MGU 1 | Begin The Conversation

 

Wellpreneur coaches, healthy living crusaders, and best friends Whitney Lauritsen and Jason Wrobel explore the spectrum of life and wellness through fun, no-judgment, and passionate conversations. The tools and techniques they have over their 25 plus combined years in the industry will help you move the needle a little closer to contentment, joy, authenticity, and living a life that is meaningful and real to you. As they endeavor to remain curious about relationships and your soul’s purpose, Whitney and Jason aim to connect with you on a personal level so you can search for answers to your questions together.

Listen to the podcast here

 

Begin The Conversation: An Introduction To The Podcast

We are excited about this show because we want to have real, authentic conversations like we’re sitting in a room with you.

Like in the closet.

A closet is also a room especially if you live in New York. We want to dive into all manner of conversations about life, love, relationships, purpose, meaning, wellness and all of the things that make us human here on the planet. Nothing’s off-limits. We’re going to dive into a whole bunch of subject matter here, exploring so many different topics as we are very passionate about life as likely you are, if you have found us. We’re digging in deep. We’re going way down the rabbit hole here with you.

We are exploring all the different ways that we can be well and ways that we can be unwell as well. We want to talk about our experiences in a raw, honest and transparent way. We feel like there are so many elements in our lives that affect our well-being and we want to explore it with you.

The vibe is we’re sitting around having a glass of wine or Kombucha or water or whatever you drink. It doesn’t matter.

MGU 1 | Begin The Conversation

Begin The Conversation: Knowing yourself affects your decisions with food, fitness, and relationships.

 

More often than not, we’re having a cup of coffee or tea or some medicinal mushrooms.

They’re medicinal mushrooms. They’re not psychedelic mushrooms. We need to clarify because that would be a very different show. Maybe we should do an episode like that one time.

That would be fun. We are into beverages here if you can’t tell. We usually have some beverage, sometimes sparkling water.

It depends on the mood.

It’s Jason and I chatting away in some episodes. In other episodes, we’ll have special guests on. We want to take a whole new approach to have guests on a show. I guess it’s not the most original thing, but we feel like we are more interested in having conversations and interviews. We want to show you a spin on things that maybe is less common, that you don’t get to hear as much. We want you to feel like a fly on the wall or that you’re there as part of the conversation and hearing what somebody is feeling from their heart.

Joy is on the other side of comfort. Share on X

We want to dive into the things that make people tick. The things that people are passionate about, the things that make people uncomfortable and the things that bring them hope and joy and inspiration. The things that make them feel good in their bodies and their minds and their hearts and taking an exploration into what it is to live this life and live it well.

Much of what each of us has been doing over the past 10 plus years has been sharing resources and tips about nutrition and vegan products, mindfulness and all of that. I feel like the approach that we’re taking with the show is a little bit different. It’s so much more about the emotional side of wellness and how nutrition, sleep, products and mindfulness practices all do play a role. It comes down to how you’re feeling on that emotional level. Many of our episodes are going to be talking about the love, the relationships, consciousness, aging, beauty, appearances and so many other factors on wellness that we haven’t dug into as much over the years.

We think that at the core of what’s going on on the planet is there is a lot of unnecessary self-generated suffering. There are a lot of situations and things people put themselves in that maybe it’s done out of a lack of awareness or a lack of understanding themselves and what’s in their heart, what they’re truly motivated by. The mental side of this, the emotional side of this is really to get to the core of who we are as beings. Because if you know yourself and you’re on a path of knowing yourself, that affects your decisions with food. It affects your decisions with your fitness. It affects your decisions with your relationships, knowing self and cultivating self-awareness, self-compassion and really getting in touch with what is motivating us in life. That has a ripple effect. It’s a deep dive where sometimes we’re looking for answers but we don’t find the answers, but the questions lead to more questions. What you will find is that sometimes on these episodes we may not have a definitive takeaway at the end. It just might be we’re asking better questions by the end of the episode and you’re asking those questions with us.

We want you to be thinking about these subject matters beyond the show and finding answers on your own. Maybe we might not be giving you them, serving them up on some silver platter and talking to you as if we’re lecturing from the stage. We’re aiming to have this friendly conversation with you and I don’t know if anybody does have all the answers. I think that part of our point is we are finding new information all of the time. Things are evolving. Things might not be so black and white. Much of what we discuss here in these episodes is a gray area and it’s something that you might not always agree with us. You might have a completely different perspective and we want to invite that into, we want to hear from you.

We hope that this becomes a two-way conversation where maybe you’re not interjecting on our show, but every once in a while we may have some live episodes where you could tune in on Facebook or Instagram, for instance, and ask questions or share your own questions about things that you want to discuss. Your answers that you might’ve found or your favorite resources. We invite you into this. You can leave comments on the website and on social media and we will read that. We want to pull you into this discussion as much as possible.

MGU 1 | Begin The Conversation

Begin The Conversation: Cultivating self-awareness and self-compassion helps you get in touch with what motivates you in life.

 

To that point, even though we have a collective 25-plus years of experience professionally in the health and wellness industries, we deeply empathize with suffering and unfulfilled potential. We are striving to question why we’re here and what the hell we’re doing. That empathy and that understanding helps us to connect with you on a personal level and hopefully a professional level as we all explore these questions together. As Whitney so brilliantly said, it’s an ongoing conversation. It’s more of like, “We’re not here to be gurus. We’re not here to be better than you. We’re not here to be experts. We’re not positioning ourselves in that way.” It’s more like, “I’m wondering about what my heart wants and where my career is going and what love means and what it means to be getting older in a world and what the relationship is between materialism and our soul’s purpose? How do I make the salad taste good?” We’re going to explore a myriad number of tops. We don’t even know where it’s going to go.

Some of the episodes start off on one subject matter and go in a different direction. I would say most of the episodes have that tendency where it’s like a little spark. It’s something that we thought it was going to be one way, but it ended up another and that’s our perspective on life too. We want it to feel less rigid as well. We’ve been in this world of nutrition and eco-friendly living mindfulness. The two of us are passionate about these subject matters. We practice yoga and meditation and we read spiritual texts. We love eating vegan food and learning about how to take care of the environment.

One thing that I’ve found with my work over the years is that a lot of people want it to be very rigid. They want it to feel more black and white. They want to have rules for things and boundaries and all that, but Jason and I don’t live our lives that way. In fact, we like the freedom of being able to explore and color outside of the lines and really go on this path of discovery all of the time because that feels really exciting. It’s much more about life. Life isn’t always perfect. Life isn’t always about staying in your lane. It is constantly evolving and changing. Us as human beings are changing as well. New information comes out all of the time. We’ll tell you what we’re experiencing and thinking and what we believe right now, but who knows that could change in the next episode? We want it to feel very fluid in that way.

Here we are together, frightened, exhilarated, confused and trying to understand life and purpose and meaning in this brave new world together. In that confusion and in that exhilaration and in the questions is our lives and that’s the juice here. That’s the core of what we’re exploring with you on this show is like, “We’re in a room talking about life as friends, exploring what these topics are about growth and healing and expansion and purpose.” Trying to figure out how the hell to be a human being amidst all this.

How we can up-level too. We love that word, high-performance and evolution and all that. We want to constantly be growing and encouraging you to grow and get uncomfortable. A lot of this is uncomfortable and we can certainly stay the same. We can choose to feel comfortable every day, but Jason and I are on a mission to break through and crack ourselves open and find as much joy in our lives as possible. We find that so much of the happiness we experience comes out of the times that we have been uncomfortable because usually, joy is on the other side of comfort. It is once we get through the discomfort and also embracing those times where we feel uncomfortable.

Longevity is about feeling your best as frequently as possible. Share on X

As we’ve talked about, there are so many things in life that are uncomfortable and so many things that are unpredictable and we feel like that’s inevitable. You can’t always be comfortable and you can’t always control things. In fact, we might not have nearly as much control as we think we do. For some people that can feel frightening and that can feel lonely. Ultimately, we’re here with you. We’re going to do this together. We might be sitting here energetically holding your hand through some of the unpleasant times in life and trying to put a spin on it so that we can feel as good as possible during even the most challenging times in our lives.

In college, my acting teacher, Nancy, once told me after a scene, she looked at me and said, “Are you comfortable?” I said, “Yeah.” She said, “Comfortable is dead. Do it again.” What an adage for life.

The other thing is Jason has a lot of adages. In almost every single episode, Jason brings up a really good quote. You have that to look forward to. I’m so glad that you put one in this introduction because I feel like it would not be complete without one of Jason’s pieces of wisdom that he shares from a book or a song. Sometimes Jason sings.

I do. I break out into song.

Do you have any song that you want to sing right now as an example?

MGU 1 | Begin The Conversation

Begin The Conversation: Hanging out with friends talking about life is one of the best moments in life.

 

I wish there were about being uncomfortable. I’ve got one. It’s not a song about discomfort, but it’s a Ziggy Marley song that I liked that goes, “I’ve got to be true to myself. I’ve got to be true to myself anyway. I’ve got to be true to myself.” The core of this is as we know ourselves and continue to shed the layers and get to the core of who we are, we can be true to that version of ourselves as we explore and go deeper. We’re going to use these analogies like, “We’re going deep down the rabbit hole, deep down the well, shedding the layers and peeling the onion.” There are a million different analogies, but the point is we don’t have any more answers than you do. We might be on a different point of the path, but we do claim to be insanely passionate about our collective development and growth as a species. We do have tools and techniques over our 25-plus combined years in this industry to help move the needle a little closer to contentment and joy and authenticity and living a life that is meaningful and real to you.

Realness is important to us and we don’t want to be spouting off facts or bullet points. We rarely have an agenda with the episodes as you’ll read it. Sometimes you’re going to feel like you just dropped into the middle of our conversation or the beginning. It’s like you’re coming to the cafe and sitting down with us and we’re getting deep by the fireplace or something like. In fact, even just that imagery evokes so much for me because some of the best moments in my life have been when I was hanging out with friends, one or two or a group and talking about life. Sharing what’s been working and what’s been feeling good just as much as we’ve been sharing the hardships and the struggles. One of the big things that we bring to this show that will hopefully brighten your heart in some way is that it is two friends talking. That’s who Jason and I are. We are sitting down across from one another talking and doing our best to make you feel like you’re a part of the conversation.

This is truly what we intend to have, intimate voyeuristic experience to you where you’re there reading and you’re peeping in and you’re like, “That sounds interesting. I want to know more about that.” How many times in life either we’re with a group or a friend or maybe we overhear a conversation in public and we’re like, “I want to listen a little bit.” The intimacy, the authenticity, the realness, the vulnerability, the voyeuristic quality. We’re doing things a little bit different here and we’re doing it our way. This is an invitation to you to join us in the conversation, to be in the room with us, chomping it up, shooting the stuff and talking about real things in life. Because we’re all exploring, we’re all questioning, we’re all seeking and we want you to do it with us.

We want to do it with joy, with laughter, fun and enthusiasm. There are episodes where we’re sometimes crying and there are episodes maybe we seem a little down or dark. It’s exploring the spectrum of life and wellness is such a huge part of it because we have a holistic viewpoint on wellness. We see how everything ties in. We’re passionate about longevity and for us, longevity is about feeling your best as frequently as possible. Savoring life and being grateful for it and just soaking it all up because life is precious and none of us know how much time we have, so we might as well enjoy it as much as we possibly can.

We want to thank you for being with us. It is our absolute honor and joy to be part of this invitation, this conversation with you as we grow and learn together because that is true, and Whitney believes this to what fostering this human family and this human community is going all about. We dive into this crazy, brave, exciting, wacky and confusing new world together trying to figure out, “What does it mean to be joyful and content and human and compassionate and open-hearted?” Even in a world that is often scary, dark, confusing and painful, we are not going to shy away from anything on here. We want you to know if you’re ready, buckle up, grab your non-GMO organic popcorn and come along with us for the ride.

 

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