Frame of Reference - Profiles in Leadership
"Frame of Reference - Profiles in Leadership" and "Frame of Reference - Coming together" are conversational style shows with local, national, and global experts about issues that affect all of us in some way. I’m, at heart, a “theatre person”. I was drawn to theatre in Junior High School and studied it long enough to get a Master of Fine Arts in Stage Direction. It’s the one thing that I’m REALLY passionate about it because as Shakespeare noted, “all the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players”. Think about the universality of that line for just a moment. Think about the types of “theatre” that play out around us every day in today’s world. The dramatic, the comedic, the absurd, the existential, the gorilla theatre (it’s a thing, look it up) that is pumped into our Smart Phones, TV’s, Radios, and PC’s every minute of every day.
Think about the tremendous forces that “play” upon us - trying to first discover, then channel, feed, nurture, and finally harvest our will power and biases in order to move forward the agendas of leaders we will likely never meet. Think of all these forces (behind the scenes of course) and how they use the basic tools of theatre to work their “magic” on the course of humanity. Emotionally charged content matched to carefully measured and controlled presentations.
With that in mind (and to hopefully counter the more insidious agendas), I bring you the Frame of Reference "Family" of podcasts, where the voices of our local and global leadership can share their passion for why and how they are leaders in their community and in many cases, the world. Real players with real roles in a world of real problems. No special effects, no hidden agenda, just the facts and anecdotes that make a leader.
And at the risk of sounding trite, I sincerely thank my wife Ann and my two children Elisabeth and Josiah for continually teaching me what leadership SHOULD look like.
Frame of Reference - Profiles in Leadership
Finding Your Flow: Kerstin Schulze on Fitness, Acting, and Life's Journey
What happens when Olympic-level athleticism meets theatrical creativity? Kerstin Schulze embodies this fascinating intersection, sharing her remarkable journey from winning a Junior Olympics silver medal in heptathlon at age 12 to her current role as a kung fu nanny on HBO's "The Righteous Gemstones."
The conversation reveals Kerstin's refreshing philosophy on balance—something she discovered after years of competitive bodybuilding taught her that stage-ready physiques often represent the "most unhealthy" version of ourselves. "Finding balance takes time," she explains, offering practical wisdom for anyone struggling with fitness goals or life direction. Her approach is disarmingly simple yet profound: five days of discipline allows for two days of enjoyment without sabotaging progress.
Particularly illuminating is Kerstin's method for creating lasting change. Rather than overwhelming yourself with ambitious goals, she recommends starting with just five minutes of daily movement. "Set your timer for five minutes in the morning and do something that helps your body get stronger," she advises. "When the five minutes are over, you have to stop." This counterintuitive approach—forcing yourself to stop rather than push through—helps reprogram your system to crave healthy habits.
The conversation delves into deeper territory as Kerstin reflects on how theater training develops empathy by requiring actors to understand perspectives vastly different from their own—a skill increasingly rare in our polarized world. She shares behind-the-scenes insights from working with Hollywood's elite while maintaining that success isn't about fame but about creating art that makes people feel something.
Whether you're struggling with fitness goals, creative pursuits, or simply seeking more balance in life, Kerstin's journey offers both inspiration and practical guidance. Her parting wisdom? "Listen to your intuition"—something she wishes her younger self had done more consistently. Discover more of Kerstin's approach to fitness and life at partyanddiet.com, where her book "The Balance" is available for free.
Thanks for listening. Please check out our website at www.forsauk.com to hear great conversations on topics that need to be talked about. In these times of intense polarization we all need to find time to expand our Frame of Reference.
It's really easy to edit. I did sound checks on that before, so that should be in good shape, and I'm also going to do the video through Teams here and we'll get that going as well, and that way we've got two things to work with. So, all right, languages everyone is speaking is English, although you might break into German. I don't know, I'm going to say English. I'm from Lehm. My sister-in-law is from Hamburg, so she's always been trying to teach me a little bit of German every time we get together. But just, we have wonderful conversations together too. So Hamburg is doing something right? I don't know, but OK, I think that seems like it's going. Yeah, we're OK, we're good. I'll lead you in and here we go, all right. Well, welcome everyone. Welcome to another exciting adventurous. I hope. I hope not boring. I hope I don't bore. I know my guests won't bore you today. So that's a good thing. We're starting at least 50% guaranteed. But I'm going to work hard to keep up All right, because today is going to be a fun discussion with somebody that has a totally different perspective than maybe you or I, in the Midwest in particular, may have in our frame of reference.
Speaker 1:But I'm very excited because I was telling Kirsten before we started this that when I was approached by our agent to have her come on the show, kirsten Schultz would love to come and talk with you on your podcast. And I thought, oh, that's nice, I think kind of familiar name. I don't know why I know that, but okay, great. So then I started looking up on the internet to see you know Kirsten Schultz. No, no, no, that can't be the Kirsten Schultz. No way, why would she be calling me Right? And sure enough, and I researched more and, like you know, there really aren't many Kirsten Schultz's out there that spell their name like Kirsten Schultz does. And I thought, oh, my God, I'm going to be interviewing someone that's right in my lane of traffic Actress, that cares very much about fitness, person, that cares very deeply about people and having balance in their lives. And I just thought, thank you, god, because this is a godsend and I am so excited to greet you and welcome you to the show, kirsten Schultz thank you.
Speaker 2:How are you? Thank you for having me, raoul, right? I'm saying your name correctly, raoul, like Raoul.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of. French. My dad was bastardizing things, so I constantly have to say Raoul like Raoul, raoul like Raul. But go for it, you're Kirsten Schultz. You can say it any way you want to, I really don't care.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. Am I saying yours?
Speaker 1:right it is Kirsten.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're saying it perfectly right. Yeah, you know, I get that too with my name a lot of times. How do you say it? So people started calling me K or KS. There was a time they called me Special K and I was like, ah, that's not so healthy. Well they have some that are healthier, don't they?
Speaker 1:They've been trying, at least. And it's Kirsten, so that's pretty much a German spelling, isn't it? Of the name?
Speaker 2:Very. Yeah, it's actually Swedish, even though I'm not Swedish at all, but the way we spell it it's K-E-R-S-T-I-N, so it's very.
Speaker 1:German. Okay, so I could go on and on introducing you, but what's your elevator speech? If people say I've never heard of her who is Kirsten Schultz? What would you say?
Speaker 2:I'm a fit creative and I believe it's never too late. So that means that wherever you are, whatever your passion, whatever your dream is, follow it, because it's not about the money, it's about your happiness and the money will follow, always happiness. I always been in the fitness world and I've always been in the creative world, and I just combined the both and found my happiness in it.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's interesting because I think of like Arnold Schwarzenegger too, and I think of that kind of melding of realities. You know, mr Universe becomes the Terminator, right? It's just one of those things where you go how does this happen? Right, and you have similar accents. I don't want to insult you.
Speaker 2:We are friends, it's okay. I know him well.
Speaker 1:Arnold, yes, you know, and he has that same. In French, we'd call it the joie de vivre, right, the sense of just really grabbing life by the throat and shaking as much out of it as you can. So I really appreciate that you started out in this what was kind of the journey into where you are now.
Speaker 2:I started in fitness. First I was at the Junior Olympics in Berlin, won a silver medal in heptathlon which is seven different disciplines. I was 12. And Junior Olympics it's a big deal in Europe, and especially 30 years ago. And then I did theater. I was 15, and I did theater for improv, stand up, travel a little bit.
Speaker 2:I have an identical twin, so we did a lot of writing our own stuff and then I went to and well then I got a business degree, because my mother didn't think that I should be an actor, that it's not a real profession. And I got a business degree very old school German, not a real profession. And I got a business degree very old school German. And I worked in the corporate world for 10 years before I finally decided to take the leap into fitness and into acting full throttle and competed in the United States, was once the tallest figure competitor in the nation and made a business out of it.
Speaker 2:I was in all the magazines and I just had a niche to understand people and I listen. You know, I think that's our biggest, biggest tool in life is to be able to listen to a person and really hear them and what they need. And then you know, continued studying. My acting craft went to got professionally trained. Act Berkeley different coaches, billy Baby and I'm not Baby Billy, he's from the show, we'll talk about that later and Anthony Andy Matheny yes, I mean, I studied with so many people. I, hugh Gorman, who was a professor.
Speaker 1:I've studied with so many people, hugh Gorman who is a professor and I studied, to the cost of it. Uh-oh, signal just dropped. Signal just dropped on my side, hmm, you are back, there we go. All right, I don't know, all of a sudden you just froze. You were in the midst of talking about some of the teachers you had worked with. We can splice that together, if you want to. Just.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's do it. So I had some really good mentors. I had some good teachers and a good friend of mine.
Speaker 1:Just did it again and I think we need to leave. Both of us leave and come back and re-sync. I'm going to go out and come back in. Isn't technology grand? I love it. Isn't technology grand, I love it. You know, the only thing I know to do in IT is if you're having those kinds of issues, you just re-sync and that hopefully gets everybody talking, like we saw beforehand. Wonderful teachers you had.
Speaker 2:That's where we were. I had some wonderful teachers and they taught me a lot and I just continued. I just stayed in it and here we are.
Speaker 1:Well, you know you have a pedigree that most people would crave, including myself, but it is wonderful to see that you are very much my MFA. When I got my thesis, production was on Winnie the Pooh. I produced a full production of Winnie the Pooh and kind of melded together several different sources from AA Milne's original work all the way down, and Pooh is just one of my mentors throughout life really. Benjamin Hoff has a wonderful book called the Tao of Pooh and you have that Pooh-ness which is just kind of floating down the river and something may happen and it's just oh, bother, but you just keep on going, you know, and the next thing that comes down it's just like oh, I hadn't seen those bees before. There's probably honey, which is what more people need to be poo-like these days.
Speaker 2:I love that. I've never heard that I'm a poo. I like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you are a poo bear, definitely a poo. That I'm a poo, I like that. Yeah, you are a poo bear, definitely a poo bear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do I actually do maneuver in life like that. I love seeing new things. I always say, if I learn something new today, it's a good day. Yeah, and I just love learning from other people and their views. And I don't know everything, and I think that's important in life, that we always grow and evolve and learn, indeed, and if we're not, you know you have to wonder.
Speaker 1:Those are the days when I wonder what the heck was I doing today, that I didn't learn anything. That's just not a good day. I have to. I'm starting on and stopping our recording here too, because I'm not getting the feedback here that it's working and I want to make sure that the visual stuff is going too. All right. Stop recording, show, let's do that. Stop, okay, and then we'll get into the favorite things, aspects of stuff. Okay, recording, confirm, All right. Now it says it's doing it again. So let's go on.
Speaker 1:As you know, kirsten, one of the things I think was sent to you in the pre-work for this was that I love to start with a thing called favorite things. One of these days I'll figure out how I can pay royalties to Julie Andrews, so we can sort of that, that, that, that, that, that that and go right into it. But you know, we'll have to have a sound engineer to place that on cue. God, you were three seconds late. What are you doing? Um, so I'll start out easy and then it's going to go wherever it goes. So all right, um, first one favorite color black, black, really black. Now I? I heard I read this somewhere that black is actually a very difficult color because it absorbs so much um that you know people think of it as being the opposite of light, but it's actually the absorption of all light. That's why it comes back as black right. Do you feel like you're an absorber of life, or do you? What is it about black that is so intriguing?
Speaker 2:I just find it classy. You always look good in it. I'm talking about clothing now, more so um and um, I don't know. Just it always is a good accent. It gives you depth when there's a color, you know, and I think that's what I like about black the mysteriousness of it, the classiness, the lines. Yeah, interesting, you ever have a picture and you have some black in the background and you can just make it more mysterious, more it draws you into the eyes of the person when you have black on.
Speaker 2:That's why I'm wearing black. Well, yeah, there you are right.
Speaker 1:So I have close to have a gray on, at least. So I wanted to look like I was actually working out with a sweats on and whatnot, but I thought that would be impressive. No, well, and it's. It's interesting too because black um I I, early on in my life I was a photographer and did quite a bit. My dad was really interested in photography and, um, did my own black and work, white work. So it was, you know, learned how to develop and and print and all that jazz, and there is something he was such a big fan of people like Kirsch and you know, the great folks that just had that understanding of light and dark and how you make shadows work. Oh yeah, how there's so much more feeling. You know, here people were all concerned when color came out, that black and white was going to go away and in some ways I think it know, made it really spur the development of black and white, what you could do with it that you couldn't do with color.
Speaker 2:So and I I love the portrait, black and white portraits or black and white pictures. There's just something I shot with Ben Stanley. He's an amazing filmmaker and cinematographer and he shot with me and he just it's very raw. You know, nowadays everybody has filters and everything, but I just love the rawness of a black and white. You can see the story in the face. Um, yeah, those are my favorite portraits.
Speaker 1:It's black and white yeah, well, and you think of it too. Iphone has a black and white filter, right? You take your pictures with an iPhone. You can turn them into black and white. So they wouldn't have done that if there wasn't a reason that you know people want to come back to that, right? Do you have a favorite book or movie, any sort of something that you go back to or think about regularly, or that you've just read, that you're really excited about, or that you just wrote Because I know you?
Speaker 2:write as well. I am always reading, I'm always referring. One of my favorite ones is the Four Agreements. It's all about being impeccable with your words, not taking things personal. It's a good. It's a short read, it's not long. My favorite movie Train, planes and Automobiles Really, oh, love it, love it, love it. Planes and Automobiles Really, oh, love it, love it, love it, love it, love it. I love Steve Martin in it. I can watch that movie every day and it's funny. My boyfriend and I we just went to.
Speaker 1:Europe and we did the whole planes, trains and automobiles and everything that could happen happened.
Speaker 2:Living the dream, yep, living the dream, yep, living the dream. And.
Speaker 1:I was like this is life, yep. Well, that's the thing about Martin too, is he really does kind of capture that essence of what's the funniest way someone could respond to this and still be life accurate, and that's what makes it so beautiful. Right, it appeals to a broad spectrum of people and even those that wouldn't necessarily have seen that or go like, yeah, I can buy that People would do that. So how about?
Speaker 2:do you have a favorite historic personality or a favorite person that you look to in history. You know that is a motivational force or inspiration for you. I remember when you sent me this question and I was like, who do I have that I really think is somebody that I look up to, and to me it has to be, I mean, short term right now. For me was Obama. I really liked him because I love the whole helping each other and I know that some people don't agree with me on this one, but I have mixed children as well. Well, and for me that was really, really important the unity, because my children have been called the N-word and my children have been, you know, mistreated just for their skin tone, and I think that that is, for me, one of the bigger ones.
Speaker 1:Well, certainly an admirable one. Whether people like his politics or not, it's hard to argue. The decency of the man Well, certainly an admirable one. Whether people like his politics or not, it's hard to argue. The decency of the man, that's what I love, the decency of the man. And that is the interesting thing.
Speaker 1:I've been reading a lot about the whole polarization of our nation right now and people trying to explain away the other side of the equation and that these are just people that are not well-informed, these are people that just have had abusive backgrounds, these are people that just are not educated whatever.
Speaker 1:And the person made the comment that you know what? I think we have to get to the point where we stop arguing and just recognizing that if you're going to be okay with all the things that are happening right now, you're just evil. You know you're just evil because their only way to continue to align yourself with the stuff that's going on and to like just refuse to see the decency in some of the people that are, you know, contrary to it all. I don't know what could black that out for someone except just pure evil, and I don't know how to quantify that any better. But at least I think it lets us know what we're on, what playing field we're really on, and can focus on the things that really matter. I mean, I find myself watching more and more dog videos lately. You know Me too, oh.
Speaker 2:God, I love it.
Speaker 1:You just want to be happy no-transcript, because all of the baloney that's being chucked out of the baloney farm, it's just a distraction of what really matters. And at some point it was a Buckminster Fuller that said you know, you don't fight that kind of thing by fighting it. You fight it by creating something that's so wonderful and so different and so aspirational that that thing becomes obsolete.
Speaker 2:And I thought you know, that's what he did architecturally.
Speaker 1:And when you adopt that mindset that says I'm just going to get into things that are really going to be constructive nurturing, they can't win against that. There's no way for that to be overcome. Kirsten, I'd like to wrap this up because it sort of fits into the rest of the discussion. But that question that's at the bottom of those is do you have a favorite memory from childhood or something that, a smell, even, that I've had people talk about how, when they they smell the you know, the smell of fresh cut grass, because they're just they love baseball so much and they remember being at baseball diamonds with their dad or whatnot. Is there something like that in your life that you just, when it happens, you're like oh yeah, and you let yourself sort of float back into that and it washes over you? You know, with that sense of….
Speaker 2:A.
Speaker 1:German bakery. A German bakery, of course.
Speaker 2:A German bakery.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, there's nothing like it Of course Are there good… I would think by you. There must be good ones, but probably not like Germany, right?
Speaker 2:I mean we have good bakeries here, nothing like german bakeries. I mean I just get and I went to paris too german bakeries just have that smell. And I don't know, because obviously I'm biased, because I grew up in germany, born and raised there, so it always smells like home. I feel like the first thing I do is I get a buttered pretzel when I get home and I just feel whole. You know, it's just that that really does it for me.
Speaker 1:Isn't that interesting? Because German bakeries. I have two references to that in my life. One is my mother, who her grandmother was German, actually German and Irish. What a combination, right, half of each. So very close, very strong woman. So her parents were, you know, one was full German, one was full Irish, you know. So you can imagine what those discussions were like around the dinner table. But she could bake like nobody's business. My mom, I just.
Speaker 1:There are still people in the world that I think I'm going to have to go to a German bakery if I want to get anything close to this, right, um. And the other one was my father-in-law, of all people, who also had a full German mother, um, who had, he had learned, you know, in Milwaukee growing up. Uh, saw all the tricks of the trade that his mom did and he then, when we got married, I one of my favorite stories of him is we were sitting and he always did all the cooking when we would come to visit and I got up fairly early in the morning he had already been up baking and baked some pies, and so of course the kitchen smelled amazing and then he was thinking about supper and he said you know, what are we going to have for supper? I said what goes good with cherry pie? And I thought to myself he plans his meals around his dessert. Now there's a guy I can get behind, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:My brother was a baker for 20 years, really, and yeah, he would bring all these goodies home and I think that's how I learned party and diet.
Speaker 2:You know, I know how to dial it in when you want to have fun on the weekend, and it started from when he would bring the baked goods home, because I love baked goods and my daughter is one of the best bakers ever and she always makes me my banana bread that I love if my wife hears this now, she's going to need to have some of that banana bread, because she's a banana bread addict, and especially a banana bread addict, and especially a good one.
Speaker 1:She'll be sending and saying anything you want, please send me some banana bread. You know it'll be one of those situations. So you know, we've kind of alluded to it a couple of different ways here, but you know, I keep coming back to this idea of theater and the training that one gets in theater. I mean, I, you know MFA in stage direction, you know, trained with multiple people as an actor as well. But I, one of the things that stuck with me as an actor was you learn how to play people that are very different from yourself, and sometimes they're not so nice people, you know.
Speaker 1:Sometimes they're, you know, quite evil themselves, right, but you have to learn that no one sees themselves as an antagonist. If you're going to play it realistically, if you're going to play it with soul and character, you have to figure that out. And that to me seems to be a quality that is sorely lacking is that we have so many people that have lost the ability, or don't even want to develop the ability, to say, yeah, I don't see it that way. I don't agree with things that way, but I want to try to figure out how they got to feeling and thinking that way. I want to try to understand that somehow, Would you agree? I mean, it strikes me that theater is one of the great nourishers of building bridges between people, Because you have to do literally, as the proverb says you have to walk a mile in that person's shoes in order to understand how they're seeing, what their frame of reference is, and find a way to play that in a meaningful way without losing yourself, which some actors do right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I agree with you. I think theater training or taking classes is good for anybody, no matter if you want to be an actor or not. I think you can learn how to put yourself in somebody's shoe, how to take on a different view, even though you know I'm not going to agree with every view of the person that I play. I mean I'm not going to agree with every view of the person that I play. I mean I play to kill a clown. I'm not going, I don't believe in killing people but I try to understand is why what makes somebody want to do that?
Speaker 2:And in the end it always comes back to wanting to feel loved, wanting to feel respected and accepted, right, and when people don't get enough hugs or they had an abusive childhood. All of these play into somebody's opinion and how they maneuver through life, and I definitely think that theater will definitely theater training will definitely help you to open your, your opinions and your your world travel and how you see the world. You know travel, see the world, get outside where you are. I mean, I've met people that have never, ever traveled the world or any places and I'm like, why not? You have to go see other cultures to understand that there's different views and not judge them for it, and definitely theater gives you the opportunity, without a passport, to do that.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, I think of my experiences of China. You know, and seeing the people up close in, you know not the presentation that China would like to make to people that come to visit, but seeing you know small towns behind the curtain if you will visit, but seeing you know small towns behind the curtain if you will. And you know you've learned just the commonality and the universality of the human experience you also. But you also do see that there are plights of people that if you don't develop some compassion for that boy, your wood is wet, because I don't know how you can look at things like Boy, your wood is wet. Because I don't know how you can look at things like USAID being dismantled and not think, oh my God, what has happened? What kind of cancer is in our nation that people aren't unilaterally rising up and saying no, no, no, we want things cut, but not that, not that, my goodness, we're not that kind of inhumane beasts. And, yeah, you know. So I wonder, I wonder.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, it's an interesting time right now to see what will develop, and you know, I think there's some good that's happening and there's some really bad that's happening, and where is the balance in all of that is what the unknown is, what makes us want to watch dark movies.
Speaker 1:Just tune out, yeah, and that you know that's the thing, right, we're, we're constantly caught in that balance between keeping yourself healthy enough to fight the battles that you feel called and led to do. So that and that is a real and that's a real challenge right now. You've found some methods I mean your entire party, but healthy kind of back and forth. It's like a yin and yang and it seems like you really have done an excellent job of finding the middle line so that you're able to kind of healthily see and participate in those things that keep that balance going. Is there a secret to that? Or how did you? How is that reinforced in what you're seeing? Or I mean, there's a lot of questions I guess I have about that, but it just strikes me as a really, really well-tuned philosophy. Did it just come upon you, or is this something that has been developing over the years as you embarked on your career?
Speaker 2:Oh, it definitely developed over the years. Finding balance takes time, right, you have to get to know who you are and what works for you. But I've basically figured out if I do five days a week, I'm good, I can have two days of great fun without having to worry about because you can never destroy in two days what you did in five days right, for the most part. And I just have learned over the time what does it mean to have balance mentally, physically, nutritionally, for me, you know, and in general, we all want to be in a social, we still want to have social settings, like. We want to have friends, we want to have go out, we want to do all these things and not be paranoid. When I competed, there was no going out, there was just one way and it was just strict diet and exercise and there was not a social life really. And finding balance and I always thought that for me and I'm speaking just for me is that being on stage was very unhealthy and the reason why is because you get your body fat to a certain percentage. It's not natural, it's just for the stage, it's just for the light, it looks great on pictures but it's not how we walk around every day, but finding the balance in how can I walk around in it with 90% of that and not 100%? That's what I wanted and that's what I think is healthy, and a lot of times people are all or nothing, and finding balance in general in anything, be it your work, be it with your family, is everything. And so, for me, life has taught me how to find balance by trial and error, you know. You know, and going on stage, being in magazines, all these other things have taught me. Ok, that is the one extreme. And then also the other one where you can work out or don't want to work out, or, you know, I always found that fitness gave me a sense of balance, of when I I have anxiety, I go work out. When I, um, don't feel good or whatever, I feel great, I work out. Or if I need to learn my lines, I work.
Speaker 2:So for me, working out was always that for some people it's not working out, for some people it's going hiking, it's still working out. You know, find what works for you. And then, um, nutrition, same thing. You know I nobody can stick on to a low carb diet 24, 7, right, and it's actually not healthy. So finding the balance in that and how to rotate your there's the oldest diet in the world that I know of is the rotation diet. All bodybuilders that came before me and that I trained with they're all legends and they have used the same thing the rotation diet, which is now called the metabolic confusion diet or the keto diet it's all the same thing. It just means that you're rotating your carbs, you're dialing in, you get yourself into an insulin-sensitive state and then your body becomes this burning machine. And that's what that is, and it's all about balance.
Speaker 1:What keeps people from that, do you think? Is there a fundamental? I sometimes wonder, is there a fundamental desire or are we conditioned somehow to live in unhealthy ways? Is there some sort of thanatos going on? Like you know, freud called it that death force, that, uh, cause it strikes me. You see so many people that try, they try there. They try something, it doesn't work. When they try something else, it doesn't work and then ultimately either get to a point where they just self-defeat everything that they did, just self-defeat everything that they did. And I sometimes wonder if it isn't something just in the human psyche that drives us to just give up and say, yeah, you know what, that bag of chips there looks really great, and after that I'm going to have that, you know, sunday that I've wanted to have all week long. And yeah, forget about the diet, I can't do it, I just can't do it. What is that?
Speaker 2:I think it's two things. I think is we have learned to be. We have not, or we have unlearned to be patient and stick with something longer because everything is so easy and accessible Social media gratifications to food being delivered to us we don't have to go and fetch for it anymore, so everything should become so easy. I mean, if you go into a grocery store, you can have anything you want, you know, and a lot of it is very bad food for us. So I think that um plays into.
Speaker 2:Because we are a nation of uh, we are addicted to sugar. It is the the biggest drug there is and I think once you start with the sugar to then cause it's such a dopamine for the body to then go against. It's like an heron addict is saying, oh, I'm just going to quit doing heron, oh, I'm just going to quit doing sugar. And I think it's a huge addiction and the only way you can finish or fix it is you have to withdraw from it. You have to do a prolonged fasting and a lot of people don't want to. There's too much fun with a glass of wine and a piece of cheesecake. You know why would you want to not indulge in that Right. So we have all these memories connected to food because we're an emotional society, we eat and create emotional connection with our food, and I think that is why it is so hard for people. And then we have people that are insulin sensitive and they, thank God we have peptides now, where people can actually have results from it and they are healthy for us. But in general, I think it's just easier and it's hard to get rid of sugar cravings. It really is, even for me. I mean, I have to be really careful that, like when we were traveling Europe, you have a glass of wine here, you have a beer here, you have a croissant here you have. You know, yes, we were walking a lot, but the sugar cravings didn't go away. So now the next day you want it again, then you want it again, and then five o'clock hits. Oh, five o'clock, I have to have this drink.
Speaker 2:So we have created a program in our system that we have to reprogram, and the easiest way and that's why I wrote a book called the Balance and it's free on my website it's to how to change the program. That is the number one thing. And the way you change a program is you give yourself. Let's say you want to change your program of exercising and nutrition. You start with five minutes a day. Don't look at the big picture. You're going to set your timer for five minutes in the morning and you do something that is for your body, that helps your body get stronger, because the only thing we have for sure is our body, and muscle gives us longevity.
Speaker 2:So five minutes in the morning, set your timer and when the five minutes are over, you stop. You have to stop. You can't continue and you're going to do that every single day for two weeks. You now have created a new program in your body that craves it and that's all it is. It's just you have to reprogram. You have to reprogram when you read. You have to like. We have a routine. When we get up in the morning, we have a cup of coffee, it's all the same thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it strikes me too. You have to have something again, unfortunately, I think is sorely lacking in a lot of people's lives. You have to have discipline. You have to be willing to put off that immediate gratification and replace it with no, I'm focused. I'm committed to this. I'm going to do this thing. No, I'm focused, I'm committed to this. I'm going to do this thing. Because what they say it takes something like 22 days to actually form a habit, you know, to have it become habitualized, and it's encouraging to hear that the body does in fact want that. It starts to crave that time and I'm terrible the one thing you said that really speaks to me. I'm terrible. I'll do five minutes. I'm like this feels good and I'll just go and do 10 or 15 or 20 right away, and then you get burned out really quickly, which is just that's me realizing. Hey, dummy, just stay to five. Be disciplined about that too, right?
Speaker 2:That's it. And then five to come 10 minutes. You know, and I always say, if you have to do more than an hour you have to take a look at your nutrition, right, because you can't chase a bad diet period. And if you start with five minutes, I think it's not such a big hurdle, it's not such a overwhelming feeling. You know, it's like I.
Speaker 2:For me, I don't like paperwork. It is my absolute I. We don't see eye to eye paperwork. I wish somebody could do all my paperwork. So I have this pile and I say, okay, you're just going to do five minutes today to do that pile. And that is discipline. You have to be disciplined. Motivation doesn't really exist. Motivation is saying I want to do this big movie with Will Ferrell and I'm going to play his sister in the movie and then just that's it. But discipline means that I'm studying the craft, I'm working with people that are surrounded with it, that are close to Will Ferrell, or that, you know, maybe I'll write my own movie and then present it to him. You know that's what discipline does. You can't just say it. You have to take action for what you want to do and you have to show up for it every single day.
Speaker 1:Haven't we become a society? Really? We all want to be influencers, right, so that there's, you know, we think that influencing is just you know. Well, yeah, I'm going to get my podcast right and I'm going to be an influencer, and the reality is that all takes in order to have it be meaningful and lasting and significant.
Speaker 1:It does take discipline, right. You have to develop the craft over time. You have to learn to listen. I'm so encouraged to hear you say that, because that is one of the things I don't like in a lot of podcasts is that the people that are running the podcast are not listening. And how do you? I don't get that. It just doesn't compute. So if people were going to listen and develop that listening skill because I think we're talking about listening to your body too, right, listening to the things that distract us, right, how do you develop that discipline? The five minutes makes great. That's very concrete. You can do just five minutes, but is there another? Are there?
Speaker 2:any techniques or leadership styles that you've learned to do that thing, to develop that discipline, to continue to get the concentration that's necessary to do that. Schedule yourself. You have to schedule yourself. That's the first thing, like the scheduling going to work, and then I think we get so overwhelmed with and thinking that we haven't done anything.
Speaker 2:I think sorting your thoughts and what I've learned from a life coach is at night. I write down everything I did for the day, like literally everything, really as small and minute, as as big as it is, and it just gives me a perspective of what I've done. And then I write three things down that I want to accomplish the next day. Only three things cannot be more. And through the night my subconscious actually prepares for those three things the next day. And it's been a very powerful tool for me to stay focused on what I want to do, because we have to wear so many hats nowadays Most people can't survive on one income anymore in this world and we have to constantly figure out how do we make more money and it can be very overwhelming and writing things down has definitely helped me just sort my mind and stay focused. And then you got to schedule yourself.
Speaker 1:Boy, there's so good lessons right there. Yeah, are you One second, raul, I have to go get something. Okay, lessons right there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, are you One second, raul? I have to go get something. Okay, one second, okay, okay. My computer was about to die and I was like no, not right now well, I'm glad you were listening to your computer, that's all I can say.
Speaker 1:So I'm hoping this is going to be a trajectory upwards. Now I want to ask a question about your efforts and the things that you've been doing. I want to assume, because of the nature of your spirit, your personality, that that has evolved over time, your spirit, your personality, that that has evolved over time. You know that you have, you've had some changes, not only in physics. You know the physical fitness areas, but how do you think that your trajectory or your expertise is different today than it was, say, 20 years ago, like when you were working as a bodybuilder in the Olympics? Have you evolved, you think, as a bodybuilder in the Olympics, have you evolved, you think, in terms of how you would approach even those workouts now than you did then, because you didn't have the knowledge and information and experience that you have now?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. You know, we're only as good as what we know and what our knowledge is right and our awareness. So back then when I competed, that's all I knew is how to do that, or with being an athlete, running and track, um, so I had all that knowledge and then how to get on stage. But what happened later on for me now is the maturity of my body, the menopausal stuff, the aging part. The things are not working. Injuries are are happening. You know that I need to fix and so that gave me another tools and avenues of knowledge because I lived it.
Speaker 2:When you live something you can talk about it, because I fixed my second degree tear, mcl and patellar, and I never had to have surgery. I don't get injured when I work out. I actually help my joints to be better, like rotator. I also surf and my shoulder got dislocated, went out surfing, and so I popped it back in. I had to rehab it because the bands were now partially little tears in it and you can do all that with exercise and I learned that while I, you know, went through it by myself and studied it and can help others, and I have a lot of people now in the age 42.
Speaker 2:My oldest gentleman is 95. And I help them to maneuver into how to start working out how to do it for their body in a way that it helps them to heal, to get stronger and have much more mobility and longevity, because it's not just about the vein part. When I used to go on stage, it was for the look and, like I said, it was actually the most unhealthiest that I've ever been was being on stage, where now the age that I'm now, I feel so much healthier, I feel so much stronger, and it's because I found the balance in how to help my body heal but also how to stay in a certain level of fitness that looks good.
Speaker 1:So if you could go back 20 years and talk to your 20-year-old self, is there one thing you would try to change or one thing you would try to emphasize for that person that you think would have been helpful? Not that we can relive, but you know what I mean. Is there a lesson there.
Speaker 2:I wish I would have started my business sooner. I wish I would have studied certain things sooner. I definitely was of how should I put that? I didn't stick with one thing alone. I didn't stick with one thing alone. Where? Now I have a better vision of what I want to do and where I want to go. Where when I was in my twenties I didn't know I had no mentor. Finding a good mentor is really important to in your twenties, to to fine tune where you want to go, and if you have somebody like that or you're seeking out somebody like that, I think it could be a win-win situation for you, because my parents weren't good mentors in that sense for me. They didn't know the things that I wanted to do and where I wanted to go and, having that, I would definitely seek out a mentor sooner.
Speaker 1:Boy. It almost seems like we need to realize that life is an apprenticeship, and then a journeymanship, and then an expert. You know the person, the craftsperson that can actually do life, because it is. You know, when you're right, you know, when we're young, we don't think. You know, I'm learning this thing that I like doing. I mean, I remember studying, acting, being like oh yeah, okay, I'm gonna put that to work, kind of thing. But you know, I thought of it before. You know we want to be influencers when we're 13. What are you talking about? You know you need to be influenced and you need to very be selective about who you choose to be influenced by when you're 13. You're right, and that's what parents, you know, do somewhat. But you know there are some kids that just you know, goodness gracious, just stop, get out of your bubble, stop listening to that and start listening to something different. You know, listen to some jazz music or something. For god's sakes, just uh get outside.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and honestly, for me it was too. I didn't listen to my intuition when I was in my 20s. I definitely listen to my intuition now, and I made a lot of mistakes in my 20s because I went against my intuition.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's still small voice Right that says oh man, it's so powerful and we're like, oh yeah, now what do you know? It's the danger and the excitement of what could happen. And you know, because I've always been such a positive person about and wanting to experience the life, that sometimes my intuition said, carson, I don't think you should be doing that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I did it anyway. I worked a show with Nikki Glaser a few weeks back and she was so funny because she said she's at the point now where her knees are starting to look like old ladies' knees. So, and you know, she made sure that we knew on the camera crew that we would get a close-up on her knees for the eye mag. And it was so funny because she said now I'm thinking I see these teenage girls and I feel like they're all looking at me, going like, well, that's what I got to look forward to, huh. So and she's like, oh man, that's probably very true. That's why I'm laughing. So okay, so I'm going to wrap up with some fun stuff, because we've got about I don't know, five minutes left here or something.
Speaker 1:Tell me about things. Like I was looking at your Facebook page. It was so fun to see some of the pictures of you. You did some stuff with. Um. I've not watched the show, so excuse me, but um, the the righteous gemstones I thought I saw something which I just saw him on letterman.
Speaker 1:I thought, oh, that just looks, I have to watch it now. I mean, I knew it was fun, but it's like in its series finale now or whatnot, and you played some sort of german um like karate or fighting expert, it looks like. Am I reading that right?
Speaker 2:So the Righteous Gemstones is an evangelistic family and it's a comedy written by Danny McBride, and it is hilarious. It's his fourth season on HBO Max and I'm playing a Sola, the kung fu nanny of Baby Billy, who's played by Walton Goggins and Tiffany's wife, valen Hall. And Baby Billy is what God just kills the role. He's hilarious, he's money, greedy, he's everything that the world is right now. He's everything that the world is right now. And here comes in Ballen Hall.
Speaker 2:Tiffany is this Midwest kind woman who is basically always thinking positive and she has and always kind, almost thinking about like she needs to be more, she needs to read more books, kind of deal. And then there's this nanny who they hired for their children, who is this calm German woman who's badass. There's a huge fight scene in episode four, which, if you haven't watched Rites of Gemstone, do yourself a favor. It's hilarious and anybody that was watching it gets hooked on it. But what I love about the show, too, is because it's so funny and so relevant. I mean, I talked to an NBC news anchor and she said it's actually very spot on. But what he always does is he brings it back to what's important, which is family and unity and how people stick together and it just has great nuances.
Speaker 1:I remember a theater professor of mine years ago. She used to say regularly in class she would say you know, comedy is not funny. And I'd be like what are you smoking? What do you mean? Comedy isn't funny. Why do we laugh if it's not funny? And her concept, which is very true, is that the reason comedy is comedy is because it's not us, it's a situation that we recognize and there is some fundamental truth there that makes us relax, become vulnerable and consider the truth. So that show strikes me as one of those that is just as the news anchor said. And that show strikes me as one of those that is just as the news anchor said spot on with hitting the problems, but hitting them in a Brechtian way. Right, you come at it from an oblique angle and it's, you can't quite. Ah, that's not true, that's not how evangelists are.
Speaker 1:It's like, yeah, no, they really are, you know, and if you can't see that, then you need to open up your eyes and not take yourself so seriously. So what's it like? I mean, to me that's a rarefied atmosphere. You know, when you're working with people like Grogan and you know that company, Billy McBride, I mean, for goodness sakes, these are people that are at the top of their craft, right, and that's got to be just marvelously liberating. Looking for like kind of a behind-the-scenes take as someone that lives that.
Speaker 2:What's your perspective on it? It is amazing, to say it in the most powerful word, that I can feel right now. Anytime we level up or we get to a set where there's this kind of cast I mean we had Megan Mulligan and John Goodman and Danny McGrath and Edie Paz and I just the caliber of the cast was just phenomenal. There's a moment where you have an imposter syndrome and it's then you say, okay, I'm, I'm, I belong here, and anytime the past syndrome means that we're stepping into something new, we're stepping into an elevation, you know, and I think it is.
Speaker 2:It is a high, it is amazing, it is thrilling and you get to watch people learn from them. I always like to get on set, even when it's not my turn to watch other people and their craft, and it's just amazing, especially when you work with a cast that has been filming for six years. This is the fourth season and I come in as the character and everybody just made me feel very welcome and this really can be very scary to go in and meet new people, and especially A-list people like that who have such a huge track record of amazing artistry and projects that they have done.
Speaker 2:It feels very good and it feels humbling.
Speaker 1:Is there a perspective you think on what I think of as sort of a dark cliff? You know the people that go over and become so enraptured with themselves and their place in. You know the spectrum of talent that they forget that and I suspect that it is about ego versus humility. You know of ceasing to be in a place where I need to learn and, more importantly, I need to teach and pass on what I've learned. Importantly, I need to teach and pass on what I've learned. Have you observed, or does your fitness training give you some insight into, what happens in a person to make them go over that cliff?
Speaker 2:Because that's a that's a dark place. I think, definitely you have to be in a place of balance already. I definitely think that, because I don't rely on acting to pay my bills and I have a great balance with my craft, I just see it's an art, right, and it's all about the art. It's not about the fame. It's not about if anybody tells me oh, I just want to be an actor so I can be famous. I think you're doing the wrong thing. It's about, you know, creating something that makes people feel something.
Speaker 2:And it can happen to people because I think when they're very young and they get the key to the city too soon, meaning they get, you know, huge fame their brain has not developed humbleness, they have maybe not had trauma, they had not had experiences where they had to work harder for it. If it comes too easy, sometimes I think people can go and lose themselves in the uh, in the fame of it. And staying humble comes with experiences that are not always been that great, you know. And staying humble means, you know, not take yourself too serious as in the success, but more in the privilege of the art, you know, to have that opportunity, opportunity for me to have this opportunity to act with all these people and that danny mcbride thought that I will have an amazing, impeccable improv to do it. It says something about my craft and, yeah, my physicality helped because they wanted a tall german. But I trained to be and be prepared for this role many, many years.
Speaker 2:When people are not watching, you know it's not for me. Oh, now I'm famous and people talk about me. That goes away like that. You know, when the show is done, nobody's going to talk about what are you going to do next? You know, and I think that's where we have to and that's with everything, you everything, not even in front of the camera. People can be very successful and make a lot of money and treat other people like jerks just because they think they have more money, but in the end of the day, we all sleep in one bed. We all have one roof over our head.
Speaker 1:We all catch a dream.
Speaker 2:Put our pants on one leg at a time, whatever it is yeah, we all put our pants on one line at a time, whatever it is yeah.
Speaker 1:So, Kirsten, thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I'm sorry I asked a really unfair, complicated question right at the end there. When I'm looking at the clock going, we have four minutes left, oh my goodness. So thank you for going with the flow. So, folks, if you haven't figured it out by yet, we've been talking with Kirsten Schultz, who is a renowned author, I'm going to say a physical fitness expert, a nutritionist I guess I'm going to put that on you as well I'm not reading this from your Facebook page either but an actress. She has been an Olympian, I mean. I think you've kind of you've got the full spectrum of life going on there, Kirsten. So I don't know quite how to introduce you any better than that, but it's been a pure joy talking with you, Thank you.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you. Great questions, loved it, and you can find me on partyanddietcom if you have any questions and need any help. I'm always available.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe at some point you'll see fit to give me another hour of time or thereabouts so we can talk some more. That would be great so, especially as we all develop a better attitude and a better physique in the next few years. So yeah, all right, take care. Thank you, bye-bye.
