How Good Can You Feel?

Speaker 1: overworked, overstressed, and overwhelmed. And throw a business into this mix. Throw kids into this mix. And it's a recipe for very serious burnout. Not just physically, but also energetically, emotionally, mentally. In order to take that power back, in order to reclaim a true life that we feel happy in, we have to do it very intentionally. I'm Melanie Bar. Welcome back to the Sheba podcast, your go-to place to empower you to live the life and business that you crave. I'm here to talk about everything from having the courage to make life and career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively, create successful teams, implement strategies for growth, and infuse tech innovation. I'm here to celebrate your wins and navigate through your challenges. I live in the city now, but I grew up in a town of a thousand people. I've navigated major life leaps, a senior level corporate career, worked in professional sports, and now as a successful entrepreneur who loves business, technology, family, and making meaningful connections with you and the She Built It Community. I also love a good workout and dose of self-care. Magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy. So, turn up the audio, open your favorite notes app, grab your favorite drink, and here we go.

Success and health

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Sheila podcast. Thank you for joining us. Terry, take us to the moment when you realized your definition of success was costing you your health.

Speaker 1: Thank you, Melanie, for having me. There were a lot of moments. I was hospitalized twice in my late 30s because I thought I was having a heart attack and because cardiovascular disease runs in my family. My grandfather actually passed away after his fourth heart attack. I immediately rushed to ER. I was having severe chest pains. I walked into the room and it was packed and I thought, "Oh my goodness, I am going to die right here because there's so many people ahead of me." And they took one look at me and they immediately put me to the front of the line. They took me back into the exam room. I spent two days there. They could not figure out what was going on. They said follow up with a cardio doctor. Of course, I didn't do that. I didn't change anything. I just kept going. It happened again. This time, I took it a little bit more seriously and I started following through and figuring out what was going on. It was because I was 80 lbs overweight. As women, we tend to take on more and more. And when there's so much that we want to accomplish, we stop listening to ourselves, like you said. Yes. In my late 30s, I had a thriving business in the marketing industry. I was working with over 400 different brands at the time, big, small brand names that you've heard of, small startups that were just beginning their journey. I had two kids by the time I was 35, family, all the obligations, aging parents, all that stuff. And of course, I was the last one in the priority list. And little by little, with each pregnancy, I gained more weight and I was not able to get it off.

Speaker 1: And on top of that, unbeknownst to me, I entered pmenopause at 37. So, it was a perfect storm. That is a lot. And I have to say, I was prepping for our episode yesterday, and you inspired me to leave my office in prepping and talking for this episode because I'm pretty good at taking the time away and making sure I get the workouts in. But yesterday, I had spent all day in my office. And I was like, I have not taken care of myself today. So, I have to thank you for that reminder. How did your early life shape the way you approach reinvention and resilience today? I came to this country at the age of 13. I was born in a communist Eastern European country. I defected at that time at about 11 years old. I spent 2 years in a refugee camp in Austria between 1987 to 1989 and that's when the wall fell. And so when I came here, everything was new.

Speaker 1: I had to start from scratch. And I didn't really know what reinvention or transformation meant back then. It wasn't really in in the top of my mind.

Speaker 1: I had no clue. It just is something that you adapt, right? You do it. You don't really have a choice. And so over the years, I've had to reinvent myself over and over again as I found myself in painful spots. I call myself an unintentional entrepreneur. I entered the entrepreneur space at about 25 years old because I had dreams. I had ideas. I thought I could do things and I did. I did not actually understand the impact that it would have on my health. I didn't think about transformation. I didn't think about reinvention. I was just doing things that I felt were the right path for me.

Speaker 1: And so nowadays, I look at it a little bit differently. There's more intention in the activities and the pursuits that I take on. There is a better alignment to my passion and my inspiration and to my values and I select things more carefully. This topic resonates with so many women listening because as women we go through different times of life. You mentioned having kids and we really want to build that business, but it's so important that we take care of ourselves and we're moving so quickly with all the platforms and all and it seems like we're constantly can be in need of reinventing ourselves more often and we can get caught up in that movement and not take the time to slow down and eat healthy and do all of those things that your business helps women do.

Speaker 1: Absolutely. Most of us are overworked, overstressed, and overwhelmed. And throw a business into this mix. Throw kids into this mix. And it's a recipe for very serious burnout. Not just physically, but also energetically, emotionally, mentally. There's a very big demand on our time.

Speaker 1: We are expected to do everything and do it alone. Most of us are living alone in a different city away from our families. And so the culture is not conducive to great mental and physical health. So in order to take that power back, in order to reclaim a true life that we feel happy in, we have to do it very intentionally. What advice do you give women to avoid that type of burnout or to see the signs that it's coming? A lot of times it happens so gradually and so slowly that we don't even realize we're operating in that space. We don't necessarily have the ability to stop and analyze, okay, I'm feeling burned down and stressed out today. We just keep going because it's how we're designed.

Speaker 1: One of the first signs usually is emotional dysregulation is what I notice is when our moods are just all over the place. We may be feeling resentful the majority of the time. Anger, depression, anxiety, things like that are just symptoms of being burned out. Gaining weight, not being able to lose the weight is another sign. And a lot of us are just normalizing this because everybody around us is living in this state. And so we're conditioned to think that we get a medal for not sleeping. We don't need sleep. We 4 hours of sleep is good enough for us. And we're patting ourselves on the back for having all these things to do and being so busy all the time. But in reality, it's costing us our health. It's so true. So often we talk about the morning routine. More often lately I've been thinking about the nighttime routine, what I can do to set myself up for restful sleep because you're right, the sleep is so important.

Speaker 1: Absolutely. Nighttime routines are great. So something that we do at the Thor retreats every night is we have dinner and then we go into a restorative yoga practice and then we have our cup of tea. And most of the women that I work with, they report back that they've had the best sleep since they can remember. So just a little bit of self-care goes a long way, especially with this lifestyle that we're living. Tell us about your business and about Thor. I like to say this and preface it with I didn't just wake up one day and decide that I was going to be a health and fitness women's coach. I actually had to become a client first. And so I lived this experience. I went from being a very busy entrepreneur with multiple businesses and a mother into being a client for getting my health back together. The work that I do right now is completely the opposite of what I used to do and that's because I live through the entire experience. And so what we do at Thor is we have inersonal retreats and I also do one-on-one coaching with women that are looking to make a change in their lifestyle, their emotional state, their mental state, and to get back to where they felt good again.

Speaker 1: Tell us about your Thor retreats. We start out with morning yoga. We have a really good breakfast. We go out for a hike. We come back. We have a great lunch packed with protein and good carbs. Then we go into a strength training session and I show women how to lift weights and empower them to feel confident in doing that because getting strong and building muscle is really the foundation of good health. And then after that we might have a workshop maybe on lymphatic brushing. Get a spa treatment, a massage, a facial, red light therapy, a Pilates session on a reformer. Then we have dinner. We have a restorative yoga class and we sleep like rocks. You bring up the lymphatic brushing. Those simple things that don't take a long time can make you feel so good and really add to your day. They're just the things that you think, "Oh, I don't have time to do that." When we all have time. It depends on our priorities.

Speaker 1: Something interesting about the lymphatic brushes. We were in the middle of a workshop at one of the retreats and we were watching this instructional video and how to do it properly and we were all doing it all to ourselves. And at one point, one of the ladies turned around cuz we were doing only one half of our face. One of the ladies turned around and I was looking at her and I was like, "Wow." You could visibly see the difference from the side that where she was working on to the other side. It was incredible. It was absolute magic.

Speaker 1: So something like that literally cost you a good lymphatic brush is $60 for life. It costs almost nothing. You spend two minutes, five minutes doing that every morning and you see such an impactful result. Come on, it's a no-brainer. Yeah, it's so nice to be reminded of those little moments for ourselves. Yes, absolutely. You've said reinvention doesn't mean starting over. What advice do you give clients who feel stuck and are not sure where to begin?

Feeling stuck

Speaker 1: Most of the clients that come to me, they feel they're stuck as far as their health and their body image. And so a lot of times my suggestion is really to stop looking at social media because it's mostly misinformation. The things I see on social media are actually quite the opposite and they're creating more chaos. They're creating more confusion. The information that's out there is just it's too much. It's asking us to do even more than what we're already doing. And so the overwhelm gets even more overwhelming. My advice is to find someone who is an expert in the particular field where you may feel stuck and simplify down to the basics. Simplify down to the foundational things that will give you 80% of the result that you're looking for. Some of the most common mistakes or questions that I hear that signal to me that we are not on the right track is how many supplements do I need to take in order to feel better? What specific exact exercises do I need? What's my training block split? What should it look like? What kind of shoes do I need to? All those things are really irrelevant at the very beginning when you're trying to get unstuck. What's more important is to get your energy in the right place, to understand why you're doing something, to remove all of the distractions and the little things that are nagging at you all day and that are keeping you stuck in that cycle of constant doing and not really spending any time being.

Speaker 1: That's so true. And listening is so important. And I love your recommendation of finding an expert because it helps you get to where you want to go so much quicker. Even if that means slowing down. Yes. Sometimes slowing down is the fastest way to get to where you're going. Yes. Yes. This is so true. You walked away from a multi-million dollar business. Tell us about that. And what were the fears that you faced?

Walking away from the business

Speaker 1: That was quite the experience. My marketing agency at the time when I had a breakdown technically is what I would call it was at the height of the number of employees that it had at the height of the number of clients and the type of clients and prestigious clients all of these things. Externally everything seemed fine everything was going well but internally I was imploding. My health was going down the drain. My emotional well-being was very chaotic. I was traveling non-stop. I was not taking care of myself. My priority was always the business and the children. It was never myself. And so one day I realized it was like lightning strike. I just realized that I'm going to kill myself if I continue doing this. And so it was an instant decision. Most people would say that's completely crazy, but it was instantaneous and I knew I I was done.

Speaker 1: Literally, I had nothing more to give. Was I afraid a little bit? When you're an entrepreneur and especially if you focus on startups and things like that, you're a little bit of a control freak. Let's admit that. You want a lot of our listeners are relating right now.

Speaker 1: You want to be able to influence the outcomes and it's your baby and you've built it and you've put all your blood, sweat, and tears into it, it's very difficult to walk away. And when you do walk away, there's a big void in your life. You tend to feel lost. You tend to feel like your identity was taken away from you. you're no longer part of that cortisol cocktail that we drink every day as entrepreneurs. And so I did experience all of those things. There was a period of grief. I was sad about it and I had the inclination that I wanted to jump back into it, but I held back because something inside me really knew and believed that in part of you that has that intuition knew that this wasn't meant for me. I was not meant to run this rat race in this particular industry. It was killing me. And so I knew that there was something else out there for me that would perfectly cater to my strengths that would be aligned with what I believed had value. There was something deeper for me that was going to give me fulfillment without costing me my health. Yeah. It's so great you listen to yourself and thank you for encouraging us to do the same because we can't take care of ourselves or our business if we don't take care of ourselves first. And so often I go through the day and I try to give myself little reminders that self-care isn't selfish. Absolutely. And I spent decades thinking that. I was one of those people that would look at someone who was going to the gym every day and think that they were just vain. And I would think in my mind, I have better things to do. I don't have time for that. Who has time to spend an hour in the gym lifting weights? What is the purpose of that? That was my mindset. And so I was very judgy towards people that put their health first. And now it's just the complete opposite. I'm like, I cannot believe I lived like that. What habits do you do to keep yourself grounded and energized?

Grounding habits

Speaker 1: I love that question. most definitely movement, strength training, exercising, running, going outside, yoga practice. I don't necessarily journal or do meditation. Some of my walks outside are meditative in a sense, moving meditation. I love that. I generally like to keep my routine in my day very consistent, very boring, and I love that. I love boring because I lived in chaos for so long. And so those are generally the things that I do. I don't have any one particular thing. I think yoga is very grounding. It brings you back into your body. It brings unity between the mind and the body. And so I highly encourage everyone really whether they're women or men to practice yoga and feed yourself nutritious food. Right? So let's not skip over that part.

Speaker 1: Just because we're exercising and we're doing all those things, what we're putting into our body and how we're feeding ourselves has a huge impact on our energy, on our general health, on how grounded we feel. Because if we're just consuming empty calories, the body is always going to be in a state of lack. It's always going to be looking for the nutrition that it needs in order to perform its routine functions. That's so true. I've been trying to eliminate as many processed foods as I can and I recently have fallen in love with five minute meditations. To me, if I do that, it sets the tone of the day. I'd like to be better at doing them at night. I haven't been able to add that routine to my routine yet. And then I also got the treadmill desk. I found when I don't do it in the morning, my business mindset doesn't come as naturally when I don't get my body moving first thing in the morning. You know what's funny? You guys are going to laugh, but I wish I could show you. I am on a treadmill with a tiny stool. I'm sitting on the treadmill. I love that. I love it. I love it. So, you do you use one, too? Yes. I actually I have two of them.

Speaker 1: Absolutely. The best thing ever. And then another thing if anybody's interesting, I'm experimenting with this. So I'm not ready to recommend it, but something that I'm experimenting with is doing 100 jump ropes very first thing in the morning just to get your blood moving, just to get your mind awake, to get your body into motion and then sitting down on the treadmill desk to start. So interesting because sometimes I'll do jumping jacks because it gives you a different type of energy to me than just walking on the treadmill. Yeah. So jumping is great because it gives you that rebounding benefit and it moves the lymph system and it really helps out your day. I love that. So interesting. Magic happens when we focus on the part of our business and oursel that brings us joy. We've talked a lot about business and health. What do you do to make sure that you're finding and living your joy? My belief is that joy is not found in the results. So when we're driven by goals and we're driven by a result, I don't think that we will ever find that space of contentment and joy. And so what I've discovered and what I believe is that joy is found in the rhythm. So building our days around movement, connection, purpose, whether we're hiking or whether I'm coaching someone or lifting weights or just laughing, whatever it may be. Joy in a sense is my GPS. The entire journey is about finding joy in the rhythm, in the routine, in the boring things. And so my advice is don't wait for it to show up. You create it. Go out and create it. Infuse your routines with the things that energize you and build a business that supports your life, not the other way around. I love that. Such good advice. And go through the day asking yourself, am I in a good rhythm? Because that's such a different question than saying, "Am I accomplishing everything on my to-do list?" That's like the holy grail, right? To find a flow in your life, to find flow in your day, and to be in the state of flow is where you have the highest amount of awareness and the deepest type of connection to yourself. Thank you so much for joining us today, Terry. You've given us so many wonderful things to think about as we go through the days taking care of ourselves and putting ourselves first. Please share with our listeners how and where we can find you. Thank you, Melanie. It was a pleasure. So, you can find me on Instagram at howgood can it get. That's my motto. You can find me on my website. It's the houseof rose.com. And if you guys are interested in connecting with me after listening to this episode, you can email me at terrytheose.com. Thank you for joining us today. I'd love to hear from you.

Stay Connected

Speaker 1: Reach out to me at hello@sh shebiltit.com on our shebuiltit website or at shebuiltit on social. Thank you to my editor Rich Duffalino who always makes us sound good. Until next time, let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you crave. [Music]