Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
131. Taking Time to Pause, Breathe and Reflect with Michael O'Brien
174 Plays1 year ago
What can we do to create space in our day to slow down and reflect?
This week's guest is Michael O’Brien, a meditation teacher and the creator of the Pause Breathe Reflect app, which makes mindfulness straightforward and relatable. In July of 2001, Michael was struck head-on by a speeding SUV while he was out cycling. Today, he refers to this as his “Last Bad Day” and shares how that healing journey led to his work in mindfulness and meditation.
In our conversation, Michael shares how that day collided with his sense of identity, how he now incorporates gratitude into his life, and why slowing down can help us ease our suffering. We also discuss ways to use mindfulness to avoid burnout, the power of lovingkindness, how we can create meaning in the difficult moments, and much more.
If you enjoy this episode, please feel free to rate and review the podcast on whatever app you’re listening on, and share with a friend!
OUR SPONSOR
Are you ready to feel more energized, focused, and supported? Go to https://zen.ai/wellnessandwanderlust1 and add nourishing, plant-based foods to fuel you from sunrise to sunset.
CONNECT WITH MICHAEL
Pause Breathe Reflect: https://www.pausebreathereflect.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pausebreathereflect/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pause-breathe-reflect
CONNECT WITH THE SHOW
Website: WellnessAndWanderlust.net
Instagram: www.instagram.com/wellnessandwanderlustblog
Facebook: www.facebook.com/wellnessandwanderlustblog
Twitter: www.twitter.com/moses_says
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Wellness and Wanderlust
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the wellness and wanderlust podcast. We're here to demystify wellness and help you add a little adventure to your life. Tune in for a new episode every week, where we'll hear from incredible guests and talk about ways to be happier and healthier in our new normal. I'm your host, Valerie Moses. Let's get started. Hey everyone. Welcome to the podcast and thank you so much for being here with us today.
00:00:28
Speaker
At Wellness and Wanderlust, we are all about personal growth, and I love being a part of this wellness journey with you. No matter what curveballs life may throw our way, we're all working to create our best lives and keep pushing forward.
Michael O'Brien's Life-Changing Accident
00:00:40
Speaker
I'm really excited for you to meet this week's guest. Michael O'Brien is a meditation teacher and the creator of the Pause Breathe Reflect app, which makes mindfulness straightforward and relatable. In July of 2001, Michael was struck head on by a speeding SUV while he was out cycling.
00:00:56
Speaker
Today, he refers to this as his last bad day and shares how that healing journey led to his work in mindfulness and meditation. In our conversation, Michael shares how that day collided with his sense of identity, how he now incorporates gratitude into his life, and why slowing down can help us ease our suffering. We also discuss ways to use mindfulness to avoid burnout, the power of loving kindness, how we can create meaning in the difficult moments, and much, much more.
00:01:22
Speaker
I'd like to thank Laird Superfood for sponsoring this episode. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that I'm always on the go and looking for quick lifestyle shifts that can make a major impact on my health. That is why I love Laird Superfood products. I'm a big fan of their functional mushroom coffee with Chaga and Lion's Mean. It's a great way to boost my energy for the day while getting a lot more out of my cup.
00:01:43
Speaker
All layered products are sustainably sourced and thoroughly tested to ensure that you are incorporating the cleanest, finest fuel into your routine. They offer a variety of snacks and supplements full of wholesome plant-based ingredients to keep you charged for wherever life takes you. Are you ready to feel more energized, focused, and supported? Go to layeredsuperfood.com slash wanderlust and add nourishing plant-based foods
00:02:04
Speaker
to fuel you from sunrise to sunset. Use our promo code wanderlust at checkout to save 15% off your purchase today. All right, my friends, now let's dive into this week's conversation. Michael, thank you so much for joining us at Wellness and Wanderlust today.
00:02:18
Speaker
Thanks, Valerie. Good to be with you. I've been looking forward to this all day. So I can't wait to sit down and chat with you about a whole bunch of goodness that we can put out into the world. Well, I am so excited for that. It is so needed in today's world. And I, as I was telling you before we hit record, your voice was so familiar because I've gotten to listen to you through the work that you do. So before
00:02:43
Speaker
We dive into the conversation for
From Corporate to Meditation Teacher
00:02:45
Speaker
today. Why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners and just tell them a little about you? Cool, it sounds like a plan. So I'm Michael O'Brien. I live right now outside of New York City in New Jersey, grew up in Rochester, New York, went to school in Virginia, and then went to DC. And that's where I met my wife. We had our first daughter, we had our second daughter in New Jersey. So most of my life, I spent
00:03:11
Speaker
in corporate life, corporate America, working for a health care company. Over the last several years, I've been on my own as an executive coach and speaker. And I'm also a meditation teacher and the creator of the pause, breathe, reflect meditation and gratitude app. And I'm also a crazy cyclist. And I know we're going to get into my cycling story, or at least the accident story of my cycling career, which
00:03:41
Speaker
really sparked my mindfulness practice and this whole notion that we can slow down in order to go faster and take a moment to pause, come back to our breath, and have a chance to reflect on how we want to show up next.
The Day of the Accident and Its Aftermath
00:03:57
Speaker
I love that. First of all, that is definitely a theme that we talk about a lot on this show is that
00:04:02
Speaker
turning pain into purpose and taking those difficult moments and finding that meaning and figuring out how we can help the next person. I love that concept of just slowing down in order to go faster because I think in this world, we just want to keep going and going and going. It may seem counterintuitive, but when we actually stop and take a breath, we can do so much more and be so much more.
00:04:27
Speaker
I would love to know your story. You have that last bad day that you talk about. I'd love to know what that looked like for you and how that led into this work in meditation and in having this reflection and taking that space. So this goes back to 2001. So I want to ground everyone in 2001. There was no internet. There was no Insta, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook.
00:04:54
Speaker
LinkedIn, none of that existed. And I was the marketing director for my company's biggest product, the reason we came from Tokyo to the US. It was a drug for Alzheimer's disease. So I had reached a pretty high level in the company and
00:05:12
Speaker
If LinkedIn was a thing back then, you could stalk me and say, well, this guy looks like he has a pretty good career. And we had two daughters at the time, still have two daughters. They were three and a half years old and seven months old, Elle and Grady. And Lynn and I had been married seven years and change at that moment in time. And we took a meeting, we had an offsite meeting in New Mexico in the middle of July, which
00:05:37
Speaker
right there should have given me some type of sign that I'm not sure what's going to happen, but who goes to the New Mexican desert in July? That was crazy.
00:05:48
Speaker
But we went, and I wanted to bring my bike because I have this goal of riding my bike in every one of the 50 states in the US. And New Mexico had not been conquered yet. So I brought my bike out. I was training for a competition. And on that morning of July 11th, I had this loop that was about two miles in length. It went out the back service road and up the main entrance.
00:06:11
Speaker
And I thought I would do like 10 laps for 20 miles and show up at the meeting, all boastful. Like I went outside, I took in New Mexico and I'm living life and you guys are just stuck in the hotel and being all, you know, smug and judgmental and all that good stuff like that. And on the fourth lap, that morning I came around a slight bend in the road and a Ford Explorer was coming right at me. He had crossed
00:06:39
Speaker
fully into my lane and he was traveling about 40 miles an hour based on what the police estimate and I remember Valerie all the sounds that day so the sound of me hitting his grill the sound I made when I went into his windshield and broke through the windshield and then the screech of his brakes and then
00:06:59
Speaker
the thought I made when I came to the asphalt below. So I had no time to react. It was just coming at me way too fast. And the whole moment was so surreal. It was like, this is not happening. Like he's going to move. He's going to turn and boom, it happened. And that of course knocked me unconscious. And when I regained my consciousness, I was surrounded by EMTs. So police, rescue squad, fire department, ton of people. And I was in the worst pain.
00:07:27
Speaker
of my life even the thought of moving was painful but back then when things got tense i would just tap into my humor and i asked the question that truly only another cyclist can really appreciate i asked the emts i was like hey how's my bike and
00:07:45
Speaker
You know, they were trying to ask me my name and I was not making any sense at all. I thought I was speaking very clearly, but they had to ask me it several times from what I remember. And I was like, well, this is not going well. I'm in a lot of pain. I could tell by just the energy.
00:08:03
Speaker
of that environment that things were really grim.
Healing and Identity Shift
00:08:07
Speaker
They weren't saying anything, but it was just the vibe. And so that's when I asked that question. I was like, hey, how's my bike? And they're like, your bike's fine, sir. Just try to breathe. And I'll go on the record here on your show, Valerie.
00:08:19
Speaker
The bike was not fine. The bike was demolished. So they totally lied to me to save my tender heart. So that's something that a cyclist will always ask. They care more about their bike than their body at times. But this whole notion of just try to breathe stuck with me. And that's what I try to do. And I was willing myself not to pass out or fall asleep or lose consciousness because I
00:08:46
Speaker
I was really worried that if I did, I might not wake up again. And they called the helicopter, the Medivac, to bring me to the only trauma one center in New Mexico that was in Albuquerque. It was a 19-minute flight. It was my first helicopter ride. I actually tried to talk them out of that because I was scared of flying back then. And they were like, we got to get you to the hospital. And I was like, OK. And I just held on and got to Albuquerque, met my trauma team.
00:09:16
Speaker
And then the next four days, next five days, I don't remember anything. They knocked me out for surgery. I went to the ICU. And when I came out, the doctors painted this really grim picture of what my life was going to be based on my injuries. So I broke a whole bunch of everything. I had glass throughout my body because of the windshield. But the big injury was the left femur shattered. And when the left femur shattered, it lacerated the femoral artery.
00:09:44
Speaker
So I was bleeding out essentially in the middle of the desert on this resort that they put out there. The doctors told my wife when she eventually got to Albuquerque with our youngest that if your husband had been 10 years older or not in shape, he would have died before he got to the hospital because he lost so much blood. And when they started painting the picture of like my life and the fact that the driver had a revoked license,
00:10:10
Speaker
He had five DUIs on his New Mexican driver's license. I was like, God, this is so unfair. I had made a bargain with whomever was listening when they put me on the helicopter. I told, again, the universe, I was like, God, Mother Nature, you name it.
00:10:29
Speaker
I was like, if I live, I promise I'll stop chasing my happiness because I was a professional happiness chaser back then. I thought my happiness was on the other side of the promotion that I was chasing or the nice car or the house.
00:10:46
Speaker
all that material stuff that we chase after, even current day. And I said, I'll stop doing that. I promise it was a total bargain just to live. And when they were telling me about my injuries in life, or at least their predictions for what my life was going to be like, I could not even spell happiness Valerie. I was like, I went into a funk. They said,
00:11:09
Speaker
You're probably going to walk with trouble. You're probably never going to ride your bike again. You'll have a lifetime of surgeries and rehab and dependency. And I just sat in my hospital room thinking, why did this happen to me? This is so unfair. And I went dark pretty quickly. I was angry, frustrated, scared, revengeful.
00:11:32
Speaker
And that's how it all started, not necessarily the beginning of a Disney story, because it was a rather grim, but it does lead to a happy ending. Yeah, I mean, what a difficult thing to go through that not only the thought that you might be losing your independence in a lot of ways, but then this thing that you
00:11:52
Speaker
absolutely love that riding your bike that brings you so much joy that is something that at the time they're telling you, you may never be able to do again. And I think it could be so easy to slip into that mindset of why me and I think that that's such a challenging thing for us. It really was. For me, it was a collision with my sense of identity. So one of the things I sort of use as an identifier besides being a dad and a husband and a
00:12:20
Speaker
an executive, I was also an athlete. That sort of was my upbringing. That was my relationship with my dad. It was all related to sports and not much else. So when I excelled at sports, I got attention. I got love. At least that was the story I was telling myself. So this whole notion that part of my identity, that I was no longer going to be an athlete, that was crushed. And when I pulled that thread even further,
00:12:48
Speaker
I wondered how could I be the type of dad I wanted to be, or the type of husband I wanted to be, or even the type of leader at work. Was this going to threaten every part of my identity? Would I be able to provide for my family? And that was really in question at the time.
00:13:07
Speaker
Initially, they really worried, was I going to be able to survive this post the initial trauma surgery? Was I going to be able to keep that one leg? Because I broke both of them, but the left leg was very badly damaged. So this whole notion of identity, who will I become? Because I don't know if I can be the person I used to be.
00:13:30
Speaker
blank canvas felt unbelievably scary. I was so frightened. And so what I resorted to was just a lot of anger. I tried to keep that bright, sunny, optimistic Michael lens on life, especially if people called me. I was like, yeah, we're doing great.
00:13:52
Speaker
It was all baloney. It was all a front. Because deep down inside I was scared to death. I was again angry that my identity was stolen from me that day and I didn't think that was fair.
00:14:07
Speaker
And I really wondered, like, why do bad things happen to good people? I was following the script, everything they tell you to do. You work hard in high school, you go to college, you graduate college, you get a gig, you meet someone, you marry that someone, you have kids, all that jazz. Like, I was following the rules and then the game changed.
00:14:28
Speaker
And I didn't know what to do besides just sit in my mud and sit in my anger until one of my mentors told me, Michael, you know, you have every right to be upset. You have every right to be angry, but I want to share something with you. And what he shared changed everything for me.
Philosophies for Perspective Change
00:14:49
Speaker
He said, everything is neutral in life until you label it. And at first I was like, what? Is this some like Jedi Yoda trick? Like, what are you talking about?
00:15:00
Speaker
He was like, everything in life is neutral until you label it. And what I didn't know at the time that he was sort of pulling from Viktor Frankl's work in Man's Search for Meaning, where that quote that goes through the internet a lot is that between your stimulus and your response, there's a space and in that space is your freedom and with that freedom is your growth.
00:15:23
Speaker
So what he was trying to share with me is that there's a moment of neutrality. There's space between what happened and how you see it. And he said, you can label this any way you want to. Right now you're labeling yourself as a victim and everybody in the world will agree with you. But what he went on to say is like,
00:15:43
Speaker
But you can choose a different label. You can look at this, not as this happened to you, but maybe, just maybe this happened for you. And instead of playing the victim, this is a setup for you to play some type of victor. And at first Valerie, I was like, that's baloney. This happened to me.
00:16:02
Speaker
This is a whole bunch of mumbo jumbo that you're trying to force down my throat. I am not buying any of it. I want to be angry and I sat with it and I processed it and I let it marinate and then I realized, you know what? He's right. Everything is neutral until you label it and I get to choose my labels.
00:16:21
Speaker
And that's when I decided to label July 11th, 2001 as my last bad day. Not because I believe in unicorns and rainbows and an endless supply of Skittles, although all three of those are really cool. Maybe not so much the Skittles because there's a lot of sugar and we want to keep away from sugar.
00:16:37
Speaker
But the unicorns and rainbows, I totally dig. So for me, it was a statement of gratitude that if I have my daughters and my wife and my friends in my life, people who bring out the best of me, people who love me, then how can I call the whole day a bad day?
00:16:55
Speaker
So I will have challenging moments. I'll have bad moments. I will have frustrating, angry, sad, anxious moments throughout the day, but they're just moments. So when I come to the end of the day and I want to label the whole day, there's no way I can label the whole day as a bad day if I have people in my life who love me. And that was the start.
00:17:16
Speaker
of a gratitude practice for me and I've been doing it ever since. I think that's such an amazing perspective to have and it's such a shift for us. I'm such a fan of Viktor Frankl. I just read Man's Search for Meaning actually not that long ago, just a few weeks ago. And it really mirrored kind of what my philosophy has been because I would see people going through really horrible
00:17:41
Speaker
difficult things and I would go through something that would be challenging and I would think, why me? Because similarly, I think, well, I'm doing nice things for people. I'm working hard. Whatever it is, why does this have to happen to me? And I think so many people approach it a lot of the time with like, well, it was meant to happen to you. And that's not really very helpful a lot of the time when someone's really struggling.
00:18:06
Speaker
But kind of readjusting that frame of reference a little bit and thinking, well, this didn't necessarily happen for a reason, but I can find meaning in it. There is something that I can take from this. I can learn something from this, even if this is not what I wanted to happen.
00:18:22
Speaker
and been kind of exploring a little bit more even with emotions, kind of not labeling them as good or bad or negative or anything like that, but really just kind of feeling it and processing it and recognizing that bad thing it might not be bad, it might just be it's a challenge or it's something but it doesn't mean that life in itself is bad. And there are still all of the beautiful things that you love and the people that you love. So I think that that's such a powerful realization. What?
00:18:51
Speaker
I love what you just said about emotions. I think that's perfect because we can do that to ourselves. Like label how we're feeling is bad or good or right or wrong. Emotions are just emotions. And who gets to say which emotions are good and which ones are bad, let's say. So if we feel anger, we feel anger. We don't have to personalize it and say, I'm angry. That's what I was doing before all of this.
00:19:18
Speaker
Anger and happiness. I see them in terms of emotions. They're equal. They both can be very valid. You know, if you have a moment where you where something has happened to you. Maybe one of your values gets violated. You have every right or you see social injustice. You think it's very human to feel anger.
00:19:40
Speaker
and that can be a really healthy way of expressing and dealing with the moment. So this whole notion of let's just check in with ourselves and create some openness and allow ourselves to get through these moments sort of as a lot of folks would say like feel all the feels. And what I try to do is I never want to give
00:20:02
Speaker
a challenging moment or let's call it a bad moment, any more fuel than it deserves. And so we see this happening a lot all the time in life today, whereas a moment happens, let's just say you get stuck in traffic and it makes you late for whatever.
00:20:21
Speaker
going into work or an appointment or a date. So you have this challenging moment, you're in a traffic jam. And now we think about it, we ruminate on it, we allow it to fester. And so when then we show up at work or we show up for our date, we're just irritated. So we've taken this one bad moment getting stuck in traffic, and we've dumped
00:20:42
Speaker
kerosene on it. And now it's like ruining the rest of the day. It might even ruin the work day or that date. And then we bring it into the next day. So what I try to do with myself and I try to role model this, although I am perfectly imperfect like we all are, but I try to help people when they have those challenging moments, they're bound to happen in life, not to give them any more fuel than they deserve.
00:21:10
Speaker
So they don't turn into a bad day or longer. And I will say just going through what we've gone through over the last three years, we've had tremendous loss in this country. We've had tremendous loss across the world and the grieving process takes a while. So that's more than just a moment.
00:21:27
Speaker
for those out there that have experienced loss as I experienced loss through the pandemic. Like that is not just a moment in a literal sense. That moment can last a long time. Like I lost my mom to the pandemic. And so I can feel sadness and I grieve even now it's been two years come this June.
00:21:48
Speaker
But I can still also create some space in my mind and in my heart for gratitude and love for everything that she brought to my life. So we have this ability to have an emotional awareness and emotional agility.
00:22:05
Speaker
and create a container where we can experience a lot of different emotions all at once. So I can feel sadness because she's no longer in this physical world. At the same time, I can be really happy and grateful for everything she did in her life that has turned me into the human I am today.
00:22:25
Speaker
First of all, I'm so sorry about your mom. That's such a difficult loss. And I think that, yeah, these last, I guess, three years now of the pandemic, there's so much grieving of the people in our lives of, I think even experiences that people didn't have or activities or things that are not going to look the way that they might not
00:22:47
Speaker
have looked or those who are experiencing health challenges now directly impacted because like from the pandemic it's really been a challenging time and I think it's a shared experience of grief and loss throughout the entire world which in some ways
00:23:03
Speaker
It makes you feel a little less alone. And then in other ways, it's hard because you can't really go anywhere and forget that it's happening at the same time. But I love what you said about creating that space to really be grateful for the things that she brought into your life. I really try to do that when I think about the people that I've lost.
00:23:22
Speaker
just try to kind of bring it back to the memories and the impact that they had. But it's definitely a challenging mind shift. And I love to know, like, whether it's that grieving period or whether it is just that difficult thing that happens in the day, I used to get a lot more road rage. And now, thankfully, I listen to a lot of books on the Libby app. And so now I'm not as mad if I get stuck in traffic, because I can just listen to my book.
00:23:46
Speaker
But I was definitely someone who would get really angry in traffic and I would let it ruin my day at different times. And I'd love to know for both of those types of experiences, so the minor inconvenience in the day that compounds or the really challenging where it's rippling, I guess, throughout the world, how do we kind of shift our mindset and kind of take on that different perspective?
00:24:09
Speaker
Yeah, great question. And I'm with you as far as audible books. I've, I've become a fan through the pandemic. I never did audible books or audio books and now huge fan. So for me, when I was coming through my recovery, I had that moment with my mentor.
00:24:26
Speaker
where he shared, everything is neutral until you label it Michael. And then a few weeks later, I was having a session of physical therapy and I realized I had this big aha that I had to heal my mind in order to heal my body.
Mind and Body Healing Techniques
00:24:41
Speaker
I needed to slow down because the extent of my recovery or the how far I had to go to get back to normal was so overwhelming. I couldn't process it all.
00:24:53
Speaker
I thought I had to do so much like right now I was going way too fast or at least my mind was going way too fast because it was just thinking all the time about what life was going to be about so I knew I had to slow down and coming from a background in athletics I know that when the game slows down everyone plays the game better.
00:25:13
Speaker
So I decided to come back to my breath. So I knew this through sports that what's one thing that athletes do if they feel like everything's going a mile a minute is to take a breath. So I knew nothing back in 2001 about
00:25:30
Speaker
mindfulness or meditation except that this is something that people in California do or people who eat great nuts for breakfast. It was certainly I had a I would say a very traditional corporate go-go-go mentality or judgment against people who meditated. I thought it was way out there and it was wacky and
00:25:52
Speaker
I was going to do it even though like intellectually I knew our breath was so vital to success and performance and all that jazz. The reality is I didn't understand it so we tend to judge things that we don't understand and I took no effort whatsoever
00:26:09
Speaker
ever to try to understand it back before my accident. So I started one morning just scooting myself out of my hospital bed into my wheelchair. I got to a quiet place in the hospital and I did a box breathing meditation. It's the same box breathing pattern that's on my app. And I just took a minute or two, I think that session was a little bit longer than that though, where I was able just to slow down and
00:26:34
Speaker
set my intentions and that's when I decided to call those breaks my PBR breaks because I thought I was being funny because most people in the United States when they hear PBR they think of paps blue ribbon and I was like yeah I need a PBR break and everyone would giggle and I was like no no no like pause read reflect and it was just my moment to say okay slow down come back to your breath and then reflect and that moment of reflection is part gratitude but also part intentions. How did I want to show up?
00:27:04
Speaker
for rehab that day or visitors. So the moment in traffic, getting back to your question.
00:27:10
Speaker
can be simply like pause, slow your breath down and reflect. Okay. It's just traffic. Um, how do I want to show up when I reach my final destination? How do I want to be, what kind of ripple do I want to put out there? And then it gives you some time just to slow everything down and realize, okay, this moment too shall pass. And I've been in traffic jams before, and I don't remember any of them from like six months ago or six years ago or six minutes ago. But I get through them.
00:27:40
Speaker
And the most important thing is how do I want to be when I do reach my final destination? And then when it comes to grieving, the breath and mindfulness can do wonders just to slow things down and just create some tenderness in our heart and in our body.
00:27:57
Speaker
have good memories of the people in our lives that have passed on and just get comfortable. This is the open awareness part of mindfulness and this nurturing through meta and loving kindness that we can heal what hurts through mindfulness. We can ease the suffering and we all grieve at our own pace and there is no quick way to do it.
00:28:22
Speaker
So we just try to be with our heart and have some heart-centered breathing and offer ourselves some self-compassion. And we can simply have a pause, breathe, reflect moment or a meditation simply on self-compassion and grieving and healing that can do wonders for us over time.
00:28:42
Speaker
I think that that's so incredible and it really is something that, again, we are so go, go, go. And sometimes if somebody suggests, hey, why don't you slow down and take a breath? You're thinking, I don't have time to do that. I go on your app. There are one minute meditations and I'm thinking,
00:28:59
Speaker
Certainly we have one minute in the day. Certainly we have five minutes in the day. And I would much rather because it's something again, like I haven't always been consistent with a mindfulness practice. It's something I've really been trying to be intentional about in the last I'd say couple of months.
00:29:15
Speaker
And I noticed that when I do take that time for myself, I mean, just those few minutes, it really plays a big role on how the rest of my day is going to go. And it's so much better spending the five minutes taking the five minutes or however long, however long I want to do. I think I did 15 minutes the other day and taking that time away from whatever else it was that I was doing, then feeling kind of on edge for the whole day.
00:29:40
Speaker
or feeling whatever difficult feelings that I had before that. It plays such a big role and it really compounds. You don't have to spend that much time doing it to start feeling some results from it. Absolutely. I love what you just said, Valerie. So as I developed my practice and I did my study and I became
Mindfulness in Daily Life
00:30:01
Speaker
a teacher, and I've studied a lot of the origins of mindfulness
00:30:06
Speaker
I've studied under Jon Kabat-Zinn and mindfulness-based stress reduction. And what I came to realize is that as a practice, mindfulness and meditation, and there's a lot of great ways to practice mindfulness and meditation is just one of them. You can have a mindful walk, you can eat mindfully, that there's no
00:30:26
Speaker
hard science on how long we should be doing this. So for me, as I met other corporate professionals and I started talking about, Hey, who has a mindfulness practice? Very few hands were raised in those auditoriums in those conference rooms. And many people came to me and said, I don't have time for that. Like I have a busy life. I have to get up.
00:30:49
Speaker
I'm on email. I jump on the Hampshire wheel. I got the kids. I got to get off to school. I got to get to work. Obviously a lot of that changed when we were all working from home during the pandemic. It seemed like actually there we traded our commuting times for just more zooms and Microsoft themes. Life just got busier and busier and to your point that you've made.
00:31:12
Speaker
Faster and faster that hamster will just keeps on spinning faster and faster and we we feel this burnout that a whole bunch of people feel. So when people came to me and said, Yeah, it makes sense, but I don't have time. The way I built the app was like
00:31:27
Speaker
I'm going to meet you where you're at. So if you say to me legitimately, I don't even have 10 minutes in the day in the morning to do this mindfulness thing. Michael, I'm, I'm like, fine. I'm not going to try to convince you to wake up 10 minutes earlier. Cause that's why it happens a lot with a lot of morning routines. People say, we'll just wake up 15 minutes earlier. And I think that can work for a lot of people and it has worked for a lot of people, but I'm not going to tell you when to wake up and I'm not going to necessarily tell you when to go to bed.
00:31:58
Speaker
But I will say this to folks. I'll share this. So you don't have 10 minutes in the morning, but I bet you have 10 moments throughout the day where you have a minute, whether that's between meetings. Heck, there's a meditation on the app for
00:32:14
Speaker
the bathroom, or when you brush your teeth, or you're stuck in traffic, or you're waiting in line to get your coffee. So I believe that we have a lot of these micro moments throughout the day. And I also know a ton of people, and you might know also a ton of people, Valerie, who have a practice of 10, 20 minutes in the morning. And then by 2pm, like life is crazy.
00:32:37
Speaker
And so what I really want to invite people to do is take whatever practice you have off the mat if you're doing yoga or off the cushion, as we say in meditation. And I want you to weave the practice, incorporate the practice into your life because just doing it is too transactional in the morning if you're not going to bring it forward throughout the day.
00:32:58
Speaker
So for me, that's why we have so many one, two, three and five minute practices because I believe in frequency. I believe in short steps, like little ripples consistently over time and maybe with a little frequency. That's the kind of thing that lead to a prolonged practice or bigger waves that generate more change. So I believe we all have, we all have 10 times throughout the day,
00:33:26
Speaker
where we can slow down and come back to our breath for a minute or two. And I think by doing that, we'll all slow down and we'll begin to hear and see and love each other more. And I think that will lead to more success for people. Certainly, I think it would lead to more happiness. And this is a big one for me, more peace. It upsets me. I get sad when I see violence in the world. And I think if we can see each other and hear each other
00:33:55
Speaker
appreciate or love each other and we can we can understand that regardless of where you live or who you pray to or who you love or who you voted for we all want a good life and we can see the humanity in each other and I think if we do that when we do that we will live in a more peaceful world and I think that's a good thing.
00:34:17
Speaker
That's beautiful. I absolutely love that. And I just think, you know, we live in, I think, a very divisive time politically and otherwise. There's just so much and it's scary and it's stressful and it's hard to see it. And I love the idea of those micro moments and just taking that time because I know I'm someone I could be very patient with certain things. I hate waiting in a line. The one good thing I felt like the pandemic brought was timed entry, but
00:34:47
Speaker
It's something where I get so anxious and thinking about I actually could take it to my breath. It might be even more than one minute. It might be five minutes, but really just grounding myself a little bit. And I find that when I'm actually taking that time for myself, even if it
00:35:03
Speaker
again if it is just a couple of minutes here and there where I remember on Black Friday pre-pandemic when things were extremely hectic panicking from claustrophobia and I brought it back to my breath and that was kind of what saved me in the
Pause Breathe Reflect App
00:35:18
Speaker
moment from I guess bursting into tears in the middle of a mall but
00:35:22
Speaker
It was such a silly thing at the time, but it was so stressful and the breath really has such a power for us. And I think I love the idea of that frequency because for so many of us, it really is a barrier if we think, well, I have to get up earlier, stay up later, add something else to my already busy routine. But there is so much, I almost think of it sometimes in my own day as like dead space in the day where
00:35:47
Speaker
You're just waiting for something or it's something where I would be scrolling. Otherwise, there's not really anything that I would be doing that would be productive. And instead of sitting there and staring at my phone or staring angrily into the back of the head of the person in line or whatever it is.
00:36:06
Speaker
You know, instead being able to kind of take it back to the breath, slow myself down, put myself in a better head space. And then usually when I am in that better head space, I ended up having a great conversation with somebody there or it never makes the day worse. I think slow it down in that sense. I love that. I love that. It never makes the day worse. I like that.
00:36:28
Speaker
If I have permission, I'm going to use that, Valerie. I'll credit you. But I think it's so true. And again, what you're saying is exactly the intent of the app. I don't want to add to anyone's to-do list, right? Because people are very busy. We're way too busy on a whole bunch of a whole bunch.
00:36:50
Speaker
Some of it's really meaningful, but some of it, if we're really honest with ourselves, is that mindless scrolling or other things that really don't move the needle or push the peanut towards our definition of success or happiness. So for me, the app really is about
00:37:05
Speaker
leaving it into your day. So yeah, if you're online or in line waiting, say at Starbucks or wherever you get your coffee, you can do a simple practice where you express loving kindness. You put some good vibes out there to the person at the cash register or your barista. It could be a really cool thing or maybe some nice kind thoughts to the head that's in front of you. The person who's in front of you to say, be very clear with your order so we can move this line, you know, as quickly as possible.
00:37:36
Speaker
It can be whatever, but I'm a big believer like if we can just weave the whole practice and connection to our breath into our days like shopping online. You just talked about Black Friday and that experience you had at the mall is like really human. It's like
00:37:53
Speaker
it gets crazy there, right? There's so many people, everyone's rushing around. So your experience is a human one. So congratulations, we know that you're human, which is really awesome. But we can, we can just like slow things down and get through those moments where we feel a little panicked or we feel the stress building up in our body, wherever we might feel it in our body. Sometimes it's in our chest or sometimes it's in our shoulders or our back. But once we,
00:38:22
Speaker
get connected with our body, we know, okay, I feel a little stressed, it's time to pause, take a breath. And again, the reflection piece is, well, is there another way of looking at this? Is there another way of looking at this moment, right? Is it happening for me, not to me? Or it could be, what's called for now? What's the next best thing I can do?
00:38:44
Speaker
And sometimes it's walking around, sometimes it's sitting, taking a break. It could be anything, but my general philosophy with mindfulness and meditation is it's something that you can carry with you throughout the day. It doesn't have to be done at a luxury spa or a meditation retreat, whether you're
00:39:03
Speaker
at Disney World or New York, Manhattan or out in LA or wherever you happen to be listening to this, I believe you can drop in and connect with your breath. You can have your eyes wide open and still practice like a minute or two of pausing, breathing, and reflecting.
00:39:19
Speaker
I just love how practical that is because like, I love to be able if I were in a stressful meeting to just roll out a yoga mat and really, you know, dive into a practice, but that is not something that we can actually do. I can't do that in the mall when I'm claustrophobic and having sensory overload. I guess I could, I don't know if there would be the physical space to do it, but
00:39:42
Speaker
Something like this, I mean, it is so accessible, we can all do it. And it's something again, that the time commitment is not something that's outrageous. It's not something that we really like, it's not going to add stress to our day. I found that some of the time when I've been very tired, I had COVID about a month and a half ago, and I'm still I've had a little bit of the tired brain fog
00:40:04
Speaker
even, you know, a month and a half later. And I found that when I'm getting really tired, some of the time, like if it's the middle of the day, instead of going into unproductive habits, or maybe unhealthy habits, sometimes I will do a short meditation, a short breathing exercise. And a lot of times that does put my head in a better space. And it is relaxing. But it puts me in a better
00:40:29
Speaker
headspace to make decisions and to just get a little bit clearer. Because I also think that when you're in that stress fight or flight response, and if you're, you know, in that, in that sense, we're usually pretty reactive. And I think that if you don't take that time to slow down and reflect and think about what is the next step and where do I go next,
00:40:49
Speaker
then that's when you go for the unhealthy food or the substance or making the decision that you know is it in alignment with what you actually want. But I think that we do that because we aren't taking that time to slow down and to really listen to ourselves. But it's so much easier to avoid those things when we
00:41:11
Speaker
are really pausing absolutely and then to your point right unfortunately in corporate life you're not going to be able to drop into lizard or pigeon pose during a conference unless you work for a really hip company and if that's the case you might have yoga mats already out there to to be used but to your point is that
00:41:32
Speaker
it's so easy to feel stress and then reach for our unhealthy ways of numbing or easing our stress. So it could be that extra glass of wine. It could be watching TV. It can even be things that seem healthy, but maybe are unhealthy like extreme exercise or work ethic. So there's a lot of things that we can look at in life here in America and say, well,
00:42:00
Speaker
like binge eating not healthy but if you're really getting after it at the gym or you're really working hard sometimes those habits or those reactions to stress may look on the surface as healthy but they could be really unhealthy if they're being used to deal with stress in an unhealthy way. So what we want to try to get to is adaptive ways of dealing with our stress because stress is going to happen
00:42:26
Speaker
We can certainly change our perspective on stress. When we do work out, we're purposely stressing out our bodies in order to grow. So we can look at whatever stress is popping up. We can look at it through that lens if we choose to. But sometimes we can't spin some stress. It happens. That's what life gives us in 2023.
00:42:49
Speaker
So the key is when we slow things down, we can be really thoughtful about, okay, how do I want to deal with my stress? Do I really want to have that Twinkie that tastes pretty good when it's going down? But then 15 minutes later, we are in a shame spiral because we didn't eat healthy, right? Or whatever. So we can, when we slow down and take that moment to come back to our breath, we can say, okay, I know I'm stressed out and here's why I'm stressed out.
00:43:18
Speaker
how do I wish to deal with it? That's the moment of reflection. How do I want to be? What do I want to do or say next? Is there a healthier way of dealing with my stress? So maybe it is doing a yoga practice or now that the weather is changing, getting out in outside into nature and going for a walk or removing yourself from the stressful environment. It could be a whole host of different things, but our breath can be,
00:43:46
Speaker
that tool I like to say that's on our Swiss Army knife that we all carry around with us in our back pocket or our pocketbook. That can be that great reminder to say, okay, I'm feeling something here. I know I'm stressed. It might be a 10 on a scale of 10. So what do I want to do next? What would be the healthiest way for me to deal with my stress? And then over time, as we continue to do this, it starts to become a habit and now we don't even think about it.
00:44:16
Speaker
When we feel stressed, we get outside, or when we feel stressed, we might do a short yoga practice. It could be anything under the sun, but as we do it more, it can become a really healthy habit, and then we don't even think about it. It's just, hey, this is what I do. This is how I deal with my stress, even though I used to deal with my stress in maybe an unhealthy way in the past. Yeah, I think it ties back to that identity piece that you were talking about at the beginning. It becomes your identity.
00:44:45
Speaker
or it becomes a part of your identity and it's something you were a person that does this to ground yourself or to whatever the case may be, but it becomes, yeah, second nature. It's just such an important practice and something that we can all find ways to integrate into the day for you.
00:45:03
Speaker
You got into mindfulness and meditation when you were in the hospital and in that recovery process. So you started there, but how did you go from that to then becoming such a big part of your practice that you've started an app and a whole business around it?
00:45:21
Speaker
like small little ripples over time. So there are two books that were really essential in my recovery. We mentioned one just a minute ago, Victor Frankel's Man's Search for Meaning. I reread it last year as I rode my bike across the country. The other book is written by John Kabat-Dinn.
00:45:41
Speaker
who brought mindfulness-based stress reduction from the East to the West. His book is Full Catastrophe Living. So a friend recommended that book to me. So I read through that. And then I started diving into more information, more study.
00:45:57
Speaker
about mindfulness, meditation, the origins of meditation, did some learning and some study around Buddhism and some of the practices there, those underpinnings that lead us to today. With PauseBreathe Reflect, I make it secular, so I don't really talk about the Buddhist underpinnings on the app because sometimes
00:46:18
Speaker
that can be off-putting to some people. I can certainly talk about it for those people who wish to discuss it, but for me it was that that was the beginning. So John Kabat-Zinn's book, Full Catastrophe Living, and then over time bit by bit I would continue my practice then
00:46:35
Speaker
I got to know Sharon Salzberg and she probably
Journey into Mindfulness
00:46:39
Speaker
is best known for loving kindness meditations and that's become a staple or cornerstone with pause, breathe, reflect. I love that practice. So I just started pulling that thread of like that teacher or that element of mindfulness.
00:46:53
Speaker
then I found out about mindful eating and mindful walking and fast forward 20 some odd years I was like okay now I've spent close to two decades with this practice and at first when I was in corporate life because after my accident I went back to my corporate job but I went back with a different narrative a different game plan
00:47:15
Speaker
But I would not tell anyone I was doing mindfulness or meditation because still back then it was still seeing, seeing us somewhat woo woo. And I was like,
00:47:25
Speaker
I'm not going to bring this up because people are going to worry that I went soft, because I was in a job that was a revenue generating job, sales and marketing. So it was like, go, go, go, go, go. So me getting up on stage talking about, all right, now let's breathe, everyone. Let's chill out. People would have freaked out. At least that was the story I was telling myself. It really was.
00:47:50
Speaker
It wasn't until I left my corporate job and started my entrepreneurial life where I started talking about my practice more openly. And then when COVID hit, I was like, this is a moment for mindfulness. We really do need to slow down. We need to come back to our breath and find a way to heal and get healthier.
00:48:12
Speaker
And I am a big believer that mindfulness can help us enhance our physical and mental wellbeing and wellness.
00:48:21
Speaker
And I really do think what happened over the last three years was a gift. Even though we've gone through great loss and great grief that we've talked about just a few minutes ago, I do believe it was a moment for us to pause, take a breath and really reflect on how do we wish to live? How do we wish to be with each other? What do we want to be doing? Is this really what we want to be doing?
00:48:47
Speaker
and treating each other. I think the answers are pretty clear, but I will also say that I don't have all the answers. There's a lot of unknowing I have. I think
00:48:58
Speaker
all of us have. But I do believe that if we can step in collectively more people, we can tip the scales to a kinder, happier, more peaceful existence with each other. We would slow down, but I think we would be more successful. We would actually get things done faster because we would have space, that space that Victor Franco writes about
00:49:21
Speaker
We would have space to think and make really sound decisions about how we go forward together. So that was the start. It was just those two books, my practice, John Kabat-Zinn's work with MBSR, and then you add 20 years, Valerie, and then it's an overnight success. So that's how it happened.
00:49:43
Speaker
Well, it's amazing. And I so agree with you. I really do think that this is such an important practice and that I think if more people were doing this or even talking about it, but the more that we do this, I think we could, I don't want to say solve all the world's problems at once, but I think getting through a pandemic, I think the challenges that we've had that nobody has all the answers, especially
00:50:05
Speaker
I hate to say unprecedented after the many times we've heard that in the last three years, but it was unprecedented. It's something that we didn't know how to move forward what to do, but I think at least with the right intentions and with the love behind it, I think there would have been less division and I think it's something that we can continue to work towards.
00:50:26
Speaker
I'd love to know too, because you know, you talked about how in 2001, this was not something really people were talking about. And I remember at that time in my life, meditation was that weird thing that my dad did.
00:50:42
Speaker
I mean the way the way that it went like on like this very rough hard to sit on stool so I really was not accessible to me at that age at that time and it was something I kind of forgot about over the years other than the fact that I knew that he was in a better headspace after he after he would do that because 2001 was also I think a really challenging time in the world maybe they're all challenging times in the world right but it's
00:51:03
Speaker
But moving forward, as the acceptance has changed around it, and people more and more, we find the executives, all of these well-respected people that you don't think of as woo woo, which a disclaimer, I think the woo woo is amazing. And I have all the respect for the woo woo. But as people are still kind of warming up to that, I mean, the research is there that mindfulness and meditation
00:51:28
Speaker
people are leading successful lives, people are healthier physically. It really has so many benefits that you really can't dispute it. And so in your work as an executive coach, do you incorporate this mindfulness and meditation and how do we use that for burnout or for even career growth? Yeah, so great question. So I do, I tend to like sneak it in the back door. So a lot of people will hire me as an executive coach,
00:51:56
Speaker
because I've been in the executive suite. So they're like, ah, we want to hire you and speak to our team about change or maybe they hear about my last bad day story. And they bring me in to talk about like what happens when something horrific happens to you, how do you become tenacious and resilient and all that jazz. And you can speak from the corporate perspective and that's why we want to hire you. And I would say, okay, that's cool.
00:52:23
Speaker
And then I know like I got this little secret. And so we have a few sessions and then I'm like, hey, do you have a mindfulness practice? And then, you know, once we have that connection and trust built up, I bring it in through the back door. I will say more and more people to your point, Valerie, are starting to do it. And they recognize the value because there is a wealth of clinical research.
00:52:47
Speaker
out there that shows that mindfulness can be effective on so many different levels. So I believe that corporations would be much healthier. They would have greater employee engagement. We would do more on the diversity, equity, and inclusion front. If mindfulness was also part of the curriculum, part of what was taught and really, this is most important, what's lived.
Mindfulness in Corporate Culture
00:53:15
Speaker
Like we can talk a good talk all day long, but as the cliche goes, you got to walk your talk. So bringing mindfulness into moments before a meeting begins or maybe after a meeting begins.
00:53:29
Speaker
or during lunch or what have you, just making a part of your culture, I think can bring together a stronger culture, a more trustworthy culture where people hear and see each other and really appreciate each other. And when leaders practice mindfulness, they can be more thoughtful with how they communicate out to their employees.
00:53:52
Speaker
how they think about very complex problems that they face. They can make better decisions. So I think that ultimately leads to better career growth. And what I
00:54:04
Speaker
tell people after a few more sessions is that I know your company hired me to be your coach or your company asked me to do this talk, but the things that we're going to talk about are going to help you most importantly at home. So the testimonials I get that I cherish the most is when one of my clients, partner or spouse, husband or wife sends me a note and says that
00:54:30
Speaker
Hey, I just want to let you know that Elizabeth or Jeff, they're better at home because of the work you guys are doing together. Because everything sort of blends, we can call it holistic. But the fact that we can slow down and pause, breathe, reflect at work and listen better, listen mindfully, connect better at work.
00:54:53
Speaker
All those skills, all that knowledge can be used at home because one day we're going to hang up our corporate cleats. The job will be done. You know, we won't have to check our email the first thing we do when we wake up in the morning. And what we have left once that career is over is our family and our friends, the people who hopefully love us even up to that point, right?
00:55:19
Speaker
And so I am a firm believer that if you want that next phase of your life to be really rewarding, rich and happy, you have to put in good deposits now before you retire.
00:55:34
Speaker
And it's showing up mindfully at home. So you hear and see and appreciate your partner and you hear and see and appreciate your kids and you're kind to your dog and your cat or whatever fur baby or creature you have at the house. I think that's what makes life so meaningful. It's like when you can have peace and awareness and focus at work.
00:55:57
Speaker
But also all the love and the kindness and warmth at home. I love that. And I think that that's so important, especially because, you know, when it comes down to it, we spend a third, maybe more than a third of our lives at the office. So that really is trickling into the other parts of the day.
00:56:15
Speaker
I do have to say, I think when you're with your animals, that brings you into a state of mindfulness and just being so present. Maybe because in my family's case, the cavalier is always putting something in his mouth, so you have to pay attention. But I think seeing the pure, animals just bring you so into the present moment. So I always just...
00:56:34
Speaker
I was actually thinking about my parents puppy during my gratitude meditation earlier today that I did from your app but I do think you're so right even just with the leaders that you have whether you're in that leadership role or whether you're reporting to somebody I know that I've let my day sometimes be defined by how that leader is approaching a project and if they're in a total panic then I sometimes absorb that and I take that with me throughout the day and then other times I
00:57:03
Speaker
you know, you have the leader that approaches something very methodically, like, okay, we're going to take a breath, we're going to take this one step at a time, and it permeates to the rest of your team and to the people working on the team. Now, for me, I can take that responsibility and think, okay, well, this is the
00:57:18
Speaker
the reality, but I can, you know, take that responsibility for myself. I can take that moment to have that mindfulness in between meetings or whenever it is. But I think so often when we are in that role or whenever I've been in a leadership role to really trying to apply
00:57:34
Speaker
approach whatever the challenge is with taking that step back and taking that mindfulness for myself so that my anxiety around it that I could be feeling if I wasn't taking that moment isn't again permeating to the rest of the people on my team. And I think when your leader has that approach and can really again take that step back, it makes such a huge difference. Oh, absolutely. So I call that the ripple effect.
00:58:02
Speaker
I am obviously I didn't coin that term. A lot of people will talk about that, but when I was growing up, my grandmother in New Hampshire, we.
00:58:10
Speaker
We called her Grammy in the mountains. She had this pond out back of her, of her farmhouse. And I would skip stones back there, like trying to like make ripples on the pond. And for me, that was the first notion of energy. I didn't know it was energy when I was a kid, I was like seven, eight years old. But this whole concept of like ripples are like energy. And so as people, we're basically energy. And so however we show up, it will create a ripple. So if we're feeling irritated or pissed off or
00:58:40
Speaker
upset about whatever, that energy will flow out.
00:58:44
Speaker
if we're feeling joy and happiness and love, that will ripple out. And we all feel this if we've ever been to a concert and everyone starts to sing every lyric to every song, that unity, that sync up, that's an energy, that goose bumpy moment, or watching your favorite team play sports, you're in the arena. There's an energy from the crowd that can inspire the team and the team's energy can inspire the crowd. So our energy travels.
00:59:14
Speaker
And when we're a conscious leader, the good leaders that you're talking about, when you're conscious, you're consciously choosing, okay, how do I wish to show up? What's needed in this moment? Like, what's my energy like? And what do I wish to ripple out into the world? And heck, we're gonna all have, as I mentioned earlier, we're gonna have some bad moments where we are reacting instead of being thoughtful. Those happen. We're human.
00:59:44
Speaker
And hopefully we can all give ourselves a little bit of grace when we have one of those bad moments. But when we're intentional about how we want to live, intentional about how we wish to work, we're going to have better moments where we show up with intention and really understanding how we want to ripple out into the world. And that has a fundamental impact
01:00:10
Speaker
in a good way on company culture and community.
01:00:14
Speaker
and how those companies interact with their full employees and all their customers. I completely agree with that. I think what kind of legacy do you want to leave? And that longer term thought, whether it's in the far out future or just for today, I mean, that's so impactful for us and can really drive how we approach a challenge or a situation or another person. So I think that intentional living is so huge. Attention is my year for
01:00:42
Speaker
2023. And in our rapid fires, I'm going to be asking you your, your word as well. Rapid fire, the sweat beads are building. Oh, yes. I hope I get them right. Oh, yeah. Well, every answer is pretty much right, which is great. Yes. I would love to ask you those questions if you're ready for them. No pressure. I'm ready. I'm ready, Valerie. Rapid fire away.
01:01:09
Speaker
All right. What is your favorite self care practice right now? Well, I bought a new loofah for the shower. It's pretty good. It's a little rough, but like, I feel like I'm just rubbing off all the dead skin cells from the winter as I, as we welcome spring. So right now that's like my favorite new thing. The exfoliation is really nice. Yeah. Yeah. Getting you some like good skincare.
01:01:38
Speaker
going before we hit spring and we're out there in shorts and t-shirts and all that jazz oh yeah that's awesome now tell me your one word theme for this year so mine is about connection and community
01:01:53
Speaker
Because I realized over the last three years, like I miss being with people. I think hooking up virtually is great. It allows us to do something like we're doing tonight, you know, talking about an important topic about mental health and mindfulness and all that good stuff. But.
01:02:11
Speaker
I really, I really have made a commitment this year to put myself in more community events.
Valerie on Connection and Community
01:02:19
Speaker
Some are still online, but a lot of them are in person. So I'm trying to do more of that to build different connection and have a greater sense of community. And with that, hopefully a sense of belonging as I travel through the year.
01:02:32
Speaker
That's fantastic. I can definitely relate on that. I felt, I think many of us were so isolated for such a long time. And I, as an introvert, didn't realize what an impact it was having on me, you know, negative impact on my health and how much I missed meaningful connections and spending time with people in person. So I think that's so great that that's something that you're bringing back into the year and able to really prioritize and be intentional about that's,
01:02:59
Speaker
so, so important. Yeah, I can't. I'm like, so far it's going well for the year and there's some
01:03:07
Speaker
trips coming up, some conferences I get to go to that I'm really, I'm really stoked about. So I can't wait to see what the rest of the year brings. That's awesome. Well, I'm excited for you. And on a very related note, what are you most looking forward to right now? Well, there's a couple things. So I have another big bike trip this year.
Honoring Memories through Cycling
01:03:27
Speaker
So last year I rode across the country with my wife driving the RV.
01:03:32
Speaker
This year I'm doing the Empire State Trail, which is a bike trail that goes from Battery Park at the tip of Manhattan, all the way up to Albany and over to Buffalo Niagara Falls. It's a place where the area around Rochester, New York, it sort of, well, not sort of, it does, like it hugs the Erie Canal.
01:03:55
Speaker
that goes from Albany to Buffalo. So it was one of the favorite places that my mom used to ride her bike. So I'm going to do it right around the time of her passing to celebrate her life and her ripple.
01:04:09
Speaker
So I'm riding from Battery Park to Buffalo and Buffalo back to Battery Park. So I'm so looking forward to that. That's going to be in June. And then in May, I'm doing one of our famous ripple challenges.
Mental Health Challenge in May
01:04:22
Speaker
In May, of course, it's Mental Health Awareness Month. So we're doing a ripple challenge. It's all designed to do little things, small ripples each day around movement and healthy eating and mindfulness and gratitude and generosity.
01:04:38
Speaker
didn't just name a few things, but each thing, each part of the challenge is really practical and reachable and
01:04:47
Speaker
collectively over the whole month of May, when we do them all together, it can help us enhance our physical and mental wellbeing. And we can also recognize May as Mental Health Awareness Month. So we're doing that come May 1st. So I'm really looking forward to that ripple challenge because I think it's, well, actually I know it's a really healthy thing to do. And like most of the ripple challenges that we've done in the past, it will change people's lives and
01:05:14
Speaker
that's a really cool thing to say and get to do. So I'm totally excited for that. That is so amazing and I'm definitely going to have to get the information for that for me because I love being a part of those types of challenges. Just joining with other people that are
01:05:30
Speaker
wanting to make the world a better place, wanting to improve their own health and wellness. And I really do think and I think that's a big reason why I do this show is because I think that there are so many ways that we can better our lives through very small shifts, very
01:05:46
Speaker
you know meaningful shifts that don't take that much time out of our day and I think to do that during such an important month mental health is more than ever I think people are finally it's always been important and I think now with the pandemic
01:06:02
Speaker
workplaces and the world's at large and now CDC recognizing burnout as an actual condition. I think it's finally really getting the credit it deserves for the effect it has in our lives and I think to really place that emphasis on mental health and
01:06:23
Speaker
joining together in this community, whether online or, you know, if we have people in person to join with us. But I think what a cool challenge and what a great way to really make a difference and give back to the world. Yeah, I can't wait for Valerie and what you said about mental health. I think it's I think it's one of the bright spots
01:06:42
Speaker
of the pandemic. I think again, we've talked about this during our conversation. We've lost a lot because of the pandemic, but one thing that was brought forward that we can now talk about more openly is mental health.
01:06:57
Speaker
and mental wellness. And I think that's super important. So we can speak holistically about who we are as people. It's not just our physical health that we should be focused in on. It should be both physical, emotional, mental, the whole person. And because when we don't have our health, we can't show up and ripple
01:07:19
Speaker
the kind of ripple we wish to ripple into the world. So spot on with your comments. And that's why we do these things is try to make the world just a little bit better tomorrow than it is today. And I'm really lucky. I feel really grateful. I went through a whole bunch in my life going through that accident and my career to be at this moment in 2023 and to be able to do this type of work and help people pause, re-reflect and really show up.
01:07:49
Speaker
fully like they want to and live with openness. It's a really great feeling and I feel very honored that I get to do it. Well, I want to thank you for the work that you're doing and I'm truly inspired by your story and by the way that you're helping others and bringing so much goodness into the world.
Gratitude and Recovery Journey
01:08:08
Speaker
And I do want to point out to the listeners as well, in case they didn't catch that you are riding a bike again and doing the thing that you love and that's
01:08:16
Speaker
just so amazing that I think that the positive attitude does make a difference in anyone's recovery and in any healing journey. And I know that there's so much that is outside of our control, but I'm so glad that you're able to do that again. And really, you know, that's still such an important part of your life. And then getting to again, bring all of these
01:08:39
Speaker
wonderful things into the world and helping people to deal with the uncomfortable or difficult situations and the difficult feelings. Oh, thanks for that Valerie. Yeah. So yeah, I am riding my bike again. My medical team is a little bewildered, like I've made such a...
01:08:58
Speaker
such a strong recovery. They're really stoked and happy for me, for the family. There's a term called mudita, which is a joyous feeling we feel when we sit with others, other people's joy. And so I feel a lot of joy for the type of progress I've made and the fact that I can get back on my bike and go to amazing places and ride it. But my healthcare team also has that feeling of joy and
01:09:25
Speaker
What I try to do with every ride is let people know. I try to do it through living and role modeling that yeah, really hard things are going to happen to people in life. Hopefully they don't happen to you if you're out there listening, but bad moments will happen and we get to choose how we respond to them and through a positive mindset and a lot of help and support.
01:09:50
Speaker
I'm here today and still riding and I want to demonstrate what's possible with a healthy mindset and the power of mindfulness and also having people in your life who bring out the best in you because I have not done this alone. It's taken a whole group of people.
01:10:10
Speaker
Even though I'm talking to you here, there's probably 500 to 1000 people that could probably join this conversation because they've all had some type of impact on my life and I'm really grateful for them as well. Well, that is truly amazing. And again, I really would love to thank you for all of the work that you're doing for
01:10:29
Speaker
putting this incredible app into the world for helping others and really rippling something that is just so wonderful and you're making the world a better place and I am so grateful for that. Tell our listeners just where they can find you and connect with you if they would like to learn more.
01:10:45
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for thanks again, Valerie for having me on. So the best way is that people can reach me at pause breed reflect calm, you can check out the app there and some of our swag. You can also find me on Instagram at pause breed reflect and then for all those corporate warriors out there. You can also find me on LinkedIn.
01:11:08
Speaker
Awesome. I will make sure to link all of that in the show notes and I'll make sure to link the challenge as well. I think that that is going to be such an amazing way to kick off the month of May and again, really honor our mental health and our physical health as well. So I just want to say again, thank you so much for coming on the show, sharing your story with us and
01:11:28
Speaker
sharing your wisdom with us and for the work that you're doing. Well, thanks, Valerie. I wish you all the best. You got a great show. So keep doing what you're doing. You are putting a fantastic ripple out into the world. And I feel honored that I got to be part of your community. And many thanks to the listeners. I hope everyone got a pearl or two out of our conversation.
01:11:49
Speaker
I loved hearing Michael's story and I find his positivity and enthusiasm contagious. I really do believe in the power of creating a ripple in the world. And I think the work he's doing is truly changing lives. I'm also a really huge fan of the pause, breathe, reflect app. And I love how it makes mindfulness and meditation so accessible, even if you only have a few moments throughout the day.
01:12:09
Speaker
I have linked Michael's information in the show notes, so make sure you connect with him and check out his app to learn more. If you enjoyed this episode of the podcast, it would mean the world to me if you would share it with a friend that you think might benefit from it as well. One of the best ways to lend your support to the show is to leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts.
01:12:26
Speaker
It helps us reach even more people and it really broadens our impact. If you have a topic you'd like to learn more about, you can drop me a line at Mallory at wellnessandwonderlust.net or on Instagram at wellnessandwonderlustblog. I am so grateful to you for being a part of this incredible community. And I want to thank you for sharing this part of your day with me. Tune in next week for another amazing conversation. And until then, have a fabulous day.