Choose Your Hard: Finding Purpose In Every Season with Tracey Sundkvist

We explore how clarity, values, and connection redefine success from a moving target into a daily practice. Tracey shares brain-based tools to set meaningful goals, escape ruts, and choose the right kind of hard while building joy and resilience.

• defining success as a consequence, not a destination
• aligning goals to life phase and values
• identity risk when roles change
• choosing joy over chasing happiness
• the cost of instant gratification and doomscrolling
• the power of deep relationships for well-being
• practical outcome setting for business owners
• the healthy mind platter and life variety
• intentional rest, habits, and gratitude
• choosing your hard and building resilience

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Transcript

Purpose, Behavior, And Brain-Based Coaching

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Hi, welcome back to the next episode of Overcome Yourself the podcast. I used to say hello there, and I said hi today, and it was weird. But anyway, welcome to the next episode of Overcome Yourself. As you know, my name is Nicole, and I'm so excited to be here today with Tracy. And Tracy, well, go ahead, please introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about who you are and who you help.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Sure. I'm a brain-based coach and business consultant, and I help healthcare-based businesses find purpose and business on purpose, so that you can build a business that you don't need kind of a vacation from. The irony is that my approach, although it's business, it kind of always comes down to the behavior of the person, the thinking, the skills, and the behavior of the individual, of the individual that's going to drive the results. So I help people get clear on the phase of life that they're in and what is going to give them the most uh connection and purpose for that phase of life.

Getting Out Of The Rut And Naming Real Goals

SPEAKER_01 1:23

I love that so much. Um, and one of the things that you do is you actually you mentioned this, you help bring clarity. And I I noticed that one of the things that you said that you do is helping people like establish what their goals are. And we know that that's actually a lot harder than it looks on the surface, right? And I think the reason for that is so many people, and you can let me know if I'm on the right track here, but we get so lost in our rut, in our routine, in the day-to-day, and especially as women, we're so focused on making sure that everybody else is okay and they've got their activities and they've got their rides and they've got food and they're like surviving, you know? And then we forget what we want. And when someone asks us, well, what's your goal? and you're like, Well, to make sure that the laundry is put away, to make sure dinner gets on the table by 6 p.m. They're like, No, no, no, no, no. Like, yeah, you do that, but what do you want? And so can you can you like talk to us a little bit about that and how we can um find that clarity, like get back to what do we want?

Success, Seasons Of Life, And Identity

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Sure. I think you kind of hit the nail on the head when you spoke about getting into a rut. Because I mean, if I think if I think back over the course of my life, I mean, it w we're on the overcome you podcast, and I was fully prepared to have the how have you overcome yourself question. And I think it fits in quite nicely now because if I ask myself what I want now, it is completely different to 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. I mean, it it has adapted as I've adapted. And what we want is it's never, it never happens in isolation. It happens in a system, it happens in a family unit, in an economic unit, in a political unit, right? There's there's all of these influences that can get us to the point where we think we know what we want and we blindly pursue that. And whether we achieve it or not, um, with external forces, what can end up happening is that things change, and at every change, you know, when you start uh, you know, if you have a developmental life change or the political system changes or your business crashes, then it's this big, like chaotic wake-up call, like, oh my goodness, what am I gonna do now? What am I gonna do with the next step? But what you don't realize is that it's always in flux. It's it's you're constantly in a state of change. If you think of the, you were speaking about the the kind of mom who has to get the family on track and get the you know, the laundry packed away and get everything sorted and everyone doing what they need to do. I mean, the the problem there is where are you in that family unit? You know, if you if your desire, if what you want, if your goal is to be like the A-class mother that you never had, to be there for your family in a way where you never experienced it. So it's almost like a way of giving back to yourself, growing and developing yourself, then all of those activities are gonna look and feel different when you're looking and saying, Well, this is how I spend my time. Right? So you can do exactly the same thing. So, so take a stay-at-home mom taking care of a family of four. You can have two different, right? Exactly the same conditions, same economic uh situation, same uh kind of family style in life. One mom can approach that from the mindset of I had to give up my career so that I could do this, and that existence is going to be less colourful. And then another mom can approach it from the mindset of, this is fulfilling my highest purpose. I am like the most fulfilled, being the best mother I can be. This is how I want to spend my time, this is how I want to spend my life. And their experience is going to be so much more positive. So at the end of the day, it's all relative. And when you're looking for the thing that's going to give you purpose, the thing that's going to make you happy, the thing that's going to make a difference, you need to understand what you're bringing to the table. Because you you can't set a goal unless you can understand how that goal fit in with me, my needs, my wants, and very often my subconscious stuff that I'm carrying. Yes.

Defining Outcomes And Values In Business

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Um and even when we're not necessarily moms, because I'm not a mom yet, but we still have other other responsibilities, other things that we put, you know, make sure mom is good, make sure, you know, you go visit grandma, make sure my friends are taken care of. Like, we have so many demands on us. Um, and I'm not saying that sometimes like habits and having our routines are not important because they are, but that's not all there is, you know. Um in my book, one of my chapters is about success. And I thought I'd be writing about, you know, like success and having a big house, but when you get down to the root of it, it's none of those things, right? Like it's so dependent on us and you know, our wants, our desires, things. But then if we put our identity in those things in those seasons, then success is gonna feel even further away. Because, like, if you if your identity, your whole idea of success is being a good mom and being there for your kids, what happens when they move out? Or if your whole identity is in being the CEO and I'm successful because I put my whole career, you know, and then you hurt yourself and now you can't go to work, yeah, or you know, something happens, you know, the industry, your industry happens to collapse, you know, like you're you were in newspapers and then you didn't adjust, you know, there's stuff that can happen, right? But if your whole identity of success is in any of those things, what happens when that thing goes away? Because like you said, everything is always changing. Um, and so at the root of it, what is success? Well, it's doing those things well and in the season that they are because you're not gonna you're not gonna be an employee forever, you're not gonna be a business owner forever, you're not gonna be like a stay-at-home mom forever, right? Because things change.

Joy Over Happiness And Practicing Gratitude

Relationships, Context, And Instant Gratification

SPEAKER_00 7:57

So um what is it? Success is tough. Success is flippant tough to to quantify because we don't know. Success for us is usually something that we want to try and achieve. So we're at point A, and success for us is point B. But success is usually a consequence of doing something. And unless we can figure out what do I need to be doing so that I feel like I'm successful, it's not something that you can, it's not something you can hit. It's like it's this absolute obsession of people currently. I want um my plan or my goal is to be happy. And I mean, that's uh that is a very uh sure-find way to make yourself very unhappy because happiness is a consequence of doing things that bring you joy, of doing things that are meaningful. Uh it's not something like, okay, pursue happy, okay, how am I going to be happy? Let's play music, let's see if that does it. You know, it's it's it's a consequence. So when when we're trying to define success for individuals, and I mean, I need to take it to the business space just because that's kind of my wheelhouse. One of the very first things I do with business owners in that first meeting that we have where we're exploring the way forward together, I want to understand what is the goal, right? And we can call that, you know, what does success look like to you? Or we can call it what is the goal, what is the outcome? What is it that you want to achieve that you don't have now, that you feel that this is going to be a culmination? You know, this is going to be kind of what you really want to bring about. Because unless you're very clear on where you are right now, so what is this current situation and what is that desired outcome or what that future situation is, there's no way that you can make progress. Now, if you want to experience more success, you need to know what is my starting point. You know, what do what do I want to try and bring about? And then you can start testing things to see what's going to work, what's not going to work, are you getting closer? Um, is it getting you further away? But ultimately it's always going to be a dance. You know, you think um in the business world, business is easy. Business is actually very easy. From from start, it follows a predictable pattern. There are predictable activities that you need to do. You know, the the thing that usually makes business difficult is our discipline or our approach or the way we think about things. So we think that we know things, but we don't really. So we take the wrong um actions or behaviors because we think we've got the solutions when actually we don't. So it's more um it's not so much a case of we don't know how to get there. It's a case of we think we know, but but we don't really. So yeah, I think it's I mean, it all sounds simple. I mean, it you know, it sounds fairly straightforward on paper, but it is different for every person. I mean, one thing that I've seen, one thing that I've seen big time with the, and I don't know if this is just a social shift, political shift, economic shift, but what I'm seeing more and more of is the the business clients that I'm bringing, they're sharing, I want to be successful. And when you kind of get into that, okay, what is success? No, it's more money. Okay, how much more money? It's so much more money. If I hit this amount of money, then I'm gonna be financially free and I'm going to be less stressed. And but when you really dig into, okay, so what is having that money gonna give you that you can't have now? You know, people aren't able to answer because sometimes the priorities we think that we need to earn more money, but earning more money is just gonna add more complication. It's going to add more str more stress, it's going to mean more work. And sometimes, and I've seen this more and more, I have had um business owners or practice owners where they want to be more family oriented. They actually want to be more successful so that their family can have a stronger quality family life. But you know, working 60-hour weeks is, you know, that's a complete contradiction to that value. So, you know, understanding your values is um way up there. If if you don't know where, if you don't have a direction or you're not sure what you want, or you're kind of floating aimlessly about, which I've spent time in my life doing, it's a horrible place to be. One of the first ways to get a little bit more direction is to understand what are my values, what are the things that I do that gives me the greatest satisfaction, and what is behind what I'm doing that generates that for me.

Intentional Rest, Self-Health, And Habits

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Yes. Um, you touched on something really, really important. Another chapter from my book, like I love this, just you're right on the money, right? But um talking about happiness and how I I realized, I learned that um, you know, I I didn't want, I didn't, I had to stop trying to be happy. I wasn't chasing happiness anymore because I realized that happiness is it it happens in your brain, it's a it's a chemical reaction, right? Yeah, so you get these feel-good chemicals, not from outside, but just the internal reactions, and then you feel happiness. And so in understanding that, I realized, well, it's actually physically impossible to be happy all the time because if we're happy all the time, then it becomes neutral, like it doesn't you don't feel it anymore. And so I was like, okay, if I'm not looking for happiness, what am I looking for? Right. And what I discovered, what I went down to the root is it's a state of being versus doing, and it's joy, it's learning to live in joy, and joy is a perspective versus an emotion, right? And then like choosing that joy, and it it it goes it boils down to gratitude, right? And learning to practice gratitude because otherwise it's all empty. We're just chasing the next thing, we're not content, we're not in the moment, we're not appreciating, and so it's always like, Oh, I had that when I was 20, like and I didn't even know how good I had it. Oh, when I was 25, I didn't know how good I had it. Well, what if we realize right now you don't know how good you have it right now? Do you want to look back in 10 years and be like, oh man, it was so good, and I didn't even enjoy it while I was there? Well, what if we stopped doing that and be like, you know what? 45-year-old me, 55, 85-year-old me is gonna look back and be like, you you finally figured it out and you got to enjoy it while it was happening. Um, and so freeing myself from trying to be happy and really learning to live in joy and contentment while still striving, still having goals, you know, but it's more about being in that versus trying to do because when you're doing, you reach the goal and then you look around and you're like, you know what? I did I made the money, I got the house, and this is a common theme on this show. People are like, I had the money, I got my dream house, I lived in my dream place, I went on a dream vacation, and then what? And I realized it was right. Um, yeah, and so I don't want that for people. I want I want you to live in enjoy. Um, and that was part of my journey was really learning to enjoy the journey, not dragging myself through life, but having fun, like living, like really living life to the fullest and enjoying it. So I don't know, I said a lot of stuff. So, what does that bring up for you?

SPEAKER_00 15:42

There's there's two things that immediately come to my mind. I think the first was that the longest documented study on happiness, I think it was Harvard, that did it, and they did it over like two or three generations. And the the results of that study was when they asked people what was the difference between having a quality life and not having a quality life, 10 out of 10 times it was about connection. It was about the quality of your relationships, not the number of your relationships, it's the quality of your relationships. So the danger that we that we're at, I believe, is that we become too self-centric. Not self-centered, not self-fish. We become so focused on ourselves that we forget that a big part of what makes us work and work well is very good connections with other people. Right? I mean, when you're going off and doing the wrong thing, you would um if you have close family members, if you have friends, this this is support for you, right? When when you get ideas that are awful or wonderful, it's it's through these shared experiences, it's through the quality of our connections that we can find a deeper sense of purpose. It makes it much easier when you see yourself as I'm I'm part of something bigger than myself. When your question is, there's something wrong with me, I'm not happy, I'm not fulfilled. Um, it's very difficult because when you only focused on yourself, you look at yourself out of context. You look at yourself out of the context of your life. I am, I have a I have a version of myself that goes to work. I have a version of myself that is a parent to my daughter. I have a version of myself that sees friends, that is in public life, that votes, that you know, you you're more than just this this one thing, right? It's um it's quite complex.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

So yeah, it's not you you think um I said two things come. So the first is quality of relationships um being the most important factor in into whether people said I had a quality life. The second thing is the the god-awful impact that um the instant gratification is having. So think of the instant gratification of online shopping, massively addictive, very, very bad for us, and even doom scrolling. The problem is that we're we're we never feel boredom, right? We're always we can we can hide in these activities that give us these bursts of um the brain chemical. So literally, it's like little reward uh pops of rewards. We can get so completely off track that by the time we start seeing the consequences of being disconnected with ourselves and with others, it's actually a much bigger problem because we've kind of numbed ourselves with with all of these things that superficially fit on and make you think that things are okay for a lot longer than they are. So those were the two things that popped up. The one was how important it is to have connections with other people and stay rooted to that reality, present in your life. That was a big thing that you that you mentioned was was that awareness of myself in the moment. This is the moment that I have. I don't have a future. The past doesn't dictate anything anymore for me. So so this is really what I need to make the best of. And then that second is hiding when things are wrong, never experiencing boredom. I mean, I think I think you might still be a bit a bit young, but before all of the social media and stuff, and you know, you'd come home from school, there's none of this, the scrolling, and you sit there, you you you'll be bored. You'll be bored to a point, and then you'll start coming up with things to to entertain yourself. And just doing those things have an impact on your self-efficacy. Am I able to see to myself? Can I care for myself? Can I entertain other people? Do I need to take up a hobby? It it cuts us off from I think a lot of experimenting that we've um we've disconnected from, which I do not think is a healthy thing.

The Healthy Mind Platter And Variety

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Yeah, I think we have to be very intentional. Um, just like with everything, like there's just so many things vying for our attention and being really intentional about rest. So, like putting down the phone and actually resting, getting sun, connecting with the earth, like going to the beach, going to the park, connecting with other people. Um and you know, I think what's really important about that too is to create like long-lasting genuine connections with people, you gotta be healthy up here. Oh, yeah. Because if you don't get along with you, like people can't put up with you long term, not because they don't want to. And I know from experience because I was the bad I, you know, I was the bad vibe, right? Um, that woe is me, everything's happening to me, blah, blah, blah. Like stuff stuff was hard. You know, I dealt with like my mom passing away when I was one, I had got a back accident, and you know, like I had a lot of other deaths, and there was a lot that did happen to me. Um, but then I had to learn how to how that that's what led me to realizing, you know, um, if I'm gonna if I'm gonna be stuck on earth, if I'm gonna be stuck on this earth with all of this tragedy tragedy, how can I enjoy it? How can I still have fun? Like, am I allowed to feel joy even though I've experienced all of this not joy? Yeah, you know, and finding grace and finding forgiveness and and and finding yourself here because like I said, it's so gay, you know, in the beginning we were talking about the rut. Um, and it's so easy to get stuck in just in just the the monotony of it all and just doing the same thing over and over. Um, and then you look up one day and you're like, where did my twenties go? Where did my thirties go? What happened? Um, you know, and and then that's what leads to like midlife crisis and things. But what if we just got to enjoy it? What if we got to, you know, have fun? And that's that's why gratitude is such an important thing for me. Like it's one of the main factors of my book. I also talk about habits because, like I said, we do need kind of like um, you know, like like certain steady things, right? Like you gotta get up and brush your teeth, you gotta wash your clothes, you gotta make sure that the dishes are done, and you gotta do a lot of boring things that you know are not necessarily gonna bring you happiness. But yeah, among all of those things, where's the joy? Where's the sparks? Where's what you do for you, the color, painting, learning a language, you know, cooking for the pleasure of it, versus just, you know, just to have some veggies. Absolutely, you know.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

In I think it's uh David Rock, he wrote, um, he's got he's the uh he coined the term neuroscience. And one of the things when I was doing the course to be a neuroscience-based coach was he brings up the healthy mind platter. And this has kind of stuck with me because it's talking about having that variety, and this is another risk in that you know, when when we're business owners, we can be 90% obsessed with business related only. Or if we realize, oh my goodness, I've put on too much weight and now I need to lose the weight, I need to get healthy, then 90% of our focus will be on, you know, it's almost like um projects. It'll be on one specific thing that will get the majority of our focus, our time, our effort, and our energy. But I think for health, for healthy living, there needs to be, people call it balance, and I hate balance because when I think of balance, I think of like balancing on a tightrope. And I think that would be the last place I would want to be is trying to walk of this very thin line where if I go too much this side, I'm gonna like die. And if I go too much that side, I'm gonna die. So balance for me is like a bit of a I think it's a lie. But it is about having a lot of about variety. So the very same as for healthy living, you buy you physically need a varied diet. I think for your emotional um health, you need a varied emotional health diet. You need a healthy self-esteem, you need healthy activities, you need healthy relationships, you need a healthy um pursuit of uh contributing to society, whether that's being a business owner, whether it's being an employee, whether it's you know being an artist. But I do think you need to be involved in in you need to have the platter rather than just that one thing. Because when one thing goes wrong, your life is over. It's like everything sucks. Because I have to be the best business person in the world, but my business is losing money. That means I'm a total failure. I'm you know, what's what have I got going for me?

Choose Your Hard And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_01 25:10

Yeah, and it's so true, and and it is so easy for us to get stuck in that, you know, because then like you're like, oh, uh, you know, my business, blah, blah, blah. But then you go to a birthday party and you're like stressing, and then you go out to dinner and you're like stressing, and you're not there. You're not in those moments, you're snappy, like, you know, and and it's about like we have to learn to enjoy all the phases. So, you know, it's not great right now, but you know what? Like, just with everything else, just like the cycles, just like the seasons, something, something will, something will happen, something will come up because it's mathematically impossible to just keep going down. Like it has to keep going. And so I like to remind myself, like, when I was I was at a stop sign one day and I was like, oh, this is taking so long. And and then I had to like really have like a like a you know, come to Jesus moment. And I was like, Nicole, it is mathematically impossible for you to be stuck at this stop sign forever, maybe for five minutes, maybe ten minutes, maybe an hour, but forever, no, you it's it can't be so um and so that helped me chill out so I can keep going on my drive. Yep. Um, no, but I love that because it's so true. We have balance. We have some rice, we have some meat, we have some veggies, we have some salad, and you know what? The salad's not good. We throw it out, but we still have veggies and rice and meat that we can eat. Um so yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I love that. Now, Tracy, how can we stay in touch with you?

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Well, on the uh I any anyone can find me on superclinicproject.com. Um, on that, um, at that resource, there's a bunch of different things you can do there. You can uh book a direct call with me, 30 minutes for free, or you can join our school group, and that is going to help people build um sustainable businesses, really focused on the marketing side, how to have a marketing strategy and uh kind of get organized service-based business. Um, or they can uh check out the podcast. So that's also around builds building healthy business. So really superclinic project superclinicproject.com um to book with me. Otherwise, I'm uh all across social media as well. So you can find me on LinkedIn. Um I try to stay away from Facebook because uh yeah, if Facebook and me aren't big friends, I'm I'm very aware of uh how things look and the reality. And I'm the kind of like quirky person that I want I want to show you in my pajamas, you know, with you know, my hair a mess, and and but that doesn't go down well. So so yeah, there's some no worries.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

Um so but LinkedIn, you said LinkedIn is like your your spot. Absolutely, awesome. All right, and so final tip like based on everything we've talked about today, what's like your biggest best tip that you've got for your for your clients?

SPEAKER_00 28:09

So it's it's gonna hurt. Staying stuck hurts, and moving hurts. You just have to choose the pain that's best for you, right? Yes, yes, yes unfortunately, get get comfortable being uncomfortable because if you can if you can do that, there is nothing that can get in your way. Yes.

How To Connect With Tracy And Closing

SPEAKER_01 28:31

Um that parallel is a story that I tell. Um, I don't know if if you've read it, I've I've talked about it, but when I went to the doctor and he told me, because I had a boat accident when I was like nine, and then nobody believed that my back hurt, and I finally went to the doctor when I was 21 and got an x-ray. And he's like, You have the back of a disabled elderly woman. If you don't retire from working in restaurants, I was a server, I was carrying heavy trays. He said, You're gonna be in a wheelchair in less than five years. Like you're you're not gonna walk, like it's it's over. And so in that moment, after I cried it out, you know, because obviously that was tough, but I had to choose. Am I gonna choose the hard of physical therapy and strengthening my back and doing all the things that I have to do? Or am I gonna choose the hard of just you know, wearing my back down all the way until I can't use my legs anymore, and then I'll just be stuck in a wheelchair, and then that's gonna be hard too. So, which hard are you gonna choose, Nicole? Um, and I went with the with the immediate hard. Yep. Instead of the delay hard. I was like, let me do it now because I'm younger, and you know, if I wait, I'm gonna be older, it's gonna hurt even worse. Um, but yeah, but it's choose your heart. So it is gonna be hard. You're so right. Um, that you know, because I'm not I I don't like the toxic positivity, so I think it's important to be honest. You know, there's gonna be storms, shit's gonna happen. So, what are we gonna do to be prepared? And how can we survive enjoy and thriving and healthy happiness? So, yes, I love it. Thank you so much, Tracy. This has been wonderful. Thanks so much for having me. No, thank you for being here, and thank you guys. For joining us, we'll catch you on the next episode. We'll catch you next time on the next episode. I don't know why I'm so twisted up today. We'll catch you next time on the next episode of Overcome Yourself. Bye.