Done with Dieting Episode #11: Creating CALM & FOCUS with Ryan Lanier

You are listening to the Done with Dieting Podcast Episode number eleven

Hi, I’m Elizabeth Sherman, former corporate high tech executive turn life and weight loss coach. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was searching for that perfect diet, the one that would finally be the golden ticket to lose the weight that I so desired.

Fast forward past tons of failed diet attempts, exercise fads and painful lessons learned, and although I still have not reached the state of Nirvana, body love, my relationship with food exercise in my body is infinitely better than it was not only when I started this journey, but even as recently as three years ago.

The journey that has allowed me to ditch my scale, stop logging my food and exercise, eat food that I didn’t prepare and easily maintain my weight – something that I never thought was possible for me.

I created the Done with Dieting podcast to give you simple, easy to do and sustainable strategies to help you do the same without all of the drama that I went through.

If you’re a woman who’s looking to create a better relationship with food and her body, get off the diet roller coaster and free up a bunch of headspace spent on calories, how you should look what you should eat and beating yourself up for not doing what you think you should be doing. You are in the right place.

Let’s get started.

Elizabeth:
Hey, everyone, welcome to the show. Now today, I want to introduce you to a former client of mine turned friend and business bestie. Ryan linear, when this podcast was just an idea in my head. And I was thinking about all of the different topics that I could talk about, that I could bring to you that I could teach. And also who would be listening, I immediately knew that I needed to have Ryan on the show. Because even though she helps women who are going in 100 different directions to create the calm and more focus that they want in their lives. Both of our messages just fit beautifully together. Ryan is a true delight. And I hope that you enjoy the episode because she gives really actionable steps that you can take if you’re someone who just wants to slow everything down around her and know that it is possible. So let’s get to it. All right. Welcome to the show. We have Ryan Lanier, I don’t know how to pronounce your last name.

Ryan:
Linear.

Elizabeth:
Linear?

Ryan:
Yeah. Close enough. It gets a lot of that, you know, morphing? It’s all good. It’s all if you’re French, it would be linear. You know, We’re just Texans.

Well, hello, I am Ryan Lanier. I’m actually Elizabeth biggest fan. That’s my whole introduction. But we’ll go a little further since we are talking.

So we knew each other from Austin, Texas, when she was here, I was a client of hers and fitness. And then we realized that we had a lot more in common

Other than that, I used to do hands on organizing with people in their homes, loved it. But then, you know, we all know what happened 2020. So that no longer became an option. So I pivoted my business to be online workshops. And I realized that my passion revolves around championing women to sit down and get more done away from all the distractions that we all have. And as they get more done in community with each other, supporting each other, they figure out kind of what they want to do when they grow up.

So these are all called the FOCUS workshops. And I have a membership base style business and the community and the sport is something that I did not even see coming, because women are just amazing. So that’s what I’ve been doing, bringing women together to get more done.

Elizabeth:
Very cool. Tell me I don’t even know like, how did you get into in home organizing? Let’s start there.

Ryan:
Okay, so it’s one of those things that in my so I’m a mom of three boys. I was a teacher. And then when I started having children, I realized that full time teaching and momming were going to be hard for me to do both. So I got to stay home with my kids. And so that’s a lot of organization right there just keeping a house going three children fed all the places they need to be I was very involved in my community. shocker. And I knew how I felt when I was tapping into trying to get my own house organized. Fly lady started me out. I’d really went through all the different organizers, my own self and I it was a feeling I couldn’t I couldn’t avoid. Right I when I noticed the feeling I felt when I had organized a space or gotten something a lot better. I was very involved in my community. shocker. And I knew how I felt when I was tapping into trying to get my own house organized. Fly lady started me out, I’d really went through all the different organizers, my own self, and I, it was a feeling I couldn’t, I couldn’t avoid. Right. I when I noticed the feeling I felt when I had organized a space or gotten something a lot better. That sort of started to percolate in my brain. And then I realized that that actually could be a business. And I started asking friends, can I help you organize? And the answer was always Yes. And as I would work with women, especially in their closets, the closet itself, is kind of the key to getting the woman prepared for her day. And when the closet is prohibitive of her starting her day off, right, that makes a big, it’s really like a fork in the road, as you were saying, we were talking about the athletic socks, right? If you can’t find any socks to work out, guess what you’re not working out. So being in the closet, and, and the kitchen, those are my two favorite areas to organize. Because it really sets the stage for productivity and just feeling like you have some chance at this day. And then this life.

Elizabeth:
Yeah. And so it’s so interesting, like we were Ryan and I were talking before we hit record. And I was saying that I really have always downplayed the role of environment, because I know how important the other pieces that go along with creating health habits are. And that, you know, one of the problems with relying on our environment is because it’s something that we have to keep up. So for example, one of the things that I talk about with my clients is in terms of, you know, meal prep, that we if we rely on the fact that every Sunday night, we’re going to prep all of our meals for the week, and then we go on vacation and come home on Sunday, and we don’t have time to prepare those meals, then everything kind of goes out the window, obviously, we want to, you know, focus on things that are more habit based, like, I know that I can still eat a healthy meal, even if I eat out. So yeah, what are some of the things that people can do to make sure that their environment doesn’t get away from them?

Ryan:
Simple, Simple, Simple. What does that mean? I feel that the more over engineered, we think things need to be, the less likely we are going to do them. And that meal planning just that word triggers a lot of people, my population of women have 1000 distractions with children, and all those particular things. I don’t just work with moms, but I am a mom. So, but the distractions are so great, that when they think, Oh, I have to meal plan, they are anticipating some giant beast, right? And when you just say what are the three things I like to eat, that will be nutritionally sound, that’s good enough, like, don’t think it needs to be one of those multi week things, because then you won’t even do anything. So I really feel like the simpler, the better. And then my book really helps people lay out the way to get things done easily. Like if you’re going to do a meal. And you know, you need to chop the vegetables, you need to marinate something, need to get the spices out, if you just start laying that stuff out. I call it a launch pad. And if you start getting the spices out, and the can the stuff that is shelf stable, and what this you’re going to use to cook it in and you’re already winning. And I found that it’s also helpful you can pass the job on eventually if you have the recipe out and all the things out. Oh, hey, look, you’ve got time. You’re bored. Look, you can just make this happen. I’ve gotten everything out for you. So I feel like laying things out to help yourself be successful and that this also goes with laying out your workout clothes. I mean that that’s been around forever and it’s still so true is having the clothes out allows but so it’s really about simple one meal that you made at home will make you feel like okay, I can do this and you build from small and then one day you’re like oh my gosh, look, I plan like that. meals and you celebrate celebrating, celebrating, celebrating.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, you know, it’s so funny that you bring up the launchpad because I was just talking to a client of mine yesterday about meal prep kits are those those meal kits that you get in the mail, you know where they send you all the vegetables and things like that. And when we were moving from Austin to Mexico in that month before we moved, I decided to try a number of them just to see what they were like, and I really didn’t have any faith that they were going to change my life or anything like that, because I was already cooking. But what I loved about them was the fact that I just looked in the refrigerator every day. And I was like, what are we going to have today? And then you pull out a bag? And so is that kind of what you’re talking about when you’re talking about a launch pad?

Ryan:
Absolutely, absolutely. It’s just, you know, it’s you just create it yourself. I love the mill kits. They’re, in my opinion, a little bit environmentally impactful with all the ice packs and all that. But if they help people cook more at home, that is amazing. And there’s actually a company here in Austin, trashed list comm that is attempting to do those meal kits, with everything reusable, and they even pick up your compost, it’s people are trying to lessen the environmental impact of that, but the having it ready, ready to go. I keep saying like, when I get my produce delivery, I try very hard to not let myself just put the whole thing in the frigerator is like, Okay, can I just wash the lettuce and put it in the spinner, like just that small effort makes the likelihood of us using the lettuce before it goes bad about 10x higher and cutting up a cucumber. If you put a cucumber in the frigerator, there’s nobody going to eat it. If you take a moment to peel it and slice it and put it in the container. Magical. How many more cucumbers you’re actually going to eat? So that is the what is the one simple step you can take to make sure you’re actually going to do the healthy eating as cucumber.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, you’re totally right. No. And what you’re talking about is what I call reducing friction, right? So if we want to do the thing, we need to figure out what are all the steps that are getting in my way of doing the thing and then make it that much easier. So if I want to eat more vegetables, making sure that those vegetables are ready to go and are accessible, so that I’m more willing to eat that, like for example, if you’re going to eat dinner, if you’re going to prepare dinner, making eating dinner at home easier than calling up and ordering it. Right. Awesome. good suggestions. Now you brought something up that I want to go back to for just a second. You talked about recycling and reusing that used to be something that was huge and your business. Um, talk more about that?

Ryan:
Well, it still is, in a way just it was very much prompted by the fact that when I would organize in people’s homes, I saw the volume of things that we were removing, to go donate. And that was so impactful for them. They were grateful to get rid of stuff. But there I noticed there were certain things I felt reticent about. And if I could say, Oh, I know there’s this thrift store that is all about craft supplies. They’re like, Oh my god, I haven’t scrapbooked in years, I would be thrilled to know that we could donate that there. So it gave it gives people and much grander purpose to know that when they donate things, that it’s giving life to someone else, somebody else wants it. So that became To me, it wasn’t, it wasn’t I wasn’t comfortable. Well, not. My standards were too high to just go straight from their house to one thrift store, which would typically be goodwill, because they take everything. And they also have an incredible pipeline of electronics and like they’re trying very hard to lessen their environmental impact as well. But I knew of local nonprofits or thrift stores that use particular things, and I knew it would benefit them. I just was I’m all about the little guy, the little guy. So that really motivated me to donate. Oh, I definitely heard that the school is collecting clothes for the kindergarteners who get paint or have an accident. And that just became part of my vernacular, I could not keep that news from people. And it just grew in my heart and kept me in touch with the community’s needs. And people love that. People love that and it helped me to lead me to the buy nothing project if you’ve never heard the buy nothing project, you need to look that up because that is like Craigslist free. But it’s close enough in your neighborhood that you’re not kind of driving all over the place and it’s a beautiful giving and receiving freely society. There’s no trading, selling bartering. It’s just giving and receiving. And I am such a nerd. I just wish the whole world work that way. But that’s kind of what got me really going in the organizing was people’s cast off. serving a second life and I still use that in my own home. I plastic forks. I know somebody that takes them to the homeless shelter. I wait, it’s, it fills my heart.

Elizabeth:
That’s awesome. Yeah. Thanks. Okay, so switching gears a little bit, how do you tackle procrastination?

Ryan:
Oh, wow.

Elizabeth:
I know.

Ryan:
Wow, that really, you know, you. Okay, no prep on that one. Thank you so much.

Elizabeth:
Sorry.

Ryan:
So, procrastination, right is avoiding stress, we all know that. That is the stress avoiding, and it is also very aligned with perfectionism. It’s another P. And people don’t want to do something, if they don’t think it’s going, they’re going to do it perfectly, and therefore, they do nothing. So it’s an ugly cycle. It’s an ugly cycle. And from where I come from people, when they procrastinate, they identify as a procrastinator, so therefore, they are identifying as somebody who isn’t doing a great job at life. And that kills me that absolutely kills me. So I encourage people to progress over perfection is such a maybe overused term, but it’s super impactful. If you really stop for a minute and say, all right, done is better than perfect. What would done look like? It’s making one meal, it’s taking one walk. It’s amazing how we blow the things that we want to do the habits that we want to create into these giant projects. But they’re they start with one step. And you’re procrastinating because you don’t know what the one step is that you need to take. And sometimes the one step is taking a sticky note or for some people, obliging themselves to someone, hey, I really want to take a walk today. And I’m afraid that I’m going to let myself down, can I tell you that I’m going to take a walk today, and then either I remember to tell you, or maybe you’re awesome, and you remember to text me later and ask, and yet there’s no judgement, right? We’re only judging ourselves. I think we procrastinate. Because we’re judging ourselves that we’re already disappointing ourselves, because we’re not going to do it the perfect way. But we got to let that shit go. We have to let it go and break. Again. Simple. Procrastination is because we’re blowing it up in our head too much. So what is literally the micro list of micro steps you can do? celebrate them, what’s the next micro step? celebrate. That’s how I that’s how I tried to and I call it overwhelm. I feel like procrastination and overwhelm are bedfellows. And they are making each other strong in our brains. So what to fight overwhelm is, what is that one tiny step I can take. We’ve been talking about this in my facebook group. And boy, overwhelm is basically it’s basically and when you talk about it, it, it dissipates quite a bit, and you know, other people feel it. That’s my, that’s my other giant love is we are better together. I am so much more successful when I know somebody else suffers with I’m distracted by this, or Oh, I didn’t do this. When misery has a miserable company.

We’re all like, Oh, I’m, I’m not alone in my suffering. And that sounds a little bit strong. But you know what I mean? when other people feel what you feel, you just feel validated. And you’re like, Okay, I’m not that special. I’m going to do the one thing so I can move forward.

Elizabeth:
Well, yeah, I think that what you’re saying is actually so beautiful. I love that. Because when we procrastinate, that impacts our self esteem, right? That we feel poorly about ourselves. We’re like, why can’t I do that? I know, it’s just so freakin easy. And so then we also have this cloud of shame. And to quote Rene Brown, shame cannot exist in the light of day, right? That when we talk about our shame, everyone’s like, Oh, girl, come on. Everyone has that right? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, it’s so interesting that you say, you know, procrastination and overwhelm go hand in hand, because they definitely do. Sometimes I think that we also have a level of confusion to like, and we don’t sometimes break tasks down to their microscopic level. So for example, if on my to do list, it’s do taxes, right? That’s just so enormous, that maybe the first step is log into my bank account and download all of my transactions so that I can see what they are or get My w two together or, you know, what is the first step that we need to take in order to accomplish that task?

Ryan:
Amen, sister. You said it perfectly. I do talk about that a lot in my group. It’s like, don’t write that. Do taxes. Wow, what, of course you’re gonna procrastinate on that. That seems like a huge task, but literally log into my bank account, wow, that I can do that I can do. And there’s never anything that’s too small. I think that we don’t give ourselves enough love to think anybody can log into their bank account. So what you still have to do it and you can still celebrate that. That little moment.

Elizabeth:
Yeah. And so I read the column method. I love the book. And one thing that you keep talking about is celebration. And I don’t think that we celebrate enough. And so talk more about celebration, why we should do it, what we should celebrate. And how,

Ryan:
how much more time do we have?

Elizabeth:
all the time.

Ryan:
So the call method was birthed out of my chaos. About a year ago, actually. And when I realized that there were so many simple steps, thank you for the compliment on my book, by the way, when I realized there were simple things I could do that would set me up proactively to, in my opinion, stop sucking so much. being late, not prepared all of that I was able to make huge changes just from those simple steps. And as I was putting the method together, putting two and two and two together, I realized that we want to be calm, but we also want to be proud of ourselves. And so the celebration, I love to say Yay, me I have had stickers made that say hey, me, let’s talk about your yay me moment in my communities and in my membership, because like you just said we don’t celebrate enough. And as women, we are not comfortable bragging on ourselves. Any man has no qualms about owning their awesomeness or whatever something they’ve done. And but we women were What do most women start a sentence with? I’m sorry, Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Like that word, it turns me inside out, because we’re already coming to the conversation as less than and discounting where we are. And I’ve also been called the positivity police. Because I won’t let people get away with that, because it’s not something we’re doing intentionally. It’s a habit. And it’s a habit we need to learn. So the opposite of starting out with I’m sorry, is I’m awesome. Here’s what here’s something awesome I did today that is small, journaling, few journal, a lot of you get a printed journal, it comes to you, you know, when somebody you love, they’ve all involved, they all have created a journal. And there’s a lot of affirmations in there. And those are based around celebrating. My favorite planner right now is the panda planner. And they actually have a little checkbox on there for the you know, you write down your wins for the day. And then it says celebrate, like taking doing the good thing isn’t it’s only about 75% If you ask me, it’s the celebrating, how many times do you do a workout and you tell somebody about it? Because they’re so proud of yourself? Right? And you know, you’re moving around and you’re tearing up? I’m so sore. Oh, yes. Because it worked out. You know, I love being sore from a workout. And I wish it hadn’t worked. But celebrating for yourself is important. But sometimes we forget. So celebrating with people, if that gets you a little bit more cognizant of celebrating, so that’s accountability partners. I mean, heck, that’s what social media is for. It’s okay. We love to celebrate other people. So put it out there. In my book, I talk about getting getting the crew into the car to go to the place when you finally get in the car and you’re ready to go. If you just peel out, you don’t get that chance to celebrate. So getting in the car, putting your hands on the steering wheel and going, Yeah, we’re all in the car alive and prepared. And let’s go. So there’s just no there is no lack to celebrating. It’s almost saying there’s no lack. I’m sorry. There’s no limit to the types of celebration. The more the merrier, the happy dance, whatever, whatever floats your boat.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, I love that. And what I hear you saying is that it’s really just acknowledging, writing. It doesn’t have to be big and flowery. It just has to be Hey, I did this and I’m proud of fist pump.

Ryan:
I was just reading an email from Mel Robbins who I adore and she started high fiving herself in the mirror every morning and heart right how simple and seemingly small but You know, we I’m not going to go into brain chemistry but is celebrating absolutely stimulates good brain chemistry and sets you up for more improvement. I mean that the post workout feels right. You never want to do it hard when you’re doing it. But boy afterwards, there is nothing to do but celebrate.

Elizabeth:
Love it. Love it. Okay, so let me ask about going into the calm method a little bit more. Have you ever read the Seven Habits of Stephen? Oh, yes. active people by Stephen Covey? Absolutely. So in I think it’s chapter two, he talks about the urgent, important matrix, right. And so for those of you who are listening, it’s a, it’s four quadrants, and the columns are urgent, non urgent, and then the rows are important, unimportant. And where we want to spend most of our time is in the important, non urgent area that we don’t want to spend any time in the unimportant areas. And we want to spend, we don’t really want to spend a lot of time in the urgent important because that’s crisis mode. And I think that a lot of people spend their time in crisis mode, right? How do we get from crisis mode where we feel like life is hitting us around to getting in control of our circumstances and our life? Is that a big question?

Ryan:
No, because it’s literally what my book is about right is the comma that it backs you up to preparing to stay out of quadrant one quadrant one is the hair on fire, the last minute, we can’t find a document, when you can’t find a document or a document expires without leaving yourself enough time, then you have your bought yourself more time in the urgent and important role. But when you prepare, because you’re in quadrant two, which is not urgent, but important, you allow yourself for more calming, keeps using the word calm, but the stress factor of when your hair on fire. It’s leading up it’s during and it’s after, like there’s a lot of energy you burn, you burn through your energy, because you’re stressed, you’re panicked, you’re in a hurry, you’re probably going to mess up, you’re going to have to redo things again, whereas with the calm method, you have looked at your calendar and put it on the calendar to prepare, you set an alarm to remind you to prepare, you’ve laid out the launchpad, which is putting out the documents or logging into the bank account, or whatever all the things that help you to be able to do said task in a calm and proactive manner, instead of our typical last minute method. And it’s not always our fault, distractions and stuff pop up all the time. So that is why when you back up and intentionally try to stay ahead of the game, on some things, you’re at least 75% they’re planning for your day, right? At the end of the day, when you look at your day for tomorrow, and you at least see what’s on your Google Calendar. And you write that down. And you at least see what your most your top three, your must do tasks, or at least if you have that idea when somebody needs you to oh my gosh, I need this happened to me yesterday, I had to go buy whiteboard markers, we did not have the thickest what were all of a sudden there was an errand that was not on my list at all. And it needed to be taken care of. So the fact that I knew when I had to be somewhere at a certain time, I could say, Okay, do have time to go run this thing that was not already on my list, because that stuff’s gonna happen all the time. So that’s quadrant one that was urgent and important to someone else, not me. But that took away from my current projects.

So, does that make sense?

Elizabeth:
Yeah, well, and it’s so funny that you’re talking about this or that I didn’t intend to ask in this way. But in the book, you talk about having to bring your kids tennis back to school. And I remember when we were working together, that you totally missed, like a number of workouts or you weren’t able to do things that were important to you, because you were running to the school to bring your kids. I think it was uniform at the time.

Ryan:
You are so right. I had forgotten that and you know, with the comment that that would not have been a thing, right, we would have I didn’t have the call method back then. And I have been doing a lot of self reflection lately going wow, this thing works. It’s so simple. And living in reactive mode for yourself is bad enough. But then most of us are have lots of other distractions that are coming up just to Layer Layer on, just layer it on. So having a little bit of a plan just ups your chances, we’re never going for perfection here ever. Perfection is not a goal is progress and the celebration to build the next time. Oh, yeah, remember how I missed that workout with Elizabeth because so and so didn’t have their uniform? Well, I do not want that to happen again. Because I miss my joy all day long of having gotten up at whatever freaking early time that we did that. And then just, you know, set me off on the wrong path. So we do learn from our mistakes, I think,

Elizabeth:
Well, yeah. And I think that for those of you who weren’t maybe connecting the dots as to why organization is important. Other than, you know, having a chaotic life, that the more organized you are, the more time that frees up for you so that you can spend your brainpower and time on taking care of yourself, right?

Ryan:
Absolutely.

If you say, Oh, I should take a walk today, or I’m going to take a walk when I have a free moment. Well guess what? That’s just not going to happen. But if you go ahead and look at your calendar and go, Okay, so I’m done with this podcast interview, and I don’t have another phone call until someone so I’m going to just jump out there and get that walked in then. And then if it doesn’t happen, you know, maybe the next pocket of time, but if you never take that moment to intentionally say, Okay, I’ve got these pockets of time to walk today, it won’t happen. But when you intentionally set your brain on it, you’re more likely and guess what, if it doesn’t happen, you are not a horrible person. I think that’s another thing we do is we just go straight to well, yep, there’s another day I did an exercise like you’re coaching people all the time. And I know they’re coming to you with that failure mentality. And you’re having to undo a lot of garbage head trash all the time in the health and fitness and I’m doing it with the busy moms because we do to easily start tearing ourselves down. So that’s why the might grow simple celebrations I do think are super important.

Elizabeth:
Well, and I love the the name that you give that like the head trash monster. That’s hilarious.

Ryan:
Oh, man, the head trash monster does not sleep. It doesn’t? Does it works full time full time committed?

Elizabeth:
Well, and you know, to your point, you know, something that I talk a lot about with my clients is failure and reframing failure from a point of view. And I think that this actually goes along with you is when we look at failure, not as failure, but if we can get curious with it and say, What could I have done to set myself up for success? How can I learn from this, then we can do better in the future?

Ryan:
Oh, you are speaking my language. I think reframing is super powerful. Because there’s a word that if we say over and over, and it brings us down, we’re gonna continue to bring down just quickly one of my clients kept saying, oh, we’re we’re still in lockdown. We’re still in lockdown. But they just added eight more weeks to our lockdown. And I could just see her physically, like draining from that word. And I’m like, all right, new word. Let’s find a new word that is not the word lockdown. And we came up with Limbo, we’re still in limbo, they added eight more weeks of limbo. And I’m telling you that small reframe really changed her attitudes towards this lockdown. So that was really, really helpful. And the other thing is just, I feel like learning from our mistakes is, if you don’t learn from your mistake, you’ve missed the lesson completely. I mean, I think if you read my book, The lessons I was learning over and over is backup. What do you need to have with you when you leave the house. So you’re leaving on time prepared, and you can be calm, you’re not that person that rushes into the room with their hair on fire and all these saris and oh my gosh, and I’m a hot mess.

I hate that term, a hot mess. Because it just I don’t want to say it’s an excuse, but maybe it’s a little bit up, I’m just a hot mess, right? Well, then you don’t have to work on yourself if you’re just a hot mess. So what can you do better, but keep it small, keep it small,

Elizabeth:
Well and hot mess is that’s an identity level thing. There’s a concept that I talked about with my clients, which is called the NLP logical layers of change. And it’s kind of interesting that we’re talking about this because environment if you think about a pyramid, and at the very top is environment, it’s easy to set up your environment, but it doesn’t affect change very much, especially if the bottom layer is a hot mess, you will continually self sabotage and do things that go along with that hot messiness. That’s a word. So like, it will create the beliefs and values that go along with being a hot mess. And it’s not until you decide that you know what, I’m not a hot mess anymore, or I do have my ashes together, that then we can instill real change that will allow us to get organized, right?

Ryan:
Absolutely.

Elizabeth:
So um, in the book, you talk about self care, and you have one tip that I absolutely loved. And I didn’t even like, think about doing it. But you say, scheduling things far out in advance. And it’s so important, because when we do that, we’re less likely to move that appointment that’s already there. So let’s talk a little bit more about self care.

Ryan:
Oh, yes. Essential.

That’s another mentality that we as women, we almost feel like we have to ask permission to have self care. And we also kind of perfectionism that one up to, oh, self care, well, I have to have a spa day, well, that’s a little hard, right? a spa day could be taking a bath in your own home, it could be sitting on your back porch with a book because you want to, like self care is taking 30 minutes after a shower to just put on lotion and just have music on like that time is everywhere. Self Care is everywhere. It is not some giant, nebulous, difficult thing to find, but it is also something you want to look forward to. So yes, I do say to schedule your self care farther out in the future, because then it is way more likely to stay on the calendar. And I mean, how many people are listening to this podcast, and that have a gift card? Okay, let’s don’t even talk about 2020. But you have a spa gift card that you’ve not used. I mean, you 100% do or you have a restaurant gift card or a Lululemon gift card, self care could be putting that on your calendar and taking yourself on a little date. And just having fun with that. And if you don’t like to do that alone, get a buddy to go with you. Because it’s almost okay for us to go take people with us. It’s just magical. And it’s amazing how much we make that such a big deal in our head. Like, why not do it, you know, or we just don’t take I think women just think we need permission. We have to ask permission. And I’m like trying to break trying to break shatter that that Mis-information in our heads.

Elizabeth:
Yeah. So what advice do you have for women who feel guilty doing stuff like that?

Ryan:
Oh, wow.

So think about someone around you look at look at somebody that you respect for their self care, and look at how you’re not judging them at all, you’re like, good for them. If you respect that person for taking the self care, there you go, that is your permission, like Don’t say things that you are not entitled at all you are, there’s no right or wrong about it, it’s essential. And think about how that it will feed you it will feed we talk about you know, putting on your own mask first or filling your own vessel like you cannot give from an empty vessel. And you don’t want to be cracking. So you have to fill your vessel. And it’s fun. It’s fun to things that just like you don’t remember the last time you took a hike or put a hair mask on your hair and slipped in the all the yumminess. And then the next one, you take that shower and you’re like, oh my hair. Oh, so simple. Go in your bathroom right now and get the hair mask and put it on your counter. And then put it on your calendar. I remember I the first time I was coaching with one woman, we were talking about self care. And she was like, I’ve got this sample of a mud mask. And like tonight you’re doing it and she sent me a picture of her face with the mud mask on. And then I was like, How hard was that? Right? It’s just, it’s just a small micro moment. And then you get to get rid of that little package that’s floating around in your makeup drawer.

Elizabeth:
Oh my god, I am dying. This is hilarious.

But you’re absolutely right. You are absolutely right that we have all of those little samples and things like that. And they just create like this static this this reminder in our head of you’re not doing enough or you’re not good enough or any of that. And so yeah, this is this is amazing. Alright, so let’s talk a little bit about your focus group. Is it

Ryan:
okay, yes, absolutely.

Elizabeth:
How does that go along with calm, okay,

Ryan:
The population of women that I serve aren’t necessarily nine to fivers. They a lot of them are But how many times and a lot of them are trying to start a business? So how many times have you heard people say, you know, especially if you’re an entrepreneur, you’ve ever set those office hours, right. And because that is when you intentionally work on your business, or your to do list or whatever, but when you are not called running around reactive, because you haven’t set yourself a schedule, you are not going to get those things done day after day, week after week. So I started having while I was having paper organizing retreats that were actually like long days on Saturdays, where people were bringing all their boxes and boxes of paper on site. And we were working through their papers. And that was actually super, super fun. But COVID and 2020 put the kibosh on doing that in person to continue doing those online. And that was another thing that we don’t give ourselves permission to stop and do a project like that people were going through boxes of paper from old jobs or photos Eve, I mean, if you’re getting to the photos part, you’re really getting deep. And you’re you’re getting through your paper clutter, which is awesome. So I felt the palpable community accountability of just being on zoom, and going through papers, people were like, I would have never sat here, but for three to four hours going through this by myself, and they were finding, oh my god, I finally found my marriage certificate, or people were finding significant amounts of money. Wow, gift cards, tender items, you know that Oh, my gosh, the last letter might so whatsoever wrote me or you know, beautiful things like that amongst 90% of SPRINT bills from 1997, that just had to go right. But what fascinated me the most was when they kept saying, I would never still be sitting here if we weren’t doing this together online. And there is some magic there too, because I felt it too. I mean, I wasn’t just sitting there watching them. I was getting stuff done as well. So they started to figure out well, let’s do more of these. Maybe we do them during the week. And I wound up slowly but surely putting together a calendar where we have a Sunday workshop where we get ready for the week, we have the Monday morning workshop that is called start your week strong. And that is the most magical workshop. I love that workshop so much everybody is so dialed in and is so focused, and they run about two and a half hours. And then there’s another one on Wednesday, we call that one winning your week, because the week is you know, it’s Hump Day, what have you got done, what have you not got done, it’s kind of just time to pay attention to how the week is floating. And then I have a fun one on Thursdays that’s always free. It’s called the anti procrastination Power Hour. And again, it’s like a Do you have some nasty phone call, you just don’t want to make and just knock that out. Eat That Frog. And then on Friday, we have wrap up your week, which is where you got to look back and look at what you did get us a little bit of celebration there. And when in wrap up your week tying things up putting post it notes on things you didn’t get done. And I sound like it’s all work there are some times people are doing physical things in their home, they are putting away laundry or organizing or they’re a dozen. I mean, even had somebody doing drywall. She’s redoing her house. But it’s just the it’s the community and the consistency and the accountability of knowing. Okay, I’ve got this time bookmarked. And I’ve also found women Tell me, I know I’m going to be coming together in a focus workshop that I feel less guilty when I’m not in a workshop to hang out with my daughter or read a book or take a nap or play around a little bit because I’ve already booked mark these times. And so the full name of the of the membership is find focus and fight calm together. Because those are just things that we struggle to do on our own. And it’s been going about six or seven months at some people have been in for six or seven months, and they are finding the time to start a business. That’s always my favorite one is they found that time to start a business, but some of them just it’s the community, you know, with the way the world has been the community aspect is huge, and the support of each other. It’s just golden. It makes me so happy.

Elizabeth:
Well, and I love what you said, because I think that this is a problem that so many of us have is that when we’re at work, we’re thinking about home, we’re thinking about how we did not spend time with our significant other or our kids. And then when we’re at home, we’re thinking about work. And so what you’re saying is that by doing these workshops, we’re It’s allowing people to be a little bit more present because they’re not spending time thinking about the things that they have to do.

Ryan:
Absolutely. Nope. That’s exactly what it’s a structure. When you have trouble putting structure on for yourself. There it is like here is the structure. And I have so much fun connecting, we use voxer. And if you ever used boxer, it’s a walkie talkie app. And I’m kind of behind the scenes talking to each each member saying, Okay, we got the next workshop. What are you working on what you know what’s on your list? Like? It is my favorite topic is to find out what the resistance is, you know, what are you procrastinating on? What can I cheerleader you on? Because you’re not doing it and you’re just continuing to feel like you’re failing? So let’s give it like, let’s say it out loud. What are you working on? I have a member who is she had a lot of medical issues, she changed jobs, she had a lot of medical bills, and she’s in an insurance nightmare. And she can just feel the love of the community like, okay, so I’m gonna go I gotta make another phone call, you know, it’s like, Alright, you got it, you you can do this, that the support of each other is if you’ve had kids, and you have one kid, you know, you have your relationship with the one kid. And then if you have subsequent children, you have relationship with each time. But when they have a relationship together, you’re like, Oh, I feel a little bit that way with my members, because they all came to the focus workshop through me, but then they make the connections. And I’m like, that’s the ripple effect. I I love it so much.

Elizabeth:
Well, that’s awesome. Okay, Ryan, where can people find you?

Ryan:
Well, my favorite places are Facebook and Instagram, organizing for good with a four in the URL on my website is organizing for good calm. If you’re interested in my book, it’s right there at the top of the page. It’s a PDF download, it is an ebook. It is not in print, I need to always feel like I need to say that. And there’s a lot of templates in there to help you with your launchpads. So there’s some definitely some resources in there. So just via the website, Facebook, I have a really juicy free Facebook group called the calm collaborative. And that is another I have just all about connection and community. And that is a fun place where we come together on Thursdays I do a facebook live inside that group. And we have all the chats we talk about overwhelm this week, and I do believe we will be having a guest speaker at the end of the month. Her name might be Elizabeth Sherman. I also do some really fun, nonprofit shout out interviews. I have a YouTube channel. You can check that out. I interview women from area nonprofits, a lot of them have started the nonprofit and I get to hear their incredible stories about how they just saw a need. And they started a nonprofit like the Austin diaper bank and Austin kids can and we are not broken. I mean, hello. So good. Can I just say women are amazing. We are amazing. I think you’re amazing. Jeremy

Elizabeth:
Okay, we are going to have all of your links up on the website. So in the show notes, if anyone listening wants to connect with Ryan, I highly, highly recommend it because as you can tell she is just a doll and she is just so delightful. So that’s all we have for you today. Have an amazing week, everyone and talk to you next time. Bye bye. Hey, thanks for listening. If the show resonates with you and you have a friend, mother, sister or anyone else who you think would benefit I’d love for you to share the podcast with them. You can leave me a rating and review on Apple podcasts which helps me create an amazing experience for you. And it helps other women who are done with dieting and want to get off the diet roller coaster to find it as well. See you next week.

Hey, thanks for listening!

If the show resonates with you and you have a friend, mother, sister or anyone else who you think would benefit, I’d love for you to share the podcast with them. You can leave me a rating and review in Apple podcasts which helps me create an amazing experience for you. And it helps other women who are done with dieting and want to get off the diet roller coaster to find it as well.

See you next week.