MGU 146 | Commit To Goals

 

We all have goals, but not all of us follow through. If we’re honest about it, the path that leads us to them is often without some bumps; and most of the time, these challenges are enough to make us quit. So how do we find the courage and discipline to commit to them? In this episode, Jason Wrobel and Whitney Lauritsen guide us with their insights to learn to stay on course with our personal and professional goals. They talk about the importance of being clear on our aims and centering on our intentions. Plus, they tap into finding the balance between putting yourself in uncomfortable situations to grow and doing things that make you feel comfortable to survive. Tune into this discussion to learn how to navigate the challenges of having to commit to your goals so that you not only achieve them but empower yourself and life in the process as well.

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How To Commit To Personal And Professional Goals

A big aspect of life that I’ve been reflecting on is something that was brought up in the meditation, mindfulness and transformational anthropology group that I’m in with my mentor, Michael. Whitney and I have both known Michael for many years. I’ve been working intensely with him as an antidote to all of the chaos, uncertainty and massive changes that seem to be occurring on a daily basis. One of the things that was brought up was the idea of an aim and setting intentions in life. For a long time, I’ve been clear on what my aims and intentions are, whether that’s something on my manifestation board, having an overarching why, or something that I feel committed to. It’s clear what I’m committed to and why I’m committed to it, which makes the how easier. It seems that when we face challenges in life, if we’re clear and we’re committed on why we’re doing it and our reasons and our intentions, it seems that the hard times are easier to endure.

For the first time in a long time, I realized that I don’t have a clear aim for my life right now. We’ve talked a lot about why we do this show, why we have our brand Wellevatr, and why you and I decided to join forces. It’s been a few years since we launched Wellevatr. We’ve always had this soundbite of wanting to reduce unnecessary suffering, increase health and joyfulness, and serve. That’s our lining through everything we do. For me, my personal aim in life is a bit cloudy right now. It’s a bit muddy. It’s such a perfect time because we’ve been talking about one of our most popular eBooks, Take Charge, which you can download on our website, which is Wellevatr.com. You click on the Free Resources section and you can download, which is a compilation of tips, perspective, stories and resources from some of our friends and colleagues in the health and wellness industry.

It’s such a perfect time to dive back into this. We launched it in 2019, especially what we’re going to talk about, which is how to commit to personal and professional goals. The timing of this and the reason I’m bringing this up is my frame on it is I’m looking to gain new perspectives and new ways of looking at what my aim is. It’s weird to use the word aimless because I’m sure that I have it, but I’ve been super uncomfortable asking myself the question of like, “What is my aim? Am I aimless? Am I floating through life without a clear set of intentions?”

As someone who’s used to having that as a foundation or a bedrock of my creativity, my art, my projects and the things that you and I do together in our business. One of my biggest levels of discomfort is that I feel muddy. I don’t know that I have a clear aim. Diving into the subject matter, I’m a little bit excited because I haven’t reviewed this section of this book specifically. I guess I’m looking for new inspiration. Any thoughts on that? Do you think about that sometimes? Are you clear on your intentions and your aims right now in life? Is it something you’ve ever think about?

For sure, I think about it because I feel most comfortable when I have a plan and I feel some sense of certainty. With the theme of this show being about getting uncomfortable in order to grow as a human being, I’ve also started to look for opportunities or at least find more contentment in uncertainty and having a lack of a plan. I notice when I get triggered, especially as I’m planning my road trip. We’ll certainly do another episode about my experiences with that journey. To throw this in here as a precursor to this trip, I enjoy the process of planning, but what I’ve learned to do is to leave room for more spontaneity.

I mentioned this in the episode with Leanne that we did a little while back after we returned from the first part of my road trip when I drove from Los Angeles to Massachusetts. Leanne, my friend, came with me. In that episode, I shared how if I could have done one thing differently, it would have been to leave more room for the spontaneous and do less planning. When I started planning my trip back to Los Angeles, I started finding myself back in that old pattern of trying to set everything up and figure everything out. Once again, before the trip even has started, I’m sitting here thinking, “Am I doing too much planning? Am I trying to control this too much? Have I left myself enough room for the spontaneous?”

If we're clear and committed to why we're doing something, the hard times and challenges in life are easier to endure. Click To Tweet

Honestly, I don’t think I have. What trying to do now, and not just with this trip because this is a reflection of where I’m at in my life in a lot of ways, is find a balance because I do want to feel comfortable. It’s important for us to feel comfortable because if we feel too uncomfortable with life, we can often get stuck there and we can freeze. I’m listening to a phenomenal book called The Unthinkable. It is so good. I’m probably going to start it again from the beginning once I go on my road trip because I want to savor every minute of it. I’m about an hour into this nine-hour long audiobook about how human beings handle disasters and challenging situations.

The section of the book that I finished was an interview or a study on one of the survivors of 9/11. One of the moments that’s sticking in my head is how she came out of the buildings. There’s this whole story of her journey to get out of the tower she was working in. She’s on the streets of New York. It’s so incredibly overwhelming for her mind. She starts to realize that she’s looking around the streets that there are unrecognizable objects. She finally processes that they’re bodies. She was in so much shock over the whole situation, then to see these human bodies on the ground deceased, she froze. She said that could have been the end of her life but in pure luck, a complete stranger who wasn’t frozen grabbed her at that moment and pulled her away from the buildings right before they came down.

The author of this book was sharing how it’s such a common human reaction in these stressful times to freeze and not be able to take action. That could cost us our lives or have major consequences. Literally, I just listened to this and I’m still processing that story I heard. It ties into my feeling of finding that balance between putting yourself in uncomfortable situations so you can grow, allowing yourself to be uncomfortable, being okay with being uncomfortable, but also doing things that make you feel comfortable so that you can function as a human being so that you can survive.

In the case of a road trip, I need to survive this trip and it is dangerous in some ways. I need to do some of the planning required of me, but then the key is to find that balance where I’m still adding in some discomfort. I’m still challenging myself to not over-plan and plan every minute of the trip. Leaving those gaps in there as uncomfortable as they maybe will lead to me getting more of what I want out of the situation. That’s a huge key to life that I’m experiencing in many capacities.

It sounds like the mantra is balance. Many things we talk about here is finding what your personal balance is because you and I tend to live on opposite ends of the spectrum in this regard, which we’ve alluded to in other episodes that you love to plan. You love to make spreadsheets. I love to improvise and make it up on the fly and trust that whatever I pull out of my ass to bring up a crude aphorism is going to probably be okay. Does that mean that I could probably become a better planner, a more organized person? Yeah. There’s a balance for me to cultivate. It’s almost like you getting toward pinning the needle a little towards spontaneity and improvisation because that’s something that’s not necessarily your wheelhouse.

For me, it’s pinning the needle a little closer to being organized and pre-planning. It’s interesting that you and I have that reflection of each other. I strongly feel that our natural seat is on opposite ends of that spectrum, which is maybe one of the reasons why we work so well together in friendship and business because we have that mirror for one another. One of the biggest things that you’re going to need to focus on, dear reader, along with ourselves is with anything you want to do in life, be it a road trip, be it a reinvention of your creative life, your professional life, something that I’m going through and Whitney’s going through, a lot of you are probably going through. I get a lot of messages from friends who are like, “I don’t know what the next stage of my evolution is going to be with my brand, my business, my creative life.”

It feels like there are many people who are expressing some version of this metamorphosis. With that, this section of Take Charge that we’re going to dive in about personal and professional goals and commitment is timely. We want to dive in to some of our friends and colleagues that are leaders in the health and wellness field, and some of the tips that they’ve used in their personal journey. This is a big one for me because for as much work as I’ve done on enoughness, we have another eBook. It was our first eBook that we released with our brand Wellevatr and the show here, it is You Are Enough. It’s all about ways to cultivate a sense of enoughness in a culture, in a society, and in some cases, family situations that you might have grown up with that encourages you to not feel enough and diminish your worth. That’s something that I still struggle with.

MGU 146 | Commit To Goals

Commit To Goals: Find the balance between putting yourself in uncomfortable situations so you can grow, but also doing things that make you feel comfortable so that you can function as a human being to survive.

 

This first tip is to avoid comparing yourself to others. One of the big things that I feel is a huge challenge with social media and the digital technologies that we have that keep us connected is it sets a lot of comparison traps. I’ve been noticing that my sensitivity around the perfectionism that even close friends of ours, I don’t need to name names, but the stuff that they’re posting, I find that it’s almost like setting a trap for me to fall into when I pay close attention to what they’re posting. One of our friends, Dreena Burton, in this eBook says, “With all the social media noise, it’s easy to get distracted by too much nonsense or worse, you get discouraged by comparing yourself to others in your field. I don’t surf too much on social or blogs for this reason.” That’s one thing that I am motivated by to be doing my social media fast. I find that I’m not able to consistently keep myself from falling into the comparison trap and going to some negative thoughts about myself. I’m curious when I’m doing this upcoming social media fast how that’s going to affect my mental health and my sense of wellbeing.

I’m curious too, Jason. I’ve thought about doing my own version of that. I guess in a way, a part of me is doing the opposite at this moment, playing around with this idea of doing things differently on social media. One other thought that came to mind was stopping and thinking about what I’m not only going to post on social media, but any time that I stopped to take a photo or video, even if I never share it, it’s still interrupting a moment. It was in that book, Do Nothing, which I’ve referenced a lot. It’s impacted me a lot. I listened to the audiobook and read most of it as a written book as well. It was in there that the author Celeste talked about how people used to travel and not take pictures.

They didn’t feel the need to capture everything and prove where they went and prove what they’ve done. We are in this time where we are conditioned by society or have conditioned ourselves, and myself included because I’ve been doing this since at least 2010 or 2011. A friend called me out about this. It’s an interesting story as a semi tangent but definitely related to what we’re talking about. I’ve had this friend since I was in nursery school and I’ve seen her a few times since I have been out in Massachusetts. We went through a phase of probably 5 or 6 years of not speaking in the past ten years. We went on this trip together in 2010 and I was starting to get Eco-Vegan Gal off the ground.

I was very consumed with blogging. Back then, there weren’t as much social media. I wasn’t using Instagram at the time, but I was documenting everything for YouTube or my blog. I was so in it. A lot of people are in that phase with social media where you see how often they post things, and how they would want to document their entire lives. There are times where I get frustrated seeing people like that in 2020. If I think back to myself years ago, I was that person. I was younger, starting things off, getting excited, feeling rewarded and motivated by it.

My friendship with this close friend I had since I was four years old, we stopped talking a year or so after that trip we went on together. It was painful and sad. I didn’t know if we’d ever be friends again, but somehow, we repaired the friendship a few years ago. It wasn’t until a few days ago before this recording that we sat down and we were having a deep discussion. She shared with me how much I have grown. She’s like, “I remember when we were on that trip together in 2010, you were documenting everything. You were so consumed with posting on your blog, on YouTube and all these other places that you were present. You irritated me so much. I didn’t know how to communicate that to you.” It had this big ripple effect on our relationship clearly because she’s bringing it up years later and I’m sitting here now thinking, “I still do that in some capacity, but she’s telling me that I was even worse back then. That’s nuts.”

I need to pay attention to this and be present when I’m traveling, be present when I’m with family and friends. Those are precious moments. It’s easy to get distracted because of social media. This also came up in a discussion I had with my private group Beyond Measure and how hurtful it can be when somebody is looking at their phone. Not that they’re on social media necessarily, but someone’s texting somebody else, checking emails, looking some up or even glancing at our phones can be hurtful to our friends and family. They might not even know it. They might not know that it bothers them. They feel irritated at that moment. They might not have the ability, the words or the desire to communicate that to you.

We have a lot of uncertainty and unknowns. It's incredibly important for us to tune into ourselves because it's a challenging time of year. Click To Tweet

What I’m curious about with you, Jason, on social media, with you taking a break. How is that going to improve your relationships? Not just within yourself, but with all of these external relationships you have. The other question for me is do we need to take that much time off social media? I don’t feel at this moment that I want to take the time off on social media like you are, but I want to re-examine how I’m stepping out of the present moment to create content that might be on social media. Also noticing the speed in which the urgency and how many people around us can put this pressure on us to be constantly moving at a fast pace or, “Why haven’t you posted on social media? I don’t even know what’s going on in your life.”

That’s another thing too, Jason, that you’re probably going to experience. People might think that there’s something wrong with you because you’re not on social media. It’s like you have to prep yourself and people around you to let them know what’s happening. They’re going to be so curious and concerned because we’re now at this point where it’s weird if you’re not posting regularly. Your friends don’t even know who you are anymore if you’re not sharing updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or wherever else. I bet you’re going to go through a lot of that as well, which is super fascinating.

I look forward to it, to be honest with you because what it does is it it’s going to lower the amount of engagement, time and energy that I’m using for low-value interactions with people. Here’s what I mean by this. I find that most of the interactions that I have through direct message or through social media are low value. What I mean by that is it’s like, “Bella looks so cute. Amazing. Keep posting.” That’s a low value for me. High value is something I would get a phone call, FaceTime, an email or someone will stop by my place and be like, “Let’s take a walk around the block. Let’s have a conversation. How are you? What’s going on? What’s coming up for you? How’s your creative life? How’s your love life? How’s your family?” That’s high-quality interactions with people.

I find that the great majority of interactions I’m having online are low quality. They’re low value to me. I’m not saying that to diminish anyone who might be reading who also follows me on social media. This is not a besmirchment on whatever acquaintanceship or friendship we have. I’m finding I have to assess what interactions do I want in my life. Do I want high value or low value? As much as I’ve been attempting to be mindful and curtail the amount of time I’m spending on my phone every day. My last screen time was still right around the four-hour mark. Do I want to be spending four hours on my phone every day? Fuck, no, I do not. The question then is if I’m not spending four hours on the phone, what am I going to funnel that time and energy and focus toward?

I realized that to be blunt and have an honest self-assessment, Whitney, we’re talking about commitment here. I’ve been wanting to finish many songs that I’ve written that are 80% to 90% done. There are sections of these songs of mine that if I were to move 3 to 4 hours of a day of screen time and focus on music or focus on my creative life, things that I want to funnel my creative energy into and maybe my aim and my intentions, my life will be very different. By reappropriating that energy into high-value activities rather than low-value activities, responding to comments, responding to DMs, constantly feeling the pressure to post, keeping up with people. Four hours a day adds up really quick. Seven times four is 28 hours a week. What could I do with 28 hours a week? That’s where I’m at with all this.

In terms of when I’m off of it, where am I going to funnel my commitment to? Where am I going to go with that? I also think that if I’m not judging myself and I’m not comparing myself constantly, “I wish I was that person and accomplished that thing or had that thing.” Where is my mind going to go if I’m not constantly judging myself? That piggybacks to something Robert had said in the book. He was like, “The moment you stop judging yourself and others and sees these arbitrary comparisons with people you don’t know that much about, you become free to live your own best life. You’re unconcerned with what other people are doing or what others are thinking about you.” That hits it on the head. I love what he said because if I’m not obsessed with what other people are doing, it’s like, “What car did they buy? Who are they dating? What are they doing? Look them at the farmer’s market, that’s them with their new dog.” What if I’m completely unconcerned with any of that information? It’s removing the unhealthy comparisons.

Samantha Shorkey also said in this book, “Whenever I find myself doing unhealthy comparisons, I try to remind myself that pretending to be who society wants me to be or look like is stressful and boring. In my experience, when I shift my whole focus to being courageous and authentic, it’s pretty cool that confidence starts to show up at the same time.” A big part of this to me is even in the space of people are like, “Why aren’t you on social media? Why aren’t you DM-ing me back?” It’s like, “Why don’t you call me? Why don’t you stop by? Why don’t you send me an email?” I’m going to have to train people to realize that I’m not going to respond to them on those platforms.

MGU 146 | Commit To Goals

None of us can force transformation, healing, and new aspects of our lives to be born. Part of the massive discomfort is sitting with what is and being okay with it.

That is a huge part about boundary setting, which we’ve talked about on some episodes and how we need to be clear with people about where we’re at. Also, know that we’re not required to answer somebody else on their timeline unless it has something to do with urgency or true emergency or even if there’s something business-related on the line. If somebody has made it clear to you that there’s a specific need for you to respond to them in a certain way, in a certain time, that’s very different. A lot of what you’re talking about here is how we’ve conditioned ourselves to respond to people quickly and to share our lives on social media. People get used to that and they think, “That’s always going to be there for me.”

Social media is starting to shift. Hopefully, that’s true and it’ll go in a positive direction. The next couple of tips in the eBook are about writing down your goals and getting clear on your why. Those go hand in hand. It sounds to me that you’re clear on your why and that’s a huge part of being committed to your goals. They have to have a meaning for you. As Adam Chaim talks about in this book, it’s understanding what your reasons are. It’s going to help you reinforce your goals, encourage you to create habits. A lot of people aren’t clear about their social media usage in this case or goals in general, whether it’s fitness, eating a certain way, meditating or whatever it is that you’re doing for your self-care.

Sometimes we get caught up because of all of this comparison. We start to feel like we should do something because we saw somebody else doing it. The other tip that ties into this is writing down your goals. That helps you get more clarity and it gives you an opportunity to reflect on them in a different way. The way that our brains operate when we write something down is very different. We see ourselves saying something on paper. We feel ourselves writing it down. It feels more concrete and real. It gives you that opportunity to reassess. This is another tip in there about how it’s helpful to do this at least once a year.

We’re coming up on New Year’s, crazy enough. 2020 is flying by. We have a lot of uncertainty, unknowns and it’s incredibly important for us to tune into ourselves because it’s a challenging time of year. This is an important thing for us to address in the upcoming episodes because a lot of people are going to be struggling with their mental health. If you’re not tuned in, if you’re not assessing what’s important to you, if you’re not setting these boundaries and creating a life that feels good, this can be more challenging than it needs to be. This is part of the reason why we’re passionate about being consistent, taking charge of your life, empowering yourself to discover what works for you.

I want to piggyback on it this whole idea of getting clear on your why. I’m trying to think of the famous quote about why. It was Frederick Nietzsche, the philosopher. He said, “He who has a why can endure any how.” Everybody craves clarity. It’s the only way to reach deeper inside of yourself to find out what makes you come alive. Starting from a place of confusion or a lack of clarity, especially like me, if you love to do a lot of things, it’s fine. I don’t care what people present on social media. Most people’s lives are not perfectly clear. They’re not perfectly manicured. If people were honest about it, every adult probably struggles with like, “What do I want to do with my life? What am I good at? What’s going to contribute something to the world? What’s going to make me and other people joyful?”

There’s a stigma around not knowing what you want to do with your life. There’s guilt and shame around this. We talk a lot about guilt and shame here on the show. If people are honest, I would bet that there are millions of people that have no clue what they want to do with their lives at any age. Even me at 43, going through this radical transformation. I don’t know what I’m going to do next and that’s okay. Self-discovery is a journey. That being curious, being open to experimenting, exploring the unknown, embracing surprises, doing things differently, maybe making radical changes that people don’t even agree with or understand. We talk about how people are reacting to me being off social media or people moving out of LA. I may or may not do some “radical changes” and that’s okay. If you keep doing the same shit, you’re not going to get different results. If we think back to the changes, Luke Jones, in our book talks about what he struggled with in the past. It came down to the fact that he hadn’t thought about why he wanted to make the changes because the underlying reason didn’t match up with his values.

It's important for us to feel comfortable because if we feel too uncomfortable with life, we can often get stuck there and freeze. Click To Tweet

He says, “If you know your values and understand what matters to you, you can use this as a guiding force to create change. When you face inevitable obstacles, you’ll have the drive to find solutions and keep moving.” I’m pretty clear about what my deepest values are. I think that I need to sit with, how do I want to leverage those values in the world now? I feel like I’m going through a metamorphosis. It’s the thing that I keep coming back to. I feel like I’m shedding the skin and it’s painful and scary at times, but it’s also part of the process.

Ram Dass has a quote too. I love these recesses of the quotes in my mind. Ram Dass talked it in his book, Be Here Now about the snake molting. Ram Dass said, “You’ve got to go with the rate you can go. You wake up at the rate you wake up. You’re finished with your desires at the rate you finish with your desires. The disequilibrium comes into harmony at the rate it comes into harmony. You can’t rip the skin off the snake. The snake must molt the skin. That’s just the rate it happens.” Sometimes I feel like, “I want this period of transformation to be over. I want the next chapter of my life or whatever the next thing is,” but I can’t force it. None of us can force transformation. None of us can force healing. None of us can force the new aspects of our life to be born. Part of the massive discomfort is sitting with what is and being okay with it.

That’s one of the best practices that we can do for ourselves and skipping forward in the tips. That reminds me of the key around tuning into what you need. In our eBook, Take Charge, Matt Frazier says, “Being true to yourself and embracing the seasons of your life has been the only ‘productivity system’ that has ever worked for me. First, it requires practice, sometimes meditation, morning pages or other journaling, a hobby, running or playing an instrument. This can create space for you to get in touch with what you need and want, and then it takes the discipline and patience to be okay with whatever season you discover you’re in.” I don’t know if I’ve ever read that out loud before but that’s so wise. This is one of the reasons why we love Matt.

We’ve talked about how this book came together through participating in the annual bundle sale that he does. All of these people in this book have contributed to that. I feel so grateful to know them because they’re so wise. Learning from other people is a helpful thing. One of our other tips in this book is about having an accountability partner, which we’ve talked about. That comes up a few times in Take Charge. Finding the difference between comparing yourself to someone versus learning from someone, and feeling inspired by them. That’s something that I’ve done a lot over the years with social media. As I’ve become aware of anxiety and falling into that comparison trap, I started to unfollow people and be very mindful about who I followed on social media.

Anytime that there’s something on social media that I don’t like, I use one of the tools on there to mute somebody temporarily, unfollow them altogether if they don’t feel right. Even in the discover section of Instagram, you can do this on TikTok as well, which I use a lot. You can say you’re not interested in something and you don’t want to see any more of it. It’s curating that and finding these people that’ll inspire you, hold you accountable, motivate you, then noticing when somebody triggers you into a comparison place. This is true in day-to-day life. It doesn’t have to be social media, but finding that awareness and coming back to what Matt Frazier said about tuning into what you need is so important. That’s going to be your guiding force through all of these challenges.

There’s also that great section about having an environment that supports you. Jason, I’m curious, what are you doing to find an environment that feels good because you’ve spoken a lot about how you want to leave Los Angeles and you returned from this trip traveling. I’m about to return from a trip traveling as well. It certainly has me thinking a lot about the environment that I’m in wherever I am. Where are you at with that? What are you shaping over the last few months of 2020 as you’re spending all this time offline?

Getting clear and realizing that if I write down the type of environment that I want to be in, that’s going to lead me to that environment. There’s something to be said about one’s personal sensitivity and what your soul or your essence is in alignment with. For many years, I felt very much in alignment with the spirit of Los Angeles, the creativity here or the environment. There are many factors that I don’t feel in alignment with any more here. Most notably at the time of this recording, there was a massive fire in Irvine, which is not that far from my house. It’s only about a 40-minute drive down the 5 freeway. They’ve evacuated almost 90,000 people from the area down there in Orange County.

MGU 146 | Commit To Goals

Take Charge

I got back and the air quality here in Los Angeles and Orange County is horrifying. I’m not engaging the hyperbole. My eyes and nose burn when I go outside to walk Bella, my dog. It’s bad. I’ve tried to talk myself out of it like, “You’re getting into doomsday scenarios.” It’s like I don’t want to live necessarily in an area where there’s always this level of subtle anxiety in the background for me. It’s not that I’m concerned about my house catching on fire per se, as much as it is that I am afraid to spend time outdoors and breathe the unhealthy air. It seems like a huge portion of 2020, literally months, has been being in an environment where I’m afraid to breathe the air outside.

I don’t want to live in a place like that. There’s a variety of other factors we’ve discussed in other episodes about my feelings on moving out of LA. The general environment could be the physical environment you’re in or the environment of the people you spend time with, the colleagues that you surround yourself with, the job that you have. Are people supportive? Is the place you’re living in feeling supportive to you? Does it feel nourishing? Does it feel healthy? Do your relationships feel healthy? There’s the literal physical environment of your life, but then there’s maybe the more energetic environment of the containers that you have, the relationships that you have. This is critical to examine because if we don’t examine this and ask ourselves whether we feel supportive and nourished by the environment that we’re in, it’s easy to slip into complacency.

It’s easy to feel a sense of cold comfort with things. These two months away from social media, Whitney, I’m going to dive deep and drill down into what is the actual environment I want to be in physically, creatively, mentally, spiritually, all those things. It’s going to be great. In the eBook, Chef AJ talks a little bit about this. In terms of health, she says, “Always be prepared. Preparation trumps motivation. Always have healthy food prepared with you wherever you go. You can’t be healthy and well in the same environment that made you fat and sick. If it’s in your house, it’s in your mouth.” The one that I pull out from there is you can’t be healthy and well in the same environment that made you sick. That’s interesting because if we find ourselves in an environment that we don’t feel safe or healthy and much me in LA right now, we’ve got to start looking for environments that do make us feel healthy and vibrant.

That’s one of the reasons that I’m enjoying traveling and I feel very grateful where my life is at right now that I have the ability to travel. I don’t take that for granted. One of my friends said to me who has a daughter who is six months old. She said she doesn’t know when she’s going to get to travel again because of that and the circumstances that she’s in with her life. That’s a huge thing to acknowledge and not take for granted what our circumstances and what our environments are because the grass is always greener. Your job might prevent you from traveling, but perhaps you have more financial stability.

You might have a child, but not everybody can have a child or has had one yet. Both sides of this are equally important. It’s based on where our choices are and where we’re at. Noticing what environment we’re creating for ourselves based on what we have at that time we’ve chosen for ourselves. I love the section in the book about not being afraid to try things. This is a nice lead-in from what I said because it’s very easy for any self-help personal development guides to be focused on like, “If you follow these steps, you’ll get these results.” We’ve talked a lot about this on our episodes of the show. We don’t want to assume that you’ve read those episodes. To reiterate, we try not to create a one size fits all set up for you.

We know that each of us, you included, are on your own journey. When you’re looking at something like this about fear, is it fear that’s coming up for you? Is it a form of resistance that you can move through that’s making it hard for you to be consistent or try something new? Is it truly your circumstances in your current environment that is creating a roadblock for you? In this context, we have this quote from Derek Tresize. He said that he’s seen enough people who have a lot of passion and never took a chance. They’ve waited a month, a season, a year. Whenever you aren’t sure about switching careers, entering a competition or even taking up a new hobby that you’ve never tried, it’s important not to worry about failing, but to give it a shot.

It's important not to worry about failing but to give it a shot. Click To Tweet

This is great advice, as long as you’re in a position to try something. When you tune in, as we said before, is this a fear about failing something? That is common. Is it fear about not being enough, as Jason was talking about? We have a whole other book on that. When you understand that motivation for not doing something, maybe you can move through it. I also want to give compassion to each of you reading because you have to look at where you’re at and what you have access to and not assume that because it works for somebody else, it’ll work for you right now in your life, especially during a pandemic.

This thing about trying is tough. I think about a lot about mortality. Not to be morose, but sometimes I think about like I’m 43. Ten years from now, I’m going to be 53, 63. My mentor, Michael, is 30 years from me. He’s 73. Who am I going to be 30 years from now when I’m Michael’s age? I think about these things sometimes. Our friend, Robert Cheeke, who we’ve had one of our favorite conversations here on the show. His episode was rich, deep and vulnerable. Robert echoes a sentiment that’s similar to what I think about a lot, not in terms of death and mortality. He said, “I constantly remind myself of a quote from H. Jackson Brown Jr. who said, ‘Twenty years from now, you’ll be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than the things that you did do.’”

Robert says, “That helps me keep perspective. It helps keep me going and reminds me that whether it’s twenty years from now or two years from now, I don’t want to ask what might have been. Therefore, if it’s important to me, I take action and make it happen.” I need to hear this shit because I know that when I get clear or when the clarity comes of what’s the next move? What’s the next chapter? What’s the next endeavor? I know I need to jump on it and take action on it and not fall into complacency or fear. That’s a big thing. I’m sure there are a lot of people with all of the massive changes and upheaval that’s happening that are getting inklings of like, “I want to do a career change. Maybe I want to try something different, move to a different city, try something new,” like I am.

Maybe you get tripped up by being afraid because we don’t know what’s on the other side of it. One of the biggest spiritual teachers that 2020 is delivering to us is we never fucking know. No matter how much planning, no matter how much certainty we perceive we’ve cultivated, no matter how many best-laid plans we initiate in the world, we have no idea what’s coming for us or what will happen. Acting and taking risks and taking chances without expectation is one of the best and highest spiritual principles we can operate under. I’m trying to remind myself that reading through this eBook is a good refresh in many ways.

It’s neat when you go back and look at things that you’ve worked on. In fact, Jason and I are going back over a program we created at the beginning of 2020 called The Consistency Code. I’m even questioning was that the beginning of 2020? Doesn’t that feel it couldn’t have possibly been 2020, Jason? It feels like so much has happened since then.

It feels bizarre because it feels in one sense like at the time of this recording, “Holy shit, it’s almost Halloween. How did that happen?” It feels like it’s been three years packed into one. It feels so long ago to me.

In a way, I’m grateful for that because sometimes time flies by much faster than I’m comfortable with. I’m interested in revisiting that program, The Consistency Code, because what we were advising people on at the beginning of 2020 is very different than how I would advise them now. For you, the reader, in addition to downloading a copy of that eBook Take Charge, which is in our free resources section of Wellevatr.com, we encourage you to stick around and subscribe to the show and check your email. When you download any of our eBooks, it puts you in our email system and we’re very mindful to never spam you. We send about an email a week, sometimes not even that. You won’t get too much from us. We try to load our emails with valuable information that we think will help you. Feel free at any point to send us suggestions because we like to customize our show, our newsletter, and the programs that we work on to your needs.

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One of the ways that we’re doing that is revamping The Consistency Code at a lower price and something that’s more go at your own pace. We’ll see how else that develops. We’ll be announcing the launch of that very soon. If you’ve been reading this and other episodes in this Take Charge series and feeling you could use a little bit more support with being more consistent in your life and implementing all of these tips, we’ve got you covered. A little encouragement to subscribe to this show because we’re not going to tell you any of those details in this episode. It’s coming up soon though. I promise you that. Before we wrap this episode, we will pivot away from the book Take Charge because we’re hoping that you’re reading it along with us anyways. There’s a lot more in that eBook than we’ve gone into.

I would love to give some brand shout-outs, which is something we enjoy doing. Jason and I love trying different products and services and don’t always want to be plugging ourselves or our guests on this show. There are a lot of amazing companies out there that can support you with your well-being. One of them that I’ve been meaning to talk about for a while now. I’m curious, Jason, I gave you some of this product and I don’t think I’ve ever asked you if you tried it. It’s a company called CBDLiving that makes wonderful teas. They make gummies as well. CBDLiving makes all sorts of things that I haven’t tried. What I have experience with thus far is their wonderful Loose-Leaf tea. They make instant coffee.

They found Whitney’s trigger, the C-word.

I didn’t even realize it. I thought that they’ve specialized in tea. I’m getting a little education along with you, the reader. I have tried their ImmuniTea, which is great. It impressed me. I’ve been using it a ton. I took it with me on the road trip. What’s cool is if you go to their website, they have an infuser bottle that’s made of plastic. I generally don’t like using plastic, but this bottle is cool. It’s BPA-free so I gave it a try. It was great on the road because you can brew their tea hot or cold. You can add it into any tea infuser that you have. They have an infuser ball on their website or even an infuser straw. They’re doing some cool stuff. They have a silicone infuser. This company has you covered.

I use the bottle along with this ImmuniTea. I got two flavors. I gave one to Jason. Jason, I want you to chime in to share if you’ve used it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s been sitting in the back of your cabinet unused, but maybe I’ll inspire you to try it if you haven’t yet. I’ve tried the Echinacea Apricot and the Elderberry Lemon. Both of them have 12.5 milligrams of CBD per serving. Plus, those other ingredients. They taste fantastic. Probably my favorite part about them is when you put them in the bottle with whatever temperature you want, it’ll infuse it.

On the road trip when I didn’t have access to hot water, I put room temperature water in the bottle. Within 30 minutes, it brewed up this wonderful cold brew tea or room temperature brew tea in that case. It was great to have it portable. I knew I was getting a dosage of CBD, which helps with stress, anxiety and inflammation. We’re very passionate about CBD if you didn’t know this about us already. I love that there are ingredients to help boost the immune system. Jason, what’s your confession? Have you tried it yet or not? If you haven’t, what’s stopping you? If you have, what did you think?

You would be accurate. It’s not at the back of my food cabinet. It’s at the front because I wanted to remind myself. If we’re going to be radically honest as we to be here on the show about many things, when you gave it to me, I was excited to try it and I opened it up and I smelled it. It has an undertone in its odiferous profile of a medicine I used to take as a child. I don’t know why, but I haven’t been able to get past that aspect of its smell. I’m going to try and make it and maybe add some monk fruit, maybe add some cinnamon or try something, but full disclosure, I was super stoked to try it. I opened it up and I was like, “This reminds me of something from childhood I did not like.” I don’t want to besmirch the company, but I need to figure out a way to get past that smell so I can enjoy it.

That’s funny how everybody reacts to things differently because clearly, it doesn’t remind me of a medication at all. It smells like tea to me. There are two flavors. I don’t know which one I gave you, Jason. I’m guessing I gave you the apricots flavor or maybe it was the lemon. They smell and taste incredible. I try a lot of teas regularly, even though as Jason teased me on, I’m a huge coffee lover now. I want to try their instant coffees. That’s awesome. They sent me these two teas to try and I enjoyed them. It’s great to have something like that where you get a bunch of benefits. It tastes good to me. Each of us have different taste buds. Jason, I’m curious now for you to try it and see maybe it’s just a smell thing, hopefully. Although your smell also impacts the taste. We’ll see about that. The fact that it tastes good, it has CBD and it has the immune system boosting ingredients, I thought like, “How could you go wrong?” They have different flavors though on their website, Jason. Maybe you need to try a different flavor. They’ve got a matcha, for example.

I find that you can’t go wrong with matcha. I haven’t had a bad matcha. This is going to be a weird shout-out. It’s not a shout-out, it’s a mention. Starbucks matcha has improved. A little too much sugar still in it. My girlfriend, Laura, she’s so sweet. She was like, “I brought you a matcha back from Starbucks.” I was like, “They’ve upped their matcha game.” Starbucks matcha happens to be pretty good. My shout-out happens to be in the same vein, Whitney. It is a CBD and cannabis product by one of the first companies I remember ever trying in the CBD world who were still apparently going strong. It’s Apothecanna. They have an extra-strength body spray that I reacquainted myself with.

I originally used it years ago when I was training with our mutual friend, Damon Valley. I was gaining a lot of muscle mass and pushing myself, and pulled a back muscle and a neck muscle, and it hurts like hell. They have a brand-new formula. It’s an extra-strength body spray. It’s incredible. I’ve been using it on my foot as I’m in physical therapy for tendonitis and a foot injury. I had a foot surgery when I was home in Detroit, which is great because it healed well. This extra-strength body spray from Apothecanna is a mixture of arnica, which heals bruising and relieves sprains. It is great for my foot. It’s got peppermint which soothes your skin and reduces inflammatory aspects. Juniper, which reduces swelling and soothes your nerve endings, and then cannabis, which is also anti-inflammatory and stresses reducing.

It’s got about 200 milligrams per few sprays. It’s very minty, fresh and cooling. It dries quickly. Whenever my foot is bothering me when I’m doing this physical therapy or I go on a long walk, whatever the case is, it’s been a wonderful aspect of my healing routine. There are certain days when my foot feels great. Other days it feels wonky. That is the official terminology. This spray has been awesome. I’m a huge fan of it. Maybe we can partner with these guys because I’m such a huge fan. I want you to try it. I don’t know if you’re in any pain. I certainly hope you don’t be in any physical pain, but if you are, I’d love for you to try this.

Acting and taking risks and taking chances without expectation is one of the best and highest spiritual principles we can operate under. Click To Tweet

I’d love to try it too. Luckily, I’m not. I got my first massage during COVID, which was pretty cool. As a side note, I will say I went to this chain on the East Coast called Elements, and they were so conscious about COVID. They had such a great system. I was wondering like, “Do I want to do this?” I felt great about it. I don’t have any symptoms of COVID. I’m going to be tested after my trip ends, but so far so good. You don’t have much contact. There’s someone massaging you. A lot of them are doing it now. I was worried that the massage was going to go out of business. That sounds crazy in hindsight. You go in and they have your whole distance thing. They have you wait outside. You’re barely touching anything. Everything’s perfectly clean. In the massage room itself, you have to wear your mask during the massage. The therapist is wearing a mask as well. They also had a cool air purifier in the room that I’d never seen before. I’d been to this chain before. It felt super clean. Everything in the building was anywhere else you would go inside. It was a good experience and it also helped me with pain.

I was having some strong, muscular tension. It feels like an important thing to do on a long trip in general. Getting bodywork is something you should have done at least once a year. I can’t even remember the time I had a massage. I was grateful that I did it. Since we’re on the CBD train, Jason, I’m going to shout out something I haven’t tried yet, but I’d like to try. You’re going to be excited to know about this. I went to our favorite market on the East Coast, which is Debra’s Natural Gourmet in West Concord, Massachusetts. It is phenomenal. I went with our mutual friend, Max Goldberg, who we’ve had on the show before. He runs a great website and newsletter called Organic Insider and his website is Living Maxwell. Check him out. He’s all over the place and super knowledgeable about organic. Please read his episode if you haven’t yet. We met up there to have lunch together outside. We saw the owner of Debra’s Natural Gourmet, who happens to me named Debra, no surprise there.

She was there and she pointed out a new product from a CBD brand that we love called Kefla. They now make instant, hot chocolate and a turmeric drink, a golden milk. The third one was a chai, but there are three products. They’re instant powders, CBD-infused with 25 milligrams per serving, which is pretty high. Jason and I love their chocolates. I have not tried these new drinks yet. I’m sure they’re fantastic because Kefla makes them and it sounds something that you would love to try, Jason.

There are a lot of things on the list to try, but I’m taking things slow. Things will come when they’re meant to come. I’m excited about trying new things in all aspects of life, food products and all these new life experiments that are coming. With that said, dear reader, if you want to experiment with some new things, you can go to our website. You can click on the Free Resources section in the upper right-hand corner and you can download your copy of Take Charge, the eBook that we’ve been referencing in this episode and a few of this previous. We also have some great free video trainings. If you struggle with not-enoughness, as I still do, check out our other free eBook called You Are Enough, which has a lot of mental health strategies for cultivating enoughness and a healthy self-image and practicing that. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t need to practice that personally.

Also, you can email us directly. If you have ideas, comments, smart-ass remarks, suggestions, whatever you want to say to us, we’re open, and we will respond to your email. It’s [email protected] and we’re on all of the major social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, TikTok. When you get back, Whitney, we got to maybe shoot some new stuff for TikTok, but then I’m doing my social media fast, so probably not. More on the social media fast soon. Until next time, dear reader. Thanks for getting uncomfortable with us. We appreciate you. We appreciate your reviews on Apple Podcasts and all of the wonderful feedback you do provide. Thanks for your support, your energy, your love and we will be back again soon with another episode.

 

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