226. Boundaries for Unbounded Creativity: How Pause and Permission Breeds Success with Sheri Jacobs

What if the key to unlocking your wildest creativity isn't endless freedom, but the surprising power of boundaries, pause, and permission?

It seems strange, but creativity thrives when we have boundaries. It's like being on a playground – you play differently when you know where the edges are. 

In this episode of Health Bite, Dr. Adrienne Youdim welcomes Sheri Jacobs, a three-time best-selling author, CEO, and innovation speaker to discuss the importance of creativity in our lives and how it can be cultivated through pause and permission. 

Sheri shares her journey from a photojournalist to a successful entrepreneur, emphasizing the significance of embracing uncertainty and setting boundaries to enhance creativity. She also highlights the transformative power of engaging in creative pursuits, particularly in nature.

Who is Sheri Jacobs?

•  Founder and CEO of Avenue M Group 
• A sought-after keynote speaker with 300+ global keynotes and workshops on innovation, leadership, and organizational growth.
• Best-selling author of three acclaimed books, including Reshaping Your Business When It Matters Most, The Art of Membership, Venturing Into Uncharted Waters
• She’s an award-winning wildlife photographer and marathoner

What You'll Discover in This Episode:

• How self-imposed labels ("I'm not creative") prevent exploration and discovery of creative potential.
• How boundaries paradoxically expand creativity: Illustrating that constraints (time, resources, physical boundaries) can drive innovation and imaginative solutions
• Real tools + mindset shifts to cultivate creativity

Why This Episode Matters:

Seeking to unlock your creative potential and navigate uncertainty with confidence? 

This episode reveals a surprising truth: "Pause" and "permission," when strategically applied within the framework of boundaries, are the keys to cultivating truly unbounded creativity. 

This episode will help you:

• Discover the unexpected power of boundaries and how they can enhance creativity and innovation in your life.
• Learn how to cultivate a sense of comfort with uncertainty and embrace change as a pathway to personal growth.
• Explore the importance of setting time for creative pursuits and how to prioritize them in a busy schedule.

“...define your playground, but leave the play unscripted.” – Sheri Jacobs

Resources and Links Mentioned:

• Sheri Jacob’s award-winning images: Checkout her whale photo and other wildlife images at https://www.sherijacobs.com/about

Connect with Sheri Jacobs:

• Website: https://sherijacobs.com/

Ways that Dr. Adrienne Youdim Can Support You

• Join the Monthly Free Mind-Body Workshops: Participate in engaging mind-body practices designed to help manage your stress response. Register here.
• Sign Up for the Newsletter: Stay updated with valuable insights and resources by subscribing to the newsletter. Sign up here.
• Freebie alert. Register for our monthly free MindBody Workshop and receive a downloadable guide on emotional labeling to help you manage your emotions effectively.

Connect with Dr. Adrienne Youdim

• Website :https://www.dradriennespeaks.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dradrienneyoudim/

Transcript

Adrienne Youdim

All right, welcome back, friends. Welcome back to the Health Bite podcast, the podcast where I offer essential nutrients for physical, mental, and professional health and well-being. I'm your host, Dr. Adrienne Youdim. I'm a triple board certified internist, obesity medicine, and physician nutrition specialist. And I've learned in working with patients and clients for 20 years that good nutrition is not just about the food that you eat, but all the ways in which we can nourish ourselves, mind and body. And I'm so thrilled this week to have Sheri Jacobs. She is a inspiration, three-time best-selling author, researcher, CEO of a multi-million dollar agency. She is also an avid photographer and a speaker in innovation and leadership. And I thought the perfect person to come and talk to us about this week's nutrient which is creativity. Welcome to the podcast, Sheri. Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be here. I'm so glad to have you. And I'm so interested in you, in your background and you as a person, because you are a highly accomplished and successful entrepreneur, researcher, all the things we already mentioned. But you also, you got your start in a creative practice, which I am right now most interested in. So tell us a little bit about that. Sure.

Sheri Jacobs

I went to college having no clue what I wanted, or maybe a clue, but then kept switching it like most of us, unless you are very focused on a certain track, and found myself in the journalism school at Indiana University. By chance, because it is tends to be one of the best journalism schools in the country, and in the photojournalism department which also we had wonderful professors there and colleagues who went there for this and I happened to fall into it, but found my passion does it quickly found my passion and. became the photo editor of the Daily Student and had opportunities to cover a whole variety of different activities and events that led to a couple of really interesting internships. and then jobs. And along that pathway, I did everything from photograph Michael Jordan when he played for the Chicago Bulls, and when he was in the Eastern Conference Finals when I was an intern, to being a tear gassed at a prison riot in upstate New York and covering tornadoes. But my passion at the time was sports. I loved photographing sports. And the reason I tell people I loved it was because it's unpredictable. You can't set anything up. You have to capture it in that moment and you have to tell a whole story often in one image to get it on the paper. So, you know, what is the story of that event about? And you have to capture it. And this is in the day of film and manual focus cameras. So you don't even know if you got the shot. until you get back to the lab and you process your film and you're like, is anything in focus? So I love the adrenaline rush. I love the creativity and I loved sports. Not that I was a huge sports fan. I just loved covering sports.

Adrienne Youdim

And yeah, I'll pause there. Yeah. Well, you know, what you're describing is like this love almost for uncertainty, which is something that makes people so uncomfortable. And I think cultivating that, That sense of being comfortable with uncertainty is important and I want to get to that in a second, but I just want to point out that I'm almost jealous of the fact that you were not scripted when you went into college that you were this kind of open page or open book. I think I knew I wanted to become a doctor since I was in the womb. And yes, there was something great about being focused and driven in that way. But how beautiful to not know and to just allow for whatever unfolds to unfold.

Sheri Jacobs

And to have the support of my parents, 100%. They're both professionals. And for them to support me in this endeavor that does not pay well, and is a little bit off the beaten track and super supportive of that. But I tell people, I have a sister who works at a Fortune 500 company in finance. And we were very close, but very different types of people. I was just born this way. So I tell people that I don't know how much of it I cultivated, but I allowed it to happen and embraced it. And it certainly just aligns with who I am, for sure. Absolutely.

Adrienne Youdim

I absolutely love that. And I wonder if that permission is what allowed you to be comfortable with uncertainty or to lead into that a little bit. Is that something that resonates with you, that you notice yourself? Is it something that you talk about in your speaking? Thank you for asking.

Sheri Jacobs

Yeah, it absolutely does. And it does. I'm super comfortable with change. But at the same time, I have always worked with people, collaborated with people, been colleagues, had clients who did not have that level of comfort that I have with change. And I started exploring What is it? What do I know? What is it about me or about other people that have that comfort level with change while other people don't? What is it that enables me to embrace things? And one of the things I did in my exploration of that topic was to look at all the data that I've collected over the last 15 years. I've collected more than a million data points. I have surveyed hundreds of thousands of people from a variety of different workforces and industries. And one thing that I discovered in that study and in the case studies that I've looked at and the work that I've done is that you may be born with that comfort level for change, but that's not what's required. What I naturally see and what others, if it's pointed out to them, that they need is to know where the boundaries are. And by discovering them, and I've got a great story behind that, but when you know where the boundaries are, you can play up to those fences. When you don't, you play it safe. You stay on the playground. Some people naturally can look around and say, this is how far I can go, so I feel fine. I can embrace change because I know that this is what I can do, and I can always come back. Other people may not know where those fences are, and so that is where they need it defined for them. So that is a bit about what I talk about, absolutely.

Adrienne Youdim

 Well, I'd love for you to share this story as an example of how this kind of plays out and particularly how the boundary setting allows people to, I guess, have a sense of safety despite the uncertainty.

Sheri Jacobs

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I've got two, but I'll start with one. There was a landscape architect named Tatiana. And she was curious about how the impact that physical boundaries have on how children play. So she invited a group of preschool teachers to take their kids to this park, and the park had a playground the slides and the swings, and then had a big grassy area. and just open space around it. And when they got to the playground, to the park, the teacher said one thing to the kids, just listen for the bell and that's when it's time to go. They didn't say stay on the playground, they didn't say what they can do, they just gave them that one piece of instruction. And the entire time they were there, the kids stayed on the playground, not one, ventured just beyond the border into the park. So a week later, same group of teachers, same group of kids, this time they go to a park and has a fence that encloses the entire space. Only thing the teacher said was, listen for the bell, and that's when it's time for us to leave. And the kids ran, they ran to the fences, they were more imaginative in their play. Now, you don't need to have a fence, you don't need to have the physical boundary. If the teacher had said, you can play up to the road, to the sidewalk, to that tree, but when you don't identify where the boundaries are, people will stay on their playground. When you define where the boundaries are and you can set them, then people can go to the fences, then they can be more imaginative and creative. And so there's this framework that I explained to people is that everyone talks about making a culture where it's okay to experiment, to fail, to embrace failure as a stepping stone and that failure is one of the key things to growth. I don't think that goes far enough because if you just have that culture of failure, but you don't tell people where the boundaries are, they'll wander around and they come back to that safe spot. But when you have like high clarity around boundaries and high psychological safety, that's the innovation zone. That's where people know how far to go and to try new things. And so as I think back to my entire career and all the changes and starting a new company in 2009 and that recession. all the things that I have done, I have always been able to define those boundaries and say, okay, this is the amount of time, this is how much money I need to make, this is what I need to do. I'm also a marathon runner. I've run 18 marathons and in everything I've done, I know where my boundaries are and so I'm able to push out to them. I don't think everyone does. So I think that's a role of leaders of teams or if you're an individual on a team is to ask those questions, is to understand where the boundaries are.

Adrienne Youdim

I love that because boundaries are often considered to be something that's punitive, right? And what I hear you saying is that when those boundaries are in place, that in fact, it allows us to be more expansive. Without it, people tend to play small, to stay in that smaller radius or area of the playground. That's exactly right.

Sheri Jacobs

And once I share this with people, they're like, oh, I see it every day. So when I moved from Chicago to Denver four years ago, I had lived in Chicago for decades. And I always knew there were things I wanted to do in the Chicago area. When I had free time, on a free day, I would go visit this museum, or go to this park, or do something different. Take the canoes out in the Skokie Lagoon. And I didn't do them. And then six weeks before I moved, I had a time limit. And so I planned out my Saturdays saying, OK, what are the things that I want to do before I leave? So when you have those limits, people think of them as constraints. I actually think that they are they are freeing. that they give you all the freedom to explore when you know where the constraints are, when you know the fences are. So I have this thing I say to people, which is define your playground, but leave the play unscripted. Like define where the fence is, but then just let that happen, dig, explore in that area.

Adrienne Youdim

I love that. And you mentioned that, well, you had a strong sense of intuition, I think, in knowing your own boundaries. but brought up that maybe people, not everyone does. And I wonder if this is a place in which we can link back to the creativity, because you started out photographing these incredible events, but from what I understand, a lot of what you do is out in nature, out in expansive spaces, And that lends itself to a sense of an opportunity, let's say, for dialogue with oneself, right? To maybe know better your own limits or boundaries or some of these things that we're talking about. Does that speak to you? And what would you say to that?

Sheri Jacobs

Yeah, it does. But I also want to point out that even for somebody who's very good at identifying her boundaries, I have also experienced times when I have thought that my boundary was something and it turned out it wasn't. That I've had, I mean, because that is life, right? It's not always as predictable or as easy as I make it sound. So I have. I try new things. About seven years ago, I picked up cameras again. This time they were digital, not the manual focus and film, but they're digital cameras. And everything I thought I knew from way back when I was a sports photographer was not working anymore. And so it was frustrating and it was a bit of a journey to learn. But I knew that with digital cameras, you can have 10,000 shots on one little SD card. So you can go out there and fail a whole bunch. But that's okay, you can erase those photos and go try again. It wasn't like film. So I started learning that and I started photographing hummingbirds in my local garden. And then I thought, why don't I go to Costa Rica? And then I started thinking Africa and then I went to Antarctica and I kept pushing those boundaries. But I found one boundary that was too far for me. Three weeks ago, I was in the Arctic and it was minus 40 degrees. Oh, God, no. We were the northernmost boat in the world. And there were just 12 of us. And we're in the pack ice up there. And there's no one else. We're at the top of the world. There's no one else there. And we're there to photograph polar bears. And it's so hard. It was so cold. I didn't have all the right and gear and equipment. And what I did have, I didn't make the best use of and I wasn't happy. It was a really, really, really difficult situation. And there was another girl on the boat and she got injured the first day. She ran into something on the bow and caught her leg. And so she was very limited in how much she could move around. And she also didn't have a super long lens. and the contrast between what we did on that trip. So she stayed at the top of the boat. She couldn't go up and down the stairs. She couldn't shoot with a really long lens. So she made beautiful landscapes. And I kept struggling with my equipment and moving around. And at the end of the trip, everybody showed their photos. We're a group of photographers. And she shot my favorite photo on the boat because she understood where her boundaries were. And I kept trying to push and say, no, I can do this. I can make it work. And I look back at that and even knowing my own advice, I still didn't take it. And I realized in reflection is like when you're in that really hard, hard situation and things are not working to take that step back and say, OK, what can I do with what I have? And I didn't do it. This is just three weeks ago. I didn't do it, but I did learn from it.

Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, no, I appreciate you bringing up that example because I do think when we hear statements like that, it feels, there may be this sense of like inadequacy, right? But it is an evolving process, this understanding and knowing yourself and pushing boundaries and being, creating safe ones. This is all something that evolves as you grow, as it should. 100%. Yeah. So I do want to get to the photography and the nature and because there's so much, there's so much data in terms of health benefits of creative pursuits, what it does for your brain, for your heart, right? What it does for your ability and the way in which you work. creativity really is a nutrient. And so tell me a little bit more about how this evolved for you and how you think it's impacted your life, the ability to have gone all over the world and to capture all of these picturesque, you know, beauties of nature.

Sheri Jacobs

Yeah, absolutely. Well, first, let me make the transition. So I am a photojournalist. I put down my cameras and I start a nonprofit because I believe exactly what you said. And I helped start a nonprofit where we give cameras to girls to empower them in the inner city in Chicago and to really empower them and to have them have another voice and to show their creativity through the lens of a camera. And I made the transition. I put down my cameras and I transitioned into nonprofit work and associations. And then I missed it. I knew there was just something missing in my life. And that was the creativity. And I am somebody that seeks out ways to physically and emotionally feel strong. I'm a runner. And I eat healthy many times, not all the time. But I was missing that part that was that creativity part, even though I helped other people with it. So I bought a digital camera. I found that I can be a very impatient person in so many aspects of my life, except for when I'm out in nature. And it shocks everybody. If anybody goes out with me on any of these trips or even just stands with me, they're like, you could stand there for hours just waiting for a hummingbird and then shoot 10,000 photos of it. Isn't that driving you crazy? And how are you not wanting to, you're a high energy person. And I found that that being in that moment and being able to try to just capture, you know, the hummingbird and being with the nature and trying to, you know, it captures something that nobody else sees, just inspires me in such a way that this person that's so high energy, that's always go, go, go, go, go, can, it's amazing how I can settle down for eight hours and sit on a boat on the Chobe River in Botswana, or stand in the water, in the ice cold water in Antarctica as the penguins swim towards me. And I know it's because it just fuels me. I mean, just feeling that it's not just what I capture, but it's the process of being there and capturing it that is what really sparks. And then, of course, the icing on the cake is I get back and did I capture something? And if I didn't, then that idea, okay, what do I need to do to adjust? But the process itself is what is so exciting for me.

Adrienne Youdim

You know, you use the word fuel, and actually, that is kind of the nugget that I share with people when I do my teaching or my speaking. And three of those elements you encompass, which is being out in nature, engaging in creative pursuits, and in doing this, you're really creating pause. you're able to still what is otherwise a very high energy person. What do you think that pause has done for you and how does that translate into all the other work that you do in your life?

Sheri Jacobs

Oh, I love that question because it that pause and everything that I look at that I have done over the last seven years is been because I've discovered having this creativity in this outlet, everything. So I mean, yes, I've run a successful company. And yes, I've done things that have been professionally successful. But as I look at the joy and the things that I've done, even in the last four years, I really truly believe that knowing that my tank is getting empty, that I need to get back out there into nature, that I need to photograph wildlife or just beautiful images, that when I do that and I get that refill and I pause, it enables me to even think through all the other aspects of my life. What am I doing? What am I not doing? What is on my list that I want to do one day and that I keep putting off? because I think I have unlimited time and none of us do. So that really has helped me not just refuel, but also accomplish more in my life because it helps me, it refuels, but it also helps me think about what I want to do and what I need to do.

Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, it's a perfect example of slow down to speed up.

Sheri Jacobs

Exactly. And I mean, I, my friends laugh at me because like, you know, ask some ask a busy person to get something done, right? You know, you want something done, ask a busy person. And, you know, between the company that I'm running and the keynote speaking, and I'm writing a book, I'm captain of three tennis teams. And, you know, I am literally and I'm traveling around the world photographing wildlife, I just am non stop. And It is, if I grab my camera and I get my car and I go out somewhere, either here in Colorado or I book a trip, I have to pause everything. There's no tennis. I put down the work with my company. I'm not giving a keynote. I'm focused on one thing. And in all other aspects, I'm not.

Adrienne Youdim

 And it's also a, um, it's also presence cultivating presence.

Sheri Jacobs

A hundred percent.

Adrienne Youdim

Yeah. What would you tell somebody who says, uh, that they're not, they're just not a creative person, you know, like how do you start, how do you cultivate creativity?

Sheri Jacobs

It's such a good question. So many people ask that and you, you, you know, my passion may be photography. And I may be a creative person, I think everyone is. My husband is, he loves to cook. And so the creativity comes out in pulling out all these ingredients and exploring different cuisines from different areas around the world. I think creativity can be expressed in so many ways, but the most important way is something that gets you curious and it gets you out of your everyday. And it's something that you create, even if whatever you create is a meal and we finish it and it's gone, it doesn't matter. So I think it is finding the thing that you're curious about and then exploring that. And that is where you can be creative. It doesn't have to be creativity in terms of being an artist, a writer, a photographer, or some of those more traditional roles.

Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, it's so true. I mean, the word that keeps coming back to mind over and over again is just permission, you know, the permission to explore and also labeling. I think a lot of professional people, especially, and no, not just professional people, like even, you know, moms or, you know, maybe it's just a human thing. Like we don't think ourselves of ourselves as creative people. We label ourselves as a mother, as a doctor, as a X, Y, and Z. And so oftentimes it doesn't allow for something else unnamed to come about. I used to tell myself that I was not creative. I don't know how to draw. I could never cut straight. I was like one of those people in fourth grade that had to like throw away a hundred pieces of paper because they all came out crooked when I was trying to cut out a shape. And for me, writing, which is something that I did just to calm myself since I was seven years old, turned out to be my creative pursuit. And my husband, much like yours, loves cooking. So that's his form of creativity. But you're right. There are these other ways of being creative that are not typical, right? It's just allowing yourself the opportunity to explore those things with curiosity.

Sheri Jacobs

I would agree. My sister always said I've got the creative genes and she went into finance. And she's very good at finance. But it turns out, if you look at all the activities she does, when she was younger, she didn't write. But she started, this is way before the internet, a fanzine, fan fiction. And she collected stories from around the world, and then published it, and went to our dad's office, and copied it, and sent it out to people. And that was super creative in how she did it. And then as she got older, she still does other things, whether it was some stained glass, or she likes to bake. and make desserts and now she loves legos and there's a whole lego community and it's still following you know creating she's not creating something from scratch but there's still a creativity that's still pulling in that creativity and that curiosity what can i build what can i create with my hands Even for this person that is in finance and works for a Fortune 500 company, it's so interesting to look at our backgrounds, but I absolutely think she's a very creative person. It may be a different pursuit than some of the traditional ones.

Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, and to your point of it not being from scratch, the expression, there's nothing new under the sun. I mean, I don't know that much is really from scratch that hasn't been done, at least, let's put it that way. But it could mean that our own twist to it is not something that is unique and creative. that's true.

Sheri Jacobs

And to build on that is, so as a photographer who goes out with sometimes a group of six people or 12, or even 20 other photographers, I know, everything we've seen a million photos of the bird, I mean, the bear catching the salmon swimming upstream, and we've seen the pictures of the whale's tail, you know, we see it. So everywhere I go, there has been a beautiful photo that's been captured of it. And I'm with eight, 12, 20 other photographers all standing around there together. Yet I still love the challenge of what can I capture that no one else can? So I was in Antarctica and we had this really unusual thing happen. We're going to be photographing landscape, just some beautiful areas, our last day in Antarctica. And the captain comes on the launch speaker and says, there are more than a dozen humpback whales outside the starboard part of the boat. Get into the zodiac boats, grab your gear. We're going to go in with the whales. So we all get into the boat, and it's a big chaos. It's chaotic. And the whales are everywhere. And I had this photo of a whale like two feet in front of me. They're everywhere, but they're not good photos. It's exhilarating, but that's not why I'm there. And even when I shoot the photo, there are five other people on the boat shooting the same photo, and we're shooting a photo of a whale, and there are five or six people in a boat facing us also shooting the same photo. So I put down my camera and I paused and I started thinking about, well, is there anything else out here that anyone else is ignoring? And I saw this one whale in the distance and the pro in the boat, she's like, no, no, the light's bad. And this is where the bubbling that they're doing, this is where the unique stuff And I thought, if I miss it, I don't really miss a thing because everybody else is getting it. There's nothing I can create here that's unique or original. So I started photographing that whale way in the distance. It was not a part of this whole thing. And we get back on the boat and everybody's looking through the photos. And I'm the only one that captured this stunning photo of the whale tail and the water dripping and the icebergs in the distance. And And it's a beautiful photo. And while, yes, a photo of a whale tail, the water dripping has been captured before, I love that I was in a situation, assessed my risk of like not doing what everybody else is doing, deciding very low risk, because somebody else is going to catch it. And I'm not going to create anything original here and turning around and looking for something else, right, to zig when everybody else zags. You know, that to me is a moment that I'll never forget. It's not an award-winning photo, but it's being creative and different and creating something different in a situation where everybody else is focused on the same thing.

Adrienne Youdim

And also following your intuition, which you only were able to access through pause, right? Like so much good stuff is just waiting to come out, you know? And I talk about this stuff myself all the time, and yet I'm constantly doing. That's probably my own personal, my biggest personal challenge is not I've gotten good at creating pause in like little nuggets, right? Like meditate when you wake up or go for a run. But I think the real magic is when you're able to do it on the fly or incorporate it in those moments, in those high Stakes moments being able to pause and to ask yourself what's really required of this moment is really I think such an integral like life skill.

Sheri Jacobs

It is, and none of us will be perfect at it. So I did a great in Antarctica, but didn't do it so well in the Arctic. When I could have paused and said, everybody else is shooting this, and this isn't working for me. So I always love to say, like, while I paused in one situation, I'm still going to be guilty as much in another situation. None of us are perfect. And it took me a week or two to just give myself some grace for saying, you know what, that's OK. I didn't take my own advice. I didn't pause. I sometimes do. I try to, but I'm not always going to. We're not all perfect.

Adrienne Youdim

Well, and what I always say on this podcast is that you don't have to be perfect in order to be effective, right? We can take the lessons, these lessons, and we don't have to bat a hundred for it to be successful in our lives. Absolutely. Sheri, I would love for you to share that photo, the whale photo, because I want to put it in our newsletter for people who want to subscribe and they haven't already, they can subscribe on the website. But I would love to incorporate that if you would gift it to us.

Sheri Jacobs

Yeah, and I have it, and a lot of these other stories I have photos of all these other animals on my website too so there is a page on the website about me, and you get to see photos from all over the world. This is on there but I will send it to you so you could share it.

Adrienne Youdim

Yes, and we'll certainly link all those in the show notes where people can find you. I'm curious how you would advise those of us who do have really busy schedules, full lives. It sounds really wonderful, taking time for nature, taking time for creative pursuit. You're a super busy woman. You wear a lot of hats. How does one cultivate the time? How does one make it a practice? And then if you would also speak to this idea of discipline, it sounds like you're a very disciplined person. You eat well most of the time. You're exercising X, Y, and Z. Do you think the discipline plays a role in doing this work? Oh, such great questions.

Sheri Jacobs

The best ways I have found, so yes, how would I advise? And the things that work for me is I definitely don't get out in nature as much as I would love. And I know that. You can't do it all. And I know I can't do it all. So the way that I can do what I want to do is I book trips and time on my calendar. where I have nothing else competing. Because while I'd love to say, I'm going to do it every Saturday, I'm not. I'm not going to get up because I want to get the run in. How am I going to get a run in and then go play tennis and get over to where the bison are here in Colorado? I can't do it all. And so after a couple of years of being frustrated of saying I'm going to do something but not getting to it, I started being more proactive at booking two trips a year. And again, it started with the Botanic Garden You know, and then, you know, smaller locations and now they're bigger trips, but I started blocking the time twice a year and saying it's okay if I don't get it much in between. Because at least I will have that dedicated time to it. And I'm such a strong proponent of that. I have a team of 10 and they I have give unlimited vacation time. And there's been a lot of pushback about that because people won't take it. And I acknowledge that, but I need my team not to be burnt out. So the two things I do is every January 1st, I say, you need to book, you can change it, but you have to book weeks on the calendar when you won't be here. And the second thing I do, is I reimburse them up to $1,000 for their trip expense if they take a trip and they turn in the receipts. So I try to give them an incentive to do it. So the point being is that you're not going to incorporate it into your everyday life. It's very hard to change our habits in some ways because we have so many obligations. And this isn't one that we have to do. It's one, even though we think we do have to do it for ourselves, it doesn't feel like a priority like other ones. So that's why I prioritize it by making sure at least do it a few times a year. And, and then You said something. You asked me something.

Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, so discipline. I mean, even that sounds like discipline to me. So what would you say to that? Or are those two things count? They feel counterintuitive, creativity and discipline.

Sheri Jacobs

I would say I'm not a disciplined person by nature, so I force myself to be disciplined in certain areas. So I, because I'm not disciplined and organized like you don't even want to know what's behind the other side of this camera. It's not pretty sight. So, at work, what I do is I know that since I'm not disciplined I'm not as well organized. found tools that help me professionally and personally to keep me disciplined because I'm not naturally a very disciplined person. The second thing I've done is I find activities that I love so it's not a push to do it. I love to run and So if you told me how to swim every day, I would never get in a pool. I hate swimming. So it's not exercise I'm doing. I'm doing an activity I love. So whatever is the activity, people say, oh my gosh, you're so disciplined about your running. I like to run. I like to play tennis. And then the third is I have a community in both in tennis and in running. And I have two girlfriends from Chicago who I ran together with for 10 years. And then I moved here. We're all so sad because we ran two or three times a week. And I moved here. And we're like, OK, well, we'll just start a Saturday call. And it's now four and a half years in. call every Saturday. And if we're in a different country or in a different city, but we can make the time zones work, we still call and we talk about our, you know, we're all working moms and have kids and we have things in common. And so I know I had that call every Saturday. So I have a community that helps. I have an activity that I love. I would not say I'm disciplined. I have found a way to bring these things that work with my natural habits more than trying to force myself to do something that I wouldn't stick with.

Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, well, I'm hearing a few things there. And, you know, on this podcast, Health Bite, we talk about actionable bites that people can take home and incorporate in their lives. And you're essentially habit stacking. You're taking, you know, several things that you enjoy and or are good for you, and you're putting them together, nature, community. Movement right all of these things so that that i think is helpful cuz you're kind of i know we're not checking boxes here but you're checking a bunch of boxes at the same time but the other thing that struck me share as you were talking is that this brings us back to i think how we started which is that. To your point, this is not discipline, but you're creating boundaries even right putting it in your calendar allocating specific time and place. These are boundaries in which. enable you to engage in those creative pursuits, engage in movement, in the things that you love. It is a matter of, maybe it's just a matter of reframe. Don't you think, Sheri? Like not talking about it again, like discipline, because it does sound punitive, or even boundaries, but it's like setting that container in which the thing can actually happen.

Sheri Jacobs

100%. My keynote is titled The Unexpected Power of Boundaries, and it is about reframing them. It is. There are constraints in our life that can be moved, and there's ones that can't. And that same with every organization, every company, in every walk of life, there are some that are outdated and possibly could be moved. So I'm not saying never move the boundaries, but identify the ones that can be moved and then identify the ones that can't and where you can play safely and then explore in those areas. But everything I do now, I look at it. If I accomplish something, if I have an idea and it's sitting there and it's a year later, It's because I didn't put a constraint on it. I didn't put a time. I didn't put a boundary on it. I didn't set some guidelines to get it done. And that's why it didn't get done. And everything I've accomplished was because I had set some boundaries around it. And then that's the unexpected power of that.

Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, this is a very powerful and very timely conversation. I love that the conversation went to places that I didn't expect. I really wanted to talk about Antarctica. But given that we are living in a time of uncertainty, I really want to kind of double click on the point that you either made or the essence that I got from this conversation, which is that there really is a lot of possibility and opportunity within uncertainty. And so if we can take out that fear aspect of it, maybe, and just give ourselves the openness, the vastness that it allows for, that beautiful things can spring up. I think that's a really important take-home message that you shared. I also love this idea of aligning yourself with things that you enjoy and creating structure or boundaries around it so that you ensure that they get done. And then the positive aspect of that, how by doing that, it trickles out into the work that you do, the company that you lead, the people that you inspire and move. It all just fits so beautifully. I wonder if you have any last minute words or guidance for our viewers.

Sheri Jacobs

Well, I have one last story and I'm going to try to compress it so it's not too long of a story. I love stories, so go for it. I'm 29 years old and my best friend Jeannie comes over and it's New Year's Day and she says, we're not making New Year's resolutions. And I said, we're not? And she goes, no. And I'm thinking, well, that's pretty good because I never keep them. And she has this notebook with her all the time. And she pulls out a piece of paper from the notebook, hands it to me and says, just write down 10 things you want to do this year. I'm like, oh, I love that. OK, so I write down my 10 things and she writes down hers and she goes, don't worry, if we don't get to them, we'll just move them to the next year. And I thought this sounded pretty good. You know, I'm going to climb a mountain. I'm going to visit another country. I'll learn to play tennis, this variety of things. But I actually didn't do them because I didn't really feel like I had a limitation because, you know what I'll do to my 30s, my 40s. I'll do it when I retire. And then in May of 2021, I went to the doctor because I wasn't feeling well. And we had a incidental finding of a small non-cancerous tumor on my pancreas. Now, as scary as it sounds, he says, don't worry, it's non-cancerous, we're just gonna monitor it's incidental. And of course I freaked out and Googled it, which you shouldn't do. And then I started, checking off things off my list because I now have boundaries of time. Like in my mind, I was thinking I may not have as much time as I thought. So I married the love of my life and we climbed that highest mountain and I started really traveling to all these places, Africa, Antarctica, the Arctic, and learned how to play tennis. Finally became the captain of my tennis team. And each year I go and I get this MRI to see. And then Friday, November 15, 2024, I go get the MRI, and I have to wait till Monday, because I got it on a Friday. And then there's no results, and Tuesday, still no results. And Wednesday, I finally get the results. And that tumor that we'd been watching, it disappeared. And I didn't realize that I was living my life as if it had no limits on it, but I was. And having that was the luckiest thing in the world, not having it disappear, but having it appear in the first place, because it showed me that I had boundaries that I didn't know I needed to really start and do those things. So that's my parting words.

Adrienne Youdim

Wow. Goosebumps and beautiful. Thank you for Shering that. If people want to learn more about you, where can they find you?

Sheri Jacobs

Well, they can find me at Sherijacobs.com, that's S-H-E-R-I-Jacobs.com, but if you just Google Sheri Jacobs, you'll find me. And that's probably the best place to see the blog posts and information about my keynote speaking and other information as well, and some photos.

Adrienne Youdim

Wonderful. Well, we'll put those in the show notes. I personally am going to go check out the photos. I am going to grab your whale shot, and if people want to join the newsletter, they can do so on dradreenedeem.com. And I really encourage our listeners to share this episode with a friend, with someone that you love, and help us share the message by going back to wherever you podcast and leaving us a rating and a review. Sheri, thank you so much for being here. This was a lovely conversation. Oh, thank you so much. I truly appreciate it. Yeah, it was wonderful. We'll see you again all next time on Health Bite. Bye now.