0:04
A lot of us that are feeling like we're underwater, it's because we're letting the outside world tell us what success looks like, and we are filling up our buckets and overdrawing from our own bank account to try to fulfill that. And we haven't stopped long enough to say, how do I define success? How will I be a successful person?
0:25
Hello and welcome to a new episode of uplift for her. We are going to have such a great conversation today with our wonderful guest, Lynn Christian. Lynn Christian is a business coach who specializes in reinvention, who has actually been my coach and helped with my own reinvention. So I'm a big, big fan. So thank you so much for being here. Lynn, my
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pleasure. I love what you're doing. Oh,
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thank you. Thank you. Well, we
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are going to be talking today a little bit about reinvention, and then a little bit about resilience and why it matters, especially as women and in lives that are busy and hard, and where we feel like we're kind of maybe just barely keeping our heads above water. We're going to be talking about the idea of resilience before we dive into that. Will you go ahead and tell us a little bit about your own journey of how you became a coach and your experience there, and then we'll go ahead and get started. Well,
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I never expected to be a coach. Yeah, I did not. I was a school teacher, and I recognized that I couldn't earn a living, that I needed to to raise kids, so I went to real estate school and sold some houses, and decided that wasn't it. But what I was interested in was getting into business for sure, because I knew I could earn more money there. And so I asked one of the best network people I knew at the time who she'd have me talk to and she said, You should talk to a business coach. And I was like, I have no idea what that is. Yeah. And I met this person at her home office. She walked in with a cup of tea, she had hiking boots on, she'd just been in the mountains. And I was like, Okay, you have my attention. What is this lifestyle? And then, as we work together, she assisted me to reinvent from being a school teacher to actually being a writer and a developer curriculum for Franklin Covey. So I was really impressed. But what I was mostly impressed was her lifestyle and her maturity. And I asked her how she gained some of those life skills, and she said it was through my coach training. So I thought I would invest in coach training as a finishing school for myself, as an education what my parents didn't give me. How could I become a more mature adult? And I didn't intend to use it for anything beyond that. But once I translated into working in business and started taking my classes, and I had to do a certain number of practical hours where I coach people. Turns out I was good at it. I liked it, and I was accumulating a pretty good size practice even though I had a full time job. So, you know, you watch for those kind of patterns, and then I just decided that's kind of life I wanted. And so now I have my home office and my hiking boots and the tea and everything.
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Oh, I love it. Tell us a little more about your specialty and what you do as a coach. Because, as we know, there are all sorts of different coaches and different who specialize in different
3:07
things. Yeah. So the three areas of expertise at soul salt and my expertise follows is, first of all, the career reinvention. So 33% of our clients are thinking about either recalibrating or completely reinventing the way they do their work and where they do it, maybe even changing industries. And then I work with executives who are leveling up their skills because they want to become transformative instead of transactional. So a lot of times, we start with authenticity and find out what is their personal identity as a leader. How do they inject that into their leadership. So they're leading from the heart and from the mind. And then the third one is entrepreneurial. There are a lot of entrepreneurs who get into business or are starting in and they don't know how to use their identity as the mind share that gets shared. And so if you're, you know, an entrepreneur, and you're trying to share your gift a lot of times, it helps to translate that. And then we did a little bit
4:02
of that. Yeah, that's Yeah, that's right, that's right.
4:04
I get to share my gift now, so I'm very grateful. Tell us I think that coaching can be a little bit nebulous, and I want to lay the foundation for the rest of our conversation so people can understand, really, how you've how you've become an expert on this topic, is with coaching, explain a little bit about what it is that you are doing in terms of mindset and in terms of of helping people kind of be in tune with with what I call their truest selves.
4:31
So there are a couple of constructs. Sir John Whitmore really led the way. He was, I actually got to speak to him and interview him when I was at Franklin Covey. And he was kind of the father of business coaching in Great Britain, which was leading the world at the time. They were ahead of everybody. And for his, from his perspective, and I really adopted it was our basic construct, is facilitate the neurons, the neuro chemicals, so that the end of. Individual gains awareness, and then once they are have they have that awareness, how do we hold them accountable if they desire to doing something with the awareness? So the bottom line constructs are those two, if you think about it, coaching came on the scene and filled up a place between self help and therapy, a big gap between how do I read a book and how do I go get help? And so we're sort of filling that gap between I want to help myself. But we also know from neuroscience, there are, there are neurons that won't fire unless another person else I do is facilitating the process. You will not. You know, you think of something later, and you go, when I think about that that on my own, a lot of clients do I go probably not for years. Would you think of it on your own because you need an outside person facilitating while you're in the juices of it? So there's this place where we find out what an individual wants. And a lot of times, my clients come in and they not they're not sure what their deliverables and their objectives are. So right off the bat, our job is to find out what are they going for, yeah, which is a high strategic question. Once we understand some of those things, then we start to close the gap by having frequent touch points. So if you look at the research on how people meet their goals, it's very similar to how we work in coaching. That's the constant touch point. It's having somebody else hear and witness what you want, somebody strategizing with you in sessions about how to get there. And so the whole process is you finding where you're going with some facilitation, and then closing the gap from where you
6:26
are. Yeah, that makes so much sense. I find that once you've entered the world of coaching, even myself as a client, you know, and I've had many coaches at this point in my life, and as you enter the world of coaching, it becomes a little bit addictive, but in a really good way. It's I find. You know, some people might approach it and say, like, I want someone to tell me that I'm doing the right thing right tell me what to do, and that's really not you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but that's not really what an effective coach should be doing. You learn to view your own self with such insight, and you notice your brain doing things that are keeping you from actually doing what you want to do, and you get to change it, and you get to sort of change your perspective, and then change your your behavior. Yeah, if
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we were telling then we should call ourselves consultants. Yes, exactly right. And sometimes more, yeah, sometimes I'll just take off the coaching hat and say, okay, it sounds like what you want as consulting. Is that right? Whatever I tell you, you still have to be responsible for what you decide you're going to do. Here's an idea. But yes, coaching is more asking than telling. Yeah,
7:26
I love that. This is going to transition into our conversation about resilience, but I still want to lay this foundation. Oftentimes in coaching, we hear about, you know, I'm going to help you live your best life, or I'm going to help you, you know, reinvent or I'm going to help you seek the thing that you really desire. And I want to lay this this foundation, because I think when a lot of people hear this, it can feel a little bit like kind of a slap in the face, you know, as we realize that we have choice in life, that you know, you can create the life that you want, if you're not in a good place in your life, it can feel a little bit like, wait. So are you telling me that I created this life? Does that make sense? I think some people hear that and and have resistance to accepting the idea of how much choice we have in our lives, because if I have choice, that means I chose the stuff that's so hard for me. So tell me a little bit more about how you approach that idea of living your best life and recognizing how empowered and how much choice we actually have. For people who may feel that resistance, feel really stuck. Feel like my life is so hard right now. That's
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one of the number one questions I get asked. What do I do with my life? I feel stuck? So I have a good article out there on how to, how to get unstuck, and what, how do I address that question? What do I do with my life? And I've been there. I mean, my book and my whole process has been waking up one morning and going, Holy cow, this is not the life I want. What am I doing? And I've done it more than once. And so it's hard when we're down to think that we have choices. And I, you know, and you mentioned that in the book, so I'm going to read Einstein early on. Was a hero of mine. I don't know why I started reading about him in fifth and sixth grade, but I felt like he was my people, because he was considered kind of weird, yeah, and I thought I was on the fringes too, but he seemed like he was pretty cool guy. So he said, How many people are trapped in their everyday habits. That's the reason we get stuck, and we don't recognize that things have calcified into a habit. Yeah? And he said, Sometimes we're numb, right? And sometimes we're frightened and sometimes we're indifferent, and I've been all three of those. But if we want that better life, we must choose and keep choosing how we're living. And so no matter where you are, you can increase it by 1% or 2% there is hope, and you may not have the energy to do it right then, and that's okay. Coaching is always a process that meets you where you are and you may not be ready for it. And you may not be ready for the message that you hear at some point when you are then you can start putting on that boot one strap at a time, but there's no pressure and there's no judgment. We are human beings, and we get caught in things unwittingly all the time. So resilience is one of the powers that sees us through, right? And that's why it's so big with your practice, that is the mainstream of what you do. And it's a good thing, because, like you said, you're, you like to use the metaphor of the ball, yeah, that goes under the water, but doesn't stay Yeah? And so the whole thing is, you go under, but do you stay under?
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Right? Right? I love that, and I love what you're, you're talking about is, is starting from a place of compassion, you know, really being understanding that we may not be ready to take big, giant leaps and steps, and then maybe we do put on the boot, you know, one one tiny inch at a time, and just recognizing that it's number one, I think, permission to say, like, I'm not super happy with how things are, and that that doesn't necessarily mean that everything's terrible. That doesn't there's nothing wrong with you feeling that way about your life, like, gosh, here I am in my life, and I don't know if it's where I thought I wanted to be, or I don't know if I'm happy with this place in my life. So meeting ourselves and our brains with a place of compassion to say, and that's okay. That's okay. I'm not going to be afraid to to move outside of the set of habits that I have, like that quote from Einstein, right? Like, I'm not going to be held back because of fear. I'm going to tiptoe forward and see, see which path feels right for me. But, man, there's just so much compassion there, yeah?
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Because it has to be the right timing. Like, there are times when maybe all you can do is get up and breathe, yeah,
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yeah. But how powerful that is to say, like, but dang, I'm choosing it.
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I choose today. Yes, this
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is my choice. I'm in charge. Well, there
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is one thing. Let's add to that too. There's a there's a mindset that we can change. And Dweck talks about this in growth mindset, yeah, which is not yet. So maybe I'm not where I want to be, but we can say Not yet. That's one mindset that you can maybe ADAPT is, yeah, it's not great right now, but not yet. Yeah. Then another thing you can look at too is to reframe it as, how is what's happening right now, not happening to me? How is it happening for me? What is this showing me that I need to see? So those are a couple of reframes that might be useful. I
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love it. And just from the neuroscience part of that, I use that a lot with my own patients. And one of the things that can be really helpful in that, in that context, is that when our brains are in fight or flight, they become very rigid, and they are not curious, and they're not doing math, and they're not solving problems, and that's intentional, you know, the body was built that way, and you've got to run from a tiger. All you do is run from that tiger. But when we're living in a state of fight or flight, we lose that sense of curiosity, that sense of a door, you know, opening a tiny bit, that sense of of observation in favor of, I will run and only run, or I will fight and only fight, and when we do just what you said is not yet. You know, maybe these words and these thoughts of of softening from out of the rigidity into that just maybe, I'm not saying absolute, I'm just saying maybe or not yet, those actually change the way that our brain. It literally changes the neurotransmitters and the and the blood flow in the brain away from the fight or flight and into this place of problem solving, wisdom, curiosity, creativity that we it's not just you're a bad person, like you cannot be in that if you're in fight or flight. You have to come out of that. If you're
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in the limbic or primitive brain, the thing that you're going to have happen mostly is an experience of cortisol, which is the stress hormone. And in my field, we say you're in an eye protect or a resistant stage right, fight or flight, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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It's very rigid and very black or white. So maybe then to transition. Then I do want to go back to that, that metaphor I shared with you. The image that I think of when I think of resilience is, you know, I learned, I learned how to fish when I was, like, eight or nine years old in a lake, right? And you throw the fishing line, it has that red and white bobbin on it, right? And that's the image that I get with when I think of resilience, is you have that little bobbin floating on the water, and maybe something happens, and it goes beneath the water and always pops back up. It always pops back up unless you catch a fish. I never did, so we'll stay it always goes back up. But you can imagine, if a wave of water comes up, it might totally sweep over, it completely bury that bobbin. But if you wait, it just pops right back up to the surface, and that's what I think of when I picture resilience. But tell me, from a more scientific, a more academic, maybe perspective, what is this that we're talking about when we talk about resilience, and why is it so important for us as women to even pay any bit of attention to this?
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Well, it has been taught. About as the number one skill to keep you going, right? So, gosh, when you have resilience, what I experience with my clients and myself, you are able to self regulate and move out of the primitive brain and the limbic system, maybe get to the neocortex and start calculating or adding things up, doing a little bit of logic. And then what we found in neuroscience is that once you get into the prefrontal cortex, you can start to feel the intimations of your heart, those 40,000 neurons in the heart and the 500 million that are in the gut. So you start to have that infinity line that runs from, you know, the prefrontal cortex, all the way through your body system. Resilience is the piece that helps you not stay stuck in any of those you're going to go back and forth, but where do you spend most of your time? And so to me, resilience is defined as the ability to bend but not break. That's just my look at it. Women
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are under such high amounts of strain right now, maybe always, but definitely right now, where it's, you know, I'm the PTA president, but I also run a business from my house on the side. Oh, and I'm a stay at home mom to, you know, four children, and I'm, I'm a wife, and I'm a friend hearing over here, and I'm a daughter and my parents, and there's a role to self, yes, and so many women that I see especially are coming in saying I'm tired, which, which? You know, it makes sense, but you know, I'm tired. I'm emotionally tired. I'm worn down. I'm snapping at my kids when I don't want to snap at my kids. I'm struggling in my marriage, and I find that a lot of people are coming to me telling me their physical symptoms, right? My sex drive is low. My I can't get out of bed in the morning. I'm exhausted when I work out. But so often, so much of it comes back to how their nervous system is doing, how their brain is doing, how their emotional health is doing with coping. And so when I think of this idea of resilience and bending and not breaking, it really is so essential for us to say, how do we do this? How do we be more bendable so we're not breaking how do we Bob more above the water, so that we're not getting slammed down under the water? Because I think most women listening will know will have experienced that at some point, that feeling of drowning, that feeling of like, I don't know if I can keep doing this. I don't know if I'm going to be able to get my head back above the water Exactly. Yeah. So, so tell us then, if this is why resilience is so important, how do you approach it? How should we approach it as women to start becoming a little more resilient.
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So this is one of the reasons why I wrote the book. There are certain things that we may not be in touch with about ourselves. We may not have excavated far enough I have taken since 1998 developed the system that I use for excavating core values. And it's not just handing you a sheet of paper and saying, What do you think your top 10 are? Because really, 10 is probably too much for an individual to align with. So knowing what your inner plumb line is, knowing some things that I have Quinn knew, which is a unique personal need that goes beyond Maslow's hierarchy, it goes into the personal world, understanding what your superpowers are and that you have pseudo strengths that you might be using that are going to burn you out if you use them, weaknesses that must be mitigated against or you cannot leverage your superpowers, belief systems that no longer serve you, because what we're finding right now is the mindset that needs to change, not the behaviors. And so one of the things that I do is a three by three philosophy when it comes to beliefs and philosophies, because I have found that I can keep I literally can juggle three balls. I know how to do that in my life. I can keep the equilibrium between between three focus points, but usually two of them have to have priority and one has to have less priority. So then we get into another piece of my work, which is starting to define success by your own metrics, and a lot of us that are feeling like we're underwater, it's because we're letting the outside world tell us what success looks like, and we are filling up our buckets and overdrawing from our own bank account to try to fulfill that. And we haven't stopped long enough to say, how do I define success, how will I be a successful person? And then pausing and saying, and are all of these things required of me at this same time? Because we have seasons of life, right? Like I was very grateful that when I was raising three children on my own, I was a school teacher, and even though I wasn't earning what I needed to earn, I had the same type of seasonal schedule, and that was the most important thing, was to spend day and night with them as much as I could.
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So let's go back and unpack that a little bit, because there's so much good stuff there. First of all, I do want to just draw attention, because you have written a beautiful book and a beautiful field guide. I think you actually call it a field guide. I don't think I made that up, but it's a great term, and it's called. Salt. And it really is sort of a DIY manual. It is exactly book to really help us go through these steps. But so go back, because the first thing you said with the core values, yes, the core values, and really that identity, you know, how do we? How do we just stop? I think the two main things that that you said. And there might have been a third one in there, so correct me, but one of them was that idea of core values and and knowing who we are, and then knowing also where we're going and what do we want. And then the third thing, I think you said, was the upns, right? The upns and their superpowers, yeah, yeah. Can you talk a little bit more? First about, like, how do we get started with this in knowing who we are, I think some people will be like, Nah, I don't have time for that. Or some people will feel like, that's a little woo for me, like I already know who I am. I don't need to dig into this exactly, exactly the case for that. Like, can you explain why that matters so much to really spend the time, even if it's on our own, to just understand our core values?
20:59
So these are the things that give you clarity, that when push comes to shove, you take a stand. And just like Einstein said, sometimes we forget we can take a stand, and the person we need to take the stand for first is ourselves. So the reason the core values are so important to me, and I got to the point where I really refined the process, because I was digging in and making some serious decisions. I had three children, I had full custody, and I was going to come out of the closet, and I could have lost them. I was certainly going to lose any status in my neighborhood. I was going to lose my position in the social group that was affiliated with a religion. I didn't know how many friends I would lose. I didn't know what was going to happen. The only thing I knew is that my employer was going to support me, and my coach supported me. So I had to really dig in and say, Well, what do I stand for? And once I define that with integrity and freedom and courage, there was no question that I had to come out. So I came out standing on my own. You can imagine what hit the fan, and it all did, and yet I could still be peaceful, because I knew I was standing in my my integrity. I
22:12
love that. I want to bring that back so it's super actionable and relevant. You know, this idea of bending and not breaking, and this idea of not being swept under by the water, right? Like not drowning, as we have those core values like you shared. So personally, is when we know what we stand for. We stand a little bit taller, we stand a little bit prouder that water comes up and we're allowed to kind of put some force on our end to say, Look, I'll be swept over by a lot of things, but not that exactly that you can get rid of, you know, other things that aren't that important to me, like maybe money, or maybe, you know, some of the things. I'll let that slide. But this, this, I will not let
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that. This is a, this is a non, non negotiable.
22:54
Do you think that that's why a lot of people feel like they're drowning? Is when, when it's not necessarily that they're not capable of handling what's coming at them, but that their core values have have been sort of covered up, sort of, yeah, they could be totally out
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of their integrity. They may not even know what they really stand for. They may be standing for values that they were told or that they think. And so that's why my process asks them to self excavate. You know, we're self authorship, and this is where the best self research comes in. Like my book is underpinned with the self authorship from Keegan and people like Dan cable out of the business school in London. We're all studying the same research of, how do we bring up the best self? So when we're talking about best self, it's not this daunting thing that you should be like someone else, it is, why don't you be yourself? And most of us don't realize that we've lost pieces of ourselves. So in this situation, you probably have. And once you understand these values, and you can go, you do stand a little taller, you can put your hand on that door frame before you walk into the room where you're going to have a crucial conversation. No, no matter what happens in that room, you're being true to you, and nobody can take that from you. That's a very, I don't want to say empowered. I think it's a very spiritually grounded place.
24:10
Yeah, grounded. I love that word. I think it rooted, right? And when you think about bending and not breaking, then we're rooted. That gives us that, that force on the other end of the you know, of this, this boomerang you know, that gives us the force to say, you can bend me, I'll bend over, but I will not break because I am so rooted in what I know. Will you just give us an example of some core values, just so we're all even
24:33
do better than that. I'll take your audience through a very quick place where they can start to get in touch with them. How's that? Yeah, yeah. And we can put the link to my course, if they want to just go through that in your in your show notes. So while you're listening to this, just notice who is somebody in your life right now that you respect, and somebody that you notice they could be somebody you admire, somebody you'd like to be more like, yeah,
24:56
gosh, it's sort of silly. What comes to mind? It, but it's my friend Sarah.
25:01
I don't think those are silly. So she's up close and personal. What is it about Sarah that draws your attention to her?
25:09
Wow, it's really there, isn't it for you? Well,
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I get emotional very easily, but I really admire her the way that she's a mom, the way that she shows up in life. She is very warm and very positive, and an amazing friend and very loyal. And I've just always respected her balance, because she also doesn't take any crap, you know, but, but you may not think that looking at her, she may seem sort of soft, and, you know, you may think she's a little wimpy, but she is not. She absolutely knows what she stands for, and she is so sure about it that she can just, I feel like, give of herself and make herself vulnerable and sort of Yeah, open herself up.
25:51
She sounds like somebody we should all know. I think so.
25:54
So let's first address your emotions. Just another suggestion, you don't have to buy into this at all, Maori, just, I, you know, there are tissues in my office for a reason, and that's the enteric or the gut brain activating with deep identity. So something about Sarah and your connection with her is not just a heartfelt thing. There's something that resonates with your deep identity. Would you agree? Oh, 100% so when those emotions come up, it's like, yeah, honor that, because a piece of you has been touched deeply, and what is that you may need to know or not? In this case, all those words and all those descriptions that you gave to Sarah, quite possibly, are part of either your core value system or your unique personal needs, and that is why you noticed them in her. We see the world as we are, right? So you saw her, and she reflects back to you some of your best self, some of the salt of your soul. And that is why you mentioned her. So everybody that's listening, if you thought of somebody, the words, the adjectives, the phrases that you use to describe them, are reflections of that piece of you that's in there that's alive and vibrant and ready to be resilient and wanting to choose.
27:07
I love that so much because I think that little experience you just took me through. You know, it's really easy to talk about that person and then to feel a little bit of guilt or lack or like, oh, but I'm not like her. Like, I want to be like that person, but what you're saying is, we already are that person. We already have those elements, and that it's connecting with those elements that draws us to that person, and so we're already there. I really love the expression. You know, you're already enough. There's, there's no future, like something that's going to make you worthy, that's going to make you enough, you just already are, and it's just more of a matter of getting crap out of the way right, just letting that version lead Yeah,
27:46
yeah, because you talked about gold when we were talking earlier about preparing, yeah. And I like Tolstoy's quote, who says truth like gold is to be obtained, not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not cold, just what you just said, let's move all the other stuff out. Let's find the salt of our soul. That's why the book is called a field guide, because I'm not going to tell you the answers, but I can show you the places to look, where you get in touch with your identity.
28:12
Okay, so that's awesome. So we've talked about these core values and how the core values can make us more resilient. So I get a lot of young moms, and I get a lot of moms with teenagers who are really, really in the thick of it, and I get a lot of women who are going through perimenopause and menopause, maybe divorce, maybe a change of career, where they really are feeling maybe not as resilient as they'd like. They're feeling more like they're about to break. So a great place to start for them would be to say, let's just pause for a minute and and be really clear about what are your non negotiables? What are your roots that drive your behavior? And I liked what you said earlier, that sometimes we think that we know what our core values are. Like, we might sort of say like, Well, my core value is family, right? One of my core values is being a mom. But as we go deeper into that, we can make it more personal. I think of people who who might say, like, well, of course, I'm going to be there for my kids. But for some people, you know, being a stay at home mom is is not good. It's not, you know, for some people, like, and other people, the the opposite may be true, of like, they may want to go chase a career and then find that, like, I'm actually not fulfilled, like, fulfilled by this. I'd really love to be home with my kids more. So I'm not saying one or the other is right, but if we just say, like, one of my core values is being a mom, is that enough to anchor us, or do we want to make it? It's
29:35
not enough. It's more personal. It's like, okay, let's go underneath the mom. What is that, is that loyalty? Is that connection? What is it? Yeah, I know a mom, her her mom core value is adventure, yeah, you know. So that's what she does with her kids, yeah? So there's something deeper than a role that you play, yeah, there is a piece of your identity. And the other thing that comes into conjunction. With this is, if we have unmet personal needs, the upns I talk about, they will run rampant through our behavior trying to get met. So there are times when we don't even know that our non negotiables are actually in need that is as imperative to us as individuals, as food, water, shelter and connection. So
30:18
that's a great transition. So tell us more about these unique needs, these unique personal needs. What what are they? How do you know? How do you figure out, what are these? What
30:28
they are? Yeah, so I didn't know that these were this important.
30:32
Yes, there are quick ways you can do it. So I learned this when I was getting divorced and not sleeping. And the reason I wasn't sleeping was I was being stalked and I didn't know somebody was didn't know somebody was going to come through the window to get me at night, and so I was not sleeping. I was trying to protect my children. And a friend saw me at work and said, Sorry, you look awful. Let's go to dinner. My family will watch your kids. And we did. And the first thing she said to me was, what do you need? And I said, I need to sleep. What do you need to sleep? I need to feel safe. And I didn't want to have the police or my parents. I just wanted a fighting chance. And so I said, I think I need a watchdog. If I had a dog that would wake me up, I would have a fighting chance. That's all I want. I don't want somebody to harm me while I'm sleeping. And she said, let's get you a dog. And we found one, and the next day had one that
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is a good friend, that's a great one, just to say, yeah, here's what I'm gonna do, and what do you need? What do
31:28
you need? And I recognize how that really saved my sanity, and that is what a unique personal need does. And it can be different for every season of our lives, but we have to get quite honest with ourselves and say, What do I need now? And it can be just as basic as sleep. And then she really floored me at the same meal, because once we had the plans for getting the watchdog, then she said, What do you want? And I don't usually do this, but I cried in public, and I was like, I have no clue. I have been finding out what my kids need. I know what my students need. I know what the people in my life need, and I'm trying to help those and I know what they want, but I've never asked myself that. And so that's why I have another chapter on possibilities, because it's a two step. Once you get your needs met, you have enough sanity and stability and resilience that every once in a while, you need to put some jet fuel in your pack and go after something that inspires you to really lift your soul. And so in my book, it's finding these things that, like, I have one client who, as soon as she figured this out, she was back stepping because she was like, that's so shallow, and it's beauty. But when she has beauty in her life, something quiets down and she's connected to her best self. And so if it's adventure or beauty or whatever it is, if it feels frivolous, pay attention to it. It's probably a non negotiable that is just unique to you, like your fingerprint and you need it.
32:50
I love that. I love that so much, and I love that you just gave people permission for it to look like whatever they want it to look like, right? I think the example you gave of sleep is so important, and is is probably a need for all of us. And that may make people feel like it has to be something that's that's logical and concrete like that, right? But you just said another unmet need could be beauty, or could be esthetics. Or I have a sister who says the same thing, like, I just think that I I feel closer when things are esthetic, I just feel like I that nurtures me, like that does something for me. And what's wrong with that? Like, there's nothing wrong with that as a need, and, in fact, just identifying it, you can act on it. And what a beautiful thing that is that then you get to just say, like, Huh, that's interesting. I don't know why that's one of my unique needs, but man, my whole life functions better when that's in place. If we can just identify those things, then it's so much easier to act on rather than trying to use someone else's script for what's trying to make us happy or what's supposed to make us feel whole or or like we don't have any needs. When we just recognize that like it or not, those
34:00
are your needs, then you can fill them exactly.
34:03
And I think you hit on something that we probably want to dive a little deeper in. So you're a doctor, how long can we last without oxygen before our brain dies? Oh, minutes in minutes, yeah. How long can we go without water, days and food and weeks Exactly, yeah. So a lot of us are out there going without these things, but what does it do to our system? So if you have these unmet needs, something's getting messed up inside you personally, and you don't even know it, yeah,
34:34
yeah. I love that. I do think that's really important. I just want to keep coming back to this idea of bending and not breaking, because I do see so many people that just feel like they are just so close to breaking, and so I just want to make it so actionable that. So we talked about, what are your roots that are that are going down? And then, what are those unmet needs? You know, what is that source of fuel or water, whatever you want to call it,
34:59
that is saying.
34:59
Mean, like I'm struggling, I'm starting to shake a little bit like I don't know if I'm going to make it. And by filling those needs, how would you say, Can you give us examples, or, yeah,
35:10
give people use once they're once they feel like they've met those needs?
35:13
So sometimes you put in place a system, all right? So I found out early that I had this need for my kids to not know how poor we were on a teacher so. And so I would take the same budget and buy almost the same foods because they fit in our budget, but then I can make them into different shapes and sizes and designs with toothpicks. And so I thought, okay, so I need the toothpicks, but then I wanted it to have an area of abundance in my life. So I went out and splurge, and I don't at the time, it's probably $12 to have a whole set of toothpicks in one cupboard. So I had all my tools. So I asked myself, What did I need? And I got it matte, and all of a sudden there was a place that was quiet, so that system was in place. I didn't have to think about it, you know. So it's kind of like, what do you need? And you start to find that you have those things, just like, you know, your kitchen is well supplied, or you have the light bulbs you need for the different fixtures in your home. You start putting systems into place, and pretty soon you find that you have flow again and that things are more stable and sustainable. So it's just starting really small, saying, where's one place where I can get a need met? Feel what is systems like? Then can you duplicate that?
36:20
Okay, so what do you say to people? Then when they say, Okay, this all makes sense. Lynn, like I see what you're saying, but when I stop and ask myself, What do I need? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, so
36:34
that's why I've created a bunch of exercises in the book, and they're not that hard to go through. And sometimes, you know, if you if you really need to, you can go to the you go to Google and look for a needs list and see if there's anything on there. Another thing you can do is start to notice when you're running up a ladder of conclusions and hitting assumptions. So if you're hitting assumptions, you have a belief, and you're having an emotion, and you're starting to feel like the story starts to build. If you stop and ask yourself, What am I feeling? And there's an emotion wheel that you can look at, you know, Google emotion wheel, and look at under images, you can start to identify what's the emotion. Then ask, what's the emotion? Telling me What's the need. Then go to a needs list and start to say, Oh, I'm having this emotion because of this need. Then you ask yourself, How do I get that need met?
37:21
Okay, okay, I like that. That feels very doable. Will you list off just like five different needs that maybe you've had people come up with? You mentioned beauty, you mentioned security, and security
37:31
is one. I have a working entrepreneur mother who needs daycare right now because that is her lifeblood. She's raising two boys. She wanted to be a mother. She's not what she would call herself. She says, I'm just not a typical mom. I'm not that nurturing, but I will be the mom that's volunteering to do art classes, and I will be the mom that's taking my boys to soccer, and I'll be the mom that sits down and talks to them about politics or science, but
37:58
everyone's better if I have some help with daycare. Yeah? So
38:01
when she has her daycare, her need is met, she gets her work done, and then she has her time with her family. So it's so unique. All over the place. Can be abundance. It can be a beauty. It can be adventure, yeah?
38:13
Wonderful. I think one of the things I want to draw attention to is that, you know, meeting our unique needs doesn't actually change our circumstances. A lot of people will feel like, I can't be happy right now because my world is falling apart around me right my my kids are struggling, or we don't have enough money to do these things, or we don't have, you know, the resources to do things. And what you're talking about is is free, and it's very accessible to us to just help us feel as individuals that we're we might be able to take a breath like we might be able to have a space to come get our heads above water. So, yeah,
38:48
just that moment. You know, if you have five minutes, five minutes, I know, being a really busy mother, if I had five minutes of solitude, I felt like I got that need met for, you know, the day. So it can be tiny, it just has to be authentic. I
39:02
want to talk then about the other element that you mentioned is knowing where we're going. Are we missing any steps before we start talking about knowing where your goal is, you can
39:10
always ask, Where am I going? That's always a high. That's like a 40,000 foot level Yeah. Question, yeah. And a good question ask yourself is, what are you going for? Yeah. Then brainstorm, pull out the sticky notes and one thing per sticky note, and have a huge puzzle of them, and then ask yourself, Okay, out of all these things, which is the one I want to start on? Now, you can ask yourself all kinds of questions and what I like to do to guide my life, and nobody has to adopt this. I can have goals and I can have targets I'm shooting for, but what I've learned is put those into play, but half of me is always staying open to the opportunity, because there are certain things in my life that have come to me that I didn't search for that were better for me than what I could have planned. And so yes, you can have goals and you can have other things, but 10% of the things that people accomplish as goals. Were not a goal. They saw somebody else doing it, and it spoke to them, and they went, I want to give myself that now. So again, back to the neurons. You need to be divergent and stay divergent in some way where it's open and you're in discovery. And then every once in a while, when you know there's something you want to go for, knowing changes the neuro chemicals from discovery. Go for it, then come back to an open space where there's part discovery, part knowing.
40:24
Tell us a little bit about your sticky notes.
40:26
I know this seems random, but I think it's my thought process. Was there exactly what you're saying is so good, and yet I'm picturing all of these women who are so busy and so stressed and so overwhelmed. Like, yeah, that sounds awesome. Like, that sounds nice for someone who has time, right? But this doesn't have to take a lot of time, no? And there can be little moments. So tell us about I know that your stickies are one of the things that we
40:48
can we live by. Yeah, because they're so visual, they help you do the brain dump. So there's a lot of things you can do with them. I do a lot of strategic planning about post it notes. You were just talking about post it notes. And here's what you can do in the strategic planning. Even when I'm taking somebody through formal strategic planning for a year, we only give them three minutes of insight. And that means you take three minutes and you pray and dump and you get everything out of your head, but only one thing per sticky note. Then you see what the contents of your brain looks like. What are all those things that are in there jumping around? And then you can ask yourself, Okay, if I can only converge, and this is a process of divergent to convergent thinking, which is something we all have access to. We can all choose very quickly, get them out, and then just say, Okay, there's only one thing I can do right now. What is it? And you focus on that, and you can keep all the other the reason we want to use sticky notes is then, okay, stick them to something so that your brain is satisfied, that you're not throwing them away. You've collected them through your hard work, and now you can refer to them later. So that's the beauty of the sticky note. Yeah, I
41:50
think, I just
41:50
think exactly what you're saying is taking the time to get it out of our brain, to just say, like, my brain just feels so overwhelmed, yes, and my brain feels tired and I don't have space to even breathe or think or process. I think by getting it out of our brains and just saying, What do you want? What needs aren't met? What are your core values? What are your anchors, your grounding anchors in life that alone, don't you think, is so powerful for for lowering that sense of overwhelm and helping us feel like we might be getting above the water. Yes,
42:23
and we're, and we're starting to live life on our terms. Yeah, we're taking some control back. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
42:29
Do you have any daily routines you recommend for kind of checking in with these things and making sure that we're, I mean, there's sort of the initial work that we do to figure this stuff out, right? You're spending a little more time you're you're going through exercises like in your book, but then once you have a pretty good idea, what are you doing? What do you recommend on a daily basis? So we can keep it fresh in our brains, and keep our minds looking in this direction, but also making those tiny tweaks and shifts as time goes by. That's
42:57
a good question. There are a couple of things that come to mind. So the first one is one that I do. I have a brightly colored orange notebook that I keep by my computer, and when I catch myself living my core values or using a superpower or getting a unique personal need met, I write it down because I know I'm embodying the philosophies that I'm coaching. So that's usually a daily, weekly practice. It doesn't happen every day. Is so regular though, it tells me, yes, you're on track. Another thing is having somebody in your life where you check in with and you say, Hey, how are you doing with personal integrity? Are you living in alignment with the salt of your soul? Are you losing yourself or finding yourself? Are you leading your life? Is that happening for you or to you? And just having somebody who checks in and you go, you know, this thing, or you're, they're on speed dial, or they're on Marco Polo, or wherever you communicate, you say, This thing just happened and, and that's one of the things that I've been working on.
43:51
I think that's so great. I think there's, you know, there's so many coaches out there who run group coaching, and I love coaches, so I think that the skill set is there. And I don't mean to diminish that at all, but like, for free, you could make a pact with four of your girlfriends and say, Hey, I know this may seem a little cheesy, but we're having a meeting where we're having a meeting every week for 20 minutes that we are going to go through these things and check in with each other and all be on the same page. And it doesn't have to be orchestrated by someone else. Like does. You could do it. It just may feel a little bit it's not what we may typically do. Maybe
44:24
a formal agreement between an informal connection,
44:27
right? Exactly, exactly. So I do want to draw back to one of the things that you just mentioned, is the superpowers tell us what you mean by that.
44:36
So there's a lot of research. It started at at Gallup management, where they found it by accident. They were looking at what the best managers did. And at the time, Dr Clifton was there, and they hired this young guy named Marcus Buckingham, and he came in from England, and I think they're in Nebraska, you know. So they're in the middle of this nowhere place, and they're studying what, how. Happens when there's peak performance at work, and at the time, it was less than 20% of the people who are working that were using what they would call strengths, and really they're superpowers, like you have. Everybody has them, probably more than they'll identify in a lifetime. Those are the places you can grow the most. Those are the places, if you focus on them. You can leverage and lift the hard, heavy things easily, and they're the things that you can you can expand on and become world class at you do have to have two pieces of technology in place when you have to know the difference between a superpower and a pseudo strength. Pseudo strength looks like your superpower to somebody else, and so they ditch that work to you. But if you did that for the rest of your life, you would burn out. Yeah, you would be sucked dry. And so you have to understand from the inside, how does it feel? You don't have that oxytocin, that dopamine, that keeps you going because you're doing it. That's a superpower. Then there's a weakness, which is, no matter how hard you try, that's not going to improve. You have to mitigate against it and keep it from knocking you off of balance, but you're never going to make it a strength. And so once you know those two, those are the counterbalances to manage those while you're leading from strength, if you only lead from strength, you're going to you're not going to be sustainable. Does that make sense? Yep,
46:15
it does. And so again, drawing it back to that resilience is that's how we really start to be straight and tall, right? Instead of being bent over by the the hard things in life, as we start to say, like, hey, I can. I can pull back a little bit like, I can exert strength. I can. I can use my own strengths and my superpowers to stand a little bit more firm,
46:36
right. And I may even know of where we can get a free assessment on that, that we could put in your show notes for people to just take 15 minutes, yeah, and then understand, and I believe it's on buckingham's site, and you'll get, like, top nine signature strengths and kind of, and just kind of look at the top two once you take that,
46:55
yeah, okay, I love that. Well, let's then talk about where we're going. How do you figure out where we're going and what you want? Because I think that seems kind of intuitive, like, Well, what do you want? But actually, I think it can be quite a hard question to answer.
47:09
It can be. So one of the things I like to do is, once somebody has this foundational work with some of the upns and they know some superpowers, they may still not have that clarity. But remember the constructs we talked about coaching at the beginning, raise awareness. So one of the ways to raise your own awareness is to be willing to discover, and one of the things I like to do is put into play a possibility practice. So anybody listening could start this now, personal life and professional life, if you have one, and start listing in 30 days, 100 things that you aspire to have to be, to experience and see if you can push to 100 something magical happens when you get past 50. A lot of times we forget that there are things inside of us that are called Heart dreams. And you know, there's, there's just so much research that shows how this increases our longevity, our resilience, by finding out these little heart dreams and starting small and getting one met just as simple as you know, one woman was like, I just want to go home at night, have a glass of wine with my partner, walk the dog, and then start the night. And it was like, How many times can you do that? And pretty soon, they were up to three a week. And all of a sudden, her life had more of that energy in it, because she was paying attention to the piece of her that was big and expansive and was possible. Yeah,
48:22
that's so powerful. I really love that. And I really love kind of tying it back what you said something earlier about kind of feeling, how it feels in our bodies. Because I think sometimes we think we want one thing, but if we're starting to implement that one thing, and we don't get that feeling of enrichment or peace or wholeness, then it's okay to be like, Huh? Maybe that that wasn't the thing that I wanted, right? Then we can shift and say, what else do I want? What are the things that are really going to help me feel that, that peace and that that refilling, I think the idea of rejuvenation and refilling our our cups is something that is really lacking.
49:03
I do too. And I think there's a mindset with people that it has to do with age and where you are in life. And I, I love this research that comes out of the New England Journal of Medicine, which is, go ahead and guess you know we've got 20 to 3030. To 40. What do you think the most productive decade is in a human beings, life, 30 to 40 Yeah, you would think that 60 to 69 Wow. The second most productive, 70 to 79/3 most productive, 50 to 59 so in your audience, if you think you hear Mallory say, well, then can pivot. You can change your mind. And people are saying, I don't have time for that. Yeah. It's like, well, if you're in your 30s and 40s. You're just getting started.
49:42
Yeah, yeah. That's fascinating. That's really great. I think in my medical practice, you know, one of the things that I really shifted from saying is I used to say, you know, watch your stress, reduce your stress, cope with your stress. And now I've really intentionally moved away from that and saying, How are you recovering from your stress? As well, because a lot of times we hear these recommendations, and I think a lot of us shuts off because they're like, What do you want me to do? Like, get rid of my kids. Like, get rid of my job. Like, how do you want me to get rid of these stressors? But so much of it is not the stressor. That's the problem. It's Are we ever refilling? Are we ever recovering from our stress? And so going back to what you were saying is, how, what are the ways that we can actually rejuvenate? I think the reason this comes to mind, as you mentioned, you know, this woman who just wanted to have a glass of wine, go for a walk, have this, this thing in place that felt to her very whole, that was in alignment, then, with where she wanted to go, what she wanted out of life. So how do we line that up for ourselves? How do we figure out what is the most rejuvenating, recuperative thing that we can do for ourselves, Discovery?
50:48
Discovery will be so much stronger than knowing the answer. So you have to experiment. So you might sit down again with the sticky notes and think of all the many varied unusual things that sound like they might be enticing for filling up your bucket, yeah, and then pick one and try it and see how it ranks.
51:04
I love that. I think there are so many great tools here for for people. I guess my heart just goes out to these women who feel like they're just about to break, you know. And I have people who I think were almost broken and who are trying, they're sure trying. They are trying so hard to get back on top of the water and almost getting there, but not quite sure how to get back on top. And as a physician, you know, I think a huge part of it is, is physical, and I know you agree with this is, you know, fueling ourselves with good food and getting enough rest and moving our bodies and sleeping and meeting those core physical needs, but there is this whole emotional, mental and you know your heart or your soul or your you know those needs that are deeper within you that, yeah, we have to explore for ourselves. No one's going to come up and tell us. And people try, right? Our parents have tried, and our our friends may try and say, This is what you need, or this is what's most important to you, but really, until you've really delved into the delved into this and done the work yourself, it's just not going to ring as true as if you can really dig down and say, How do I build my resilience? Who am I? What do I want? What do I need? And that's when I think we find so much peace and and we do kind of say from the very beginning, like I'm done with that crap, like I have no need for that. I draw the line like that. Nothing gets in the way of me and these needs and this, these core values, yeah,
52:38
our tagline at soul salt is, find your truth and live it you you find it only yours, and then you can find out. How much can you live it? Yeah, and it may only be 2% of your day. I worked with an addict that if she were to even take one more drink, she'd probably die. And I worked with her, and I think I worked with her when she gave me her 10 year medallion of sobriety, and where she started was 2% of the day she was sober. So if she could be 2% of the day sober and then 4% and move it up till she was completely sober, why can't we be 2% of our best self or the thing that we want for ourselves, and then that's the best we can do that day. I love that. I
53:21
love all of this. I
53:22
really hope this is helpful to the women who are listening. I hope that you feel can feel hopeful and feel like, okay, I have some starting steps. I know where I can get started. I definitely think it can be helpful for people who are already, you know, wherever they're at in their journey. I certainly find it helpful and continue to do this work on a daily basis, and find it so beneficial for me, and find that when we feel trapped and victimized by our circumstances, you know that, like, well, what am I supposed to do? Like, my, my child is struggling, and that's stressful, and that that makes me unhappy, or my my spouse is really difficult, and so I'm not happy like oftentimes we we just feel totally stuck, because those are our circumstances, right? That's the that's the hard thing. I'm in there a lot of hard things that you're facing, yeah. Can you not think about it? Yeah. And I just hope people can feel empowered to say this all comes before anything ever changes in your in your surroundings and in your circumstances around you. This all comes from a place of change, of just knowing who you are and being able to behave and respond to the world differently. From that standpoint, once
54:28
we change the mindset of who we are and what's possible for us, then everything opens up. Really changes our perception. Yeah, and it doesn't have to open up and you run through the floodgates, it can open up with one toe sticking through the door. Yes,
54:39
I love that. I love the permission you've given people to start so slowly, in that compassion to to have with self that, you know, it doesn't matter how long it takes.
54:49
No, we all only have a certain amount of bandwidth to give, if nothing more, a place to start, especially for mothers, would be self regulation. You know, the autonomous. Nervous System, just so that can start flight system, yeah, just so we can start to hear ourselves. And there's so many, you know, really quick tools, like the one I like, really fast. And it works great with kids too. When your kids are having a damped room, is just stop and look around and say, How many colors can I see? Five colors, four textures, three shapes, two things that are man made. One thing that reminds me of an animal, and also notice what your nervous system did.
55:27
Yeah, being very mindful. I
55:29
talk about the nervous system as the our inner cave woman, right? That's our response to saber tooth tigers. And I use the same technique, and I call it distracting the cave woman. She wants to tell us all of the things that are going to kill us. And when we say, like, I've got 10 toes, then she's like, Uh huh. And that's all she can do. She can't do both at once. So you just distract her in reality, into facts. Great tool.
55:52
So if you're listening and you see Mallory, yes, the autonomic nervous system, also known as self regulation,
55:57
that's a power tool. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, where, Lynn, where can people find you and continue to get this great help that you have to offer? So
56:06
we have a good presence online. So soul, salt.com, a lot of soul, S O, S O, U, L, S, A, L, t.com, we have a lot of articles. Put a lot of articles out there, a lot of free stuff to do on the website. I'm personally posting probably daily on Instagram, and I hear I'm going to be on Tiktok soon, so that's where they can find me. But we have a presence on LinkedIn and all you know, all the socials. So the main place would be the mothership of soul, salt.com, I have a large network of people I know. So if my specialty is not what you need, a lot of times I can refer you to somebody good. So, yeah,
56:42
wonderful. And tell us about this book, Soul salt. Where
56:46
can people find this book?
56:47
Anywhere the books are sold. Yeah? So it's soul salt fulfilled guide, and it helps you with your confidence and your purpose and your fulfillment. And
56:53
it's got lots of blank spots on there. You can take your pen to it, it's it's meant to be marked up. Yes, yeah. Wonderful. Well, thank you again for being here. This has been a really valuable conversation, my pleasure. Thank you. That's the end of this episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. We will have another great conversation for you next week. If this has been valuable for you, or if it's meaningful for you, please share with a friend. Leave us a review. Help us get the word out so we can help with women's health and wellness, and you can subscribe, like, follow, we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening and come back next time for another episode, and remember this information is for education only and not intended to be medical advice. You.
