When life throws a curveball, how do you dance with the chaos? That's what Sarah Wilson, the voice behind the Everything's Messy podcast, and I, Mindy Duff, unravel in a heart-to-heart exchange. Sarah's life, marked by the challenges of type one diabetes and a heart attack, has become a testament to the strength found in life's untidy moments. Together, we explore the dangerous trap of comparison and the liberation that comes with sharing our genuine, disordered lives. It's a candid look at authenticity, with Sarah imparting wisdom from her homeschooling journey and how it aligns with the needs of her two special needs children.
Navigating the health maze can be daunting, especially when chronic stress enters the mix, an all-too-common companion of motherhood and the quest for self-care. I reveal my own skirmish with stress-related health tribulations, emphasizing the guilt tied to self-indulgence and the severe repercussions of neglecting personal care. Reflecting on the pitfalls of Western medicine's one-size-fits-all health approach, Sarah and I dissect the necessity of personalized health strategies, such as understanding the individual impact of medications like statins and blood pressure drugs. This chapter is an invitation to reclaim one's health through education, tailored nutrition, and the discernment of treatment effects.
Lastly, Sarah and I ponder the transformative magic hidden within life's intervals. It's the 'middle picture' of personal journeys where authentic growth and development germinate. We discuss the society's often misplaced focus on just the outcomes, and the importance of valuing the struggles and lessons of the in-between. This dialogue underscores the significance of recognizing the hard work and inevitable setbacks that pave the way to our goals. It's about the courage to celebrate balance as a continuous pursuit, not a destination, and embracing the journey as much as the arrival. Join us for a discussion that honors the tenacity required in the beautiful mess that is personal evolution.
To learn more about Sarah, visit:
https://www.instagram.com/everythingsmessypodcast/
To learn more about Mindy CLICK HERE
When life throws a curveball, how do you dance with the chaos? That's what Sarah Wilson, the voice behind the Everything's Messy podcast, and I, Mindy Duff, unravel in a heart-to-heart exchange. Sarah's life, marked by the challenges of type one diabetes and a heart attack, has become a testament to the strength found in life's untidy moments. Together, we explore the dangerous trap of comparison and the liberation that comes with sharing our genuine, disordered lives. It's a candid look at authenticity, with Sarah imparting wisdom from her homeschooling journey and how it aligns with the needs of her two special needs children.
Navigating the health maze can be daunting, especially when chronic stress enters the mix, an all-too-common companion of motherhood and the quest for self-care. I reveal my own skirmish with stress-related health tribulations, emphasizing the guilt tied to self-indulgence and the severe repercussions of neglecting personal care. Reflecting on the pitfalls of Western medicine's one-size-fits-all health approach, Sarah and I dissect the necessity of personalized health strategies, such as understanding the individual impact of medications like statins and blood pressure drugs. This chapter is an invitation to reclaim one's health through education, tailored nutrition, and the discernment of treatment effects.
Lastly, Sarah and I ponder the transformative magic hidden within life's intervals. It's the 'middle picture' of personal journeys where authentic growth and development germinate. We discuss the society's often misplaced focus on just the outcomes, and the importance of valuing the struggles and lessons of the in-between. This dialogue underscores the significance of recognizing the hard work and inevitable setbacks that pave the way to our goals. It's about the courage to celebrate balance as a continuous pursuit, not a destination, and embracing the journey as much as the arrival. Join us for a discussion that honors the tenacity required in the beautiful mess that is personal evolution.
To learn more about Sarah, visit:
https://www.instagram.com/everythingsmessypodcast/
To learn more about Mindy CLICK HERE
Hey friends, this is your host, mindy Duff, and you're listening to Uplevel your Life with Mindy, your number one personal growth podcast that will bring you closer to uncovering your greatest self. As a certified holistic health and nutrition coach, I created this podcast for anyone who desires to improve physically, emotionally and spiritually. I'll be interviewing experts and sharing tips and tricks that have helped not only my clients, but that have guided me on my own transformational journey. I believe that we all have a greatness that lies within. We just need to uncover it. Are you ready to level up? Let's begin.
Speaker 1:Hi everyone and welcome back to Uplevel your Life with Mindy. I'm your host, mindy Duff, and I have a special guest with me today. I've got Sarah Wilson, and Sarah is a podcast host herself from the Everything's Messy podcast, and Sarah and I are going to talk about messiness and how life can just be messy, and I know Sarah's got some great stories to share from her own life. We'll talk about what you do when life is messy, because it is Sometimes. Every day it's messy, at least a little bit is messy.
Speaker 2:That is so true, sarah. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for having me, mindy. This is great. I'm so excited to get to chat with you.
Speaker 1:Now tell us a little bit more about you. We know you have a podcast, but what else? What else does Sarah have to do?
Speaker 2:I'm married mom of three. We homeschool, which can be messy in and of itself. I have two of my children are special needs adjacent, so it just works for us to be in our own environment and let them go at their own pace. That really, really helps. But I think overall, homeschooling is a blessing anyway and if you are able to do it, I completely encourage that. I know some people can't and I respect that, but I do think it is worth every messy frustration that can possibly come about it. I'm a type one diabetic on an insulin pump and I had a heart attack six days before my 43rd birthday, which is almost two years ago. Yeah, lots of mess, lots of things going on.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So why did you title your podcast Everything's Messy? Because I know this kind of goes into. And why did you even start this podcast in the first place? Because I know this kind of ties into your story a little bit with being type one diabetic and then the heart attack. That kind of came out of nowhere, if I'm understanding correctly it did.
Speaker 2:I love that question. Yeah, the title. I actually had started this podcast in 2019 and it was something that my husband and I started to do and it was just supposed to be sort of like about messy marriage and sort of banter back and forth. And we had a few episodes I think we did maybe 10 and it just it didn't sit well. It wasn't where we wanted to go and he felt like he would be better behind the scenes and kind of just let me take over. And then COVID happened and the world went upside down and our focus went elsewhere and so just kind of sat for a little while and then the heart attack happened and I'll circle back to that in a minute.
Speaker 2:But the title to me really spoke about just our life in general. Everything and everyone has a mess and something is happening and you don't want to compare and you don't want to invalidate, because everybody's mess can be to them super messy. And it just spoke to I want to hear other people's stories and I want to hear how they're setting through the mess and what they're doing. And while we're in the mess, I also want to hear those people that have come out of the mess on the other side and what they've done and the message that they have, and it really became sort of cathartic for me after experience what I had gone through. Just let's talk about it. Why don't we talk about it? Why do we have to have this pretty picture, perfect Instagram family life story? You know that everyone wants to aspire everything's Pinterest looking and all I'm not, I'm messy, I don't have that. So I felt like I couldn't be the only one that could feel this way and as I sat down and really just needed to get it out there, I got really good feedback and one thing led to another and it just started to unravel and I'm so grateful for it. I really am. It's a great platform and I love it.
Speaker 2:And as to your second question, it's, you know, when you're lying in the cath lab and you kind of have not to be cliche, but you really sort of have all of these images and memories and things that sort of flood you. You start to think about what am I leaving behind, what can I do, what can I help with, what can I show that I'm capable of? And am I going to get that chance? Because you know, like I said, laying there I was like I'm not sure, am I going to kiss my children again, am I going to like? It was such a surreal and just scary, scary experience and messy and I just I had to do something with that. I had to, you know, and yes, there I went to therapy and things like that, but I just needed to connect, to connect with people that just you know, this sucks and what. What can we do about it? And so that was born with, where I kind of took the everything's messy brand. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like so many things that you said. I like that you mentioned that not to compare somebody else's mess to yours. I think that's really on two sides of it. One, you know you look at somebody and think, well, that's why are they so upset about that?
Speaker 2:That's not such a big problem.
Speaker 1:Or you look at somebody and think, oh, their life's perfect. My problems are way bigger than theirs, you know it doesn't matter what. All that matters is the person experiencing it. How does it feel to that person?
Speaker 2:Exactly Does it feel like a?
Speaker 1:big deal or not a big deal?
Speaker 2:And most of the time, whatever they may be sitting with, it is a big deal to them.
Speaker 2:It doesn't make them any less grateful for maybe other things they might have, but whatever they're sitting with, it's this is bad or it's messy. And I just don't think. And I think sometimes there's a stigma of, you know, people will see somebody less fortunate or somebody will be, you know, in the depths of something and it takes away what their pain might be, and then they don't actually feel validated or they don't feel worth like they can talk about it or they can, and that's I just hate, because we're all connected and we're all in this together, this messy, messy world, and so why not talk about it and don't feel bad about this? Hurt me today, or this is not. I don't like this, that's okay, you know. I think people, more people, would say you know, and again, it's all about perspective. We don't want to stay in that mess, we don't want to stay in that place, but sometimes, if you don't sit through it and it festers and you push it down, it manifests another way and that's not healthy either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, bingo. Oh, if you've listened to my podcast a lot.
Speaker 2:You've heard me share this statistic.
Speaker 1:I'm almost sure it again. I should keep like a little tally of how many times I share this. You should yeah 80 to 90% of chronic conditions have an emotional root. It's scientifically backed. If you know a physician, like if you're friends with, like a doctor or someone. Ask them what they think about that, because all the doctors that I know personally say, yeah, we know.
Speaker 2:We see that chronic conditions yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and in somebody who that suffers a lot of those, I can say that, yes, it absolutely stems from it and there's got to be a better way. There has to be a better way and I'm trying to fight for that. And I think, like I said, I don't want to be cliche, but when you're just at your lowest, whatever has brought you to that lowest, and you just have all of these things that are flooding through your mind and man, I don't want to be a statistic, I don't want to leave like that. I want to do better for others, for myself, for my family. I want to do better, I can do better. So, yeah, that's how it was sort of born.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I love that that you're bringing people onto your show that have been through the mess. Maybe you're still, maybe they're in a different mess now, but are sharing how they got through it or even just like what that experience was like for them going through whatever their quote unquote mess was, because we learn through story and we learn from each other. So I could do a whole podcast episode on scientific studies and facts and statistics and there might be a small percentage of people that would listen to that and enjoy it if that was all I shared.
Speaker 1:I'm a nerd, I would definitely nerd out on that, but the majority of the population will resonate more if you not that you can't share a statistic, but if you say, hey, here is Betty that went through this situation. Tell us about what that was like, betty. And then you hear that and you start to recognize pieces of yourself and other people's stories. And that's when you can. When they tell you what happened next, you can start to internalize that and kind of form those beliefs for your own self that oh, if Betty got through this, maybe it is possible, because I see some of myself in Betty.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and in a roundabout way, it's almost strength in numbers Because, as you see, these people rise up. Like you said, you have that belief. I can do this. I'm not going to stay here. It's going to be hard. I'm always telling my kids you have to choose your heart. It may be hard today to clean your bedroom, but imagine what it's going to be like a week from now. So choose your heart.
Speaker 2:You always have a choice, but either one's going to be hard, so pick which one that's going to be. And I feel like when we're in it and it is hard and maybe we do want to stay there or sit there because we just feel so helpless or hopeless, we've got to push ourselves to get to that other side, to get through, but knowing somebody else has done it and kind of has a path for us to follow and we can feel not alone, not like why. I feel like I'm the only one this is happening to know Is somebody else up and they've paved a little bit of that way. So go that direction and I think that, being connected and relatable, we need that for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So, speaking of so, sarah, tell us a little bit about some of the messy pieces in your life. I know you've mentioned a little bit about this heart attack.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And if you want to talk about what was leading up to that, it wasn't necessarily, I don't believe, a just random medical occurrence. I think there was some lead up to this, so tell us about that.
Speaker 2:So the biggest thing, the biggest culprit, if you will was stress. I do have type 1 diabetes and that does add to it, but that was not due to it. It was this compound chronic stress, and part of it was as a mom you're a mom we put others before ourselves. We are the last to eat, we are the last to take care of ourselves, and especially when they're really little, maybe we don't even get a shower. It's a very and we just sort of go into this mode and I wasn't resentful for it. It was just this is what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:And because of that and I will say too, when I did take a moment for myself, or maybe I did get to go out to dinner with a friend by myself, or something like that I would feel very selfish. I would give myself this huge guilt trip of no, what am I doing? Why am I taking this time away from my kids? I need to be home. This is where I need to be doing. I wouldn't even allow myself permission to take care of myself, and that turned into eating what I could, eating where I could, you know, shoving it in. You know just what I could do to survive, basically, and I wasn't taking care of myself at all and somehow in my head and I don't think I'm the only one that feels this way taking care of myself equal being selfish and that was such a huge. I still work through that every day because I just think, especially as women and as moms, we just our heart wants to take care of everything else around us until we think now I can give myself time, but at the end of the day I'm so exhausted there's nothing left to give. You know, you're just falling asleep and that was such a horrible wheel, hamster wheel to be on and such a this compound stress that added every day that I wasn't, you know, taking care of myself. You talk about statistics. There's an interesting statistic where for every hour you exercise is, it adds three hours to your life. Well, I was almost in the negative because I wasn't. You know, we would walk, we would go to the park or whatever, but there was nothing like that. That was my focus, my part. It was not important to me until it smacked me in the face and had to be important and that whole journey was so scary and I don't want to tear out, but it was just so much, so much.
Speaker 2:And coming out of that, you know the hospital that you have to go to cardiac rehab. And here I am sitting in this room and these people were amazing. But I'm the youngest person in this room, right, these, these, I mean, I think the biggest age distance was like 27 years younger than the person there. And, man, that makes you just feel like what have I done with my life? What am I doing? Something has to change, something has to be completely different, and one of the things that I had to go through they put me on this very restrictive vegan diet and I have nothing against vegans other than to say it didn't work for me. It made me super anemic, to the point where they were going to do a blood transfusion. It was. It messed up my hormones, it messed my adrenal glands, Like it was terrible, terrible. And so I started down this journey of there's got to like.
Speaker 2:No, I'm not a medical professional by any stretch of the imagination. I do have a background. I was EMT for several years. It was 911 police dispatcher, so I had some basic training, but nothing on the level. And you know, I don't know about you, but once you go down that rabbit hole, you can't unsee the things that you were learning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I started to learn about just how food in general, what it does for you, what it can do for you good or bad, how your body receives it and honestly, there's no one fixed thing for any. It's like different for everyone, depending on what your makeup is, how you're, you know what you do, how active you are, and so just learning that kind of gave me a sense of I'm going to take back a little control. I'm not going to just flounder and have no way I'm going to find a way. So I get super educated. I try to read every book I could on any sort of like actual foundational nutrition. You know and I speak a little bit on this on the podcast about this but our Western medicine is great.
Speaker 2:In a crisis, we have the best traumatic crisis intervention medicine we could possibly have. I mean, obviously, save my life. I was rushed to the cath lab so I have nothing to say about. But the maintenance within our medical community is let me just give you a prescription and you be on your way. They don't have any desire to find the root cause. Well, I had root causes that I need to get to and it was very increasingly frustrating to just have a doctor say, well, you know, here's another medicine, here's another.
Speaker 2:I found myself probably four or five months in I was on like 12 different medications and I didn't want to be that person. Now, some of it I have to, it's life saving. I have to have my insulin, they have to, there's just no way around that. But all of these other medicines that I was on, this can't, this can't be right. 12 medicaid like no way.
Speaker 2:So I started doing research on statins, I started doing research on high blood pressure, I started doing like all of these little nuggets and tidbits and things that I could find, and, again, not recommending anybody go off their medication. You have to do your due diligence, you have to talk to your doctor. But I was able to get to a point where I had my physical part under control, the exercising and that let me back up a little bit. The heart attack there was not due to high blood pressure and it was not due to high cholesterol. Yet those were. That's the cocktail that they give you as soon as you have a heart attack.
Speaker 2:But I didn't need either of those. I had none of those. So I immediately weaned myself off of those against my doctor's advice, because their narrative was well, it'll prevent future heart attacks. And that may be to a point, but if you look at just the side effects and risks of a statin, to me it was not worth continuing to stay on. So I had to really and I like I talk about this control feel you feel so out of control that anything that I could grasp be like okay, I have that again, and it would give me confidence and power to know that I'm just, I'm just not going to have them tell me what I need to do. I'm going to take the power back and do it for me in the right way. And so that was a really I'm still learning that every day. That was really big.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's.
Speaker 1:I think that there's a lot to be gained from this story of yours, sarah, and, if I can boil it down, I think one of the biggest things I'm hearing right now is just you know, life throws things at us that we don't necessarily like or want or want, and once that happens to you whether it's something as big and drastic as a heart attack or a hard financial situation, or maybe it's something smaller, like I don't know, your coworker just annoys you once a week, I don't know something, something that's you feel a little more minor, it doesn't matter. But once you can identify what the problem is which, in your case, was pretty easy, pretty obvious right away Wow, how did I let myself get to this place? Yes, and then you get to that I don't like this, I don't want this anymore. Okay, that's there to teach you. You don't, you don't like this.
Speaker 1:So what do you like, what do you want, and how can you be in control of your life and send it in the direction that you want? So if you don't want a life full of medications and health problems, what do you need to do? You want the opposite, Exactly. So figure out what that looks like for you. Yeah, and I think that's that can be true regardless of your, your messy right now, whatever your messy situation, is everyone listening? That same thing is true for you. So that messiness that you're in is just it's teaching you something, if nothing else is teaching you what you don't want. So now you sit with it until you can figure out. Well, what's the opposite, what do I, what do I want and how do I get to it? That's right.
Speaker 2:And, and that's powerful. That's powerful, yeah, just reaching that epiphany is so powerful. Yeah, and then taking that first step.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I am going to throw this out there. I don't know if you know this, sarah, I am also a certified holistic health and nutrition coach, so I didn't know that. Like the words you're saying, I'm like yes, right on.
Speaker 1:I love that you say that you were vegan and then that didn't work for you. I say that often I'm actually. There's a new Netflix documentary out. I'm actually not quite done with it. It's really interesting and they kind of they're kind of pushing the vegan a little bit with it. Change up, or it's the one with the twins, I can't think the name of it.
Speaker 2:They did a twin study.
Speaker 1:It's interesting, regardless of whether you're like, oh yes, vegan or no thanks carnivore. Because essentially in that, what they did is they took twins. One twin had to go vegan, one twin had to go on a healthy diet, and so, again, I'm not quite finished. I only got a little bit left, but it's been interesting.
Speaker 1:But I, when I speak about nutrition to groups, many times I've said you know, for some people being vegan is the best thing. So I know people personally that they go vegan and they feel so much better. And then there are people like yourself who tried it and it just is not what your body needs, because we're different. We have different physiology. There's no like one recommended. Oh, if we all just eat the same exact stuff, we'll all live forever. No, it doesn't work that way.
Speaker 2:So, again.
Speaker 1:You're going to you try something and then you're met with that contrast that, ooh, this doesn't feel right, I don't like it, Okay. So how do you move from there to what you do like? So kudos to you for recognizing that and making the change. It was really hard.
Speaker 2:And you know there's some nuances, as I'm sure you know. You know the vegan diet, especially for women, can be harmful because they push so much soy, which just drives your estrogen levels up through the roof, and that's what messed with my hormones. And again, I'm not saying that happens for everyone, but it made me estrogen dominant, which totally messed up every. It threw me into perimenopause. I mean, it was just all of these things and triggers that started happening. And again, like you said, it doesn't happen to everybody, but I found that eating red meat, when I flipped that switch and went the other way, I started to feel better because I was like sickly, almost, like I said, and severely anemic on all of these things. And so you have to do the homework. You have to do what works for you.
Speaker 2:What bothered me the most about it is because it was hospital prescribed. I literally had to go into this group where they would teach us how to cook, teaches the labels to read for vegan, how to cook and be a vegan, and those types of things. When you would ask anything of the contrary to the narrative that they were pushing, not only did they not have an answer, they didn't want to discuss it and that really to me. I can't have absolutes, so even if I was trying to be vegan, I still needed to have opposite information just to balance it in my head of why this was happening. And there was none. It was very you just adopt this and that's what you do and don't ask questions, and it was like. That doesn't work for me.
Speaker 1:But I'm here to ask questions, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that was a frustrating part, for sure, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can imagine and I think again. Yeah, the biggest lesson there is pay attention to your own physical body and how does it feel. And if it feels great to do one thing and other people are saying, oh, you shouldn't, but yet you feel great and you are healthy because of it, then obviously that's what you need to do. That does not mean like oh, I feel great when I eat donuts, like I'm not saying this.
Speaker 1:This ain't that. This is not what I'm saying. It's true, but if it's something that's reasonably healthy for you, I mean have a donut once in a while.
Speaker 2:Well, it's all about balance. That's what it is. It's not only balance with your nutrition, it's balance with your health, it's balance with your life. It's just finding that balance, and that's really tricky and hard. Some people have it nailed and they've got it down. I'm not one of those people who have to work at it every day.
Speaker 1:I would challenge that and actually say that I don't think anybody has that down, or sometimes people might have it down for a little bit, but, as we know, life is in a constant state of flux. It didn't. We're never in just a static environment. It's always changing. So I think of young children, like when my kids were really young, and you're like, oh yes, we finally got our nap time, sleep time routine all figured out. Oh, this is great, and I actually now can have an hour in the afternoon and I can actually get this laundry done. And then what happens?
Speaker 2:the very next day. Isn't that crazy, though, that you're excited about doing the laundry.
Speaker 1:Yes, I know, I know that's your life when you have little tiny baby babies, that's it, or toddlers, but yeah, and then the very next day they would change. I would run into that with my kids when I would think when they were really little, oh, I'm going to start working out again and they're finally sleeping through the night and they're getting up consistently at 7. So if I get up at 6, that's perfect. And then what happens after that? They switch the routine and they're up at 6 now.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep, and it's just. You know that's light, you got to just kind of roll with it.
Speaker 2:But I think you bring up an interesting point, though you were still trying to find time to do that, and I think as women, as moms, we have to find that time and it's OK. It's not only OK to have that time. I know I'm a better mom now that I have carved out that time for me.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I didn't understand that. I didn't understand what that meant. I just always gave to my kids, not knowing maybe I'd maybe get grouchy or a little short. Hey, I'm there, I'm showing up, I'm here. No, I can be so much better for them. I just take a little sliver for me and it's like, oh, I'm actually enjoying this, I'm enjoying it Like it's not. You know, I know that I ever considered it at work. But sometimes days, you know, they say the days are long and the years are short. Well, sometimes my days were really long. So, yeah, yeah, that's for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I you mentioned earlier too about feeling like taking time for yourself is felt selfish, and I relate to that a lot. I am, I'm mostly, I would say I mostly kind of passed that I think it was harder when they were younger and now I I am gone a lot sometimes for different things that I do, and then the mom guilt kicks in because like oh, I should, I haven't hung out with this kid for a while or whatever. But yeah, that feeling of it's selfish of me to take time to do anything.
Speaker 2:That mom is so real. It is such a beast in and of itself. And putting that in check and making sure you know you know what you don't like there's that is so hard to you know. Get that beast back in its cage. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But really, like you say, if it's, if we're talking in terms of something like, like a workout, for example, it doesn't have to be exercise for you, but it's an easy example that would benefit everyone's for so many reasons, you know, I, a workout doesn't have to take very long. Take 20 minutes, take 30 minutes, exactly, exactly, exactly. And that's not you know that's not selfish.
Speaker 2:No and you're, and that was one of the other things I had to learn. I'm actually doing something for me that will allow me to hopefully be around a lot longer. Yeah, because it is exercise for me, but it was also like learning how to breathe. You know, breathwork is just an amazing thing, but you know, people tell me well, like you know how to breathe, what are you talking about? No, there is something to be said, and if you meditate through it or you're praying through it, whatever, your thing is just those moments of Clearing out. I call it the dinner party in my head that just keeps yapping and yapping and yapping, get the dinner party quiet and that breathwork is really Like I had never experienced that before so for me all of these new things are just really I'm so glad to sit with them and just learn about it, learn about myself and that it's okay and I didn't know.
Speaker 2:I never knew it was okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's just such a and anyone that's listening. If you need a Quote permission slip to take a little time for yourself, I mean maybe you know, for some people that might have to be like a practice, it might have to be okay. I'm gonna have 10 minutes to myself. I'm gonna go Meditate or at least just sit quietly for 10 minutes by myself. I'm gonna, if you have small kids, tell your partner or whoever is around like you're just put in a video for 10 minutes, that's not very long in the scheme of a day, and see how keep doing that until it doesn't feel yucky anymore.
Speaker 2:Right, how you can do 10 minutes without feeling guilty, feeling bad, yeah, and I will say, though, and it's because it's a different kind, and I don't I'm not judging anybody because I do it too, but it's not sitting down and watching a Netflix show. It's not right, because I know, you know, I do that too, but it's not the same. You have to be. It has to have intentful purpose behind it. To know that you're checking in with your circulatory says you're like talking, like sounds crazy, but you almost talk to yourself, check in with yourself. Yeah, because sitting down and watching a program, it's not the same. Yes, it gives you a moment and you just kind of go numb, but going numb is not the same as doing the work, and that that was I had to learn that. I had to learn that I was so much.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, yeah. Scrolling on social media, watching a show on, you know, netflix or a movie or whatever All of that is a form of disconnection and it has a place, like you say. I mean, I do it Sometimes, I intentionally my brain is like a thousand miles a minute and would I be more beneficial to sit and meditate for seconds sometimes. But sometimes I want like that literal, like just distraction and like unplugged my brain for a minute. Okay, now I can come back to where. If I sat down to meditate now, I actually probably do a better job exactly because I've like taken a step sideways for a second.
Speaker 1:But yeah, the you know social media, bidgin and Netflix, that's. That's disconnection from yourself and it's fine, it's entertaining, it has its place. But the meditation and those types of activities, that's a reconnection to yourself, paying more attention to what's going on internally versus Going outside of yourself yet again to look externally right and and if you're looking for calmness and stillness and stress relief and Relief from anxiety, you're never gonna find it externally.
Speaker 1:It's it's not possible that external is what's causing a lot of the stress and anxiety for sure, in a lot of cases. But if you're wanting to Find that piece, you have to have to go in internally. That's the only way you're gonna find it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I had. I had to learn how to do that, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah sometimes I'm like how am I this many years old and I didn't know any of these things? But you know, we ask so much of our bodies, you know, just taking the mind part out of it, we ask so much of ourselves and we don't, you know, we don't think to, you know, recharge or put back into it, and so having to learn that it was like how did I survive? Because that's what I was doing, I was on survival mode. How did I like, thank you, thank you that I can't. I did survive because now there's so much more intent that I have, that I'm purposeful, that I have direction and that I Mean. For me that was just huge. It was really yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sarah, I read somewhere that you said. I don't remember where I read it, you'll probably know. You said something about the before pictures and the after pictures.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1:Yes, I do so there's something and you can say this better than I do, but you know we look at the before and after like for people that are working out. Let's say you know look at this before, or even like a room redo. Here's the before picture, here's the after picture, but you talk about being the middle picture. And yes, we need to pay more attention to the middle picture that we don't see, that's right. Why is that? Tell us about the middle, because that's the journey.
Speaker 2:That is the place where you're figuring out all of this stuff. That is the most important piece to get you to that after picture. You know, if you ever see those you know diet ads, where they have the woman before and the woman after and in between, is that black line and it's the skinny black line in between. That is the biggest, most important piece to what that woman's journey was and that's the part I want to see. That's the part I want to be in because, you know it, yes, I am in the middle. I am not at my after picture yet. I know I'm gonna get there.
Speaker 2:But this part that I'm in right now, it is so impactful and I know that once I get to my after picture I'm gonna appreciate it so much more because of this journey that I had to go on the twist and turns and ups and downs and there's a lot of downs but I come back up, I figure out the way that I need to go and when we skip that part, you're skipping over the most growth and the most amazing part of learning about yourself and learning about other people.
Speaker 2:And for me, you know, getting to that middle part was getting outside of myself and Sort my children too. Of course, you know, of course family comes first, but I wanted to help other people and just being in that moment where you can give to somebody else and start them on that journey, that is so I just get excited about it. I get excited that people start to have the light balls come on, like I did, and that, to me, is the most important piece that you can have. That's, that's where you grow and change and learn. I don't like to skip over those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that this whole idea of the middle, the middle picture, and because you're completely right, or I think you're right anyway so I like that. Somebody can disagree, but they're not here right now, it's just me, I think I, you know, we, you maybe have heard this before too where you know if you're living a life where you're always chasing after the next thing, you're chasing essentially that after picture. When I get married, when I have kids, then I'll be happy. When I get to this next you know, income bracket, when I get that promotion at work, then I can relax and be happy and that's. You know, what happens is we, we achieve that thing and there might be a little bit of joy with it. Hopefully there is, depending on you know, like I was happy when my kids were born, but then, okay, now what there's always that will now what feeling, and I think it's because in our life we're gonna have lots. Hopefully you have lots of after pictures in your life.
Speaker 1:Hopefully lots and lots of reasons for after pictures in your life. But the point isn't the after picture, like you say. It's that journey, it's that that growth part in the middle, it's that black line. What did you learn here? What did you, you know, take from this experience and how can it help you as you Propel on to the next thing? And it's not about hitting that, climbing Mount Everest and getting to the top. You know it's, it's the climb, it's the process.
Speaker 2:So, and I like that, the most significant part, you know, and listening to your show and how you know you talk about leveling up. I have goals to get to that next level, but I know I can't get there until I get through this level. And so if I Accomplish everything on this level, then I can level up and that gives me goals and encouragement and inspiration to. You know, want to keep leveling up but I'm not gonna get there if I'm skipping the part. You know I can't cheat on this level.
Speaker 2:You know life isn't like that, you can't. I mean, maybe you'll get away with it sometimes, but it eventually catches up with you. So you want to make sure you, you know my a video game reference would be you got to get all of the you know Points or whatever it is, on that level so you can level up and continue to have that growth. And I think, man, this, when they make that little skinny black line so tiny and it's like no, no, what did she do? You know, especially some of the drastic, you know weight loss or physical improvements that you see, and it's like that was hard work. Yeah, that was absolutely hard work and You're just. That's it. You know there's no in between, like there has to be in between.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot, and not just like what did she do? What workouts did she do? What food did she eat? What did she do when it was hard? What? Did she do and she didn't want to do it anymore. How did she keep going? How did she motivate herself? Did she go backwards ever? Did she have some times where she didn't? Then she lost and there, you know, gained weight back or whatever it is and Then I don't.
Speaker 2:I don't hear a lot about that and I know for myself. You know this, this new journey, my newest thing, is weightlifting and getting stronger, and while, yes, I would like to have the weight loss part there, that's not my focus right now. My focus is to get stronger. And Was in the gym the other day and I was completely just exhausted and drained, but a little part of me was proud of myself.
Speaker 2:But it was this tornado of feelings. I literally just lay down on the ground and start crying because it was all of this emotion and, wow, I could do that. I didn't know I could do that and it just came rushing and it's like nobody's talking about that far. Who's crying at the gym? Yeah, where's that picture? Exactly, exactly. And that was so and I got up, I rushed myself off and it was like how I did it and I think it was sort of cleansing. I got whatever that emotion was, got rid of it and now I feel stronger and I'm gonna keep going on that stronger journey. I think it's a metaphor for Mentally as well, because you have to be connected mentally to get the body and listen to the body and do what you do, and I was missing that piece for so long for so long yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm curious now, sarah, if you can, can quantify this for us three things that you have learned on your messy journey that you want to share with all of us, that you think that we all might gain a little from.
Speaker 2:First, yes, definitely take the time for yourself. It's okay, Take that time for yourself. Second thing would be Definitely do your own homework and your own research and don't just take and again, there's a lot of good doctors and physicians out there but you have to be your own self-advocate for your health. You have to be nobody's going to come in and do it for you. If that means you know, maybe you suffer from migraines, find out what that root causes for migraines and then go in with that information to your doctor and have a discussion about it and hopefully, if you have the right doctor, they're gonna want to listen to that. So, definitely be your own self-advocate. And three, it's okay to sit with the mess. Sit with the mess. You don't have to stay there. I don't want you to stay there, but embrace it, ride those waves of you know, whatever it is, the sadness and whatever, just go through it and and it's it'll. It'll be okay, you'll come out on the other side and maybe not be so messy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is okay, mess is okay, so yeah, I love that, especially that last one about you know, essentially feeling your feelings, basically giving yourself, do it like permission to, even though it's not gonna feel good. That's gonna be a faster way out. Yeah isn't what's that? You know the fastest way to the lightest into the darkness. I?
Speaker 2:was trying to explain that to my kid the other day and he was like you are crazy.
Speaker 1:No no, no, no, no, listen, listen, like when the Sun starts to set. If you hop on an airplane and you, you know you fly west, you're just kind of prolonging it, but if you fly east, okay, well, it's gonna be super dark really quick. But pretty. So you're gonna hit that light sooner because you're going towards really Faster you can deal with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because if we're just suppressing it and pushing it down, it's gonna come out. Somehow it's gonna come out, you know, in a vice or an addiction, in a, you know, a very angry person. Somehow it's going to come out. So you might as well just get through it and Um, it is again. The mess is okay, it's okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So, sarah, I have a question of the month. I started doing it just just this month. I just decided I'm asking all my guests a question of the month and I want to know what. What's one thing you wish everyone on the planet would do in regards to their own own personal health and well-being?
Speaker 2:It's kind of a twofold question. I mean I would say, definitely, you know, find your why. Find your why for sure, whatever that may be, whatever it is You're going through, find your why. But then I would kind of make it a little more trivial or maybe not trivial, but just a little less heavy, and say get strong, weight lift, take care. That's the best thing you can do for yourself, and I don't mean, you know, roided out the, you know, strongest man competition or anything like that, but as especially as women. Yes, cardio is important, there's a place for cardio. It's good for your heart, it's good for your lungs, but the strength, and with that physical strength to me comes Mental strength. So, yeah, yeah, that would be my thing.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that. I love that. So, sarah, um, we've mentioned your podcast a little bit here, but if people want to listen to your podcast or find you somewhere, where can they?
Speaker 2:learn more about you. So it's everything's messy podcast. It's on most of the platforms apple, spotify, I heart, deezer, pandora. Um, it was on google podcast, but I think google's going away, I think it's becoming something else, and then it is on youtube. So definitely check it out. Um, I'm also on instagram at everything's messy podcast. Uh, and yeah, reach out, let me know your mess. I would love to hear it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you. I'll be sure to put those a link to your podcast in the show notes so people can just find you with a click of a button. Um sarah, Thanks so much for being on today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, mendy, this has been great. You are amazing and I love what you do and your podcast, and I am trying to level up, for sure.
Speaker 1:I love that and everybody that's listening. I hope that you gained something from this messy podcast episode. I I know I certainly did. I think this was a really great, important conversation that we Aren't having enough. I think, hopefully this helps to make this a little bit more mainstream, talking about the messy parts in our life and helping lift each other up and level up through those messy parts. So, um, wherever you are at today, I hope you are having a fantastic one and I will catch you on the next one. That's it for today. Friends, if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe or, even better, leave a review and let me know what resonated with you the most. The more you tell me what you love, the better I'm able to create future episodes with even better content. I'm sending you so much love and light. I'll see you in the next episode.