Cindy Roy Gonzales (4:44)

Well, Nicole, thank you so much for having me. There is nothing I like more than talking about girls on the run and confidence building. So this is a joy. So, as you mentioned, I absolutely did not like running as a kid. And like most women, I first started running because I wanted to be in shape. I wanted to make sure after college I looked good. And, you know, I had a desk job, so running seemed like the easiest way to try to, you know, keep my physique or not gain weight. But it became so much more over time. I I learned how to set goals. I learned how to deal with disappointment when goals didn't go my way, a race didn't go my way. I learned how to convince myself to do things that were hard. Right. So getting out the door at 6am on a cold winter day, the last thing I want to do is go for a run. But I know how I'll feel when it's over. And so the benefits of running and the way in which I am a more confident human being because of it are innumerable every single day I finish. I've never finished a run feeling like I suck. I'm the worst. I'm just glad to have gotten out there and done my best. And that's what we're trying to teach girls too.

Nicole Khalil (6:06)

Yeah, I think there's so much to that. The keeping the commitments you make to yourself, keeping the promises you make to yourself, that is a huge confidence builder. It creates trust. And so as you said, whether you feel like it or not, just getting out there and doing it is that demonstration to yourself that you can trust yourself and that you'll keep your commitments. I have to be transparent. I still hate running other than when I'm done doing it, like you said, like I don't enjoy it other than when I finished. But one of the things that I will say that I found really fascinating is how much more connected to myself and my best ideas. It's almost meditative. Like I feel like clarity comes. Okay, so Girls on the Run targets young girls in the third through the eighth grade. Why that specific age group? I have ideas, but why from your end?

Cindy Roy Gonzales (7:05)

Yeah, so funny. Because most of our girls fall into that third to fifth grade range. And then we do have that middle school program, our Heart and soul program, which a lot of councils across the country offer, but not all. But we're seeing more growth in that sixth to eighth grade range. And I think the reason behind that, at least in our experience, is girls are craving something that will allow them to be with their friends and make connections and is not competitive. By the time a girl gets to middle school, most of the options for physical activity are competitive sports. If you haven't done a competitive sport since the time you were 4 years old, your odds of being able to do it or be successful at it are really low. That's the middle school. The reason why the elementary school level is so important is we have seen a decrease over the last decade in girl self confidence and an increase and girls sadness and loneliness. And so that will only continue over the course of adolescence unless we start giving them tools that they can use now to deal with hard situations. I mean, it is not a coincidence that loneliness and Sadness have increased, Confidence has decreased all during the time that social media has exploded. And so we want to get girls before their problems get really big and give them the tools that they need to successfully navigate the challenges that they're going to face. So I love the younger girls program. The middle school program is great, too, but it sinks in with girls right there. They're hearing the messages, hopefully from us before they're hearing the messages that lots of other people in the world are going to tell them.

Nicole Khalil (8:48)

And the messages that you're sending and the tools they get in their toolbox are very much aligned with the tools that I'm talking about with grown adults and executives and, you know, highly successful entrepreneurs. So I want to dive into a few of those tools. Some of them really jumped out to me when JJ was going through it and talk a little bit about the value or why you honed in on that. So the first one, I think it's week one of Girls on the Run is something that's called what makes me me. Now I have an exercise called the Things I know to be true about me at this point in my life. And it's very similar. It's that foundational block of confidence is knowing who you are and not just knowing, but appreciating and valuing it. So tell us a little bit about the what makes me me tool in their toolbox.

Cindy Roy Gonzales (9:48)

Yeah, it's. It is. It's. How we start each season is getting girls to sit down and think about, what are the things that bring them joy, right? Do they like to read? Do they like to play soccer? What are the things that they themselves enjoy that may or may not be different from other people? So we ask them, what do you like to eat? What's your favorite food? How do you like to spend your time? What do you like to do with your friends? Who are the people in your life you like spending time with? Really trying to get them to both understand who they are, but also to remember the things that they can go to when they're having a hard time. We have this thing that we teach girls very early in the program. We refer to it as star power. It's that inner essence of a girl. We all have it. Male, female, whatever. We all have star power, the thing that makes us us. And sometimes that star power gets clouded by things that happen. So friends who are being mean or just a hard situation. And so if we can remind girls, hey, remember, what makes you do, what makes you happy? What can. What can move those clouds away? They can Go back to that. And so one of the. One of the things that every girl who participates in Girls on the Run gets is a journal so that they can go back and look at what have they learned, who are they, what are they reflecting on? So that's, you know, really the idea is get the girls to understand who they are and what makes them happy. And that's a. That's a core foundation of confidence building, 100%.

Nicole Khalil (11:26)

And I loved what JJ came up with for her star power. And it was so clear to me that she came up with it on her own and then it felt real and true for her. And I loved that because how often throughout the course of our entire lives we get influenced or told who we are, who we should be, who we shouldn't be. And what a gift for these young girls in third, fourth and fifth grade to decide that for themselves to know it at an early age.

Cindy Roy Gonzales (12:01)

That's one of the great things about the program, I would say, overall, is that it's really girl led and even more so, frankly, at the middle school level. But the girls are guiding the conversations because we want them to have ownership. It's not effective if we're telling them this is who they are and how they need to be. They get enough of that. We're asking them who do they want to be, who do they think they are? And giving them the space to explore that.

Nicole Khalil (12:25)

Okay. One of the other tools in the toolbox is something you call happy pace. Talk to us about that.

Cindy Roy Gonzales (12:32)

Oh, happy pace. So happy pace has a couple of different meanings. When we're doing the running piece of our workouts and we're doing our celebratory Fire 5K, it's what, it's what you might imagine. It's moving at a physical pace that feels good for you. And we really stress the non competitive nature of our program. And so happy pace is just move in a way that feels good. So for. For some girls, that's going to look like running really fast one day, and for other girls that's going to look like, you know, slow walking or skipping. We want girls to move in a way at a pace that feels good for them. But there's also this idea of happy pace as just the way you approach life in general. Right. You don't have to do everything everybody else is doing. You don't have to go up the speed that they're going. As young girls, your development might look different. So I love happy pace. I tell myself often in race situations that I am in that I am going at my happy pace, and that is going to look different than everybody around me.

Nicole Khalil (13:35)

It's so important we know comparison is the thief of confidence. Right. It's absolutely something that derails all of our confidence. And again, to learn at a younger age, to stop comparing yourself to everyone and everything around you and determining what your pace is to run your own race. I'm so glad that this is part of the program. And. Yeah. Something I think we can tell ourselves in our adult years.

Cindy Roy Gonzales (14:06)

It's even. It's so funny because even now, I. I just turned 43 years old. My running looks different than it did when I was in my early 20s. And being able to say, like, this is my happy pace at 43, that was my happy pace when I was 22 and had nothing else going on in life. It's just a really good reminder of being where you are right now. Yeah.

Nicole Khalil (14:29)

Okay. Being a star sprinkler. Let's talk about that. Given that one of the things that I think that does do damage to young girls confidence is what I'm just gonna call mean girl syndrome. So what is being a star sprinkler, and how does friendship and community play a part in building girls confidence in Girls on the Run?

Cindy Roy Gonzales (14:54)

So it's Star sparkler.

Nicole Khalil (14:56)

Oh, sorry.

Cindy Roy Gonzales (14:58)

No, no, no. I will start using Star sp.

Nicole Khalil (15:00)

I love that, too.

Cindy Roy Gonzales (15:02)

So star sparkler means you're lifting other people up, you're seeing what makes other people shine, and you're being intentional about activating that in them. And as you said, I mean, the mean girl thing. You asked earlier why we're starting this program at the age we're starting at. We know that bullying is happening at a much younger age than it used to. And so we're trying to give girls the tools they need to combat bullying, not just against themselves, but against their friends and their peers. We do know one of the things we focus on at Girls on the Run is being intentional about building connection. So our team sizes are generally capped at 20 girls with three or more coaches so that girls can create relationships with adults and also have the space to create relationships with. With one another. And what we've seen coming out of Girls on the Run is that girls, what they're learning, the connections that they're building, extend beyond the program. There are girls who didn't used to talk to each other in a classroom setting who are doing it now. We've heard from teachers and principals that it's made the school environment more positive because we're teaching girls that they have an obligation to stand up for one another. We we used to call it being a stand buyer as opposed to a bystander. It's easy. It is hard to be a star sparkler. It is hard to be a standbyer. It is easy to either go along with the mean girl stuff or to ignore it. But what we're trying to instill in girls is there is value not only to frankly the person you're standing up for, but to yourself. The confidence that comes from being able to stand up for another person is immense. And so yeah, we're trying to teach girls. Be a star sparkler. Don't put out other people's lights. It's your obligation to help lift people up. We at Girls on the Run talk about caring and connection and this is one lesson that focuses on both of.

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Nicole Khalil (17:39)

You already know that I love cozy earth sheets for all the right reasons. Sleep is sacred, and those temperature regulating, buttery soft sheets are basically my love language. But let me introduce you to my newest obsession. The housecoat. My sister and her friends have turned housecoating into a verb. And there are rules. Housecoats are to be worn while sipping coffee, tea or wine, reading, napping, or light snacking, but never for sweating, cleaning or anything remotely productive. And if you like playing by the rules like I do, you must have the Cozy Earth quilted housecoat. I mean, these things are a. And yes, men can house coat too. So go visit cozyearth.com and use my exclusive code TIWW for 40% off your very own housecoat. And while you're there, get your bed some cozy earth sheets too, because great days start with better nights and house coats are what make them legendary. Yeah, and I think there could be the tendency to think about this being for the benefit of others, as you said. But I want to reiterate that, like you said, this impacts our own confidence when we stand up for someone or something, or when we recognize that something doesn't feel right and we do something about it. It builds our own confidence. It builds our trust in ourselves. Conversely, when we don't, we lose trust. We lose confidence when we go along or stay quiet even though we feel like we should say something. So I again think these things are so important. So another good, good, good lesson that I think many adults could absolutely benefit from is stop and take a breather. I feel like that's fairly obvious, but let's talk about it.

Cindy Roy Gonzales (19:31)

Yes. Stop and take a breather is one of my favorite lessons. I have been coaching, gosh, for seven or eight years now, and this continues to be a favorite. So the idea behind the lesson is that you have a choice to respond or to react. And so many of us, children and adults, are so quick to react in a given situation. And so we teach girls stop and take a breather. And there's a word game that we play with them, and we tell them, okay, the tools are breathe, stop, breathe, think, and respond. We instill that in them over the course of an entire practice. And we keep asking them, okay, stop, breathe, think, respond if you can. Just. If you can do that, if you have that skill in your toolbox, nine times out of 10, you're going to have a better situation than if you choose the reaction method. Sometimes girls will stop, they'll breathe, they'll think, they'll respond. And then we ask them, okay, how did that response feel? They're like, oh, that response didn't feel great. We give them the opportunity to practice it again. We're giving them these tools or getting the opportunity to practice, to understand how it feels, and. And hopefully then they take that out into the real world when they've left their practice. Yeah.

Nicole Khalil (21:04)

All right. You mentioned community and connection being integral for so many valid reasons that you've already mentioned. One of the things that girls on the run encourages, and I'm going to touch on a couple other things in the toolbox, but one of the things it encourages is having a running buddy for their celebratory run at the end. And my understanding is that they can pick someone they know or an older. Either a teenage girl or adult will be provided for them. Talk about why this is important. They've been training, They've been running for the celebratory run. Why is it important that they have somebody do it with them?

Cindy Roy Gonzales (21:49)

Yeah. So you had mentioned earlier that as a parent of a participant, you got sort of weekly updates on what your daughter was learning in the program, and so that helped you Make a connection with her and with what it was she was, she was doing. One of the things I love most that is hard to quantify about the program is how many moms, dads, aunts, uncles, brothers, cousins join the Girls on the Run community as a buddy. So if they know when their girl starts the program eight weeks earlier, that their girl wants them to complete this event with them, they need an adult. Because we want to keep everyone safe, it often will get that person their first experience with running. And so they train alongside their girl, not at the same practice, but over the course of the eight weeks they train with their girl and they get to complete this thing together. They get to share in the accomplishment and the goal setting and the joy together. I have stood at the finish line of so many celebratory Girls on the run 5k events and seen the smiles on the girls faces. But I'll tell you what, the smiles on mom and dad's face completing their first 5K event, it's amazing. And so many girls and their family members have gone on to make that a thing they do together long after Girls on the Run. So it's a really great way to get adults in their lives, also physically active, also learning some of the same lessons that the girls are learning.

Nicole Khalil (23:31)

Yeah, I can attest to the power of that from my one experience. Jay was JJ's running buddy, as he should be, because I would not have been able to keep up her happy pace. But I worked one of the water stations and I teared up so many times seeing not just the girls, but their running buddies. And I mean, maybe this speaks to my bias, but a lot of times people I didn't expect, you know, you could tell it was an uncle or a teacher or a sibling or. I mean, it was just the coolest experience to see all these girls being supported in that way. So one of the more common misconceptions I see when it comes to confidence is I think people often think it needs to be big or bold or jump into the deep end of the pool in order for it to count. And what I often say is it's one foot in front of the other towards what matters. Small acts make a huge difference. And you have a section or a tool as part of Girls on the Run that small acts make a difference. So how does that relate with young girls? What are you focused on there?

Cindy Roy Gonzales (24:49)

So every Girls on the Run team across the country, every season, they get to choose a, what we call a community impact project. And with the relaunch, we Launched a brand new curriculum, an updated curriculum last year. And when it came to the Community Impact Project, it really made clear that this is a project that should be completed in one standard 90 minute practice. We don't want it to be some big gesture. We want it to be a small way that a group of girls can positively impact their community. So girls might choose. I've worked with teams where they've chosen to pick up trash in the space where they have their practice. It's a small thing, but they're leaving their neighborhood a little better off. Or they've made cards for the DPW workers who are the ones who are day in and day out cleaning up after the kids in the schools. So again, this idea of building community, making connection, having a positive impact, working together, compromising. There have been tears, many, many tears over which community impact project the girls are going to do. But they learn these skills, how to negotiate, ultimately, all in service of leaving a positive impact in their community just by doing one simple thing, the middle school program. Rather than complete the Community Impact project as a group, the girls are asked to go out and identify how they individually want to make an impact. And again, the idea is small things, like I said, you make a card for the male person or you are intentional about saying thank you to someone you see every day. A teacher, a custodian, a cafeteria worker. Just reminding girls that there is a world outside of themselves and showing appreciation and gratitude for that world.

Nicole Khalil (26:55)

Yeah, okay. And then the last one I wanted to talk about today because it leads into that celebratory 5K or at least it did in the program that JJ went through, is letting your star power shine. I think whether they've gotten the message yet at that age or they're about to, there is a pretty consistent messaging that I think a lot of young girls receive. To play small and to not brag or boast or be fully authentic or bring their full and best selves to things. And this letting your star power shine sort of spoke to that, at least for me. So talk about what that means and what you're encouraging girls to do with that.

Cindy Roy Gonzales (27:40)

Yeah. So that it's sort of capping off all the things that they've learned, starting with that first lesson about who they are and what makes them happy and what makes them them. And reminding them that they have a toolbox. They have built a toolbox over the course of a season where they can learn how to do the things that make them happy, how to manage hard feelings, how to change the narrative when they hear themselves speaking negatively. I'll tell you what, in our office, the number of times in a week somebody in our office will say to another coworker, positive self talk, negative self talk. Like we use it ourselves. So we've built these alongside the girls, we've built these toolboxes that as they set out for the 5K event where they're going to have probably a challenging period during that 3.1 miles reminding them they have the tools to get through a hard thing and that they should be proud of themselves when they cross that finish line because they've set goals and they've worked towards their goals and sort of no matter what the outcome is, they've done the work. And so our hope is that after eight weeks they're walking away. They feel good about who they are and they truly believe and trust that the world needs them and wants them to show up as their true authentic selves. That's the takeaway that we hope all the girls are leaving Girls on the Run with.

Nicole Khalil (29:04)

That is the takeaway. I mean we could end the episode with that. That's, I mean, everything I hope for wrapped in a beautiful couple of sentences. So thank you.

Shopify Representative (29:13)

Yeah.

Nicole Khalil (29:14)

For those people listening, how can they get either their girls involved or how can they get involved as parents or people involved in young girls lives or just people who care?

Cindy Roy Gonzales (29:25)

Yeah. So Girls on the Run is a national program. There's about 165 councils across the country. So if you go to girlson.org you can find your local council. Your local council will have a list of teams that are available. If one doesn't exist, you can contact Girls on the Run about starting one. So that's if you want to get your girl involved. We are desperate not only in greater Boston, but across the country for more adults who are willing to step up and coach. The quality of our coaching is terrific and there's some training involved in doing it. But we want to give girls a high quality purchase program. Anybody who is an adult can coach. We do do background checks on everybody. I want to be really, really clear, you do not have to be a runner to coach Girls on the Run. We just want caring, kind adults who believe in the value of inspiring girls to be joyful, healthy and confident. It does take a couple of hours a week over the course of an eight week season. So I don't want to dismiss that. It is a time commitment. But if you're interested in coaching every Girls on the Run council will have a place on their website where you can Fill out an application to coach or to learn more about coaching. And then all of the Girls on the run councils have 5K events at the end of each season. If you want to just get a taste of what the program is like, come volunteer. Come see it in action for yourself. It's a really great entry point into the organization.

Nicole Khalil (30:57)

Yeah. So let me reiterate. You don't need to be a parent and you don't need to be a runner in order to be a Girls on the Run coach. You just need to care about girls and their confidence, and you don't have to create the curriculum and stuff on your own that is provided by the organization. So again, girlsonthe run.org is the website. Cindy, thank you for the important and incredible work that you do on behalf of all young girls and also on behalf of my young girl. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. All right. Everywhere we turn, society is telling girls what they can't do, who they shouldn't be, and where their limits are. But confidence isn't about fitting into someone else's expectations. It's about showing up as your true, authentic self and owning your space in the world. Which is why programs like Girls on the Run are so powerful. They don't just teach girls how to run. They teach them how to trust themselves, how to support each other, and how to break through the limits that were never really theirs to begin with. And as the adults in their lives, the most important thing we can do is model that same confidence, because they are watching and always learning. The world doesn't need more pretty wallflowers and shrinking violets. It needs authentic, confident humans who speak their truth, live with purpose, and run toward the life they want and the things that matter most to them. So let's teach them as soon as we can that that's what it means to be doing woman's work.

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