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The StoryBrand Podcast
#203: Cathy Heller—How to Reimagine Success and Create Abundance in Your Life
00:33:17
What if the secret to abundance isn’t found in chasing external success but in reframing how you see and approach your life and business? For so many of us, achieving more doesn’t always equate to feeling fulfilled. How can you shift your mindset...
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- [00:02]
Kathy Heller
When you thrive, not only are you not taking from someone else what's theirs, you're creating for them.
- [00:11]
Mark Roberge
Welcome to the Business Made Simple Podcast brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network.
- [00:16]
Bobby Richards
I'm Bobby Richards.
- [00:17]
James Sweeting
And I'm James Sweeting. Every week on the show we bring you straightforward strategies to help you become a better business owner by giving you the tools and frameworks to tackle challenges head on and drive real growth.
- [00:28]
Bobby Richards
Today, we are talking about redefining what it actually means. Means to live an abundant life. We've got Kathy Heller on the show. She is a bestselling author, a business strategist, she's a podcast host.
- [00:39]
Mark Roberge
She's actually going to be sharing insights.
- [00:41]
Bobby Richards
Directly from her latest book, Abundant Ever Tools for Creating a Life of Prosperity and Ease.
- [00:47]
Mark Roberge
And in today's conversation, she's going to.
- [00:49]
Bobby Richards
Break down how you can change your mindset to help break through the blockers that are keeping so many of us stuck or feeling stagnant.
- [00:57]
James Sweeting
So if you're going, that's absolutely me. Constantly feeling stuck in survival mode, constantly chasing goals in your business and even in your life, never feeling like you're getting ahead, even feeling like what you're doing is not really connected to what's authentically you and what you really love, what lights you up. Kathy is here to offer you a new path around how you can create abundance and fulfillment without burning out, along with some simple shifts that you can make today to bring more clarity, confidence and success to your journey.
- [01:25]
Mark Roberge
All that and more with Kathy Heller right after this. When all your marketing team does is put out fires. Yeah, they're going to burn out. But with HubSpot, they can achieve their best results without the stress and spoiler alert. Burnout. Tap into HubSpot's collection of AI tools called Breeze to pinpoint leads, capture attention, and access all of your data in one place, all while keeping your marketers cool in your campaign results. Hotter than ever. Ouch. Visit HubSpot.com marketers to learn more.
- [02:07]
Bobby Richards
With your new book and with just thinking about leaning into you have abundance. It's there. You just need to recognize what abundance truly is and start to really prioritize what really matters. Making that shift is so hard. And if you don't have the tools, if you don't have the frameworks, if you don't have that insight that you know that you speak about in your new book, Abundant Ever after, then no matter how successful you are on paper.
- [02:34]
Mark Roberge
If you're trying to fill a gap.
- [02:36]
Bobby Richards
You'Re never going to Feel full.
- [02:37]
Kathy Heller
Yeah, that's it. When people come to me, they say what they want, you know, I'm like, great, tell me everything. And they'll say, I want a nicer house, I want this better relationship I want. And it's all these things that are beautiful. And I say, yes. And then I say to them, but I believe you have bigger dreams than that. And I say, I believe you're really dreaming about inner peace and being in flow state and having like creativity just oozing through every pore of your body and collaborating with people and having this feeling of that you're living into your potential and growing and having a connection to God and the divine and a mystical experience. They're like, oh yeah. And I say to look, you weren't built as magnificent as you are to come to the world to amass a pile of things, right?
- [03:26]
Bobby Richards
Yeah.
- [03:27]
Kathy Heller
So that's where it gets really fun and juicy and interesting. Because everything I said in the second list is available right now all the time. You can find the part of you that can sit on a park bench with a paper bag lunch and feel full. You can see the world through the eyes of how much gratitude, how incredible, how magnificent. And when you come back to like who you really are, what starts to open up is this feeling of equanimity, wholeness, being in integrity with yourself. You become a blessing then to everyone around you. And then, by golly, it's quite interesting, the abundance. It can't miss you because everything is attracted to some if you're going on a date, right? And I can only speak to what girls are typically like, right? Because that's been my experience. But you go on a date as a girl and let's say you really want this guy to like you, you, you blow it. But if you do the other thing where you're just RSVP to your own party and you're sitting on the date and you're just feeling good in your own experience. He's all in. And it's the same thing in business. The ROI that you're looking for is not the ROI on what the outcome is. It's how much juice and fun and, and how much joy can I get out of the moment by moment experience of my life. And when we do that, we feel whole immediately. We're having fun immediately. And then that's typically when you start to create incredible opportunities in your life and the wholeness creates more of that wholeness. You're not in this urgent state of I need this to feel good about Myself or I need this to happen in order for me to feel better. You're feeling good, so it's just going to happen.
- [05:07]
James Sweeting
So, Kathy, would you say that then there's kind of a link between that, you know, being present in the moment, being, you know, aware of what's going on, present to, you know, internally and externally as well, that there's that link between that presence and abundance and fulfillment in that way?
- [05:23]
Kathy Heller
Yeah, totally. And also, I think part of that link is Donald's really good at kind of calling this out. But people have a hard time having more of a relationship with something if they have a bad relationship with it. And here's what I mean. If secretly you have shame around money, why would you have more of it? When you are at a place in yourself where you don't need something outside of you, necessarily because you know that what makes you feel good in a moment, you're in charge of that based on what you're thinking and feeling and how you're responding. So then you don't put these things on pedestals, and you also don't shame people for any of it, because what matters is not how much money someone has, it's how they feel in a room, you know? So what I'm saying is I find a lot of people when it comes to abundance, they don't allow it in their life because they put it on such a pedestal and then judge other people who have it because they believe, like, who are they to have it? And it's like, are you kidding me? Like, do you do that with people who have a lot of love in their life? Abundance is great, right? And abundance of everything is great. And abundance of love and abundance of oxygen. I mean, I played tennis once at the top of the Hyatt Hotel when I was nine with my dad, and we were in Denver, and it's a little hard to breathe. Yep. And you have to get used to that. And it's like, you want an abundance of oxygen, not just a little. You want an abundance of resources. Money is a resource. Why would you want less of it? When you clean up what's inside of you and you become an open vessel for all that bounty that God just wants to give. Right. Then those who have integrity will do good with whatever the blessing is. Those who are out of integrity will do bad with whatever the blessing is. If a person who doesn't have integrity is blessed with children, they might not be the best parent. If a person who's out of integrity is blessed with money, they might not do the best things with it. But it's not the money that's the problem. It's the integrity of being in a state of being right with yourself. And so when you're really right with yourself, it's incredible how you trust yourself to be a steward of money. You trust yourself to be in flow with it. You're happy to give it, you're happy to enjoy it. Like, it's so unbelievable because people be like, mindset, it doesn't work. I'm like, it's not really mindset. It's the entire way in which you're operating your life, which then either opens the door to blessings or totally closes it. And you don't very often. There's very good people walking around who would be good stewards of abundance, but they have this idea that they would no longer somehow be a good person or they would have to sacrifice so much for it. And I think the work that we all do is trying to help people decode that so that they can just enjoy their life and thrive and do good with what they're being given.
- [08:14]
Bobby Richards
Absolutely. And those constructs, though, like you said, are hard to break down. And, and my question is, and I know that, you know, there's so many business owners that are on the other side of this, listening have. This is, how do you start to break that wall down, those constructs down? Think about what you've been valuing your whole life, or what you've been told to value, or what you thought would make you happy. It won't do that. How do you change that perception?
- [08:41]
Kathy Heller
That is such a great question. Because if the thing you desire, you desire because you think it will make you whole, you will just keep pushing that desire further and further away. Because it's the wholeness in you that actually is what magnetizes you to that. Right? What's that great quote like? If you want love in your life, be love. If you want friendship, a friend, right? It's the same thing, right? So I say to people, you want to be abundant. Why can't you feel abundant right now? Like, buy the Starbucks for the person behind you now. You know how abundant that'll make you feel right now. Buy the groceries for the person behind you now. But what? But I'm like, no, no, no, try it. You'll feel so abundant. Like, when the gardener comes to my house on Wednesdays, my kids know we're going to run into the fridge and get a cold Dr. Pepper, and who wants to be the one to give it? That makes you feel Abundant. You know what I mean? Like, what do you have given? Offer it. So don't wait until you're like, well, now I can justify feeling abundant. You can feel abundant in a million ways, right? You can also just give your time. Like, it's that. It's that when you feel that you have what to give, you feel abundant right now. When I was living in Jerusalem after college for three years, I asked my rabbi, what's the most abundant spiritual thing I can do? And he said, I'm going to give you an address. And he gives me this address on this little piece of paper. And I thought, there's going to be some temple or something, or we're going to go to where Jesus walked Israel. There's a million things you could take. He goes, knock on this door. I'm like, okay. And then he says to me, he whispers. He goes, the woman who lives there, I'm like, yeah, is she a nun? Like, who is she? He goes, she's a widow. Offer to do her dishes. That's the most spiritual experience you're going to have today. And I just, like, burst into tears. But, yeah, that's. That's number one, is like, you need to find your way to abundance now in order to have abundance in the next moment and in five years and all that. Okay. The second piece that I think is helpful in what you said, like, deconstructing, are maybe some of the myths that keep us from it, is that the word currency comes from the word current. And a current in a river needs to keep moving. And we are one. And here's how you know we are one. Like, if I paint my house and my. The value of my house goes up, I just improve the value of my neighbor's house. If I open a store on Main street and I start to make income, I just created abundance for everybody who wants to now open a store on Main Street. So we literally are in the same garden, so to speak. So when you thrive, not only are you not taking from someone else what's theirs, you're creating for them. If you have a garden and something is thriving in the garden, it will actually create more health in the whole garden. If something is creating weeds and whatever, you want to prune that away because it will affect the entire garden. So the best thing you can do is to thrive, right? There is no redwood tree that says, I shouldn't be tall and I shouldn't have all the water. It's like, no, no. Be humble enough to do the job God assigned you to do. Fully, period. That gives life to the entire ecosystem. So people who have scarcity mindset, think, who am I to have this? The second you make money, if it goes into a bank, which most of our money is all in a bank, it's a right. It's right away funding other people's mortgages and loans and credit card bills. Literally. We're all helping each other. We are one. You can't separate it. So it's a beautiful gift to welcome it into your life. And Mother Teresa herself said, it takes a checkbook to change the world. And she's right.
- [12:12]
Bobby Richards
And that other side of it, too, of really identifying and living as your, what you call in your book, your authentic self.
- [12:18]
Kathy Heller
After living in Israel for three years, you know, that was a fluke. I was supposed to be there for a summer, and then I stayed for three years. And then I moved to la and my whole life I wanted to write music. So I got a record deal, which was crazy that I figured that out. But somehow that happened. And I was sitting next to Lady Gaga and she was recording this song. And I was thinking to myself, I think I'm about to make a deal with the devil. Because the things that were happening in that recording studio at 3am, I was not supposed to be in that room. And I knew that. And then, of course, I got dropped from the label because I think my conscious part of me was like, I don't really actually want this. But in any case, when I got dropped for a while, I was actually depressed because I didn't know that there was another possibility to make money doing the thing that I thought was my gift. So I got really confused. Like, if I got that far into something that's so competitive and I'm going to give it up and there's no other way to make money at it. I guess I can't be my authentic self and make money, which is a really weird place to be. So a friend of mine said, why don't you just make money then and make a lot of it? So she's like, you should work in real estate. And next thing I know, I meet this guy who sells like $300 million shopping centers, and I go to work for him. And he was really cool, and I made money working for him until I looked at myself in the elevator doors and I saw myself one day in the office and I was like, I'm a creative person. Like, I have a talent. I don't really actually want to do this. And I quit my job and I found a new door because I asked a question I had never asked, which was, is there any other way for me to make a living being my authentic self? I had never even considered that there was. I thought it was Rockstar or nothing. And so I literally googled, how do people make money with music outside of record deals? I never even thought that that was a thought. And I got all these different, like, articles, and one of them was, you could license your songs to McDonald's. You could license your songs to Toyota. You could license your songs to Grey's Anatomy. And I thought, well, I want to try that. So I started to call ad agencies, and I started making 300 grand, 400 grand, double the money I was making at 25 in real estate. And I was featured in Billboard magazine, this, like, full page article. And a bunch of songwriters started saying to me, how do you do that? And then I realized something interesting, which is, for everything you do, whether you can make a good cupcake or you're a really good parent, there'll be a line of people who ask you how you do that. And so I taught a class in my living room, Scrappy, on how to license music to tv. And then one of those people happened to say to me, do you know Amy Porterfield? And I'm like, no. Like, I was a songwriter who was now just teaching a class in my living room. And she said, you should teach this online. And I'm like, you're talking to someone who's a mom of, you know, two kids. I was pregnant with my third, and I don't have an Instagram account or email list. She's like, yeah, yeah, but you should teach this. It's very niche. It's very specific. You should teach it. So I watched one webinar of Amy Porterfield, and because I'm a very scrappy person, I was like, oh, I got enough. So I did a webinar with no slides, just, like, told my story. And at the end of it, I was like, if you want to pay me a thousand bucks, I'll teach you how to license your music. And 147 people signed up. And I made $147,000 that night. And I said to my husband, oh, my God, this is insane. And then a part of my brain said, but you're an artist. Who are you to, like, teach people how to do business? And then I thought, well, that's so lame. I can do both. Why can't I be lots of things? And then, lo and behold, three months into that class, my baby was then Born, I was loving it. And one of my students said her husband worked for Adam Carolla and would I ever want to start a podcast? And I thought, well, let's just keep saying yes and yes and yes and why can't I do that, too? And so I started a podcast called Don't Keep youp Day Job. And it was for people who wanted to make a living doing their thing they loved. And within a year, we had a million downloads. Then we had 50 million downloads. And the podcast started making a lot of money and building an audience. And at that point, then I had music I was writing that I was selling a songwriting agency, licensing other people's music. I then had the course that was making a few million dollars a year. And then I had this podcast, and it was just like, oh, you can just keep adding, and if you're resourceful, you can work on your business instead of in your business, and you can still be a mom who's breastfeeding. And it was just like, I was just playing. Like I just wasn't overthinking it.
- [16:50]
James Sweeting
Yeah.
- [16:51]
Kathy Heller
And so there is no end to how many things you can do. We don't realize how much potential we have. And I think that quote, like, people are burnt out not from, you know, doing too much, but from doing too much of the wrong things. When you're doing the thing, you really feel lit up. It's the opposite. You just feel so filled up from it.
- [17:11]
James Sweeting
And what I love about that, even just to. To. To go back to where you started at the beginning of that story that I wanted to just call out again for our listeners, is, you asked a question around is, you know, how can what I do align with my authentic self and what I love and what lights. And that led to. Just like the blossoming that happened after that moment just sounds incredible.
- [17:33]
Bobby Richards
And being tuned in, you giving that amazing example of and then this happened, and this happened, and this happened. It was because you were open and available to receive all that.
- [17:45]
Mark Roberge
Science of Scaling, hosted by Mark Roberge, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Mark's resume is impressive. He's the founding CRO at HubSpot, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, and co founder of Stage 2 Capital. And on the show, he sits down with the most successful sales leaders in tech to uncover the strategies and tactics you can use to scale your company. In fact, in a past Q and A episode titled how do youo Solve for a Siloed Marketing and Sales, Mark tackles one of the biggest challenges businesses face misalignment between marketing and sales. And offers practical solutions to unify your team and ensure everyone is accountable for meeting revenue goals. Listen to Science of Scaling wherever you get your podcasts. And now back to the show.
- [18:37]
Kathy Heller
You know, Seth Godin is a really close friend and a mentor, and he said to me once that business is radical empathy. And I think it goes two ways. It's radical empathy for your client and radical empathy for yourself. And what I mean is, so many people, we know this. What I'm. What I'm going to say is something you've said. I know you've said it and you've heard it, which is so many people don't even start because they need to be perfect or else they don't do it at all. And the only reason I've done all those things is because I gave myself the grace to not begin them perfectly seriously. And I knew enough about human beings to know that what would be most impressive wouldn't be my slide deck. Didn't have to worry about that. It was tuning in, which is the other way of using that word. Not just the radio, but tuning into people. In fact, if I look back at my music business, when I was calling NBC and asking what music they needed, or I was calling Ogilvie and Math, or Leo Burnett and asking what music they needed, they would always say to me, kath, you're the only person who asks us what story we're trying to tell, what songs we need. Every other artist just sends us their music and then we have to listen through it. They're not empathizing with what we need. And I think so much of what stands in our way is either not having empathy for ourselves and needing ourself to be perfect so we don't start, or not having empathy for the client. Because at the end of the day, if someone's gonna listen to your podcast and give you their attention or pay you for something, it's because it speaks to them. And so you need to find that intersection of not just what lights you up, but what lights up the other person, too. And that's healthy. A lot of people go, no, I'm just going to make the art I want or the show I want or the cupcakes I want. It's like, well, no one's buying it, right? So you have to be willing to back up and say, God, put me here to serve. It should be interesting to me how my gift can contribute and they don't have to just be my business. So in the other parts of my life, I can do things that are just for me. It's interesting how people resist that.
- [20:43]
Bobby Richards
So many people out there, I'm including myself, will put everything ahead of me, actually doing the things that take care of me and that ultimately, like we've been talking about, then service everybody else. If I'm my best authentic self or if I'm optimized to operate in my superpower 100%, I can then help provide abundance and lean into that with other people. But if I'm not, then I'm tapped and I don't leave me alone. And then I'm the worst to be around and I'm taking away energy from people. Like what are ways that we can sort of escape that and even just start to promote that and incorporate self care, you know, just day by day.
- [21:19]
Kathy Heller
The first thing I would say is like, in 2007, I took a class at UCLA on meditation and I heard the teacher that day say something that I was shocked to hear, which is, you don't have to stop your thoughts. In fact, you won't. Your heart will always be, your mind will always spin. And I'm like, oh, wait, what? And she said, it's about witnessing that. And instead of being in the blizzard of the mind, just looking out at the blizzard, and when you think of it like if it's Christmas morning and you're in a blizzard outside, that's not really fun. But if you're looking at it from inside the living room window, it's so beautiful. And so she gave that example and she said, watch your thoughts with unconditional nonjudgmental awareness and just notice it like, oh, wow, There's a part of me that's still thinking about the past. Oh, wow. And with non judgmental awareness, then ask yourself, who's doing the witnessing? That's you. And that part of you is wise and that part of you is needing your attention. And so even if you only spend five minutes a day with a cup of tea in that sort of part of you that's really you, it's very fulfilling, it's very actualizing. And I think that's why of the 900 people I've interviewed, almost everybody has some kind of prayer or meditation practice. You get a lot out of that. Like, you could say self care is like, you know, get a massage, but it doesn't do as much for you as arriving at your own door, truly stepping back from the mind. Because the mind will lie to you and say you're not Enough. And here's what's not possible all day, really, actually, because the mind wants to protect you. And whatever you've been through, it's like decided how to keep you from danger by not putting you in a place where you'll be vulnerable. So it lies to you all the time. And it's so awful, actually. But when you witness it, you take away its power. And then you feel this part of you that there's nothing urgent, you don't need to get the likes on Instagram, you don't need the money. You know what I mean? And all of a sudden you come back in this feeling of wholeness. There's this equanimity. And so I say to people every morning, the way you choose what you're gonna wear, you select your shirt, you should stop and select how do you wanna feel today? And close your eyes and say, what would ease feel like? What would connecting to the divine feel like? What would surrender feel like? What would joy feel like? And then close your eyes and for 90 seconds see if you could feel that whole feeling just like in your body. And then open your eyes and go live your day. And I'm telling you, we're so good at actually tuning back into ourself that little moments like that will change your entire life. If you were on a boat and you changed course two degrees and you kept going 50 miles or a hundred miles, you'll wind up in a different continent. So these little changes, the really powerful ones, completely and totally shift you and give you back the joy that's available all the time when you're not running. Because the mind will say, you're not feeling whole. You urgently need approval from somewhere outside of yourself. You're not feeling whole. You better make money. You better prove your existence.
- [24:34]
Bobby Richards
Run faster. Go faster, do more.
- [24:37]
Kathy Heller
Exactly. It's such garbage.
- [24:39]
Mark Roberge
Oh, my gosh, Kathy, thank you so much for that.
- [24:42]
Bobby Richards
Oh, man, I needed that.
- [24:44]
James Sweeting
And what? I would just be curious for the, you know, for the listener right now. That's. That's just in the middle of a crazy, hectic season. Oh, you know, overwhelmed.
- [24:53]
Bobby Richards
They're in work. Tornado. They're in the middle of.
- [24:55]
James Sweeting
They're in the tornado. Yeah. Middle of the workday. Listening to this episode. What's one, like, practical thing in the middle of the day? I love that you kind of mentioned that first thing when you're even just choosing out what you want to wear. What's something like middle of the day? Just to try to bring some of that, you know, awareness back inside.
- [25:10]
Kathy Heller
Re center stop and fill up. Like, look outside and see if you can notice the 47 shades of green outside. Fill up like, notice when you go to drink that afternoon coffee or whatever it is, pause and taste it, actually taste it, and then feel your feet on the ground. And then you literally feel like you're going to be brought to tears because you realize that we're often in the energy of striving and hustling and wanting to earn it. And it's coming somewhere in the future when really we have to grow the muscle to feel the having to really have what we have to really sit at the Thanksgiving meal and be like, I am full. I am satisfied. Like, how often in our culture is the word satisfied coming out of people's mouths? It's because we live in an incredible country. It is the best in the world, and we're really.
- [26:12]
Bobby Richards
It's.
- [26:12]
Kathy Heller
And it's great because we can always continue to create and improve, which is. It's awesome. But it can very quickly ruin your capacity for joy because you just keep moving the goalpost. And I think in the middle of every day, you should have a moment where you feel truly satisfied and you enjoy your life and you say, oh, everything that I have right now is so fulfilling. And because of that, it's really fun to work on this project, and it's really fun, but. But there's no urgency because I have the capacity to feel full in this moment. And what's really sad is you think about the people who look back on their life and realize how much they had that they didn't let themselves fully receive and enjoy it while they had it, because they were always in the future moments, so they were never where they were. So I think that's a good middle day practice.
- [27:07]
Bobby Richards
I mean, what a plan of action. Like, we call out a plan of action every episode where we're like, what's that main takeaway from the conversation that the business own or our listener can immediately just implement right after they're done listening? And that pause and fill up is invaluable. It's invaluable.
- [27:26]
Kathy Heller
I love that you think that. Thank you. I also think for the business owners, oftentimes there's a part of us since childhood that thinks when we're in the workday, we have to be serious a little bit. And often if I'm in the middle of a project, whether we're planning an event or. Or working on some marketing and it's starting to feel a little crispy, as you would say, I stop And I say to my team, let's delete all of this for a second and just ask a question, which is, how could this be more fun? And I'll then often realize right away what's feeling, like, pressure or what's not feeling fun? And then I'll say, huh, how can I re approach this and have fun with it? So often people are in the middle of a launch and they'll say to me, oh, my God, how do you do so many launches? And I'm like, oh. Because I always remember that I better be having fun. And so if I'm doing a launch and it's all about the ROI and it's like, I won't have fun, I'll be stressed. But if I just say, forget it, this is my sermon on the mount, maybe people buy, maybe people don't, I'm going to have fun with it. We're going to riff with it, we're going to come up with something new to do every day to make it silly and playful. Then I'll just enjoy the experience and then it won't matter. But then usually that's when the launch does better. And so, oh, my God, like, could you just look at what you're doing and insert a little more joy and play? It'll probably go better.
- [28:50]
Bobby Richards
That's empathy for you. That's empathy for your customer right there. Before we split, I want to make sure that we're pointing everybody in the right direction to go get Abundant ever after. Kathy, where should people go to order the book? Where do you want to point them?
- [29:02]
Kathy Heller
Get it everywhere. Barnes and Noble or Amazon, anywhere. But if you go to kathyheller.com book, it will direct you to all those places. But then you can also collect. Obviously, we made bonuses for people so they can get a little bit of like, a journal with, like, really cool prompts and questions. There's like affirmation cards for your morning and some extra little bonus courses. Like, I have a course that's like a one hour meditation made easy to help people who like me think that that sounds really hard and make it make sense. So a lot of bonuses. Kathyholler.com book fantastic.
- [29:35]
James Sweeting
This has been an incredible conversation. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.
- [29:40]
Kathy Heller
Kathy, you guys are so awesome.
- [29:45]
James Sweeting
Bobby. Oh, that was fantastic.
- [29:47]
Bobby Richards
I know, I know. And it was at the end of the episode, I said it on mic, and then even after we got off mic where I was going, Kathy, this was the universe dialing in and me feeling like I was being receptive to what I needed to hear. Cause I feel like everybody is in a season of craziness, you know, if they let themselves get there. And that's not to say that there are not seasons where things feel crazy. There's lots going on. But like Kathy said, sometimes you got to pause, even if it's in the middle of the day. And I loved how she said this. Just fill up. Like, look at outside, go. Okay, let me see if I can find all the different shades of green. How can I actually. This was so huge for me. Meditate and actually be aware of the whirlwind of the snowstorm and watch it instead of feel like when you're inside of it, yeah, you're going to feel cold, you're going to feel uncomfortable. But how can I sort of pause and take that strategy, that meditative strategy of being aware that it's happening and look at it and appreciate it and see what you can find through it?
- [30:54]
James Sweeting
I remember there was a point in my life where it was absolutely insane. Very crazy, very hectic, very stressful. And one of the things I would do would be go to the river that was down the street from my house, and it was fall. And so I would just literally sit, even just for 10 minutes, and just watch these leaves hit the water and then float downstream past me as a way to, like, kind of clear my mind, step back from everything, let those thoughts go by. And so I was like, those stressful thoughts, these feelings that I'm having, I would kind of picture them as the leaf and just watch them go by. But that being in the moment, being outside, filling up in that way in the middle of the day, like she talked about, it's so helpful. It's always valuable. It's always worth it.
- [31:34]
Bobby Richards
And it's easy to do. It's easy to do because that's the stuff that I will absolutely go. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I'd love to, but I don't have 45 minutes to work out right now.
- [31:42]
James Sweeting
Yeah.
- [31:42]
Mark Roberge
Do you know?
- [31:42]
Bobby Richards
I mean, and that's an excuse. Yep. But you think about it as this huge. I got to do this huge lift. And you. You find all the reasons why you shouldn't and prioritize, you know, like what Kathy was saying, the things that ultimately are not filling you up, then you're going to find yourself empty feeling like you don't have abundance feeling, like no matter if you checked all the boxes that you were working towards, unless you are really leaning into being your authentic self, leaning into fueling and filling that well in your life with abundance and being aware of that, you won't ever feel like you're fulfilled. Like what she said, you won't be satisfied.
- [32:19]
James Sweeting
Right?
- [32:19]
Bobby Richards
Yeah. Yeah. So great. That's right.
- [32:21]
James Sweeting
And I loved, even just at the end there, that one little practical question of like, how can we make this more fun?
- [32:27]
Bobby Richards
Oh, yeah.
- [32:28]
Mark Roberge
Oh, 100%.
- [32:29]
Bobby Richards
I love that 100%.
- [32:31]
James Sweeting
And so that's really my question for you right now, Bobby, is, as we wrap up this episode, how could we make this more fun?
- [32:39]
Bobby Richards
Okay, maybe like this. Thanks for always listening to the business.
- [32:44]
Mark Roberge
Page sample podcast where we are obsessed.
- [32:47]
James Sweeting
With helping you become a better business.
- [32:50]
Bobby Richards
Owner, grow your small business, and align.
- [32:53]
Mark Roberge
With more prosperous and purpose filled approaches. I think we nailed it.
- [33:01]
James Sweeting
We made it more fun.
- [33:02]
Bobby Richards
Did we make it more fun for.
- [33:03]
Mark Roberge
You all out there?
- [33:03]
James Sweeting
I think it was more fun for y'all too.
- [33:04]
Bobby Richards
Yeah, we did.
- [33:05]
Mark Roberge
We'll see you next week. See you next week.