy of.
Our guest today, Doina Oncel, hasn't lived an easy life. Yet despite all the challenges she has faced from youth to adulthood, she has risen above it all to become a true inspiration. She shares the ups and downs that she’s experienced in life and how it’s helped her in the line of work she does. As she reveals her life story, we’re made aware that the concept of homelessness can affect just about anyone and that we should never stop being grateful for the blessings we receive. Most importantly, she and Dawn come from a place of compassion and encouragement, mutually agreeing that the hand we must always extend to the less fortunate is that of a helping hand.
Who this for
For many of us, homelessness can be a tricky topic to talk about. It can be hard to associate or empathize with the homeless especially if we come from a place of financial security. For anyone who’s always sought out a perspective from the other side and yet was always too afraid to ask, or for anyone who’s always wanted to help out the homeless yet doesn’t know where to start - this episode is for you.
About Dawn Taylor
Dawn Taylor is the professional ass-kicker, hope giver, life strategist, trauma specialist, and all-around badass. Dawn's journey into helping others heal began when she took her personal recovery from the trauma she experienced in her life into her own hands. While at times unconventional, Dawn’s strategic methods have helped hundreds heal from traumas such as issues related to infidelity, overcoming addiction, working through PTSD from sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, as well as helping cult survivors thrive. Dawn’s work has empowered entrepreneurs, stay-at-home moms, and CEOs alike to be superheroes in their own lives. Having completed thousands of hours of training from many professional programs, including the Robbins Madanes Training Institute, Dawn’s blunt honesty will challenge your thinking, broaden your awareness, and help you achieve the outstanding results you are worthy of.
Dawn Taylor is the professional ass-kicker, hope giver, life strategist, trauma specialist, and all-around badass. Dawn's journey into helping others heal began when she took her personal recovery from the trauma she experienced in her life into her own hands. While at times unconventional, Dawn’s strategic methods have helped hundreds heal from traumas such as issues related to infidelity, overcoming addiction, working through PTSD from sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, as well as helping cult survivors thrive. Dawn’s work has empowered entrepreneurs, stay-at-home moms, and CEOs alike to be superheroes in their own lives. Having completed thousands of hours of training from many professional programs, including the Robbins Madanes Training Institute, Dawn’s blunt honesty will challenge your thinking, broaden your awareness, and help you achieve the outstanding results you are worthy of.
Get to know Dawn on a deeper level through her book! Order Here
P.S. I Made It, is a powerful story that grabs you through its lack of pretension and honesty. Every page reveals another layer of curious wonder at both Dawn’s life and the power of hope that moves within each of us. Dawn’s hope is that you use this book as a resource to deal with your struggles. Share it with someone who needs it. We all want to feel like someone understands what it’s like to suffer through something and – come out the other side. She describes her life as “horrifically beautiful and beautifully horrific.
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This podcast (including any/all site pages, blog posts, blog comments, forums, videos, audio recordings, etc.) is not intended to replace the services of a physician, nor does it constitute a doctor-patient relationship. Information is provided for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. You should not use the information on this podcast for diagnosing or treating a medical or health condition. If you have or suspect you have an urgent medical problem, promptly contact your professional healthcare provider. Any application of the recommendations in this podcast/website is at the listener/reader's discretion. The views and opinions expressed are those of guests and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or policy of Dawn Taylor, The Taylor Way and or its Associates. The before mentioned are not liable for any direct or indirect claim or loss.
Dawn Taylor
I am your host ,Dawn Taylor. And today we are talking to Kat Halushka. Today's topic the other side of immigration. I was joking, I was going to name it from dictatorship to death threats. But that might be a bit dramatic, but not actually that dramatic. If you hear more of Kat's story. But before we get started, I want to tell you a little bit about Kat. Kat immigrated to Canada when she was 19, so she was still a child. And okay, okay, I know all you 19 year olds are actually adults, but you're not. She came from Russia and Belarus, comes with a totally different perspective than most people. When she first got here, she worked at 9 to 5. She ended up building an insane six figure marketing agency from the ground up in less than a year. Sold it, is now doing all kinds of entrepreneurial stuff. She's been on over 200 stages in the last three years, built crazy wealth doing that. She's a powerhouse, but she also has a really interesting story around immigration. And so let's dive into that. Welcome to the show, Kat.
Kat Halushka
Hello. Hello. Excited to be here.
Dawn Taylor
I am so excited you're here. So what is it you wish more people were talking about and discussing?
Kat Halushka
Uh, really that other side of immigration and what it looks like. What does it mean for a person to immigrate to a different country? I think not many people actually know what I call the dark and dirty truth about being the newcomer.
Dawn Taylor
100%. I mean, as a Canadian, we're just like, yay! Look at our beautiful country. Right, but I can't imagine. I can imagine being that person. So let's start at the beginning of your story. So you were born in Russia?
Kat Halushka
Yeah, I originally was born in Russia. Well, I mean, back then, USSR. Right. Very first time I was born originally it was. Back then it was USSR. And eventually it fell apart when I was a little teeny tiny baby, uh, and I spent kind of half of my life in Russia where I was born. And then eventually we moved closer to the family, which was in Belarus. So I kind of got to experience both worlds, because when it comes to Russia, it's very typical what you hear USSR it became pretty much Russia, right? Belarus split off into its own thing and eventually turned out into this, like, country that separated themselves from everybody else in the world. They were one of the first countries to get kicked out of Europe Union and, um, splitting off and closing its borders. So when the president came into power and he's still in power, like, gosh, I was 19, I'm like over 30 now, almost 40. Like, that's many years. You would think that should be illegal for a president to be in power for that long, right? They call him the, you know, one of the last dictators in the world because of the way that he ran the country. So needless to say, I'm surprised I'm here in Canada now. But we made it.
Dawn Taylor
So, for anybody listening, just go Google shit because we're not going to give you all the details. But a dictatorship is a government or social situation where one person makes all the rules, all the decisions, no input from anybody else. It's a complete and utter total power. So, what can you give us even some examples of what it was like being raised or what did that mean in a day to day life? Because again, you came to Canada where we have all of the freedom but have none. But we do like we actually have a lot of freedom here. And so what were some, like, some examples of what childhood was like for you?
Kat Halushka
Obviously as a child, I didn't really think about a lot of those things. Right. So when it came to being a kid, I just got to be a kid thankful to my parents, who, you know, took all the things onto themselves. Uh, I would say I had a pretty, pretty lucky childhood. But looking back on a lot of it even seeing my parents struggles right when it came to finances, when it came to living arrangements, when it came to find a place. But even some of the things when it came to when I was older is, uh, for example, my dad, he worked on those tankers that transport goods between countries. So he would be gone a lot. So usually it's like a US company or some other country's company that would hire him as an engineer or mechanic. Right. So when it comes to Belarus, one of the things that they decided to implement eventually is that banks are allowed to report anything in your account whenever the government wants it. So like there's doesn't need to be any cause,nothing. They just pretty much send you a balance and where the money is coming from. But also they decided to implement that if you work for a country other than Belarus, your taxes are over 50%.
Dawn Taylor
Oh wow.
Kat Halushka
So, imagine we're here in Canada now complaining about our, you know, like 25, 30%. But imagine of of every paycheck that you get, you have to give back like 55, 60% of the money.
Dawn Taylor
Wow.
Kat Halushka
So that's just one of the examples when it comes to things that were very difficult, because there wasn't enough jobs and there wasn't enough connections because my parents were newcomers to Belarus, so they didn't have the connections to get the jobs that they wanted. And now there are newcomers. Well, a few years ago, newcomers to Canada, even less connections and no English.
Dawn Taylor
That's crazy. So you're 19, your parents are like, oh, hey, by the way, we know you've lived this life for a really long time, and friends and family and language and your comforts. We're going to hop a plane and head to Canada.
Kat Halushka
It was actually even worse.
Dawn Taylor
Hey, how did that conversation go down? What did that look like? Was it safe to leave Belarus? Was that something where, like in a lot of countries, you're not allowed? That's an issue. Talk us through that.
Kat Halushka
I think I might have been like 11, 12 when my parents first talked to us about it. I have a brother. So us is me and my brother, and they set us down. We're just children, right? And they're like, how do you guys feel about potentially moving to like, Canada? And we were like, yeah, sure, whatever wasn't much of a conversation. And then what happened is at 19, I was finishing up my college and two months, I think it was about two months before my graduation. My mom came to us and said, oh, by the way, remember how we hired an agency to help us immigrate? It went through, paperwork is done. We booked the tickets and we just sold an apartment.
Dawn Taylor
So, no conversations for all of those years just because we're done.
Kat Halushka
Because an agency was doing the work. So it's like an agency for hire. So they have their own business doing that. And they tried. They must have tried at least once and it failed. So at that point, my parents had no hope that that's actually going to go through. And so they didn't feel like they actually need to have that conversation. But once it did, it was an immediate, we do it now or never.
Dawn Taylor
So, was it ever a safety issue with leaving, was that you had to sneak out of your house in the middle of the night sort of thing?
Kat Halushka
No, not really that sad. Again, like I said, I'm pretty lucky, child. I feel like my parents took a lot of burdens off of me and my brother, and so I feel like there might have been some things unsaid on why it was so urgent. It just was one of those things. We're done. Wrap up. Uh, you're going to receive your diploma when you're already in Canada. You're not going to attend your grad because we're flying in a week before that. And, um, you are allowed one bag each, so pack wisely.
Dawn Taylor
You're like, okay, thanks, mom and dad.
Kat Halushka
And then at the airport, because you have to claim this was probably my first time flying ever. Yeah, at the airport, because you have to claim what you have in the bags. One of the things that I brought was a really, really old book that I really liked, and it was a book about a child who, during the war, uh, the soldiers made fun of him because he didn't smile enough. And so they cut his face from year to year so it would heal in the smile. And it was just like, very traumatic book, but I just really enjoyed it. Yeah, I didn't realize that this book has historical value, and therefore I have to pay to move it to a different country. And so I literally had to give that book to someone in the airport, because we just didn't have the money to pay for it. And why would you pay it, to take a book?
Dawn Taylor
So, even just that statement, you have to like, tell them every single thing that's in your luggage. You have to pay to remove a book. I'm like, that's, yeah. No, the same as here. Why did your parents choose Canada out of everywhere in the world.
Kat Halushka
I asked myself that every year on our anniversary. But when it comes to between United States and Canada, Canada is much safer. Yeah, but also, originally, our paperwork actually was done to go to Toronto. And last minute, my mom decided that we're going to get an additional ticket to go from Toronto to Edmonton. Yeah, because I don't know who told her that, but she thought Edmonton was this small town with people who all know each other, and they leave their doors open and it's all friendly village.
Dawn Taylor
Yeah. Not quite, not quite.
Kat Halushka
Not quite. But perhaps at some point it was. Uh, and we just ended up coming to Edmonton instead of Toronto and kind of stuck around. Yeah.
Dawn Taylor
So, you land at the airport. Did you know---
Kat Halushka
Oh, hey, if you guys need all the trauma, even before I landed at the airport---
Dawn Taylor
If you can see Kat's face right now. She was, like, clutching her chest.
Kat Halushka
So first of all, we go through customs in Belarus and we're all crying. So it was me, my brother and my mom. My dad already made it to Canada because he was for work, flying around. We're all crying. We get on the plane, we're all crying. My brother takes some drugs because he gets really nauseous flying. So he's drowsy. Mom and I are crying. Ten hour flight. Were crying. 12 hour flight were crying. We pick up the luggage in Toronto. We're crying. They're taking photos of us for our temporary ID. We're crying. We cried the whole time, and we landed here. And finally, like, you know, you dry up a little, but now you're just exhausted because we didn't sleep. We ended up crying the whole time and we had someone pick us up. We hired a service to pick us up and take us to an apartment that we rented and all I remember I'm driving in the car and I'm looking out and I'm like, oh my God, why do they sell drugs in the stores in Canada's with big signs? Because English was so limited. I thought literally, people have stores where they sell drugs like illegal drugs or all of that.
Dawn Taylor
It's amazing that you're like, this is very interesting here.
Kat Halushka
I was like, where did they take us? There's nothing around from the airport except for the road. And then you see big glowing drugs, drug store signs. I mean.
Dawn Taylor
There's just drugs everywhere here. That's funny. What time of year did you move here?
Kat Halushka
Uh, actually, I landed in Canada on Canada Day.
Dawn Taylor
Okay, so at least you didn't land in, like, the depths of the hell of winter.
Kat Halushka
No, nothing like that. And I gotta say, one of the most asked questions that I got for the first few years when I still had very thick accent is, um, if it's much, much warmer here. But the truth is, it was never as cold in Belarus or Russia. Edmonton is way colder.
Dawn Taylor
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Kat Halushka
It's crazy.
Dawn Taylor
Weird stereotypical idea that we have of Russia. It's black cars, men in big fur hats, machine guns, and it's all. We've all watched a few too many movies. I think that's crazy. Okay, so you got to figure out adulthood in a place that don't have a natural, like, had you started in school, you would have had like a natural way to meet people, make friends, all of those things. But starting at 19.
Kat Haluhska
Still going through puberty you could say. And back home I just started getting live and friends and going out and you know like all those things and then landing here and realizing, man, I literally have nobody but my family. And I was so mad at my parents that I wouldn't even like I would, I would just take off and go walk the streets because I just didn't want to be in the same house.
Dawn Taylor
Uh, I can imagine. Okay, so for starters, I don't know 119 year old that wouldn't behave that way if they had to move to a new place, because that's just how we are at 19. But moving somewhere where nobody speaks the same language, nobody probably dresses the same, eats the same, looks the same, nothing, like there's no comfort in walking into a store and knowing you're going to find that comfort food or that comfort item.
Kat Halushka
Yeah and I gotta say, like Canada really, really worried me. Like I had so much anxiety just walking on the street because everybody would talk to you.
Dawn Taylor
Yeah. We're real friendly here.
Kat Halushka
Yeah. Very friendly. And like, everybody would try to pet the dog where that's a big no no. Like, you don't just pet strangers, dog. And everybody would ask, how are you? And you go to the store and the cashier asks you. And there I'm trying to answer in my broken English. And then realizing they don't really care and not understanding what is the expectation of that interaction, because that's not the interaction I'm familiar with. That's not how it goes.
Dawn Taylor
Okay, so I'm thinking back to all of the interactions I've had over. And let's be honest, we live in Edmonton, which is like a multicultural salad bowl. I don't think I've ever been to a place in my entire life that has so many cultures, so many languages spoken. It's a it's an interesting cultural experience here, which I love. Yeah. But that also creates its own set of problems. Right, like like you were saying, like that friendliness. It's that friendliness that makes us so Canadian and makes us so us and how many times have we been part of that? Whereas like, let's smother you with love because you've arrived in our country and smother you with attention for different things, not paying attention at all to like, are you comfortable with this and what are my intentions behind it? But like you said, the expectations behind the interaction. I feel like nobody ever talks about that, right? It's like, what are the expectations you have on this interaction with me? Because right now I'm just trying to figure out life.
Kat Halushka
Yeah, yeah. And trying to just do the basics like finding a bathroom or buying something at a store that's behind the counter that you have to ask for, but you don't know the word for it. My first experience going on a bus ride, which a lot of people don't think about, but buses don't work the same everywhere, where I came from, bus stops on every stop to pick people up and drop people off. And so, as I said, they're on the bus going downtown to pick up my paperwork as a permanent resident. I don't realize that the bus is not stopping at every stop, and I have to do something in order to make it stop.
Dawn Taylor
You pull the little cord.
Kat Halushka
Mhm. Yeah. Going to the depot and back was fun. But it was until I was like oh people are doing something around me. They're pressing buttons and pulling cords and all the kind of stuff and figuring out how do you actually know where's it going to stop when you pull it? Maybe it's a stop too early or too late.
Dawn Taylor
Just hope. Just hope and pray that it gets to your stop.
Kat Halushka
Yeah, it was interesting. It was very interesting. And I think that that was a big learning curve. Right? Uh, and besides that, just lack of exposure to cultures. So when I was growing up, the majority of the people came from countries surrounding me, which means I had a big gap when it comes to exposure to anybody was really different ethnicities or colors of skin. And so I had to be honest, I don't think I've seen a black person until I was 19. Like, it's that bad? Imagine you walk on the street and you get such a high exposure of all the different dresses and cultures and colors and all the different people and how they look. And I'm just in shock and I'm looking because I've never seen it. But people think I'm looking because I'm rude.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, yeah. You know, that might cause a problem or two.
Kat Halushka
Just a couple? Yeah, just a couple.
Dawn Taylor
So what was the what was the number one thing that you did? Or even, like the top few things that you did to finally find your place to feel comfortable, to to feel like you weren't lost in this big ocean of people anymore.
Kat Halushka
You know, I probably went the opposite direction from majority of people who immigrate to different country. Yeah. I mean, one of the hardest decisions in my life. And I decided that I'm actually going to cut myself off from my culture. So I stayed away from the Russian speaking community completely. So I had one friend in Edmonton, uh, that we just accidentally met, and that's the one friend who spoke Russian to me. And otherwise I would not go to any events, community centres or gatherings or any sorts that were speaking in the same language as I did.
Dawn Taylor
Your brother and parents?
Kat Halushka
I mean, they spoke Russian at home, but remember, I didn't want to be at home. I'm mad at them. And so I would always be out and I would really reinforce myself. Was the idea that there is no going back? There is no way for me to go back to my past life. There is no way for me to go back to speak in Russian all the time. That's just not going to happen. I'm not going to teach every Canadian how to do it right. There is no way for me to go back and change my education or friends or whatever. There's only forward. And so I have decided for myself that my way forward will be integrate myself into Canadian culture and English as much as I could. It wasn't easy. That's for sure. And you meet all kinds of people. I've been lucky enough to meet people who, at my first job at Tim Hortons, would sit down with me and make me read a newspaper until I pronounce things correctly. And then I've had people who would laugh at me and bring me, because it was funny to joke around how I pronounce things in their friend groups. So you kind of got both. You had people who took advantage or made you the laughingstock kind of thing, and you had people who really wanted to help. And like I said, I've been pretty lucky in my life. I feel like I've had a lot of different mentors and friends who really helped me through those difficult times of trying to learn and integrate. And let's be honest, I'm still weird. I'm always going to be weird, but now I know there's nothing wrong with that. So I'll find my people. Always do.
Dawn Taylor
You're awesome, I love that. Looking back. So it's one thing to do that at 19 and be like, I'm going to just cut all that off, walk away from it, and I'm going to figure this out because that's what I have to do. Looking back now, all these years later, would you make the same decision?
Kat Halushka
Yeah, for sure. Because looking at my life right now is I think actually, I don't know if my parents feel the same way, but I think I'm living out the exact legacy that I would want for myself. Yeah. Like I'm living. Living the the the dream that I want for myself. I work for myself. I have the freedom of time. I have the freedom of finances. I have deep connections and friends in my life. Those, you know, like those couple of people who you're going to be friends with forever. They're family now. Yeah, I have just about anything that I wanted. And so to me, that was a stepping stone to that, although it was hardship, it was still the one thing that drove me to work through all of those kinks in order to get to the exact life that I wanted.
Dawn Taylor
How did your parents, how did your parents deal with that? Because one of the things we had talked about prior to this was, you know, we always hear about the families that came to Canada or came to another country and immigrated because they just want a better life for their children.
Kat Halushka
Mhm. That definitely was my parents.
Dawn Taylor
Right. And that's what they wanted. And they they gave you the opportunity. I mean let's be honest. Every parent can give their opportunity, their child an opportunity to do amazing. You did the work. So congratulations right. Like you stepped up. You did the work. You fought for a ticket where you are, right? But what did that journey look like for your parents?
Kat Halushka
And I think that's one of the dark sides that people don't talk about, is when my parents have made a decision for us to move as a family, they had only one thing in mind, and that's a better life for their kids, for me and my brother. Like it's it's a better life. It's more opportunity. It's easier life than what they had. Right? It's it's more love and freedom and all the things that we want. Um, and I don't think that through that whole journey, once they thought about how hard it's going to be for them, because me at 19, of course, I picked up English and all of those things, you know, it comes much easier. But also it's so much easier. Yeah,
Dawn Taylor
Yeah, you do your thing.
Kat Halushka
Yeah. And it's easier to make connections because it's just you're just enough and mature to do crazy stuff and be weird. Right. And find your kind of weird people.
Dawn Taylor
Totally.
Kat Halushka
But as you get older, and that's what I find for myself too. As I get older, it's harder and harder to create those deep connections because you already have a life that you've lived that's so full, and you have your ways and you're pretty set. And I swear it was. Every year I get more and more stubborn in my ways, and I don't know if that's just my family gene. Or maybe that's just people in general. But from my parents is I just feel grateful that they have each other, because often I feel like they never thought about just how alone they're going to be, how how hard it's going to be for them to find friends and deep connections and how their whole life from that point of coming to Canada on is just going to be our family and that's it. Yeah, they left all their deep connections and friends behind. And although of course you can catch up online, it's just not the same.
Dawn Taylor
It's not the same. And what about even for work? So, they come to this country with, like, my kids are going to have a better life. This is why we're doing this. There was obviously a probably a massive cost attached to them even coming. I mean, not even just the flights, like just the hiring, the agencies, the paperwork, the renting of the apartments, all these things. They arrive now, they're alone in this country. What are they even doing for work? And what did that look like?
Kat Halushka
Yeah. So luckily, through previous experience, my dad was the only one in the family who spoke English.
Dawn Taylor
Interesting. Because of his work he had done.
Kat Halushka
Yeah, yeah. So he had, uh, not a huge vocabulary, but enough to have a conversation and carry the the work that he was hired to do. So he actually ended up, uh, going and getting a project manager certification and going into that field. But before that, of course, we all worked at Tim Hortons, the gas station, the grocery store, you know, the very typical for his jobs, except usually kids work at an early age. That's where you start. But I mean, imagine being like a 45 year old and that's your, what feels like first job,
Dawn Taylor
Right? And you're and you would be you would be looked at as. The person who had no skills and no training and no anything, even though you would come from this very impressive career back home.
Kat Halushka
Yeah, we all put in our fair and share of working for minimum wage. For those of you from Alberta. Minimum wage used to be way lower than it is right now by about half.
Dawn Taylor
My first job when we moved to Alberta, we were just about 21. And I remember it was 5.25 an hour. So probably around like it was a few years earlier than you moved here. And yeah, those were the days. Let me tell you.
Kat Halushka
And I think I always had advantage over majority of the people around me. For me, I always had this. Ever since I was a child, I had this, um, really strong, weird sense of curiosity over everything and how things work. And so, like, even working for Tim Hortons, which was my first job, I went from the minimum wage to making 16 bucks an hour within like six months, which is unheard of. But because I wanted to learn every job, it wasn't just me following their structure. It was me like, okay, and now show me how to do the donuts and now show me how to do the sandwiches, and I'll show me how to manage the payroll. And now you're going to show me how to open and close the store, and now you're going to show me how to fix an oven, because they could never hire people fast enough to do that. And I would just learn every possible job within that place, which made me almost invaluable. Yeah.
Dawn Taylor
Which is wild. How did your parents deal with? Especially because, like, they had lived that culture for so much longer and the language and all of those things, how did they deal with it when you said, no, I'm walking away from all of this and I don't think I'm going to integrate.
Kat Halushka
I don't think they ever really knew, to be honest, because I very much disconnected from my family for the first year of being here, for the first year. I was still determined that I'm going to go work, save whatever paycheck I have leftover because I would put money in for the family, right? And then usually half, I would say for myself, and I'm going to go back.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, so that first year you were like, I'm out.
Kat Halushka
Yeah. I was like, I'm going back. I'm going to go visit my friends. And then I didn't really have a plan. What's after that? I just missed my friends so much and I missed home so much that I decided I'm going to go back. And so a year later, I booked the ticket for 30 days.
Dawn Taylor
Wow.
Kat Halushka
The one thing that, uh, I think I didn't expect. Because that's when the big shift happened of completely deciding to to shift my whole life out of the past and into what's happening now is I didn't realize that when I go back, I have opened my eyes and have had the taste of a different lifestyle and different culture and different surroundings. And so going back, some of the things that you could say, I was blinded to that now I could see is that some of my friends lived in a one bedroom apartment with their parents and grandparents, and the brother and the brother's wife and two kids.
Dawn Taylor
Oh my goodness.
Kat Halushka
And I just didn't see it before because it was normal. And when it's normal, it doesn't seem out of place or weird. Right? It just seems like that's just how you live. That's how everybody lives. Or going back and realizing that none of the people I went to college was actually went and used their diploma to do the work that they went to college for because they didn't have the connections. So most of them were cleaning toilets or doing some kind of paperwork somewhere, or they were doing tickets on the bus. Just random jobs. Or like even seeing how a teacher, uh, in school back there was making less than the person who was cleaning the toilets in that school. Like, that's just terrifying to think. And especially knowing how much influence my teachers had on me in school. Like, that's just terrible.
Dawn Taylor
So you went back, had your eyes crazy opened, positive and negative. How hard was it to come back to Edmonton?
Kat Halushka
Easy. Because now I was determined. I was like, man, I make so much money on my minimum wage here. It's insane. Yeah. Where? Like back home. The the paycheck feels different because of how much things cost. But even if you, if you say, like a loaf of bread would cost, say, like $2, but your paycheck is $150 a month. So it's quite difficult to even comprehend the idea of how my parents have survived through the years with two children. Like it's insane for me to think about it. So when I was coming back, all I could think about like, man, I got it easy. I'm in Canada now. I can get a loan, a mortgage, I can get a job where they pay me every two weeks. Like everything just felt like it's just easy. Like, from now on, it's just easy. Because looking at how all my friends lived, that's hard. They might have not felt that way. And I don't feel sorry for them because they love how they live. But for me, I couldn't go back to that. No.
Dawn Taylor
And I can see that where it's like, I might hate Edmonton, but I hate this more.
Kat Halushka
Yeah. Yeah, I truly came back loving the opportunity that my parents have sacrificed for to create for me. And that's when I started healing my relationship with my parents, because I realized that they didn't do it to harm me. They did it to create with me and for me.
Dawn Taylor
Which is amazing. I love that you had the opportunity to heal that.
Kat Halushka
It's been a journey.
Dawn Taylor
I bet it has. We all have parents. We all know the journey.
Kat Halushka
I still have you know like in my garage, this one corner that I just save up all the things that are breakable to go and take to the rage room. So when I'm still mad at things, I can just go and smash them.
Dawn Taylor
You can go and rage. That's awesome. So for your parents, you get to start fresh. You're 19 or now 20. You've been working. You're doing stuff. I mean, you go on to build crazy businesses and do amazing things How does your parents do?
Kat Halushka
Yeah. I think my parents, um, are very interesting couple in general because I look at their relationship, we often model our relationships after our parents. Right. So even looking at theirs, my dad is very much standard corporate job consistency, stability. He's our anchor. He always has been our foundation, our anchor. He's grounding us. He's incredible at it. My mom is opposite. She's like, how do I find the shortest path from A to B in the best way possible? That creates the most for everybody around. And so she's been from jobs to she started a business. So she actually has a cultural store in Calgary now uh, that she's running and she's constantly her mind is going on what else she can create. So I love that about her is she's very creative and she's very driven. So perhaps that's where I got it from, too.
Dawn Taylor
I was gonna say, give the credit where it's due. Yeah, maybe a little bit. Not too much. We don't want to cause more trauma for you, but yes, maybe a little bit of that.
Kat Halushka
And so her drive has been a huge inspiration for me as well in life a lot of the times, because as I go through hard times, she's been always the person to shift my perspective on what's happening and shifted into, I know it sounds cheesy, but anything is possible and I can do and be whatever I want. And I grew up in that. I grew up in that container of I can create the change in the shift within me or within the world around me in order to make things happen. And again, I just feel so freaking lucky and skillful and just full from an ability to always figure it out. Like there not has not been a moment in my life in many years now where I felt like I can't figure it out.
Dawn Taylor
That's beautiful. That is something I think more people need to have access to. Is that part of it? And it's amazing. I've always said that I'm like, no, I can figure it out. Bring it on, bring it on. Right. Like I'll figure it out. There's always a way, there's always a way. I'll figure it out. Like I say that all the time. And I love that I've met someone else who has that in them. Because it's not a common trait these days. The beautiful gift your parents gave you, even if it came wrapped in a shit ton of tears and flights and trauma and everything else. The wrapping paper may have sucked, but the gift itself was really beautiful.
Kat Halushka
Yeah, it's actually the conversation I had with someone yesterday about change. So I think that's one of the superpowers that is underrated. That people should embrace more. And I think me being able to not just create change for others, but create change for myself and enjoy it, truly find joy in it. It came from originally that trauma that I got from moving to Canada that I got to heal throughout the years. So that's the thing is, I find that we live through life and I mean, we all have some kind of trauma, not just one multiples, right? And once we start working on healing, and that's how it was for me once I start working on healing it, that's one of the things that I noticed is when I'm doing the work. And once the healing has happened for me, it always turns into a superpower. It's freaking crazy.
Dawn Taylor
Oh. Doesn't it?
Kat Halushka
Uh, it's just insane. So, like, embracing my weirdness, finding joy and change, creating shifts. And at any time that I want or need, like, all of those are superpowers that came originally from something that I thought was so traumatic and at that age, dramatic. That was the end of the world, right? And so the joy in life is truly found within the healing process and the healing journey and all the things that come after. Or that's what I believe.
Dawn Taylor
I 100% agree. You know, I was thinking to as you were talking, we are so quick to hold on to an identity. And for anyone who's going to get mad at me because this isn't politically correct. Deal. Send an email to hello@thetaylorway.ca. But we grab on to an identity, right? And I was thinking about when you said that you had to like, shut off all the Russian peace, the Belarus piece, that part of you to fully integrate into where you are. We do that all the time. We buy into an identity of what our role is and our marriage. We buy into an identity of who we are as a parent. We buy into an identity of who we are. Looks health, culture, jobs, titles. And it was that shift. It was that shift in releasing the identity, because at the end of the day, you are still who you are genetically like, who you are, and your brain, your heart, your soul, like, that is still you. You had to release. You had to release an identity around that. To be able to accept a new one. You had to release an identity around that to be able to create something new. And it didn't mean it was dead and gone, right? But you had to push yourself out of that comfort zone. You had to push yourself out of that, that area you've always known. Right? It's the concept of like, if you're the smartest person in the room, get in a bigger room. Change rooms. And that, that discomfort, I think is so huge. And we need to learn to feel good in the discomfort. Not even feel good in it but to like almost get excited about it. Like oh this is uncomfortable okay. What would this mean for me? What could this mean for me?
Kat Halushka
Mhm. That's one of the things that as a child, a lot of us play and put on different masks and personalities and you try different things, right? And then some of you like and some you don't, some you keep and some you don't like. I think about some mannerism when I was a child. I still have it, probably forever will have because I like it. I liked it about me, so I kept it and I forever will keep it right? And so last year, part of my healing process is that was the year of one phrase for me, and that one phrase was, it's okay to change your mind. Isn't it powerful? Especially as a woman. It's okay to change your mind. You can be someone different. You can do something different. You can go somewhere different. That's okay to change your mind. And so I just came back from Mexico, which originally was supposed to be a speaking arrangement that someone invited me to do in San Diego. And I was asking my guides and I was like, should I book it? I'm just not sure. Like the timing, whatever, all the things. And I kept getting, yes. And then I go online and I look up the tickets and the website crashes and I'm like, okay, refresh. And as I refresh, promo code comes up for a trip to Mexico. And I'm like, that's not what I was looking for. But I'm like, huh? Did you mean I should book the flight or I should book the trip? I was like, book the flight. And I was like, Mexico, it is. So it's okay to change your mind. I got way more enjoyment out of that than going to San Diego to speak.
Dawn Taylor
You just made my day because it is so true. It is so true. You are a beautiful soul. I hope you know that. You really are. If you were to give any advice. Two parts, one for people coming to Canada or an immigrant here, or someone who's just moved here that is like, wow, what do I do? What is a piece of advice you'd give them and a piece of advice you'd give for a super overly friendly Canadians welcoming in all of these immigrants, right? I have no idea what to do.
Kat Halushka
I'm going to start from Canadians because they are overly friendly, and there's nothing wrong with that And just be forgiving and patient because when it comes to new language, new places, new cultures, new introductions, right? It takes a little bit to learn. And a lot of the times it doesn't even mean you got to explain something, but it's just a matter of giving a person an extra half a minute to figure out what they're trying to say.
Dawn Taylor
Totally.
Kat Halushka
Right. It takes some time. So, a little more patience and grace to those around. Doesn't matter if they're immigrants or they live here. Some of us just need time.
Dawn Taylor
I was going to say, I don't think it's just for the immigrant. We all sometimes just need an extra second.
Kat Halushka
Yeah. And then for people who either just immigrated or are looking to immigrate soon is tap into all the resources that are offered. That was such a huge game changer for me. Um, there were programs for new immigrants where they would walk you through some of those cultural differences, made a huge difference for me. Uh, one of the biggest life changing experiences that I got to go through was actually going to northwest to English classes. And it wasn't even because of English is because of the amount of different cultures in there. And just how patient the teachers are who are introducing you. Yeah, to all those cultures and little weird things about Canada and weird things about English, and how much of a community you get to build within that that you truly are going to need, especially if you're coming alone.
Dawn Taylor
I do love that about especially Edmonton, like we have so many resources here for people
Kat Halushka
And years down the road actually went back and volunteered for northwest as a teacher helper.
Dawn Taylor
Really?
Kat Halushka
Yeah, because I felt like it's such a tremendous opportunity to be in a place in my life to actually give back in that way and volunteering. Now, I want you to just imagine here for a second. You're in the classroom and you're in a classroom of the level one, which is the the really first level of English, which is people know maybe a word or two. Yeah, it was 20 people from eight different countries, and they're not allowed to use their own language. And you're teaching them English. Part of that is given back. But other part of it I truly got to play, because how else can you teach someone a word that truly means nothing to them, but to be a kid again and place your grades? Really, that that's what it's like. That's the classes you play in charades.
Dawn Taylor
So all the hand motions. Amazing. Kat, thank you, thank you, thank you for being here today. Thank you for sharing this. I feel like my interactions with people are definitely going to shift based on this. And yeah, we got to think about those parents sometimes. But also I can just visualize this beautiful 19 year old just angry and full of piss and vinegar and spitfire who's going to make a difference in this world? Kat is an international speaker. She's a marketing consultant. She's a business tool nerd and the founder of Profit Impact Academy. Go to the Show Notes located at TheTaylorWay.ca to find her information. Her contact information, all about her, how to follow her everywhere to hear her cool accent. Thank you to all the listeners who are here today. And yeah, subscribe now on Apple, Spotify or wherever you download and listen to your podcast and see you here in two weeks for another cool topic.
About Dawn Taylor
Dawn Taylor is the professional ass-kicker, hope giver, life strategist, trauma specialist, and all-around badass. Dawn's journey into helping others heal began when she took her personal recovery from the trauma she experienced in her life into her own hands. While at times unconventional, Dawn’s strategic methods have helped hundreds heal from traumas such as issues related to infidelity, overcoming addiction, working through PTSD from sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, as well as helping cult survivors thrive. Dawn’s work has empowered entrepreneurs, stay-at-home moms, and CEOs alike to be superheroes in their own lives. Having completed thousands of hours of training from many professional programs, including the Robbins Madanes Training Institute, Dawn’s blunt honesty will challenge your thinking, broaden your awareness, and help you achieve the outstanding results you are worthy of.
Connect with Dawn here at The Taylor Way: Consultation Call | Website | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn
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P.S. I Made It, is a powerful story that grabs you through its lack of pretension and honesty. Every page reveals another layer of curious wonder at both Dawn’s life and the power of hope that moves within each of us. Dawn’s hope is that you use this book as a resource to deal with your struggles. Share it with someone who needs it. We all want to feel like someone understands what it’s like to suffer through something and – come out the other side. She describes her life as “horrifically beautiful and beautifully horrific.
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Transcript
Dawn Taylor
I am your host, Dawn Taylor. And today I have the honor of talking to the amazing Doctor Jody Carrington. So what are we going to be talking about today? Happiness should not actually be the end goal in life. I know, I know, right? So let's all be offended by that. Before we get started, I just want to tell you a little bit about our guest so you guys can be as pumped as I am about this. Doctor Jody is a renowned psychologist. She does courses and written books, and she's a leader of Carrington and Company. She's funny as hell. She's sassy, she's unconventional and authentic and real and she's amazing. She's had a 20 year career as a psychologist, and she's all about, how do we connect? How do we connect to people, our culture, everything, anything and everything within that and that we're not meant to do this world alone. And so I personally saw her speak at an event a few weeks ago and may have kind of harassed her after I've been like, “I want you on my podcast and I want you to talk.” So here she is. She actually said yes. And welcome to the show, Doctor Jody Carrington.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Oh, Dawn Taylor, come on. I am so excited to be here. And I am, and I'm very ready to have a heart conversation that you're so good at around here. So let's do it.
Dawn Taylor
Thank you. So everything in life is these days. It feels like to me is totally guided towards like this toxic positivity self-help. And it's like, “Oh, I'm not fulfilled. Oh, I'm not happy. Oh I'm not whatever.” So let's get divorced one more time. Let's shift my career again. Let's change everything again. More plastic surgery, more, more everything. Right? Because we're so just determined that happy has to be the end goal. What are your thoughts on that?
Dr. Jody Carrington
Well, I mean, let's come out of the gate hot. Um, all right.
Dawn Taylor
We're going to start real quiet. We're going to start real gentle on this one
Dr. Jody Carrington
I love it, I love it. Listen, um, here's what I know to be true to the core of me that I have not met a human that does not have the capacity for good. And I think so many of us, I mean, I talk about this often, you know, I have assessed and I've treated over a thousand people in this country, and I've never not one time a bad human. I've met a lot of people that have lost access to the best parts of themselves. And how we lose access to the best parts of ourselves happens in places where, you know, unprocessed experiences or traumas or stories that live in our heads, that, you know, we haven't had the chance to work through or process or really question because they've stayed pretty stuck in, in the way of operating every day. And one of those things that I think stays pretty true to many of us in this country is the need to be or the expectation that we'll be happy. And, you know, as a child psychologist, I've often asked parents, you know, what is your one wish for your child? And many people will finish this sentence like this, “I just want my baby to be happy.” And I mean, I've said that too. As a mum. I have three kids, you know, our twins are 11 or well, this is 13 and like it is the most difficult job on the planet. I just, I worry much more about them than I worry about anything else in, you know, in my world. And I really just want them to be happy. And I think the elusiveness of happiness for all of us these days leaves us very concerned that we're not doing it right. The vast, the biggest feeling that so many of us feel these days is loneliness. And loneliness certainly is not synonymous with happy. Um, when we see an increase in anxiety and depression, particularly in our kids, we’re like, “Oh my goodness, they're not happy.” Here's my wish for every human being. Is that we have the capacity to feel all the emotions because happy and sad, depressed, guilt, shame, remorse, all of those things are just that. They're just emotions. And when you have the capacity to feel them all, the script to feel them all, you will be among the most healthiest in our planet.
Dawn Taylor
I love that you say that.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Yeah. The issue is you can't. We don't have a script for futility or loss or sadness. And when we really just focus on keeping everybody happy, particularly our kids, giving everybody a medal or letting people down softly or whatever the deal is, we lose the capacity for our ability to handle futility, which is part, you know, conflict is part of every healthy relationship. One of the greatest predictors of couples that make it and couples that don't in the marital space that Gottman have come up with this after 45 years of research. It comes down to this. It's not how much sex you have or, uh, how much you fight or you don't, or how much money you have. It comes down to one thing - your capacity to repair, your capacity to sit in with those emotions. Not if but when shit goes south and you can't teach your babies, uh, you can’t tell them how to do it, right. You got to show them. And so our ability to lean into those all of those emotions, not just, stay hellbent. Unhappy is so important. And so here's your full permission to do that.
Dawn Taylor
So I often use the metaphor of a rainbow, where it's like we're so focused on feeling like, I just want to feel passionate and excited and and success and all of these things all the time. And I'm like, yeah, but that's like having one color to a rainbow. It's beautiful because it has all of them. A piano is amazing because it has multiple scales and when played together and used together is when it creates the most beautiful music.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Mhm.
Dawn Taylor
And I think access to all of them and the ability on how to deal with them. And we've become so scared of our negative emotions, that we run from them. We run from them constantly medicate ourselves from them. We're so scared of them. I remember a client years ago, she's like, “Dawn, I can't sit in my heart, I can't, I can't.” And I said, “Okay, so I want you to do me a favor.” And she goes, “What?” And I said, “I want you to set a timer. And I want you to just feel it. The thing that you run from that makes you drink a bottle of wine. I said, I can sit on Zoom with you while you do it if you want, but I want you to just sit with it. Just sit with it and feel it.” And she's like, “what if it kills me?” And I was like, “here's the cool thing no emotion has ever killed a person.” That's right. Oh, and I said, but we also have to remember that no emotion is permanent. They're not permanent. And I said, “So just sit with it. Just sit with it and play with it like a train driving through it, going through the station.” And just like let your thoughts go where your thoughts go in your fields, go where your fields go and just see what happens and look at it with no judgment, just curiosity and just in awe of where it goes. And I said, and see what happens. I said, set a timer on it. Set a timer on it for like an hour. Just like I'm going to sit there for one hour. I said, you've watched a bad TV show for an hour before,
Dr. Jody Carrington
And I would say an hour's way too long. So here's the interesting thing is that very few of us have the capacity to be still for 20 seconds. What I think is really critical in this moment, right. Is that so many of us, we're the first generation of parents, we're the first generation of humans that have had this much access to data to noise. We never get a break. So, you know, I have to ask. I think we asked this question, you know, where do you charge your phone? And so many of us, you know, me included by our beds, which means that, you know, in the middle of the night, if you wake up, the capacity just to sort of replay the day or feel the emotions or figure out what you're going to do next is so easily thwarted by just scrolling Instagram even at 3:00 in the morning, and then in the morning when you sort of get up and you think about your day and it makes you feel like, oh, Christ, so you're gonna just check your emails or do the things that kind of interrupt that thought process. And what happens in this moment if we think about even just, you know, one generation ago, our bodies are not. Scripted for this quite yet. And so the necessity of introducing this concept of even just seconds in a day, right? Seconds in a day of dropping your shoulders of, you know, I for a very long time, I've talked a lot about, um, the concept of meditation. So eastern philosophical practices have long been the place that has, um, touted some of the healthiest practices on the planet that decade after decade, century after century, we always go back to. And it often comes back to the very basics, right? Which is that when your body is in a state of calm, you have access to the best parts of you. And when we are in our most dysregulated state, we lose access, not our ability. We lose access to the best parts of ourselves. So when we have so many opportunities to get away from, that will take it. Because the hardest thing we will ever do is sit in that stillness. So if we know that to be true. If we know that is the fact. If we know that even in this one generation, we're completely out of practice in that regard, our expectations of ourselves, just to be able to do this for five seconds. 20 seconds and, you know, I mean, after the talk that you were at. You know, I often have this conversation about all I want you to think about is putting the word “shoulders” on a sticky note, put it on your computer, on your bathroom mirror, um, because the body keeps the score. Bessel van der Kolk has written one of the finest books on trauma. It's called The Body Keeps the Score.
Dawn Taylor
Oh. It's amazing.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Yeah. And and it often talks about the importance, right, of how you can cognitively work through anything you want. That's irrelevant to me. Completely irrelevant. The definition of trauma, of course, as you know, is not what happens to you.It's what happens inside of me as a result of what happens to you. And so we can spend a lot of time on the logistics of what happened to you, which is always very important part of the story. But what matters most to me in this process is what happens to you when you think about these things, when you go still in your body, and can you get into the state of just dropping your shoulders? So when you see that cue, you know, shoulders, all I want you to do is you sort of suggested to your client is just notice, just notice what is in that moment. Because oftentimes there is no fix for it other than to reconnect the mind and the body. And so when you do those two things, um, you put your body back into the state of emotional calmness or emotional regulation that then opens up all the access to the best parts of us.
Dawn Taylor
I started a practice years ago. And side note with that client, she did that and she called me after laughing because she's like, it just kind of came and it went and the emotion went with it. She's like, that was really weird. And she started it as a regular practice to just like sit and sit with her feels to get comfortable with them. And I was like just kind of rumbling them, like, invite them in to hang out, like you're having a coffee date. So yes, I challenge people to try, but I started a practice years ago where I turned off all my notifications on my phone at all times, so it doesn't matter. Even if I glance at her, I look at it. I think the only one that still pops up is for garbage day, because I need that one, and it's once a week, but there's no notifications and I don't remember the last time my ringtone was
On. Idon't, and I offer my clients unlimited texting and emails and different things, and they know my hours that I take those and stuff, but I'm like, no, no, no, because I can then choose. When I look at it, I can choose when I go to it. And I would challenge anyone listening to do the same thing is even acknowledging those moments of when you walk into the grocery store and you're standing in the lineup, instead of picking up your phone to scroll. Just look around. Right. Look around and just. Just sit there. It's a safe way to just hang out with yourself. In a totally different way. But just like standing in a lineup at a grocery store.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Yeah, I know, and it is, you know, driving in silence is another one that is really scary for people sometimes. I saw this meme not very long ago or was like that, you know, we saw this guy at Starbucks the other day and he was like, no phone, no computer, no nothing. He was just sitting there drinking coffee like a creep. And I was like, right. So, like, we don't have a plan for that. And I think that, you know, again, I think it's just those little things that, you know, sometimes can feel really big to sort of engage in a meditative practice every single day, to be able to do those things. But I just want you to think about, you know, getting your body back into that state of emotional regulation that can just be so critical in this time of busyness and overwhelm.
Dawn Taylor
So can you define emotional regulation from your standpoint? Because everyone there's all these like verbiage in terms out there that a lot of people just don't understand. But
they go, aha, yeah. Aha, I know what that is. And they actually have no idea - to you what is emotional regulation?
Dr. Jody Carrington
How not to lose your friggin mind. How to stay calm in times of distress. So the greatest capacity for, I think, the most successful leaders among us, when we are pushed up against the wall as parents, is that we will all the time emotionally be feeling incompetent and overwhelmed. The ability to regulate emotion is something that is in our bones, because as human beings, we all start in exactly the same place. We hear the very first sound that any of us feel is the heartbeat of our moms. And I often say, whether she's alive or you have a relationship with her or not, your capacity for emotional regulation is in your bones. It's that capacity to slow down in that rhythmic exchange. Often what we do, with the crying baby. So it's a universal response to a crying infant when they're losing their mind. If you have never, regardless of age, race, religion, socioeconomic status, gender identity, if you come upon a crying infant on this globe, you are biologically wired. If you are regulated to pick up that baby and engage in a rhythmic exchange, even if you've never, ever had a baby, if I watch a grandpa or an old papa, you know who hasn't changed a bum in years? Or maybe never? Uh, you put a crying infant in their arms and very quickly there's a rhythmic exchange that happens often, huh? Uh, and that's in our bones. Because when we're most distressed, what we don't need is somebody to tell us what to do. We need somebody, the physical presence of another to show us. And we never, ever outgrow that. And the more disconnected we are. So we're the first generation of people that are so wildly disconnected.
Dawn Taylor
Horribly disconnected.
Dr. Jody Carrington
So the response then often is we're in a mental health crisis. And I actually don't think that's what's happening. I think we're in a loneliness epidemic because this is an appropriate response to being very disconnected from other people. And so the response then isn't, you know, we get very worried. Is it the government or what is the administration going to do or how are we going to superintendent, you know, the president of the organization? Uh, we're not going to live that long, um, to be able to see, um, the rest of us catch up because we're playing by a set of rules that was established for a world that no longer exists. And, we have changed so dramatically in this one generation, and technological advances aren't the problem, it’s how we use them. That is the issue because despite the fact that we're neurobiological wired for connection, the hardest thing we will ever do is look into the eyes of the people we love and we lead. And now we've been given so many exit ramps that we will take them, and we're losing skill in the ability to just be kind, to slow down long enough. And so we won't have the senior leadership positions held by the vast majority of leaders these days come with that set of rules in their bones. And it wasn't bad. It used to work. But the point is, now we are leading people who feel so empty and unseen that being able to initiate a relationship first approach of being kind and not tolerating bullshit in that order is sort of the new set of rules that we play by often around here. And, um, you know, when I wrote Feeling Seen, it was often about this conversation of, you know, rules still apply to everybody. If everybody gets a medal, it's a waste of time because we need a script for futility. But the issue is kindness, the capacity to engage in relationship first with your kids, your partner, particularly with the ones who don't seem to deserve it because the ones who need it the most are the hardest to give it to.
Dawn Taylor
Always. Always. It breaks my heart when and I have clients online. I have clients in person, probably like you do. It breaks my heart when someone contacts me in. The first question they ask is, are you willing to see me in person?
Dr. Jody Carrington
Mhm.
Dawn Taylor
Yes, yes. You can come to my office. They're like oh okay. And that it breaks my heart and it breaks my heart for a lot of industries and a lot of things. And I think that with the disconnect over these last two years, like working from home is amazing and yet it's created more disconnect. My husband and I were talking while we were driving yesterday. We drove two hours to hang out for three with his brother and wife and kids because we're like, no, no, no, we want to connect. I want to play with your toddler. I want to wrestle and tickle and hug and cuddle. And, you know, he made a comment. He's like, “I love that you didn't even go check your phone once or pick it up once.” And I said, “Well, no, because I don't want her to think that I live on my phone.”
Dr. Jody Carrington
Mhm.
Dawn Taylor
Right. I want her to know that Auntie Dawn is the one that'll go to her room and giggle and tickle and wrestle with her and throw her on the bed and laugh and hug her and play like that is what I desire her to know me as.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Right, right. Yeah, right.
Dawn Taylor
Not another parent watching TV or another parent on their phone or another parent. That's not a bad bash to anyone who is doing that. But there is a lack of presence. There is a total lack of presence happening. And yeah, what are some ways that you can see or just some easy, tangible things for people as saying that could be like,” Oh, there is one tiny shift I could do in work at home, with my kids, with my spouse. To engage in a different way.” Because often the loneliest people are the people that are the busiest and have a million friends and family members and people everywhere, and they still feel completely alone.
Dr. Jody Carrington
You know, it's interesting. It reminds me of this conversation we were having this past week around artificial intimacy, the new AI. And, um, you know, there's lots of conversation, a beautiful book that was initiated, you know, has initiated many of these conversations called Artificial Intimacy. And it's really this concept of, you know, we have a thousand friends on Facebook, but nobody to feed our dog. We have, you know, we chase a million likes in the run of a day. But like, you know, when I come home and I need to get my kid to hockey practice, it's like, who do I call? And I think that, um, I think what is so critically important is fostering those relationships in your community on purpose, and also the thing that makes it quite easy for me to remember this sometimes is that the bar is so low. So it's not just you and me, you know, feeling this, right? You give somebody a compliment in the line at the grocery store or at the hockey rink, or you buy somebody's coffee in the lineup behind you at Tim Hortons. Right? It is remarkable what will happen. And in order to do those things, you see sort of like this 007 trick, because in order to do those things, you have to be emotionally regulated. And so if we make it a goal on our part to be able to sort of build our own community up, to be able to be the one that, you know, gives out a compliment, even on our shittiest moments in the days that we feel like we don't, you can have an awful day for the vast majority of your day. Feel every bit of it, but your only job is to give two compliments a day. I know when you switch into that mode, you're pulling your prefrontal cortex on, and it is allowing then us to build the communities, to build the connections in a community and some of the healthiest among us, like if we look at the data, um, Susan Pinker's written a beautiful book. She's a Canadian psychologist, and she talks about how in the blue zone. So some of the most you know, the centurions, the ones who lived beyond 100 years in a healthy way. Um, the greatest predictor of longevity isn't necessarily. In fact, it's not how fat you are or how much you drink or, um, how much you smoke or don't smoke. The greatest predictor of longevity is social reciprocity in your community. So people in the blue zone, for example, uh, on the island of Corsica, off of Italy, they live close together. Uh, their access to steel, to their daily functioning, like going to the post office. They get bread, fresh bread every day. They go get their milk. And they have to not necessarily have a bunch of close friends, but they have the social reciprocity with people that's checking on them. Hey, I didn't see you come by for your milk today. Uh, how are things going? Or did you make it for coffee or did you do those things? And so those social engagements become some of the most important things. And now that we can do many of these things post-Covid, in particular from home ordering our groceries, you don't have to go to Costco because there's too many people, which means we don't take our kids on Costco trips, which is a rite of passage. You should have a meltdown in Costco with your toddler at least three times, you know? And like all of those things become really critical because you can't tell somebody how to navigate those experiences. You've got to show them. And I think that on purpose choice to be able to play cards with your neighbors on the weekends too. I was too tired to go to the movie, or we're too tired or whatever. Being able to sort of do some of those things, not all of them, but some of those things on purpose, will serve the next generation well, because the concern for me isn't necessarily us. It is so much about what the babies coming behind us are watching.
Dawn Taylor
I love that you said on purpose. Right and doing things on purpose. It's so hard to naturally, so I come from a background where and for anyone who's read my book or knows anything about my personal story, I was born to a mom who tried to miscarry me her entire pregnancy. So I struggle with bonding a connection. My entire life. It's just been this ongoing battle that I've had my entire life. And one of the things that I have done is I have an on purpose in my calendar of like, “No, no, no, I'm going to make time not just for a zoom date with someone, but I'm going to like, I will drive to your house.” I will, like, let's meet somewhere and do something that's spend time together on purpose. But I track it. I make sure in my calendar that there's so many connection points in a week where it's like, no, no, no, I need this. Like I need this, scheduling dates with my husband. I mean, we've been together 28 years. Do we still need to schedule dates? Probably not, but yeah, we do, because the disconnect can happen. And you know, we're walking into 20. Yeah. We're almost at 28 years together on in like two weeks. Which is incredible. And 24 married in May. And we just had a conversation about it where we're like, no, we need to like, schedule time together again because we're both passionate about what we do, and we both have careers and we both have lives, and we have totally different hobbies. And we now have like time blocked in our calendars. And he's like, I hate that it feels so awkward, like it's an appointment or a meeting. He's like, but we have reconnected more in the last two months of doing that than we have in probably the last year. Yeah, because it's intentional actions. Intentional behaviors. We're doing it on purpose, right?
Dr. Jody Carrington
Good for you. Yeah. That's amazing. I mean, I struggle with this all the time. And I think that, um, I think that's part of it, you know, is, is really that idea of we're also exhausted. So being able to schedule things on purpose, even a bit in and of itself feels like I can't even do that. Like I'm failing at that too. It's almost like another expectation that we also can't get right, you know, so I, you know, I think it is so critically important in this space to, to give ourselves some grace. I am amazed all the time at how much rest it takes to compensate for what our bodies are set to navigate this season. So, we have so much. Our kids have so much access to us now, which is, I mean, beautiful in so many ways. But it's also, I know when we have a phone, we have our Apple Watches on all those things. If I miss a phone call, I'm going to get buzzed on my wrist. Right. And our parents also never had this much access in previous generations. Right. And so in the run of a day, I can, you know, in an hour, I get a phone call from the school saying, you know, mom, I'm feeling anxious. I don't know what to do about these feelings, which I love. I created this monster. And then my dad, who's struggling with dementia, is like, hey, I just don't know how to get the curling on. Okay? So if we think about just one generation ago, we talk about this, you know, often when our parents would go to work, they would go to work. It would be very difficult to get a hold of them. If there was an emergency, for sure. There would be very many channels that you could do that. But at the end of the day, a 40 hour workweek made a lot of sense because things were done. Nobody could get you, your clients, your patients. Your customers couldn't get you once you entered the threshold of, you know, the sanctity of your home. And many of us now work from home, many of us, you know, check our email before we get up, even though we say we won't, we get something in the middle of the night and we're like, you know, we want to be really helpful because, you know, this is where our identities live as first responders or as clinicians or teachers. You know, we fall in love with the people that we, you know, serve in this regard, because we're worried about their safety and their physical well-being and their emotional well-being and all those things. And so there is a cost to that, that we haven't quite negotiated yet, because when we still consider it necessary to be at work on Monday morning at 8:00 and to work until 5:00, um, we have not taken into consideration then that, that we actually don't get to then seeing into our families or go to hockey practice or go home and make dinner because we're doing all the same things, um, way into the evening. And then in an effort to regulate our systems, we feel like we've earned the right then to, like, watch Dateline for two hours before bed
Dawn Taylor
And we're like socially acceptable thing these days.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Which I mean, again, makes complete sense to me if you understand the inundation of our system. So it's not the problem of, um, I think that sort of the development of technology, it really is what we do with it that becomes really critically important. When we have many exit ramps, we'll just take them.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, we absolutely will. We sat down. About a year ago, we sat down and my husband and I both have very busy careers and we work a lot and there's an intensity to it. But he is so phenomenal at shutting off when he shuts off at the end of the day. Like his phone's done, his work is done, and he's good to go until the morning. And he hobbies like he's got hobbies, he's got his things. And we had a conversation. And one of the things he said to me, and this is something that I am constantly looking at within myself, is like, what are the expectations I've set for myself? Because those came from a standard that I set based on a situation. Right? And often he's like, I look at them and I'm like, okay, what are the expectations that I am putting on myself right now, or that I'm allowing society to put on me right now that no longer match my capacity? That no longer match where I am in life, right? And one of those was like, make a home cooked meal every day. Right like that was one of mine. But again, being raised by German farmers and my parents like that was what you did. It didn't matter. What was the expectation? Yeah. Pancakes. It didn't matter. You still made a home cooked meal every single day. Like we laugh about it as adults now, my siblings and I were like, there was always like a plate of cut up cucumbers and a plate of cut up tomatoes to make sure you had your veggies. And like, all of like the carb, the starch, the meat, right. Or the veggies. And we were laughing about it. And I sat down and I looked at him and I was like, I don't want to do that anymore. I don't have the capacity. And what it's doing is it's making me not enjoy it. And I'm not happy about cooking anymore. And I love cooking. But because it's like this rushed expectation, it's no longer enjoyable. And he's like, so don't cook. And now he laughs to me. And my inner circle knows, like I make one meal every Sunday and then I make another one on Friday to last for Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And then I make another one on Sunday. But I am now at a point where, like, I've done this for over a year now, I cook two times a week. And I'll eat that same meal for lunch and dinner and just add, like, a new hot sauce to it, or shift something about how I eat it. But it's this beautiful gift I've given myself to be off a little bit. And I think it's even just those simple things. So simple things, at the end of the day where, like one of my team members, she refuses to put emails on her phone. She refuses. She's like, nope, nobody can email my cell phone. I don't ever want to look at it. Yeah, she's like, so if I'm not at my computer, I cannot check an email.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Yeah, brilliant. And it's really and it's like, it's so many of those things that we've never even thought about doing.Because like, oh my God, can we do that? Is that allowed? that allowed? That's awesome.
Dawn Taylor
Right. And it's laying out those expectations, this thing with those expectations for ourselves, but also the people around us to be like, no, I'm not available at two in the morning.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Yes, yes, yes.
Dawn Taylor
I'm not going to answer my phone call at 10:00 at night. I'm not going to respond to a text. Sometimes people laugh at me. They're like, is your ringtone ever on? I'm like, very seldom. If I'm like in a shopping mall, separated from people I'm with, and I know we're going to call when we're done. Yes, I'll turn it on. But other than that, it lives off all the time because otherwise it was that constant, just constant ding ding ding ding ding, right?
Dr. Jody Carrington
Yeah, 100%. And I think that like, I think I think so much of it is, you know, we can always sort of not, not make the excuse. But I think for many of us there is that real expectation that, you know, we do have to be available for our children or our aging parents or, you know, we're on call because of our job. And I think that, like, accessibility is also not always a bad thing. I think it's a little bit about, you know, do we have the counterbalance to be able to do that on purpose? Because I think if you shut off all of your things and you spend the vast majority of your time wondering, are you missing something? Um, it's also not a benefit. And so I think the idea is also with respect to whatever works for you, doing that on purpose, because I think, again, it's that that concept of, you know, even this week, charge your phone outside of your bed one night, one night outside of your bedroom, one night, if you know, if it's like, no, I'm on call for the volunteer fire department or, you know, I'm my kids got the car and I don't want to okay. Like if it's going to be more difficult to not do those things, then don’t.
Dawn Taylor
100%.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Right. And I think that it's these easy little things that - not easy. I shouldn't say - um, tiny little switches to our, you know, 30seconds of dropping your shoulders, breathing deep, letting your gut out, wiggling your toes, doing those things that sort of get our body back in alignment, you know, which is really, I think, where the self-care rhetoric came from, their very prescriptive way of, you know, move, um, you got to work out, you got to do yoga, you got to drink your kale. And part of the deal is that if you do all of that with your shoulders up, it's of no benefit. And so the purpose of sort of moving our bodies, um, whether it's, you know, you're training for an ultra or you're, you know, going for A1K walk outside. When you do those things on purpose. And so many of us exercise with the point of getting through it. Right. So we got to we got the show on, or we have the best playlist that can just make us like, totally zone out and like, oh shit, good. There we go. We got the five minutes. I think what's so critically important is how we do some of these things on purpose. And I'm not saying I mean, certainly this is, you know, my time to watch my show was on the treadmill or whatever the deal is. But like being very conscious of what is happening to your physical body, just even a little bit more than you did yesterday, um, can make all the difference.
Dawn Taylor
I love that you say that. It's because it is right. It's doing it because you love yourself, not because you hate yourself.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Yeah. Isn't that true? That's a great line.
Dawn Taylor
These things aren't supposed to be about punishment.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Yeah, yeah, but they have for so long, though, and I think that's the thing that we really need to just sort of acknowledge is that, like, it's okay if that's what you feel like in your bones, because for so many of us, me included, it still is that bias that is very deep, right? And I think that you can't address what you don't acknowledge. And so this I think, you know, this conversation around just do it this way or just do this more often is so hard for so many of us to consume because it is, again, this is what everybody seems to be doing. It's not what everybody is doing. Everybody does not do this perfectly. And, you know, I would even argue your husband struggles despite the fact that it is like, yep, I shut it off. Yeah, it's almost physically impossible to do that sometimes. Right. And so I think the expectation that people actually can do that and maybe there is an anomaly, maybe there are those things. But I think we have to be very conscious of the fact that it is difficult for everybody, and the vast majority of our consuming of what other people are doing is a highlight reel on social media, which makes it look as though you know, you're getting all your workouts in and you're drinking green in between them. And you know, nobody's also like and I had 17 Oreos as soon as I got off the treadmill, you know. Right. And you know what I mean. I think those are the things that and you know this. Right. Like I think particularly on our platform on my podcast, it's really this conversation around, you know, vulnerability begets vulnerability. And it's not about sort of, you know, Brené Brown has talked beautifully about vulnerability isn't like a vomiting of self-disclosure. It is really that there is this time in our lives where sometimes it feels like it's undoable. There's this time and there's sometimes, moment to moment that it feels like, you know, parenting is hard, marriage is hard. All these things. And I think the acknowledgement of that creating safe enough spaces to acknowledge that sometimes while we then also celebrate the wins, is such a balance that I think for the rest of our generation, we're going to have to work really hard at.
Dawn Taylor
I always laugh. If we did all of the things that they told us we needed to do to stay
healthy. Right? Like, if we all did all of the workouts every single day and we journaled and we meditated and often with friends. I'm like, cool. Who told you to do that? Yeah, it's always my
first question. And they're like, what do you mean? And I'm like, was it somebody with no kids is telling you to do all these things, and they don't have to deal with kids in the morning? Is it somebody who, maybe this is their full time job is all they do is self-help. Or they like, do self-care all day. Is it? Who is telling you that? Do they have your situation, your metrics, your body? Your stuff going on?
Dr. Jody Carrington
Yeah, right. 100% 100%.
Dawn Taylor
Right. And that's where it is. So like, we need to like settle into our bodies and to actually sit with them and be like, know what works for me? Yeah. Not for somebody else. For me, meditation in our normal way doesn't work, had a brain aneurysm at 17. My brain vibrates at three times the pace of an average brain. When I close my eyes, it doubles. Meditation is torture for me, right? It's like watching strobe lights and going to a rock concert all at the same time. But I love to sit and play Lego. And the action of doing that is very meditative to me, and it totally calms me. Right, but we're so busy attaching a judgment to everything. And this is a right versus a wrong, a good versus bad, instead of like, no, let's just get really curious. What do you need? And if you did it out of love. Like I said, I often tell people it's like, no, no, no, do this because you love yourself, not because you hate yourself.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Right? 100%. Yeah. Yeah, I love that.
Dawn Taylor
If you loved your body enough to eat healthy, what if you loved yourself enough to say no. What if you loved your life enough to make a change? Yeah. Instead of doing it with the intention of like, I hate this, so I have to fix this.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. I think it is. It is always this journey. And I think that's the point, right? Is that we don't arrive. We had this conversation, you know, and I often have this quote over my shoulder from Ramdas. Actually, often I do in this moment. Uh, a philosopher and a Yogi. And he just said, I mean, this is our job here. We're all just walking each other home, and it's probably the most profound sentence in the human language for me, because it really grounds me back into this place of, like, even after we do all the things, even when we fuck it up, even if we took wrong turns and felt as though we made bad decisions, which many of us or all of us will, we're just here, walking each other home. Nobody gets out of here alive. And in some moments, in fact, in the exact same moments, you can be a walker and a walkie in need of somebody walking you while you were doing that for somebody else. And some of our legacies, our most profound legacies, will be in the moments when we are walkers for other people. And so as parents or teachers or first responders or best friends moms, um, those are the things that I think we get most proudest of is when we are in a state of emotional regulation for another human being, and it often doesn't involve fixing it because we can't, you know, when somebody buries a child or tells you that they they have cancer or, you know, some of those big moments where kids are saying, like, you know, I'm scared to go home tonight or, you know, whatever the deal is, I think it's not about having the answer. It is about the physical presence of another human being doing that concept called walking. And, um, and I think that's my favorite thing about this season is that, um, the world is isn't just such need of you and of what you, um, can offer to the people in your community, your friends, your best friends, you know, all of you listening. This is the time in our respective lives that we can write our legacy so beautifully. And it really just so much involves showing up for ourselves and for each other.
Dawn Taylor
So our motto in our marriage is how can I love you even more right now? And I think that without boundaries it can be harmful, but with healthy boundaries in a marriage or a relationship at all. Right? Even with the people closest to me, it's often like, no, no, no, it's not. How do I love you? How can I love you even more right now? And sometimes that is buying them a coffee in a lineup. Sometimes it is just being there when they are having a bad day. Sometimes it is, you know, giving the support when they need it. Right?
Dr. Jody Carrington
Right.
Dawn Taylor
Yeah. Right. It is. It's the walking. You're just walking everyone home. Right. And. I don't know. It's a really powerful statement in our household. Yeah.
And our actions and our behaviors and all of those things.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Yeah. I love it.
Dawn Taylor
So going back to the beginning of happiness isn't the destination. Why do you think that our society is so stuck on this idea that we're supposed to just be happy all the time?
Dr. Jody Carrington
Um, I think that it is probably the most regulated state is, uh. It's predictable. We know what to expect from other people. Uh, they tend to be the most communicative in those states. And I think it's the desired outcome. I mean, it's what behaviorism is built on. I just want to get you back to this place of compliance. And, uh, I think that's why, I mean, again, it feels the best in our body from a neurophysiological perspective. And I don't think it's wrong to want. To get people there. In fact, it is what I would like most often. Um, for the people that I love but I think that's not necessarily synonymous with what is required for us to be the most well-rounded human beings. So I don't know that the desire to get back there will ever change. I think the permission to, you know, sort of feel all of the emotions, um, is the conversation that becomes most important.
Dawn Taylor
Is it that but also understanding that, so we were talking earlier about how like even in my hardest year of my entire life, there have been some doozies. I started tracking years ago what my mood was every day, and I was like overarching at the end of the day, what was my day? Was it like ten? This is the greatest day of my entire life. For one, I actually have a shovel and I'm digging the hole in the backyard. Right, like I'm out. Where am I sitting? And I marked every single day for 3 or 4 years and actually, I still have it. I marked what my number was at the end of the day. And it was like, no, no, no, not in the moment. Just as an overarching at the end of the day, maybe work went horrible, but personal was amazing. And then I was like, no, it was an all right day. And the fact that in the hardest year of my life, one of the hardest years, it ended at a 6.5 average over the course of a year. And I remember talking to a friend about it and I said, we there's this idea that we have to live like either were in like the zero to 3 or 4. Where it's like depressed, not functioning. Life is hard and horrible or we have to be in like the eight, nine, ten. Where it's amazing. And I said, sometimes life is really awesome between the like four and
seven. And that that's actually where we spend a lot of our lives. And it doesn't mean that we're sad or that we're depressed. We're actually just kind of calm. And that we're okay. We're actually kind of good.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Yeah. The negativity bias has long been a concept in the world of, you know, psychological understanding that really comes back to this concept that we will pay most attention to when things are not going well. And I think that, you know, it is this phenomenon that equally or easily takes over for all of us. And the concept then of being able to balance that to the best of your capacity, you know, a good friend of mine, and has written a book called um, Find the Joy. And it really is this, this idea that when you are, you can't hold to emotions, um, in your head at one time, one will always win. So you're going to mixed emotions, but one will always slightly overtake the other. And the idea is that when you are focused on all the things that are going wrong, what you will inevitably miss is all the things that are going well. Because you can't selectively numb. You can't just, you know, exercise excessively to get rid of the bad emotions. You will also then lose your capacity to hang on to the good. You can't drink effectively to just, you know, dampen the bad emotions. You will also dampen the joy. And so the concept of being able to, you know, even call into awareness and negativity bias becomes really important when we want to shift the narrative. And I think when we use words like always or every time or, um, I'm never lucky or I'm always in this bad place really lends itself to, you know, no room for another narrative. And so just really watching, I think the way we speak about our children and our use of technology, our concepts, you know, um, becomes really powerful in the way that we sort of see the world, um, because it can really dictate how we think it is.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, yes, 100,000%. Yes. I remember sitting, so I got diagnosed with this crazy rare thyroid disease about two years ago, and I sat in an IV chair five days a week, up to eight hours a day getting treatments. And it was brutal. And I remember a friend sitting there with me one day, and he was laughing at me because he's like, you still can crack a joke through the tears, through the pain, through whatever. And I said, you know what? This is a blip. This is one little blip in my life. But so much of it is good. Yes, this sucks. And I'm going to fully own the fact that this moment sucks and this moment is hard. But how amazing that I even have an opportunity to do this and that at some point, this moment too, will end. And I won't be sitting in this damn chair anymore.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Yeah.
Dawn Taylor
Right. And I don't know, I think I've always been not a glass half empty or glass half full, but cups are refillable. That's how they work.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Mhm. And I think this is so true. You know I hear parents say this often or you know when we're in this place like um, you know when our babies are little and you know, we're getting up 2 or 3 times in a night or, you know, at the beginning stages of any diagnosis or whatever those things are. I mean, I think that's the whole point. And you might have even said this earlier, is that, you know, the emotions are temporary, but it is so hard to believe that to be true when you're in the middle of it. And I think both of those things can hold space and reality. Right. Like I think I think it is supposed to feel overwhelming and exhausting. That's okay. Um, and it is also, uh, temporary.
Dawn Taylor
Yeah, I always laugh that my success rate to date, to overcome every hard thing that's come my way has been 100%.
Dr. Jody Carrington
You got it.
Dawn Taylor
To date every day I thought I wouldn't survive. Every moment I thought I wouldn't survive every trauma I went through. Right. Like success rate to date is 100%. So what makes me think that this is the one that'll take me out?
Dr. Jody Carrington
So far, so good. Yeah, you got it right.
Dawn Taylor
And that's that's always where I go to is I'm like, no logistics wise, the math says I'm going to survive this thing too.
Dr. Jody Carrington
Yeah, yeah, you got it right.
Dawn Taylor
But yes, people in my life laugh at that. Jody. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for being here today and hanging out with us. Is there anything else that you want to leave with our listeners? Any little last minute thing?
Dr. Jody Carrington
Oh my gosh I don't know I mean I, I just, thanks for, you know, thank you for having me. I appreciate your work. I think that, you know, oftentimes it is the necessity of just having places to land when you need to get regulated again. And, um, I mean, I would love your community to be a part of ours. And I think that access to resources and being able to understand that we're not doing this alone is probably one of the most important things these days. So, yeah. That's it.
Dawn Taylor
So for anybody listening, we are going to link everything Jody in our show notes located at the TaylorWay.ca, all the books that she recommended, all of the quotes that she recommended. There's a full script of this entire conversation there. If you need to read through it, highlight it, whatever you need to do with it, please check out TheTaylorWay.ca and join us again in two weeks for another really cool topic. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for hanging out with us today. And Jody, thank you. Doctor Jody Carrington. Thank you for the work that you do.
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Guest Bio
Jo is an experienced and passionate leader, speaker, coach, transformational trainer, mom, wife, and friend. Not to mention, a bestselling author of two books in seven countries. She enjoys helping women to discover how to have it all without doing it all, finding the best version of themselves and understanding that it’s never about the money, the food, the kids or the husband. Instead, it’s always about them and the inner work they need to do to be able to live the life of their dreams, the life they totally deserve to live. Jo has over 17 years of experience working with Fortune 100 companies like Goodyear & PepsiCo, and leading personal development companies like Mindvalley. She has coached and trained over 15,000 people on 4 continents and in more than 25 countries. Jo has spoken in multiple universities both in the US and internationally and is frequently a podcast guest where she shares her knowledge and experience in a broader way. She is also the host of a TV show, MOMFIT with Jo Peters, that reaches over 1 million views every week.
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TRANSCRIPT
Dawn Taylor
Hey, hey, hey, I'm your host, Dawn Taylor. Okay, one day, I'm just not even going to say that because. Hi. You know that obviously, if you're listening to my podcast. Anyways, today we are talking to Jo, the unicorn coach, and our topic is when is enough enough? And if that's right, we are probably potentially going to piss people off and we are okay with that because this is a topic that really needs to be discussed. Before we get started, let me tell you a little bit about this absolutely phenomenal human being. Jo is an experienced and passionate leader, speaker, coach, transformational trainer, mom, wife, friend, and probably way more. Not to mention, she's a best selling author of two books in seven countries. Guys, she's kind of a rock star. She's all about, like, inner work, figuring out what you need, following your dreams, helping people live and really figure out, like, that they deserve to live. She's over 17 years of experience working with fortune 100 companies like Goodyear, PepsiCo. So not just your everyday coach, not just your everyday person who hasn't lived the the life or walked the walk. She was also, she worked with a leading personal development company like called Mind Valley, which we've probably all heard of. She's coached and trained over 15,000 people, you guys, on four continents and in more than 25 countries. She's spoken in multiple universities, both in the US and internationally, and is frequently a podcast guest, where she gets to talk and hang out and share some of her knowledge. She also, because she's bored and has all the time on her hands, is the host of a TV show, Mom Fit with Jo Peters that reaches over a million views every single week. So, if you're not intimidated, I am. But this is who I managed to get as a guest on my show today. So here she goes. Welcome to the show, Jo.
Jo Peters
Thank you so much for having me. I am super excited to be here and talk about the things that nobody else talks about. And let's go to normalize that for ourselves and others.
Dawn Taylor
Right? So we had met, I mean, within the last week we talked. And for anyone listening, I interview everyone who goes on my podcast. We have like a 15 minute ahead of time to be like, what are we going to talk about? Is this the right fit? Is this a conversation that really needs to happen? And you and I both were like, oh my gosh, when is enough enough? As a society, but more importantly, from who we are as women. Right. Like, at what point is 0 do you not need the big huge job? At what point do you not need to have all these huge expectations? So let's dive into this. What is some of your background that got you to where you are and doing what you're doing?
Jo Peters
The background is that I was for a lot of time, almost a decade into that. I call it the hamster wheel, where I was all into hanging on into the society, keep asking for more, keep working more, keep reaching more and more, more, more is more. More is more. More is better. More is, um, what you want, and I start feeling that emptiness in my heart of, I had everything that society was telling me that I should have, like $4 million per year, uh, beautiful house, all that. And that was still pushing more and more and more. But I still was like, “Is this it? Like, is this really like what is going to happen in my life for the rest of my life?” And back then I was still working, um, for corporate America. And one of my mentors was at that moment, the president of Lilly in the United States asked me that question and said, “I want you to know, I want you to answer me this. And if you don't know, that's fine, but I want you to work on it. How much is enough?” He just talked about it in the financial part. But you were like, how much is enough money in your bank account for you to say, I'm good? And then I look at him and I smile and say, like, “Well, I don't know.” And he will, I will. That is the first answer that you need to ask, because if you ever wonder why me or Jeff Bezos or all these billionaire, multi-millionaires, you are like, why do they keep working? Why do they keep hustling? This is why. Because we never answered this question. And when you don't have clear what is enough and how much is enough, then it will you get in the hamster wheel of feeling that is never enough. You will always have another month. You will always have another year. And that is based on a society that is mainly designed from a patriarchal standpoint, from a male energy standpoint. I was today preparing for the show. I was listening to an audiobook. And they were saying how they are statistics on what males versus females do with power and well, and how males by their brain are designed to collect it, to accumulate it, to create generational wealth than for females is more about impact and creating community and supporting others and helping others. That is part of our DNA. And if we don't put that in the mix of really “What is enough for me?” Not in a silo, but as a whole human being as a whole female, as a whole multi passionate person that wants to be there for her kids and for her partner and for her friends and for her business or her company. Then that is when we as women, I think, get into the hamster wheel and go into burnout. And then I say, it's not possible having it all. I'm done. I'm quitting. I'm closing the company. I'm divorcing. Uh, whatever it is, that explosion of time that happened, when we get into the will of more and more and more, and we don't have that clarity of what I really want in life. And having that permission, you and me, we're talking about this to accept that it could be different than others, than what means enough for me is different than what means to you. And hey, we are going to support each other. We are going to love each other. We are going to cheer for each other. And the only thing that we're not going to do is just start comparing ourselves and doubting why what you want and what enough for you is different that what it is for me because we are freaking different people, right?
Dawn Taylor
So, diving into this. So, Barbie movie just came out a little while ago and there is so much controversy around it. Right? And at the same time, it’s America Ferrera who did that talk about, like who we have to be as women and what has to happen. And I was talking to a friend about it and I said, you know what? Say what you will about the movie, but that is how the majority of women think, and that is really the pressure that we have put on ourselves. Let's be perfectly honest here, and I don't care if anyone is upset about that. I believe we have put that on ourselves. We have 100% put that on ourselves, right? The majority of men are not expecting those things of us. Right. And I remember the day that my husband looked to me and I was all stressed out because I was overwhelmed. And, you know, he was finally home every night for dinner. So I had to make dinner every night. And I was like, working full time. And I'm trying to take care of the house. I'm trying to take care of everything. And we had been in a situation for years where he worked out of town, so he wasn't home every night. So, I deal with the car and I deal with the oil changes, and I deal with the garbage, and I deal with the laundry, and I deal with paying the bills, and I deal with everything because he's not home a lot. And all of a sudden that shifted. And now he's home every night for dinner. And I got really angry. And I walked upstairs one day and I looked at him and I was like, “Oh, what? Now you're going to ask what's for dinner?” And he was like, “No, no, I'm actually not.” And I was like, “You know, this isn't fair. I feel like this just isn't right. And I'm working more than you are. And now I have to make dinner every night.” And he's like, “Whoever said that that was an expectation of you.” I remember looking at him and being like you. And he went, no. He's like, you can actually never cook me a meal again for the rest of your life, and it wouldn't change my love for you. He's like, you have an expectation on yourself of what dinnertime needs to look like. You have an expectation on yourself about the fact you have to make a brand new, fresh meal every day. He's like, stop. He said. Because you're torturing yourself and then getting mad at me for it. And it was such an aha moment for me of like, oh, the stuff that I talk to clients about every day, right? You and I both do. But we do have these insane expectations. And am I saying that men don't ever put these on us? No, because they do. Right. But how many of them are actually just from us? But then tying that also into like, this hustle culture that we're in. Right. We're both in this coaching industry. And I was literally just at a networking event and they were talking about like seven steps to a seven figure business. And I looked at the guy next to me that has a product, product based business with multiple locations. And I looked at him and I said, what are the chances a single person in this room ever hit seven figures? And he started laughing and he goes. “Probably pretty low.”
Jo Peters
2% for females. For women in the United States, only 2% of business owners that are female reached seven figures.
Dawn Taylor
Right? And he started laughing. And he goes, what are you thinking? And I said, well, is it? It's interesting that it's like, oh, here's your seven steps and all the things you need to do to get there. And I said, but when I look around this room, I see moms, I see caregivers of elderly parents. I see single dads. I said, when do we give ourselves permission as a society to know that we don't actually have to hit seven figures to be considered a success? That we don't have to push, push, push, push, push that we can lower our goals. We can actually lower our goals to the point where we're sitting at a really stable, healthy level and just kind of go and we don't have to consistently be in this hustle and this drive. All the time. And he looked at me and he's like, hmm. He's like, “I'd love to see you get up and ask this room that.” And we just laughed about it, right? And the day continued and the speakers kept talking and I was thinking about it in regards to our talk today. Right. And this podcast episode. Because when is enough enough?
Jo Peters
And I think that I think that goes into what I'm seeing and what I believe goes in two main reasonings. The first one is, um, absolutely is imposed by us. And I think that goes into what I call hashtag the good girl syndrome. And that good girl syndrome is that brainwash that we had in watching when we were two years old where our toys were kitchens and what we saw with our mothers and our grandmothers. So that good girl, just complying, of being people pleasers, of believing that our worth is attached to our performance, to what we do. And then when we take that, that culturally for generations is being how women are created, and we mix it with the huge screw up that we have right now in the business world, in the leadership world, where all that system and structure that the world run right now on was designed two, three, 400 years ago by literally white males for white males, because 400 years ago there were not business owners like you and me, see, and I think that part of that is that we are still trying to play and win that game. That is a game that never was designed for us, that never was created for us. That doesn't take into consideration all the other variables that we as females had. So, I really think that we are set for failures in the beginning, because when is enough enough? We don't even start thinking about that in a holistic perspective of what my life as a woman is. My life as a woman is not just my career. It's not just my business. I remember, uh, a conversation that I had with a client that came in a coaching session, very dysregulated. And she was like, because we were talking about five-year, ten-year vision into planning. And she was like, well, I don't have five years. And then I was listening to this, uh, coach, very famous person saying that you should have a ten-year and make it happen in six months. And I'm like, okay.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, I heard the speaker talk about that today.
Jo Peters
And I would be like, mhm okay. Who else do you hear saying that? I want to ask you the same. And then she named like two more people or two more people and they were all males. And I say okay do you ever hear a woman, a woman and especially uh, maternal woman either taking care of their elderly parents or taking care of children, saying the same? And then she talked for like ten minutes and say no. So, like, do you know why? And then you're like, no. And I said, like, because those males that are saying that in stages and in courses and in groups, 99.9% of them had a wife or a mom or a maternal person that take care of everything else so they can get one focus. Just go and make it happen. 99.9% of us females don't have that privilege because we have homes, because we have parents, because we have children. So I think that is matter of us to start dropping that good girl syndrome and expectation and say, okay, first, it's going to be very clear how I want to live and why in the three main areas of my life, how I want my health and my wellness to be, how I want my relationships with my children, with my partner, with my in-laws, with my family be and then what is the level of finances that I want to have? The lifestyle that I want? For some of us, could be “I just want to be in the middle of the field raising chickens and goats. And that will make me the best, happiest person in the world.” For somebody else to be going and traveling for three months. We need to have clarity into who we are first and what makes us happy as a whole. And then from there, I start making those conceptions of “This is what enough is, this is what enough is, this is what enough is.” in those areas of our life. And then from there, I start working as an engineer backwards,
re-engineer backwards from what I want backwards into. Okay, so now what I have to do, do I really need to work 100 hours if this is what I want? Uh, probably not. So we don't need to get to that point of burnout where we just as women try to send everything to hell and burn the village with us.
Dawn Taylor
I was going to say, when women burn out, we're like, I'm going down in a flame of glory, and I'm going to burn everything in my path with me.
Jo Peters
Someone like that, like The Hunger Games, like if I, I if I burn, you burn with us.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, 100% like you're taking down the village. Yeah, totally. I love how you worded that right. I always called it like a build back schedule. So like I had a new I have a new client starting actually tomorrow. And her and I were talking about it and I said, “So what do you want to make in your business?” And she said, “What do you mean?” And I was like, “What's your number?” “Well, no, it's about helping people.” I'm like, “No. What's your number?” She was like, “What?” I was like, “You wouldn't be doing a business or running a company if you didn't want to actually make some cash. So maybe that's not your focus and that's not why you're doing what you're doing,” I said. “But you need something tangible and measurable to know that you're hitting your goals and you're actually succeeding at it.” And she said her number. And I said, “Okay, what are your rates?” And she told me and I was like, “Cool, you're never going to hit it.” I can tell you that right now. She was like. “What?” And this is just in our consultation. And I said, “You physically can't.” Like, do the math. One plus one has to equal two. Like, you can't. You won't hit it unless you're willing to work 18 hours a day, seven days a week, because the math doesn't work. So, what are your priorities? And one of the metaphors I have to use is like - so you have like an egg carton and you have enough spots for 12 eggs. Okay. What are your priorities? What is taking up? What amount of space? Is it travel? Is it time with friends and family? Is it working out two hours a day? Is it money? What is it? You have to figure that out. Right before you set your goals, before you do any of that stuff. And I know for me that was a big one, is my goals in 2024 are way less than they were in 2023. And when I told someone that they were like, what? That doesn't even make sense. Like, why would you want to decrease your income for the next year? And I said, “No, no, no, it's not about decreasing it. I figured out my level, my numbers off where I'm comfortable with, where I'm happy with, where I can live the lifestyle I want, where I can have the retirement I want. And I can still have time for my health and still have balance and still travel and still do all of these things.” So, why am I pushing so hard for more? Because I don't actually need it. Right.
Jo Peters
I think that is about what we were saying. And you know that because you know the number, because you are clear going back into you need to go into that feature and say, “okay, got to be clear into what enough is in my health, what enough is in my relationship, what enough is in my finances.” Because from there you come back and say, okay, so how much? What I need to do, what I need to adjust. The problem is society brainwash is giving us into that hamster wheel of oh, having more is going, is almost like I will be happy when I have money I will be happy when I be. This is the perfect sample. I will be happy when I'm a millionaire. Yeah, you can be a millionaire with $1 million or with $999 million. You are still a millionaire. So, when you're going to stop, are you going to stop at 1 million or you are going to go until 900? So, it's about that clarity. And I think that is also very important to know us and in our personalities. One of the things that I work a lot with is with archetypes and, and is so important that we honor that because the reality is depending on who we are, is going to work differently for all of us. One of my clients is super funny because she is an alchemist onto, like flow, and she was very frustrated last year with how that she was living on. Now, everybody else that was coaching her was like, well, fine. Uh, another house and get a commitment. And for a year, like the regular thing. And then she started working with me. And I was like, “What do you want?” And then she was like, “I would love to just jump from place to place.” She's been for the last seven months and had houses for the next eight months ahead, to where she's completely living in the house that she wants. And the model that is working for her is she's housesitting for these amazing houses so she doesn't pay rent. She lived there for free. She lives in beautiful houses that are hers for month to month. Will that work for me? Will not work for me. Do that work for her and make her feel completely happy. Yes. So why? She will need to jump into the wheel and say no until it's not my house. And I put a down payment and I get a mortgage for 30 years, then it's not going to be really successful. Bullshit.
Dawn Taylor
Thank you. My husband and I had this conversation the other day and due to a bunch of circumstances, right, we're renting right now and we're not owning a house. And we were talking about it because we're like in about two years, like we've been talking about, like building a house and having an acreage. I'm having a property and all these things. We're planning this out now and we're dreaming about it. And I looked at him the other day and I was like, do we want that? And he started laughing and he's like, I don't even know if I do. Like he's like, so much of me desires that. And I want the privacy and I want this like I want all the things he's like, but I love the freedom that we could give 30 days notice tomorrow and move. Like, we could pack up our entire lives and leave, and he's like, we're not going to. We both have very solid careers here. We both love what we're doing. Like we have people, our life is here. He's like, but man, that freedom. He's like, I freaking love knowing we have it. And the amount of people that have judged us for not owning a house and made really snide remarks about it. And I'm like, but that's not my measure of success, is owning a house. And then when I tell people I'm like, actually, I've owned four properties, I've actually owned four. So I can already check that box. I've owned condos, houses, duplexes. Like I can check that box perfectly fine. And now I'm renting again. You know, I had a mentor years ago. I wasn't the right fit. He wasn't the right fit. I wasn't the right spot on my business, to be perfectly frank. Now, I could take the whole I would totally love to be his mentee, but he wasn't the right fit at the time. But one of the things that he said to me one day, because he was the guy, he was the guy with like multiple multi, multimillion million dollar companies flying in his private jet to his different plants and his different corporate headquarters all over the world. Like he was this crazy, amazing man. And I asked him I was like, “So when do you know you've made it?” And he said, “Let me give you the best advice I ever got.” And I said, “What's that?” And he goes, “Seven things. Find seven measures of success.” And he said, “And it doesn't matter what they are.” He's like, “One of my measures of success was the day that I could go home and have lunch with my wife if I felt like it. And I had that freedom. One of my measures of success was when I had the cash in my bank account to buy, like a Toyota Corolla car. Cash. He's like, not even a fancy one. Like I didn't want, like, a Lamborghini or a Ferrari like. But I could walk into a dealership. With cash and buy a car. One of them is when I could go to every single sporting event for my son. In a single month, and I wouldn't miss one of them if I chose to.” And he's like, “I'm not telling you the rest because some of them are very private.” he said. “But come up with your seven things. Your seven things that you've made it.” And you know what one of mine is? When I can turn off my alarm clock and sleep in if I want to. Right.
Jo Peters
When I go to, well, you were saying with your husband. And then, him, I will pay you $1,000 right now that if you reach out back to him. And that is probably one of the main differences between why so burning out for us females versus males? Because they have all those measures of success. And my dear sister, the last thing that they are thinking is how they can do all of that by themselves. Oh, they are always thinking. These are the measure of success. This is what is going to be here, okay. Who can help me with this and this and that? So, their brain works like that? Ours. Not so. We are like, these are all my measures of success and I'm going to do it all. So I'm going to still work full time in my business and then um, go to the do the game with my kid and then stay until midnight to catch up and then and then and then and then. And that is part of of that. Don't drop the ball.
Dawn Taylor
Men don't think that way. They're so quick to hire a staff. They're so quick to delegate something there, so quick to walk away. My male clients are the ones that are like, no, it's fine at 90% if someone else is doing it, because I don't feel like putting in the extra ten and figuring it out myself. They are so quick to do that and women are like, no, I can do it. I just have to add more hours. I just have to get up earlier. I have to stay up later. I have to just find the time. I remember the first time I hired a house cleaner. My husband and I were having this argument. So we've been together 28 years. And we were probably, oh gosh, probably about five years into marriage. And so I've been about eight, nine years into our relationship. And we both worked full time. We both had crazy hours. We had so much going on. And he looked at me and he goes, “Dawn, take care of the house. I need the house to be cleaner. I can't handle the chaos and the dirt in here, and I can handle doing it on my day off like I've one day off a week. I'm not cleaning. Figure it out. I need you to take this on.” And I was like, “Yeah, cool.” I hired a cleaner that day. He didn't know. He did not know. I hired a cleaner for almost 18 months because she came when he was at work. I've said nothing. You just went into the budget. We dealt with it. He was so happy. Our house was so clean. But then I was like, “No, you didn't say I had to deal with it. You said I had to take care of it.” And maybe that's like the post aneurysm masculine side of my brain that I love so much. I was like, “No, no, no, I'm not adding one more thing to my plate. But I sure as hell will hire someone else to do it.” Right. And all of a sudden I was away on a business trip and he ended up off for a rainy day. He didn't work that day. And he's wandering around the kitchen and the door opens and the cleaner arrives and he was like, “Um, hi, lady. Who are you?” She's this woman, like in her 50s, and she's like, “I'm your house cleaner.” And he was like, “Sorry. What?” She's like, “I've been cleaning your house every Monday or every Tuesday or whatever it was for like a year and a half. Like, I have a house key.” And it was like. Okay. And I'll never forget that phone call I got right. And he was so shook but laughing so hard. And he's like, “I love that you just didn't accept it and take that. Right. And I think we need more of that. We need more of that where it's like, wait a sec, I can't do everything. Maybe I need to hire a VA to help with something. Maybe I need to hire a cleaner. Maybe I need to hire an assistant. Maybe I need to look down, look at my expectations that I have of myself. I figure out, are they mine? Are they somebody else's? Are they a coach that I've hired? Are they a parent or are they like, whose are they, and am I okay with them?
Jo Peters
Like. I love that you put that example because I tell my my clients and my friends that like, I was talking with somebody in Puerto Rico in January and she was thinking about, again, very successful, her and her husband, working kids. And as we are being talking to the default everything. And she was talking about a housekeeper and I said like, “Hey, that is going to be the best decision of this year for you. And let me tell you something else. It's not going to only make the house better, it's going to literally improve your relationship with your husband. It's really going to improve your sexual life because it's one less stress for both of you. One last thing for you guys to argue, to fight, to discuss.” So, the best investment ever is that and I one of the things that that always because I'm up here perfectionism recovery that I see in a lot of women, including me, is part of that fear of
dropping the ball, of delegating is “They are not going to do it as good as I do it.” So, then I have to do it all. And for the female audience that are here, if you want to hear something, that you may be pissed, but it's okay. Like I like to hear, that is what we're doing here. A lot of people complain about not having health at home, with their partners, with their kids, because yeah, we can hire and there are people that are saying, I'm just starting my business. I cannot hire yet you still have people in your house that can help you. One of the reasons why they don't help is because. Whenever you ask somebody to do something for you, and after they do it, you go back and do it again. Or told them that was not the way, this is the way. That is when you are screwing things. My standard is 100%. What will be good enough? Thinking about grades. The best grades? Hundred percent with what grade I pass the course? Do I have 50, 70, 80? And then? Can I be okay with that? Can I be okay with that? Can I ask my husband, take care of the laundry? And even if he doesn't fold the sheets and the towels like I do. What is the end goal? Is the laundry clean? Okay, let it go. Like Frozen said, “Let it go.” So then you can take care of the things that really, like you were saying, are your priorities, your freedom, the things that make you fun, because we only have 24 hours a day, I truly believe we can have it all. What we need to stop thinking that we can do is we need to stop thinking that we can do it all. We cannot do it all. That is a recipe for burnout. That is the recipe for breaking marriages. That is the recipe for creation, for depression, for meltdowns. You cannot do it all. You are not supposed to do it at all. You were supposed to live in a community that help you. Let people help you.
Dawn Taylor
Well. And for the generations where like, we literally had a family cookbook growing up, you know, when they said, I don't know if they did this in Puerto Rico, but these who do these like fundraisers or things where it'd be like the family cookbook and everyone would pitch in their five favorite recipes and they'd make these cookbooks and sell them. It was like a thing in the 80s and 90s. So every church group had one, every sports team had one, every family had one. Like, I swear, when my mom passed away, we got rid of like 20 of them because we're like, we don't know these people, we never use these, right? But the one that was for my family literally said in it, your actions equal your worth. And we were raised, right, especially babies of the 80s and 90s, 70s. Whatever. We were raised with transactional love, where it was like, “I will love you if you perform.” That is when you'll get attention. That is when you'll get love. That is how this works. Here's the thing that is not how love works. So if that is a struggle that people have, that is something they need to heal. That is something that people need to heal desperately. And I was like, go to the show notes. You have both of our contact information. Pick one of us and heal that, right. Or find someone else. But I think that that's such a big piece of it. Is. But, if I can't do it all, then I'm not enough. Then I'm not accepted. Then I'm not loved. Then I'm a failure. Right, then I'm all of those things. And I was talking to a client this morning and she's like, she's a big challenge coming up for herself this fall. And she's like, “I'm just so terrified of failing.” And I said, “Okay, define failing.” She said, “What do you mean?” I was like, “What has to happen for you to fail?” She's like, “I don't even know.” And I said, okay, “So you do know that that is the same as me being angry every morning and being terrified or being angry every day because I didn't turn into a unicorn in my sleep.” Like I'm just so mad. Like it's that logical. I was like, you're terrified of something you don't even have a definition on that isn't even real. And she started to laugh about it. And we were having this conversation about it and I said, you know, I said, how many times in life do we not do something because we're scared to fail and we don't even know what it would mean to fail. Right. And so when we have like this transactional love that we were raised with. So now we have to provide we have to show up, we have to do all these things. I was at a the networking event I was at at lunch today. And this woman beside me, she's like, I'm so stressed out. When I asked how she was doing, she's like, I'll be honest, I'm totally stressing out today. And I was like, okay, what do you need to take off your list? Different. What do you mean? And I was like, well, stressed is just overwhelmed. So what is it you're overwhelmed with? Because overall means that we put too many things on our list, or we've allowed other people to put too many things in our list because we have unhealthy boundaries. So what are you taking off? Actually, she kind of looked at me and she was like, “Oh.” Now I was like, “So what specifically is making you feel stressed?” And she's like, “I don't even know what to make for dinner tonight.” She's like, “Dawn, it's 3:00 and I don't know what to make for dinner tonight.” And I said, “Is there a grocery store between here and home?” And she went, “Well, yeah.” And I was like, nobody ever died from having cereal for dinner. “Buy a jug of milk and a box of cereal, slap it on the table and say, enjoy dinner.” And she started laughing and she was like, “But I can't.” I was like, “Oh, you grew up in the 80s, you know that? We ate pancakes way too many times and macaroni and cheese way too many times, a pizza pop too many times. And I said, guess what? We all survived and we're all here.” I said, maybe you need to look at your expectation that you have on yourself the standard you've set for yourself when it comes to meals, and re-evaluate if that standard still lines up with the position you're at in your life.
Jo Peters
I love that because I love how we are getting back into the root. And that is the part of the difference between the hardware and software and that when enough is enough. What is enough? What is enough? Goes back into fixing that software. That mindset of understanding that we are worthy not because of our performance. We are worthy not because of what we do, not because what, how we act. We are worthy. When you start thinking the possibilities
Dawn Taylor
I saw something the other day, the scientists did this thing on it, and it was in the New York Times. And it was it's like less than 0.00001% chance that you're actually on this planet. It's mind blowing that we are even born.
Jo Peters
I like 64 million things need to happen for that specific spermatozoa to come into the egg to make you. So, when we start going from that perspective of, oh, separating our worth from what we do, separate our worth from our performance, then we start having that clarity to define those expectations, to define those healthy boundaries, to define who we want to be and to start defining, now that I know that I'm worthy and I'm enough, just because I'm breathing now is going to define what enough means on these areas in my health, in my relationships, in my finances. And then from that perspective of confidence, claim what we want, because that is the other part. From that, we were talking about the good girl syndrome and the people pleaser that affect everybody. But I truly believe that a lot more females, and that is that fear of speaking up, that fear of saying exactly what we want because that transactional love that you were saying and because we are, and this is something fascinating. When I was in Africa with the Hadza tribe that is one of the oldest of humanity. I saw this, our minds evolve a lot faster than our DNA, than our physiques and female versus male. If a male gets exposed and eliminated and everybody in the tribe took him away, the male will have a lot more chances to survive because the male, our ancestors’ males had that training and that happened to hunt and to hide. If a female does the same, a female will not last more than a week. So, that really is literally a real subconscious reptile brain survival fear of if I speak up, if I ask for what I want, if I get out of the norm, if I create my own path. The risk is they are going to exclude me. They are going to put me away. Our molecular DNA doesn't understand that now in 2024, even if everybody else is glued to you, you still are not going to die in a week. But your ancestors did and you are having that generational pressure. So it's a lot likely for us to speak slow and let it go. And don't make drama and don't speak what you think.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, don't be too much, don't be too much. Yeah.
Jo Peters
And it's not. Don't be too much. But it's still keep going, going, going in the wheel. So is all these controversies for us that is minor of us to say enough. It starts with enough. It's enough of me trying to play a game that was not designed for me, that I will never set to win. So how many times you will play a game, any game where since the beginning, it will say “Alert!” No matter how many times you play this game, you will literally never have the chance to win the game.
Dawn Taylor
You will lose every single time and go, yeah.
Jo Peters
You will be like, yeah, right. Let me pick another one of the million options that are here, because I'm not going to waste my energy here, but that is what we do every day. So instead of that is. Create a new option and start believing that you are worthy of living your life on your terms, on what makes you happy now? Not What society is doing now, what the influencers in social media are doing now, what Beyonce is doing now, but what makes you happy because your uniqueness will be fulfilled and be a full soul, sparkling light to your surroundings with something that is unique for you, and it's okay for us to honor that. It could be being a full time mom dedicated to kids and having 12 kids. Bless your heart if you are one of them, because with one I almost lost my mind. For other ones, it could be running a business. For other ones, it is about us accepting that we are unique. That is not a cookie-cutting that your path, is okay, that will make you happy. It's okay for you. That is nothing wrong with you because you don't want that, or because you didn't achieve that, or because you don't have this hunger for more.
Dawn Taylor
Right. Yeah. It's so funny, I. I know you and I got so passionate when we talked in our initial 15 about this topic, because we're both like people doing, and it was like I today this woman, um, she looked over and she's like, “Oh my gosh, your ring is amazing. I wish I had a ring just like that. Like, that's the most beautiful diamond ring I've ever seen.” And I said, “Oh, 24.99 on Amazon.” And she went. “What?” And the guy sitting between us starts laughing and he goes, “Are you serious?” And I said, “Yeah, I needed a ring door to networking events because guys are creepy sometimes. And she goes, you seriously bought that on Amazon? That looks so real. I was like, oh, I'll send you the link. You should get one too. And she couldn't stop laughing. And she's like, that is amazing. And I was like, I don't need a $25,000 diamond to make me feel worthy. Right. And so for anyone listening who's thinking like, okay, so I have unrealistic standards in my life, for standards I can't meet so constantly don't feel like I'm enough. Right? One of the things that I would look at is, as like a tangible of what to do is, when was the standard set? What was the situation that happened to cause you to create the standard in the first place? Was it how you were raised? Was it a trauma? Was it marriage? Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter what it is. But what was the situation that created the new standard? That then created all these expectations you've put on yourself and others. Now look at when it was set. Are you still in that position? So if you have a standard, for example, of like how clean your house has to be and your meals have to be, and how much you travel and what your body looks like, and all of these things. But it all was set when you were 19, were 20 and first living on your own, and you were single and ready to mingle and just dating. And it was all good. And now you're 35 and you have two kids or three kids and a dog and a husband, and you're volunteering for something and you have a job. Totally different recipe and you're expecting the exact same result.
Jo Peters
I think that part of that is, and that is another one of my hypotheses on what I work in this, I call it our
pregnancy syndrome, and that is because we give life, even if we choose to not be moms, our body is still with all the systems and all the memory to do it, and our body knows that you cannot go to labor at four months pregnant or five months pregnant, because the chances of your baby to die
are huge. That is why our body is trying to keep it as much as possible until 40 weeks. Because as more ready to completely done is as higher the chances to live. The problem with that is we take that to everything else. So we are like, this project needs to be completely perfect before I launch it. Everything has to be done. Choose this path at 19. It needs to be like that for the rest of my life. And then we need to, probably two of the biggest lessons there are. The first one is it's okay for you to change. I actually change and adjust my vision and my goals on a yearly basis. I don't change them completely, but every year I'm like, “Okay, is this still aligned with who I am? I grow a lot in this last year, what changed? What of these serve me? What of these is not serving me? What of some of these things that I thought that I want? Now I'm realizing that I don't want.” And then feel free to take it off. And and having that assurance that you don't need to make a plan and keep the same exact plan for 65 years. You make a plan. And one of my favorite quotes from military is “A plan is worth it and works until the war starts.” And that's it. Whatever you are deciding is going to work until you start facing things in life, and then you adjust, and then you face and then you adjust. It is a journey. It is a dance.
Dawn Taylor
It's always organic. It shifts and changes and grows and adjusts. And sometimes we don't. Right? Like we don't hit our goal that month. Well, okay. But that's because something major was happening in your life and you didn't have the capacity to put into your business that month. That's okay.
Jo Peters
And is part of that, of that flexibility of adjusting, because first you don't know what you don't know. Second, sometimes we think that we want something and when we get it and we are like, uh, or I will tell you the first time that I get, uh, for shoes, I was so excited. I was like, yes, it's going to be an upgrade. Italian handmade. Yeah. I wear the freaking shoes that were like, I don't know, $600. And I'm like, they're not that comfortable. It was okay. Instead of beating myself as an “Oh no, but you bought them. You need to wear them. But shame on you.” Or like, no, I learn. Now, I know that that brand is not good for my feet. It could be good for other feet, but not for me. It's okay. And then the other one that I think is important is it doesn't have to be perfect before you try, I always put this example on women applying for jobs. A woman will not apply for a job if
she doesn't have one qualification.
Dawn Taylor
I would have like 75. That is their dream list.
Jo Peters
A woman that is 99% good for a job will not go because it's not 100%. The statistics show that male in the same scenario apply. And as for the reason that job, if they meet only 50% and they're like. If I'm 50% enough, I will figure out the rest. And that is some of the attitude that we need to start thinking on defining what enough is. Oh, I have 50% of this figured out. Okay, that's good enough. Let's do it. Let's start seeing it. Let's start living it. And adjusted to have that clear path of feeling worthy and understanding what enough is for us.
Dawn Taylor
Totally. I often use the metaphor of like, you can't steer a parked car. Sometimes you just have to like, get it and start driving like, you got to start the damn car, get on the road and then figure out where you're going. But man, you can sit in that car all day and you're not going to get anywhere in your garage. Right. Just start. You have to build the momentum and just start. Because once you're going, then you see what else is out there and what's on the road. And you're like, oh my gosh, here's a shift, here's the pivot, here's something I want to do different. And here's something I love. Here's something I don't, right. But you can't just sit at home and dream.
Jo Peters
Or wait until you have the perfect path and the perfect GPS route to maximize everything, because you're saying, you are going to stay in your garage for the rest of your life with the car in park and not even turn off. But, uh, having that, um, curiosity and I will say, going back into what you were saying of our expectations and our, conditional, transactional love, knowing that it's okay to make mistakes, that it’s okay to try something that didn't work and say, you know what? It didn't work, and let's go figure it out. That doesn't make you unlovable. That doesn't make you not enough. That doesn't make you worthy, that makes you human.
Dawn Taylor
I was just going to say it makes you human. I'm laughing because our. When we started this call, I was at this thing and I was like, no, I have tons of time to get home and find the file and find all my stuff on my computer and the bio and everything I need to do, because there's like ten minutes of setup at least prior to recording a podcast. And I'm making tea. I'm like, good to go. And then I come running downstairs, I get caught in traffic like nothing worked out the way I needed it to. I come downstairs, my computer's dead. I have to, like, plug it in and get it charging. And I show up like three minutes late and I'm like, apologies. I'm not usually chaotic, but I am right in this moment. And now I need to find all these things. And we just laughed about it. Had this totally human moment. You're like, “Oh no, you're fine, take your time.” Right. I'm calling my assistant in the middle of it being like, “Where's this file?” And Jo and I were just laughing about it because we're like, we're just human. And it's a moment and it's fun and get it back together and right. And even in that, the overwhelming feeling was like, we both gave me grace. Neither of us were judging it. Neither of us were mad about it. There was nothing like, “Oh, I suck, and I failed, and I'm embarrassed and I can't believe I did this and I'm - why are we even recording this? And now it's going to be an extra four minutes.” It was funny. We laughed about it. We joked about the fact that Jenny's amazing and we need Jenny in our lives. My assistant. Seriously, she's like the wrangler of the shit show most days. But that was this beautiful conversation that happened. And as women, we could give ourselves and give each other that grace. Right. And I think that if more people in general adopted that, to be like, “Yeah, you know what? I'm three minutes late and I don't know where anything is that I am laughing at it.” Right. Oh, and there's so many of those lessons in life like, oh, no. my new CRM decided to email every single person in my entire email list saying that they were all accepted to be on my podcast this last week. Yep. It did. All 900 people got told that they were accepted, including strangers, including people where I had, like, donated money to a fundraiser and I had their email in my CRM like it was so hilariously bad, like brand new clients that hadn't even started yet. They're like, “What? I have to tell my story on your podcast? I haven't even heard of trauma work with you yet.” And while we were freaking out, I was laughing so hard and everyone in my world is like, how are you this calm about it? And I was like, Because as technology and it screwed up and we're just going to own it and laugh about it and just put it out there. And so we did. We sent her an email to everyone being like, hey, you probably got one, right? You probably got it being like, uh, technology, forgive me for this mistake. Like, just delete the previous email unless you want to be on it and then feel free to apply. Right. But all of those moments, all of those moments where we beat ourselves up, where we feel like we failed, where we feel like we suck. Are just these beautiful moments where it's like, “No, you know what? I'm killing it at 65%.” And that is such a beautiful number. Like killing it.
Jo Peters
Well, I will tell you back to the example of of the grades. Like, we all went to school, we all went to college. Tell me, how many people now are like, “um, tell me, what was your grades in high school? Tell me, how was your your grade on college? No, the only thing that they matter was do you pass or you didn't pass? And guess what? You have a title. So you pass.” And at this point is how much easier our life will be if we go into that part of it doesn't have to be 100%. If we pass, if we have to be 60%, 55%. I was hearing today somebody talking about politics and leaders from countries with only 52%, if they they get 52% of the population saying that is the way, they rule it. Good. And then we are here saying it has to be 100 and if not, the sky is falling apart. It's not. It's absolutely not.
Dawn Taylor
Oh my goodness, I am loving this conversation with you. If you were to empower people with one last thing on, enough is enough. What would it be?
Jo Peters
Embrace the things that you are not planning that happen. And knowing that the things that you don't have control over are not defining your worth. They are a mild step, mild rock towards the path and I promise you 100% of the are the ones that going backward are going to be the hugest. That's life. That's going to be able to help you to share, is the story that you're creating. So you can learn the lesson and say, hey, you know what? A year ago, I was in this show and my baby came and I had to breastfeed and almost didn't finish the show because he was interrupting us. How I react to it, how I process it is what is going to create the journey. So, uh, 65%. It's enough, right?
Dawn Taylor
Thank you. I want to challenge anybody and everyone listening to this today. What is one area, one area of your life that you could release, that you could release 35% in? And figure out what that new metric is. Figure out what that's going to look like for you, and how can you actually let that go knowing that it is more than enough. You still passed. You still get your gold star. You still get your sticker. You still get your points. Whatever it is, whatever it is, if you need a report card, I will send you a report card saying that you passed okay, that you have leveled up to the next level in your life. You have passed. But thank you, Jo. Thank you so much for hanging out with us today. Thank you for sharing your wisdom, your beauty, your knowledge, everything else. I hope that everybody starts following you and they reach out to you as well. People listening. Please, please, please, I hope that you take in every single word of this today and start to see in your own life where you are holding yourself back. Because enough is actually enough. Join us again in two weeks for another fun topic. Tell your friends. Share the podcast with people if you're willing. And if you want to know how to get Ahold of Jo the Unicorn Coach, check out the show notes located at the TheTaylorWay.ca for all of her contact information. Links to all of her fun stuff, everything else, and subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. See you guys in two weeks.
Get to know Dawn on a deeper level through her book! Order Here
P.S. I Made It, is a powerful story that grabs you through its lack of pretension and honesty. Every page reveals another layer of curious wonder at both Dawn’s life and the power of hope that moves within each of us. Dawn’s hope is that you use this book as a resource to deal with your struggles. Share it with someone who needs it. We all want to feel like someone understands what it’s like to suffer through something and – come out the other side. She describes her life as “horrifically beautiful and beautifully horrific.
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Transcript
Dawn Taylor
I'm your host, Dawn Taylor. And today we are talking to the amazing, fabulous, wonderful me. No, seriously though, we are talking to me today. Jenny is going to be taking over and putting me in the hot seat because something really, really massive has gone down in my personal world over the last few months that I have overcome. And if you've read my book, you may have read a line that said, "P.S. you might want to talk to a therapist about this." And yeah, some big things have gone down. And when Jenny and I were in a meeting one day, she's like, "You know what? We really need to share this with your podcast world." So, I hope you love this episode. I hope that you feel a little bit inspired from it. And yeah, we're going to let Jenny take over. For those of you who don't know, she is the CEO of the Taylor Way and more importantly, she's one of my really good friends. So take it away, Jenny.
Jenny Ryce
Hey everybody. Thanks for showing up. And Dawn, as always, for letting me steal your seat in the Taylor Way Talks podcast world.
Dawn Taylor
Oh. You're welcome. Maybe?
Jenny Ryce
I know you might regret it.
Dawn Taylor
I was like, Will I regret this decision? You just don't know.
Jenny Ryce
You just don't know where we might go down the rabbit hole.
Dawn Taylor
Pretty much.
Jenny Ryce
Thank you guys, everyone, for showing up and and taking the time to listen to us today. Dawn and I were talking about something that was really, um. really fascinating. We were digging into the topic of fears. Right? And how do we face our fears? Because regardless if they seem rational or not to other people, when when we are anchored in our own fears, there's no talking through it. There's no, you know, zero logic. And, uh, Dawn and I were blessed. She took me on a really fun, uh, retreat getaway for for, I think, what were we on 10 or 12 days or something?
Dawn Taylor
Oh, yeah. It was a full 12 days.
Jenny Ryce
Yeah. Fun. So we road tripped in Texas, and then we were really blessed to get on a cruise and go to some really beautiful places with palm trees and and ocean, right. When you're on a cruise ship, you're on the ocean. And we're going to dig into why that's important in a minute. But one thing I wanted to ask you, Dawn, before we got into it, I want to talk about fear itself, just so that the listeners and people that might be sharing this, this conversation with other people. I want to get clear on the definition of how you see fear, so that everybody's going to see it differently and understand it. So when we talk about facing fears, what does facing your fears mean to you?
Dawn Taylor
So, our bodies are wired for protection, right? So they will not let us totally feel unsafe. And I say this often in talks is like there's a reason why we can't hold our breath to die. It's
because your body will do anything to protect you and protection mechanisms. So, typically fears show up when something happens, right. So, for this conversation, when I was playing in the creek, in this creek and going over these waterfalls and a half empty air mattress when I was 12 and smashed my head at the bottom on the rock and went under and wasn't coming back out, and someone had to jump in and rescue me, right? Brought on this massive fear of water and having my face under the water. My husband playing a practical joke on me. We were dating in high school by filling the bottom of a backpack with snakes and asking me to grab a pen created this massive mess. That one's a big one. I'm still working on that one, but a massive fear of snakes for me. Right? Having a dog chase you or whatever. Right? Like fears come from a time in our life where something in us was really, really jarred. And then we attach a story of everything that will happen after it. Right? So it's like every time I go into the water, I'm going to feel like I'm drowning. This is now the new belief. This is the fear and the acronym "Future Events Appearing Real." Right, where it's like this is a fear of what could potentially happen. But my brain is convinced because it appears that it's actually real.
Jenny Ryce
Can you do that acronym again in case people didn't actually catch that? Can you just, like, I want that to be hammered in like hard.
Dawn Taylor
Future Events Appearing Real. So, not just like an idea that it might be real, like it's actually appearing, that it's real. You are fully believing that it's going to be real, even though it's a future event that hasn't even happened yet.
Jenny Ryce
Right, so future event we're in the we we you know we're going to dig in the past today because we're not doing it as we speak. But before we were going on this trip, you had expressed especially this fear around water. I mean, you tackled a bunch of fears. Let's be honest, on this trip that we were together.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, I totally did.
Jenny Ryce
I, you know, I mean, I would love to think it was all me and hanging out with me, but let's be real. That's not the truth. I might have been a really good wingman for this, but the bottom line is when you're tackling fears, a lot of it comes from your own internal strength and resilience. So when we were talking about going on this trip, I'd love for you to share. And if only share what you're comfortable with, some of the reservations you are having about maybe some of the the excursions that I was curious and excited to to try. And it opened up this dialogue. Would you mind sharing with our listeners what that was?
Dawn Taylor
Oh for sure. And, you know, I'll say anything. So, backtrack a little bit. The drowning thing when I was 12. So, I fully went in, I fully went under. And one of the hardest parts to admit about it was that I remember very distinctly not wanting to fight for myself. So, if you know anything about my past or if you've read my book, "P.S. I Made It." There is a chapter. There's fun. I mean, if you've read it, you understand that I had a really insane life, but I remember not wanting to fight for myself and thinking, this is my out. Like it's time I get to go now. And so that in and of itself was really, really hard. But it also attached that meaning to now, water, ever. And so from then on, I didn't plan leaks in the same way. I didn't plan rivers in the same way. I refused to go in the ocean. If I did go in the ocean, it was very, very shallow. I was not getting my face wet. I might be the only person I know that's done. Things like gone to Laguna Beach and never stepped foot in the water in two weeks, right? Just wouldn't do it. Put me in a pool, I'm fine. But even then I did like, lane swim with a paddle board so that I wouldn't have to put my face in the water. I've even gone as far as to like. I struggle in the shower, getting my face wet. And it makes me feel panicky immediately. So a couple years ago, and in order to see these, you're going to have to ask for them. But we will put some in the show notes on my website, TheTaylorWay.ca - few years ago, I did a photo shoot while trying to overcome my fear of water and forcing myself to sit in the fear of it. And Jenny, you've seen them there. They are jarring. They are jarring photos. So that's the one warning, if you go look at them. But. I wanted to see what that looked like for myself, and to also have them to share with someone else if they ever needed to see them. So I put myself in a bathtub and forced myself to go under the water and hold it past the point of comfort and allow myself to face that in and the biggest thing was allow myself to face it and acknowledge if that feeling of not wanting to come back up showed up. Right? Because I think that, no, it's not even a nice thing. I know that behind the scenes, that was the big piece of it was, would I still have that feel? Would I still, at this point in my life, having healed so much and gotten where I am and build who I am, would I still have that moment of my head under the water thinking I could just not come back up? And how would I deal with that? And it's no different. I've talked before my social media on here and stuff about how, you know, if I get really, really, really sick and all of a sudden I can't eat for a long time, this little like wiggle in the back of my brain is like, "but you could just stop eating?" Right. And I always tell clients it's like, it's not about if that voice is going to come up or not. That's not even part of being healed. It's what you do with it that matters. So I had done this and faced this so that I could now put my head underwater. I could actually do that. And in January, I went on a trip with my husband and my nephew, and I actually swam in the ocean for the very first time in my life, fully swam, put my head under the water, got smashed by waves, everything else. But, there were still more fears around it. So when you and I started talking about this trip, all of a sudden it's like, let's go on a tandem bike ride through the jungle, let's go snorkeling. Let's go hold sloths and animals. You were asking me to do all these crazy things, paddleboarding, right? All of these crazy things, and I panicked. I really, genuinely panicked, right? It was like, I can't do those things, right. It's so many biases, so many biases that I even had on myself. If, like, I can't ride a bike through the jungle because there's no way I could do that and that that wouldn't even be a thing. And I'm too fat and I have bad knees and I, like, right to the same with paddle boarding. But I mean, that had its own like attachment to the ocean, peace in the water and everything else to snorkeling, because that's literally like face under the water for a really long, extended period of time. And when you and I first started talking about it, I know I explained some of this to you and like my fears, but I'm also a big believer that your fear is a fear because you're refusing to face it. And as long as I don't face them, it gives them power. 1s And I don't want anybody or anything to have power over me. Right? So part of my working on my snake fear, I used to not even be able to see a photo of a snake at all and where I'd panic. And I've actually been watching Survivor because there's snakes shown slithering like nonstop through the entire episode, and I'm forcing myself to watch it and pause it and look at them and be okay with that and feel through those feelings in my body. But I also did things like went to Utah and hiked a trail that is known to have rattlesnakes, and they give you a big talk before you walk it for safety. And I not only walked it, but I did it twice. To face that fear, right? Was it easy? No. Was I like, the entire time? Yes, but. But it was still facing it. And I think that's why I said yes to all of the random things that you wanted to do on this trip that terrified me. Because the more of my fears that I face. The less external things have power over me and control over me.
Jenny Ryce
I love that because it's true? Right. It's hard work, but it's true. So you mentioned a few events that occurred on our vacation. So we want to bring some humor into this as well. So I think. I think we're going to go in chronological order, if that's okay with you.
Dawn Taylor
That's good.
Jenny Ryce
Um, and you brought up some really valid points, is so we're we we've booked this excursion and we booked it. So like, many entrepreneurs were super busy. We're multitasking, you know, we're doing the things we're trying to get ready. And we booked this one excursion.
Dawn Taylor
Okay, so for two non-drinkers, we joked our entire trip that we drunk booked our excursions. Okay. Like the things we booked that we never would have had we been thinking more clearly.
Jenny Ryce
Well, I'd say we wouldn't necessarily have booked them, but we may have put different ones or may, like - so this is the funny part you guys. We're, we're sitting down in bed, we're getting ready for excursion number one. It's like you know, we're going to wake up in the morning and we're heading out at like eight in the morning. When we get into dock, we're unloading and we're hitting the bus and we're doing the things. So I say to Dawn, can you read and tell us if is there anything we need to pack? Is there anything, is there change rooms because we're going to go. We're going on a trek through the jungle. And that was it. For those of you that don't know what that is, it's basically a natural hole in the ground where water comes in. And these are these beautiful oasis, the natural pool, basically surrounded by beautiful scenery, etc., etc. we're like sold. Didn't even read it. Just book it. Let's go. So, Dawn's reading out loud to me. 1s That she's like, um, we're going on a tandem bike through the jungle,
Dawn Taylor
So we have to ride. There's no bus.
Jenny Ryce
Okay, so for those of you, Dawn, you express this, which I, I really valued. What was your initial, I want you just to reiterate that your initial, because this wasn't we didn't decide determine this three weeks ago that we were going to ride this tandem bike.
Dawn Taylor
There is not a chance in hell that my fat ass, lumpy body is going to get on a tandem bike and be able to ride through the jungle with my bad knees. That was my very initial reaction, and I was like, you're going in the front because I'm going to be in the back of my feet sticking out, and I'm not even going to pedal, and I'm going to die of heat exhaustion in some damn jungle, bike seat up my ass. That was my initial reaction.
Jenny Ryce
But what I loved is when I said to you, so this is when, you know, we do some of that self-loathing, right? It's like, I'm not capable. I'm physically a certain way. I'm, you know, the all the things I'm like, do you feel strongly enough that we should change this? And you know what I loved? You're like, no. And I said, awesome. Because honestly, if we can bike there, we can walk there. Worst-case scenario is we will get off our damn bike and we will walk it into this location that we're going right. And I had my own fears creeping in. I was like, oh my gosh, when was the last time - I've never been on a tandem bike. I felt this kind of responsibility to make sure we got to a location and, you know, like, am I going to have the balance? I'm 53 years old. I want to do this, but random, you know, I knew I had the physicality to do it, but I was like, oh my gosh, am I going to get Dawn there? I took on this mantle. That was my job. to get you, like I got very dramatic. My crazy helmet on and so we roll up, you guys to this amazingly random location.
Dawn Taylor
Very authentically, stereotypically poor Mexico. We're going to just put it that way
Jenny Ryce
To the point where I said to the gentleman, is there a washroom I can use at there where we get our bikes and our helmets? He's like, actually, ma'am, I would wait until we get to the cenote. There's nicer outhouses there for you. I wouldn't use the one here. And I was like, okay, like I'm going to hold it.
Dawn Taylor
But oh my gosh, you guys just have this mental image. Okay. There's what, 16 of us? And in this little tour. We've ridden the bus forever to get out to this area. We're on this property. Beautiful flowers, altars, things, everywhere. It was stunning. And they give us our bikes and our bike helmets. Do we have bike helmets?
Jenny Ryce
We got helmets. Till on the ride home you didn't have yours on.
Dawn Taylor
Yeah, mine was not on. Right? I look like an absolute doofus. And it wasn't really on my head. Like, had we fallen, I would have actually just died. Um, because I haven't ridden a bike since I was 12, and I'm now almost 44 and we get on our tenant bike and we're like, just going to ride around a little like parking lot area. And it is like the most potholey parking lot you've ever seen in your entire life. Like it is worse than anything. Like that's probably like the worst ride of the entire thing was the parking lot of the road leading up to the jungle piece. And we get on this tandem bike, not realizing my handlebars. So I'm in the back, my handlebars are broken, and they're attached directly to Jenny's seat. So every time I move my handlebars, her entire seat turns with it. And it's natural that when you want to turn, you're trying to turn your handlebars. And we're on this tandem bike. We were laughing so freaking hard. Other people could hardly ride their bikes because they were laughing at our laughing at ourselves. So, we finally like trade in our bike, get a better one that's not broken, and then we start this ride. And if we didn't die laughing the entire time, it was the -
Jenny Ryce
I mean, I'm still laughing. My face still hurts. I still have the muscles from, you know, this was a few weeks ago and and what I love to is we're doing this pothole road and, you know, trying to stay on the bike and balance. And, you know, the best part is, is when we rolled up to this place, we made the commitment that we were going to just be present.
Dawn Taylor
100% all in.
Jenny Ryce
And then whatever happens from, you know, whether we get scrapes and bumps, whether we bail, whether we walk, whatever it is we're going to, we're going to take this on and we're and I'm, I'm pedaling. I'm like "Pothole!"
Dawn Taylor
It's like, it was like a comedy routine. That was absolutely hilarious.
Jenny Ryce
But of course, we didn't realize, again, we're talking third world country experience to a degree. Right? Our handlebars. So at this point this is the better bike and we're in the bike doing the things down the path. And we realize the handlebars actually aren't secure. The front steering,
Dawn Taylor
Oh no, they're not secure.
Jenny Ryce
Like pivoting back and forth. So, anyway, the cool part was, is not only do we survive it. When I looked at you and I said, "So who's leading the way home?" And you're like, "I'm in!"
Dawn Taylor
Oh, yeah, we fully did, we fully did.
Jenny Ryce
You're like, I'm driving on the way home and. I would love for you to share what it felt like to prove to yourself that when you trust yourself, go for it. What did it feel like?
Dawn Taylor
You know what I think more than anything, it's not giving a shit what anyone else thinks.
Right? It was a piece of, it was a split second decision of, what are the judgments of other people that are going to happen if I do this? If we fall, if we screw this up, if our bike breaks down and we're standing on the side of the road, whatever. Whatever it was. And the minute that came up, I was like, "Oh, hell no. I am not going to stop myself from living because of a judgment from somebody else."
Jenny Ryce
Amen.
Dawn Taylor
And that was the feeling that kind of went through that entire day, because from there we then went to the ocean. And this little area, and we're swimming and we're doing our thing, and I'm in the ocean and we just got run over by boats because we went outside of the area that we were supposed to be in, which was probably really dumb.
Jenny Ryce
Slight little rebels, just saying.
Dawn Taylor
Oh my gosh, they're like, stay within this cordoned area. We're like, I see a hole in the fence, let's swim underneath it. Like, literally we were like breaking out, like we were in jail. It was very funny. But again, when I wanted to paddleboard because this is a massive fear and a judgment I'd put on myself and all these things. And when even the instructors were like, "Hmm, yeah, no." And I was like, "Uh, yeah, actually I am. And watch me go." Right.
And throughout that entire day. And this was something that was really interesting, is from that excursion to another island that we went to, was it Honduras? In Roatan Island? We did this excursion where we drove like buggies that they called buggies. We drove buggies through the through the jungle again, horrible steering. The thing died every 30 seconds. We had to restart it like, it was an epic shit show. And covered in mud and you couldn't. I've never had mud on my body that you couldn't actually get off. And it dyed your skin. Oh yeah, it was wild. But like, we did that and then we went to, um, this nature preserve, and we held sloths and fed toucans, and I've got a very healthy fear of animals. So that was facing it, another fear. And we did that. And then we went to the ocean. And there were similar people. Some of the same people were on this tour as the previous one. And we saw some of the same people, and they started to comment on how what we were doing was inspiring them to do things.
Jenny Ryce
Mhm.
Dawn Taylor
And it was when we got to the ocean at that resort and the water was, the beach was beautiful, but the sand walking in was disgusting. It was like slimy mud that you had to walk through. But there were coral reefs, what, 100 feet out? Yeah. Or so. You had to get to this like slimy, sludgy -
Jenny Ryce
I had Dawn floating so I could push her along.
Dawn Taylor
Because I'm terrified of seaweed. Like petrified of seaweed. Did not face that fear at all. Okay, I didn't face that one.
Jenny Ryce
You did, because there was a place that you had to put your feet down.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, I did it. I was not happy, though. We did scream.
Jenny Ryce
People will come rescue you.
Dawn Taylor
Yes. And people just kind of figured out that I had to be pushed everywhere. So I am, like, very, very buoyant. And so I kind of stay, we're really high up on water and you could just, like, shove me like a beach ball.
Jenny Ryce
Dragged her around.
Dawn Taylor
You totally did. It was hilarious. You dragged me all over her. shoes on.
Jenny Ryce
So, let's be clear. I had water shoes on. She's on, and you did not. That is true. It was easier for me to step in the back.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, okay, guys, this dirt was so gross. Like, it was so disgusting that 99% of people did not ever set foot in that ocean. But we went out and there was this other, there was like a mother-daughter group. They were on the same cruise, and we had seen them around a few times, and they ended up joining us out there, and I decided to face my fear of snorkeling. And we got out there and anything, so because of some of my traumas in the past, anything that's constricting on my face or feels like it's holding me down or there's like any panic, if not breathing or like tightness around my neck had anything causes like sheer terror, panic in me. And so when we put the snorkel mask on because it was the full face one where you don't have to have like the separate piece in your mouth. I thought I was going to die.
Jenny Ryce
Mhm.
Dawn Taylor
And I don't even know how to describe the terror. That is probably the only word for it that went through my body in that moment. And I put it on, and I think I yanked it off right away and was like, okay, we're doing this. But here's where I want to challenge people. Yes, it was terrifying, but it did not kill me.
Jenny Ryce
Mhm.
Dawn Taylor
It did not kill me. And I say this all the time. I have statistically to date overcome every single hard thing that I've been faced with. Every single day that I thought I would not make it through a day. Every single hard thing that I thought was going to kill me, every single thing that I was like, nope, I'm not strong enough to do. This girl is still here. Which means I have actually overcome all of those things. And so that is this belief that constantly runs in the back of my head is this the thing that's going to take out my average? Because right now I have a 100% success rate. Is this the thing that will actually wreck my average? And if so, what makes this one so much bigger than the other ones, right? And I refused to have floated that far out through that nasty ass dirt. It was a very entertaining day, to not suck it up and try it. Right? And to not face that terror. And I'm talking like debilitating, body freezing, heart racing. If a medical doctor was there, they probably would have said I was having a panic attack. And I was like, no, fuck it. I put that mask back on and I went. I put my face under the water and I just did it. I just did it. And as my heart's racing and I can hardly breathe and I'm panicking, I was like, "No, stop. Breathe through this. Because no feeling is permanent." Right? Like there's no feeling on this planet that is actually permanent. So this terror can leave too. And so as I just like floated and breathed and then I like went far away from you guys because I was like, if I'm going to have a full blown panic attack, I'm not going to do it right in front of all these people from a cruise ship. But I went and I did it. And then I popped out of the water and I took the mask off, and I looked around, and then I did it again, and I did it again, and I did it again, and I saw a lobster. And then I forced myself to hold my breath and go under the water to get a better view of it, which was not comfortable because I because of the panic at the beginning, I didn't I didn't ever, like adjust the mask to be what it needed to be for my face. There's water coming in like -
Jenny Ryce
You were borrowing my mask.
Dawn Taylor
Like, nothing about this was setting me up for success other than my sheer stubborn determination. And I came back and I stood up and I went to take the mask off and I couldn't get the clips, so the whole thing just came right off my face. I was like, nope, nope
nope, get this thing off my face. But I don't know if I could have been more proud of myself in that moment.
Jenny Ryce
I was going to ask, what did that feel like?
Dawn Taylor
It felt like I had overcome a pain. From when I was 12. Right? That that little, that girl, that young woman, that 12 year old girl that didn't ever believe I could go back into water did something that I have fought so hard for so many years. The amount of times I've signed up for snorkeling and ever gone. The amount of times that I've tried and could not even get my face near the water and I just was like, oh no, I can't. Sorry. Right? And in that moment, I could have made every single excuse in the book, oh, I don't have a mask. And okay, we tried to find me a mask. Like we spent hours driving around, phoning stores, all of these things to try to find a mask prior to so that I could get one fit for my face, that it would work like I was willing to put the money out to face this fear. And we couldn't, like anywhere. We went to more Dick's Sporting Goods stores and you could imagine and just could not find what we needed. And surf stores, like, we went to all the places, but, it was this moment of sheer pride, like, so friggin proud of myself, but then excited to live. And that was really cool. Like the feeling of not just like I faced my massive fear but like I faced my massive fear, so what does this now crack open in the future.?
Jenny Ryce
Well, and that's what I really want to touch on. I do want to get back to our paddleboarding story, but I want to keep going on this train just for right now. What do you feel? You shared a lot of things with me in that moment about what this meant for you. And that's your story to tell.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, no, you can say it,
Jenny Ryce
but I want to hear from you. Like what? You felt that cracked open. Because facing our fears, sometimes we think, well, what's the point? Yeah. Like it's way more comfortable to stay in all of this, right? Yeah. So what did it mean? For you to all of a sudden, "Hey, not only can I swim in the ocean, I can put my face under the water and be under the water." Like, what did that crack open for you? And what does that future look like?
Dawn Taylor
You know, one of the biggest is, my husband and I have very, very different hobbies. And one of our struggles in traveling together is he's a water baby. He just wants to play in the water all the time. He wants to body surf and scuba dive and snorkel and swim. And like the boy, could live in the ocean. And we have had very divided, separated vacations for 24 years of marriage because I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. And he had made a comment on our previous trips, so we had gone on a birthday trip with our nephew in January. And he had made a comment when I was we were in like in Saint Martin in the ocean. Another cruise. Love cruising, by the way, but on another cruise
Jenny Ryce
I'll endorse that as well.
Dawn Taylor
I'm like, I'm like a crazy cruise lady. But he had made a comment. He's like, I might actually enjoy traveling with you now. And not that he hated traveling with me. But it wasn't fun for him. It wasn't enjoyable because he wanted to go do these things and have these adventures and do these excursions and live. And I was too busy letting the fear kill me on the beach.
Jenny Ryce
Mhm.
Dawn Taylor
Right? And all of a sudden it was like, hey, wait, you mean we could actually have fun together? We could have adventures together. We could try these things together.
And even just that. That was the day. So we had no internet, cell service. Like we didn't have any of that on the cruise. And that was the day that when we got off that beach, I turned on my phone and paid the obscene amount of money per minute to phone my husband in tears and tell him that I had actually snorkeled. And not just once, but twice. And I did it. And I want to do it again. And I'm excited. And that has connected us. And I mean, it's something so silly, but that has connected us and made us so excited for our next trip.
Jenny Ryce
Which is incredible, you know, because I think about when we were at the cenote which kind of will lead us back to the paddle board story. When we were at the cenote, there was a gentleman with us because he was by himself, because his family, that was not his family. His family couldn't do the bike riding and wasn't interested in going snorkeling or They had no desire. You could tell he was having fun. And it was lovely because he latched on to us and we got along great. And it was wonderful to, you know, meet somebody new and chat. But it did cross my mind that this, this gentleman would probably enjoy much more being with his significant other or his partner providing, and again, I love and honor that people are willing to still do the things that they love to do and not, you know, force other people to, to participate. Because of course, there's no joy in that either. But to see your face light up when you're like. How did I get those dawdling? It was amazing. Absolutely amazing. And I was I was honored to witness it and to be a part of it. And, I loved it, I loved it.
Dawn Taylor
I don't think I ever thought I would, if that makes sense. Right? Like, even being able to have a shower and put my face under the water has been such a shift over the last few years. As ridiculous as that might sound. But it's giving myself permission to live. And our fears, our fears are not "Should I wear this?" I always look at it as like, you can fear something once and it's like a little baby fear. And then our brain attaches more meaning to it and more meaning and more meaning and more meaning. And it becomes a bigger story and a bigger story and a bigger story and a bigger story. And it becomes this, like, out of control thing where we are so scared of it. That we will kill part of ourselves to not feel the fear again. We will literally stop living in areas of our lives so that we don't feel that fear again. And to have had so many experiences over these last couple of years of pushing myself to drive past a certain point, forcing myself to walk with snakes. Forcing myself to go to like, even our local zoo and go into the reptile area and, like, stand there and stare at snakes. Like, I don't think you understand the fear in me unless you're terrified of something that I feel. But when I can sit there and actually, like, breathe through it, talk my way through it, feel wherever the feels are in my body. Give myself permission to feel them and but also release them and be okay every single time that happens. It builds that muscle in me, that muscle in me of like, "No, no, no, nothing's going to scare me and nothing's going to hold me back." And it has made me so excited to live. Like, I don't even know how to describe it. Like, I'm so excited to live. My poor husband is going crazy with my like 295-day countdown to the next time I get to swim in the ocean. And he's like, "Oh my word. I never.: he's like, "In 28 years of being with you, I never thought this is who you'd be."
Jenny Ryce
Well, I love it because we've kind of created a monster in a really good way.
Dawn Taylor
She's a monster.
Jenny Ryce
Okay, so let's let's let's visit back. We've just gotten off the tandem bikes. We get on to the we've done this two note. We've had lunch.
Dawn Taylor
We've the Jaguar Orange bus.
Jenny Ryce
Right. We get on this groovy bus and they're playing the coolest old rock and roll. It was actually a really good time.
Dawn Taylor
It was very entertaining.
Jenny Ryce
Yeah. So we get to the beach. We again go out past the, you know, we're out in the zone doing the things and, you know, maybe going out a little farther than we're supposed to, but, you know, and you're like, “I want to try paddleboarding.” Uh, so we swim back in. And like you say, you get a little bit of resistance.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, I full-on, like, asked to paddleboard. He did an up and down and was like, well I don't know if you'll be able to and I was do you remember? I was like, “Because I'm fat?” and the poor guy's face. And I was like, “Oh, cause I'm fat. Okay, cool, cool. Good, good.” Right?
Jenny Ryce
And you know what? What kind of frustrated me as there was another lady that would not stand up on the board. No, because I think that was the same response that she had had to. You know, had we been there, I think we would have been able to change that for her. Um, so we get you a life jacket. I grabbed the paddle board. I'm like, “Screw you, dude.”
Dawn Taylor
Well, because we had to, but we kind of waited until they weren't there. Yeah, they took it off. They walked away to go get lunch. Yeah. And I was like, “I'm doing this.” And I grabbed everything and we just went like, yeah.
Jenny Ryce
And so what did it feel like? So here's the thing. And the reason I want to bring this up, especially for those listening, we've all had that.
Dawn Taylor
All of us.
Jenny Ryce
You might be too overweight. You might be too skinny. You might be the wrong gender. You might have the wrong hair color. Like people will make us feel we're not capable in our hearts when we feel like we can. And when I say capable, I mean to try. You might not be good at it. Nobody can expect to be good at anything when you try it for the first time. Yeah, but to try, you're all, everybody's capable to try, right? Yeah. We'll get the paddle board in the water. We've got your life jacket on because, of course, those are the rules, which is smart. Okay? I'm an advocate for making good choices. Safety is everyone's responsibility.
Dawn Taylor
I was like, what up? I'm fine, I float.
Jenny Ryce
Well dude. Honestly. So we get you on the board. And you're like, I'm standing up, I don't care what happens. And I'm like, hey, can we just get you a little deeper? So if you do fall off, which is possible, you're not going to hit the bottom. So we get out there, right? What I love is you're screaming at me. “Let go, let go!” Unbeknownst to you, I've had let go.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, I think at one point I, like, threatened your life with the paddle if you didn't let go. And I was like, kind of like I was like a defiant toddler on that board.
Jenny Ryce
And so I was just there just really as moral support than anything. Because it takes a minute. If you've never been on a paddle board, it's all about core strength and balance. And if you've never done it, you don't know to go from sitting on the board, which really you should be kneeling on the board to standing. There's a precarious time, right? So I was not actually holding the board. Well, in your world, am I? I told you I was holding the board, but I have my hands on either side of the board ready to grab it. So if you needed to, it didn't flip because I was like, we need this girl to have like, we got you got to get standing. Once you're standing,
Dawn Taylor
Jenny moms me a little. She takes care of me.
Jenny Ryce
Yeah, just a little. So I knew, though once you got standing, it's like your confidence would kick in and away you go. Because falling off when you're trying to stand sucks. It's like then you got to climb back on and do the things. So yeah, I love it. You're ripping me a new one in a fun way about like, look.
Dawn Taylor
And keep in mind again, these are all the same people that have been laughing at us all day, all day because we're sassy with each other. And yes, I was totally screaming at you in the middle of the ocean.
Jenny Ryce
Yeah, which was so good. So I let go. And what happened? All paddleboarded.
Dawn Taylor
And didn't fall once. Thank you very much.
Jenny Ryce
Not only did you not fall. The really cool thing was, is the smile on your face would have literally lit up a whole room. Have we been in a dark room. And the pride. You're like, I am doing this. I have the coolest video of you doing it like you nailed it. And I have to tell you being on a paddleboard. Yes. You see these people doing dog poses and all those kinds of things. Generally speaking, your body's in a weird shape. When you're on a paddle board. Your knees are slightly bent. You know, you got like, it's not the sexiest view, right? Like you're out there for the world to see, right? And you were killing it. And I love that about you. And what was really powerful is this couple, um, a mom and daughter saw you paddleboarding. And what happened?
Dawn Taylor
They got up into that, too.
Jenny Ryce
Exactly.
Dawn Taylor
And they had also, and they had a million excuses why they couldn't. My one leg is shorter and I can't. And I'm too heavy and I'm too tall and I'm too this and I'm too that. And the minute they saw me up there, they were like, “Oh, if she can do it, we can do it.” And the amount of times that you and I heard that on that trip.
Jenny Ryce
It was unreal.
Dawn Taylor
It was so interesting. And so I think that's part of this is not only I know we've rambled on our stories for a long time now, but it's not just about facing your fears. Face your damn fear so that the world does not have this control over you anymore.
Jenny Ryce
Absolutely.
Dawn Taylor
Face them. Just get in there and face your fears. Right? Do the scary things. Because really, what's the worst case scenario? It proves that you should have been scared of it. Cool. Now you're scared of it some more and you have another fear. Whatever. You're fine. Right? But
like. 99% of the time you can overcome it and it's no longer scary and it holds no power over you. And it's you taking your power back, piece by piece by piece, that we have given out our entire lives, right? But more importantly. When we face our fears, it does give other people permission to do the same.
Jenny Ryce
Mhm.
Dawn Taylor
Because they see us doing the hard things. They see us doing that. And that's not why I did it. You and I both know, Jenny, that at no point was I doing it to have anybody even acknowledge I was doing it. And when you asked me about recording this, you're like, I want to record a podcast on this because you face some big fears and biases, and I think people need to know this. And I mean, give me shit as much as people. What about not posting more of my life on social media? I don't do these things for accolades or recognition. I never have. I do these things because deep down I don't want to feel the fear anymore.
Jenny Ryce
Mhm.
Dawn Tay;pr
Right. And I want to change that in my own world and. 1.3s Yeah, it was really, really interesting. The I was telling someone, I've never been on a trip where, you know, we're getting off the cruise ship and there were probably 25, 30 people that were like, so, like, so excited. But there were so many cool moments where we challenged people. We nudged up against people, we showed them. It was like, no, this is this doesn't deserve to be scary to you.
Jenny Ryce
And I think what really anchored into and why I thought this was really important for us to talk about and share. Plus, it's fun to reminisce and I hope you guys have enjoyed the shenanigans. And that was the title of our trip.
Dawn Taylor
Oh my gosh, there were so many shenanigans. Ask us one day about renting an electric vehicle in Texas. That's a whole nother story. I was like, if you want that story, you need to like, message me. Oh my gosh, not recommended. We'll put it that way.
Jenny Ryce
It's not only again creating the space for other people. So when you show up for yourself and you step in and you do things that are uncomfortable, like you were just sharing on, as you create a space that provides people to do the same. And I don't know how many times I heard on the trip, if I didn't have you there to support me, I wouldn't have given that a try because I was helping random strangers do things, and not because I'm a superstar, but because I wasn't afraid to try myself and I was willing to help people I don't know try. So, it's not always about just facing the fear. It's finding ways to, like, expand on that and create a safe space for people to try. Because really like, the worst that can happen is you decide. Actually, this really isn't for me. And that's not the worst thing. There's an acceptance then. Like you said, it was a really cool experience to leave that cruise ship with all these people that were drawn to us. Not because, okay, we're a good time. Let's be real, right? Like we are hilarious. We're a lot of fun. But we were open and people felt connected and heard. I mean, yeah, people wanting to learn how to play cards, people joining us to play cards. Where do you, where do you go?
Dawn Taylor
People are asking how I got the food I got on my plate and how to order it like that. Like the weirdest. We had the funniest experience with people just really curious about
us.
Jenny Ryce
Yeah, and connecting with people on a different level. So when we step outside our fear and we allow ourselves to experience it in different ways, again, you are not the same person. And we have this conversation when we realized we had booked these things. And these excursions.
Um, unbeknown to me, everything we booked pretty much. There was one component we knew was to be true, and then everything else was like.
Dawn Taylor
I don't know how we did not pay any attention. Like, I know we it was like our brains filtered out everything except one little baby thing in each excursion. We're like, that sounds like fun. And then we ignored all of the rest.
Jenny Ryce
All of the rest. And what was really cool was that. It changed our way of being, right. And and it may be invalidated other ways that we are naturally, it was pretty, pretty unique. And for me, what I took, especially when we went to the chocolate farm, when we drove in Belize and we were at that chocolate farm, and they were giving us an opportunity to actually, like, create chocolate by hand and tortillas like the old fashioned way.
Dawn Taylor
In a Mayan village.
Jenny Ryce
And nobody would get up but me. I was like, and then I was talking to the because the one young lady she was, it was her 30th birthday. Was it something like she. gorgeous soul. You could see it in her eyes and she's looking at me. We're talking. I'm like, you are never going to get a chance to do this again. I think you need to get up and do this. And she did. And then it got her sister to get up. And I don't share that in a sense of, oh, look at me, like you. It's this. That's not what this is about. It's about cracking the door open for yourself and holding it open for other people. Right? Don't be ashamed to be proud like you standing on that paddle board and, like, literally cheering yourself like you were like, yeah, that's like dad. And like, we were watching.
Dawn Taylor
Screaming on the paddle board and cheering, right? I am, I'm doing this. Oh, I was so salty that day.
Jenny Ryce
It was so fantastic. And then literally this woman's like, “Jenny, will you help me?” And I'm like, absolutely. And she did it. And you know what she said? And I think you were there because we were snorkeling with them. That they went on a different excursion the day we went to the chocolate, she said. I actually felt safe and empowered on her next excursion because they were actually doing a paddle board, which was more of like a, wasn't quite a traditional paddle board, but they were going out with manatees and she's like, “And I could go and relax and enjoy myself because I knew I could do it.” And I was like, “Yes, yes, Queen, you can do it.” So we can do things to hopefully inspire and and spark you guys to, oh my gosh, don't live in your shadows. Hey, let's live, right.
Dawn Taylor
Just live. If I can put my face under the water after what I went through and that amount of time of a debilitating fear, so can you.
Jenny Ryce
It was an honor to be a part of that and to you know, laugh with you, hold your hand whatever it needed. Right. Like scream with you cheer all those kind of things. It just allowed me to
Appreciate the courage that it takes to do that. Don't get me wrong, I have to battle my own fears. I got my own stuff too, but we touched on a lot of things on that trip that you weren't comfortable with.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, so many. Right?
Jenny Ryce
So, you know, that's why I just really wanted to highlight the change in you from that has been. monumental, right? It's literally like changing your belief system, right? You've changed your belief system. And it's been life changing.
Dawn Taylor
And it has. And I have no regrets. No regrets. Was it scary? Yes. Did I wreck a pair of shoes? Lose a skirt? I mean, there was some damage. Did we get some sunburns? Being near the equator. Like, yeah, there was a financial cost. There was a ring. And yeah, there were some moments. There were some moments. But, man. If you could bottle the feeling of knowing you overcame something. Like, if I could bottle that and give that to the world, I would.
Jenny Ryce
That's the Willy Wonka golden ticket, right? So to sum this up. When we think about, you know, excluding the trip. Our time together, when you sum up. 1How would you sum up what you overcame in the outcome? When we finish off with our audience today, what are some of the key things you want to leave with them so that when they find themselves saying yes or no to something. Because of an inherent fear or, you know, whatever might be holding them back, whether it's judgment, all those kind of things. What do you want to make sure that the audience hears from you as we finish this, this episode?
Dawn Taylor
Nobody else actually cares. So, being out there in a bathing suit, standing on a paddle board.
Yelling at you, but nobody else there cared. Not a single other person was like oh. And you know what if they were. I didn't know about it.
Jenny Ryce
I would say they were cheering for you, to be honest.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, I think that that entire beach was cheering for me in that moment because they could well, they were listening and laughing and they could see and hear it. All right, guys, I was salty. It was funny. I should have had my own comedy show that day, but like, nobody else actually cares. It's us.
Jenny Ryce
Mhm.
Dawn Taylor
Right? And failure is not falling in the water. Failure is not any of those things. Failure would have been sitting on the shore and watching everyone else do it and not attempt. I think lowering my expectations of it. I went in just being like, whatever happens, happens. And, you know, it's funny at the end when I was like, speed paddling in because I was like, oh, I'm going to go in really fast. And you guys were all like, so afraid. And then I was like, I'm fine, and got in and jumped off the paddleboard and kind of just walked over and very sassily was like, and I did it to the instructor guy. You know, it's those moments, those feelings of like, “No, I did it.” And it didn't have like, no, I wasn't doing yoga on a paddle board. And no, I wasn't paddling out into the waves. And I was like, no, I wasn't doing those things. I had a very low expectation of how it had to be in order for me to succeed at it. And I think that's something I would want to leave people with, is like, when you look at any of those things, what's your success rate like? What's your tangible of, when you can measure that you succeeded at it and the moment where you're like, no, I kind of sucked and failed at that. That was really bad. Figure that out for yourself. So going in, you even have a tangible number on that for yourself or an idea on that for yourself. And for me, it was if I could actually like, go in a circle and get back to sure, I had succeeded. If I fell off and I did all those things right. If I fell off and couldn't get back on, that's what I needed to, like, walk away and be like, yeah, okay, let's not fight this losing battle anymore. Face them. There's so much less scary than you could possibly imagine. There's so much less scary. And what is the actual worst case scenario of what would happen if you did it again? Right? Like, what was the worst case scenario? I was going to fall back into the water I had just been swimming at. There was like 3.5 ft deep.
Jenny Ryce
Worst case, you're getting wet again.
Dawn Taylor
Worst case, like, that was it? Right? And often our worst case scenario. We forgot to look at that and think, huh, I could actually overcome that. I don't deal with that.
Jenny Ryce
You know, I'd like to just interject and share. You know, you didn't go from being terrified to put your face under water to getting on a paddle board. You allowed yourself those baby steps of nurturing yourself to get to the point where you can have a shower with your face under the water, and then in your bathtub exercise
Dawn Taylor
Baby steps to the bus, bub.
Jenny Ryce
Right. And so again, you set yourself up for success. Yeah. By healing and working through those stages. And then when it came to Paddleboard Day, it's like, okay. I just want to stand up. Anything above that's gravy.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, totally. Just had to prove I could. Right. And then now it's like, yeah, you're going to. There's no doubt in my mind you'll be paddleboarding again. None.
Jenny Ryce
Oh, yeah.
Dawn Taylor
Because now it's just a matter of okay, now I want to actually get good at this craft. I want to also, going to be doing a hell a lot of snorkeling in my future.
Jenny Ryce
It's so exciting, right. Thank you Dawn for sharing your truth and your vulnerability. It's hard to sometimes admit where our fears live and the beautiful thing is when people meet you, right? They have this vision of this strong, put together entrepreneur, successful. You are a force in your own right with a vulnerable, gushy center. Right? You're like a Cadbury egg.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, I always joke that I'm an armadillo.
Jenny Ryce
Okay, right.
Dawn Taylor
I'm like a really tender tummy. A big, hard shell protecting it.
Jenny Ryce
Yeah. So allowing people to see the truth of that right is. It's helpful. And we saw that in real time in action. So thank you for allowing me to ask you these questions, for allowing me to reminisce with you and for allowing me to be part of that journey. I was super blessed to be the one that was able to participate in that and be your wingman through all of that.
Dawn Taylor
Thanks for being there. Thanks for being there. And now I yes, yes, I have a trip to book, a trip booked to go snorkeling with my husband. He is so excited. But I just want to go play in the ocean. Yeah. So for everyone listening, thank you. Thank you for hanging out. Thank you for being here. And I really hope that you beat a fear of your own in the future. Join us again in two weeks for another topic. And tell people. Tell people about the podcast. We can get a few more listens, but check out the show notes like hidden located at TheTaylorWay.ca. Yes, we will include a few photos of all of this. Crazy. We'll see if I approve one of my paddleboarding. But if nothing else, send me a message through my website, through my Instagram, through wherever. Send me a message and let me know of a fear you have in your plan to overcome it. Or if you have, I would love to celebrate every one of you and a fear that you want to overcome. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast. And if you love the show, it would mean the world to me if you leave a rating and review. See you guys later.
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Guest Bio
Andrew comes from a unique background of art and business. He graduated from the Guthrie Theater magna cum laude with a BFA in Acting. He also holds a MFA in Acting from NYU Tisch School of the Arts’ Graduate Acting Program, which accepts 1% of applicants. He has appeared on Broadway, Film, and Television, and runs the top life coaching company for teens and young adults worldwide, Southwestern Student Coaching.
Andrew has a passion for students, education, and entrepreneurship. He lives with his wife and three young sons in Hell’s Kitchen, NYC, they aptly named “The Testosterone Factory.”
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TRANSCRIPT
Dawn Taylor
I am your host, Dawn Taylor, and today I have the privilege and the honour of talking to you, Andrew Hovelston. If you don't know him, you need to. So who is Andrew? Before we get to our topic, Andrew is an actor. He is a passionate guy in art and business. He graduated from Guthrie Theater, magna cum laude with a BFA in acting. He also holds an MFA. I don't even know what that is, but we're going to ask, acting from NYU TIsch School of the Art graduate Acting program, which only accepts 1% of applicants. This guy is impressive. He has appeared on Broadway, film, television, and runs the top life coaching company for teens and young adults worldwide, Southwestern Student Coaching. He also has a passion for student education entrepreneurship. He lives with his wife and three young sons in Hell's Kitchen, NYC, which is New York. Manhattan, New York that they aptly named the Testosterone Factory. Because if you've ever been to New York, you know the apartments are not large. So, I cannot even imagine living in one with three kids. But today, guys, we're going to have a bit of a controversial topic today. So, I hope you listen to this all the way through and listen to it with an open heart, because I am incredibly excited about this. We're going to talk about how you're screwing up your kids. And how we as a society are screwing up our kids. So, Andrew, take it from here. Welcome to the show.
Andrew Hovelston
We should have a little disclaimer, along the bottom or, you know, that pops in here that says Andrew does have three kids himself. So, he is in the active process of screwing kids up with everyone else who's listening.
Dawn Taylor
And I don't have kids, so I really I guess I'm not allowed to have an opinion, but I work with the kids that are getting screwed up when they show up in my office as young adults. So, you and I had, we met through an event we were both at forever ago, and we've been having this amazing month of conversations. Talking about mental health and kids and youth and, you know, just life in general. Business owners, all things, just all the things. And one of the topics that came up when you're talking one day was how we're actually screwing up our kids. And we talked about how parents don't want to hear this. And I said, you know what, let's do a podcast on this. Let's talk about this. And also like in that give some tips, but also some like, hey, in this way we are. And I even say like we collectively as a society. We are screwing up kids. So talk to me about your thoughts on that. Oh, really quick before we start, what is the MFA? Is that a master's in fine arts? Oh, okay. Wow. Impressive.
Andrew Hovelston
It's, uh. I always lead with that in my bio because it gets the hook. And then we ended up not talking about acting at all. We end up, rightfully so, talking about the next generation and coaching kids. But it's a lot of shiny objects for, you know, people in social media, short attention span to go. I guess I'd better listen to this guy.
Dawn Taylor
Maybe because he actually has some letters.
Andrew Hovelston
It's some letters behind his name. Yeah,
Dawn Taylor
I love it. Well, Mr. Letters behind your name. Let's talk about how we're messing up our kids. So what we were just talking about prior to even hitting record is this toxic positivity that is going on in this world right now. And this complete bullshit idea on we should just all be following our hearts. Well let's, let's just go there. Let's just go there. What are your thoughts on this?
Andrew Hovelston
Yeah. I mean, my thoughts are. I have many, many thoughts. My overwhelming thesis and hypothesis are different. But my hypothesis on the grand experiment of life, which is parenting is you need to follow your heart when you can pay for it. That's it. Full stop. Follow your heart when you can pay for it, and when you can learn how to do it with great mental health.
Dawn Taylor
I'm not disagreeing at all.
Andrew Hovelston
One of the biggest challenges, uh, I find. In my time coaching kids is that they are stuck between two worlds and have no navigation on how to bounce back and forth from them. The first world is from their parents, their grandparents, people that are 10 to 20 years older than them. So sorry, 20 to 30 years older than them.
Dawn Taylor
So it's like, whoa, what? Yeah. What kids are you working with?
Andrew Hovelston
All right, well, I grew up in a small town. I. I grew up in a small town. Sometimes that ten gets pushed to, you know, 18 years older. But let's go 20 to, you know, 20 to 30, maybe even 40 years older than that. Right. It grew up in a different time. It was a time where, where 401 K's, where pensions existed, where the cost of living was exponentially lower than it is now. Um, at least in America, where the labor protections were far greater. Where if you didn't have labor protections, your ability to negotiate a living wage in a job was more, um, where even if you took a chance on yourself and your business and your passion when you failed, if you failed, it was far easier due to just the simple economics of life to pick yourself back up numerous times and multiple times. It's not that way right now.
Dawn Taylor
Not at all.
Andrew Hovelston
And and so kids are on social media all the time, which I think is awesome. My wife is an absolute badass, and she runs an awesome online fitness business. And I am a huge fan, I follow a ton of entrepreneurs online who have taught me a ton.
Dawn Taylor
Yeah.
Andrew Hovelston
The reality is that when a social media influencer or not even an influencer, somebody who runs an absolutely great company comes on and they say follow your passion. More often than not, what that is equated to with young people is just putting your passion online. Literally put your passion on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook. And they're not saying learn how to monetize it. They're not saying, I actually built a personal brand after I built a supplement brand, or after I built the long and boring work of building a plumbing company. Right. Or being a professor for 40 years. Right. And now I have this knowledge as a professor, and somebody taught me how to film myself. Or real estate. You know, that's huge online right now. Real estate.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, ridiculous.
Andrew Hovelston
Just be a real estate millionaire. Sure. Absolutely. You can, you can, you can buy a house for a million bucks now and then. Can you deal with your toilets and termites and tenants? Right. And so a 15 year old just thinks, no, I'm going to put that online and become a YouTuber. Okay.
Dawn Taylor
Mhm.
Andrew Hovelston
Or a Twitch streamer. Right. Because that's my passion. Well the reality is that that's what you see as your passion. If you're going to be a Twitch streamer or a YouTuber, your day to day life is much different than playing video games. It's investing in the tools in order for you to sound good. To look good. It's being okay with a 15, 16, 17, 18 year old brain when you film 12 hours of you playing Grand Theft Auto and you forgot to click record. And the work is now, you think your life is over. And, or I'm an artist. I'm an actor. Right. Follow your passion. I love following my passion, I followed my passion also. Part of my passion was having a marriage and having three kids and their realities that come with that, which means you need to have money coming into your bank account. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to earn the money. It can come from parents who support you or family money that supports you, right? Or a cash windfall that supports you. But unless we talk about that with young people, the simple follow your passion for young people gets incredibly disoriented. Disorienting because I coach them. Right.
Dawn Taylor
Andrew Hovelson
Mhm. Um, let's say a young actor, right, moves to LA and says, well, my parents told me to follow my passion. I'm supposed to follow my passion, but my passion, I'm not passionate about that. I can't pay rent at the end of the month. I'm not passionate about that. I'm really lonely and the rest of my friends are going into a job every day and have a social life that is just a byproduct of working. I'm not. I'm not passionate about that. I thought, following my passion of creating characters in my mind and my body and my spirit was going to be enough. And it's like, well, it's a lot like a marriage, that it's not enough to just follow your passion.
Dawn Taylor
Well, can we talk about two with that? Then becomes this massive feeling of rejection and I'm failing and I suck and all of those things. And then not only that, but then we have this world of people out there. And, I mean, I did an entire podcast on - is the self-help industry harming more than healing? So people know my thoughts on this if you've listened to that episode, but
then we have this whole world of like, no, you just have to be at a higher vibrational frequency and know you just have to be aligning with it, and you just have to fill in the blanks and it's magically going to flow. And I don't agree. I don't agree with that. I talk to people every single day. I talked to someone a little while ago. He literally quit a major job. He's had one client in five years trying to build a business. “But no, this is my passion.” And I'm like. What are you like? Go get a damn job. Like, when did, j-o-b, when did having a job become, like, the ultimate failure in life? And almost this thing to be looked down on instead of hey, you know what? Based on everything from my mental health to my need for security, to my dreams, for my future, to my responsibilities. I actually really just want a paycheck. And then my passions can be my hobbies, my passion can be my side hustle, my passions can be those things. And I truly believe that we are not even just screwing up our kids. We are screwing up ourselves with this. I talked to a young business owner this week and I said, seriously, do me one thing, if nothing else. And he was like, what? And I said, do not make yourself your business. And your business yourself, I said, because then what happens is your worth becomes your business. And if at some point in your life you can no longer do it, you don't want to do it. It doesn't work for what you're doing. You can make your resume up and go get a job and be fine. And he's like, yeah, but what about you? You've been doing this for nine years. And I was like, yeah, and I could get a job tomorrow and be okay with that. And I think that's like, we are screwing that up. We're not teaching anyone responsibility anymore.
Andrew Hovelson
I mean, that's the big thing, right? Is that in our coaching, um, with Southwestern Student Coaching, is that you can follow your passion, but. But far more important. Then your passion or following or the suck it up mentality, right? That's the other thing that we're killing our kids with is just suck it up. I don't care if you don't like it, suck it up, suck it up. And the kids are like, oh, I guess I don't even have any room for passion now, and I just have to suck it up and do stuff I hate for the next 50 years. And that gets disorienting, because then they talk to their friends, they go online and they see, well, these guys are all following their passion. My mom, dad, uncle, brothers, sister have been really successful, and what they're telling me to do is suck it up. And so what's in between? Well, what's in between for us is, passion has to become. It has to become the not the toxic positivity self-help. But the executive skills of what is self-talk is the discipline behind choosing the words you say to yourself and believing them. What is the discipline behind how to set a goal and achieve it? I don't care if your goal is I need to go get a job at Taco Bell, or if your goal is I need to start a little dropshipping business or lemonade stand because that's my passion. None of that matters. The outcome does not matter.
Dawn Taylor
It's the skills that you're developing.
Andrew Hovelson
It is the skill set you're developing. It is 120,000,000% the skill set you're developing. And that goes for top performers. We coach Utah Olympians. We coach people from MIT grad school. We coach people that are high schoolers that are headed into Ivy League schools. And we coach a bunch of people that are unmotivated and on drugs and alcohol. Right? What's far more important than any of the results that they get is their ability to seal with challenges and shorten the time in which they forgive themselves. Learn and then go take action again. So a kid that gets his first C or her first C and spins out of control. Spins out of control like their life is over. Because we've told them to suck it up. Right? And you didn't work hard enough if you didn't get the results that you wanted, is the exact same problem as follow your passion and get all F's. But at least you're following your passion. Because it's not teaching the discipline, the skill set and habits and the mindset that they can go do whatever they want. Go be an engineer. Go be a plumber. And if you want to learn how to, you can make a lot of money just being a plumber, not just being a plumber. That's pejorative. Uh, you can make a lot of money being a plumber if you want to make more money, but also have a little more stress. Build yourself a plumbing business. But you're no longer a plumber. You are now a business owner, right? And so don't look at the guy in your hometown that says, just be a plumber and make millions. You have to figure out how to build that plumbing business, and that takes a different set of skills. And we're not telling that to our kids. I'm saying plumbers can make a lot of money seeing social media. People can be millionaires. Right. We're saying, just go play your French horn and you'll be successful. I live in a building. There's a lot of French horn players here. Success is relative. They might be super happy. I don't know if they have the money they need. I have no idea. Right. But I hope that is not too, I hope that's tangible enough. That were really, really, really messing up the future generation, um, by not giving them a path to run on. I always think of this vehicle ability and mindset, right. And I think about that in business more. But how have we been able to translate that to coaching to 320 kids in nine different countries? Right. What is the vehicle in which you're going to learn the skill set or how I talk about it is what is the framework in which you're going to learn the skill set of overcoming adversity, learning how to succeed with good mental health, and being kind to yourself. Now it could be a chess club. It could be the football team, right? It could be learning how to be valedictorian. But, you need a framework in which to learn those things, and the framework doesn't matter. You just have to have a framework and it can't be only 1 or 2 frameworks. Follow your passion or suck it up. Those aren't frameworks.
Dawn Taylor
No, it's interesting. I was talking to some have a lot of nieces and nephews that I have really cool relationships with, and it was probably four years ago that my one nephew was like, oh, I don't want to be an adult. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, oh no, I'd rather just kill myself. And I was like, oh, hi, can we have a conversation? Like this is extreme. And we did. We've had so many conversations around this and thankfully he's come out of this headspace. But we had a really interesting conversation. He's like, no. He's like, why would I want to become my parents? And I was like, explain, like define that. What do you mean by that? And he goes, well, look, he's like, think about it. He goes and everyone online is talking about this right now. He's like, yeah, my parents have a job and they're doing their thing. But then they complain about it all the time and bitch about it all the time, and they're miserable at the end of the day. And it doesn't matter how hard you work, you never have enough money. And he's like being an adult really looks miserable. Why would I want to do it? And I remember thinking about that, and we spent hours talking about this and how we could shift this and how we could change this. And I said, you know. Because he's like, you're happy in your work. He's like, how did that happen? And I said, you know, a couple things. One is I stepped out of the expectations that people had of me. And I wasn't afraid to fail.
Andrew Hovelson
Yeah.
Dawn Taylor
And I said, I don't know if it's because I had failed so much in my life. I had fallen down so many times in my life that it didn't become scary anymore. Sure. But it was like, yeah, why not? It's not going to fall again. Cool. I know how to get back up. And I think that is a thing that we're not teaching our kids either. Nowadays. Like you can't even fall on a you can't even fall on a playground anymore. I don't know how the state says, but Canada is like, no, no, no, we're gonna make it all foam and we're gonna make it all soft and gentle because we don't want anyone to get bruised. We don't want to get hurt. Right? Like it's gone so far in the opposite direction. It's like we're going to swoop in and rescue you. Anytime there is a problem, anytime there is a discomfort. We don't ever want you to have to face adversity. And I think that our kids need to know that they need to learn how to grieve. They need to learn how to fail. There's consequences for action sometimes. And no, you didn't finish your homework, so you did get in trouble in class. And I'm not going to call your teacher to rescue you. That's just your reality.
Right?
Andrew Hovelson
Yeah. Part of what gets really challenging in parenting. Um, and from the parents that I work with and, you know, parenting myself is that the kids from, you know, about ten years old to maybe 24, 25, have a different idea or definition of what failure is. And while I 1,000,000% believe maybe to a fault, right, that they need more and more and more and more failure and more challenges and more challenges. What we do as parents that we really screw things up on is not acknowledging when they feel like they've had a major failure. Right when there and then. And then giving them the tools. This is the most important part. We all screw up on, is absolutely giving them the tools to recognize, to not discount their failure, but to recognize that next time they can change it. So my eight year old and we're screwing our kids. I mean, I'm gonna screw my kids up, right? But it was like, it was like a valuable lesson. I was like, um, our philosophy in our household is that even in third grade, we're not going to tell you, um, we're going to make sure you get your homework done. Right. Your eight year old brain can remember to do it. But you know what? If you forget that folder on the table, right? Or underneath a chair? That's not our responsibility. It's really not. And what we can help you do is right after you get your homework done, we will remind you the first couple times to put it right in your backpack because that's definitely going with you tomorrow to school. But it's not my job to remind you every single morning because then your pattern is I don't have to think about it right when I get it done because somebody else, mom or dad, it doesn't even matter. You can replace any adult or any brother or sister who will remind me to go on to the next step of my homework, which is actually bringing it to school to turn it in. Okay, long story longer, uh, I'm like, this is amazing. I'm a genius parent. This is like going to my kids who are going to be so successful and whatever they want to be. And, uh, he, you know, my eight year old forgets it, and we're on our way to school and he mass hysteria, he's like, I can't, it's my life is over. I will never, my teacher is going to get so mad and I can never and I get to school and I'm like, all right. And I'm trying to be like, okay, what did we learn? You know, and we'll implant this into your brain. Now, you'll remember it when you're 18 and when you're 38 for bigger challenges to solve. Get to school. And as teachers like what went on and I was like I actually don't know what there's something just besides the homework. And he goes you didn't sign it and I can't, you didn't sign my homework and now I'm not going to get credit for it. And she looks at him or the teacher, she goes, oh that's it. He's like, dude. Get into class. And it was just a breaking of his pattern. And where I kind of look back where I screwed up, is that not I would have never told him to have his homework again. Right. But I could have got down and been like, that really sucks. Do you feel like your life is over? Huh? You know what, it might be, but we're not going to know until we go talk to your teacher. And I think most parents let's forward ten years and their kids are 18 and they're not turning in their homework. Right. You're saying your kid is a failure or you're talking to your son? Why don't you turn in your homework? You're lazy. Right? Why don't you turn in your homework? You're never going to be able to do anything, right. Why don't you turn in your homework? See, I told you, if you just would have turned it in, your results would have been different. When really what we've missed over the last eight years, from 10 to 18, is all of those little times, those tiny little times where that kid didn't raise his hand in class or he or she had another, that kid, even for the popular kids in school, say you're stupid, right? For them. And they're afraid to take that risk and fail. Um, because of how they're going to be judged. And we didn't catch that stuff early on enough. That's saying life is going to be hard. And, you know, this time that you got that B or you got that B, um, you can get an A next time. But it might not just be hard work. It might be some different things. You might need to go ask your teacher for some help, reason you might need to think through the fact that, excuse my French, but you're not a shitty person. Right. You're just around five kids who make you feel terrible about yourself. That would be hard for me to get in any two. And acknowledge that and then say, you know what? You know what, Billy? Johnny? Rachel? It's not going to help you. To blame them. If you want what's the tools that we need to do in order to get that? And if you don't want the A, fine. Or not, fine. I mean, you know, you choose your parenting style if you don't want the A, fine. Um, but what we need to do here is if you get a D and you feel bad. And part of the reason is that you're having a horrible time at school. What can you do to not have a horrible time at school and the results will speak to themselves?
Dawn Taylor
But I have to wonder, like, not even wonder. It's, we don't create critical thinkers as a society anymore. No, we haven't in so many years. And so we expect our kids. We expect these younger generations to process, to think things through, to try things in a new way, a different way. They don't know how. They actually don't know how because nobody has to fight for an answer anymore. I have 72 spices in a spice store. I love using spices when I cook, and I had a 22 year old in my office that day and they're like, I heard you have a crazy cool spice drawer. And I laughed. And it's beautiful. It's very organized in alphabetical order and laid out beautifully, like it's a masterpiece of artwork. And I said, yeah. And they looked at it and they're like, oh, this is life goals. And they went, you know what? I don't even know how to use those though. And I laughed and I said, I said you know what you do and. And she was like. And I said you just play with them.
Andrew Hovelson
Yep.
Dawn Taylor
And she went, what do you mean? And I said, you can Google how to use spices together. You can Google combinations. You can do that. Is that. Or you can open the lid of one and open the lid of another and hold them both under your nose at the same time and smell it and see what happens. Does it smell amazing, or does it smell nasty because you grabbed like, cinnamon and pickle seasoning or something, right? And it's like, oh, that's really bad. Okay, so put one down and try something else. But we don't live in a world that pushes, “Just try it.” Try it and see what happens. Fail, fail. Have it make something that's disgusting, laugh about it, and then try again tomorrow. We don't live in that world anymore. Where it's like, no, if that is making you that miserable, if it's that gross, it's okay to throw it out. It's okay to quit. It's okay to walk away from something. I mean, there's a fine line. There's a fine line of like, no, it doesn't make me happy because you're not actually learning a skill set in that of, like, sometimes there has to be a little bit of like. No, you need to face some discomfort.
Andrew Hovelson
I mean, my theory on this. Right. But whether it's right or wrong, I'm a, you know, I'm still I'm still young enough that people listening to this will be like, man, that guy doesn't know anything, and I'm okay with that. But my theory on this is that, pre-social media pre-pandemic and even pre, you know, probably ten years ago, the rise of the, um, of the idol worshiping of entrepreneurship. I'm an entrepreneur. Right. So, but the rise of entrepreneurship is that the failures often would happen outside of your occupation. So they gave you the safety and framework in which to like to go date someone new. And then you got to be like on and like that. And then you would just tell them on Saturday morning, I didn't have a good time on Friday night, so we're not going to date anymore. And that would be okay, because Monday morning you had some stability of going back to your job. Right? Or maybe I want to be a woodworker. And then you put up the shelf in your house. Nobody knows that you put up the shelf in your house. You just decided after your, you know, your job as a middle manager at Target Corporation that you wanted to be a woodworker. So you put up the shelf in your house in Minnesota and then you put, you know, the nice china on it. And a week later the shelf fell over and you were like, oh, dang. Number one, I didn't enjoy putting up that shelf. And number two, I really suck at it. I don't want to get any better at that. But you know what? I still get to go back to my job on Monday or Tuesday.
Dawn Taylor
Still have that safety, that security, that paycheck.
Andrew Hovelson
Exactly. But now the failure and the trying and the, you know, the challenges are wrapped up in. If I don't succeed now, I can have the outsized returns and therefore I have nothing tomorrow. And I hope that makes sense. But there has to be as your, you know, as you're a kid, you're it's a lot like an entrepreneur from 10 to 25. You have to try things, make mistakes, try things, make mistakes, try things, make mistakes, try things, make mistakes and how to school. However, when anyone feels about the school system right, my kids go to public schools. So that's where I'm coming from. But we coach unschooled kids, home schooled kids, uh, public private charter school kids. So I'm a fan of all of it, right. The one thing about education across all of those barriers, it is a consistent it's a constant of getting slightly better every single day. And so it gives a framework in which kids can fail. And succeed. What they don't realize is part of there terror that we are screwing them up with as adults, right? This has never been part of my narrative, but many adults who say, Hey, you need to do x, y, and z. The framework of their narrative is when they were 18 or 22, they did the same thing. They're in the same job, right? They had the consistency in which to bounce against. Right. And kids are terrified of what happens when I graduate and I'm 18. I don't have that consistency.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, it's so hard. It is so hard on kids right now. And we haven't, we haven't been taught like. 1s I was talking to a friend the other day and. And she's like, I don't know, Don. I don't know when we're talking about business stuff. And and I said, you know what's amazing, and I said, you've really just lived like 12 years as an adult. That's right. What do you mean? And I said, well, 0 to 20 is kind of like your formative years. For easy math, I was like, those are your formative years where it's like, you're in school, you have parents making sure you're fed and you have clothes and you have food on the table, hopefully, and all these things. Right. And so those are your formative years. I said, so you've really only lived from 20 to 30. And I said, and at this point, the fact that you're unhappy with where you're at or you're worried about your future or all of these things, I said. You still have 30 to 40, 40 to 50, 50 to 60, 60 to 70, 70 to 80, 80 to 90, 90 to 100. Because of modern medicine we are living healthy into our hundreds. Mhm. Yes, you may have screwed up one life that ten years real hard. I was like, you have seven more.
You have seven more of those. Think about that for a second. And she was like, huh? And I said, so you could screw up like another five and still have two good ones. I said, but you're not a tree. Move. In the words of I think it's like Charles Duhigg that says that, right? And it's like, you can shift, you can change, you can adjust, you can pivot, you can do all of those things. And I know so many business owners that have shut down companies in the last couple of years and just been like, no, I want a job. Like I want someone else to worry about the clients coming in the door. I want someone else to have to pay the insurance and someone else to carry the stress, and someone else to manage HR and someone else to do all those things. I just, I just want a job.
Andrew Hovelson
Yes, I want to. And I am seeing this 5:00 so often right now. I want to go to happy hour. If I partake in that on Saturday morning, I want to get up and go to a runner's group. You know, on Tuesday afternoon I either want to go to I want to go to Bible study or I want to play, you know, I want to play rec basketball and I don't care if it doesn't make me millions tomorrow. You know, one of the, here's something that I really think about often. And I'm not sure how we solve this, but Gary Vee, however anyone feels about him, right? He's loud. He's been.
Dawn Taylor
He's a love it or hate it guy.
Andrew Hovelson
20 year olds. Gen Zs are not lazy. They're not lazy. They have options. And I agree with that. And what I think people are seeing when they see lazy is that those adults that are saying they're lazy don't remember options. They don't remember options when they were 18, 19, 20. They said they don't remember. They say I didn't really have any options. I was going to work in the family farm or, you know, my dad was running a Northwestern Mutual insurance business.
Dawn Taylor
So I had to step into the family business.
Andrew Hovelson
Yeah. Or my mom was in sales, right. Or HR. And so I just did that. I didn't have any options. And then they translate that. And so I went to work. Right. That's what those adults. So I went to work and something that I maybe didn't exactly love, but I just went to work. And they're translating that to an 1819, 20, 22 year old who has options there saying you're lazy and where we've failed as parents. Is to help them critically think about which option to take at any given moment, and then be okay with the consequences. Maybe it succeeds, maybe it fails. And, um, and we'll help guide you as elders in this tribe of homo sapiens to, uh, to really the next phase if it doesn't work out. You know, the best thing that any young person could ever do is go try a bunch of businesses. Have them fail. Go work at a bunch of startups and get laid off. Right?
Two things can be true that the best thing somebody could ever do is when you're 22, start a financial practice for the next four years and just do it and just do it. And if you like golf, close a lot of deals on the golf course. You know and retire with money if that's what you want. And build your family and be home at night. And all those things can be true at the same time. We've just had a huge gaping hole in our ability as parents and as elders in this tribe of humans. Help people to help young people understand. What goes into their decision making? And so because we don't understand that and we're not evolved enough, um, as adults to understand how to help them think about their way of thinking, we call them lazy. That's it. We call them lazy, and we're screwing them up. We're screwing them up because they've heard that they're lazy from 15 to 25. And it's just not true. It's not true. You know, go to college. Great. I've gone to seven years of higher education. I believe in college. Right. But go to college and they say, great, are you going to pay for college? And then you say, well, I haven't been able to do that because of the economy the last 20 years and the higher education costs. And they're like, okay, so why should I like - Did you graduate college with debt? Well, yeah, I did. How much was it? It was 20, 20 grand in debt and I worked my tail off and they're like, well, I could-
Dawn Taylor
Why would I want to do that?
Andrew Hovelson
They're thinking, why would I want to do that? And they're all thinking. They're also thinking I could pay off 20 grand in debt, but I'm not stupid. I could also graduate with $200,000 in debt. Like, you're not comparing apples to apples. They're asking, no, you have enough money saved for me, mom and dad. Well, I don't, so. Good luck. They're like, so stop, stop! Help! Help me! They're begging for some help on some critical decision making skills and tools that they can put into their tool rather than judgment about, uh, the habits that they have.
Dawn Taylor
You know my nephew a few years ago, and I'm so freaking proud of him for this. We were talking and we were driving. We went for a drive and he's like, I don't know what to do. Like, I hate school. I don't know what to do when I graduate, like help. And so we're driving around and I started just pointing out jobs. And I was like, we're driving down the street. And I said, okay. I said, here's part of it. If I say we're not taught what our options even are after high school, we're not taught this. And I said, what careers do you know of? What jobs do you know of? And he listed, like aunts, uncles, parents. And like, maybe like the teacher, the lawyer or the doctor, you know, like you're basic 5 or 6 that a teenager even knows about. And I said, okay. So I pulled over on the side of a street in a residential area and I said, okay, that bench right there, somebody was the graphic designer that created the ad that went on it. Somebody does the wrapping that actually created the signage that put it on there. Somebody else works for the city that maintains it. And he's like, oh! And I said, now let's look at the house. I said, you have the landscape or you have the landscape architect. You have the contractor, the builds that you have, the plumber, the drywall or the mud or like. And I started to like. list off just like all the different kinds of careers. Just sitting right there in front of someone's house in a residential neighborhood. And I said, this is what you don't understand. I said, there's 10,000 or more, 100,000 whatever types of jobs you could have. When you start asking people what their careers are or what their parents did, you're like, that's a job. Like, who does that, right? There's all these. like, crazy careers out there. And I said, so instead of thinking about what you want to do, what is the lifestyle you want to have? And he was like, what do you mean? And I said, do you want the same lifestyle as your parents or an uncle that you know, or of us? Or do you want to be able to buy a pair of shoes a month? Do you want to go on trips? What kind of house do you want to live in? And we started talking about these things, and then we went to a restaurant that had, um, like the kraft paper on the tables to draw on for kids. We sort of mapping it out, and I was like, okay, this is the kind of cost it's going to be for a mortgage for a house like that or rent. This is the kind of cost it's going to take for you to travel. Okay. So, now whatever income you make, you're like, all your taxes are coming off of that because we live in a place of high taxes. Canada. And I said, so this is the kind of money you're going to have to make. To have the lifestyle that you desire to have in your future. And he went, oh, is it okay, so now let's break down what kind of jobs you could do. I said, but then let's also look at do you want a job that just pays you a set amount? There's a natural ladder climb? Or do you want a job where your, like, action is equal how much you're going to get paid. Yeah, because those are two very different things. And I said, do you want, like, way more time at home with your family? Do you want way more time? Like do you want the hustle of the work? I said, these are the things that I think we need to be talking to our kids about. And so he was like, no, I like this, and I like this, and I like this. And we started having these conversations and I said, okay, so now what skill sets do you need to have to thrive in that industry if you're going to be in sales and dealing with people? I said, here's what you need to know. You need to know teamwork. You need to know customer service. You know how to manage difficult people. You need to know how to schmooze and talk to people. You need to know how to pick up a phone call you need. Right. And I said, so where can you learn those skills? And then we started mapping that out and I was like, you need to get a job at a restaurant. And he's like, what? And we were sitting in Boston Pizza and I was like, apply for a job here. And he goes seriously? And I was like, look around. I said, you're going to have to learn how to deal with hustle. You're going to have to learn how to deal with it when you're tired. You have to push through. You're going to have to learn how to deal with the person who screams at you, because there's lettuce in the salad that they ordered and you're like, are you for real, moron? You order this right? I was like, you have to learn all those things. Like, those are all skill sets you can develop. I said, now you tell the boss you're willing to learn anything in any role. I said, and then what you're going to do is I said, you're going to I said, this is my recommendation. You now go and you show up in a decent outfit. I said to every single real estate office in this city and you ask if you can volunteer. And just learn. And you will gift them a couple hours of your time of day to just learn that. Here's the thing, his passion is in real estate. But he is still, he is killing it in his first year or first two years of real estate compared to most people in the industry. If you look at the average over across Canada, he's killing it with his numbers. But guess what? Even killing it with your numbers, he still needs a job to pay his day to day bills.
Andrew Hovelson
Course he does. Of course he does.
Dawn Taylor
Yes, because he has to build this. He has to build it. And he's young and he's still all these things. And I was like, at no point does that make you a failure. At no point does that make you less than. At no point does that devalue you. I was like, if you need a part time job on the side for the first five years while you build this, rock on, and you're going to be way less stressed out than anybody else who's like, but no, I hung my shingle and now I have a business card and business will start flowing.
Andrew Hovelson
It's, you know, it's two things, right? The, the. A huge mantra in the personal development field is success leaves clues. We've all heard it over and over and over and over and over and over. All right. We, you know, if we're talking about the kids and parents and, you know, aunts and uncles, what you did, there was a great service that you gave them way more clues than can just be found on a pamphlet. Right. Success leaves clues, as in. Hey, do you have a significant other that you want to be with? Right? Well guess what. Your hours are going to be 14 to 16 hours a day. And also, the part of the success is you need to get her on board with that. We've all heard that right. Let's say, you know a young person. Let's say they're a young mom or a young dad that happened accidentally or not, accidentally or success leaves clues. Just follow my passion or just go grind like you're your nephew in the real estate space. Well, who's going to take care of those kids? How are you going to keep the roof over your head? Part of the clues that you need to do is then you need to go model young people that have kids and who took care of the kids. Do you have parents there that allow you then to go work hard? Do you have a second job? What are you juggling? Right. So the success leaves clues. And then the other thing that that translates to, I talk a lot about in my coaching is, is the juice worth the squeeze?
Because you know what? I'd love to I. love to sell the dream. I think you can do whatever you want. As long as you put your mind to it. And you get around the right people and you, and you have the right self-talk, right? The squeeze is there. Or sorry, the juice is there. But is the squeeze worth it? Yeah, right. If you don't want to read a ton of books and put a lot of things into action, don't be in the self-development space. Yeah, right. Is the squeeze there? If you want to be a doctor. Right. But you don't like sciences. And your parents are doctors. Don't
go. What are you doing? Don't do it. My business partner has it. He's got like. It's such a funny story. It's endearing every time he tells it. His parents were famous opera singers in Germany. Okay, so well-respected careers. German opera singers are paid by the government quite a bit, and they have really good standard of living. Okay. And he tells a story about. He was in seventh or eighth grade sometime, and his mom was like, you know, what are you going to do for your job? Or maybe he was eating at 1112. It doesn't really matter. And he's like, well, I'm I'm an opera singer. And she goes, she goes, Adam. You don't show up on time to your voice lessons. You don't sing in the choirs. You don't warm up every day, right? You scream on the playground with your buddies. Like misuse of your voice.
Dawn Taylor
She's like, all the things you should not be doing.
Andrew Hovelson
I appreciate that because I'm your mother. But you don't want to be an opera singer because the squeeze is not something that is enjoyable to get the juice.
Dawn Taylor
Mhm. I love that. I love that so much. And I think these are the conversations we need to be having with kids. We need to be having these with teenagers, with youth. And really look at like, what are the skills that they need? What are the tools that they need to have? What are the. character traits that they need to have to be successful in anything and everything that they do.
Andrew Hovelson
Here's one of the here's a big tip for any parent that is listening or aunt or uncle that's listening. Okay. Students 18, 16 to 25. are getting stories inputted into their brain. Most of the time it's from Google and social media. A lot of the time. It also comes from parents or family members. Okay. One of the biggest, biggest, biggest benefits you can give your kids is to tell the stories right of what happened to you when they were your age. Now here's the key. We all have heard when I was your age, I did this when x, y and z. You cannot present it like that. Think of it as presenting them with a Google search or a menu. Here are the actions that I took. Here were the results. You go and figure out how you feel about it. Not when I was your age, I was grinding and you're not grinding, so you're not going to be successful. It's hey, you know, when I was your age or when I was not even your age, when I was in 10th grade, right? What happened to me is that we were in a really small town. Okay. And I could play all the sports. I could do all the arts. Right. And I realized that my friends were actually much better athletes than I. And I had to start this process of what was my identity? And when I was a junior in high school, I had to leave our subsection basketball game to go to an audition for college. That was a really, really big deal for me. Okay because I had to say no to something else. Yeah. Right now, young Billy. Bobby. Johnny. You don't have to do that. But do you have any questions about that? Because that was my experience of a high score. And then you follow that up with “Do you have any questions about that?” Right. And then you share. What's your experience right now? Because they actually might be much more aligned with you as parents. They just might have a different framework that they're seeing their experience through. And it might be socially, it might be an extracurricular club. It might be a teacher that they're like, I don't even like social studies. I love math, but this social studies teacher gets me going every day. But you have to ask. You have to share stories. So, let me be really clear. I can get on a rant. You share stories with them of your time when it was their age with zero judgment of what their time should be. Right? Ask them if they have any questions about the story, the menu that you've laid out. Right. And then number three is. What's your experience in life? What can you relate to? What can you not relate to? And then shut up. Shut up.
Dawn Taylor
Thank you. Sweet Jesus. Shut up! They know you're successful. They can see that you guys go on more vacations than their friends, right? They know that you work until midnight and that you've missed some games, right? And that there's no judgment in that. They know that, you don't have to retell them, that that's what it takes in order to be you. Shut up. And shut up.
Dawn Taylor
I love that. Just shut up. One of, the only thing I would add to that is. I've often talked to our nieces and nephews and the kids in my life about where we thought we were going to be when we were 15 and 16 and 17 and 18 and 22 and 25 and 30. And where we've ended up and how different those are and how at different points along that path. This is something that my husband and I do at least once a year. As we sit down, we should do it on our anniversary. And we talk about like, hey, when we started dating, and for us, like I'm talking like 1996, like it's a long time ago. And it was like when we started dating, where did we think we'd be? What was our future? What were our goals? What were our dreams? So, what do we think we were going to be after high school? What do we think we'd go to school for, training for? And then what do we actually do? And all the million pivots along those years to be like, hey. If this one doesn't work, or if you think this is your giant goal, in your dream. It could change 5000 times between now and when you are old. And that is beautiful. And that is totally okay because some people my husband made a comment yesterday or two days ago. He's like, I swear God put me on this earth to hold your feet to the ground.
Andrew Hovelson
Sure.
Dawn Taylor
He's like, I literally think that is my job in this world is to hold your feet solid on the ground. And I laughed. But if you know me, my personal life is like, yeah, that sums me up. And I was, but I was always the kid where, like my brother and sister, chose a career. They did it right out of high school and they're still doing it to this day. My dad did the same. Like that was just my life. My aunts and uncles, my cousins, like everybody, they've all had one singular career and have not ever deviated from that plan.
Andrew Hovelson
I find that, uh, extremely envious. I am envious of that, of them.
Dawn Taylor
Well, and I have that sometimes I have that. But I also think if you're not that person, like, I wish I had had someone in my life that was like, it's okay if you don't have a ten year goal. It is okay if you change careers at some point. It is okay if you think you're going to go right and you end up going left, all of that is actually okay. Because that's one thing that has always caused this weird feeling of like, I don't fit in in my world. Because I've shifted so many times, but that's what makes me, me.
Andrew Hovelson
Yeah.
Dawn Taylor
And so I think that that's part of it too, is like, talk about those things with kids, those conversations that I have with my nieces and nephews. Are so interesting and so valuable when we have those conversations of like, you know what? That's amazing. And I love that for you. But at the same time, hey, guess what? Sometimes that plan will not go according to plan. Sometimes it's going to totally fall apart. Sometimes you're going to make a really silly decision. And somehow you're going to actually make it out the other side and you're going to learn so much from it, and then you're going to thrive in something else. And that's okay. And you know what? That one might suck too. But then there's another one. And sometimes that's totally normal and okay. And I think we need to teach our kids that. We need to teach them that, that it's like, no, you might hate this job. This might not be the thing for you. I hated working at a clothing store in high school because I was like, no, that dress looks really awful on you. Try a bigger size or try something different. Like it didn't match my personality. But I loved working like a service desk at Zellers because I like the sassiness of it, and I liked the people that came in and yelled over Pokemon bedding, and I thought it was hilarious that I was the one who had to call the cops, and someone was stealing jeans and running out the front door. And, you know, like, that matched my personality in a totally different world.
Andrew Hovelson
Absolutely. Love bartending here in New York City. I loved it, I got to watch sports. I got to talk with people who loved to watch sports. I got to do my version of manual labor on high volume sports bar. You do not stop at 12 hours.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, not at all.
Andrew Hovelson
People are like, why don't you run a restaurant? And I would be like, there is nothing I would love to do less than do what my bosses and their bosses had to do. That sounds absolutely miserable, when what? The outside world, you know, find yourself in the story, what the outside world thinks and what kids think about their parents is, oh, you love to bartend, so you should be in the restaurant industry.
Dawn Taylor
No, no, I really like to bartend.
Andrew Hovelson
Yeah. That's it. It was great. I got to go home at the end of the night where they were freaking out about the electricity, and I said, hey, your ice machine doesn't work. I'll be back in time for brunch. I see you later.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, it's so true. I even now I've had friends that own stores and restaurants and different things and I, I'll go and help.Like if someone's like, I'm like, I'll come on a till, like, I love that. Like, I often joke about that I'm going to be the 70 year old, like running a cash register somewhere and doing that because I'm like, why not? It's awesome. Like that's something I actually genuinely enjoyed.
Andrew Hovelson
Yep.
Dawn Taylor
And I think, yeah, I think we need to look at our kids a little bit different. Andrew thank you, thank you, thank you for letting me take up so much of your time today.
Andrew Hovelson
Thanks. This was fun, having me. Thanks for having me. I could talk about this stuff for hours and hours and, uh, the beauty, the beauty dawn of anyone that's listening. I said this at the beginning is the jury, and the verdict is still out. Because I have a 12, eight, and a four year old, and we'll see how badly I screw them up, and then we'll come back and we can, we can roll this.
Dawn Taylor
We can record this again. Life lessons. Yeah. My new life lessons abundantly. So totally for anyone looking to connect with Andrew and the amazing work he's doing with you, you can totally check out our show notes located at the Tailor Waka for all of his contact information and how to get ahold of him. Thank you again for hanging out with us and for the listeners for staying tuned in for this whole thing. And also, we'd love to hear what part of this really shifted you, triggered you, or made you think different about how your parenting or how you are behaving or acting as an uncle grandparent, whatever role you have in someone's life.
Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast. And if you love the show, leave a reading or a review and your I can't wait for our next coffee.
Hello, hello. Today on The Taylor Talks podcast, we have the amazing Giselle Denis. She's a world renowned artist, she's a mom, she's a wife, she's a business owner. And this woman has more drive and hustle than most people I've met in my life. But stick around as we're gonna dive into the topic of the grind behind the beauty, what it actually has taken her to get where she is, and some of the amazing things she's learned along the way. I walked away from this recording was so many new strategies for my own life and things I want to change in my own business. So really hope that you enjoy this one as much as I do. So, after the show, listen for instructions on where to find a super fun giveaway. It might even include some of her art.
Dawn Taylor 00:53
Hey, hey, hey, welcome to The Taylor Talks. I am hanging out with, as you heard, the amazing and beautiful Giselle Denis, the world renowned artist. So conversation that Giselle and I've had over the years, is how easy it looks from the outside. And there's this whole girl boss mentality right now, this, like, it's just so simple and have alignment and flow, and it's just so beautiful and easy. And the hard conversation we want to dive into today is that's not realistic. That's not the reality of it. That's not actually how most businesses are built. So Giselle, let's dive into it. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how this all started for you.
Giselle Denis 01:48
That's a loaded question. So I've always been an artist, I grew up in an artist home, and just always, always painted. And I started selling my work when I was about 14 years old. I learned realism and I was doing portrait work. And that's how a lot of artists start out selling their work, is, you know, finding a niche. So for me, it was portraits and pencil, and my work doesn't look anything like that now, but I learned really young that people wanted to buy something that I made with my own hands. So that was very appealing to me, I loved to do it anyway, and if people were gonna hire me and give me money to do something that I love with my hands, like, that's amazing. So I just kind of kept going with it. I went to college and studied music for four years. And when I finished college a year later, I got married. And then it was like, okay, now what? What do I want to do? And I just kept going with my art, but as most people know, art sales can be few and far between. And I didn't know how to, like, make a respectable adult income, like, what do I do? So I thought, I'm going to have my own little house cleaning company for a year. I'll work my own hours and the rest of the time I get to control when I work, when I can paint, and I thought I'll do that for one year. And it turned into five years. I know.
Dawn Taylor 03:09
You mean you weren't a millionaire in the first year?
Giselle Denis 03:13
I worked really, really hard. I I didn't hate cleaning, always. But near the end there I was getting a little frustrated with oh my gosh, it's been this long, like, when am I going to stop doing all this? So I thought how about I try - because I was selling my work in between in every single, like, any kind of art show I could find I would do. And I just really exhausted myself. But I had more energy back when I was younger. So I thought okay, if I was making $1200 bucks a month house cleaning, and I thought to myself if I could make $1,200 in art sales every month this summer, I'll quit cleaning just for the summer and see how it goes. And then I never looked back. I did it. I was able to do it. And then more, my clients all said, like, you're not gonna come back cleaning. And they believed in me, like, I hoped they were right. And I didn't look back. As far as income and sales go, it's been a roller coaster. It's not consistent. It's been more up and down most of the time. But people don't realize when they first, like - yeah, like you say before, like, live here - people think, like, oh my god, she got famous overnight or something. And obviously, most of the time it doesn't look that way. I've been married 19 years. And that's when I house cleaned for the first five years. So I quit cleaning and have been doing art full time for 14 years. And so it's been 14 years. It's not, like, it hasn't been five years, it hasn't been 3, it's been 14. And I bet you probably about year 10 is when I was like, okay, I'm making a respectable adult income now. That's how long it took.
Dawn Taylor 04:55
Okay so let's just pause on that for a sec. Like for anybody listening thing to this: 10 years. Like it took 10 years to get to the point where you were like, I'm an adult making a real income. And those were 10 years of just, like, okay, so only because I've been on the inside a little bit of your business, like, I've sat in your studio and wired paintings and filled out spreadsheets and, like, I've done some of those parts. So I've seen the crazy. I've driven with you to Calgary to hang art in lobbies of skyscrapers, like, I've done a little bit more behind the scenes than probably the majority of people have with you, right, but, like, this isn't you just sitting at home listening to music and being like, well I'm painting and this is all lovely. Like, talk about like the work that actually went into it. Like, what kind of hours have you put into this? What has the drive been? Like the drive but also like the grunt, like, the you know what I'm talking about. Like the hustle that's actually had to go into this to get where you were at the 10 year mark.
Giselle Denis 06:07
I think that thing that's kept me going is the chutzpah, the passion and love I have for what I'm doing. I love to paint, I can't see myself doing anything else ever with my life. I don't know, I just finished this huge, my biggest commission of my entire career, they were pieces that I made for the Sherwood Park Community Hospital. And they were 8 feet by 16 feet, the first painting, and the second painting was 8 by 6 feet. And my husband, when he watched me make them the whole time - not as a creep, but as like he was videotaping me, taking pictures, and documenting the whole thing - and he said I can't believe how much will it takes to do these. And I've never actually heard anyone put it into words like that before. I'm like, yeah, like, of course. But from someone watching me do the work and him setting, like it's exhausting just setting me up for the work. But he can see and feel how much will it took. So I think I have a strong will in me that... like, don't get me wrong, before I ever made any money, like literally $7,000 a year for a long, long, long time, I was happy. I was doing what I loved. I mean, my husband had a regular income. So he was able to, like, carry me through all those years of making very little. I always hoped that I would be where I am now. But I never would have imagined even as much as how well I've done now. But it has been a struggle. I hadn't had any help. It's funny when you want an art gallery to represent you, to help your career at the beginning when you need the help, my experience has been really, like, they're just not helpful at all. Nobody wants you when you're nobody. And then some people start wanting you when you're somebody but when you're somebody finally you don't really need them. Like do I need a gallery in my own city right now? I don't need a gallery in my own city. I could really love to, it'd be cool. I'm not even really actively looking right now for a gallery in another city. Like, I kind of cycle through my sort of seasons of okay, I'm going to try and submit to these other galleries to get some representation in a different city. But I found the most success for me has been going to that city for whatever purpose and you build your audience one person at a bloody time. One person at a time. So I just got back from Saskatoon painting in a charity function. I was just invited to come and do this piece for this room, there's probably 800 people in the room. So lots of good advertisement. I have a goal to raise a million dollars for charity. So that was another thing to, like, we just come up with clever ways to get my name out there, my art out there. I've done as best as we could with what is follows the alignment, with what aligns with our values and our desires, and what we want to do. Another thing that's really helped me is I like to talk about, have you heard my boat analogy?
Dawn Taylor 09:03
I'm... maybe, but please share it with us again.
Giselle Denis 09:05
Picture your life, or I would picture my life as a boat, an aircraft carrier, like the hugest boat that you can imagine on the ocean. And an aircraft carrier has helicopters and a landing pad for helicopters, planes. It's got places for the army, it's just this monstrosity of a city of a boat. Okay? And it moves very slow. And it has everything on it, everything and everyone on it. And as I've kind of moved along the ocean of my career, I was like, oh, this is not working for... I'm sinking and I'm drowning. So how can I pare it down and take everyone's... take the people off the boat that I don't need, the things off the boat that I don't need, the expectations, the, you know, things that people put on your boat. They didn't even know how it got there. How did that even get there? It's weighing me down. So I I've taken off all, as much as I can, as much as I've, now I have a tiny speedboat with the things that I decided this is what I want to do. These are the things that I've decided that I have intentionally put there to help me go along my way, and I go much further, much faster. I'm happier, I'm not weighed down by other people, other things, just the world around me, it's been really hard to do that. And you let people down. People are, you know, for the most part... I mean, I don't usually hear about stuff like that, but I would expect that, you know, you disappoint people. Because it's just, like, I don't have the capacity to have the world on my boat. So I just want this small little boat and go, and people who really love me will understand and know that, like, it's just I have to, otherwise I'll die. I hope that makes sense. I hope I'm saying it right.
Dawn Taylor 10:53
No, that's a beautiful analogy.
Giselle Denis 10:56
Yeah, it's really helped. You know, when you kind of decide, and it's hard to know at the start. Like, most people probably do start off their lives and their careers that way, like, I want to do everything. And another example would be like, why doesn't she paint...? Why does she just paint flowers? And I'm like, well, if you really dig into it, it's not the only thing I paint. But, like, why don't you only paint this, like this just flowers or just nature? And I was like, well, okay, here's the how I say that: if you paint everything, you'll be remembered for nothing. So if your business, for example, if you, you know, if you're a coach, cool, but what specifically do you coach? The more you, like, narrow it down, you have a niche... the best advice I've ever been given, I went down to San Francisco and I heard about this like an art critic kind of guy, but he's really interesting. And so I went down and hired him for a couple hours just to sit down and talk with him about like, you know, if I'm missing anything, I really would love to know what your opinion is on my life and my career, what I'm doing. And as far as moving forward, like, do you have any tips for me? And he basically said, you know what, I think you're doing the right, you're on the right track. I paid him to tell me that you're doing a great job. He said, the best advice he said was, find something that no one else is doing and be the best at it. Yeah. Cool. I like that. So, you know, for me, you know, one thing is don't compare. I do my hardest. And it's a daily decision to not compare myself to other artists, other business people, women, anything.
Dawn Taylor 12:34
Women are the worst at that.
Giselle Denis 12:37
I just, like, okay, don't make apologies for who you are. And what does be who you are really mean? And so I've been able to, like... I mean, social media is great and stuff for work but, like, I try not to use it too much for my entertainment. And it's just, like, helped me go what, you know, live painting, for example, it's not for everybody. And so many artists say oh my god, I want to be like you, I just want to paint like you, I want to be, I want to paint, I want to be live painter just like you, teach me how, teach me teach me teach me... and I'm like, oh my God, frikkin people. I'm like, you don't want to be like me. Why would you want to be like me?
Dawn Taylor 13:15
Okay, say that again, you don't want to be like me.
Giselle Denis 13:19
You don't want to be like me, why do you want to be like me? I am me. I already exist. There doesn't need to be another Giselle. There doesn't need to be another Dawn. There needs to be... you have a responsibility as a human being, as a artist, entrepreneur, businesswoman, whatever it is you do, you have a responsibility on this earth to pull out the best parts of who you are and be that person. Because the world needs you to be you. The world doesn't need you to be another me, like, you know. Who's your favorite artist, like who, like, people always ask me that. Like, who is your role model, who's your, all this stuff, and that stuff's cool... but, like, I don't intentionally try and paint like anyone else. Like, I love Monet. I love Van Gogh, of course. But I don't sit there and, like, try and copy their paintings and paint like them. It's just like, take a scene that you love and paint it what that looks like to you. And however those brushstrokes come out onto your canvas, let that be your voice. Let that come out how it comes out, and don't try and, like, when there's little things that, like, the nuances of how you hold your, seriously, people want me to, like, literally.... They want, like, I'm gonna do it exactly like that. And I've seen like really disturbing copies of my work that they're trying to sell, and I'm just, like, guys, like, stop. Just, you know, do... it looks bad.
Dawn Taylor 14:45
So let's dive into that for a sec, though. When people are trying so hard to copy, and lots of people have said over the years, right? Like no, no, they're copying you, like, take it as a form of flattery. I often look at it as like, it's actually genuinely sad to me. Like, where have we lost ourselves? Where have we, as a society, gotten to this point where we can't be original anymore? Right? And the failure or the fear of all of these things behind it, where it's like, no, no. Like, what is it? What is it about that, do you think? And being that insecure?
Giselle Denis 15:20
Insecurity. They don't want to put the time in to figure out, you know.
Dawn Taylor 15:25
Oh, there we go.
Giselle Denis 15:26
Right? They want the easy way, like, well, I just want to, like, you know, I want to have 11,000 followers on Instagram, and I want to be famous and paint in all these places, and do, like, then go ahead. Like, go figure out how you're going to do that. Go figure that out. But, like, one of the ways, for example, I decided not to do that I've been ridiculed for is I don't coach other artists. I have no desire to do that. Here's a funny story. I had a lady who was insistent that I see her for coffee. We're going to meet for two hours, she's going to give me $150, she's going to e-transfer me right away. And we're going to talk, and I'm going to coach her for two hours. And we're going to be on this date. I was like, okay, there's no way that's happening. And oh, did you just tell me what I'm worth?
Dawn Taylor 16:15
That is so funny.
Giselle Denis 16:17
What? You can keep your $150. No, we're not meeting. I don't do this. Because it's one of the things that I took off my boat ,like, no, no. I've never coached artists. I can talk to you about things. But as far as like, I get an email almost a day about from an artist who wants me to basically coach them and tell them how I've done everything. Tell me everything. Tell me how you've done, how did you get to this, and I want to know everything so I can do it, I want to be just like you, I want to do all the things just like you. And, like, I don't know, flattery to me isn't appealing at all. I'm just like, I don't know, like I just say, you know, I would have to spend months with you to figure out what your end goals are. I bet you don't even know the answers to those questions. There's a whole shit ton of work you got to do before I could even sit down and talk with you. Could I do all that? Yeah, I could quit my job and coach. I could quit my job and teach. I could do all these things. And I'm like, but I don't want to do that. And I decided that's not what I'm doing. This is what I'm doing. And that's what I'm going to continue doing. Sometimes, like, you know, little things come up. And I leave space for those things. Because I'm not so like, no, this is exactly how my day goes, or this is exactly how my year is gonna go. I don't plan out all the... exactly. I want to leave space open for... if I fill everything up with all this unnecessary things that I let people say that I should do, it's such a frickin waste of time. And to do what, for what, to accomplish what? Exactly. So I can hold your hands? I can hold your hand through this whole thing? And I'm not, you know, I'm being maybe a little bit too... this is just years of people trying to, like, suck from me. And I'm just, like, if I feel like you want something from me, I don't, I have no time for you.
Dawn Taylor 18:08
So, no, but like, here's the thing. This is literally what this whole podcast is about, is the conversations that nobody's having. Right? And the conversations that people are scared of, or there is shame attached to them, or frustrations. Like, this is literally what this conversation is about. And not even just like the rant about it, but, like, no no no. It takes hard work. Like it has taken you so much work and so much effort. Like, I remember one point in your career, and I hope it's okay to say this, you were like, I don't remember the last time I had a day off. It's been literally, like, months since I had a day off. Because all week, right? It was like painting and painting and emails and building frames and canvases and supplies and, like, all of the million things that had to happen. While being a wife and a mom and you have an acreage, you have to take care of all the things. But then it was also, like, what Wednesday you'd start prepping for the weekend of like going to an art fair, or going to a street thing, or you're at a craft fair, you're at a thing right? You hang it all up and then sit there for 12 hours and tear it all down, like, I did a weekend for you. Right? It's exhausting and the energy of the people, and the energy of all that stuff. Like okay, a) people appreciate these damn makers out there that are actually putting their time and energy and effort into this. And yes, it might cost more than an Ikea painting. It should. Like it should cost more because their blood sweat and tears have gone into it, right? But with that--
Giselle Denis 19:41
And then just because you're an artist, people think they can barter with you. Because you're an artist on the street or an artist at a market or an artist in the studio, they think they can barter with you. And you're, like, a lot of artists let that - that's a whole other story - but a lot of artists let people do that. And that's really the word, you let them. You have to decide, like, you put a value on that piece of work, and you have all your reasons for putting that value on there, but if you aren't confident in that price you put on there, you will get pushed around. Like all the time. And people will, it'll get around, word will get around, like, oh, no, she'll have a studio sale in like three months. Every year she does big studio sale, so don't buy from her till then. And you'll get 70% off at her blowout sale. Or yeah, you know if you talk to her you can get a deal. Like, it's like... and I never have studio sales. I don't have sales. My prices only go up every year. Right? That's it. And my paintings aren't, and I see other artists work out there who've been doing a lot way less longer than me... way less long. Maybe there's a better way to say that? Who have not been doing it near as long as me, and you're charging like twice as much as me, and I was like, oh, okay, okay, cool. Like, fine. Like, if you can get those prices, cool. Go for it. I've chosen to have my work priced at a certain level. And then every year it goes up. And... anyway, that's a whole other story. Can I just say too how much I hate 'Boss Babe? I hate that. I hate girl boss, girl boss, boss babe. And I have my reasons why I hate all that.
Dawn Taylor 21:20
It is my biggest pet peeve. Like, I hate it too.
Giselle Denis 21:24
I had to do, like, interview questions for this other thing I'm answering questions for. And one of the questions asked was, what has it mean or what does it mean for you being a woman in business, or I forget exactly how it was worded. I gave all my answers and at the end - oh, and not to mention, like, my entire life being sexually harassed. And I just stopped. I'm like, it's okay to say, but you asked me for the truth. And it's the truth, man. If you're a woman on the planet, you've been harassed probably most of your life. Like, probably most women can say that. And that's one thing people don't talk about either. And so the one reason I hate about boss babe and being, you know, I don't like, I mean, I'm a woman, I'm she/her, like, you asked my pronouns, and people are asking your pronouns now, this is so new, the world we live in. But I just, like, I don't know. For me, I'm like, I don't know, being a human... this is what it's like being a human. Why do I have to, like, always say, like... why do we always have to say, like, because I'm a woman. It's tough because I'm a woman. Like, yeah, no shit, like, of course, of course. But I don't like to be like... it's like when people say to me, like, oh, that's such a masterpiece of a painting. And I'm like, no, it's not. It's not a masterpiece. I made a great painting. It's kind of just, I'm going off on a little bit of a rabbit trail. But like, the masterpiece thing. It's not a masterpiece. If everything I make is a masterpiece, then nothing's special. Nothing. I would say 1 out of 100 paintings stand out. And, you know, so I don't know...
Dawn Taylor 23:07
I like to think I own at least one or two of those. I like to think that I do. I own a few your masterpieces, I will say that.
Giselle Denis 23:16
The thing is because you connected to certain pieces. You can't, nobody can connect to every single one. Right? It's not possible. And, like, for you, like when you coach someone, there's usually probably a little sliver in there where the person's like, oh.... like they have their amazing hour with you, or time with you, but then there's usually some snippets that are like little gold nuggets. And that's why people go to you. Because only Dawn can present those gold nuggets. Because you're you. And you found your niche, you found, you know, what makes you connect to people and you are given these, like, moments of insight to their lives in those moments. And that's what they come for. And not everybody who needs coaching is gonna go to Dawn, because the ones that are supposed to come to you will come to you. And it just works that way, like the universe brings them to you.
Dawn Taylor 24:09
So for all of these people... and thank you, I love my niche market. Like, I love working with people with, like, business and trauma, and the combination of those, or just one or the other. Like, I love my niche market. So, for someone coming to you - because it's gonna happen, right - people will always come to you and be like, teach me, tell me what to do. Right? Do you have a recommendation on how people can approach you? And what they can say that actually matters.
Giselle Denis 24:43
Do I have a recommendation?
Dawn Taylor 24:45
Yeah, like if someone comes to you, and they're like... no, no, no. But for someone to come up to you and just be, like, hey, I really respect you and your work. I followed your journey. Like, it's really cool to watch. Like, is that something you want to hear versus, like, wow, must be nice to have such amazing, like so many followers, or do you know what I mean by that?
Giselle Denis 25:10
I'm not sure what you're getting at exactly.
Dawn Taylor 25:12
Sorry. Like when should people not say when they approach you? And what should people say?
Giselle Denis 25:17
No, I'm not like that. I'm not... because I really do think that everyone, 99% of people that say something to me aren't trying to be dicks. They're not. They're trying. They're not. They don't, even though they might say something that I'm like, what the hell? I would say most of the time, even if they said something weird, I'm like, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. There's a few in there that have been like, oh, that was fully aggressive. So no, I mean, honestly, it's all it's a whole. It's just, it tells the story. And I try and have very few things surprise me anymore. So if someone says something that triggers me, I just like learn to deal in the moment. And just go okay, at this point, like, I have an answer pretty much for everything. It's very rare now. And is there anything that someone shouldn't say to me? No, bring anything, anyone can say anything they want. And I can just laugh inside now at this point, even, like, it's very rare, like people won't be like, oh, I hate that. Like, they'll be normal people and turn the corner and talk behind my back, like most people would, right? Like, if someone's gonna say something stupid or mean, like, oh, my kid could do that. Or you start painting these, Tiffany, you could paint all of these and sell them. Like, people say all kinds of things, I just laugh and I'm like, whatever. So no, like, it's kind of funny. It tells the story. And I go home and write about it in my journal that eventually I'll turn into a book, you know, of stories of my life or something. I'm not exactly sure... that I've kind of.... I have all these snippets and I'm going to work with an editor one day. I'm not thinking it's anytime soon. I have too many projects on the side that I'm slowly sort of...
Dawn Taylor 25:51
You're like, my boat is not big enough for this right now.
Giselle Denis 27:08
Yeah, exactly. I don't like it when people lie to me. That's probably my biggest trigger. Like if someone, I met someone recently painting live, and the entire time he came... the story was, we talked, he's like, that would look really nice in my house. And like, oh, cool. You know, what do you, where do you live? And he's telling me he's got like, eight houses. And then I'm like, oh, cool, where are your eight houses? And they were all over the world. And I'm like, well, what do you do? And he's like, well, I'm, I thought he said loyal. I'm loyal. I'm like, do you think I'm hitting on you right now? I'm not hitting on you. Like, no, he said no, I'm royal. Oh, like, royalty? I didn't even know what he was saying. He's like, yes, I'm royal. I'm like, oh, oh, well, I don't even know what to say next. I'm like, what does that mean exactly? He's like, I'm from the royal family, the queen is my ninth cousin or some story. Anyway, we talked for a really long time. I found out later after, I sat down and googled him after he left, because this girl I was talking to said like, I call bullshit. Like that's not true. Anyway, we googled him and found out he goes around lying and saying, making up these stories. Anyway I'm off on a tangent. I don't like when people lie to me. Don't lie to me.
Dawn Taylor 28:28
There's no need.
Giselle Denis 28:31
I don't have time for lies. I don't know why lying makes me crazy.
Dawn Taylor 28:36
Oh, that's too funny. Reading is huge for you. And over the years, you have had some amazing books that have like, influenced your life in everything from sales to just life in general. Would you have a couple you could recommend to people?
Giselle Denis 28:56
Oh shoot. I'm really bad at remembering the titles. One of the first books that really got me into reading business books - it's so ridiculous - it's from the 80s and it's like, 'Zig Ziglar's The Art of the Sale' or something like that. It's a really stupid title. Yeah, I saw it at a secondhand store and I bought it, I was really intrigued. But I learned a lot, I was able to, like, you know, sift through the crazy talk and actually find some really good like gold nuggets that I kind of learned. And after that I really started like digging into, like, how to sell your art, like, how do you do this? And I was already really good at talking to people. But I've read books on, like, tons of of books on art sales, tons of books on running a business, conversations, how to have conversations with people, but really like... shoot, I can't, I have to go grab it. I don't remember any titles in the moment.
Dawn Taylor 29:47
If you'd be willing to send me, if you'd be really willing to send me some, I'll just include them in the show notes for people that are curious about maybe, like, what your top five are.
Giselle Denis 29:54
Okay, yeah, I'll do that. I'll send those.
Dawn Taylor 29:56
What are you reading right now?
Giselle Denis 29:58
Right now I'm reading, it's called 'Smart Women Finish Rich'. And it's really interesting because a lot of different stories that women would share about, like, their husbands passed away, and they had zero clue about their finances. And if you don't know where things are, like, it's really scary how you can just become like, almost destitute, because you didn't, like, you didn't organize stuff, you didn't know where things were, and you didn't know whose name things were signed under. And anyways, so it's really important for, I just want to think about that more and go, okay, like, where are our investments and what, you know, I know what some of the things but not answers to all of it. I don't want to be caught, like, not knowing information that was easy to know about, as far as like planning for the future. Because my husband, Neil quit his job last March, to work with me full time. So things we have to think about, like, for planning for the future, like, it looks a lot different now when he works for me and doesn't have a typical, what do you you call it, benefits and stuff with a normal job? I wish I could remember some book titles. I'm sorry.
Dawn Taylor 30:59
No, no, that's okay. I'll get you to send them to me. And I'll put it in the show notes so that people can... we'll put some links and stuff so that people can access them. And they know what some of your favorites are. So knowing now, looking back at all of this, is there anything that you would do completely different?
Giselle Denis 31:19
I would believe in myself earlier. Having confidence is something that, you know, people would.... my teachers and stuff would tell me, like, yeah, I can see you have the thing. It's just, like, believing that you can do it. But I guess that just I don't know, some people, it just takes years to believe that you can do it. Would I do anything different? Probably. I mean, would I go and take a music program at the school I went to at this, like, would I make that same choice now? No. I mean, but I don't regret it. At the same time I don't regret any decision I've made. I don't know. Not really. I mean, I love where I am now. And I loved where I was then. And all the choices I made, good or bad, wrong or right, got me to where I am now. And I don't want to say a whole lot of regrets. Just like... yeah, I maybe would have bought an acreage sooner, but we couldn't. I couldn't have done that back then.
Dawn Taylor 32:16
But even that, from the outside the acreage, I mean, it's stunning, your property, your house, they're beautiful. But you also bought it when it was like a run down condemned, like....
Giselle Denis 32:33
Almost, yeah.
Dawn Taylor 32:35
Literally, like it was brutal. And you guys put blood, sweat and tears to renovate it and create what you have.
Giselle Denis 32:44
Yeah, I am glad we bought it when we did. People thought we were crazy because the place did need a ton of work. Would I do all that over again? Yeah, probably. I'm glad I don't have to. Like at this point I think this is our forever home. We're now building an extension to our house, to my home, that's a studio space that's attached to the house. And it's a bit of a disaster right now, and it's hard because, like, when you're living in a mess, you're like, oh my gosh, but I've never... at no point was I ever like I wish I never did this. I don't think any, you know, as far as career choices and stuff, I don't think, no. One of the things I wrote down to talk about today was saying no, saying no to things. That's more about the boat thing. About, like, what I chose to have on my boat. But one of the things - back to the confidence thing - okay, one thing, not one, but this is an example of one of the things I would have done differently. I was painting - I think I told you the story - but I was getting ready to paint at a charity function. The lady in charge turned out to be, like, just unstable is the polite word. Crazy. You know, when I tell this story, and I won't say names or anything, but at the event, just as I'm about to get started to paint, and she like ripped up, like at me, and starts yelling at me. She just turned crazy. I'm like, what is, why is this lady yelling at me? I don't, like what is happening right now? And I didn't know how to deal with it at the time. I went to my car and cried. And I hadn't finished setting up, and I called Neil, and I'm like, I don't know what to do, this is what just happened. But she literally yelled at me and then hit me. She, oh, like she hit me, and I was standing there like in shock. And I didn't know what to do. So I put my things down. And her team came down the stairs to kind of welcome me, oh Giselle, and I told them what just happened as I'm like having a panic attack. And they were like, they didn't even know what to do either. They were like, oh my god, oh my god. And I'm, like, I need a minute. And I left and went to my car, called Neil, told him what happened. He's like, leave. This is what you do now, you leave. You do not stay there. And then I talked myself into staying. I'm like, I committed to being here today, I said I would be here, I'm here, I'm just going to do it. And that was, I don't know, six, seven years ago. Would I do it the same way now? Oh, hell no. I'm not, I'm not like diva person. But now I would say, I am leaving, goodbye. And I would, no explanation, I would pack up my things and leave, no matter what, because I will not be abused. That was, and now to this day, when I see that person in a public space or at a function, you've been with me at these functions, at... there was one. And I have panic attacks. And I'm working through how to, I've seen her now at a number of different functions since. I bet you she doesn't even remember what she did. I try and tell myself that, but it's just like, God, I don't, I don't know how to... sorry, let's have a session with Dawn.
Dawn Taylor 32:45
I'm like, call me. Actually, you should call me. I have some, I'll give you some strategies on that.
Giselle Denis 36:02
I just like need a way out. Like, you know, there's a few people in this world that if I was to bump into them, I need a way to, to deal with this situation. I don't know, I just don't know, I don't know what to do. That's like, I don't want to be wrong. But I also don't feel like I need to be their friend. So it's just I have nothing to say to you and then walk away. Like having that sort of, to how do you deal with conflict or difficult situations that, yeah, it's very like, does anyone else, like, listening, have you had those scenarios where you're like, you see this person who literally major triggers you and all your emotions like surface? And you're just like a different person in that moment. You're shaking, like physically, you're sweating? You can't... that's what happens. And I don't know what to do with that.
Dawn Taylor 36:57
We'll talk. I'll call you. Yeah, but that is, that is something like we aren't taught how to do that. Right? We're not taught how to deal with conflict. We're not taught how to grieve. We're not taught how to do any of those things. And that's, again, like, that's what this podcast is about is like, let's open up these conversations. But it's, let's have the hard conversations. Let's open it up to be like, no, this is maybe what things look like on the outside but like, I've put - right, you said like, since you were 14, you started selling art. You've been married for 16 years, and 14 of them you've been a full time artsist. Or 19, sorry, but like it took you 10 years before you started to actually make some money at it. Right? Like all of those aspects of it. Like that's what I want people to see and hear, is like--
Giselle Denis 37:45
The hardest part through the whole thing has been people. Dealing with people. That's been the hardest thing. And people are great. It's the few that are awful, that stand out, that make you go, I don't know what to do right now, in this moment. And it's really scary feeling... like, I'm not a control freak. I'm not, I've never been, that I know of, been labeled that way. But I don't like feeling, like I don't like when my body feels out of control. And when I don't know, I've had a few interesting, you know, very strange... but when you're dealing with the public, when you're with the public a lot, and crowds of people in places and spaces that are just, like, funky part of town, you know, you just deal with, you know, things come up and you're like, I don't know, I've ever been in this situation before. What do I do right now? Yeah, it's very, it's very interesting. Anyway,
Dawn Taylor 38:41
No, I love it. If you were to give, if you could have a billboard anywhere with anything on it, to get a message out to the millions, when it comes to, like, business, what would it be?
Giselle Denis 38:53
Don't quit just yet, maybe. Because, I don't know if I've ever felt like quitting. Maybe keep moving forward. Maybe that's a better way to put it, keep moving forward. Because things are gonna come up little burps, little things, little glitches, people, you know, scenarios. And it can be super devastating and very frustrating. And you wait and wait and wait and wait and wait for things. Like you say people think, oh, this happened overnight for her. And it's like, no, it didn't. And sometimes you get a surprise phone call, and like I'm going to a function tonight, I got a call a few weeks ago about winning a Strathcona Art and Culture award. And I'm like, the lady called to say I won, and like I did what? I won what? And here's a sad story. I was nominated - quite a few years ago, 2016 maybe - for a mayor's art award. And at the thing you're there and I was live painting in the lobby. It was a function, huge thing at the Winspear Theatre, and on the list in my category, the guy is up there reading, and you got your thing and you're following along, and in my category of like 15 people listed, there were two Giseles. Okay, there was me and this other girl. And the guy is reading through the list, and he read, I am not kidding, the other Giselle's name twice and didn't read mine. I wanted to sink into my chair and then through the floor, I was so embarrassed that my name didn't get read. Is it super small and stupid, so insignificant and dumb? Yes. But in that moment, it meant everything to me. And to not have my name read and have that tiny little one second of a shining moment, I was so devastated. So when I got this call three weeks ago, hi, Giselle, you won this art award. I was triggered. With, oh, shit, I don't want to go to that. Like, I don't want to go to that. Please don't make me go to that, bad things happened at those things. So the girl called a week ago, who called me the first time, hi Giselle, I just want to confirm the pronunciation of your name. And I called her back, I'm like, dude, you have no idea. If for one second, you felt this is a waste of time calling all the nominees asking them how to pronounce your name, let me tell you a story. And I told her that, and I said, can you imagine you in that moment, how you would feel if your name didn't get read at this thing that you got all dressed up for, spent two weeks stressing over? You're sitting there in the moment, and they don't say your name at all. They didn't even mispronounce my name, they didn't even say my name. And she was like, oh, my God. Like, I know. In the spectrum of the world of what's going on, does it matter? No, no. But in that one little moment, it did matter to me. And we had a good laugh. And it's not all, most things, Dawn, that I painted for and had these what look like shiny moments on my social media. A lot of the time I get overlooked, forgotten. You know, people treat me like crap. The ones that treat me good stand out. So I like do their events again. But most often, I get overlooked or forgotten. Just like what the heck. So you just have to go, you know what, it's probably just human error. Or maybe someone was jealous. Maybe it looked legit, got forgotten. And you were the unfortunate name that didn't get, you know, so there's been so many over the years. And it's just like, you know what, push through. I'm not doing it for them. I'm not doing this for them. Doing this for me, and my family. And at the same time, my painting, I do my art because it's not about me. This is not about me, this is for the, this is for what I'm putting out there. So all the little things that come and that distract me, and, you know, because really, in those tiny little moments of feeling like crap and insecure, I'm feeling insecure. And that's on me. So it's like, okay, so what do I do with that? Can I, do I'd let it devastate me for two weeks? Or do I just, you know, keep moving forward? Keep moving forward... just don't get distracted by dumb things. Most of the time people mean well, and the ones that don't, you don't want them around anyway.
Dawn Taylor 43:21
Right? No, it's so true. All right, let's finish off our time together today by super silly, rapid fire questions, just to get to know you in a different way. So what is something you spend a silly amount of money on?
Giselle Denis 43:39
Clothes. Yep. I love clothes. I need lots of, I need outfits for functions a lot. Like, an unusual amount of function clothes. And so I, yeah, clothes. It's bad. But it's not, because I need them. And then you wear them a lot. And then you're like, I don't want to be seen at that same event the next year wearing the same thing. Like I literally go back what did I wear the last time I was at that thing? Like, it's kind of a show? Like, I'm on a show. And I'm like, oh my gosh, like it's kind of this thing. And I like an excuse to buy another outfit.
Dawn Taylor 44:15
I've been with you. I've been shopping with you. What is your secret guilty pleasure way to decompress? I like when people are like I meditate. I do deep breathing exercises. I'm like, No, I watched Love is Blind.
Giselle Denis 44:33
Oh, I don't know that one. My favorite, I love to play music. We haven't talked a ton lately about what my life looks like right now, but I studied music and so I've been writing songs and I write so many songs. I have a new sound system in my house right now that was like given to me. Like, a $5,000 sound system. I'm just storing it for this new friend I made, but yeah, I love to play music. So I'm writing music, playing music, singing. I love to go for walks to decompress. That's a big one, going for walks. It's like my way of meditating. I love meditating. I fall asleep. But playing music is very, like, therapeutic for me. And then just sitting and petting my cats. And yeah, I like shows too. I don't watch very many shows. Once in a while, I'll get into something and then I'll binge watch it. You know, every night I'll watch an hour or whatever, but I'm usually way too tired. By evening, to watch anything--
Dawn Taylor 45:30
I don't think people realize how hard you work, and the hours.
Giselle Denis 45:33
Like we try to watch, like, literally a one hour TV series in the evenings, and most of the time I can't even get through the one hour. It's really bad. So it's, I wish, but I just, I can't, I get like I gotta go to bed. I gotta go to bed. Yeah, that was not a rapid answer. Sorry.
Dawn Taylor 45:51
No it's okay. What is a purchase of $100 or less that has most positively impacted your life like recently?
Giselle Denis 45:59
$100 or less?
Dawn Taylor 46:01
Something little. Maybe it just made you super happy? Maybe it... mine was an alcohol ink pouring class. That's turned into like a complete addiction. Is there something that you've bought that just like has completely been a happy thing for you?
Giselle Denis 46:19
I can't think of anything. Next question.
Dawn Taylor 46:24
Do you, what is an unusual habit or absurd thing that most people wouldn't know about you?
Giselle Denis 46:30
Absurd habit.
Dawn Taylor 46:31
Or just thing.
Giselle Denis 46:32
I love cats. I know people who are dog people hate that. I don't know. I love cats. I love, I've... oh, oh. Well, I love, I learned how to bake bread. Like I'm way late to the game with this whole everybody making sourdough. But I learned not sourdough, normal white bread. I really love making bread. Oh, what did I just buy? I just bought something to do with music. It was $100 something to do with music. What did I buy? Was it a microphone or something? I'm sorry, I'm bad with this.
Dawn Taylor 47:07
You're killing it. I want to thank you so much for being here, Giselle. This has been an absolute blast. We do need a coffee date again soon to catch up. And hear some of your music you're doing. Thank you for being honest about what it's actually taken you to get where you are. The whole analogy about getting people off your boat, getting rid of the aircraft carrier, is so powerful. So for anybody listening, please please please go check out the show notes we might have a treat for you. Talk to you guys later.
Dawn Taylor 47:38
Thank you so much for hanging out with Giselle and I today. I hope that you are now looking at what you need to have on your boat. And that you're around again for our next episode in two weeks where we have another amazing guest for you. Check out the show notes located at TheTaylorWay.ca for that free download, but also for all of her other contact information and that beautiful photo, I promise it's good. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you loved the show, it would mean the world to me if you would leave a rating and review.
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Guest Bio
Tess Jewell-Larsen empowers women professionals, entrepreneurs and juggling-it-all’ers to go from exhausted and overwhelmed to balanced and thriving. Tess is a certified mindfulness coach, somatic healer and a Yoga Therapist in training. Tess emphasizes breath support, mindful movement, stress management, nervous system resiliency, mindset and lifestyle shifts, and taking small steps that build up, so that her clients feel more joyful, balanced, and optimistic, and thrive no matter what obstacles come their way. Tess is also the co-host of the podcast The Happy Edit, a podcast that dives into what it means to be happy and how to build a foundation for happiness through different lenses.
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TRANSCRIPT
Dawn Taylor
I am your host, Dawn Taylor. And today I get to talk to an incredible woman. Her name is Tess. And what is our topic? Rest doesn't make you lazy. It does not mean you're a lazy person. So before we get started, I really want to tell you a bit about her so that you can be as excited as I am. Tess is a rock star. She's a powerhouse. She's also nuts because she's probably at a weird time of day in talking to me, but that's okay. She is a certified mindfulness coach, a somatic healer, a yoga therapist in training. She helps people heal. She also has her own podcast, The Happy Edits. It really dives into what it means to be happy and how to build a foundation for happiness through a different lens. And honestly, it all comes down to what most of us as business owners or humans or parents have done is we've all burned out. So let's dive into this topic today. Welcome to the show, Tess.
Tess Jewell-Larsen
Uh, well, thank you so much for that intro, and thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
Dawn Taylor
You're welcome. So when you and I first met, so for people that are listening to the podcast, one of the things I do is if I don't know the guests in advance, they've just ask me on the show, we hop on a quick like 15 20 minute zoom call to like meet, connect and figure out what we would talk about, really like kind of what our topic is going to be, but also make sure that I'm okay with it for my listeners to be really honest, right? Like to make sure it's a good fit. And we had such an incredible conversation talking about burnout, talking about what rest means, and this bullshit idea that rest means you're lazy. And that there's like this weird guilt and shame attached to it. And, I mean, I experienced this every day when people find out I nap all the time or that I, you know, book Lego building into my schedule or things like that. They're like, why? Like it's so interesting. The judgment is almost like this weird condemnation slash jealousy that comes with that. And so I was so excited about this topic today. Like this is so needed. So let's start with your story. Like where did this all start? Where did this come from? How did you grow up with your beliefs around this? I'm going to let you take it from here.
Tess Jewell-Larsen
So, uh, yeah, let's talk about the growing up part. Um, that's where it started. So I grew up with the phrase “you can sleep when you're dead.” Um, that was like the motto that my dad literally said all the time. And he got it from his dad, you know? So it's. It's been in the family for a while. Yeah, it's just very much this idea. You know, you've you've just if you stop, if you sleep, then you're lazy and you're not doing everything that you can be doing. Um, and not, you know, one side, it's not necessarily bad because, you know, it's good that you have that push and you're doing things with your life, but on the other side, it can lead to, um, not listening, what your needs actually are. And, um, in my own case, burning out, um, I was very much a product of my upbringing and just trying to do too much and also doing things not necessarily that lit me up that, you know, gave me satisfaction. I was just doing them because I kind of what I thought I had to do and, you know, have that job and provide for my family and, you know, do all those things. And, through doing that, I kind of started to disconnect from what I really wanted from things. Yeah, like I said before, like lit me up and helped me, like, cultivate my creativity. And so I was really cutting back on those things because I was doing something that I didn't enjoy. And burnout can happen if you do something that you enjoy as well. But this is just my experience. And, um, the more I was cutting out from myself, the more I stopped listening to what I needed more. I stopped listening to hey, like, it's okay to take a break, it's okay to take a nap, for example. Um, and I really stopped listening to, you know, what I wanted out of life, and I just kept doing because I thought, you know, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. And in over
the course of several years. It was like progressively getting worse. And not that I noticed it really. At the time, I wasn't really paying attention to it. I was like, oh yeah, I'm having another panic attack. What's that? Um, or like, why am I becoming so negative? Or why aren't I, why am I not doing anything that, like, is creative anymore? Um, you know, those things I didn't notice it, right? And I didn't notice. I eventually started noticing. I think one of the first things I started noticing was like, the breakdown of my relationships. Like my marriage was not awesome. I wasn't reaching out to my friends as much. I wasn't connecting with them as much. And as I mentioned, I was having panic attacks and they were becoming more frequent. And I was like, this is weird, but not really putting the two and two together. Like, what is that equal? Um, and then in 2020, thank you. Covid, with all the other extra additions going on globally, and in my own personal life because of, you know, effects of Covid, um, I ended up majorly injuring myself, to the point I couldn't move.
Dawn Taylor
Oh my goodness.
Tess Jewell-Larsen
And I mean, and when I did move, I was in so much pain. I'd like to say it was exactly that point that it was like. Yes. This is where I need to stop. It didn't, you know.
Dawn Taylor
No it wasn't. There's always like another level of burnout. Yeah. The bottom.
Tess Jewell-Larsen
It really got to the point where I just like, I mean, it was just, I wasn't in a good place. And I realized I was trying to do all these things, and I wasn't stopping because, you know, I was thinking, well, I have to do this for my family because my husband wasn't well. And, you know, there's lots of other things going on. And I was like, you know what? Um, I'm just going to keep pushing. I'm going to keep pushing. And then it just got to the point that I couldn't anymore, um, physically, mentally, emotionally. Um, and that is when I realized that I had to make drastic changes in my life. Um, so I sat down with my husband, and we came to the conclusion that in that moment, the best thing for me to do is to quit my job, which was terrifying. Um, and I know that's not available for everyone. In my case, I'm very fortunate to have that opportunity to be able to do that. Um, but I needed to have that complete wake up call and that complete change to be able to start like a new foundation. Um, and that doesn't have to happen for everyone. I'm putting this out there like it was, that was what I decided to do. And that was my situation. Um, but it's really been a journey since then of like, okay, how do I put myself back together? So physically, how do I get my body back? Um, how do I get to the point where I'm not,
like in tears every time I try to move, um, where I'm not gasping for breath every time I, you know, shift. Um, and, you know, our bodies are very much connected to our mental state. So obviously, you know, part of that like that, you know, pain management had to come from my, you know, supporting myself mentally as well. And so learning how to do that as well. Um, and it's been, you know, I studied a lot, I trained a lot with some amazing people from all over the world, which was a benefit of Covid, that was then available to do that online with, with some pretty amazing teachers. And, um, yeah. So, you know, that led me to, to studying mindfulness and somatic healing and yoga therapy. Um, and it's been a fun journey because. So I quit my day job, um, started putting myself back together. I started teaching yoga. In that like I was sharing my journey, you know, like, oh, these are things I'm learning. This is how, you know, I'm supporting myself. Um, and the students coming to my classes, they were like, oh, that's really interesting. And then they started bringing that into their lives and like, hey, Tess, like that really works. That's amazing. Um, and then they would share it with their friends. And so it was this really fun ripple effect to watch, right. Like it was, like, something that I was learning that I was able to share with others. And they were then able to share it. And I was watching this growth of this little community around me, um, that was really healing themselves through the pandemic, through, you know, the different craziness that was happening in their own personal lives. Um, and I realized that that's what I wanted to do, that that was like my passion was to help be that supportive guide and resource and really to help people heal, as you mentioned at the beginning.
Dawn Taylor
Which is so cool. So let's backtrack a little bit because I really want to dive into, like, burnout what burnout means, how to even recognize it. So, just on like the Mayo Clinic. I was doing some research on this because I have burned out so many times, and one of the things I have to tell people is like, no, you need to start watching for this, and you need to have like a red flag system for yourself on burnout because we can. I don't burn out because I'm miserable in my life. I burnout because I'm so passionate about what I do, and I'm so excited that I just want to do all the things right, and then it causes me harm, and I burn out and I crash, and it becomes this whole issue, right? And it's like, why are you burnt out again? How did you get there? And for me, honestly, it often comes, like end of the year or beginning of the year with shifts and changes and just not having capacity anymore. Right. But I was at the Mayo Clinic and it was just like burnout. Like, even just some questions, right? And it's like, are you becoming, especially around work? Are you becoming critical and cynical at work? Do you have to drag yourself to work and have trouble getting started, or are you becoming very irritable? Um, do you lack the energy to be consistently productive? And I mean, this is even at home. Right? Are your sleep habits changing or are you having unexplained headaches, stomach or bowel problems that are physical ailments? Are you finding it hard to concentrate? Are you feeling disillusioned with your life? Are you using food, drugs or alcohol to feel better or to not feel? And so many of these I see every single day in clients. We do live in the same world, right? We live in this world of people that we have a million shoulds. What we should be doing and how we should show up. And, you know, the old Pinterest wife mentality or like the perfect husband or the perfect dad, or the perfect mom or the perfect friend and the perfect everything. And I was talking to a friend yesterday and he's like, you know what I love about you? And I said, what's that? And he goes, I love that we haven't talked in weeks, and I never question that. You're still my friend. I never question that. He's like, but you're also the very first person that always is like, no. I don't want to. He's like you were so fast to, like, not go to the event. Say no to the party. Like you're just like, no, I don't want to. I don't have the capacity for that. And I said, but part of that is like when you burn out. It is so much faster to go there again. It's like you've created the pathway. And so what? The second time it's like a way easier path to follow, and the third time it gets easier, and the fourth time it gets even easier and it becomes a really slippery slope.
Tess Jewell-Larsen
Yep. Right now it does. It does.
Dawn Taylor
How all of a sudden you end up there again. And I know for myself, um, probably my worst burnout I've ever had, I was doing what I love. There was no question about it. But it was, you know, I always worked Monday to Saturday. I always had clients six days a week. And for years, like, I'm talking like seven years of my business. I worked at six days a week, which now I'm like, that's insane. Of course I needed more time off doing what I do, right? But then it was like a client and I was due to an emergency situation. Like I'm talking like lawyers and cops involved kind of thing, right? It was an emergency situation and the only time they could escape from their situation they were in was on Sunday. That was the only day they could get out of it to come and work with me. So of course I'm going to say yes, come, come on, a Sunday doesn't mean I stopped working Saturday. I decided on Sunday and it's right.
Tess Jewell-Larsen
Yeah, exactly.
Dawn Taylor
Right. And then it became one client and then a second one, and then a third one, and then a fourth one. And at one point I had gone 12 weeks without a day off. And I actually fully lost my ability to talk. I definitely had migraines. I couldn't form coherent sentences, I couldn't talk. It was about a week before Christmas. I had booked my schedule all through Christmas with no time off, and my husband is the one who actually sat me down and was like, I'm contacting your clients. We're canceling everything for the next two weeks because you can't actually do this anymore. And I was like, yeah, how did I get here? Like, how did that happen? And. I think that's the piece that people miss is that often we got there with the best of intentions.
Tess Jewell-Larsen
I think so, I think so, and like you'd say, like, you know, it can happen when you're passionate about something. It can happen when you're not passionate about something. You can get there in different ways. And it's about taking that time to be aware so that you can see what those red flags are. And if you don't know, like in my case, like I had no idea, like I didn't put the two and two together. Like this is a red flag. That's right. I mean, maybe I should have, but like panic attacks all the time. Not really a, you know, in a happy flag, right? But at the same time, it didn't, like I'd struggled when I was younger, I had struggled with anxiety and I just thought, oh, well, you know, it's just, you know, rearing up again.
Dawn Taylor
Isn't that wild?
Tess Jewell-Larsen
And it's, you know, but it's it's that our bodies are created in a way that we, you know, we have these experiences and we're designed to be able to, you know, kind of keep memory of that, whether it's a conscious or a subconscious memory. And so when something similar comes back, like everybody goes, oh, well, this is how I respond to it, right? Like this is how I get away. This is how I protect myself. And it's doing that because it loves you. And so it's like part of stepping on a burnout is rewiring that response so we don't go back into it. So it's not that slippery slope. And it's not an easy thing to do. It takes time. And I think so often when we go through burnout, we don't fully continue that process. So like we get to a point, we're like, oh, I'm fine. And then we go back to what we were doing before and we don't continue that work of checking in, allowing ourselves those active rest moments. You know, those moments where we just tune in to us and just be, right. And those moments are incredibly important because we have, you know, if you look at it like the nervous system. You have the sympathetic nervous system, which is designed there to be an acute response to get you out of a situation.
And we tend to stay in that in a much longer, more sort of persistent response, which is not a good thing. And that's where that, you know, the inflammation happens. That's where the poor digestion happens. That's where the, you know, the headaches come from the, you know, maybe you have other things going on physiologically with your body, increased pain awareness, you know, things like that. Right. So it's when we're able to shift, we're able to take those moments to allow the body to down regulate into that parasympathetic response, that calm, rest, digest response, that the body goes, oh, okay, I don't have to continually stay in this hyper, you know, vigilant response. I can rest. And that is super important. That's important for our long term. So both are good. And I think, you know we have this sort of thing in our society a lot. We're like oh you know, fight flight freeze. It's not a good thing to have. No no no. It's a very good thing. Like your body loves you. That's what it's protecting you.
Dawn Taylor
It’s literally a protection mechanism.
Tess Jewell-Larsen
Yeah. And so it's like rewiring that. So we're not constantly staying there like when we're noticing, hey, I'm in that mode okay. Noticing it with awareness. Compassion. Like don't beat yourself up for being there. It's fine. You're there okay, but what can I do now to come back into a more restful state, meeting yourself at that point and taking those small steps to lead back into a more balanced, homeostasis state.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, the conversations you and I could have on this. This is literally what I talk to clients about all the time. Right? And we do. We fight. I was saying to a client yesterday, I was like, you know, we're so busy fighting our protection mechanisms because we're so mad at them and they're making life uncomfortable or they, you know, they're not appropriate in this new moment in our lives. And I always say to people, I'm like, you can't out will, you can't willpower. You can't stubborn your way past your protection mechanism because they're literally they're designed to protect you and they're your safety mechanism in your body. And this client was like, okay, but explain. I said, it's the same reason why you can't hold your breath to commit suicide, like, or to have death by suicide, you literally can't like your body will force you to breathe. And he's like, okay, that's a very blunt way of putting it. And I said, but think about that for a second. These little protection mechanisms, you could have been in a situation where you had to duck and cover all the time, or you had to, I often see when someone was raised by an alcoholic, is they become very, very good at reading emotions and smells and sounds and tastes and everything. Right? Like they can tell by the way their parent drives into the driveway. They can tell by the sound of how they open a door. They've attached a meaning to everything, which is now this incredible protection mechanism as a child. Well that's amazing. If you stop and think about it, it's phenomenal that our bodies at the age of like three, four, five, six, like they can develop this incredible skill. The problem is that now, when you're safe and you're not living there anymore and you're outside of that, you're still reading into all of those things because this is your new way of thinking and living and breathing and sleeping like, and you do that. But we get so busy judging it that we can't sit back and be like, hey, what if I just got really curious about this? And I really looked at this in a different way, because you have to really close the loop on that. You have to close that loop of, as you know, of like, no, we have to go back there and heal that. So that you can actually move forward without needing that safety, without needing that protection mechanism again. So with your, I'm not even diving into your work because for anyone listening, you know, this is like a hard-no sales podcast, right? This is not what this is about. But also, like Tessa's info is in the notes, if you want to talk to her, in the show notes. But for you, your big signs of burnout, as you said, like you very much physically felt it. When you went back and looked at it. Were there red flags that you could see over the course of an extended period of time where it was like, oh, this is the moment I stopped doing my hair, or this is the moment that I started eating out more often, or this is the moment that I came home and didn't want to do the laundry at the end of the day, because I really just wanted to sit and veg on the couch, but my intentions behind it weren't the same. Can you look back now and see a bunch of those red flag moments? Because I think it's one thing to talk to people about, like when you hit burnout, it's a whole other to gift them like, hey, here's some red flags you could be looking at in your own world, and you could start seeing to be like, oh, maybe I'm on this pathway to burnout and I don't actually want to be.
Tess Jewell-Larsen
Yeah, yeah. No. Definitely no. I definitely look back and go, you know, okay, this is a red flag there. And I guess I wasn't one of those was being negative. I am not a negative person. Naturally I'm a very happy go lucky. Like let's like, you know, um, let's look at the positive side of things in general, right? Yeah. Um, and, and I would shock myself how negative I was getting and how, like my response was to go in for the kill rather than to just kind of process and, think about, okay, what's going on here and then move forward. Um, and I really started noticing that first with my relationship with my husband, because
shockingly, that didn't go very well. You know, there are lots of other things going on at the time. So, you know, I didn't fully process like what it was. But yeah, and looking back, I can say, yeah, that was a huge red flag. Um, another was like I used to, I used to write all the time, like, I loved writing and then all of a sudden I didn't. I didn't like, I didn't write in a notebook. I didn't write anything. Like I didn't want anything to do with writing. And I was like, that's weird. Like, and I started thinking about, like, I, I don't write at all anymore. Why is that? Oh, well. And then moved on. Right. But like looking back, I go, that's another huge red flag. Like I didn't, I didn't want to write. I didn't want to be creative, I didn't I, I sing a lot to myself. I didn't sing to myself at all for a really long time. And it makes me happy. So like, why wouldn't I do it? But I didn't. And actually, my husband even mentioned, like, you never sing while you're cooking anymore. What's up with
that? And I was like, I don't know. Maybe I just don't want to anymore. Yeah. But, you know, so like it was, it was things like that that I was really like looking back, I go, yeah, that was a huge red flag. That was another huge red flag. Um, and, and as I mentioned, panic attacks like the fact that I was increasingly having panic attacks and I was like, the kitchen was my place to have them. I'm not really sure why, but, um, I don't know, maybe I felt supported in that area. I don't know.
Dawn Taylor
I was gonna say you were safe in there.
Tess Jewell-Larsen
I felt safe so I could release. I would just be curled up sobbing, not being able to breathe, just
not seeing anything, you know, just really like everything, which is black and just, like, on the kitchen floor and in, like, cuddled between cabinets, yeah, really dark areas. And it was just, you know. That should have been like the biggest red flag. And yeah, and it wasn't like, you know, like looking back there. Yeah, there's so many things. But it's so like if you're listening to this and you're going, okay, like one of those things. Yeah, I connect with that like take a moment to process that. Right. Like, you know, maybe it means something else, but also maybe it means that you're, you know, you need to start listening. Maybe you're feeling, you know, you are disconnected from self. Do you notice if you're hungry? Like that's something that's important as well. Like for that introspection. Like do you notice you're hungry. Do you notice your thirsty right. Do you, do you notice those other bodily-like functions that we should be, you know, really obvious to like? Do you notice you have to pee or are you, like, bursting to pee by the time you finally, like, realize it? You know, like this is important too, because when we start disconnecting from those, you know, those mental things, we're also disconnecting from physical. And so when we start to bring that awareness back little by little, little by little, right. It's not like all of a sudden everything turns on and it shouldn't. We need to stay within our window of tolerance. Um, because then it gets messy. But like, you know, it's, it's little by little becoming aware of these things. You know, it's noticing these patterns that we're holding in our body. And then
once we start noticing them, that's when we're able to say, oh, okay. What is something that I can do to pause that? What's something that I can do to start to shift it slightly to then have, you know, that navigation go a different way?
Dawn Taylor
You know what? I often do an exercise with clients where, and I do it for myself because my burnout there were very, I have very, very specific things that are very tiny things. But there are my red flags. They are my biggest red flags. And one of the things that I do is I tell people around me about these red flags. I'd be like, hey, if you do this, ask how I'm doing. If you see me doing this action or not doing this thing, I need you to say, how are you doing? And yeah, one of the things and this could be an exercise even for someone, this thing is like, I have a list of like, from the minute I wake up, like the time I wake up all the way through, do I go to sleep? I write like when life is amazing and I'm thriving. What does it look like? What time am I getting up in the morning? Am I wearing clothes right? Am I showing up to my work meetings in pajama bottoms with a nice top? Or am I actually like putting on pants? Right? Pants is a big one. Like am I putting on pants is a weird one for me, right? Am I wearing mascara? Am I putting, doing my hair and makeup? Am I remembering to shower at least every other day? Am I right? What am I eating for breakfast? Am I drinking coffee? What am I listening to? What am I reading? What am I watching like, am I eating? What am I? My regular routines of dietary stuff that I know makes me feel amazing. And I go through this giant list of stuff. Right. And then I compare it. There's three columns to column one is that, column three is like when things are at their worst, what am I doing? Yeah, right. So if it says it's best, I'm waking up at 630 or 7. When it's at its worst, I'm getting out of bed at 830 or 9. Right. Okay. Well, there's a big gap in between those two because we don't go from like, amazing to burnout overnight. There are a thousand tiny steps that got us there. And on that journey there are so many red flags. Right. And so what I do for myself is then go, okay, so now I'm listening to like, music every morning here. I'm listening to like, a crime podcast. Okay, here I am, you know, doing my hair and makeup every day and stuff. Fancy. If you've ever met me, you know that I'm very, very minimal. I'm like mascara and I fill in my eyebrows and that's about it, right? But, like, if I'm not even doing that. Right, like what's going on? And it's interesting because I started to pay attention. And hilariously, some of my big ones are the first one ever to go for me is my kitchen. My kitchen becomes messy and at the end of the day, I don't clean it because I am not obsessive. Because that's not the word for it. I'm very habitual. Like I make sure every single night the kitchen's clean in the morning. Like everyone in my house knows this. Like, the first person to make coffee empties the dishwasher while they're making coffee, because then it just keeps this, like pattern going and our kitchen never becomes a disaster. So if you ever come into my house and my kitchen's a mess. I'm feeling overwhelmed. Something's going on and it's a one degree shift. It's a one degree shift off my normal pattern. But weirdly, some of my other ones and some of my biggest are, if I stop wearing earrings or if I stop wearing mascara. Those are two of the ones that go really, really fast. And then it goes like, this. Sleeping in in the morning and then it starts to spiral from there. But they're like this simple, simple thing. And I've had friends like middle of the year where we're like on a zoom call and they're like, get close to the camera. Are you wearing mascara? Because they can tell I'm not. And they're like, what's going on? Because I have allowed and this is a vulnerability piece like I've allowed other people into my life that go, no, you've requested us to call you on this. If we see this action or this behavior. Yeah, like I had a friend come over. It was about a year ago, and she's like, okay, kitchen, earrings and mascara. We need to talk because she's like, what is going on with you? Right? And it was just like, I was really struggling for a few days. I was dealing with some health stuff and I was just having a really rough week. But for me, if I don't catch those fast enough, I can spiral really hard, really fast. And so I would challenge people to do that. And that middle column is your red flag. So that's like, okay, I didn't wear mascara for a day, or it's like, no, it's a weekend and I don't feel like it. That's fine. But on Monday morning, did I put it on again? Yeah. And that's your awareness column. That's your awareness column of like when I hit this wake up time, if I look at my alarms on my phone and I'm at this time consistently, I need to just be aware of this and see what's going on. Right. And that's often where I recommend someone starts when they're feeling like they're like, how did I end up here again? And I'm like, well, because you don't know what your flags are to get like, to stop you. Right? And figuring that out. So then with that. Rest does not mean we're lazy. Let's jump back to that topic of like, okay, now you've burnt out, now you have figured this out. Good luck slowing down because the people around you are going to judge you. And really stupid meaning to things that should not have meaning. So talk to me about that topic because you were. You would recommend that as the title is like rest does not mean you're lazy.
Tess Jewell-Larsen
Yeah. So, I mean, I think this leads into that, right. Like I think so often, those points where we have those red flags is because we're not taking the time for yourself that we need. And, you know, that can show up in different ways, like you're saying, maybe putting on makeup in the morning, you know, maybe you don't for several days in a row. Why? Is it because it's a weekend and it's fine. It's not that big of a deal? Or is it just because you can't do it because you just don't have the energy for it, right? So it's like that. It's, in my opinion, it's always about coming back to that awareness and saying, okay, so how am I feeling right now? And rest can look different. It doesn't have to always look the same. And I think this is a really important thing. I think when people hear rest you're like, oh, well, that means that I need to like, take a nap or I need to just do nothing. Or maybe, maybe that's exactly what you need, but maybe your rest is not paying attention to your work and you go for a walk. Maybe your rest is meeting up with a friend because you haven't met up with a friend for a really long time. So it's about really checking in with yourself and asking, what do I need? What am I not giving back to myself right now? Um, and, and meeting yourself where you are. Because I think if, you know, if we're, like, really high up here and we're, like, all over the place going straight for that, like that low key moment is probably going to be really jarring to your system. So taking that time to meet your
system, yes, where it is, and take those small steps to come back into that more balanced state, that more restful state. And so it is really about that, you know, and I think that your exercise is great. Like having those, those things, you know, you have those three columns in your list. And I think I would I would personally add to that like a because, you know, maybe more of my background is, you know, very physical with yoga and, and that but like somatic healing but like, how am I feeling like when I am doing these things, how am I feeling in the body? Like, do I feel open and spacious? Do I stand straight? Do I, you know, in the good column, right. Like, you know what? What is happening in my body? Do I have good bowel movements? You know, you know, like all looking at all of these different things, right? How am I feeling? And then it's, you know, okay, when I'm in these, like in the, the lower states and I'm like in your example, you know, uh, you your kitchen is really dirty. Okay. When I walk into that kitchen, how am I feeling? Like how am I holding my body? Am I like turning in, am I, you know, feeling like my abdomen is crunching? Do I feel tight in my chest? You know, like noticing these feelings in the body? Okay. Where can I make that shift? How can I start bringing that spaciousness back into my body? Maybe cleaning the kitchen will be a benefit. So maybe that is my rest moment. Maybe my rest is like taking that time to clean part of the kitchen. Maybe not even the whole thing. Maybe just washing whatever is in the sink and not on the counter. Right?
Dawn Taylor
Or, you know, putting 15 minutes at a timer.
Tess Jewell-Larsen
Yeah. Set a timer. Exactly, exactly. And it's, it's about these little tiny things that we can do for ourselves. And I think so often, you know, when we go, especially when we're in that burnout state, like we feel like we have to do, as you mentioned, I should do this, I should do that, I should do this, I should do that. And we have a list a mile long of things that we should be doing. And then we beat ourselves up about it because we don't get it done. And then when we go into, well, I need to heal, I need to recover, I need to step out of this burnout. Well, I should be doing all of these things to heal and to recover.
Dawn Taylor
Gosh, that list is just as big as the list that got us there in the first place. I always laugh so hard at that where it's like, yes, well, now you have to journal and you have to go for a walk every day and you have to meditate and you have to this and you have to that. And I'm like, that's just actually more tasks on your to do list.
Tess Jewell-Larsen
Exactly.
Dawn Taylor
Like what actually motivates you? What fuels you, what fills you up, what causes you to have rest, but also with that like sometimes rested thing? No. And just not. Sometimes rest is simplifying a meal. Sometimes rest is scheduling a nap into your day every day so that you recharge sometimes. Yeah, rest is actually having a bubble bath, but sometimes rest means we need to go see a doctor, sometimes rest as we need to actually supplement our bodies. Because burnout has hit so hard, we've literally drained our body and shot our adrenals and we need outside support. Like, I think there's this fallacy of like, because so many people believe our actions equal our worth. Yes, because of where we were raised, because of what our parents were like. Because. And they did the best they could, honestly. Like they just learned from their own parents. But because of that, there are these obligations constantly. But then, like we were also raised with “sleep when you're dead.” Right?
Tess Jewell-Larsen
Yeah.
Dawn Taylor
But yeah, like I was talking to somebody about Christmas this year. And depending on when you're listening to this, it either has just passed or it's coming up, but we were talking about Christmas and they're like, oh, it's just so exhausting. And I was like, only because you make it exhausting. And she kind of gave me this look and we were just having a coffee connection date kind of thing. And I said, I'm not stressed out about Christmas at all. And she's like, what do you mean? She's like the presence and the decorating and the food and the blah, blah blah. And I was like. Yes, but what if that is actually what your people want and need and love and thrive on? And what if that is what you should do? Because that's what they're doing in a hallmark movie. Or how you were raised. And that's what you have to do, right? I think that it. A huge piece of this is number one. Take a damn nap if you need it, right? Find time to eat a healthy meal. It doesn't have to be fancy. Some of my healthiest meals are when I'm feeling overwhelmed or I have too much on my plate because I live on salads with rotisserie chicken and some other veggies thrown in. And I just. And I'm like, good to go with these, like super quick easy meals. That's okay. Sometimes it's saying no I'm not going to make a full turkey dinner because that actually is really time consuming and I don't want to stress out about it. And I don't want to financially, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, financially stressed out over Christmas this year. Yeah. Hey, what if we just don't?
Tess Jewell-Larsen
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're saying that, um, this year. So I live in Spain for listeners. Um, I'm, I'm originally from Oregon, but I live in Spain, and I've been here for like almost 15 years now. And usually every year we have some sort of Thanksgiving, Friendsgiving meal, and I, you know, spend a lot of time cooking. And we all also have friends bring dishes from different countries because we have a wonderful community of friends from all over the world. And, um, it's really fun. But this year I just did not have the capacity for it. And we were talking about it, my husband and I, and I was like, I just can't. And I feel super guilty because I know people are expecting this and people have asked about it, but I can't right now. I have so much going on and I just don't have the capacity to spend all that time cooking. And so he was like, so let's just go out for a meal, like, let's just go out for lunch. Then, like, that's not a big deal. People can join, they can join. And if they can't, they can't. Yeah. I was like, can we do that? It's like, of course we can do that, you know? And it's like, I'm in this role that I, you know, constantly am like coaching other people about these things. And I was like, you know, I have like people
expect this of me. And it's like, oh yeah. Like it's not that big of a deal. The whole point of this, you know, getting together is to be together. It's not about my cooking. It's not about, you know, all these other things that I'm putting on myself. So I think it's, you're exactly right. You know, it's about sort of noticing, like what is true in the situation. You know, what is valid there and what are we adding extra that we don't need to. And how can we reach out to our support system to support us? So if you know what is true in that situation is you need a nap, please go take a nap. If you need to take two minutes to do a little like progressive relaxation and release the tension out of the body or shake it out, right? Do that. Do it. The fight flight freeze response that's stuck in your body. Let it out so that that calm, rest, digest response can pick up and say, actually yeah. And so rest doesn't always have to look like one thing. And it's like you're saying, you know, it's so important that we really meet ourselves where we are and take those steps from that point. And it's not about adding more. It's not about doing all of these different things. It's about that one tiny step, that one tiny shift that we can make that makes all the difference moving forward.
Dawn Taylor
Well and preventative maintenance. I remember hearing a speaker years ago that was talking about the fact that he booked his time off and his calendar before anything else when he did his goals. And it was like, no, my time off goes first. Like downtime, vacation time, whatever goes first. Then it's my time with my family. Because I need number one to fulfill number two. And he worked his way down his list. And I'm not saying this in a way of oh my goodness, but I work 8 to 8 hours a day or ten hours a day or 12 hours a day, and I can't book that in and I can't this and I can't that. Yeah. You can't. It's saying, no, I'm not going to go to family houses every single weekend of every single month of every single year. I'm not going to go to every single party. I'm not going to do every single activity. I'm not like, it's finding it outside of it. Maybe it's even on your lunch hour. Instead of scrolling your phone or working through your lunch hour, sometimes you actually just go for a walk or you just go out into nature. If there's anything nearby, like a tree, like whatever it is that you can do. I know right?
Tess Jewell-Larsen
Pugs are great, they're amazing, and trees are good too.
Dawn Taylor
But it's finding those little beautiful bits of time. I was talking to a friend last weekend. We were hanging out of town together, and we were laughing because, like, we were having a lot of conversations on, like, work and life and business and all of these things. And she's like, oh my gosh, so many events in December. And I thought about it after and I was talking to my husband and I said I had this weird moment of like, I don't have any events in December. And he's like, no, because everyone in your life knows you're gonna say no. So they just stopped inviting you years ago. And I started laughing and I was like, does that make me a horrible person? And he's like, no. He's like, but you actually get to enjoy December every year and you're not burnt out by the time Christmas comes because you haven't done all the things. Mhm. And so I was laughing about it because then like his staff Christmas party next week and ye,s we're recording this end of November and you know his staff party is next week. And then the week after, you know one of his old co-workers who owns a company invited us to his staff Christmas party because he really wanted us there. And it wasn't even like a given that we would go like, he's like, if you want to, you are invited. Like, I'd love you there, but. Right. And my husband was like, are you busy on this day? Would you be open to going? Because, you know, it's like I am the first person to be like, no, nope. I'm good. Right? Yeah. And I challenge everybody listening to this. I challenge every single person to look at your calendar. And take out 1 to 2 things a week. Knock them out. Take them out 1 or 2 things a week and find 1 or 2 things that you can add in that are like your preventative maintenance.
Tess Jewell-Larsen
Mhm.
Dawn Taylor
To stop you from burning out, what are your 1 to 2 things of rest? Is it sitting in your car while you listen to your favorite song every day in your driveway or in your garage before you go in? Is that your moment of rest? Is that when you come home from work? Is it going? And just like laying down for ten minutes and having a power nap for ten minutes to breathe? Is it waking up half an hour earlier in the morning to, like, sit and just have a moment while you sip your coffee? Yeah, all of these little moments add up. So for our listeners, is there anything else that you want to add, or are there just like a few quick tips that you could give people?
Tess Jewell-Larsen
I think my tip would be and it's what we're talking about. But I think my tip would be. Take that time to really be mindful of what is going on. So at one point every day it can be. Any time of the day, right? See what works for you. It could be in the morning. Could be the afternoon. Could be in the evening. You could put this as something I tell my clients, like put a sticker on the back of your phone as a reminder. Right. And take that moment to check in. Ask yourself, how am I doing? How am I doing physically? So noticing, like, do I have any aches or pains? Do I have any tension anywhere? Um, do I feel open? Do I feel at ease? Right. Just whatever comes up, just acknowledge it. No judgment. Just notice what's going on mentally for me. How am I feeling mentally? Same. No judgment. Just noticing. How am I feeling emotionally? Once again, no judgment. Just noticing it. How am I feeling spiritually? And I don't necessarily mean spiritual as in divine. I mean spiritual as and like connection. Do I feel connected to self? Do I feel connected to the world around me, to my partner, to my community? Whoever? Right to nature. Check in with those four things. And then ask yourself, is there one thing that I can do for myself today?What's that? One thing. And it doesn't have to be a lot of time. Ten minutes. What's that one thing that I can do to get back to myself today?
Dawn Taylor
Love it. How can I love on myself even more today?
Tess Jewell-Larsen
Yeah.
Dawn Taylor
We're so busy loving on everybody else. So sometimes we need to take a moment and just love on ourselves. Definitely, definitely. Right. And I think we're so busy setting New Year's resolutions and we're so busy setting new goals, the new everything. And prior to recording today, I told you that I just, like, shut down like two whole sections of my company. I walked away from them and was like, nope, that's not what I want to be doing. That's not how I want to be serving. That's not how I want to be working with people. The one on one trauma is my jam like that, and some corporate like that is my jam, and I'm going to just stay in my lane. And it was interesting because part of that came from a few different conversations over the last few weeks, but also my husband looking at me and going, when is enough, enough? Like, what is the driver behind all of this? He said. Because it's never been about money. He's like, but what is the driver behind all of this? To do all the things all of the time. Like at what point have you earned your rest? At what point have you, you know, and, it was the most incredible conversation. Anyone who knows my husband is laughing because he's a man of few words, but mass wisdom. Right. He's very shy, he's very introverted, but he also has a wicked sense of humor. But he is also the guy that all of a sudden will say something and you're like, oh, I needed to hear that and listen to that.
Tess Jewell-Larsen
Yes, yes.
Dawn Taylor
Right. And that was part of his thing. He's like. He's like, you're not loving those. They're not working for you anymore. And he's like, but also like, why? Like what is making you do that? And it just is amazing how making the decision was so powerful. And going back to the word that you use, like the guilt that we feel for things. I challenge people to look at like, what is your expectation that you have on yourself? And is it yours or is it somebody else's?
Tess Jewell-Larsen
Oh yes.
Dawn Taylor
So if you have an expectation of yourself, of how hard you have to work, or when you have to work, or how busy you have to be, or the fact that you can't sleep till you're dead. Because guys, by the way, your body will find a way to get a nap. Whether you give it one or yes.
Tess Jewell-Larsen
Sleep is important.
Dawn Taylor
Your body will find a way to slow you down if you need it. Right. Whether you get a cold or a flu or you get sick or you get panic attacks or whatever it is like, your body will create safety for you in that way. So it's way more beneficial if you do it yourself first. Mhm. Right. But really look at those. Right. But look at those expectations and be like is this my expectation of me or is this somebody else's expectation of me? And if this is someone else's. Do I want to meet this? Is this something that's actually important? Something I need to be doing for myself? Or is it because I'm scared of disappointing them? Problem number one. But then the second is like, if this is my expectation of myself. Where did this come from? Right. Where did this come from? What happened in my life that a situation happened, that I created a new standard for myself, that I then had to create expectations in myself and really take a look at that and go, is this still appropriate in my life today? Does this still match my circumstances today? And that's a really easy way to start to see those things for yourself and go, no, you know what? I had a standard for how I kept my house, or I had a standard for how I kept my physical appearance, or I had a standard for how much it worked. But it was based on my life. Pre kid's pre-health condition pre age pre-menopause pre whatever it is.
Tess Jewell-Larsen
Mhm.
Dawn Taylor
Right. And that was a beautiful standard that I set for myself at that point. But maybe it's time to shift and pivot that a little bit, because my new circumstances don't actually match up anymore.
Tess-Jewell Larsen
Yeah, and that's okay. Right? It's okay to shift those things. It's okay to. Right. As I've said, you know, meet yourself where you are. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. And I think
when, when we take that time to kind of forgive ourselves for, for buying into those ideas that like, oh, I have to do this, I have to do that, whether it's right, someone else's opinion or our own and, you know, forgive yourself. It's okay. Meet yourself with grace.
Dawn Taylor
No judgment, just curiosity. The line I use probably 100 times a day with people. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Tess, thank you for hanging out with us today. Thank you for being on the show and sharing your amazing, beautiful wisdom with us in all of these areas. I hope that for someone listening today that if nothing else, you got given permission to go have the nap. Permission to, like, take that five minutes to yourself in the bathroom. Take the ten minutes to have a hot bath if you need to at the end of the day, but also to say no, and to realize that, like, the preventative maintenance, the maintenance of this is huge. Please, please, please join us again in two weeks for another fun topic or hard topic. And tell your friends the more people that feel misunderstood, seen and heard, the better. Check out the show notes located at TheTaylorWay.ca. We're going to have all of this information so you can reach out to her if you're looking for any support in any way. And also to follow on her journey when she lives in Spain, which is one of my favorite places in the world. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen your podcast. And if you love the show, please, please leave a rating and review. Thank you, Tess.
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Guest Bio
Paul Young, author of The Shack, Cross Roads, Eve and other books, was born a Canadian and raised among a stone-age tribe with his missionary parents in the highlands of what was Netherlands New Guinea (now West Papua). He suffered great loss as a child and young adult, and now enjoys the “wastefulness of grace” with his growing family in the Pacific Northwest of the USA.
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Transcript
Dawn Taylor
I am your host, Dawn, and today I get the privilege to talk to the amazing Paul Young. You guys would know him as the guy that wrote The Shack. If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, you desperately need to, but today we're talking about a different section of his life. Today we're going to talk about being an MK and how to keep your faith. So, MK for laymen’s folks that were not raised in a church is a missionary kid,
Paul Young
Or it can be called a third culture kid because it’s a different culture. Yeah. And third culture means that you belong to a group that is different from your passport culture and the culture that you grew up in. And so you don't fit in either anymore. And so, you know, when I'm, when I meet a missionary kid, the third culture kid, we instantly have a bond. Instantly, I was, uh, I was with, uh, Bill and Gloria Gaither in the Midwest, where they live at one point. And there was a gathering of about, I don't know, 150 people. And somebody asked me this, during the Q&A, um, as because it was in the US, Canada would be a Q and R, and because we Canadians don't have all the answers.
Dawn Taylor
I love that you say that you're a Canadian. We literally went to the same high school.
Paul Young
So they said. You know. What was it like growing up as a missionary kid and why do you have this, this attachment to other missionary kids? And I said, oh, let me explain. I said, we've got probably 40 missionary kids in this room, and I'm going to ask one question and count to three. And wherever they're seated, they're going to answer it. And I said, okay, ready? So here's the question. What's the hardest question anybody ever asks you? And all over the room, you know, without exception, they called out. “Where are you from?” Because we don't know how to answer that question. Are you asking me where I currently live? Are you asking me where I grew up? Are you asking me what's on my passport? Are you asking me? You know all of that. Where are you from?
Dawn Taylor
So very different. So let's backtrack a little bit. So you were born in Canada?
Paul Young
Yep, a year old.
Dawn Taylor
Raised among a Stone Age tribe by your missionary parents in the highlands of former New Guinea.
Paul Young
Now West Papua.
Dawn Taylor
Okay, so then had this crazy great loss as a child, young adult. And now, I do want to ask you about the statement you now enjoy the wastefulness of grace with your family in the Pacific Northwest. I think it's just a sort of Portland, if I'm guessing. Right.
Paul Young
Just north of Portland. Yeah.
Dawn Taylor
Okay. And he's the author of Lies We Believe About God, the New York Times bestsellers The Shack, Crossroads, and Eve. You've got kids and grandkids and a marriage, and I've heard you speak on the sexual abuse that you dealt with as a child and a lot of different things, but today we wanted to go at it from a bit of a different standpoint of when you're hurt within your beliefs., right? So when the hurt comes from within your faith and your culture. How do you maintain that? How do you come back to it and what does that look like? So, the first time you and I met was at a Little Warriors Luncheon. And then I was like, hey, I want to have a zoom call with you. Can we have coffee? And you actually said yes. Like he actually said yes. And I'm like, yeah, why not? But then when we connected, we realized that we actually went to the same high school and knew this same kind of neck of the woods area and some people, which was a really fun connection that we both grew up in Terrace. But let's talk, tell me about your story. From
the little boy and what that looked like.
Paul Young
So. A year old. We go to the Highlands of New Guinea. New Guinea is a very unusual place. It has over 800 unrelated language groups. Wow. So, like, they're still looking for the Tower of Babel there somewhere, and, uh, but 800 unrelated, like the tribe north of us. Danal was a was an, um, ours was a non tonal dialect, like English, but theirs was a tonal dialect, like Chinese. And, uh, right next to each other with no common languages, no trade languages, nothing separation by swamps or mountains or rivers or whatever. And so, you know, everything our, our tribe was in the valley, uh, the Barling Valley called the Cannibal Valley. That was the nickname because they practiced ritualistic cannibalism. And so it was a big tribe, 40 to 60,000 members over about 100mi². And, um. One of the biggest, New Guinea as a whole, is the second largest island in the world. And, uh, and so. People don't know it. It goes from right off the equator up to glaciers. And people don't know that there's all this diversity, um, in the middle of that country. Yeah, middle of that island. So Dani it was my first language. My first real language. It was the first language that I, I could speak fluently. It was my dreaming language. So I felt like a Dani because my parents were very much doing the work of God. And, uh, so I was basically raised Dani and, uh, which I, I thought was great in so many respects. And, um, even when I was in their, in their villages and I heard conversations about whether they were going to kill my parents or not, I never felt any fear. And, um, I, I wasn't, I wasn't white anyway. I mean, really, because you get color blind about yourself in that sense. And it wasn't until boarding school when I was sent to boarding school at six, did the actual realization that I was white happen, and that was a shock. But, you know, when I think about the sexual abuse, it began in the tribal culture, and I don't know, I don't know whether it was just endemic to the culture or whether I was targeted or not. I'm just not sure about that. But when I was sent at six to boarding school, I was targeted, there's no question about it. And, uh, and boarding school was not a safe place, but I was, I had already disassociated from my parents. I didn't have any sense of their parental relationship with me. And, uh, I'm the oldest of four.
Dawn Taylor
So let's talk about that for a second, because a lot of people don't understand that as a missionary kid, the majority of missionary kids are not raised in the village, in the culture, in the town, with their parents. The majority of them are sent away to boarding school. What does that mean?
Paul Young
Well, in our world, as a missionary, you raised your own support, but it was a requirement that you had to send your kids to a boarding school. That means at six, they put you in an airplane and they send you to the coast. In our case and it was a school from first to eighth grade. And, you're by yourself, you're just a school full of kids. And your dorm parents or your those who ran the school, things like that. And it's kind of crazy, but. Usually the dorm parents and all those. The ones who are over the school weren't those who weren't very good missionaries. And but there was no sense. And even when my parents the year before we left became dorm parents, there was no connection. I mean, at that point, they were the parents of, what, 30, 40 kids? And so there's no sense that you're connected to them in any other way than everybody else. Um, but going to, you know, being pulled from your world, your tribe, your color into a place and dropped into a world that you don't even know how to make sense of. And think about it. Six years old. It's a baby. And now they've got to figure out how to survive. They've got to figure out how to deal with the abuse that takes place. Because you got to find a way to survive. You know, and when the big boys would come and molest the little boys. At six. That was the only sense of belonging you knew. So boarding school was dangerous. There was, you know, f a girl wet her bed, she was forced to wear a diaper and sit in a highchair. You know, for meals. And she could be in seventh grade or eighth grade and, uh, you know, there was one of the kids that was quite rebellious and in their estimation, and he spent probably most of his elementary school in lockup. But there was a day where he was forced to lay on the concrete slab we had, and all the kids were forced to kick him as hard as we could. To communicate what a piece of garbage he was.
Dawn Taylor
You know.like you're sent there for, like, your parents are there to do such a beautiful thing. Like they're genuinely there to do something beautiful. Yeah, but that had to hand you over to that.
Paul Young
And so my parents went with the best of intentions. My mother's a nurse, and she knocked a disease right out of the Central Valley. You know, they had a disease called yaws, which is like leprosy on steroids. But it had no resistance to penicillin, and it was a horrible disease, a horrible disease. If you ever saw pictures of it, you just go like, that's like the worst thing you've ever seen. And, she knocked it out the, um, and then she became the one they'd come to if they had, you know, arrows stuck in them, you know, because their warfare was bows and arrows. It was a Stone Age culture. So they had no metal in it at all. And so that's one of the reasons they didn't kill my parents because my dad had brought him a whole bunch of steel axes, which were much better than the stone ads that they used. Andvso they decided just to rip off as many steel axes as they could rather than kill us. But again, I didn't ever feel in danger except from the witches. They were a little scary, but they were all old women and couldn't run very fast. Yeah. And, uh, but, um, you know, so there's, there's all these layers of trauma that was going on and the sense of abandonment. You know, I have a memory. And it was probably just before I went to boarding school. Where my dad, my mom guilted my dad into letting me go on a trek with him into the jungle. And he was mad about that. And as soon as we got out of sight of the compound, he just took off. He just took off and I couldn't catch up. And all I remember is running and running as hard as I could. And I don't know if I ever caught him. I don't know, I don't have a memory of ever catching up, but, you know, there's just things like that and the trauma of having to leave the culture itself to go to a place you didn't know or understand. That's six. Yeah. I mean, who would send their kids away at six? You know, I've got my kids, but I got grandchildren now, a whole bunch of them. And one of my daughters, one of our daughters, is pregnant with grandchild number 16. And. When you look at a six year olds. Like they've got no capacity. They don't understand anything. And, to basically be abandoned to that world. You know, it's a crushing thing. And I've talked to, you know, MKs all from different parts of the world, and they experience the same sorts of things. And a lot of them are really struggling to integrate into any part of the world, part of it, but part of the beauty of MKs. And let me say this. As they carry a gift of being able to cross cultural divides. They see things from outside the box of a particular culture that they find themselves in, because they're not in it. And so they have a capacity to see the things which don't make any sense for, um, where people just accept them without challenging the assumptions. And so as, as MKs or third culture kids. Become healthy. They become gifts to the world. And you'd be absolutely amazed at who in the world is helping solve problems that have a background as third culture kids. But you gotta get through the crap, you know, you have to find a way to come to wholeness. And that's a long and arduous journey for many of us.
Dawn Taylor
It is, and for so many reasons. Like, it's one thing to deal with sexual abuse
when you're in a healthy home environment.
Paul Young
Yeah. Which I wasn't.
Dawn Taylor
Which you weren't. So you dealt with abuse in the village, then you get sent away at six. You're now dealing with this rejection and abandonment.
Paul Young
I already had a very furious dad who wasn't a healthy man.
Dawn Taylor
So now you add that on to it. Right now, you go to this environment that's not only abusing you, but they're teaching you like I can't even imagine. And what that psychologically would do to you?
Paul Young
I have this when people ask me, is there anything you don't like to eat? I always say sauerkraut out of spite, you know? And people go like sauerkraut out of spite. And if they want to hear the story, I tell them about the day that some nice-loving Dutch person sent 50 gallons of sauerkraut to the boarding school and when they arrived, the people who ran the school, the dorm, parents and stuff, they they knew that this was brand new to all of us. And so we had a meal and uh, they put a bunch of sauerkraut on our tables and on our plates. And the thing was, if you ate all the sauerkraut before, you know, if everybody ate the sauerkraut on their plates, then they would cancel school in the afternoon, and we all go to the bomb hole. It was a, World War II was fought in New Guinea a lot. And so there are these bomb holes, and the water from the mountains would come and fill them up, and they became swimming holes. And so, yeah, it was great. And I got caught throwing mine down the toilet. And so everybody in the school got to go swimming. And a woman sat there with a wooden spoon and all the leftover sauerkraut and hit me every time I would take a bite and swallow. I spent the afternoon that way. And I must have been seven by then. Probably seven. So I don't like sauerkraut out of spite.
Dawn Taylor
No, I wouldn't either. So you lived there for how long? How many years did this abuse in all forms take?
Paul Young
Yeah, we came back when I was, um, right around ten years old, and we came back to Canada and, uh, Saskatoon in the middle of winter. Um, and, yeah, it was a culture shock. Went to a mall for the first time. And it was just like there's little doors. People went in and came out different, you know, the elevator, and we couldn't figure that one out. And there was an African American man that came through the mall, and we jumped him, four kids talking to him in Dani and wondering why he's not talking back because he's the closest thing to home we'd ever seen. And, um, so there was all this culture shock, and I moved around. We moved around a lot. My dad became an itinerant pastor at 13 schools before I graduated high school. And, uh, a lot of things were broken, porn addict by 12. And, uh, and because, you know, I had no capacity to trust a relationship. So porn is, you know, the imagination of a relationship without the risk of a real one. And, um, and so my cover skill, my survival skill was to tell a story like, which is another phrase for lying. I became a really good liar. I had already done that. My dad had beat that into me. And um, and you know, with so here's, here's what my history had done. Um, my relationship with my dad had communicated that I was a piece of shit. My sexual abuse communicated that I was a piece of shit. My abandonment communicated the same thing my experiences at boarding school communicating the same thing. We came back to Canada with no explanation and so we had to make stuff up. Moving around communicated the same thing. The self-hatred that came out of things like the porn addiction was just evidence of my theology that I grew up with that communicated the same thing. So I had a theology that says, you have, you're totally depraved. You know, it's like Luther said, we are snow covered dung, you know, piece of shit theology. And, um, so God looked at me the same way. And that was a huge hurdle. But you know, I look back at my childhood and for all the crap that was going on, there was such beauty. It would reach out. Not just in the land. But in the moments. And in the stories I was reading and in, you know, the tribe, the Dani tribe. The reason that I even became a follower of Jesus is because the tribe did. I was part of the tribe. And they did it at great cost and not because of the missionaries. Actually, the missionaries told them it wasn't a good idea because their immediate response was to build a burning pyre, a fire that was 100 yards long, three feet wide and three foot tall of all their weapons and all their spirit worshiping stuff. Not at any of the encouragement of any of the missionaries that were just there. Response of heart. And even at boarding school, you know, there were those moments we had this we have this, um, seed that had wings, you know, and you could fly them. It would just float, like, you know, it would just do this thing and float like this. And there were these huge butterflies, and there were these birds, you know, the bird of Paradise and other birds that were just absolutely magnificent and, you know, in the midst of the trauma, in the midst of the Indonesian soldiers getting drunk down in the valley and shooting up the little church that was on the property from below, and, uh, lots of snakes. They scared the crap out of me. But lots of them. And big ones and very poisonous ones. So in the midst of all this, there is, I didn't grow up blaming God for all the damage, I grew up loving Jesus. Even in spite of all this, and a little terrified of God the Father, because he looked just like my dad. But there was something beautiful about Jesus. And so that was the through thread. Jesus was the through thread. Even though He was pretty disappointed in me most of the time. There was still a real affection there and and a desperation because I couldn't, you know, turns out I'm pretty smart. And so, you know, in my teens, I was already reading, you know. Hermann Hesse and, uh, Pascal and Jacques and really heavy thinking sociologists and philosophers and stuff like that. And I couldn't find an alternative that really held water. But man, was I mad at the church. Really had a chip on my shoulder for a lot of good reasons. And somehow, and this has not been a common thing for missionary kids. Somehow I managed. Now I put Jesus on the fence a couple different times where it's like, you know, and I always ended up having to do things, you know, that being a part of something that was beautiful, a healing of somebody's heart that was that Jesus was absolutely essential part of that. And, and that would be a problem with my intellectual, you know, distance from God. It was just like, oh, crap. And, um, and, you know, I didn't know what else to do. So I left home as soon as I could. I was 16 and started working really hard, many jobs, and then went to Bible school because I didn't know what else to do.
Dawn Taylor
Where were you looking at that point?
Paul Young
So Terraces, where I graduated. Right. And, uh, I worked at the radio. I started doing that when I was 16.
Dawn Taylor
Little small town, northern British Columbia.
Paul Young
Well, what's funny is I go in there and, uh, and they and I said, can I get a job? And they go, like, do you have any radio experience? And I go, no, but I've, I've been in the play at Caledonia.
Yeah. And, and uh, I actually played and oh my gosh, they did Our Town, I was the town drunk and the evolutionary professor, I played both those roles and, uh, as. And I'm the preacher's kid in town, so. But well, we had a situation last night. Our rock n roll disc jockey who is really good left his mike open and he was dealing dope over the mic. So they said, we're going to train you. So I got 24 hours of training and I was on with nobody to oversee it or anything. I got to be the worst. Couple days, you know, radio broadcasts. I think it would be so hilarious to listen to those and but, you know, I worked hard, worked at many different things. Was a Hot Springs lifeguard at the same time, was doing construction work and, you know, really, really hard stuff, and then went to Bible School to see if I couldn't find something that made any sense. And I am so grateful. Inside of all my fury. Um, there were people that just showed up at the right moments. Most of them are women, frankly. Like Ruth Rambo, who is the president of the school's wife. And she'd slipped and I found out later, much later, that she did this to a lot of kids. She and her husband had been missionaries in the Philippines, but she would slip me a note or a book or a tape and, uh, and it would help. It would keep the movement going. But man, did I have a lot of deconstruction to do. And it took me a long time and part of the problem was you could intellectually come to a position. And you can see things, but it doesn't impact the integrity of your life. You can't, you know, coming to an intellectual position will not heal you and your world on the inside. It will not heal the broken places. And, uh, and I know, I know a lot of folks who are trying to make a change in terms of an intellectual, rational position, hoping that it will change. The things that are broken in them.
Dawn Taylor
The trauma didn't happen to our brains. It happened to our bodies and the clients all the time. Right? Is when you're scared, you don't go, I am scared, your brain has this like I'm scared moment, okay? No. Your body physically feels the scared. Yeah, right. When something happens to us that happens there. So I was, I spent some time googling you, my friend, and
I was reading an article that you wrote for something. We'll take it in the show notes so you guys can read it. I also found it on your website called The Shattered Soul and it was really interesting. I love your words that you put to this. And. The Shack, which we'll get to later, is the book that you wrote that a lot of people, I think, took the wrong way. I know there was a lot of–
Paul Young
Those are my people, right? No. Not quite. My people would be those who didn't actually read it and are still mad about it. Right?
Dawn Taylor
Oh, it cracks me up. And I remember I remember hearing about that right. And hearing this whole thing. And you write about it and I'm just going to read this for the listener. You can read The Shack as a story, but my intent was always more than that, a parable laden with metaphor. It is a true story, but not real. The shack itself represents the house on the inside. The people help you build. It is the human heart, the uniquely crafted soul that can so easily be torn from its moorings and left to flounder in the waves of a storm tossed world. Some of us had good help building the house of the soul, but many of us did not. For us, this inside place became a shattered hovel, a barely habitable dwelling of which we were intensely ashamed and into which no one would ever be invited. Here we stored our addictions and hid our secrets. It was the house of shame and pain, held together by a webbing of lies, and protected by an ever growing array of survival skills and defensive mechanisms. And we believed that God hated this place even more than we did.
Paul Young
Yeah. Pretty much.
Dawn Taylor
And those words. I read those and I went, oh, isn't that so? The things that happen to us, the things that have been done to us. Our shame, our guilt, our hurt, our pain. All of these things. And yet we choose to either curl up and die or choose to fight.
Paul Young
Yeah. Yep. For a bunch of us. You know, suicide is a is a common companion because it's the last way to run away. And we've spent our whole life running away. Yeah. And, uh, but it's the last way to run away before you hit the bottom. For a lot of us, and for some folks, it's the way to stop the pain. Um, and, uh, but for me, it was the last way to run away. So there were more than a few times that I'd just about call it in. And, uh, and I'm grateful that I didn't. So, you know, part of the implicit question here is. What was the trigger that made me start to look honestly at the damage, you know, and it's different for different people. For me, it was Kim catching me in a three month affair with one of her best friends. And that just crashed my world. And it was, oh, the shame was so profound. But the question was even deeper. And that is you can either kill yourself or do you think there might be a way to change? That was the question. And, you know, I'm thankfully married to a very, very strong willed, emotionally healthy, furious woman.
Dawn Taylor
I love that you have furious in there.
Paul Young
Oh my gosh. You know, I look back, if it hadn't been for the intensity of Kim's fury, I probably wouldn't be here. In fact, I know I wouldn't be here. And, uh, it was the intensity of her fury constantly like it took her and I 11 years to heal. 11 years. Yeah. And in a world where it's so easy to give up. I don't know why I didn't because the first two years especially were absolute hell. Um, absolute hell. I remember driving with the family through from Banff down into the Valley of BC, and I had a half an hour of peace. That's the only peace I remember in the first two years. And, uh, and I was working hard. I pulled the yellow pages off the shelf and, and looked under counselors. Not because Kim required it, because I needed to find some help, and I knew I couldn't. I couldn't come to healing alone. Everything about my life was about isolation, everything. And I didn't realize that isolation is always disempowering. So, you know, I started with the A's and worked my way down. And I found Agape Youth and Family Services in their box over here. They said, we specialize in sexual abuse histories. And Kim didn't even know about the sexual abuse. I mean, she didn't know anything. In fact, when I had my first conversation after she caught me. And said, I'm at your office and I'm waiting. Oh, and I know I'm at your office and I know and I had to make the decision whether to kill myself or go and face her, which I couldn't actually face her. You know, literally, I, I couldn't get my eyes off the floor because you can't take the risk of that disgust in the person's eyes. Who you are in front of. Just won't shatter everything. So, she talked for four hours just laid into me and at the end of it that's when I said. If we're going to do this, I need to tell you every secret I have. Because secrets have been killing me my whole life. And naively she said, bring it on.
Dawn Taylor
And having no idea what she was walking into. How long have you guys been married?
Paul Young
Um, 13, 14 years. Right in there. Because Matthew had just been born. He was like six months old.
Dawn Taylor
So how many kids did you have at this point?
Paul Young
Matthew was our sixth child.
Dawn Taylor
So you had six little kids at home?
Paul Young
Yeah, our oldest was. 13. Almost 14.
Dawn Taylor
So life's already hard just based on the fact that many kids and there's not much parenting going on.
Paul Young
Yeah, yeah. And, Kim's I mean, she comes from a huge family in which there is a high degree of health. You know, all the boys in their family knew how to raise children. They, you know, from the time they were little, they knew how to change diapers. They knew how to. Yeah. You know, all of that. She has five sisters and two brothers. And her and her five sisters are called the And may the force be with you. She was born in Minot, North Dakota. You know, there's no 50 shades and nothing. And I am very clear about this. And she would say there's lots of things that she did wrong during this period of time. And I would say I don't care. And I would say to anybody that Kim saved my life. She literally saved my life. I actually hit the bottom. When you're around somebody who hasn't hit the bottom, they will always point a finger elsewhere. They won't deal with their stuff completely. They will always find a way to make it somebody else's problem, in part, which may be true. But when you're going to face it when you get to the bottom, you don't care. You don't care who did what, it's about, is there a way to heal? Is there a way to change? And that when I went and met Scott, who was the therapist. The first question I asked him is, well, I told him all my situation and I said, can you help me? He's the first person I ever said those words to. Wow. And, you know, here I am, 38 years old and had never said to anybody, I'd worked off a persona. You know, I had such a shamed, drenched view of myself. You know, the affair wasn't about love because I didn't have that capacity. The affair was porn in the flesh is what it was. You know, it was my vacancy of soul that projected itself onto another image and somebody we knew very well and somebody whose kids who loved us. And so the damage was monumental. I still am in such deep gratitude and incredible regret. Not shame based regret, but grief based regret. And of the damage that I did and some of it's still not reconciled all these years later. And it's a timing thing and I'm not I'm not in charge of that. But one day, I said to Scott, can you help me? And he said, yep, I can, but it'll take a year and a half. I said, I'm in. He goes, he laughed at me. He goes, Paul, everybody says they're in when they're sitting in your chair after a couple of months, they'll feel smarter and more in control and they'll bail out right before the really hard stuff. And turned out I pulled this guy out of the Yellow Pages. He had graduated from Prairie Bible Institute. He had worked with a lot of churches in which sexual abuse was, you know, amongst the elders of the leadership and stuff like that, including I didn't find this out until later, including one that involved one of my uncles. And, so here I am, pulling a guy out of the Yellow Pages in Portland, Oregon. And it's a setup. It's totally a setup in the best possible way. And it took, I worked really, really hard. I almost killed myself about four months into it because it was getting too hard. And it got intercepted by a couple of people who did not know what was going on at that time in terms of my struggle and saved me and then went back to Scott. Nine months into this, he says, Paul, you're done. And I'm like. What? Like, you said, it was going to take a year and a half, and he goes. We have never seen anybody work this hard and stick to it. And it was life or death. Desperation for me. And Scott and I became friends, which is a great gift, too. So, you know, you look at all this, the intellectual stuff. I had to dismantle and rebuild a lot of that. But that's not what changed me. It's not what caused this massive shift in terms of my inside world. It was suffering and crushing and choices, and hurt that I inflicted and pain that I needed to deal with. It was that side. And a lot of people hide their deconstruction for all their internal messes, right? So they think they can think their way into health. Not going to happen. Not going to happen. I got a great poem. Friend of mine is an Aussie and uh, David Tennyson. He says, if you must deconstruct. Take every part. Weigh, measure, keep and discard necessary things. Take all the time you need, but do not camp in the ruins. Discuss discoveries, but do not raise monuments to your brilliance. Brave as you may be instead. In time, build something new. Take the remains. Sorrows and pains. New friends you've gained. And build something new. Allowing the wise few to remind you. There is a time to break down. And a time to build up. It's called “If you must.”
Dawn Taylor
It's beautiful.
Paul Young
So Kim and I are now married 44 years. We're the best we've ever been. And it just keeps getting better. But we lost some things because of my choices. And, uh, and it is smashed into my kids. And in terrible ways, and it took time for that to heal. But now I have grandkids, and one of the great unexpected beauties of having grandchildren is as you grow, your capacity to love increases. And I've been able to love them in a way that I didn't have the capacity to love my own kids. And they know it. But they watch me love their children in ways that I couldn't love them. And it's healing things that are still left to be healed in my own kids and in my relationship with them.
Dawn Taylor
You know, what I love about that is we are so quick to walk away, so quick to, we will hold people at the point in our story where our story kind of stopped with them, right? Or where there was a really hard pivot point and we will hold them there. Yeah. And we forget that people keep growing and they keep changing and things adjust and shift. And we have to give people a chance.
Paul Young
Absolutely. And ourselves, you know.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, and give ourselves so much grace. I often have described my life as beautiful, horrifically beautiful, and beautifully horrific.
Paul Young
I think that's right. And yes, um, you know, part of this journey is destroying my really ugly view of God. And taking the risks that God was as at least as good as I wanted God to be, at least as good. And it turns out that that's just scratching the surface. You know, I have people, my people who write to me and they, they write and they say I'm terrified to take the risk that God is as good as you say and you're wrong. Right? So they've already built in a God who's untrustworthy and, you know. I think the human, deepest longings are little windows into the nature of God. And if those are our deepest longings to be truth tellers, to be kind, to be good, which I think we are all already are being made in the image and likeness of God. But if we can find those deepest longings. They are sometimes grime-covered, but they are windows into the nature of God that is at least as good as our longings.
Dawn Taylor
Did you ever struggle with. and I hear this often with people that were raised, raised in any religion that they were raised like God the Father, that he's like our dad. And that for me, that's something that I always bump up against is like, I can't think of God in that way because then I think of my dad, right? Right. And that's not that's not okay. Yeah. And so, you know, with drawing some of the wording of that and shifting some of the beliefs on that because I hear that constantly from clients.
Paul Young
Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I was having a conversation with a friend and she was talking about she had an incredible father, an incredible father. And so she challenged the bad theology right off the bat because God would, was at least as good as her dad. Right? And the theology didn't even didn't even allow for God to be as good as at least her dad. But for a lot of us. God is anything but. The father is anything but good. And so there's a split inside what we would call the Trinity, you know, three persons, one essence. And so you've got multiple gods and and you've got a god of the Old Testament who is the father. Then you've got Jesus, and you know, who knew where the Holy Spirit was. We weren't Pentecostal or charismatic. We got the Holy Bible, who needs the Holy Spirit? And so so we had we had God the Father. Who is this? I got a letter from an MK and she says. When I grew up, I really couldn't define what the difference between God and Satan was, except that Satan was more consistent. And so here she is trapped in this. You know, you didn't know whether God got up on the right side of the bed today and was all based on your performance. So, it was all moralism and behavioral control and all that kind of stuff. And so, God the Father is the one that was going around killing babies and things like that, because you have to accept that the Bible was absolutely inerrant and infallible and that everything that they would say about God commanding the destruction of whole, you know, committing genocide was true that that's what God actually wanted. And then you got Jesus as the sort of commercial break. For Dove or, you know, something nice. And then you got, you know, we're back to our regularly scheduled programming when you hit the book of Revelation. I mean, there were parts of that that took me a long time to take a hard look at and go like, this cannot be true. Yeah, this cannot be true. And so I don't believe any of that. I don't believe that. I believe that Jesus and God the Father, Jesus says, you've seen me, you've seen the father. I and the father are one. I mean, there's no distinction in terms of character. Um, and there's just this absolutely union of the father, son, and Holy Spirit. So, that means that God submitted to those who wrote about Him, wrote about God. And that is part of the goodness of God, is that God submits by nature. You know. So, there's so much there is so much to disentangle and even all the crap that's going on, really horrendous stuff in the Middle East. We're still entangled as Christians in really bad theology that is wrapped up in the Middle East and, uh. And it's like, come on. But I see changes. I see changes. And it's very, very encouraging that people are beginning to hear for themselves and people are beginning to say, nope, God is at least as good as my best longings. At least. And of course, it's like I said, it's only scratching the surface, that's what I tell people. I wrote God is as good as I know how, and I know I just barely scratched the surface. It takes a lot of work to disentangle yourself. Especially when you've been taught that this is how God looks at you. So God tells you you're a piece of garbage, and then you find out that you're made in the image and likeness of God, so that patience is who you are by nature, kindness, who you are by nature. Pure of heart is who you are by nature, and so is self-control. Both things, all of these come from the inside out. Those two things are what destroyed my porn addiction. That I am pure of heart and that I am self-control, not self-discipline, that's an outside in kind of thing, and it only lasts as good as you can have the energy to maintain it. And so it always breaks down. But. I haven't had an issue with.looking at a woman as an object or anything as an object. For 30 years.
Dawn Taylor
It's amazing.
Paul Young
It is. And? And it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be amazing. It should be normal. It should be normal. And it's because we bought into all this. You know, when people behave in destructive ways when people think it's okay to kill people. Because they think God kills people. They're not talking about the reality of the nature of God they're talking about how they think about themselves. You know? If they act in ways that are destructive, they're telling you what they believe about themselves. Because as a person thinks so, they are as they think in their heart about who they are. The ways of who they are are an expression of what they think. And so we have to find the truth that I am kind by nature, that I am loving by nature, that I'm patient by nature. All the things that are true of God are true, true of me in terms of character.
Dawn Taylor
It's so easy to just buy into what we've been taught.
Paul Young
Especially when it's all fear based.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, 100%. Right. And from Christianity to like every culture, every race, every religion.
Right? It's so easy. We are so brainwashed.
Paul Young
Yeah. You know, I was having this conversation. Really good conversation. And it's like above every culture sits the kingdom of God, that which is right and true and beautiful and good and caring and confronting against that which is in us that is not of love’s kind. It is a furious fire, but the fire is not aimed at us. It's aimed at everything in us that is not of love's kind, that prevents us from being fully human and fully alive. But there is a culture of Christianity. And there's a culture of Islam, and there's a culture of Judaism, and on and on and on. And in those cultures, conversation with a Muslim friend. And it's like, you do realize that there are people in Islam that are, that live in the same ways as anybody that's involved with the kingdom of God. And we don't have, there are things about culture that are beautiful, but there are things about culture that are horrendous. Genocide is horrendous in any culture. But as missionary kids, this is what our parents were sent to do, to move a Muslim from their culture to our culture. Not to encourage their growing into becoming those who express the kingdom of God. Right? So it's a shift from culture to culture, and as a result, we destroy culture. We pull people out of that which is beautiful to them and try to, it's like bringing a Muslim into the Christian culture from the Muslim culture. And it's like, you know, we committed genocide against the Muslim culture. And they brought art and science and music and all these beautiful things into the world, and we're going to annihilate the culture. I was having this conversation with a 16 year old girl who is Buddhist, and she was a foreign exchange student in the United States, and read the shock and got upended by it. Very Buddhist family. Loved going to the temple with her grandmother, who's very Buddhist and she's nominal Buddhist. Like a lot of young people in the West are nominal Christians or whatever. And her family, the family father with whom she was staying is a friend of mine, and she didn't know it. And so she had said a couple of weeks before she left, she said, you know. I would, if I was in bucket list. I would love to meet the author of The Shack that was on her bucket list. So he calls me and says, would you like to meet with her? I go, are you kidding? Absolutely. So we met at, um, Saint Arbucks down by the airport, the patron saint of staying awake in church. And so it blew her away, right. And we started a two hour conversation. And at the end, she's like, oh, man, can I ask you a question? Um, I love my youth group at the church, and they've started to say something that's bothering me. I like what she goes. They said that now that I'm a Christian, that they're praying for me, that when I go back home that I would take a stand, you know, for my Christianity. And that's bothering me in my heart. And I don't know what to do. And I said, oh, this is an easy one. She's like, this is an easy one. I go, yeah. She goes, what do I do? I said, don't be a Christian. Be a Buddhist follower of Jesus. Because Buddhism is a culture. Right? Don't vacate your culture. Just be a follower of Jesus inside your culture. And she goes, you're allowed to do that. I said, yeah, I know Christians who are followers of Jesus. And, uh, she's like, oh, the weight of the world went off her shoulder. And she said, so what do I do when my grandmother says, let's go to the temple. I said, ask Jesus, because you're not going to be going somewhere where God is not already and you're not going to be going with people or meeting anybody in whom God knows did not already dwell. So I would think that the Holy Spirit will whisper to you and say, yeah, let's go to the temple with your grandmother because that's that's loving your grandmother. And so, you know, you can trust love. You can trust love. No, we like religion because you don't have to trust God. You just have to know what you're supposed to do. There is, there is a new way to think about the world, but trust and control are opposed, and love and fear are opposed. And the Scripture says there's no fear in love. There's just no fear. So if there's something that is fearful. It's not love. Roger Zack, who lives in southern BC, is a theologian. He's written some things about how do you relate all this to children? And he teaches children of the three things. The first thing is there is a thief. There is an enemy of the human heart that will always steal and and and kill and destroy. And that's a Scripture. And so anywhere in Scripture you find killing, destroying and stealing, that is not love, that is not God. And the second thing is that God has submitted to His own people to write about him, to write God's story. And so they're going to write all kinds of things that are not good. They're even going to say that it's God who comes to steal and kill and destroy. And, uh. so any time you find there, and the third thing he says, look for Jesus. Look for Jesus. And we both know this little girl named Anna. And Anna likes to find the hard, raunchy parts of the Bible, right? She just has a radar for things. And so she was reading about the destruction of Jerusalem in the Old Testament, and it was bad. I mean, they were killing and eating each other. And I mean, it got really bad and all of that stuff. And so. She's like, okay. Obviously that's the thief, that's the enemy. Because all of this killing and destruction and all of this theft of life and so that and yet the writer's kind of intimate that God was the one who commanded all this. And she's going like, okay, nope. Not true, not true. They wrote it like that, but that's because they didn't see things clearly. Third, where was Jesus? Her answer was phenomenal, she says. Jesus. I mean, Jesus was in the tears of Jeremiah the prophet, right? Who was weeping over the destruction? Jesus was in the tears of Jeremiah the prophet. And Bradley goes, so how did you come up with that? And she said, in the New Testament, when Jesus stands and he knows that Jerusalem is going to be destroyed, he weeps. Right? I mean, it's like, we need to learn that. That's the way of looking at things in which love is distinct from fear or destruction or harm. And we need to look for where Jesus is even in our deconstruction journey. God is not a thief. God does not cause harm. That God does not take away life. God is life. And yet lots of our brothers and sisters write out of their cultural Christianity as if God is a destroyer. And we need to say where it's Jesus and all this. And the answer is with us, in us. Even in this hard deconstruction. And we need to remember the story is not over.
Dawn Taylor
That right there. The story is not over. I think for anyone in the scene today, if you got nothing else out of this, I know some people are going to be like, wow, Dawn, that was a heavy G this episode. I'm okay with that. No issue with that at all. This lousy listener. I've no problem. The biggest thing was, it's not the end of the story and listening. It doesn't matter how traumatic your childhood has been, how hard it's been, how horrible your parents were, how broken, how broken you are. You were how much people broke you. However you want to word it, the story is not over
Paul Young
And do the next right thing. Don't future trip your process. Don't future trip your fears. Stay present. Do the next right thing and you don't have to have the God language involved in this. You know, in the deepest of your heart. I would think that you would agree that there's something bigger than you, even if it's just love. And so do the next right thing. Stay present. Do the next right thing. Love the person who's in front of you. Respond to the next right thing that is actually in front of you. That's the only real world there is.
Dawn Taylor
It really is. It's we, before we even started recording today, we were talking about how right now, like, there's a lot of really heavy, hard stuff going on in this world, but also statistically, what were you saying statistically right now? Can I get you to repeat what you said?
Paul Young
Yeah. And you can look it up on the web and just look up something like the world now compared to a hundred years ago, or is the world now better than the world 100 years ago? And you'll come up with a whole bunch of stuff and it consistently is. Yes, the world is better now. Less human trafficking, less disease, less war. And so, you know, we get invited to be worried about things that we actually have absolutely nothing we can do to control any of it. And because we have instant news and communication, what used to take folks two months to find out about, we have it in a microsecond. And you're getting all this news that supports the commercial industry because because blood cells and fear cells and you don't realize that a gal that I met two weeks ago who spent five years in prison because of her addiction, has come out and is now she started with 20 returning citizens, that is, those who are coming, exiting out of the prison system, returning citizens, which I love. And she started with 20, in a placement company because nobody would look at them because they were felons, because her requirement was you had to have spent at least five years in prison before she would help you. And yeah, so she was taking the felons and the worst, you know, the worst offenders according. to the system. And she now has a placement company that is placing 26,000 and in five years and with companies and I think around 70% of those she places temporarily are now working as permanent employees for the companies that she has placed them with.
Dawn Taylor
There's so much beauty. There's such beauty in this world and things that people are doing and changes people are making and. for anyone listening. You can make a little shift. You can make a ripple.
Paul Young
Yeah. She's five years clean and sober. Her brother is six months clean and sober. I mean, these are real people fighting real dragons and doing the next right thing.
Dawn Taylor
Thank you. Thank you for hanging out with us today. Thank you for talking about this. Thank you for being open and vulnerable and emotional and all of the things talking about life. But thank you for doing the next right thing.
Paul Young
You're so welcome. It's been an absolute honor to be with you. Love to everybody out there.
Dawn Taylor
For everyone listening, please, please, please, if you haven't read The Shack, if you haven't watched the movie, do it. Be offended. Doesn't matter. But pay attention to what the actual story was behind it before you just dive right in and get mad. Please tell your friends. Spread this podcast around. People need to hear it. Especially for MK kids that really need to hear a story of hope, a story of resilience, and of someone who dug in and did the work. Who did the work to heal. Loved hearing about the marriage. All of it. All of it. I have no words for you, Paul. Check out the show notes located at the taluka. We are going to link Paul how to get ahold of him, websites. The article thing I read, we'll link it all. We're going to link it all in there so that you guys can have access to all of that. And please subscribe now on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast. See you guys soon.
Get to know Dawn on a deeper level through her book! Order Here
P.S. I Made It, is a powerful story that grabs you through its lack of pretension and honesty. Every page reveals another layer of curious wonder at both Dawn’s life and the power of hope that moves within each of us. Dawn’s hope is that you use this book as a resource to deal with your struggles. Share it with someone who needs it. We all want to feel like someone understands what it’s like to suffer through something and – come out the other side. She describes her life as “horrifically beautiful and beautifully horrific.
Guest Bio
Doina Oncel is a changemaker, founder, innovator, social entrepreneur, and a licensed financial advisor/broker, building communities and helping families with access to financial literacy. Doina works with women and families to help them build a legacy through financial education leading to a world of wealth.
Doina was named the 2021 WXN Canada's Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award Winner. Nominated for the 2021 Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Award and the 2020 WomenTech's Global Awards in the Women & Diversity in Tech Ally of the Year; Nominated for the Premier's Award by George Brown College.
Doina is named a Role Model for Canadians by Barbie's "You can be anything" campaign; Named Trailblazer by Women in IP Institute of Canada
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TRANSCRIPT
Dawn Taylor
I am your host, Don Taylor. And today I have the privilege and the honor to talk to the amazing Doina Oncel. And yes, I asked her how to pronounce that to make sure I got it right. So today's topic is to homeless and back. Before we get started, though, let me tell you a little bit about our guest so that you can be as excited about her as I am and how honored I am to even have her here today. Doina is a changemaker, founder, innovator, social entrepreneur, and a licensed financial advisor and broker. She builds communities and helps families with access to financial literacy. She works with women and families to help them build a legacy through financial education, leading to a world of wealth. But some cool things that have also gone on for Doina is she was named the 2021 Wcn Canada's Most Powerful Woman Top 100 award winner. She was nominated for the 2021 top 25 Canadian Immigrant Award and the 2020 Women Tech Global Awards, and the Women in Diversity in Tech Ally of the year. And she was nominated for the Premier's Award by George College Brown. Guys, this girl is not collecting dust and she's not bored or boring. She was also named a role model for Canadians by Barbie's You Can Be Anything campaign and named Trailblazer by Women and IP Institute of Canada. So keep all that in mind as we talk about how she ended up homeless. Welcome to the show, Doina. I am so glad you're here.
Doina Oncel
Thank you so much, Dawn. I appreciate you having me here and I'm really excited to share my story.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, I'm so excited. I'm excited to dive into it. And for those listeners, you've already heard me fumble a lot of words. Forgive. I've had a cold for the last week and I was like, there's no way I am canceling any of my podcast recordings this week, so there might just be some fumbling words or a little bit mumbly today. But, Doina, we have this epidemic really right now, and I know it's global, right? But especially in Canada, where we're seeing this at a higher rate than ever before and more being talked about it around being homeless and the judgments, the ideas, everything around it. And you are so open talking about what has all gone down in your life. I want to dive into this and really get a different perspective on it. But also, listeners, we're going to go into like how what do we need to do about this? Like how can we shift and change some of this and support people that we know that are homeless? So let's start at the beginning. You were how old when you came to Canada?
Doina Oncel
Oh, I was 19 years old when I came to Canada. I came from Romania. And, um, actually, what a lot of people don't know. And I think it's important for me that they do know. When I grew up in Romania, the first 16 years of my life, it was, I grew up in the communism regime. And then I've seen the revolution happen where the the communist regime was kicked down. And then three years later, I came to Canada. So it was very new and refreshing. So there's so many things that were happening for me at the younger age where I feel like, yeah, I kind of build resilience. But then yes, I when I came to Canada, I was it was a lot of new things, new, um, like after the revolution in Romania. So like a new life then coming to Canada, a new country. So there's a lot of new things happening for me around that time. So yeah, I was 19 when I came to Canada and, I'm not sure if this may be important, but I didn't speak a word of English. I didn't even take English in school. The only thing I knew, I think I learned about two weeks when I got here. I knew "Hello. How are you? My name is Doina. And goodbye.: So people will be talking to me. They'll have a whole bunch of sentences, you know, saying stuff to me, and I'll just be nodding. Yes, yes, yes. Then I'll be like, goodbye at the end. But I have no idea what they're saying. So that was my first two weeks in Canada.
Dawn Taylor
Okay. So did you come to Canada on your own or do you have family with you? Did you have friends with you? Did you have
any?
Doina Oncel
Yeah, I came well, my father was here before I came to Canada. He was here. So he brought my sister and I. My younger sister and I brought us here in Canada. So he was the only person that I knew. So, mind you, one, when he left the country, when he left from Romania, I was ten years old. I was still a child. And then when I came to Canada, when I arrived here, I was, I would like to say a woman, you know, 19, almost 20. I was a woman. So I was a, you know, basically for the half of my life, he wasn't around and half of my life. Half of my life, I had him around then, and after the later half, I didn't. And then when I came to Canada, I was a completely different person. So there are so many stages that he missed from my life before I got here.
Dawn Taylor
So you came to Canada. The place of dreams and freedom and jobs and life and living this completely different world here. So you got married, had kids. Tell us a bit of your story of where you were and how, like how life started to progress for you as a young woman new to Canada that then resulted in becoming homeless.
Doina Oncel
Well, actually. So, we're going to go back to when I just came to Canada. So I came to Canada. I was here with my dad. Uh, he brought us here, both my younger sister and I lived with him. He was married. He had two children. And his wife, then my stepmother was not very fond of us being here. So, actually, I lived we lived with him for the first ten months in Canada. And then she said, we can't live with him anymore. So we had to literally pack our stuff. And then, um, living somebody's living room for, for a week until we were able to find a place to stay. Yeah. So that was the first time I was homeless in Canada. So new immigrant, young, young women right out on the streets, not speaking very well English, trying to figure out life in Canada and your culture knew everything. Then we finally were able to find a place to stay. Um, and then after that about another year and a half later. Uh, we were homeless again, but my sister and I were homeless again. We're trying to go back and stay with my dad again because he said his marriage is not working well. So, he came back to us and said, can you come and stay with me so that we can, you know, I can finally be a father, so to speak? And then we just said, okay. Yeah. So I guess you are our father. We didn't have anybody here right in in Canada. We needed to have someone. So we said, okay, fine, we moved in with him, and then, we just decided to leave because things were very, very tough. It was so, like, really, really tough. Like, he was abusive. I would say abusive, as in, like he was trying to, the word would be abusive. It could be whatever people want to give the meaning they want to give. But basically he was trying to, um, keep finances from both my sister and I. So we not have enough money to be able to move on. Um, he was tracking all, like, everything that we spend just to make sure that, you know, if we were working in any money that we make goes towards the exact expenses. So, not be able to have anything, uh, for us to be able to build a life, you know, the dream, the American, the Canadian dream, the North American dream that we wanted, we couldn't do it. Uh, but also, to make matters worse, he was trying to, um, basically like, because when, as I mentioned earlier, whenmy dad left, I was ten years old when I came to Canada, I was 20, almost 20, 19 years old. And so he didn't look at me as as a child. He looked at me as a woman and he was trying to molest me. And so I have to take my sister. And we had to leave. And then I stayed. So, the second time when I was homeless, I went and in the shelter, the homeless shelter with my sister, and we stayed for about a week. We basically run away, I took my sister, we ran away. Uh, we went to inside the Ministry of Family and Children's, inside the building. And I said, we need help. We need, you know, this is what's happening to us. We can't take this anymore. And they just, uh, you know, this amazing woman. And if she needs to listen to this podcast. Barbara, she took us on as if she was our mom. So, she really took care of us, you know? And she was, um, I would say she was very... Her words meant a lot to me because when she said, you know. You were one of these young women that I wish my daughter will be inspired by, because when we were living in the shelter, it took me one week to find a job. It took me one week to find a place to stay because in back of my mind I said I didn't come to Canada to live like this. I came to Canada for better, and there's no way I'm going for worse. Because back home I had a mother that was taking care of us. We had a place to stay. We had everything we needed. So then coming here, you know what I mean? But yes, Barbara took care of us, you know. You know, she would come and visit us in the shelter. And then me, I was like, I need to know how to get out of here. You know how to find a place, how to find a job. And I remember when I was in the shelter, um, way back when. This is 25 years ago or more. Um, yeah, about 25 years ago. Um, we were not allowed to use the phone. All the time. We had to sign up to use the phone in the shelter, and then I would just be like sitting by the phone and just in case somebody missed the time, and then they were late and they couldn't use the phone, I want every opportunity I could get. And I had a newspaper back then when we used to read newspapers, and I was to circle all the jobs, all the places to stay, and I would just go in and I use my charm, whatever, I don't know, I think I had charms but she, I would get jobs, I got a job, I got a place to stay and I got a job. But because I also went into, into welfare, in here in Ontario where I am is called Ontario works all over Canada is called welfare. So I was on welfare and I went to my caseworker and I said, I need you to help me find a job. What programs do you have? What is, you know, what do you have available? And they had a program where they were offering training dollars through any employer that would hire someone from Ontario Works. And I would just go to every employer. And I said, there's this program, I'm in Ontario works. I'm on welfare, and there's this program that is offered. And if you hire me, you get money for training. So ,that's how I look before they hire me. So then I got the job. Um, but I lived in for one week. It was very devastating and very embarrassing because,
you know, as a young woman coming to Canada, yes. I didn't have family and stuff, but then the community where I come from, the Romanian community was not very welcoming to me. Right. It was, I felt like I was like pushed back by everybody, you know, especially the Romanian community. Right. They were like, we don't want to have anything to do with you, because look at what you're doing to our culture, our, you know, to our people. And it felt like they were blaming me for standing up for myself. So, you know, being in that situation, to be honest with you is really, really tough. And I could understand why some people could like, you know, go into a really dark phase into their life having to go through that. Oh. After that, I came to Toronto. I lived in Vancouver. Back then, that was when all of this was happening, was in British Columbia. Then I moved to Toronto, and then I moved here because I wanted to stay away from myself. I want to start aresh. Um, that was like 20 years ago. So I said, I want to start fresh. I want to have a new life and start all over. And once I come here, I didn't get married, so I have my children, but I wasn't married. I was just, you know, I wanted to have children. And then because I thought, you know, being by myself in this country, I thought if I were to have children will be, will be giving me some company, but more like the love that I needed to have that I wanted. You know, I believe that everybody that's going through trauma, to be honest with you as women, you know, sometimes and in my case, especially with my first daughter, I had her because I thought, if I will have a child, I'll be loved unconditionally, not knowing how hard it is to actually raise a child. Right? So and then when I have my second daughter is when I experienced domestic violence, and that's when it was really, really harsh. I mean, being a young person new to Canada and being homeless was one thing, you know, feeling like it was the cause of a circumstance that was in not necessarily, you know, and plus it was mostly just me that I could, I will have to push through. Right? Just for myself. But now as a mother, when you have children, is really tough because so that time was the hardest part for me, being homeless is because. My youngest daughter was six months old and my oldest daughter was six years old. And then I experienced domestic violence. I had no money. I was $60,000 in debt. I was a business owner. Because I know a lot of like we mentioned earlier, sometimes you look at people that are homeless and then you judge and you think, oh, they might be there because they want to be there because they, you know, I was a business owner. I had a business that was making about $10,000 a month profit. This is15 years ago, 16 years ago. Right? And I was still broke. I had $60,000 in debt because I was with a partner that was alcoholic. Like, he would drink thousands of dollars that would go into the liquor store. Right. And instead of actually going into the household and the business and I was going, I was actually going through postpartum depression, and it was hard for me to keep track of things that were happening. Uh, you know, I used to, I didn't have his support. All right. I didn't have the support to actually get help for myself. I took it on myself. But then I didn't actually have that, you know, like, it's, I'm sure that a lot of people identify with this when you are alone, when you don't have help and support, and especially as a young mother, you are with a partner that is not supportive. You know, you have a business, but you don't have control of the money. You know what I mean? It's like it feels like it's things were just going down like, you know, the sand goes through the fingers, right? This kind of, I felt like my life was going at that time. And yeah, it was tough. It was tough because I feel like how could I be in this, in this situation. And actually while things were still holding up by very thin thread while I was in that relationship, I had so many people around me, they used to come to the house and like, you know, we have parties and we have, you know, things every weekend and spend thousands of dollars on, like alcohol and food and music and, you know, have a good time with me and a young baby and like, go through postpartum depression. And it was hard to say no to all of that. But people come to the house and enjoy themselves. But when I eventually went to the homeless shelter, like the abused women's shelter. Nobody was around after that. As soon as I got into the shelter, I used to call the same people that would come to the house and be like, hey, I want to hang out. Because for me, in my mind, I'm like, I want this to be temporary. This can't be my life. I come to Canada for this, right? It can't be my life.
Dawn Taylor
You're like, I'm here again. How did I get here again?
Doina Oncel
Yes! So then I used to call them. I say, you know, let's hang out, like, can I, it's just me. Let's go to the park and stuff. And they're like, are you still, you know, are you still in the shelter? I say, yeah, like, oh no, no, no, let's hang out once you move on on your own place because I don't want to catch anything. And I was like, what? Like, seriously? Like, what would you catch? Homelessness? Homelessness is not, you know, transferable. It's not like, what would you catch from me, really? I'm still the same person. You used to come to the house and used to have a good time. Like I'm still the same person, but now I just need more. I know I need help, you know, there were very few people actually in my life around that time that were, you know, they really. They were supportive without taking my dignity away. Right?
Dawn Taylor
No, no, no pause right there, though, for a second. That statement right there, though they were supportive without, there were very few people that were supportive without taking my dignity
away.
Doina Oncel
Yes.
Dawn Taylor
I think that. So, so many thoughts. And I'm I'm looking at even as you're talking and looking through it in my head, as someone who's never been homeless, someone who's ever had to go to a shelter, someone who's never had to make those decisions for my family, to save my family, to protect my kids, to save my life. Right, right. And I remember years ago when I owned a restaurant, um, we brought lunch once a month to a women's shelter. And my some of my staff. I remember having conversations with him about it and going, no, no, no, nobody wants to come here. Nobody wakes up one day and is like, wow, I really think I should go to a homeless shelter or a women's shelter. They have gotten themselves into a position or decisions have been made, but somebody else has caused something to go on in their life that has gotten them to this point, and this is actually a step up for them.
Doina Oncel
Yes.
Dawn Taylor
They were. And. I remember one of my staff members going, what do you mean? This is a step up? Like they're homeless. 1s And I said yes, but they had to leave a very violent or toxic situation to go here. Right. But the fact that people around you took your dignity away. Do you think that's one of the biggest struggles that comes with being homeless or ending up homeless or whatever is like, your worth in regards to what you have, what you've done, who you are, all of that is stripped away, but your dignity is taken away with it.
Doina Oncel
Yes. When people make you feel less than because now you're not where they what they expect you to be, or even what I expected to be, I didn't expect. That's not my like you said, that wasn't my dream. I didn't wake up and say like, oh, I can't wait. You know, I'm just going to check in the homeless shelter. I'm going to be there with my kids. And then we're going to depend on everybody else around us for survival, for food, for everything, for shelter. Right? That's not that wasn't my dream when when people were coming across. And they're making me feel even worse because. And those are the people I thought were my friends. Um, and I remember even before I checked in the shelter because, so what's really, um, I would say funny, but like, funny, you know, like, not the ha ha way, but funny as, like, how life works, right? It's that I just finished before my abuse, I just finished, I went to George Brown College, the one that you mentioned earlier. And they, they nominated me for the for the Award, you know, about ten years later. But, um, I studied the assaulted women's and children's counselor advocate program. So I study social work with the feminist perspective. My job was to was supposed to be me helping women as the one that I was right going to abuse. Coming new to Canada, experiencing barriers. That's what I was supposed to do. And I feel like I was my first case study. Really. But I didn't, you know, I still could not, even though I studied this stuff. And I remember, uh, and when I finally put my stuff in storage, and I had my kids in the car and I was driving, I said I was calling people, and I said, I need a place to stay for a night or two nights until I find something to get myself together. And people were like. Well, this is not a good time for me or I don't have space. Mind you, I didn't know these people's places. What they had, like what they live or anything. They used to come to my house every weekend to have a good time, but I didn't know.
Dawn Taylor
I was gonna say they were enjoying partying at your house.
Doina Oncel
Oh, yeah, there were that. Just that. But then for me to actually, I didn't know where they live. I had no idea. I just know they live in a different city or an area. But I've never been to their place, and I was asking for help. They're like, oh, this is not a good time. I don't actually have space. I don't, you know, and I remember if you're like, what am I going to do? You know what I mean? Like, I don't want to be here. Like, how how do I look my kids in the eye and say, look, you know, this is where we are. It's it's really not that, you know, a dream come true. Um, it's it was it was really, really tough and then while I was in the shelter, when I was asking people, I said, can we hang out? They'll say no, because I might catch something from you, which was kind of ridiculous. But there's a couple of people, like one one friend in particular. She has a daughter that was very close to my oldest daughter in age, you know, like two days apart. And we met in the park before all of this happened. And she used to come like, hey, my daughter wants a play date. Can you come over with, you know, with your daughter so they can play together? She never would be like, oh, I want you to come over. I want to see you. I want to spend more time with you because I don't want you to be in that environment the whole time. But she used to make it in a way that, you know, we're still the same. You're still the same person. She never made me feel like I am less than just because I live in a shelter. And she would make me food. And, you know, because she knew that I love her cooking. So she would make me food. And, you know, it was it was a little bit of normalcy. There was another friend of mine that had a restaurant back then, and he used to just say, hey, come over, you know, come by the restaurant because we have, you know, there's a new item in the menu, so I want you to try it out. Little did you know that was after I moved out. Like, you know, while I was in the shelter, I was still going in and visit. But then after I moved out for a couple of years after, he still be like, come over and just have some. We have this new thing on the menu. I want to test it out. I want you to tell me if you like it or whatever, just making it sound like, you know, I was like such a celebrity or whatever, I don't know, but, if I wouldn't go to either his restaurant, I won't have food to eat. I will feed my kids. But that's all I had, right? Like to just buy food for the kids. And then I would just go eat at his restaurant. But he never made me feel that he's doing me a favor or that he's feeling sorry for me. He didn't have that pity, you know? I was just somebody that he appreciated. And he, you know, he knew what I was going through, but he didn't want to make me feel like I was, you know, less than, you know, he added value like this. These people, this especially these two people, they they made me feel valuable. They added value to, to me, you know, during that time. And it's it's really tough. And I'm going to share another story because we're talking about how people feel when you, you know, when you are homeless. One thing I remember while I was living in the shelter, I used to. But my kids in the car and I used to go visit my mom and we used to drive, and, um, there was a there was one intersection closer to where my mom was, and there was a homeless guy asking for money at that intersection. Every time the red light would stop, people in the car would give money. At first I didn't have. I remember right before I moved in the shelter, I took the empty bottles from the alcohol, from my ex and I took it at the liquor store and they give you money, they gave me was worth $5. And so I'm like I'm going to give my, with really good intention. But I feel like this $5 is the reason why I am who I am. Because the alcohol was the reason why I was where I was. Like, I didn't want to use the $5 for me, but I want to give good energy to those $5 and pass it off to this person. So I gave him the $5. I said it was my last $5. I didn't have money, but I said, I want you to have it. And he was very grateful. And every time, like after I moved the shelter, I used to bring it to kind of, kind of pop some, you know, some desserts, some, you know, some food. And I'll just pass it on because I don't have money. But, you know, I would just eat less and I just want him to have some food too. And he was very grateful. And then one time I remember I was, uh, a few cars back, you know, and there was a car right by him. And he was sitting there and it was very polite. He wasn't like, oh, you know, like, you can tell that this man was very gracious, very graceful for
whatever.
Dawn Taylor
He wasn't aggressive.
Doina Oncel
Absolutely. No. And he these people in a very fancy car. What they waited for a little bit and right before the light turned red. Right. They took a whole bunch of change in back in the day when we had pennies. And it's like a lot of pennies. A lot of change. It took and just threw it at him and then they drove off. And the man just went to pick up the money from the ground and he was still saying, thank you, thank you, thank you. And I'm just like, I was so mad because I'm like, why do people have to treat people less fortunate that they are with that much disrespect? Do you know that it could be that you could be that person there someday? You never know. I mean, and even to this day when people talk about homeless people, oh, homeless people are there because, you know, they just make poor life choices. And like, yes, that may be true, but then do you know that that could be you someday. Yeah. Like to be anybody. And when I say tell people like I was homeless, you're looking at somebody that was homeless. Like, you probably don't see this now, but I was so like, no way were you? Yes, I was, because it doesn't matter who you are, it could be anybody and you could just be in that circumstance. You're only like one life decision away. Or it could be either, not even you that makes that decision. It could be the economy. That whatever's happening right now with people not having jobs getting laid off. And there's nothing that you know that they can do, they could be homeless with the with what's happening in the real estate industry, the mortgages, you know, the rates go up double and people are losing their homes. That could happen to anybody. Right. So. I just wish people would stop with stop, right.
Dawn Taylor
There's so many, there's so many judgments about itm around it. And it's an interesting conversation to have with people when, yes, there's drug issues and alcohol issues and a lot of mental health issues tied to many, many, many people that have been homeless. But I remember when economy was crashing years ago. I mean, probably like 10, 15 years ago, one of the big crashes that happened and they were interviewing people in a tent community in the States, and they were talking in a lot of them had lost, like it was like their retirement had been taken away and like a Madoff scam or something like that. Right? Like they had lost everything. They couldn't afford to feed themselves anymore. They couldn't afford their mortgage because of the way the rates went. And it wasn't even that they were financially irresponsible people. It was that there at that point, there were no jobs. There weren't there? There was nothing. Right. And they were struggling so hard. But I remember one couple that they interviewed. I'll never forget it to the day I die. The looks on their faces of shame. And they had kids that they could have told and they're like, no, our kids don't even know. Yeah. This couple in their 70s and their own children had no idea that they were living on the streets.
And they were like, no, we go out and we look for jobs every day and, you know, we're pounding the pavement, but we're trying to find money to, you know, pay for printing resumes and all of those things. And I think that right now, being homeless, there's so many things like that that people aren't looking at is. One is how hungry you are, right? Like think about how your brain doesn't function fully when you're hungry. Right. When you're hungry, you aren't thinking clearly to begin with. Right now. Be hungry for days and days and days and weeks and weeks and weeks on end.
Doina Oncel
How do you get a job when you don't have a address?
Dawn Taylor
Don't have an address?
Doina Oncel
Do you have address to get a job to put on the resume? You need an address, right? You can't get an apartment or anything else, or you can't find anything. Address? Uh, whose address can you use? Like, really? And especially if you are too embarrassed or you don't know how. There's no judgment onto the decisions that people make, right? Uh, how to whether they want to tell people or not. Like, that's not something that you. You know, you everybody feels comfortable talking about right to share with people. Um, so we don't want to judge. We don't want to judge, of any people start drinking alcohol and taking drugs or whatever. That would be a coping mechanism for whatever the circumstance they on. This is not some this is not us too judging to say, oh well, I didn't do it. I could just say, yeah, me, I would say the first time when I lived in a shelter, it took me a week to find a job. And it doesn't mean that everybody else had the same outcome like me. It's not that they didn't want that, but they had different, there were women that I had babies. How could you find a job in a week when you have a baby and you just know daycare, there's no you know, there's so many reasons why people are, or some people move faster than others. For me, I feel like I was lucky because I found some people that were a little bit ahead of where I was, because I decided to to find the people for me, my my people versus like looking up to everybody, uh, as to who's going to help me, people that I already had in my life before. I'm like, obviously they're not here for me and they're not going to help me. So I decided to find my my circle. Right? And then that helped me because those people are believed in me. They saw something in me that I didn't see myself. I consider myself lucky, so I found them. Not everybody has that right, because sometimes you could be in a community where, you know, it could be in a community where you are around people from the same country as you, and then you can't make a move forward because people are going to look at you different. You you're really concerned about what they might think or what they might say. So you put a facade for them. Uh, you know, or you might be around people that they just do drugs and then they just know the, the next thing that you, you know, likely are to be doing because that's what you have around. There's there's no way for us to judge again, as a coping mechanism. My coping mechanism when I was in the shelter until I found my own place, until I found myself like, I'm ready to go now was I used to go out all the time. I used to just go and buy cheap clothes and go out dancing, like, you know, I get my mom, watch my kids, I'm out. Yeah. You know, and until one day and I'm like. My aha moment. Well, I had two aha moments. One is when I was in the shelter. I remember sitting at the dining room table. We just had dinner, and I was holding my younger daughter and my on my lap. And then my oldest daughter, you know, she was sitting by me. She was having fun with her friends before she had dinner. And then she stood by me. And, you know, she was happy she ate something that she liked. I think it was. And then she said, you know, mom, I love you so much. She says, when I grow up, I want to be just like you. And I was like, whoa. I realized that, you know where I'm at in decisions that I'm making. And you know what? I'm going through life. I can't tell my kids. Do better if I'm not doing better, right? So that was my motivator. Not everybody not everybody has that. So for me, that was it. And then, the second time was when I was I told you my mechanism was going out dancing 3 or 4 times a week, I would just be going out and dance until whenever and then come home and go to work, find something to do and, you know, to make money to pay the bills. But I remember that one last time when I decided I can't do this anymore was when I bought a ticket already to go out. And then right before I left, I looked in the fridge and I saw there's no milk. So I'm supposed to because my kids are still young. They all drink milk every day. There's no milk. And all I had in my bank account was $10. And I was like, okay, so I need to change my life because I. How do I get to go out and buy a drink for myself? Like, you know, I feel like I had to make a choice. Like, do I buy a drink for me or do I buy milk for my kids tomorrow? You know, so I'm like, I sat down and luckily this was on a boat. And I feel like, you know, I look at things as though, like this was to happen so that it can force me to sit there and think. I was on a boat, so I don't swim. I couldn't even jump in the water to swim to the shore to go home. I was on and so I just felt that, you know, I need to change my life. I need to do something for my kids. I can't have them. I can make these choices. Yes, I like going out. I love dancing. Well, who doesn't? Right? I love dancing, but I when I go out, I want to be able to not feel guilty that my kids don't have food, you know what I mean? So I had to make that decision. I was stuck there for like an hour and a half, I think it was or two hours on the boat. And then it forced me to sit down and think. And my friends were like, come and dance. I'm like, no, I just need to sit here and think. And then when I got home, I decided I'm going to do something. I need to change my life. And that was, you know, but again, there that was my story. Some people could have their, you know, something else that could keep them out. Or it could be, I believe, that we have in our life. We have people that are either pushing us to go to the next level to where we supposed to be, or people that are holding us back.
Dawn Taylor
Yes.
Doina Oncel
Right. So I was lucky that I had my kids. That kind of I feel like I need something for them because it was. Sometimes it's easier when you do something like when you change your life for other people versus for yourself, right? So for me, it was my kids. I needed to change my life for them. And then there are there were also people that when I started changing my life, they were like, well, um, who do you think you are now? You know, or you forgot where you come from. You know, or you think you're a big boss now, so you don't want to hang out with us anymore. You don't want to do this. I'm like, it's not that I don't want to hang out with you. It's just that I have I decided to have different priorities, which are, you know, and I decided to be around, um, not around people, but around circumstances to make different decisions that will get me to where I want to be. You know, that was my. That was my You know, next step thing.
Dawn Taylor
Which is amazing. So the second time you ended up in or third time, the one the time you ended up homeless in the shelter with your daughters, how long were you homeless for that time?
Doina Oncel
I was there for three months. I was in the shelter for three months. And as we were mentioning earlier, it was a step up for me. At first it was a little bit like, I can't believe I'm in this situation. And nobody, you know, nobody took me in the house and like, this is the worst thing happened to me and all that stuff. But then I decided to allow what was happening, to just let it happen. I said, I'm here because I'm supposed to be here, and I'm supposed to learn as much as possible. And here are and especially that I studied this in school, right? I thought, here are the people that are supposed to help me. Because if I am ever to go out there in the world and help women like me in my situation, I need to see what that's like, right? I need to feel it. I need to know because, you know, we have a lot of people, a lot of, um, therapists. And they come and says, yeah, I know what you mean, but they don't actually know because they know.
Dawn Taylor
They don't actually know.
Doina Oncel
Right. So for me, I feel like I'm here because I'm supposed to learn. So when somebody who tells me. I'm, you know, I'm going. You know I'm poor. I'm a single mom. I don't have, you know, a place to stay. I don't have food, I have this. And if I say I know, it's because I know I've been there, right? So. But those three months that I was there, you know, were really pivotal for me because I decided to let other people help me. The people that were working there the best that they could, you know, help me. Like, I, uh, these services were designed for people like me to help me. They will not, um. There's nothing to be embarrassed of, you know, uh, although some people were making me feel bad. Oh, this is where my tax money are going. Yes, because I pay taxes too,
like, I go to work. You know, I went to work. I pay lots of taxes. I'm planning on going back to work. I'm going to pay taxes. So, uh, I'm not going to feel guilty for using a service that was designed for me. You know, it was there for me to use, right? So. And plus, being in that environment was it also allowed me to see that I'm not alone. Allowed me to see that there's other women. And I have seen women that were there, from newcomers to women that were born in Canada, women that had no education, women that had education, women that had that will stay at home moms previously and women that had their own businesses. So it doesn't matter. Right? It it helped me see. It doesn't matter where we come from, we could all end up in the same place. And that place. Allowed me to see that I'm not alone. There's other moms like me that are going through, or some women who were single. They didn't have kids, but they were, you know, and it doesn't matter who who you are, you can end up here, right? Um, and the culture didn't matter. The economic status didn't matter. Everybody was there to get the help and support that they needed. And I just, you know, allowed for all that to be. This is what it is. And, you know, and then it also being there. I, for lack of a better expression, I took advantage of that time that I was there to find myself. You know. How do I find myself? What is it that I want from life? And then what my daughter said to me that when I grow up, I want to be just like you. That was a wake up moment for me. I'm like, who am I? What am I here, you know? What do I want my daughter to see? Both daughters. What do I want them to see in me, you know? And I took that as being the the moment to change my life, basically. Yeah.
Dawn Taylor
Which is amazing. So what are some key things that. Okay. A couple thoughts. Couple thoughts here. Number one is the story about your daughter saying that to you. I said that to my grandma one time when I was quite young. I was like, grandma, I want to be just like you when I'm older. And she went, oh, shoot, I better shape up. And I'll never forget it. Like she. It was the cutest little statement ever from my tiny, petite little grandma. 1s Um, sometimes it's too hard to look at ourselves to figure out, like, I need to heal me. For me. I need to do better for me. I need to push harder for me. Sometimes that's way too hard to do. And I know even in my work as a trauma specialist, often what I'll tell people is like, find someone else to do it for. If you can't, if you can't do the work right now for you. Yes, find someone else. And they're like, Don, that's backwards of what everybody else says. And I'm like, oh, I know. But often when we have been so beaten down and don't believe that we are worthy of more. We don't know how to fight for ourselves so we can fight, you know, for our dog, or we can fight for our neighbor kid, or we can fight for our children or our, you know, someone else in our life that you're like, I need to be better for them. I have to be mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, relationally, financially healthier for them. Yes, often that's a big help to like get people over that initial hurdle, right? To be like, who am I fighting for? Because they they don't have that. They don't have that in them anymore. Right? But the other thing is I wanted to ask is what? So having lived in the shelters and having done that, it's easy to go, well, no, I'm not going to give money to a homeless person because they're going to just spend it on drugs, which is the line that you and I have talked about. Like, we hear this all the time. Or like, no, look at them. They have a cell phone, right? They must have money because of that. Well, guys, if you can see doing his face. These are the beliefs and the judgments that come with. Not understanding. Right. And the whole purpose of this podcast is like, no, no, no. Yes, yes, there are people out there that are just rough and there are people that are choosing what they're doing, and there are people that are just very far gone and drugs and alcohol and don't desire anything better for themselves. But that is not everybody and that is not the majority.
Doina Oncel
Mhm.
Dawn Taylor
So, for what are some easy, tangible things that people could do to support people to love on the homeless, to give them, give them that leg up that they might need in order to get where they're trying to go in life.
Doina Oncel
Well, first let me just say the reason why I was like, oh my God, I had a reaction to what you said because, you know, people don't understand that just because somebody has a phone, it doesn't necessarily mean that they bought it or that even works properly.
Dawn Taylor
Oh my gosh. Right. So but again we talked about like you have to have a phone number to get a job. You have to have a phone number. Like I've often thought like that would be one of the best things you could do for the homeless is to hand out cell phones with pre-paid calling cards on them. Like, yes, give them an old flip phone with some minutes on it so that you can actually do this something, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it works, you know, properly.
Doina Oncel
So it might be an old phone it must have been donated to from another organization that they were part of, like an A program that they went to. You never know. Or could it be that the one thing that they have left from their previous life. So why judge you know, again it comes with judgment, right? People use the, the judge, saboteur not just on themselves but on to others about what they are. Yeah. The thing is, though, is something that I learned from my grandmother is that when you give to people, you give freely because you feel that it's the right thing to do whatever they do with whatever you gave them, it's on them. If they're using it for good or bad, that's on them. It's not on you. You're not here to judge. And I'm not saying that they can, you know, I support drug use or anything like that. Absolutely not. But if you can take on a person and say. You know, because you're asking me, how can we help? What can we do? We can ask them. Sit down and talk to them. Have a conversation and, you know, figure out, like, what do you want? I had when I moved from the shelter, I decided I wanted to do something good. I wanted to find a man that people throw money at him. And I couldn't find him anymore. He wasn't there anymore. But then I want I started, I got a job, so I was working, and, I would go into this, this mall where this homeless guy would come. He opened the door, hoping people will actually give him money. Here we are. We go to this really expensive place, and we have people that were hired to open the door. We give them a tip, but then we have a homeless person that opens the door for us, and we just judge them because I'm not going to give you money because like, no, let's not do that. Because, you know, they're working for the money when you think about it. But then I saw him there for a couple of months and I whenever I had change, I would give him money. I would, you know, I'll give him $1, $2, whatever I had. And then it was around the holidays and I noticed that he was he was still in a t shirt. Like the holidays mean like winter time. Yes. So he was in a t shirt and very, you know, he didn't have much clothes. And I said, I started talking to him. I said I didn't want to assume, hey, I want to give you some clothes, you know, and then I, I talked to him and I said, hey. You know, I started with the conversation. I was, you know, back in the day, you know, when I was I was having a hard time and I started to talk to him about me being homeless. And I lived in a shelter and stuff, and I'm like, I don't know your situation. I don't know where you are, but, you know, I just kind of want to. Let's talk, like two people. I got him coffee and we were having coffee and we're talking and then, you know, and I said, if there's anybody were to do anything for you to help and support you, what would you want? Well, what would that be? He goes, oh, I need, I need jacket and and clothes for winter. He, you know, he just needed clothes for he was worried that winter is coming. He has no, no clothes. And I say, okay, well what size are you. And he told me size. I went to Goodwill because I didn't have money. So I went to Goodwill. I bought secondhand stuff. I gave myself a budget like I do with everything else. And I said, okay, I only have like $20. What can I buy for $20? And I bought like a pair of pants, a sweater, a jacket, and I believe it was, I went to the dollar store and I passed out like a scarf and stuff, you know, because I want to get something new. So I gave him that. And, you know, I went the next day, he was like, oh my God, he was in tears again. The way to support is to ask, to ask people. Like, what do you need? Because some person we think we might do and again, we might come with good intentions to give someone something or to help them in a way like, oh, here, I'm going to buy you, But that's not what they actually need. They might need they in their mind, you know, they might need clothes or they might need, um, a contact or where they could go and stay because a lot of homeless shelters, and especially for men, they're not always available. They have the the limits. Right. You can only stay here for like 1 or 2 nights or, you know, you can come back here after, you know, after 30 days or whatever. You can go to this different shelter if you want to take showers and some. Then again, it comes with limitations, which is something that everyday people don't know. They think, just go to a shelter like go and stay there. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's available. So we want to talk to them and ask them like what you know, if if you know, if you need if you were to need any help right now, what would that be? Right. Um, and again, some people might say, no, I don't want anything and just walk away. Simple as that. Don't don't say like, well, I'm trying to help you and you don't want it, and you're a loser. Just walk away. Just be be kind. I think the most important thing we need to remember is to be kind. Right. Everybody.
Dawn Taylor
People in my inner circle know I'm a bit of a giver. I like to give, give, give, give, give. It's kind of a toxic trait of mine in a lot of ways and but also beautiful. And I know one thing that I started doing years ago was if I pulled up to like a gas station, there were homeless people there. I often don't have cash on me. Right. So it's not easy just to be like, here's a $5 bill or a $10 bill, or go buy or sell something. I'd say, hey, can I pick you up anything while I'm inside? Do you need anything? Right. And I remember um one gentleman I was in the Okanagan and Canadians know that is in British Columbia. And um I was there in this man looked at me and he goes anything. And I went, yeah, anything. What would you love? He just wanted a cup of hot chocolate like he had drank at his grandma's when he was a little kid. And when I handed it to him, he just started crying and he asked for a toothbrush and toothpaste. It's like, I don't know if they have it in there, but I just want to feel clean teeth again. And I was like, yes, yes,
I can get this for you. And so I ended up buying a few sets of that and gave it all to him. And I was like, go share this with your friends. And he was like, thank you. And I think it's something so simple that, you know, you don't need to hand them cash. You don't need to do that. I owned a restaurant years ago, and there was a homeless man that lived in the back alley, and I asked him one time, I was like, can we like, can we feed you like, is there anything that we can do? And he refused to take. He had such pride. He refused to take. And I said, what if I hired you? And he kind of gave me this funny look, but he would wash all my restaurant windows, right? He'dome and do the most incredible job. And I would pay him with food and cash, and he would wash them once a week for the longest time, and then he would disappear. And then he'd come back a few months later, and then he would do it again, and he disappear for months on end, and then he come back. And this is just like our pattern. And I remember talking to a friend of mine who volunteered at a homeless shelter years later, and she said, that was his pattern, is he had way too much pride, but he knew he needed to work for his drug money and his alcohol money. And then he'd go on a bender and then all of a sudden he'd be like, okay, no, I'm back again. I can do this. I can stay sober. I can do what I need to do. And he'd earn all his money again, and then he'd end up back on a bender.
Doina Oncel
You might have been like, to be honest, you, when you look at that, right? If you wouldn't have had that support, he could have been just ending up disappearing forever.
Dawn Taylor
Well, you just don't know exactly.
Doina Oncel
For those times when you're offering him the help and support like he would. You know, you might have been something that will even get him out of being high says, you know what? I need to get up because somebody's waiting for me to wash their windows instead of looking at the other way around. Right. We can look at it, say, because there's many people that could get into that situation and because they have something to hold on to or somebody that they know that you're willing to have you. And for him probably was like, okay, you know what? I've had enough of this. Like, this person is waiting for me and she was good to me. You probably show some some sort of kindness where it helped him get out of zone when he was high or, you know, drugs or whatever the case was for him. Or maybe he was somewhere else. We don't know that. We just know that, you know, he would come back and you could have been the lifeline for him at that time.
Dawn Taylor
And you just don't know. And I think for a lot of people, it's whether you're donating to the food bank or you're donating to a shelter, or you're volunteering at a shelter, or I know lots of people that do the large Ziploc bags in their car, and they'll always have a few that have, like, you know, a $20 bill and some snacks and different things in them. I think there's just a piece of compassion. And when you've had your dignity stripped so hard so far, and you have right, people judge out of fear. People judge from a place of fear. And I find the biggest one is like, it's a fear that like, what if I could also end up there, right? So it's easy to judge someone else for being there. It's easy to judge someone else, you know, for being broke or for having too much debt, or for going through a divorce, or for having to leave an abusive relationship or all of those things. But at the core of it is like, what is it about it that scares me so bad?
Doina Oncel
Um, yeah.
Dawn Taylor
Right. And so based on that really stepping out and going, no, no, no. Maybe I'm not comfortable walking down the street and handing out food to the homeless, but I'm comfortable donating money to a food bank where I know they can go and get food.
Doina Oncel
Yes.
Dawn Taylor
Or to, you know, anytime we donate anything to like to give away for like second hand stores here Edmonton, there's a place called Hope Mission and it's a place for it's a second hand store, but all the workers are volunteers and all the money goes to feeding the homeless and clothing them and housing them and giving them that leg up. You know, it's making a decision to go out of your way to find an organization that really hits your heart, and your heart feels safe donating. Right? When I had the restaurant, it was easy to have this man cleaned my windows. He wasn't violent. We didn't feel like we were in danger. We had a lot of cops come in and eat there, and I asked them, like, do you know anything about him? And they're like, no, he's totally safe. Like you don't have to fear him in your business. Because some people were more scary. So I could do that. I could deliver meals to a shelter, I could do those things right. That was my comfort level. But I think to just walk past somebody and judge and throw money through pennies, not even money, pennies at them, I know. Right. Or to do that, it's beautiful, I love that. I love that we're giving people some ideas on things that they can do and they can support, because it could be, it could be. You that ends up there. It could be your next door neighbor that ends up there. It could be your friend. It could be your friend. Your grandchildren. Right? Anybody from your family could be. Yes, absolutely.
Doina Oncel
And if we donate money to a food bank, they actually able to buy more for if we were to go to a store. Right. And we can, you know, store they have like donate for the food. I'd much rather donate money to the food bank than to the store, only because the food bank is able to buy more. Like they can stretch a dollar more.
Dawn Taylor
Yeah, they can.
Doina Oncel
Right. So then plus I'm all advocating about employee people employing people. And when you're saying there's a secondhand store, there's a lot of second hand stores here that hire people that are that come with a record or come with, um, from welfare. You know, they give them the second chance and I'm all for that. I support that so much because it's like, if we don't have these programs, you know, it's hard for people to come out, you know, out of circumstances that they enter. Right, I have seen somebody post actually on, on Facebook post and said, I want to, I want to, I have some clothes and I want to donate. I do not want to give it to a secondhand store to sell them for money. I want to donate it directly to the, um, a homeless woman. There's a pros and cons to both, right? Yeah. The pro for that is that you give it directly to that woman. But then you have to find that homeless woman that has the size, you know, your size and all that stuff. So you have to do the research yourself. Or you can donate it to, um, a homeless shelter. Some homeless shelters don't want to take a lot of clothes because of the bedbugs. So they want to make sure that, you know, they much rather, you know, get the money and they can buy the clothes, or you can just donate to the second hand store, and somebody could buy for low cost. Right? And actually employs the woman that is homeless that you want to support her directly. She might get a job there. Right? So when you think about it that way versus thinking, I don't want to do this because, you know, you know that I have a charity, right? Like I started a charity to support girls in and to get into STEM. I'm very big on employment and the next generation because I really feel like I don't want women to feel like they have barriers. And if I can do anything in this lifetime to break down barriers, as many as I can as one person that I am. And I've had a conversation with somebody in the past say, well, before I donate to charity, I want to make sure that, you know, it goes directly to the people that it supports. And my thought process and being that I started a charity, being that I worked in the system, people have been in the system. I can tell you this, the most important thing that you can do is support the charity to hire people, the best people, because those best people are the ones that support people directly. Yeah, right. Um, and the nonprofit sector, we don't pay people enough. Right? And they end up leaving. So then what we do is the cycle. Yeah, they burn out. They can't pay their bills. They end up. They end up low income like the ones that they're supposed to help. And so what they do, they leave. And then the people that are here supporting, needing the help because the way that, you know, being what I study and being in where I am with the work group, is that the way to support people is you have to build trust with people when someone is vulnerable. You can come up and say, hey, I want to do this for you. They don't know who you are, you know, why would they let you help them? Right? So you have to build trust first. They have to know that whatever you said are you going to do for them. It's actually helping. And sometimes someone that is is homeless. They might test you out and you can come up and they can see that you judge them, they can feel that you judge them. And that's why they don't want your help. Right? But if we pay people enough to be in the sector, in the nonprofit sector, to support them, to support the most vulnerable population, you know, it's without saying, well, and I don't want to donate money because I don't want, you know, these people to get paid. Why wouldn't you? You go support businesses that make profits in millions of dollars, but you don't want to support the nonprofits. It kind of makes no sense to me, right? I'm all advocating for support. The nonprofits, support the charities. Are they just because they hire trained professionals. They have people like me or other people that have gone to school to this is their passion. They want to make the world better. And then what are we doing as a society? We say, no, we shouldn't get paid. Like, you know, people in the corporate world, we should pay you less money because you're not worth it. That's not the message we want to give people, right? We want to turn around and say, I want to support you because you get to support the vulnerable, the ones that I care about. Right? So just find a charity that you think supports them, who you want to support. Right?
Dawn Taylor
And there's so many. This morning just on Facebook this morning, I saw a thing called Help Portrait Edmonton where they're going in and they're doing like hair, makeup, wardrobe for photos. And it's for vulnerable people, homeless people in recovery, elderly refugees.
Doina Oncel
Yes.
Dawn Taylor
Right. For photos, for things. There's, um, I'm blanking on the name of it, but it's like a dress for success. And it's downtown Edmonton, and I've seen it where you can go and you can get outfits for like job interviews if you're homeless.
Doina Oncel
I got stuff from them.
Dawn Taylor
You can do things like that. So you can help in so many ways, find a way that you're passionate about and support. Doina, I want to thank you so much for your time today. Anyone who's interested in her charity, please check out our show notes located at the TheTaylorWay.csyou under the podcast link. You will see everything there, who she is, what she's doing, all of the magic of everything that's going on. Thank you so much for being here today.
Doina Oncel
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it, and thank you for doing the work that you do with your podcast. It's so important to have more people hearing about what's happening out there in the world, and then hearing from the people that have been through it or are working in this field. I think it's so important that what you do. So thank you for
that.
Dawn Taylor
Oh, thank you. I'm honored to do it. And I love the conversations I get to have with people every day. So join us in two weeks for another topic. Maybe one day I'll go weekly, but probably not. But please tell your friends. The more people will feel understood, seen, heard, healed. The more people that can lose a little bit of their edge of judgment, the better. Check out the show notes, as I said, located at the TheTaylorWay.ca. For more information and for all the contact information for Doina, subscribe now on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you love the show, please, please, please leave a rating and review. See you guys later!
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