Cara Houser

In this episode of Just Call Jenna, host Jenna Williams sits down with Cara Houser, a commercial real estate executive, entrepreneur, and author of Burned Out to Lit Up: Ditch the Grind and Reclaim Your Life. Drawing from more than two decades of leadership experience, Cara shares the personal journey that inspired her book and the wake-up calls that revealed she was living out of alignment. Together, Jenna and Cara explore the often-overlooked signs of burnout, how it gradually narrows our perspective, strains our relationships, and disconnects us from both ourselves and the people around us.

Cara offers practical insights into the role of self-care, self-awareness, and intentional living in recovering from burnout and creating a more fulfilling life. She discusses why healing is more than simply taking a break—it’s a journey toward reclaiming your sense of self and personal power. Listeners will walk away with actionable strategies they can begin implementing today, along with encouragement to recognize burnout before it takes a deeper toll. Whether you're feeling overwhelmed, stuck, or simply seeking more balance, this conversation provides a thoughtful roadmap toward living with greater purpose and alignment.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:24

Welcome back. Today I have a friend and guest, Kara Hauser. Kara is a 20-year commercial real estate executive, an entrepreneur, and an author of the book Burned Out to Lit Up, where something inspiring in her life that was just gave up on the corporate world and said, I'm gonna go live the life I want. So it's about getting rid of soul-crushing burnout without hitting the eject button on life. Cara, tell me about that. And welcome.

SPEAKER_03 0:47

Hi, Jenna. It is such a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. And I don't know, just been lovely to get to know you.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Awesome. I feel the same.

SPEAKER_03 0:54

So, yes, what is this book about? And why do I say it like dealing with burnout without hitting the eject button on your life? Is that the point, one of the main points, is that you don't need to go and kind of leave the country and do the whole eat, pray, love thing, although that is awesome. And you should do it if you want. But you don't have to. And some of us are in phases of life where we don't want to or can't, say raising young children, just having a bunch of financial responsibilities that aren't so easy to hit paws on. And so there are ways to reclaim yourself right where you are. And in fact, one thing we all know who've traveled, although traveling is amazing, our mindsets follow us there.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

So Yeah, that's absolutely true. We gotta deal with those anyway. I think it's interesting how you bring up the idea of, you know, the adult responsibilities. I like to joke and say adulting would not recommend, but it is, it's all the responsibilities. I would love to run away and do the eat pray love thing, but unfortunately I have other things that I signed up for. And there are commitments in life. No matter what the mindset is, we still have to follow through on our commitments, I think.

SPEAKER_03 1:55

Yep. And sometimes things happen in life that jar us enough to where all of a sudden maybe big experiences like that come into focus as being possible.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

And so I think it's about being open to well, and I think life keeps coming. No matter what you do, some waves are little and some are tsunamis, but life happens. I mean, you can have a stroke, that's like a tsunami. But well, you would know all about that. I would, unfortunately. I do not recommend. When people ask me how I feel about my stroke, my favorite is zero stars. Do not recommend. But you always tell me all the things you've learned. But I think that's a choice that we have is when things happen, you can choose to victim it out and pour me. And I like to call it the Eeyore way, or you can choose to say, okay, what can I learn from this? Because I don't want to repeat this thing. I think with mine, like I've already said to many of my family members, that if this was to ever happen again, just take me out, I'm done. I don't have the recovery in me again. Really? No, I don't think so. It was a hard road, and I had to go through that quite alone. Like when you go through that, people can't understand. And I think I was aware that I needed to have a lot of sort of faith to get through our delusion of not knowing how, because all the odds were stacked against me. And the recovery took something, but like something in your book you talk about is self-possession. And I sort of had to possess myself and get back to who I was so that I could become this me that I am now. And I like this me now, but I don't think I want to do the work to get here again. That was a lot.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

But that is the gift, right? That is the gift. And it's really annoying to talk about gifts that come out of hardship because it sucks. Sometimes it does. But we've all had, you know, hardship, every single person on this planet has gone through something. And so it's easier on the other side. It is to look back and see the things that we, the perception shifts and the broadening that happened that could never have happened if we had just been kind of floating along in our little controlled sea. So, what does self-possession mean to you?

SPEAKER_02 3:53

To me, it's like the authentic self, like who I am at the core, the neutral version, not what voices are everybody else as we've had conversations about environments we've grew up with, the voices that don't belong to my parents and teachers, the voice that is just me. So, what is it that I truly want? I'm in this phase of my life where I'm coming up on 50 and my kids are adults now. One has already moved out. I'm sort of deciding who do I want to be when I grow up and self-possession is I had all these choices I had to make because of all those responsibilities. And sort of now the choices are what do I want? So self-possession to me is like what is coming from my core. What do I really want without anybody else's voice? And I kind of don't know how to do that or don't have much experience in it.

SPEAKER_03 4:40

That's the that's this current journey that you're on. It is. It's just so cool to discover that. And that's I love how you described it. It's a lot, it's actually pretty similar to how I conceive of it somewhat in the book. Yes, it's about it's about owning yourself, all the pieces of you, and yeah, to some degree kind of banishing or at least integrating in a really healthy way all of the experiences that you had and the feedback you've received, whether you solicited or not throughout your life. And being really grounded in what your values are, what matters to you, who matters most to you, and then putting our energy, time, attention, resources, et cetera. But self-possession is the root underneath that that helps you do self-care things that actually work and matter for you, that aren't something that you read about in a magazine, like, oh, I'm gonna go and do this thing or this new, but it's about figuring out what really motivates you and lights you up. So that's part of the reason for the title of the book. Going from burned out, which is kind of like this very small, non-energized place, to this very lit up place where your energy is coming from within again in a really natural way.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

Yeah, I love that. I think about um one of the things is as I heal from the stroke, people will hear me say, I'm not going to dim my light for you. If it's too bright, I'm not forcing you to take it. Put on sunglasses, go in the other room. But that does not require me to make myself small to make you feel comfortable. I'm not trying to have a conflict, but I don't need to make myself small. So I love lit up because I always think of like letting my light shine and not having it be dimmed. I think I lived a lot of my life of worried about all these external views or other people in that sort of people-pleasing pace of just constantly shrinking myself to make other people comfortable. And I realize now that it's okay if they're uncomfortable. I'm not meant to be compatible with everybody. And so it's okay. But I think about that a lot. Like I don't want to do my not willing to do that in this phase of my life. I did it for 40 something years. I'm just not willing to do it anymore.

SPEAKER_03 6:44

Well, and the experience that you had is so profound, you know, it's truly a life, life and death experience. And so I think people who've what I've heard experienced that have come to the other side of it, yes, with a different sense of clarity around what really feels important.

SPEAKER_02 7:00

Yeah, you you start to really make choices. And you're willing to let go in a way that I don't think I ever had before. So that might have been one of the gifts I got out of the stroke was being able to let things go in a way that I couldn't before. Because I just realized that it's sort of dissipating and diluting, and the less attention I give to it, the quicker it goes away. And the more the brain repeats it, the more I get stuck on.

SPEAKER_03 7:24

Yes. I need to take some pages out of your book on that.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

Uh-huh. One of these days I'll get around to writing one.

SPEAKER_03 7:30

It is. I think that's such a common, that is like a universal thing. We just get, we grab onto stuff and we don't realize that we've we've grabbed it. We're thinking it needs to let go of us. Yeah. We're the one strangling the thing to death. Yeah, I agree with that. It's very hard though. It's actually can be exceedingly challenging because it doesn't, what does it mean to let something go that's been a part of you for so long? That's that's really been that you've taken in as part of your identity, probably.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

Yeah, there's a lot of this. I mean, I think that was hard for me that there was an identity, right? Before the stroke, I was a single mom, building a career, building all these things, and I was just needing to produce. And when I was at that level where learning how to walk and talk again, just basic things, right? Learning how to take a shower without assistance again. When I was at that place, I think you realized how little things really matter. And then I went and got a neuroscience certification on how the brain works because I totally nerded out on the brain. And when they were talking about addiction circuits and letting things go, there's actual science in the brain that just the 30 seconds between your thought that you repeat all the time, and like a breath and a pause, that power of the pause, that just 30 seconds of not thinking that thought again and sort of observing how you feel versus self-judgment, that that's literally how you break circuits of addiction habits in like psychology, neuroscience, but that's how they do it. They talk about just like the 30-second pause.

SPEAKER_03 8:59

That's interesting. I hadn't learned that, but it makes sense to me. There's this difference between processing through something and ruminating in it, getting stuck in it. And that I think is a tool, probably, of how one might be. I like that you call it a tool.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

I think it's a skill because I didn't have it before. I sort of got forced to learn it, and that's where all this podcast and stuff came from is like what I learned. I just want to help people get to the life I have now without having to suffer what I did. I mean, I think suffering is a part of life. Learning struggle, that's a part of it, but that doesn't mean that people need to have a life and death situation to learn it. I think they can learn the basics. And I believe everybody wants different things. And I think that place of like not judging what I want versus what somebody else wants and giving them the space to do that. But it's the tools, it's the skills. I didn't have it. And I feel like now, how did I not know that? It seems so simple, but took a long time for me to learn, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 9:57

I like that framing of it too, because when we get stuck in, you can either think of it as we're just living and we're learning all the time and we're always acquiring skills. What we didn't know before, it wasn't because of some horrible failure of character, probably for most of us. It really is, maybe for all of us. It really is just a lack of skill that we had at the time. And when we think of things that way, for me anyway, it becomes a zillion times easier to be graceful and gentle about the thing that, you know, I sucked at before.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:25

Or that I experienced from someone else that I hated. You know, it allows the perception of compassion to happen for self and others in a way that otherwise is a lot harder to get to, I think.

SPEAKER_02 10:34

I think the judgments and preconceived notions that we have, or what might be referred to as like a limiting belief. I think this way, but that doesn't mean that there's not a whole lot of other views on that out there or a different way to see it. And that's why we talk about like perception and those things that they matter. But I think we are always learning and always growing, and the only thing limiting us is ourselves. I think, in my view, everything's possible. The universe is not on a budget.

SPEAKER_03 11:01

Yes. So that's the other thing. We do tend to get caught up in this very zero-sum game way of thinking. Yeah. And that can be really hard too. I know when I was, you know, deep in the pit of burnout and just other struggles that maybe weren't exactly burnout, but have been low points in my life, life just got very small and very constricted and very all that expansiveness and lightness kind of went away. And it's unfortunately it's a self, it's a self-building cycle of doom because you think, oh, I don't have the energy to kind of be out there in ways that might be useful or or healthy for me. So I'm just gonna kind of I'm gonna pull in. And then you think, well, I don't want to ask people for help or support because that would be leaning on them too much. And I don't want to be a downer on people. And so it just becomes the very things that we need to actually feed us, to connect with others, connect with ourselves, kind of go by the wayside, and it becomes very difficult. And so part of the journey out is getting reconnected with ourselves, actually, first and very grounded. One of the very first things that I did, the first sort of steps of getting out of burnout, involved making space. And so that literally involved like doing like a Marie Kondo. She wrote an awesome book about decluttering, kind of making physical space, which helps create space in our minds, as she talks about, which I totally learned is true. And then just like getting literally grounded in making space in other ways. Like when I had my kind of burnout meltdown and had to take a break from work all those years ago, I re-landscaped our front and backyard, like literally, you know, pickaxe on that horrible clay soil and digging out everything and supplementing with new soil. I just was out there every day. And the neighbors would walk by and they would see everything going from the barren wasteland to like eventually super cool. But it was a big project. And just being in the ground and in the dirt and in nature is really good because I was able to achieve kind of an exhaustion of body, which is much more centering actually than an exhaustion of mind.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:56

And it allows, you know, it's there's a lot of ways one can meditate. We can meditate sitting on a chair, we can meditate doing, you know, the garden, we can meditate playing an instrument or a sport or whatever it is that allows us to get into kind of like a less ruminative flow state. Those are all ways to make space in our life.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

I love that you call it making space. And I love that you brought up gardening. My grandma was a gardener and she always used to say, you can solve a lot of problems by digging in the dirt. But like making space and letting your body like that movement gets energy moving. And I love the decluttering. Like I just recently cleaned out, as simple as it was, a closet in my house where all the pet food and stuff is. And you know, over time you just throw everything in the closet before, and then you're just trying to shut the door. So I spent a day and I just cleaned out the closet. And as simple as that was, like the space in there went to feed the dog this morning. I was like, oh, how nice is it in here that I can see things?

SPEAKER_03 13:46

It's so satisfying. It really is. All of the things we're talking about, that's the other thing about it. They're super satisfying. Like you spend a day doing it, and you're like, boom, results. Ha! Look at I have accomplished this thing. And it just this expansiveness and sense of satisfaction is pretty cool. So even just one closet can offer that.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

But I I like to remind myself that the universe is not on a budget. And to me, like an abundance mindset is what is abundance? It doesn't mean I'm the richest or have the most resources out of everybody. It's not a competition. It just means I sort of have enough to do what I need to do and a little more that I can share and put some back out there in the world for those who need. That to me is kind of how abundance works. It's enough to do what I need to do without feeling lack and enough to share.

SPEAKER_03 14:33

And when we give, we're open to receiving. So it sort of opens this whole cycle of awesomeness. Not that we're giving to get something, but you know, it just is a very energy flow, I think, in that way.

SPEAKER_02 14:43

I agree. I think it's all a lot about an energy flow. And I think of things a lot as like an energy exchange, right? Whether it be monetary or conversations we're having, but life is kind of like an energy exchange. So when you think of like the golden rule, don't harmony, don't go putting negative energy out there. I mean, it's hard to do. We're humans, like life happens.

SPEAKER_03 15:03

So, what's as you look forward now in the current state of mind and life to the new possibilities sort of in your future? What are some things that come to mind that probably wouldn't have popped into your consciousness kind of pre-life change?

SPEAKER_02 15:16

To really sort of be mindful and intentional in the things I do. Like I love the term self-possession, but like really connected to myself. Like sometimes it's as simple as washing the dishes. I'm washing the blue cup, it's plastic, it feels like this. Or like yesterday I was out in my garden. Oh, I'm cutting this flower, it's pink. I'm remembering when I planted the little seed and look at it now. So I think for me, it's about being intentional in the things I do. There's a Buddhist concept where they talk about chop wood, carry water. So instead of getting overwhelmed by what's outside of you, just do the things you need to do. And the big things kind of take care of themselves. And I am holding true to the boundary that I set for myself after recovery, which is if it takes my piece, it's too expensive. And there is not a thing in this world that I am willing to let take that from me. And I hold on to that with everything I got. So I think that's one of my intentions.

SPEAKER_03 16:08

That's a hugely profound shift.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

It really is. How do you see self-care as being a thing that's important?

SPEAKER_03 16:15

You know, it's really just about doing the things that matter most to you and not to the whole rest of the world or the advertising. You know, self-care has become quite commodified.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

Yeah, I think it's like a trend versus what it really is.

SPEAKER_03 16:28

Because people are like, ooh, I could sell so many things, supplements, this and that. Because if you think it's something you can buy, then you keep it very external. That's what that's why self-possession is it's a rootedness, that it's really it's a very internal thing. Self-care could be digging a hole in the ground. It could be taking a trip somewhere, awesome. It could look like so many things. And it depends on what kind of fills your cup in that moment of that phase of your life.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

I think we need goals and things that we want to do because achieving there's a certain reward that comes from it, but I'm really living in like achieving versus consuming.

SPEAKER_03 17:04

Like I can't enjoy the past. That's it. Everything you're doing, like this. Like you're not just doing it because I just want to check it off. You're doing it, I think, because you're actually enjoying the people that you're working with, all the folks here. Yeah. The process, the guests, yourself, and all of the thinking and creativity that you're tapping into to do it. It's just an enjoyable thing.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

It is. This is, it started out as like a little passion project, and now people are listening and commenting, and family and friends, and even strangers are like, hey, I caught this in comments. I mean, there's certain people who have negative comments, there always will be, but the overwhelming majority are happy with what they're learning. Aha, I didn't know this. Like I did an episode on isn't visible disabilities. I had a guy that reached out to me and was like, look, I had a brain injury years ago, and it meant so much to me to just hear that there's somebody else out there in the world living through some of the things I do.

SPEAKER_03 17:54

How cool.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

And that is the remote. Powerful it is.

SPEAKER_03 17:57

But you know, there are folks who we're just not going to vibe with, and that's totally okay. It doesn't mean anybody's a horrible person, just means we're not really a match.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

I had a really hard time with that personally before the stroke, like being misunderstood or allowing people to not like me, or I used to feel that I need to make people like me or just at least comfortable. And now I'm like, okay, if you're uncomfortable, that's okay. I can let you go. I still wish you well. I hope you eat and have an abundant life. Sure. That doesn't mean I need to break bread with you. Absolutely. Those two things can exist at the same time and really should. There's a universal law that they talk about, the law of allowance, which is allowing me to be who I am, but also allowing you to be who you are. And it was very easy for me to allow other people to be who they were. But I would had a really hard time of allowing myself to be who I was and like being okay in my own power. Like growing up in a male-dominated work environment, I always thought of like, I'm a female. What's your superpower? Like being female was my superpower. I learned how to use that to my advantage in my being pleasant or making everybody feel comfortable. And then it sort of got to this place where it's like, okay, well, if you don't like me, I don't need to make you feel comfortable. That is really not my job.

SPEAKER_03 19:08

Right.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

And that part was really hard for me to learn.

SPEAKER_03 19:10

If you have good intentions, you're doing good work, and you're, you know, you can't take responsibility for everyone else's emotional state.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

And I think as women and culturally and society-wise, I know certainly like what I grew up with was like, okay, you have to make everybody else feel comfortable. That's your job. Like you have to make sure everybody's taken care of. Like when you're a mother and you're having your kid's birthday party and you gotta make sure every kid's happy. There's all the everybody's having a good time. I used to feel that pressure all the time. Now I don't. Like, if you're not having a good time, okay. I might say you don't have to be here. You're welcome to stay if you want, but like do what you want. I think that's part of wisdom.

SPEAKER_03 19:43

Oh, totally.

SPEAKER_02 19:44

Every human needs that space. Yes. And sometimes life's lessons are hard. Yes. Like a stroke. A stroke was hard. Yeah, it's very. I think even nowadays, some of the things I do beyond healing from that are hard, like making hard choices or letting there be consequences to the choices I make. Like everything has consequences, some good, some bad, but just holding true to who I am. Again, I want to live in peace and I'm not willing to let anything take that, regardless of what that looks like. Yeah. I had recently a person who had been in my life like 20 years. And we had always had like kind of an ambivalent friendship, if you will. There was no real good or bad, but it was like, oh, every time we made commitments and I really didn't want to go, it was like, well, we've been friends 20 years. It's been on the calendar two weeks. And I would always leave from that kind of feeling like, why did I go spend my time doing that? Gotcha. And I had to let that relationship go because I realized as simple as it was, it wasn't horrible black or white, one extreme or the other, but it was just kind of, you know, I guess lighting me up, if you will. Yeah. And I just kind of, it was hard. Like, okay, we've been friends forever, but it was okay. It's not that we're harming each other, but it's not doing anything good for me. But I can leave it right here. It's kind of like what got me here isn't gonna get me there. It was part of my life, but it doesn't have to be part of my future, if that makes sense. Right.

SPEAKER_03 21:01

And it still is and was valuable. Yeah. But it may not be something that fits.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Yeah, it just doesn't matter where you're going. And there's nothing wrong with that person. And there's really nothing wrong with me. It's just yeah, it's not supporting what I'm doing now in my life. And I feel like I've made all these changes to what the next version of me is gonna look like. And it just doesn't match that vibration, if you will, or what I'm creating over here. So letting it go without feeling guilty was a very hard lesson.

SPEAKER_03 21:32

Yeah, it's actually another way of making space. Yeah. Too in our lives, you know, because with those that time, you can now invest it in anything, other relationships, things for yourself, you know, th things that are gonna be energy giving versus energy depleting. So that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 21:47

I like the way that you said that giving versus depleting of energy, because energy is a flow. And, you know, we all need to kind of shine or sparkle or however we want to say it, but there are so many things that are holding us back that, you know, if they're not black. Black and white, like it's not full harm. It's somewhere in the middle that we just kind of hold on to them. That's why I call it like the ambivalent relationship. And that was kind of how it goes. But I think we all do that. We hold on to things like familiarity, comfort, the habits, our brain knows what it likes, right? And it's a prediction machine. This is comfortable. I know how to do this, more of this.

SPEAKER_03 22:20

We're more self-possessed, we're more in our body. Yeah. And we can sort of receive our intuition signals better. I get that. You know, we can really, you can actually notice when when your body and your mind are telling you something is for you or something is not. Yeah. In a way that in a super burned out state, I wasn't able to. I had to come, I think I was pretty detached from that. And so that's another kind of coming home, I think that happens. Okay. I get that.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

So what do you think are some things people could do to focus on self-possession? And what practical tips would you give?

SPEAKER_03 22:52

I think it really starts with what we've been talking about, all the different suggestions that we've given around making space for yourself, physically, mentally, emotionally, starting there. If you think you need support, get it. You know, whether it's from doctors or mental health stuff or friends or family, reach out and find that those things. And then once you've kind of created that healthier baseline, you can start filling it in with things like start with the basics, you know, really annoying stuff your doctors has said. Do you have enough good food? Are you moving your body? Are you spending time in nature? Those kind of basic building blocks. Are your relationships generally healthy and supportive in your life? So kind of doing, taking stock of all the things we're doing. Are we sleeping well and enough? Starting with those. And then once we've got that foundation, we can start building some other cool things like fun stuff. Like I started learning guitar, for example, which had long been on my list. I am taking the improv class now, which is just a hoot. So, like, what is on your list of stuff? Maybe it's been on there for a while. Maybe it's just newly coming to mind as you're thinking about it. Like, what is a thing that you can just start a little bit with that would be kind of add a little magic into your life? Is it learning to paint? Is it something, yeah, is it something big that's gonna take lessons? Is it something smaller? There's no too big or too small. You could want to know how to bake bread, you know, make a recipe, see how it goes. Just kind of start with little things and then just see is this sparking joy, as Marie Kondo says, in my life, and then kind of just build on those things. Like the more we can feed that sort of joy machine, the more that's gonna build. Like you said, you know, what we do more of grows. So you want to do more of awesome stuff that gives us energy and joy. And then, and then you meet cool people. Like in my improv class, there's all these cuties in there. It's I'm taking it near Cal's campus. And so there's a lot of youngsters in there. Adorable. It's fun. It's cool to meet new people and to just expand our lives in different ways. So kind of getting back into things that are joy, more joyful, more fun, and really fun in like a kid way. You know, we think that's kind of a nice to have. It's a total must to have. So, what are some things? And I know when you're in the pit of doom in life, it's nothing is fun. And so just start with the tiniest thing, tiniest little spark, and see if you can kind of start building a little fire from that. I get that.

SPEAKER_02 25:03

There's a couple of concepts that you talked about there that make perfect sense to me. Like again, back to that Buddhist concept of chop wood, carry water. Like, just build the foundation. Like, are you eating and sleeping right? Like, first take care of the basics and then build. And then when you talk about sparking joy, years ago, I went through a custody battle and I had to do some co-parenting. And there was a therapist way back when, before I even really participated in therapy. But one of the concepts he said was, your mind to heal needs play, right? It needs some joy. Otherwise, all it's getting is heavy concepts. Like you need a little joy, the creative spark. So that's what hit me out of random, probably 15 years ago, as you're talking about what sparks and joy. And like, I love that you took an improv class or learning guitar. Like, I keep thinking about what are those things I want to do and have I been doing.

SPEAKER_03 25:51

Yeah. I mean, one thing folks can do after this, they listen to this if they want, is just get a piece of paper and a marker and just start, just brain dump. Spend five or 10 minutes brain dumping everything you've ever enjoyed, might enjoy, have considered enjoying, saw someone else enjoy. Like just dump it all down, super big, just no uh editing allowed. Just write it all, all the crazy stuff, write a motorcycle, I don't know, whatever it is you want to do, and then come back to it after you've done it all a little later, maybe the next day, and kind of just look at it and pick a thing or two off of it. Like what jumps out to you? Circle that thing and then just make a little bit of space for it once a week, start there, and then start to get it in.

SPEAKER_02 26:29

I love that. So I was raised by an English teacher and I did a lot of reading when I was younger. And before the stroke, I think my books were well traveled. I would pack them for vacations and never read them. And then after the stroke, like my brain literally couldn't process it. One of the places where my stroke was affected vision. So processing the words to let it be language in my brain was a physical thing. I couldn't do at first, and I had to rewire the connections to be able to do it. So then reading became a thing. And I just add books to the list. It's probably a hundred books long. I don't know if I'll finish it in my life or not, but that's not the point. It's the space for reading every morning, and I read for enjoyment, filling my mind, and some are fiction, some are business books, you name it. But I think it's creating space. But like when you talk about a list, like I just add it to the list. Sometimes people give me books, sometimes I borrow books from people, but it's that space to do that. So I love that you brought up that list idea because to me, that's just my books. But it might be fun to just make a list of all the things that I ever wanted to do and maybe try something new. I think of trying things new, it expands your brain a lot.

SPEAKER_03 27:37

Yes. And for those of us moving into the second tier of our lives, we need to keep our brains active. Yeah. All of us do, but it is a lot more fun. And then all of a sudden, you're it will fertilize your creativity.

SPEAKER_02 27:49

Yeah, I agree with you. In always. I think of life a lot of like planting seeds. I just go and plant a lot of seeds in my life, and then I tend to my garden and remove things that keep them from growing. Like, you know, like that idea of I don't chase, I attract. I just remove the things that stop me from expanding my energy or growing my energy or shining my light, however you want to put that, but just planting a lot of seeds and doing what I can so that they grow. Some of them blossom beautifully, and other ones just never make it past a seed. Right. So tell us how we can find out more or get a copy of your book.

SPEAKER_03 28:22

You can find the book anywhere you buy books: Thrift Books, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, for those of you.

SPEAKER_02 28:28

I know that's Yeah, I'm a click-click deliver girl. I love Amazon. Thanks, Jeff Bezos.

SPEAKER_03 28:34

Um, so there's a anywhere online you can find it. And on my website, you can find a like an activities workbook kind of PDF download that goes with it if you like. But yeah, check it out if you're interested.

SPEAKER_02 28:46

And my website, Jenna Williams.online, has a partner page where any of my guests, you can find their information on links to their website. So feel free to check it out.

SPEAKER_00 28:57

Jess Call Jenna.

SPEAKER_03 29:01

And here is the book Burned Out to Lit Up, Ditch the Grind and Reclaim Your Life. If you need a little bit more lightness, joy, all the good things in your life, check it out. Anywhere you can find anywhere you buy books, you can find it.