The Cost of Ignoring Ourselves: A Conversation with Jenn Pike

The hardest person to hear is often ourselves, especially after years of putting everyone else first.

In this episode, I'm joined by Jenn Pike, a Functional Medicine Diagnostic Nutritionist and Medical Exercise Specialist for an honest conversation about the subtle ways women disconnect from themselves and the physical, emotional, and spiritual cost of staying there. We explore what it means to come back to your body, reclaim your voice, and begin listening to the wisdom that's been there all along.

Together, we dive into nervous system regulation, burnout, intuition, and the patterns that keep so many women overgiving, overfunctioning, and disconnected from their own needs. This conversation is an invitation to stop abandoning yourself in the name of productivity, perfection, or pleasing others, and start creating a life that's rooted in self trust and alignment.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why so many women become disconnected from themselves without realizing it
• The link between burnout, nervous system regulation, and women's health
• How people pleasing and overfunctioning pull you away from your authentic self
• Why your body often recognizes misalignment before your mind does
• What it looks like to rebuild self trust by listening to your body's wisdom

Connect with Jen:

• Website: jennpike.com
• Instagram: @jennpike
• Podcast: The Simplicity Sessions Podcast

Take the next step

Stop trying to sound like everyone else. Discover how your voice is naturally designed to connect with the people you're here to serve: Get your free personalized Voice by Design Guide

If you've hit an invisible ceiling and you're ready to understand what's really beneath it, I'd love to work with you. Apply to work with me

Join the conversation on Instagram: @_brendajohnston

Substack, The Limitless Life Uncensored, for deeper conversations beyond the podcast.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Welcome back to the Limitless Life podcast, or welcome if you're new here. I think there comes a point in many women's lives where the question stops being, how do I do more? And it becomes, how do I stop abandoning myself while I'm trying to do more? Because for a lot of high-achieving women, life can look successful way before it feels sustainable. You can have the business and responsibilities and expectations and all of those things grow. And somewhere along the way, a lot of us become experts at thinking, but not feeling. And so we start to override the very thing that is trying to guide us, which is our body, which is why I'm so excited to have this conversation today with my guest. Her name is Jen Pike. She's the founder and CEO of Simplicity Project Inc., a women's health and business empire built on one foundational truth. Your body is your most valuable business asset. Jen is a medical exercise specialist, functionally integrative diagnostic nutritionist, yoga and Pilates instructor, a best-selling author and podcast host, and honestly, one of the most respected voices in women's health. For nearly 30 years, she's helped women understand that when you put your body first, everything else, including your revenue, relationships, and leadership, has somewhere stronger to grow from. All right, so welcome to the show, Jen. Thanks so much for having me. I'm super excited to have this conversation because I always spend a lot of time preparing for these type of conversations. And when I was getting into your story and who you are and what you do, all the things you've created. This is more than just like a business success story. You've been doing the same thing for 30 years, like devoted to the same work. This is an evolution. And so I'm really excited to take people through this evolution. And I know your story is going to resonate with a lot of people. So let's get into this. Who was Jen before the business and before all the things that you do?

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Oh, I mean, I think just like a super inquisitive young girl who always had questions and knew that there was more than meets the eye when there would just be a very blanket kind of black or white answer to anything that was going on. But with me, it was especially about the human body and women's bodies. I mean, I've been doing this. I'd been like accepting a paycheck since I was 17 in the health and wellness industry. It's when I registered my company. I started off teaching fitness classes. But even before that, I was lucky enough. I grew up in an environment where my dad was always super active and involved in his health. And he took me into a gym environment at a really young age. And I got to witness what it looked like all ages, all shapes, sizes, phases, and stages of life going into the gym environment and moving their bodies, everybody having a different goal, everyone having a different capability. I can just remember, like my first experience, I was six years old at the Toronto Fitness Institute, and they had like kind of a kids' activity area, but it was all glass and you could see out. And I remember vividly like watching and just being so much more curious about what was happening out there than like playing with Lego in the room that I was in. And my dad worked in the golf industry. And when I was seven, we had moved out of Toronto and lived a little bit further north. And when I was nine, where we lived, because we lived on a golf course, they had a country club and they had a kids' program. And I was part of that. And I loved it so much. And it was this kids like cardio movement class. My dad would do his workout. My mom was more of like walk with the neighborhood ladies, maybe go to a jazzer size class every now and again. My dad was a gym guy. And so he would work out and I would go to this class. And it wasn't too long after that the instructor of the class said, you know, we have this kinder class. The kids are like two and three years old. Do you think you'd want to teach that? And I was nine. And I was like, Yes, I do. I was like, you know, I didn't know what that meant, other than I used to bring a cassette player and like use a cassette to have music for these kids. But I really realized from a young age that I loved being a leader. I loved teaching. I loved watching people have this like aha moment. So then as I got older and I was in the gym more, and then I was really, you know, in high school, I was that girl in gym class and more so in the change room, and we would have health class and we'd be taught something. And I would just be like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And I'd go back into the change room and say to my girlfriends, like, you know, that what we just taught isn't the whole story. And part of how I also knew and understood this was my oldest sister was 12 years older than me. So there were a lot of things that she was going through when I was young that in our house, nothing was like, you only talk about that in the bathroom, or you know, you don't talk about periods. Like that's not dinner table talk. Like it was just talk in our house. So, you know, I always give this example so people can understand. Like my sister was 16 and I was four years old. So you think as a 16-year-old girl, all the things you were going through, period stuff and hormone stuff and boy stuff and conversations probably around birth control and sex and all those different things. And I'm four and I'm the inquisitive kid. I am the three Enneagram one, three projector human design profile kid who I don't know any of this at the time, but I am just like ears are up and open. And so I'm absorbing and just taking all of this in and kind of filtering it through my own lens and experience just as I grow up and get older. So from an early, early age before Jen had the business, I feel like I was already preparing to do this work from that. I also always had this like entrepreneurial energy in me. I mean, I had like a babysitting flyer when I was eight years old and was like going door to door to get babysitting jobs. And I had my first job at McDonald's when I was 14. And I always had multiple jobs. I loved working. I loved like learning. I liked being part of a team. I loved earning money.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

I love that. I also love that you started working at 14 because I had my first job at 13. Cineplex Odeon. I've seen a lot of movies.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Yeah, I've made a lot of Big Macs.

unknown 7:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Was there a moment as you're growing up and you're doing these things? Was there a moment where you realized, oh, this isn't something I'm just really interested in? Like, I'm here to do this.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Multiple times. Multiple times when I would be having a conversation with another girl or woman or just someone in my life, or I would be teaching a class, or just have an experience with someone. It could even have been like at the grocery store, me witnessing somebody standing in a section where I was like, I wonder if they need help. And then saying, like, can I help you find something? I don't work here, but I might know an answer. And then just seeing the body language change for that person, or seeing something connect in their eyes, where they were like, wow, I never knew that. Or like, thank you so much. Or I always loved teaching when I'd go over and give a slightly different cue or help someone with their form. And they would be like, Oh my God, I didn't know I was supposed to feel it in this area. Or I've never felt it in my glute. I've always felt it in my hip. I feel it in my glute now. And it would be those things from you where I just realized that I wasn't doing something that no one else was doing. Like there's a dime a dozen who do what I do for a living. Okay. Like there is no shortage of people who do what I do. But the way I do it, I see things that people don't say. And I realized this at a young age where I'd have a conversation with someone and I didn't have to say to them, I think there's more to this that you're not telling me. I would just know there is more to this that they're not telling me. And I had to learn to creatively figure out how to understand the language of their body or what they were going through in a way where I could convey it to them so they could start to understand the language of their body. And so I realized early on that what I was doing wasn't just this designation of being an instructor or a strength and conditioning coach or a nutritionist or a women's health and hormone educator. I learned that I was getting into a relationship with this people and that really what my role was was to educate.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

One of the things I always say is that energy speaks before your mouth even opens. And I feel like even back then, you were being intuitively guided to help these women in different ways. And that's a really powerful thing when you can lean into that. So if somebody had told your younger version of you what you'd be doing today and what you'd create, what do you think would surprise her the most?

SPEAKER_01 10:10

I think probably just like the bobs and weaves that happen. I grew up in a generation where you're kind of just taught there's a linear line, you start at A, you progress to, you know, B, and then you move forward. And there's just a path, and the path is straight. My path has not been straight. Even though people hear things like, I've been in the same industry doing the same thing for 30 years, which I think is a rarity as an entrepreneur. When you are part of a union or you have a corporate career, or you're part of something where you're getting a pension and a plan, that's not uncommon to hear someone had a career for 30 years, right? Where you show up to a job. But to be an entrepreneur, to have created your own revenue streams and your own products and to be in constant visionary and ideation and execution mode for 30 years on the same thing, that is definitely more rare. So I think that for me, looking back, I would have been surprised at how many times I would have had to bobbed, weaved, pivot, ask myself questions. Also understood, I would not have got it back then if someone had said, this is gonna be the greatest personal development journey you're ever gonna go on in your life. And every stage you go into. So you think you know who you are and what you're doing right now. But when you become a mom, that's gonna change. And then when you become a mom again, that's gonna change. And then when you do this, that's gonna change. So all these different experiences have shaped the line of work that I'm in, the way I do the work, the language, even that I use. Like I go back and watch videos of myself 15 years ago, and I am like, oh, look at that itty bitty girl who spoke in a way with such authority and certainty. Little did she know. And I'll go back and listen to this episode in 15 years and be like, oh, listen, you know. So, but I've just learned over the years, like, I actually think that's so amazing.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Yeah. And I think it's so amazing that we can go back and listen to things. I listened to like the first season of this podcast, even the second, third, and fourth. And I'm like, ugh. I know. And I'll have people tell me they binge listen to the whole like everything. I'm like, oh, just start at like season four or five. Just ignore the verses.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

I was just warming up the first couple. You can just like fast track through those. My husband and I laugh when we look at like before I even knew what I was doing, and I was creating like YouTube videos out of like our first kitchen. You can't even see me. Okay. The lighting is behind. I'm like so washed out. It is horrendous. I think you can't hear things in the background. You can 100% hear them. And they're still up on my YouTube channel. Like, because I also think it is, man, if you just don't take the courage to start somewhere, you will never end up even nearly close to what you hope the ending looks like.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

And anybody listening to this, pay attention to what she just said. You just have to start. Get out of your head. So was there a point, and I know you've talked about this on other platforms and all the things, a point where you realized that something that had always been working in the business wasn't working for you anymore?

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Yeah, multiple times. The first time, really, for me was when I became a mom, because I always say it the same way as I had been chasing after my paycheck. I was driving to multiple locations. So I was working in Toronto, and then I also was working in Newmarket, Ontario, where I grew up. And depending on the traffic, 40 minutes or four hours away from each other. I was headhunted by Sports Clubs of Canada and Ballet Total Fitness when I was in my early 20s to essentially go and headhunt and find like the best trainers or the trainers in the Greater Toronto area who had really good potential, bring them into one of our, you know, locations. We had seven sports clubs of Canada locations, and I can't even remember, I wasn't as involved on the ballet side, but there was multiple. Bring them in, groom them, train them, develop them, teach them how to become the best trainers on the floor, and then also teach them how to be the best at sales. So we could build like this force of trainers. And so really fun in doing that, but I couldn't do that when I became a mother. And we were my husband and I were now living even a little bit further north than Newmarket. So I had to figure out where am I going to be? I can't do business and work the way I used to. I don't have 60 hours a week anymore. It's not just me. I have a daughter now and I have a home and I'm fucking exhausted. I don't want to do it this way anymore. So I think in the beginning, you try and be logical about it. And then you say things like, I can't, because logistically, bottom line was, Brenda, for me, I was like, I don't want to do it this way anymore. And I was looking for examples of other women, not the men. I was looking for examples of other women around me in my industry who were doing it differently. And I was like, oh my God, why can't I find, you know, more than like one example who's doing this? And so I was like, well, I'm just gonna create it then. I'm gonna have to figure out something different. And I really started to figure out if I want to stay closer to home, no more of this one-to-one client session experience. I'm starting small group training. I'm gonna bring two, four, eight women in at the same time. I'm gonna create incredible value. I'm gonna earn eight times the amount of money in this one hour away from my daughter that it would take me to be eight hours away from my daughter and driving on the highway to do this. So those were the things I started to learn. I also was able that I had some street cred from being part of these bigger establishments in the greater Toronto area to go to the director where I had been at and be like, pay me to come in here and do the same thing here. I can do this up here. I can do this in a small town. So I was given the opportunity to that and did that. And then what I realized when I had my son was I think I want to have something of my own that's in my actual town where I'm not driving as much. I'm gonna create simplicity. Their daycare is in town. I'm gonna create my business in town because my husband was also an entrepreneur. And my husband was in carpentry and general contracting, but he was working on all of the cathedral buildings downtown Toronto, the National Ballet, the AGO, the Art Gallery of Ontario. He was on the road at five in the morning every single day driving to Toronto. He was gone for like 12 to 15 hours every day. I didn't want somebody else looking after my kids full time while I was trying to do the thing. So I just had to really carve it out for myself. And when the kids were two and four, I ended up opening up my own boutique studio, thinking that was going to create more simplicity. I called it simplicity right outside the building. I was like, if you build it, they will come and it'll be simple. And in a lot of ways, it created simplicity in my life because my commute was seven minutes to daycare, to work, to my house. But in other ways, it added a lot of complexity. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. Having been directors in businesses that I didn't own, I thought I knew it all. I thought, if I owned this, I would do it this way. Why don't they do that? Why don't they invest this? Why don't they pay this? What you know, like my shit didn't stink. I didn't realize that was the energy that I had and what I was thinking until I was the person where my name signed every single check. And I was responsible for every decision, all of the experiences that our members were having, that my staff was having, everyone. And I was like, oh, I did not know. I did not see that coming. I can remember, like when I had my daughter thinking to myself, I wanted to call up all of my personal training clients who were mothers before me and say, I am so sorry. Because I was hearing what you were saying to me, but I didn't get it. And now I get it. And I remember when I opened my business wanting to also call all of my former bosses and be like, I am so sorry. I didn't get it, and now I get it. And so I owned and operated this studio for almost six years before I sold it. It was the best decision I ever made because I it liberated me from a system that in my industry had been created that nobody thought you could break. And I was able to break out of that system. So it created a lot of liberation. I've earned my MBA in business multiple times. That was, I think, my master's. I think I defended my PhD at that point. I hit burnout multiple times. So that was another pivotal moment when I realized that what I had been doing was no longer going to work this way. And at that point, it was harder because now I had built a community team. I was responsible. It wasn't me giving my notice. It was me actually selling. And now I disappointed so many people who were like, This is our community. This is like our home as well. Too like, what do you mean you've sold it? What do you mean it's not gonna be you that's here? And this was right in the heart of my community. And so people were very loving, but also they were really disappointed. They weren't mad, they were like heartbroken. That meant a lot, but I also took on that heartbreak and I didn't realize how much the sale impacted me. And I thought that coming out of that, I was gonna like, you know, take a month off. And then I was gonna launch into my next creation. My ass laid on a couch for a year drinking tea and I went for walks. That was my year after. I didn't realize how tired I was. I didn't realize what burnout actually meant on a cellular and like a soul level. I knew it to see it in labs because that's what my clinical mind had been trained to. I didn't realize it through the lens of being a mother, what that had meant that was happening to my family, all my relationship dynamics. So it was a whoa. It was a whoa moment. And I realized whatever I'm gonna build moving forward, it's not gonna be like this ever again. And then when I built online, I'm not an overnight success story. There's a lot of people who would come into my world now and be like, they have their own idea and perception of me or what I've created. And I'm like, 30 years, friends, not 30 days, not 30 months, many different iterations. We are a multi-seven-figure company now. We are very successful. I really didn't hit that stride until about 2019. So about seven years ago. Well, you do the math. That was 23 years into starting this business and needing to go through all these different iterations. People always say it like your 20s are for exploring, your 30s are like they're your grit, like they're the mucky years. That's where a lot of the hustle and the grind lives. Your 40s are the years where you make money and you start to make your most aligned decisions. And that has been true for me. My 40s have been the most incredible decade of my life so far for so many reasons. But really discovering who I am, who I've been working to become this whole time with so much gratitude. And also like, oh my God, if I could go back and like hudback girl and be like, you're gonna need very stable blood sugar and hydration to get through what's about to come. And you should probably go to bed because your ass is gonna get served to you a few times, but this is part of the process. But I think it's like if we knew ahead of time, I don't know that we would jump in and do it. So the ignorance is bliss for a reason. And now I sit here at this stage in business and we really just, I guess I've started to ramp up and we had a few years where I was like, oh my God, is this our reality? Like this is the money we're generating, this is the impact we're creating, this is how many women we're helping. And then I could start to feel that burnout energy coming on again because as the company was growing, everyone was telling me, well, bigger team now. You need to get a bigger team, you need to do this, you need to do that. And I started to outsource my own knowing of what felt to be true because I was listening to people who had created this before. They had come before me. And I was like, Well, I'm not gonna try to reinvent the wheel. I will just try to apply their approach. Some things worked and other things very much did not. And I found myself again a couple of years ago going, I'm starting to feel some signs and symptoms and see evidence in my life where I'm going to end up back on the couch. I'm going to end up back in that burnout state. What do I need to do differently? And this was like every time you have this feeling, you have decisions. Like I had to choose to borrow some courage from people around me where I was like, this feels scary, but I've got to lean in and do it anyways. I had to be a little braver than I thought I could be. I had to have a whole lot more audacity. I started to trim away certain programs. I was like, we're going to put that to sleep now. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm not that woman anymore. I taught what I came here to teach. I have now created impact with that. That's no longer the work that I'm in at this point in my life. There's new teachings that are essentially being downloaded to me right now. I channel a lot of how I teach what I teach. So it's like I have a ton of book knowledge and resource knowledge and course knowledge, but a lot of how I teach what I know. Again, like I said, I am not some special unicorn because of my letters behind my name. I'm a unicorn because I trust that I know the way to communicate it the best way I can. And I had to close some things down. I had to decrease the size of my team. I had to come back to simplicity, even when people thought I was absolutely crazy, because I knew it was the right thing for me.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

I'm just sitting over here, like so excited, listening to all of this for so many reasons. The burnout piece, especially, is interesting because not only could you feel it in your body, you could feel it in your soul. And so when you started to recognize that that might be happening again, was it more of a soul burnout or a body burnout or a combination of the two?

SPEAKER_01 25:00

I mean, it was probably a combination, but I started to feel on the soul level first because my most significant burnout was significant. And it was significant in the way that on the outside, I mean, people kind of knew like they would say things to me, like, you're doing a lot right now. But it wasn't like coming at me with necessarily like concern. Like there was nobody in my life who was trying to sit me down and have a heart to heart. What was happening more so is I was just getting more and more praise. I was getting put up on a higher and higher pedestal. I was getting more accolades, but internally, I was like, I'm kind of fucking dying actually over here. And I feel like I'm I'm selling my soul a little bit to try to keep things going, but that's not what people were seeing. What they were seeing was it is so incredible to watch you do what you're doing and raise kids and stay healthy and do the. And I was like, yeah, yeah. Listen, like I'm a firm believer we train people how to treat us and what to expect of us. So I fully participated in this. There's no disillusion on my side of this, is that I showed up with that front. I got it. I don't need help. I got it. I'm like the multitasker, but what do you need from me? I was the martyr. I was the mama, like I was the studio mom. I took care of all of those members and those women and created the environment for them that a lot of them never had. I was like, do you need my right arm, my left leg? Like, what can I give you? And I just gave, gave, gave. And I would go home. And my children and my husband, who were actually my family that I loved the most, they got the absolute shittiest leftover parts of me that were disengaged, that were there, but not present and always distracted. That's like soul level exhaustion to me now, where I can remember that the way I would move through my days, I sighed all the time. And I would just not even pay attention to it. And my husband would say things to me like, What are you sighing about? And I was like, I'm not sighing. He's like, Well, you're sighing or you're like having a cardiac event. Like, which one is it? And I started to then be aware of it and be like, when I would be overwhelmed, one of the ways my body, my nervous system would let go of tension were these big sighs. I had to start to figure out like the question you asked me, was it soul level or was it physical? On paper, physically, it's like I slept, I exercised, I ate well, I did all the it wouldn't look like I had like physical exhaustion, right? It was like internal. But then again, at my core, I like data and I would run my labs and I would see adrenals, not doing so great. Thyroid, extremely suboptimal. And when it got to that point of like real world burnout and I ran my labs, I was like, oh shit, I am on the brink of an autoimmune condition. Like, I am on the brink. I'm gonna be that woman who gets Hashimoto's. That's what's about to happen to me. I could see it. It was eye-opening, but it wasn't enough for me to change what I was doing because I needed to keep those contracts in place in terms of like soul contracts. I needed to keep the studio busy. I needed to keep money coming in. We had hit a point at one time where I was in debt big time. I wasn't telling anybody on the surface because the studio was busy. You would never think that behind the scenes there wasn't enough money to get to the end of the month. But when you again, when you run your own business, you don't realize like you can't do the simple math of, oh, if we get these many students into a class and you multiply it by the average of this and da-da-da-da. That math doesn't math in business. It doesn't math in business. And so I had to also figure out how to create other profit streams in there, how to bring on other practitioners, how to like I had to really learn what it meant to run a business, not four walls where people show up to something, like run a true business with systems and structure and like operations manual and do all of that. When I started to feel myself a couple of years ago get back to that place where for me it shows up in the sighing, I start to have feelings for a moment like I'm resenting what's on my calendar. And I'm like, oh, okay, I love what I do. So if I am resenting something on my calendar, if I'm praying for cancellations, I've overcommitted, I've said yes to things that aren't a yes, or I've just served that purpose and that role and I'm ready to shift into something else. So that's now for me more so where and how I feel it. And then I have non-negotiables in my life at this point. I want a super spacious morning. I want hours to myself before I have to show up and do anything. I want to wake up and spend as much time in my robe as possible because it's my favorite place to be. I want to drink my matcha. I want to putter around the house. I want to catch up on Instagram DMs. I want to read if I feel like it. I want to connect with my husband. I want to work out. I want to go for a walk. Those are the things for me where I'm like, if I can start my day with that, everyone else in my life gets a 10x version of Jen.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

Oh, yes. The spacious mornings is one of my favorite things. The number of people, when I say, I don't even see clients until 1, 1:30, they're like, really? I'm like, yeah. Because I want to hang out with my dog. I want to go to the gym. I want to go for a walk. I want to chill out.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

You know, it's hard sometimes though, because if you're listening and you are a creative like Brenda and I, is that the tricky part is that I'm also at my sharpest in the earlier part of the day. People will say, well, if that's your sharpest, it's when you should do your like highest lever moving positions for your job, like for your company. And I'm like, yes, and I always say if I would ever change the branding of the podcast, the show would be called yes and because I feel like everything is yes, and we deserve the best parts of us as well. So if I wake up every day and I go give, I've done that before. I've given everyone else the best parts of me. And then the parts that matter the most that's going to be with me for the rest of my life, get the leftover crap. I'm not settling for leftover crap anymore. That's just why it's a non-negotiable.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

Yes. One of the things I really appreciate about the work you do is that you don't separate success from well-being. And you've spent all of these years helping women understand that the body isn't something that we deal with after we've built the life. It's a part of how we build it, it's part of the business. One of the things you talk about is how so many women are living almost entirely from the neck up. So I want to go there. In your words, what does that actually mean?

SPEAKER_01 31:51

Means you're trying to make sense of everything. You try and execute everything from the mental place of like make it make sense. It's formula driven, it's spreadsheet driven, and you are totally tapping out of tuning into what's happening below the neck. What is happening in your nervous system? How is this actually feeling? What is your gut telling you? What are your hormones telling you? What is your cycle telling you? What is your energy telling you? Your recovery, your sleep, what is your like actual cognitive ability telling you? What are the words that are coming out of your mouth telling you? What's everything around you in your environment telling you? When we are focused so much on the head, you have a dogmatic approach. It's rigid. You're trying to control everything. You're controlling your schedule, how you show up, you're controlling the outcomes, all of it. You are missing the fucking point. To live life in general, I don't care if you own a business or not, is to feel life. And every single human being experiences life through their nervous system. And then you process it out on that cellular level out into the world. And so if you are ignoring every sign and symptom, every cue, whether it is discomfort or joy and happiness and vitality, you are missing so much of the golden wisdom that could actually help propel the business forward. Your body knows better oftentimes than your brain does, right? Your brain is designed to protect you. So you might think that you're showing up in this like super organized boss babe leadership energy because you let the brain execute. If you are not bringing your body on as part of this journey, if you don't actually have a meeting, okay, if you follow my friend Kate Northrup's work, she has coined this term body first, business second. And I live by this. I live by this. It is all part of the same. You cannot compartmentalize your dreams, desires, and the way you run your business from your body and not end up having some cost to pay down the road. And this is what most women in business don't realize. It's also what a lot of business coaches do not teach. It's like, build the business first and then we'll come to the body. You know how much harder it is to do that? And when you've already built something that now you think is being completely sustained off of you, you will not show up and take care of your health in the same way because that is always going to feel like a bigger priority. The business, the success, people's impressions and opinions about you. And so this is why I say like when you are at a point, you know you're at a turning point in your body and in your health and in your business, courage, bravery, and audacity, they become like that is your friggin' ABCs right there.

SPEAKER_00 34:35

How does a, because I know there's gonna be women listening to this going, oh yeah, okay, but that's not me. How does a woman know that she is disconnected from herself, that she is in her head? Like, what is the number one thing you would say? Like, get the fuck out of your head. This is what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

The way you describe yourself. So you struggle to get up in the morning, okay? You need to have coffee or some type of stimulant to get you up and get you going. You cannot start your day without being on your phone. You are always so into the weeds of like what is happening in the business. You go first thing in the morning on your phone, you end the day on your phone, your email, Slack, whatever it is. You describe yourself as saying, like, I don't know what's going on with my body, but something is out of balance. You book appointments for other people to tell you what's going on, but you've yet to have a conversation with yourself about what's going on. You have no energy, your body composition is changing, and yet you're saying, like, I've not changed what I eat or what I do or anything like that, but I'm gaining weight. I feel inflamed, my cycles are changing, my mood. Oh my God, I have no patience anymore. I have anxiety I never used to have. Sometimes I feel depressed. I don't know where that came from. My hair is not the same that it used to be. I get headaches I never used to get before. I just don't feel like myself. And oftentimes, this is the way that women will start to have this disassociation, is like, I just don't feel like myself, right? Or you'll be talking to a woman and she'll be speaking very frank and matter-of-factly about things. I'll give you an example. I've worked with women before who will say things like, I'm feeling horrible right now. I have no energy, like my body aches all the time. I just don't feel good. She'll go on with all these symptoms. And then I'll just say, like, what's been going on in life over the last bit? And then she'll say, like, nothing that crazy. And then tell me something super stressful had happened at work. Tell me that they just made a big move. Tell me that they, you know, lost someone in their family. Their dog also passed away. They're now also primary care for a parent. Their kid is going through something significant with their own mental health or with some kind of a challenge. And I'm like, okay, I know you think that none of these things that you just told me are impacting how you are feeling. This is living in your head and not in your body. The fact that you don't recognize how all of these stressful events, family dynamics, moving house, losing people you care about, losing some of that connection to your own body, all these different things. Like your body has to process all of this. You don't get to just pack it up, put it away into some folder on your desktop that says, get to it when I can. And your body's like, no worries. Behind the scenes, your body doesn't need your permission to start to execute a response. And this is where we start to have these signs and symptoms where people say, I feel like I just woke up and it happened like that. And I'm like, let's go on a little journey backwards. Because I can guarantee you, as you talk to me more and more about all the time that has led up to now, I don't have to be the one to connect the dots for you. You are going to start to realize it. You just haven't had people around you asking the right questions. So, what we tend to do, and this is part of survival, you surround yourself with people who are like-minded, who think the same, who share the same cognitive bias so that it can feed back into where you need to stay in order to survive. You've heard this before. It's like some people say you're the sum of the five. And so without even realizing it, your inner environment is chaotic, but your outer environment is like confirming, no, this is normal. So it's like if all of your friends are living the same way, they all have the same stress slope, they all have the same kind of stuff going on. That's just normal. There's nothing that you need to be aware of or pay attention to. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 38:36

100%. You're speaking my language, girl. It's so interesting too, because when I was leaving corporate and I was starting to do this work, I remember walking through the building, kind of like in a creepy way, paying attention to people because that's what I like to do. And I realized why they call it water cooler gossip. Because people literally would meet either in the bathroom or in the cafeteria or by the water cooler to bitch and complain and gossip. And I was like, wow.

SPEAKER_01 39:10

You know what I find though about that is like, and I totally was guilty of that kind of stuff before. Oh, same, same. And it's been a lot of years now where I hope, and I'm human, so I probably slipped. You know, someone could be listening to this and be like, don't you be full of shit over there. I heard you saying, so I totally could have slipped, but I feel like because in the work that I do, I work with so many women and I work in group, which to me, like the group is the medicine, like all my group-based programs, is that because I hear so many different stories, it's having this level of empathy but understanding of women in a different way, where not only I don't want to participate in talking poorly about any one. Okay. But also like the lens that that comes through. And what I have just found is the women who have done the work on themselves, the ones who are more regulated, the ones who aren't codependent, the ones who have this better connection with their body, they don't need to talk the shit about other people anymore, right? It's the opposite where it's like instead of being like, oh my God, did you see what Brenda's doing? It would be like, Do you think Brenda's okay? That's that different thing. When I stopped wanting to participate in that kind of gossip, when I stopped drinking, when just all of those things, like in my late 30s, I had female friendships and relationships that I had had for most of my life that just naturally dissolved because I didn't realize that those were actually the things that had us connected. And if we weren't talking about other situations or people as part of our time together and we weren't having a drink, we actually didn't have anything to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

That's been one of my biggest lessons too. I also think I'm slightly older than you, but our generation was also taught to do things a certain way. And I feel like we've had a lot of unlearning to do. And one of the biggest things, maybe it's one of the biggest surprises, I'm not sure, has been how my circle has shrunk, but it's more intentional. The people who are in my life are there for a reason. And we have a lot of things in common. Like it's just so different.

SPEAKER_01 41:23

The women that I've met in my 40s and the girlfriends that I have in my 40s, you know, there's something beautiful about having historic friendships. Like I'm still friends with a few of my girlfriends from high school and like from being a young kid in elementary school. And it's so special. And I love those women. But there's also something that is interesting when you have friendships where there isn't that like rich history, and you're really just meeting each other as the you that you are today. And you get to like discover those parts about one another without like knowing it all. I have different groups of girlfriends now. And some are in person. I have like online girlfriends that I've never met in person, but I consider to be like sisters. So I'm so grateful for that as well. And I just think that as women, you know, we've been taught so much to pit against one another. And I'm like, man, you are missing the point. Like the classroom of life as a woman is to be in community with other women.

SPEAKER_00 42:22

Yes, that's also why I love having these conversations with people like you, because I want women to see how accessible people are and how important it is to create genuine relationships and connections. Like it's magical. It's actually magical. What are you most excited about in your life now? Not necessarily in business, but in life in general. So much.

SPEAKER_01 42:49

So we're recording this the day after my oldest just turned 20. It was her 20th yesterday. And I've been a mother now. So Emerson's 20. So it means, you know, for 21 years, essentially. I have a son, Sam, as well, and he'll be 18 in September. And this has been probably the most emotional year of motherhood of my entire life. And I don't think this gets talked about often enough is like the grieving that comes with the gratitude of watching your kids grow. I always get like emotional when I talk about it. But this past year, my son, he's played rep hockey since he was little. Like my husband had him on the ice at three. He's been on a rep team since he was six. And this was his last year in like organized U18 hockey. And this year, coming into it, I just was like, oh my gosh. Like, you know, when they're younger and you're like, have practice that you're like, oh my God, more hockey. Like, when does it ever end? And then when the ending starts to come, you're like, oh my God, the ending is coming. Like we've had some of the best conversations on the way to hockey on these long drives, like before and after the games. And, you know, just experiencing all of this with your kids. And so this year and his final year, I was like, I am not missing a single game. I am not missing a single tournament. I don't care what bus we have to go on, where we have to travel to, because in BC, travel is a thing. Like you can be gone for 10 hours for a home game because your home game is three and a half hours away. And I was like, I am not missing any of it. And so I didn't. And as like it was getting closer to the end of the season and he had the best season. He won like best defensive player and just had a banger of a year. And they won the entire provincial title and like all but one tournament they went to. And it was just celebration and celebration. And then after every celebration, I was like, oh my God, like we're not going to have that celebration again. And so it was starting to come to the end. And I was so emotional about this journey ending. And turns out now he has signed with a team and is playing junior. So he's going to be playing again. But it was also he graduated high school a couple of weeks ago. So that was another ending. Then our daughter turning 20. And it's like when you hit a new decade, I'm just like 20. And I'm like, oh my God. Like in five years, I was married and pregnant with her. She's 20. And your whole dynamic as parents changes. Like we've gone from being mummy and daddy to being mentor, role model, friend. We took a beautiful trip with our kids to Italy for 15 days in May. And it was the absolute best. Like it was the most fun, the best journey. Ages of like 18 and 20, I just like to do a trip at that stage of life. There's just been for me this past year so much gratitude in life and blessings, but also a lot of grief of again, like things are changing. The way I've mothered my children is no longer the way that I'm interacting and engaging with them now and moving forward. And so I'm excited in life right now where it feels like we've gotten through graduation. And now it's like, okay, I feel like I can take a deep breath again. In business, you know, I've been clearing up things in the last couple of years to make room for what I love to do the most, which is teach. So I actually have a mentorship coaching program for practitioners that's launching in the fall to help to bridge the gap between graduating, whether it's as a holistic nutritionist or you're a trainer or you're a chiropractor or an RMT, an osteopath, somebody where it's like a huge part of your clientele or women coming to you with all of these struggles. And you're like, I know a little bit, but not enough. I want to help to build the bridge that is enough to create the continuing education, to help them to understand when a woman is coming to you with her words and with her test, how do you understand this? What kind of protocols? Like, how do you support the whole woman she is? Not just supplements and not just a meal plan. And so that's launching in October. And that has been super exciting. And also on the business back end, like working with lawyers and legal team to build out the IP and contracts and like just make sure that it is, you know, it's the Wild West out there right now. And when you're somebody like me, like I'm not a doctor, I don't have MD behind my name. And it's online, like people can come and attack you because they're like, well, you're not a medical doctor. I'm like, no, and I'm not trying to be. I'm trying to fill the gap to help you as the woman. So when you go to your doctor, you are more educated and empowered. You already have some of the foundational things in place because you've worked with people like me. So you can get more out of the relationship with your doctor. So you know what to ask for. You know how to understand when your results come back, what to do and where to go next. So that's what I am most excited about in business right now. And then just continuing to also bring in a different level of business mentorship for women in business so that we can build the body, business, and life that you desire, not just the business and the bank account. You know, I really do believe like your business is only going to thrive to the extent that you yourself are thriving.

SPEAKER_00 48:16

It's so beautiful because as I'm watching you talk about this, your energy just gets really, really expansive and starts to vibrate. And it's just for me, that's how I can tell that somebody really does truly love what they're doing. So it's so nice to witness that. Now, this podcast is called The Limitless Life. So after everything you've built, everything you've learned, all the versions of yourself that you've had to become, what does living a limitless life mean to you today?

SPEAKER_01 48:52

I'm gonna come back to the word liberation. I feel like living a limitless life obviously for me is rooted in like feeling my best vitality-wise and health-wise, but it is being so liberated in the decisions that you get to make in this one life that you have to live, and that you're not doing it based off of conformity of either what society, anybody else, your parents, your like whoever else or whatever else is around you. You build your limitless life not from the plaques on the wall behind you, but from literally all of it inside of you and how it feels. And I know I'm living that expression of my current limitless life right now based on how I feel when I open my eyes and how I feel when I close them at the end of the day. And so, yeah, I'm just so grateful.

SPEAKER_00 49:44

Jen, this has been such a beautiful conversation. Thank you for sharing not just what you've built, but who you've become along the way. I think so many women listening to this are gonna see pieces of themselves in your story, your evolution, the wisdom, all the things for everybody listening. If you want to know more about Jen, her programs, her books, her social media, her podcast, all the things, I'm gonna make it really easy for you. I'm gonna link everything in the show notes. If you love this episode, please be sure to screenshot it and tag us because it is conversations like this that I just love to have with people, and I will keep having them as long as I know you guys are loving this. So, Jen, thank you so much again for your time and wisdom. And I can't wait to see what you create.

SPEAKER_01 50:35

Thank you. I've really, really enjoyed this conversation today.