D61: Why Your Most Valuable Asset Isn’t What You Think — It’s Your Life Force with Delliah Shaffer

Most of us chase material growth—but what if your real asset is your life force?

In this episode, Delliah Shaffer, health coach and systems thinker, challenges survival-mode thinking and redefines success through both spiritual and material balance. Drawing from her shift out of the pharmaceutical world, she breaks down how virtues like presence, patience, and optimism directly impact your health, happiness, and business.

We explore practical tools—like timeline mapping and breath awareness—to help you measure and strengthen your inner assets, so you can lead, work, and live with more clarity and resilience. If you’re burned out on hustle culture, this is a grounded approach to building a life that actually feels aligned.

Connect with Delliah:
https://qualycoaching.au/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Work is the thing that puts a roof over your head. But what if it's not that simple? What if making less money actually brings you closer to who you are? Today's guest challenges the idea that income is just dollars. She expands it into presence, patience, optimism, and how we show up in the real world. This connects to something that I love, value. And she mentions the flaw of averages. Just because life looks manageable on average doesn't mean it is. Some parts will stretch you, others will ground you. So how do you navigate that? Let's roll right in. All right, welcome to the Work Sucks But I Like It podcast. Today we have Delia Schaefer. She's a certified health coach with her work spanning Australia and Canada. She has many years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, aged care industry, and has even owned a small aged care agency herself. Her work today, quality coaching. Delia, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Thank you so much, Tony. Really um pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

No, awesome. So, Delia, one question I'd like to ask our guests. First thing, how do you define work today? How do you define it?

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Well, you know, I've reflected on that a lot because I've been working over 25 years. And to be honest, we spend so much time at work. Um, I define work as an occupation that generates income to put a roof over my head.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Perfect. So how does that look for you today? How do you apply this definition?

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Well, I um I can I earn enough to put a roof over my head. I've probably not accomplished that much more in my life. Um, I think I've been working my whole life to put a roof over my head. And um, that is mortgage free. It was a big goal of mine because I I do feel that that mortgage is really what makes work that thing that puts a roof over your head. It you don't have a lot of freedom in your work when you've got that. Uh, and I'm a subcontractor now. I work on three to four days a week and set my own hours. I'm st I'm a single mom still. I still have my child. They they do stick around for a long time. She's um I've got a teenager now, and I do have the work life balance finally. Um, and I call it spiritual versus material balance now rather than work-life balance, because I don't think we've gotten very far with work-life balance. So I've got the spiritual and material balance now to really be present because that's a spiritual quality. It's a characteristic, it's a quality of virtue, value, whatever. Um, I can be present with my teenager. I can cook meals being present, and I've got that space and time. But I had to become a subcontract to achieve that. And um, it's really a lot of what my coaching is about and the AI systems we put into companies is about getting spiritual versus material balance.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Now, I love that kind of like distinction between life and work. Walk us through how you had this realization of how you went from work-life balance to now spiritual and material balance. What made you see that you had to change the language?

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Yeah, look, that's been a long journey. When I worked in the pharmaceutical industry, I was earning a lot of money. So I was able to spend a lot of money on coaching and different modalities, um, even somatic healing techniques and things like that. When I switched to aged care, I have to say my income went down, but it was it was a choice for me to be more aligned with, you know, how I felt inside, uh, that with my soul or with my life force, if you want. Um, and I do feel more right in myself working in aged care than I did in pharmaceutical. So, you know, that was probably the first step. And then I did a lot of um coaching. Really, it hit the the way I stumbled upon it is that I realized uh in my life, I'm not trying just to produce income in terms of money anymore. The income I'm trying to produce is I can live, I have to, I have to get my fingers out and count it. I'm trying to produce optimism, uh, love. Honestly, I'm trying to produce unconditional love. I'm not sure how much we have of that in the world, but every time um I'm doing something, an endeavor or interacting with someone through all my coaching, I've come to the conclusion that not only am I trying to produce money, I'm trying to produce optimism, unconditional love, presence, patience, calmness, and collaboration. Um, I do change that up sometimes, um, but that's what I'm trying to produce as income as well as money. Um and I realize that if you're if we're half spiritual and half material, our goals and the income we're trying to produce need to be half spiritual and half material. Um, I really feel it took me all my life to work out that our society and our systems were built out of survival mode and focus on material growth. And um really one of my mentors, Mary Morrissey from the Brave Thinking Institute, she always says that we we right now, in the time we are in our society, we believe that growth is all about materiality, but it's actually spirituality that we're chasing now.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

And so how do we start separating ourselves, Delia, from this sort of materialistic thing and moving towards the spiritual sense? I guess another way to ask it is how much is enough, right? You make so much money, how much is really enough?

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Well, in my coaching, actually, which has evolved through a few disciplines, I divide life into four buckets relationships, well-being, and then uh foundational assets, which is that's a big one. Um, but in that, I think if you think of that and look at that bucket in your life, if you look at spiritual and material assets, that's the starting point. If you're not even looking at what your spiritual assets are, you're not really going to be collecting them. Um, and I think another concept, um, and there's a uh a fourth bucket called worldly pursuits. It's very good to break the activities and endeavors and opportunities that you're involved in into spiritual versus worldly pursuits. I mean, we're here as a spirit in the form of a body, but I do believe, and so you know, there'll be some worldly pursuits we just want. Maybe someone does want a four million dollar house, and that's great. But as long as you know that's a worldly pursuit and you know what your spiritual um assets are as well. So I think just breaking that down.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Walk us through what you mean by a spiritual asset. And I guess for the listeners, what are you defining as an asset? I guess can you walk us through that?

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Yeah, well, there's a couple things here. First of all, there's assets and income. Uh look, and I ran a small business. Everything's about a profit and loss statement in business. And honestly, I think it's true in our life as well. And um, I love coaching. I mean, I'm always doing coaching. My newest coaching coach that I've been following is Gal Ezra. And he really makes it clear that income is whatever you want. So, and and it really ties in with I, what, with what I've created is a foundation for your life where you know what your spiritual and your material assets are. So, in if you have an asset, you're also pursuing an income for that asset. So, spiritual asset, I've really reflected on. Honestly, the spiritual asset is that life force that's inside each of us. It, you know, a lot of times it's only talked about in spiritual circles or in religion. It's not talked about in boardrooms. But I believe that our in every setting in the world, even in international leaders' conferences, that word should be mainstream, life force or soul or spirit. It should be used every day by everyone, the highest leaders in the world. Um, what we are without that is just physical substance, bones, skin, and tissue. We're we're nothing without that. So, in fact, that should be treated as the number one asset in the world, in everyone's personal life. That life force inside them is their number one asset. And in systems, the systems should be designed around people being able to express them. And when I talk about life force, I really I picture it now because that was the coaching I did with um Mary Morrissey, for example, is really about visualizing your your life goals and your assets. Um, I picture my life force as being attached to the universal life force that, you know, it envelopes all of us and hugs all of us. And I've just, it lent me one ray of itself. I put it in my body and it's sort of dispersed. I've got a picture, actually. I'll I'll send that to you. Uh, I talked to Jet P T chat GPT and it made a picture of what I picture. That's my relationship with my life force, being able to picture it. And we all have that inside us. So, really, we're all connected through that. We've just got it while we're here in physical substance. And I believe that in that one ray that I've been lent from the Universal Life Force is just a unique set of values, virtues, and boundaries. So ultimately, our spiritual assets are our values, virtues, and boundaries. I really believe they're baked into us, though, through this ray of life force that we're carrying around.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

So I'm really curious, Delia, how what did you type into Chat GBT to get this picture? I think the listeners would love to kind of hear what you kind of gave it for the algorithm to spit out something that you actually resonated with. I think that's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Yeah, well, look, um, the coaching that I went through and that I've now put into my own system is visualization. Um, I have to say, probably Mary Morrissey convinced me that the way our soul speaks to us is through vibration, feelings, emotions, and that all gets translated into visual pictures. Um, so I had to, I wasn't actually a person who could visualize very well either. So um, I listened to another podcast by Rich Maloney. In the end, I visualized it myself. I just couldn't draw it. So I already had the picture in my mind. So it was prompting ChatGPT with the picture in my mind, which was actually my body with this ray of life force that's been lent to me from the Universal Life Force coming into me. It's dispersed throughout me with all these uh as dots, as specs. And then it comes back out and it actually wraps itself around me, my whole periphery, like a protective shield. And then uh yeah. So and that's what it spit out. It was amazing. And I'll send that.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

That's awesome, actually. Yeah, I would love to put that in the link for the listeners. So I guess, Delia, one thing that I find interesting, and I really vibe with the spirituality. I guess walk us through for listeners that might be skeptical when they hear that term spirituality and might think, uh-oh, this is becoming woo-woo and maybe religious. How do you walk that sort of fine line, that path as you're talking?

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Well, look, that's that's why I think I use the terms assets. Um, and that's part why what I said earlier, I think in every setting in the world, including government leader, world leader conferences, it should be mainstream that we have a life force. And I've got a word art actually that I've produced to put in my book. It has all the names we use for this. There's so many different ways of expressing it from so many different disciplines and realms. But if we just pick something like life force or soul or spirit, um, those should be mainstream. And I think we would only start doing that if we actually see this as our main asset. Um, and I mean, people have to start accepting, and I think it was more accepted in the past. Science has kind of made us want to see tangible things, but it's an intangible asset. But I think there's no doubt in my mind that it is an asset and it's more important than mine.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

You think that's why it's overlooked, I guess, to your point? I because corporations love, right, kind of the their bean counters, right? So they love having things in front of them. Why do you think spirituality and measuring the way you're saying is overlooked today?

SPEAKER_01 12:08

Well, yeah. I mean, nobody um measures how much optimism they're producing or patience and presence. But you can actually measure those things. You can measure how present you are yourself, you know. Uh I think how do you do that?

SPEAKER_00 12:21

What's one way that you measure your sense of presence, just so the listeners can build this sort of skill here?

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Actually, you're whether you're connected to your breathing or not, it's so easy to stop breathing. I think that's one of the first things I learned. Um, and I did everything when I had a lot when I was earning good money in the pharmaceutical industry, I did NLP, I did all of that. It still took me a really long time to realize that I'm often disconnected with my breath. And I often forgot to drink enough water for my well-being. Like those are things we even know scientifically, you need a certain amount of water to replenish your cells every day and just to feel well. Um, so I think when you're not drinking enough water and you're not connected to your breathing, um, you're not present. Because you're not doing your basic, um, you're not remembering to do your basic self-care and you're not remembering to breathe calmly or you're breathing in a choppy way. I think your breath um says it all right there. Spirit. Yeah, and spirit comes from the Latin word. I think it's spiritus, which actually means breath.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

So I'm very interested, you know, Delia, that you have your coaching in a business called quality coaching. So I'm a quality manager and I've been in the quality industry. Now I know you chose quality for a specific reason. Can you walk us through how you came up with that word and what is your sort of mission with this coaching program you have now?

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Yeah, look, so uh my background is science, and it's so I do believe in measuring things, um, but I do in general feel that science has the flaw of averages. If you look that up on the internet, that's actually a new concept. Um, it's also a concept that's clearly explained when you study user design, which which I've also done because I do study a lot. There have been was an example from World War II where a lot of pilots were crashing their planes, and it was literally because average height was used to set up the cockpit. And once they individualized components, the death stopped. So I think science really has that same flaw of averages issue, but it's not well known in scientific circles. It's well known in user design circles that there's this concept of flaw of averages in science. Uh, while scientists are very scientific, I think they haven't figured out that they're actually dealing too much with flaw of averages. So the reason um, and my scientific background was in um health economics and epidemiology, public health, and we measured something called quality adjusted life years. And that means that you are alive for one year. And in the pharmaceutical industry, we had to show governments that when we had a new medicine, that it produced not only longer life, but we had to show what kind of quality of life you have on that medicine. So it could be, it was um like it was literally measured between zero and one, a very tight, um, tight bandwidth there on a something called a utility scale. Um, so, but and I we measured that for years and years and years. I just got bored of doing that in the pharmaceutical industry. I think there's a lot more to life than medicines, and I do believe we can prevent a lot of illnesses. And I've probably come to the camp that uh spiritual mystic, Carolyn Miss, um, advocates is that most of our diseases are our spiritual illnesses. We're just we're living unlived life. There's a few terms. Um, Mary Morrissey always uses the term unlived life. Carolyn Miss uses the term that our illnesses are um spiritual illnesses. And if you tie them together, a lot of our illnesses are because of unlived life, longings and yearnings that we have that we're just not able to follow and pursue because of the way our systems kind of block us. It's not, it's not that we're lazy, but I mean, the amount of work you have to do to be spiritual is is pretty hard. We don't we don't have we we haven't set things up. And our systems are still designed from survival mode. And I think we've surpassed survival mode. So if we really want to evolve spiritually and emotionally, I I do think system redesign is is part of that. We can we can do a lot individually, and that's what my coaching does as well, is for individuals. But I'm hoping to get the um quality mind AI systems who I've partnered with into organizations to really start finding organizations that maybe can help speed up the emotional and spiritual evolution.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

No, I love that. Well, you have a metric now, right, with this quality, like it's shortened for quality adjusted life years. Where have you seen with the data? I know you're kind of branching it out from the pharmaceutical background that you kind of took this from. Where should our number be, right? From zero to one? Where is like the target? Where I'm just curious. Like, what have you seen in the data set? And then also, can you guide us on how we actually get to that number? How do we arrive at the physical measurement to get that number?

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Yeah, look, I don't think what's done in the scientific world in the pharmaceutical industry is practical at all in the real world. So, um, and that's where I probably it's just too expensive. The testing to make a questionnaire is too time consuming. And um, it's not sensitive. A lot of the times we would find it wasn't sensitive enough to sensitive enough to pick up changes. Um, the whole science is really um difficult and expensive. So um the concept is great. That and I think this is where uh in your personal life, people can do something a lot simpler. Um, your quality of life is really when you feel right in yourself, when you when you smile a lot during the day, laugh a lot, um, when you feel safe. I think those are things people can assess themselves. But I also think in terms of assessing what makes you feel better and what makes you feel worse, there's a really simple system and it's called timeline mapping. It's from health coaching. It's actually a health coaching system. Um, there's some science, there's a scientific paper that has studied that as well, um, where you basically just put your timeline of your life and when you've felt bad and when you've felt good, and then you start from there, and then um, even even if you're taking an antidepressant medicine, for example, um, you can take so many doses of that. You can start on a low dose and it's an anti-anxiety medicine. So, even that, your doctor can't tell you what makes you feel good. Your doctor doesn't know. The scientific data tells you a dose, but that's the based on the flaw of averages. So, even something as simple as that, um, you can use this timeline mapping system, which is very simple, just to see if it actually makes you feel better or not. Um, I have to say, in science, in clinical trials, there is a concept called the N of One trial. And um, so it's almost like you can do the N of One trial yourself in your life. It's really um using doing something, whether it's a coaching course or a certain dose of a medicine, doing it for a couple of weeks, noting down in your timeline mapping how you feel, then trying something else and then going back to the other. You know, you can just go back and forth and then really work out what works for you. I think it's very hard sometimes to be in touch just based on raw intuition or based on scientific data. I think it's good to actually do journaling and things like that and timeline mapping. They're little tools that are free or very low cost that you can do to improve your quality of life.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

That's awesome. So, this timeline mapping, I feel like a lot of people today, hopefully listeners not on the show are looking for shortcuts and hacks because that's not what I'm about with the show. What sort of like, you know, time frame for the timeline mapping would you need to sort of be able to assess this sort of baseline? And then from that, I guess, what have you seen with sort of like how much time it takes to change? I know it's like a very general question, but just curious what your thoughts as that comes to you.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Goss, I think when you start timeline mapping, you go back to as far as you can remember. I think, you know, there's major life events, people who were in your life, the jobs you've had. I think that gives you a lot of information. And if you're doing that and you're also quiet, I mean, listening to your own life force, every discipline teaches you the same thing. It's about being quiet and then feeling your sensations, your vibrations, your emotions in a quiet space. And um, if you're doing that while you're timeline mapping, it's really clear to start seeing patterns going forward into the future from there. I I think it really depends on how connected you are to your own life force and how much meditation and quiet practice you do. I don't believe humans can live without meditation and practices like that. And I think so few people in our society have time for that. Um, I know religion tried to put it into our lives. I mean, really, that's what setting aside prayer time is. It's really nothing, you know, there's so many, you can have free-form meditation, or you can have scripts, which prayer might be, or you can have, you know, listening, or um, yoga is a form of moving meditation. But I do um a lot of religions had movement and and prayer meditation. So um, now that we're moving away from religion, it was also very prescriptive. I think it's really up to everyone to find what connects them to their inner sensations, vibrations, emotions, and feelings, because that's really your your life force speaking to you.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

With meditation, I find that, I mean, I love it. So I teach yoga, I'm a yogi, so I love the moving meditation you just referenced. So most people, when we say meditation or that meditating, they kind of get scared, right? They think that it's like clearing your mind. What do you recommend to that person when you say meditation? What are you sort of meaning when you say it and use it?

SPEAKER_01 22:01

Well, it's really hard because I have become very spiritual. So it is really hard, but it's really just a quiet time being connected to your breath. I I think coming back to spirit being from the Latin word that meant breath, it says a lot. Um, anything where you connect with your breathing. Um, it's like you have to do two things at once, though. I think that's what I've I've actually learned as well through all of this. Being spiritual and material also means doing two things at once. And it's funny, what's come up recently, just talking with friends and things, is when I was little, I used to practice, you know, patting your head and rubbing your belly. I practice that a lot. So I know for sure that I can do two things at once. I practiced that for ages. Um, but what we teach in the quality mind system, and what I learned um when I was studying the quality mind um being to become a quality mind mentor, it was really all about creating neural pathways in your brain. So um, whether it's doing one activity or doing two tasks, I mean, you've got to, you know, I definitely created a neural pathway in my brain for patting my head and rubbing my belly. Um, you've got to do that for breathing and talking, for example. And you've got to do that really probably, um, so you going to quiet space is connecting you to breathing. But I do remember in yoga class being taught that the point of it is that eventually outside of class, you're in the same state as you're in in yoga. Now that that takes people lifetimes, or they in this lifetime they never achieved that. But being able to breathe and talk at the same time, or breathe and type on your computer is like doing two tasks. And uh I wasn't taught to practice that. I I was taught to practice this when I was little. I was never taught to practice breathing and talking or breathing and typing on the computer. So if you're not breathing and doing your work and you get into a kind of zone where you're actually really disconnected from yourself.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

I just want to make clear. Sorry, this is early awesome, that you say two things at once, which I really love. So there's sometimes this idea of like multitasking, right? People feel that they need to multitask. What is the difference between what you're saying with the two things at once, excuse me, and then the the idea of multitasking? What's that difference? You've kind of mentioned it a little bit with the neural pathways, but I want you to kind of build on it.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Yeah, well, look, I I I mean, I'm very organized. It's that's been my role in all my jobs. I've been either organizing big submissions or running a business. Multitasking, from my understanding, just like time lump is time chunking is a big concept in time management. Multitasking is actually switching between one thing and another very quickly. I don't believe it's actually doing two things at once. That's what I eventually learned in that kind of organizational research. Um, doing two things at once is actually having a neural pathway where you can do two things at once. And I I don't think, I don't know if a lot of people can breathe calmly and correctly in a sort of parasympathetic nervous system type of breathing, where you're um breathing in at the breath, the outbreath is actually supposed to be longer than the in-breath. Um, it's good to have a pause at the end of your in-breath and at the out end of your outbreath. Now, my physiotherapist explained to me why you should have a pause at the end of your outbreath, and it is something to do with how your diaphragm works. I'd have to go back to her or research more. But a lot of people are taught to pause at the top of their breath. But according to my physiotherapist, and um, and uh then there are some disciplines that teach it, you're supposed you should need to pause at the end of your breath to keep strengthening your diaphragm. Um, but anyways, doing that whilst doing anything else would be the ultimate um doing two things at once. So you're not switching between that and doing something. You are doing that just like when you're patting your head and rubbing your belly, you are doing that while you're doing anything. I uh and I think that's a harder skill than we think. I think a lot of people don't realize they aren't doing that. They'll be working and realize they haven't breathed calmly in a long time. Be working for hours. And and I think, well, going back to the Latin root of spirit, I think that's actually what's connects us to our life force. So if we can't do that while we're doing everything else in life, eating, everything, playing, um, we're probably disconnected to ourselves more than we like to think. And that's why, for me, I've done years and years of of personal development to figure that out. I would have loved to have been taught that when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Well, that's your work now. That's your work now. So, Delia, this is the work sucks, but I like it podcasts. And I like to ask, what sucks about your work now? And what are you doing to make it not suck?

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Yeah, well, my um my um role now, which flows on from the business I used to own, is probably uh combined with the years I worked in the pharmaceutical industry, what finally put the like let made the penny drop that our systems have issues. Um I work in aged care in Australia and we've just we had a royal commission years ago, and they put in all these changes over the last two years that have put the entire industry leadership into survival mode. So that's that's bad because when people are in survival mode, whether they're aware of it or not, somewhere inside them they're be they become anxious. It's just an example of another system built out of survival mode. And I think when it when our systems have been built out of my survival mode, sometimes we make changes out of survival mode. And that's exactly what's happened in aged care in Australia. So um it's put small businesses into uh really bad situations. So I I did sell my small business because of that to someone that had more investment money. This transition period, we've had uh an income stream cut by 80%, you know. So even the big providers, I mean that to do that to an entire industry puts people into survival mode. We've got a lot of examples of bad experiences. I I've I've just hired someone actually who was put through the ringer from a uh a company. I would, yeah, it's just um so all I'm doing is uh working as a subcontractor and I'm trying to create and I meditate a lot and I'm trying to create optimism, patience, presence, calmness, collaboration, and earn just enough money to put a roof over my head and contribute that in every interaction. Um it's hard work. Yeah, um, I do work for a small provider and it's digging ourselves out of a hole, I guess, from a business point of view, because I was always big on reviewing my profit and loss statement every three months, just to explain it simply. If you were a small provider, if you could survive really well and the owner could get paid on 60 clients, you now need like 180 clients. You need three times the base. And it's a lot of money to get clients. So it's really put um small providers into survival mode. And I and I know there's issues at the big ones as well. I worked for one for a year. Um, and people aren't able to focus on producing optimism, calmness, caringness. So what I've done is recently removed myself a little bit and as a subcontractor, try and keep producing the income I've chosen to try and produce. Not that I'm great at it, you know, I'm so good at I'm I'm I have this ability to earn this much money that I need to live. And then now I've I'm just growing my ability to create optimism, calmness, patience, presence, collaboration. And um, and again, this is where I come back to everyone probably will eventually find when they start doing this work that the income they want to produce is kind of related to the unique life force in them. So their set of virtues and values and boundaries that they're trying to create as income will be a little bit different than mine. Um, if you go to a website called Um Virtues Project by Dan Popoff, he's he's actually extracted all of the virtues that have been sort of published in all the sacred texts over time. And there's a list of like hundreds of virtues. I mean, probably no human being is going to be able to express all of those. But I think if you go and look at that list, you'll find some of them resonate with you. And for me, optimism, orderliness is another one really resonated with me. So those are the ones that I'm really trying to produce when I show up at work every day. And I'm not perfect at it. I forget to breathe too sometimes, but it's my goal and it's making my life better and my quality of life better. And hopefully the quality of the life of the people around me, too, that I work with.

SPEAKER_00 30:21

No, certainly. Well, I love it. So if listeners on the show want to check out your work to go from that survival mode to improving their quality adjusted life years, where's a good place for them to land?

SPEAKER_01 30:32

That would be www.qualycoaching.au.au there for Australia.

SPEAKER_00 30:39

Perfect. Delia, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Thank you so much, Tony. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

At the end of the day, quality of life isn't what you have. It's how you feel in yourself. When you're grounded in your breath, you respond instead of react. You stay steady when things get unpredictable. Because remember, the average is misleading. Life has deep ends, and that's where this all lands. Skill for today? Come back to your breath. Pair it with action. That's your anchor and chaos. And your access point to what Delia calls your life force. Do the work, breathe through it. That's how you build a life that actually feels right.