Health, Healing, and Entrepreneurship: Allison Steinke Joins the Conversation

Allison Steinke, a holistic nutritionist and health coach, shares her journey of starting over after leaving an abusive marriage while raising 11 children. She opens up about shifting from copywriting back to coaching, reframing mindset, and learning to embrace authenticity in business and health. We also discuss balancing energy vs. time management, social drains, and finding strength in healing and self-worth.
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Speaker 2: [00:00:00] Hi, my name is Allison Steinke. I am a holistic nutritionist and a health coach, and I am a mother of 11 children who I've recently had to start over, because I was in an abusive marriage. And I am restarting my career as a coach. I did my training years ago, but I'm niching down, getting really serious about this, and I have a story to tell.

And I am very excited to share my story with you and to help as many women as possible who are in the position of having to restart, step back and take a look at their life, who are ready to move forward with their health and mindset and whatever that life looks for you as an individual.

Speaker: So how, after leaving the situation you were in, how did you get started again with coaching? What made you decide that was what you were gonna go with? 

Speaker 2: I'll start a little bit back here. A friend of mine who is [00:01:00] a physician, she asked if I would work for her as a health coach.

She was gonna start a holistic fertility clinic, and that excited me and it was right up my alley. So I got my certifications and then she never started the clinic. She might in the future, but it's not in the works right now. But I just had my 11th child when I was certified, my husband was making money, paying the bills, wasn't really something I had a lot of time to focus on, and I never planned on marketing myself and starting a business from scratch.

So I just had a few clients, but it kind of just sat on the side for the most part. And then, the other piece too was, I was overweight because I had turned to food to deal with the drama. And I was embarrassed to tell people that I was a health coach because I was overweight and felt like a hypocrite.

And then fast forward, I ended up having to leave my husband. And the first thing I thought I would do, because I didn't feel like it was in a place to be coaching others, and I wanted to work early in the morning, [00:02:00] I thought I wanted to be a copywriter because I enjoy psychology, I enjoy writing.

I feel like I'm. Not bad at persuasive writing. So I poured myself into copywriting, put many, many hours into that. But I only wanted to write for coaches, and I realized that was a fairly saturated industry. And the idea of writing for somebody to sell razors or soap or something, it just, I couldn't do it because I wanted to make a difference.

I wanted to help people and I was passionate about coaching. Funny thing is I ended up with a client by accident, a coaching client. I was trying to, do some writing for her and she's like, no, no, I want you to health coach for me. So I got back into it because of her and I'm like, oh yeah, this is what I was made for.

This is what I love doing. This is my purpose. Why in the world am I writing? And I completely switched gears and got back into health coaching and I have not looked back. I am [00:03:00] loving it. It aligns with who I am. It aligns with my gifts. It's what I wanna do.

Speaker: So what was your biggest hurdle to get over when you were starting to coach again?

Speaker 2: I would say mindset, and finding my. Methods of marketing that lined with my energy and also the people that I should be serving. And that was something that took a little bit of time and a little bit of refining and a little bit of back and forth to try and fit into that groove and figure out my story, my gifts, what I can bring to the world.

And, yeah, it was just a process of time and a feedback and of realizing, who my ideal client was and where they were and if they were even looking for coaching services. So I'm continuing [00:04:00] to, clean up my message if you could say that, to try and reach my ideal client.

Speaker: How have your views on mindset changed? 

Speaker 2: I used to, my dad used to call me the Frustrated Entrepreneur because as long as I can remember from a young age, I was coming up with business ideas, and then as soon as I found a reason why I didn't think they would work, I just said, oh, it's not gonna work.

And then I scrapped the whole thing instead of figuring out a way through. So there was some pivotal moments and some big changes after my husband and I separated. One of them I told myself, failure's not an option anymore. That's not an option. I have to do this. I have to succeed. And so when I came up against a challenge, I just plowed through.

I just figured out a way through it, figured out a way around it, put the time in, ask for help, figured out a plan. Chat. GPT has been great because I'm not very [00:05:00] good with technology. So say step by step, tell me how to do this with this platform, with this website, whatever. And that's been a big help to me.

But just I've hired a little bit of help here and there, but hardly anything because I don't really have much of a budget for that. I always had limiting beliefs too, like I can't do this because, or I'm not good at this, or people wouldn't wanna hear what I have to say, or, I'm not perfect, therefore I can't proceed with X, Y, and Z.

And so I've had to really reframe my thoughts instead of saying, I'm not perfect. This, therefore I shouldn't do it. I tell myself nobody was perfect at it. It doesn't mean I don't have something valuable to offer. And just reminding myself of when I have been of value to people, when I've been able to help them, when I'm coaching and I see just the tears or the light come on, I go back to those moments in my mind and say, no, I have something to offer and this is my path.

And [00:06:00] so every time I come up against some kind of limiting belief, I'm like, no, I cannot entertain these thoughts. I gotta find a way through it. I have to change the way I think. I have to change the way I word these things. I practice gratitude. Enjoy the journey. That was another thing I always thought.

Oh, the mountaintop is so high and the goal is the mountain. It's the top of the mountain. No, the goal was never the mountain, the top of the mountain. The goal is the journey is on the way up. It's enjoying the climb, it's taking those steps, the fresh air, feeling good about it, making the changes. I still have some weight to lose.

I've lost a lot of weight, but I have to just shut down that negative voice that says, people won't wanna hear me, speak if they see me being overweight. No, I have a story and I'm proud of my story and I'm proud of how far I've come. And it's okay that I'm overweight, because I am doing all the things.

I am eating well, and I am exercising [00:07:00] and I'm doing all the things that gets you to the point of being thin, even though I'm not quite there. It's maybe I'm more relatable that way too. I don't know. 

Speaker: I think it is hearing somebody, I mean, look, I'm not thin myself, as you can obviously tell, but, for me, seeing an influencer who weighs 10 pounds, talking about how they struggle every day to exercise is like, oh yeah, right.

Whatever. Oh, I don't care. You annoy me. But, seeing somebody who is overweight, trying and succeeding at losing weight, that for me is a higher motivator because, the 20 something year old who's never had to go through anything who doesn't have any kids and doesn't understand that your body changes after having even one kid and saying, oh, see,

I can do nothing or I could pretend to lift [00:08:00] weights and I'm still, this skinny thing is really frustrating because you're like, you know what? I could never do that. I've always been, the more, thicker thighs and stuff, even when I weighs semi in range. So them influencer people just annoy me.

And so for me anyway, it would take somebody who's been through trying and failing and trying again to lose weight and then succeeding even in, an ongoing process. It would mean more to me than that. 

Speaker 2: I try and be real within reason when I post on Instagram and Facebook, there's one post where I had gotten some horrible news and I was.

Devastated. And I like, what do I do with all this pain and anxiety and frustration and emotions. So I went for a run and I took a [00:09:00] picture of myself and I looked heartbroken, but I felt so much better. And so I posted that and that got a lot of use because I was just being real. And I posted another one yesterday, like, should I even post this?

I look so tired. You know what? I'm tired some days and that's okay. So I just posted anyway because I wanted people to have the content and have the information that I was sharing with them. 

Speaker: I think a lot of people are done with seeing the perfect person, however, that ends up looking like the perfect mom whose house is super clean all the time, because that's a lie.

Unless you're that strict and dude, somebody needs to check on your kids. Right? Or the person who cooks this huge, huge dinner and says, look, I did it all in one pan, no cleanup. Everything's, clean. Yeah, no, that's because for the 15 steps before it got in [00:10:00] that baking pan, like you washed behind yourself, you washed the dishes.

It's called clean as you Go. Anybody who's ever worked in a kitchen will tell you that's exactly how you're supposed to do it. But they use it as a haha. If you can't do this in one pan, then you're a failure. And I think a lot of people have keyed in on that and are looking for the more authentic posts where, like with you running, you look heartbroken, but you're still doing.

Right. You're not sitting on the couch with a bag of Cheetos, although nobody would fault you if you did when, extremely bad news happens. You stumble a little bit. That makes you human, right? There's a lot of not human people on social media nowadays and their perfect life.

Look, if you actually think somebody's life is perfect, then you obviously don't know them at all. [00:11:00] Nobody's perfect ever in any situation. 

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker: Some people handle difficulties differently and they come out, the other end. Having grown stronger without having, relied on anybody. Those are rare me.

Everybody's gonna know if I'm going through something hard because I am mouthy as heck. I'll be like, why do I have to do this? I don't even wanna do this. Why do I have to do this? And my friend will be like, because you have to. Fine. I'm doing it

with much complaining. I'm doing it. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. We all have our own process, our own way of getting there and doing that thing, whatever that thing is. And that thing can be different for different people. I think we see these perfect models on Instagram, like, oh, she's a health coach, or whatever she [00:12:00] does and she does this and that.

The other thing, that means I have to do the same thing to achieve the same results. But I think we so often. Forget the fact that we are unique individuals, and I'm very passionate about this. Like everyone is created differently and we all have different gifts, and I will fail if I try and be like you.

Mm-hmm. And you'll fail if you try and be like me. And I tried exercising regularly at this time that I thought just made sense in my day, and I realized it made sense as far as scheduling went, but it did not make sense as far as my energy flow went. So all I had to do was change up the time of day and I loved exercise.

Now it is my therapy. It was actually, I went to the gym last night and worked really hard as a treat to myself. And it's not just because I should be doing these things, I found what I love about it. And that's gonna look different for everybody. Mm-hmm. Not everyone's gonna love lifting weights.

That's okay, because there's other ways to be healthy. Lifting weights [00:13:00] is good, but there's other resistance training. There's other things that you can find. And I like to help my clients find that, they're individual gifting and find what works for them, because that will be sustainable.

Anyone can stay on a schedule and say, eat this, do this exercise, whatever for four weeks. But then as soon as they're done with the accountability, they'll just slowly drop off and that will be the end of it. But finding what works for each individual is the key. 

Speaker: So how is your mental health doing after all of that? 

Speaker 2: Pretty good. After all that. As in bad marriage or not today. 

Speaker: I have a bad background myself, and so I do know not any kind of specifics of yours, but I do know coming out of a bad situation can be very hard on mental health.

Speaker 2: For me, I often think in pictures, and [00:14:00] this is the picture that I have, when I was with my husband, I have this picture of like being in a road and there's this manhole, and I'm trying to get on the manhole and he's shoving the cover on me and I try and reach my hands out and he.

Shoves it on my hand. All I wanted was air and light and to live and breathe. So now the manhole cover's gone. I get to show up how I want. I get to be who I want. I get to do what I think is best. And there was a period of grief, like the most intense grief I've ever known. Not because I lost him necessarily, but because I lost this idea of a perfect family.

My children basically no longer had a father. They still have a father. He is just not around much. He's not really part of the family. I lost a lot of things that I had to grieve. And I got sick and tired of crying. There was so many tears. You know what? I had not cried for so long that I couldn't cry.

I had to retrain myself to [00:15:00] cry. And after the grief, I am happier than I've ever been in my life. I am so happy and there are hard days. Absolutely. There are struggles. Absolutely. But I'm happy to be alive. I enjoy my life. I enjoy my kids. I enjoy what I do. And when I do come up against a problem, I ask myself, okay, what's going on?

Am I depressed? Am I grieving? Usually I forget to ask myself if it's hormonal. Sometimes I'm like, oh, that's what was wrong. And then figure out what the best thing to do and how to get through that. It might be do I need to call a friend? Do I need to go work out? Do I need to journal?

Do I need to sit on the couch with a bag of Doritos? And I think just being aware and figuring out what you need. That changes, from day to day, from month to month, and then finding out what you need and fighting for it. 

It was the [00:16:00] beginning of all my healing. I felt like, and this was a few years probably before I left my husband, I felt like God couldn't love me because I was not perfect. And even my husband couldn't love me because I wasn't perfect.

So how could a perfect God love me? And I told my counselor this, and she had me read Psalm 1 39, and it's all about how God knows us intimately and how he created us. And he knows every little detail of our lives. And only someone who loves you immensely cares about that many details of your life.

And it finally stuck. I knew intellectually that God loved me, but in my heart, I couldn't believe it. I finally accepted it. And that was the foundation of my healing. Because if God loved me, I had worth, if God loved me, I should be treated with respect and dignity. I should have [00:17:00] boundaries for myself.

I should not put up with the treatment I had been putting up with. And I deserved to be treated with respect and with love, and. Without that understanding. And it's so hard when you're in an abusive relationship too, right? Like your abuser just chips away at your self-worth and makes you feel like nothing.

Mm-hmm. And so without understanding your own worth, it's pretty hard to move on and to move past and to take this necessary steps that you need to take and to know that you deserve to take those steps for your wellbeing. Actually in my case, I mean for your kids' wellbeing too, right? I'll won't go into all of that, but, that was, I would say, the foundation of all my healing and then understanding, like I told you I went through that period of grief afterwards.

But then it kind of just hit me one day, like I cannot. Give my [00:18:00] kids a whole family, whole traditional family with a father and mother. But my family was never really whole anyway. It was always broken. Even though we were all there, all the members of the family were there. But what I could do is I could give them one healthy parent.

And that was another really pivotal moment, because I said, okay, I have to be healthy for my kids because I can do that. That's in my control. So I asked myself a lot of questions. Everyone should do this. What do I need to do to be healthy? First thing came to mind was sleep. I'm a much nicer person when I sleep, so I make sure sometimes, I mean, life happens.

We don't always get eight hours of sleep, but that's a priority for me. That's really, really important to make sure that I get eight hours of sleep. I have a schedule I like to stick to. If I go to bed late, I will wake up a little bit later to get my sleep in. And then of course, nutrition.

And that's when I curved the nighttime [00:19:00] stacking because I relied on food in order to calm down enough that I could sleep. It was a stress reliever, it was a numbing drug. So I started working out, that's when I started working out in the evenings too, and I found I slept a lot better. And then it also regulates your hunger.

I had something heavy in protein if I was hungry so that I wouldn't have the urge to snack. And I changed my schedule so that I wouldn't be up late by myself reaching for the snacks. And they weren't necessarily unhealthy. It's just you can eat a lot of the right thing and it can be wrong because of the volume.

Anyway. And then, yeah, so exercise, nutrition, mindset. I'm still working on my me time. People ask about me time. But honestly.

My favorite me time is working out. Like I will dance under the Stars by myself. One time I was dancing out under the stars [00:20:00] and the Northern Lights crept out and we were dancing together and it's incredibly healing thing to do. So listening to my loud emotional music and working out is like, that's my me time.

That makes me feel rejuvenated. Anyway, I went on and on about that. But yeah, those were two pretty big keys in my own healing and recognizing my uniqueness and working with my uniqueness. And I think I am neurodivergent and that makes it, it makes us, we have a harder time just doing the things on our list.

It is very, very difficult for us. And so like with the copywriting. What I felt like I couldn't, I physically couldn't write unless it meant something I really couldn't. And so I had to work with my energy instead of against it. And so that's really actually been a benefit to me, I guess, in a lot of ways, because that's become very important to me and that's something I feel like I can help other [00:21:00] people achieve as well instead of just checking off the boxes on a list.

Speaker 3: Hey everyone. Thanks for sticking with us. Before we dive into our next topic, I just wanna take a quick moment to remind you two who like this video, subscribe to our channel and hit that notification bell. That way you'll always be the first to know when a new episode drops and we want to hear from you.

What topics are you most excited about? Drop your thoughts in. The comments below. Your feedback helps us create content that you love. We've got some exciting stuff coming your way, so don't miss out. Now let's switch gears and jump into our next discussion. I.

Speaker: I'm going to do energy management versus time management in business. So time management, you focus on the schedule and prioritizing tasks within the hours that you are going to work.

Energy management, you [00:22:00] prioritize task based on your energy levels. So if you wake up first thing in and you're like me and want to kill everybody who talks to you, maybe first thing in the morning isn't the time for you to be doing certain things. But if you wake up in the morning and you can get yourself going, maybe that is the time for you to, do all of your, journaling.

And what else are they saying nowadays that you're supposed to be doing first thing in the morning 

Speaker 2: exercise? I don't know 

Speaker: guess. Like journaling, exercising, doing those mindful exercises where you're basically singing kumbaya for a couple minutes by yourself? I don't know. I don't do any of that.

I'm a normal person. Actually, I am the farthest thing from normal. Please don't actually take that to heart. Time management helps with productivity, but doesn't account for where your energy is. So you could be saying that you'll [00:23:00] have a meeting with somebody at five o'clock, you're so tired you can't keep your eyes open by four 30 in the day.

So now what are you gonna do? Well, he should have been a different time of day than five o'clock and second. I don't know, go get some caffeine if it affects you. It doesn't affect me, which is like so sad. I could drink an energy drink and go to bed. Not helpful. Energy management says that recognizes that not all hours are equally productive.

So for me, anytime before noon. Is usually less productive than any time afternoon, just because I am fighting, being awake with every ounce of my being. I fight to fall asleep and then because I have to take meds to help me with that, I take a sleeping [00:24:00] pill, which is literally the only way to knock me out.

And so I end up the next morning coming out of, Ashton death. I sound like an imagined dragon song. The that beginning noise that he makes at that song. The, yeah, it's completely me. First thing in the morning, I'm like, I'm awake. Okay, now what do I gotta do? I do usually hit the ground running, but it's very un, un enthusiastically.

And if I woke up because somebody called me, there is hell to pay. Why are you doing this to me? You should know me if you have my phone number not to call this early. Time management if done wrong, can lead to burnout if overscheduled without considering where your energy is. So if you're scheduling yourself, if you look at my schedule right now, it's a try to burn me out.

It's really trying [00:25:00] to, I put out a post on Facebook and I put up a post in an, or I had somebody feature me in their newsletter to get guests here on my podcast. And, I have two podcasts scheduled today. So after this one I have to go record another one. And, that's been happening for the last couple weeks.

I am. Enthusiastic and grateful for the responses that I got from both, but I am looking forward to getting through all of it. Probably being done with my podcast for the year at some point.

Time management relies on calendars to-do list and deadlines to maximize efficiency, which to-do lists only count if you use them. I am of the mind that I write, what I need to do on a piece of paper. Okay. Electronically [00:26:00] a remarkable, I put all my stuff on my remarkable, but, I don't have like a list that says this is what I have to do because I won't necessarily pay attention to that.

I write it down so I'll remember, and then once it's in my head, I could go ahead and get everything done.

Energy management encourages, breaks, movement and self-care to promote peak performance.

If you are encouraging yourself to take breaks, so me, I have time baked into all my appointments so that after I'm done with the appointment, I can get up and just get up for a minute.

Because if I stay seated all day with all my autoimmunes, I will not be a happy camper by the time to go to bed. 'cause I'll be as stiff as a board and just about as energized as one. So

I usually [00:27:00] take, two to five minutes to just kind of walk even if I stay in my room. 'cause I know my next appointment is in two minutes, just move around for a second. Otherwise, my knees start aching and my hips and my back, it just all goes to heck in a hand basket. It says time management often promotes multitasking, which can reduce focus and effectiveness.

I disagree with that. I can multitask. I don't usually do more than two things at a time, but like I'll answer a phone while still doing something on the computer or stuff like that because if I don't, then I'm not gonna have any time for anything. There's just stuff has to get done. So I am of the mind that you're supposed to use both time management and energy management at the same time.

So you don't wanna strictly do it by time management. 'cause then you're [00:28:00] gonna fill your calendar up and not have any wiggle room to be able to do anything but what's happening on your calendar. But at the same time, you have to recognize that there's going to be a schedule. You can't just get rid of the schedule altogether.

Your schedule is what keeps you doing the things that need to be done. They need to be done. You have to do them. This is the time you've laid out. But the key is to schedule when you are, best at doing things, maybe you schedule those boring business meetings first thing in the morning because you don't need to be anything but half dead because you have a way to take, notes for you, right?

Record the meeting, shove it into the thing that says meet, meeting notes or whatever. I don't know. Different people do it [00:29:00] different ways. You do that in the morning when you have barely any energy, and then towards the middle and end of the day, you actually do the work when you know you're gonna be the most focused and the you have the most energy and you're ready to go and do that works best for me.

On days where your calendar seems to be filling up quickly, if you use an outside calendar. So I use Teddy Cal now to schedule appointments. Obviously that's how you got here. And so people can schedule with me. I finally figured out that I can tell it how many of a certain appointment I want per day.

So last week I had a bunch of 10, 15 minutes in a day, which is very not productive days because they were spaced out enough [00:30:00] that I just couldn't get anything done. You just get started on something and then you were back in another 15 minute meeting, and then you get started on it again and oops, gotta go into a meeting.

But I was able to cut it down so that I have five of those a day. And then I figured out that doing three podcasts in a day was way too exhausting. So I switched it and now I do two a day, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And so that way I can have room around. And my podcast recordings, which are scheduled Thursday, Friday, Saturday, are scheduled later in the day.

They're not, nobody is getting ahold of me at 9:00 AM to do a podcast because my sinus happy, would have a field day with that. I'd sound like a dude half the time and I'm not into it.

So I know for myself that for podcasting, I have to go [00:31:00] later in the day for them. I actually semi sound female. I don't know exactly how female I sound. I hate my voice actually. So there's a problem when I'm editing. 

Speaker 2: That's always a struggle, right? It's always something I think we all have to work through is the sound of our own voice.

Speaker: Yeah. 

Speaker 2: Before cell phones and people would call the landline, I would raise my voice so that people wouldn't think I was my husband. Hello.

The funny thing is though, I'm a soprano. 

Speaker: Yeah. I used to be and then I started smoking. Don't do that. Kids at lower my voice. You don't only want to schedule things in your energy spots because for one, that sounds way too woo woo for me. And like, oh, I'm feeling the energy of Sagittarius [00:32:00] today, so I can't take any of these meetings.

I don't know what the crap that means, but yeah, that's probably a crap excuse. Just saying, astrology is a thing I guess, but I don't actually think that it means anything because then what? A million people are all gonna have a bad day on Tuesday because Aries is in retrograde. Like, what the crap is that mean?

That means you're not special and everybody is special in their own special way. We're all special snowflakes. But we're all different, right? We have, experiences that are similar. Like I have experiences that sound similar to what you've gone through. No, we're not gonna start getting into it.

'cause if we start doing that, that's a whole different kind of podcast right there. That's a whole different kind of meeting right there. But we are unique in how we dealt with it, how we got out of it, when we got out of it, that kind of situation. [00:33:00] So, while you may be doing the same thing somebody else has already done, you are still doing it uniquely because it's yours.

That does not mean that you're gonna get anything for free, just 'cause you did such a thing. It just means that you are unique because of the things and experiences and stuff that you have. Your energy, in my case, all I mean by energy here is, you know, when do you get tired during the day? When are you most energized?

When do you feel that your attitude has calmed down from actually waking up? Because I can tell you, I've answered the phone at nine o'clock in the morning sometimes going, what do you want? Because it is way too to be talking to anybody at that time. And I am not, it's gotta be like noon before you talk to [00:34:00] me.

But at the same time, so we don't want it to always be time management and we don't always want it to be, energy management because that's when you get into the habit of saying, oh, I can't do this today. My energy's off. I'm gonna go buy a t-shirt.

No, you still have to work. You probably have to bring money in because you're probably not rich. I say probably because I don't know who's listening at this point,

and it could be something different. But,

make sure that you're matching when you're the most energized to your schedule as best as possible. Like some of us don't get any choice. They have to go into a job or a career, but it's still working for somebody else. So you don't have much [00:35:00] choice as to when things get scheduled. You work your schedule as much as possible to fit when you feel you're the, at the most energized, and then be willing to compromise because you may not be right.

After all these years, know that I'm a hundred percent correct in saying I'm not a morning person. 10:00 AM should be like the earliest people can talk to you. Maybe 11. 11 sounds good. Take as far out of the am as possible, but at the same time, if you're working for somebody else and you're not setting your own hours or whatever like I am, then

still pay attention to when your energy is and try to put, like, I'm meeting a client at three 30 today. That's when I'm the most energized, and I will have a great [00:36:00] meeting with that person instead of saying, oh no, they scheduled him at 6:30 PM I'm going to be dragging my feet to this meeting because I'm not gonna have energy left.

So work within what hub?

Speaker 2: Yeah. And if someone else's scheduling your day for you, like you're employed and you don't have a choice in when you do things, there's always things that you can do. Say, okay, well I know I have this meeting later in the day and I'm not gonna have energy for it, or whatever, so I'm gonna take a five minute break and I'm gonna do something that energizes me.

Listen to some energetic music, or just close your eyes and take some deep breaths, or whatever that is for you. Right? So recognizing what your energy is or how it flows is still helpful even if you can't schedule around. It just helps you to manage it a little bit better. 

Regarding energy, there's something interesting.

I totally a hundred percent believe that you're not a morning person, but I know for me [00:37:00] personally, I thought I wasn't a morning person and I was always up late. Then all of a sudden I realized I can get up early and be all by myself and drink my coffee and do my work. And that's when I have the most mental clarity.

And so that's when I do the most mentally intense work is in the mornings before the kids get up. I found, I think the hardest part for me wasn't the morning, it was the transition to everybody being around and, me needing to parent and teach and all that stuff. Right. So, yeah, I found that interesting.

And then in the afternoon, I have so many tabs open in my brain. I can't concentrate on doing anything else, so I just tend to do the mindless, I have to print this and I have to do this, and try and close some of those tabs that are open, because I've tried exercising and having my quiet time and my prayers or whatever, and after lunch doesn't happen.

I just, my brain doesn't work that way. And [00:38:00] then in the evenings, that's when I'm physically energetic and I figured out why that is and how that works, and then figured out what helps me to go to sleep. So yeah, this the, what you said about the, planning versus the energy and how they work together is so important.

And I think a lot of people might miss that. And I know I miss that. I just tried to push through my day and beat myself up for not succeeding at all these things, but having the freedom to recognize our individuality and work with that instead of against that's how we're gonna shine the most and produce the most work and be successful at whatever we're trying to do.

A hundred percent. I love it. Yeah. 

Speaker: Yeah. I was scheduling appointments at 8:00 AM and because heavy sleeping pills I'm on. I was missing appointments. Oh. Because I absolutely could not wake up in time. So it's [00:39:00] gotten to the point where if somebody's like, oh, can I meet with you at like 8:00 AM because I have to do this thing and the rest of my day is booked out, I have to stay up the night before.

I will do it on a rare occasion because it's whatever. But, literally all I have to do to stay awake all night is not take the sleeping pill. Wow. So it does end up happening because, I have something happening first thing in the morning or I'm too worried about something and I just, my body will not let me take that pill.

But I try to keep that very few and far between because I know I have to sleep. I have gone, so before I started being medicated into sleep. I would be awake anywhere between, 48 hours and well anywhere between two days and five days. And if I was up for two [00:40:00] days, I would sleep the normal eight hours and be fine.

And if I was up for five days, then five or six actually then I would sleep for like an entire day and night. And that caused a lot of problems and meant that there were things happening inside my home that I didn't know about. And when all of that came to head, of course, nobody believed that I was sleeping 24 hours at a stretch.

But sleep for me is one of those things where my body has never agreed to do it. It gets forced to do it. Either after being up for so long or after, the pill makes it so my body and sleep are not friends. 

Speaker 2: That's gotta be tough. Yeah. That's [00:41:00] intense. One more thing about the energy is I know for myself I've learned, the other thing too is, social energy, there's introverts and extroverts and ambiverts and there's also the type of interactions that you have with people.

And I've learned, I have to be careful about the next day. I learned this lesson. There's a couple stories. I'll share one of 'em quick, but I went to a networking event and I was in town all day shopping. 'cause I live outta the city. So drive into the city, you get everything done at once. And then I went to this event in the evening and I was on and I was smiling and I was engaging, I was listening and I was like, oh, that went well.

The next day I could not function. I was fully disabled. Like, I literally, I just lay outside on the deck and fell asleep. And my son came home from work. He's like, what are you doing? I said, I can't function. He's like, why don't you get the other kids to help? I said, I can't. I don't know how I'm disabled.

Like, I can't do it. So he got them. I didn't know what to make for supper. [00:42:00] I couldn't even figure that out. So he got the kids to help clean up enough that my mind was clear enough. I'm like, I can make rice and beans and then they'll be fed. I mean, it's basic, but that will be food. And I learned, to guard my energy how much I do.

And if I do have something that well being authentic. I found, I think masking is what's really, really draining and being with people who drain my energy. So if I feel like I'm gonna be in an environment that's very draining on a social level the next day, I can't do like a podcast recording or have intense meetings or expect a lot of myself.

I just have to be able to kind of function and get through the day and make sure everyone's fed and clean and whatever else, right? Mm-hmm. So that's another thing too, is just being aware of our, whether we're extroverts or ambiverts or introverts and how much we can handle and what type of interactions, and kind of spacing that out and honoring that about ourselves and working with that to preserve our energy.[00:43:00] 

Speaker: Probably the fastest way to make me go to sleep is to put me in a room full of a bunch of people that I have to network with. 'cause my energy stores are going to go away very, very quickly. Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm the type of person that's like, hi, let's talk politics. If we talk about the weather, I just, oh, this is tiring.

Speaker: We're talking about the weather. I expect them in a crowd of 60 or 70 year olds, because that's, who talks about that? I've watched the Weather Channel today. Why? Why? When there's so much more interesting things to watch. Did you decide that the Weather Channel was the most greatest thing on the planet to watch?

I don't. I don't understand. 

Speaker 2: I'm in a farming community, so weather is fairly important. 

I've [00:44:00] enjoyed talking to you. 

Speaker: Enjoyed your perspective. Yep. Thank you very much for coming. I appreciated it. I think we had a wonderful talk.