the bossbabe podcast - 54. 5 Ways to Heal Your Relationship With Food & How it Directly Impacts Your Daily Life With Sarah Stewart

Episode Date: November 6, 2019

Join BossBabe's co-founder and COO, Danielle Canty as she interviews Sarah Stewart. Sarah is a certified Holistic Health Practitioner, Founder of the Awesome Inside Out Movement and Hay House author. In this episode, Sarah and Danielle talk about the need to prioritize our relationship with food and healing our bodies in a holistic and sustainable way. You’ll learn why this is a crucial element of our foundations to a successful business and a thriving life.  Sarah shares her personal story that leads her to have a unique and heart-centered approach to health. They have an open conversation as to how you can find the courage and confidence to break through resistance, identify your self-limiting beliefs and reconnect with your health to live a life that is in alignment with your purpose. If you'd love to learn from the BossBabe team about how to grow your audience on Instagram by 10,000 ideal clients in 30 days, register for a free spot in the next training at: https://bossbabe.com/growthatinsta  This episode is sponsored by the Insta Growth Accelerator. A 12-week accelerator designed to show you how to grow and monetize your Instagram account. www.instagrowthaccelerator.com

But oftentimes I think people have this big vision of what they want to create based on a wound. The biggest struggle that people have with creating a healthy life is with themselves. The things that make us happiest and healthiest don't involve money at all. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place that we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. I'm Danielle Canty, co-founder, COO and president of Boss Babe. Now today I'm joined by Sarah Stewart, certifiedified Holistic Health Practitioner, founder of the awesome Inside Out movement and advisor to international wellness

brands and soon to be Hay House author. Now for those of you who don't know, one of the company values of BossFabe is transparency. Transparency internally in the way we work as a team but also externally with what we share online. And so I want to be fully transparent with you today, as always, because I know so many people are going to relate to this topic. And I actually orchestrated this interview after I heard Sarah speaking on our friend Ashley Starr's podcast. And I related so much to the topic of conversation they were having around food and the impact our relationship with it has on multiple aspects of their lives. I just knew this is an interview we

had to air and so I asked Sarah not only because of her amazing insight but her unique and brilliant heart-centered approach to helping people make sustainable lifestyle changes and actually heal their relationship with food and their bodies and we have this whole conversation around that actually the foundations of your business really are based on being able to look after yourself and having a healthy relationship with food is one of those foundations and so in this podcast you'll hear about the five ways that you can work towards healing your relationship with food and how by overcoming these can actually have a profoundly positive impact on your business.

So the quote I want to share on this week's episode is one of my own and it's this, you are only going to be as successful as you are mentally and physically capable of being. And I truly believe, but most of you know my background is a chiropractic but you really are not going to be able to see success in your business if you're not looking after your mental health and your physical health on the daily. So take as much as you can from this episode Sarah shares some amazing insights and we'd love for you to share your takeaways at bossbabe.inc at Sarah and Stuart and at Danielle Canty. This episode is brought to you by the Boss Babe Insta Growth Accelerator, a 12-week program designed to help you grow and monetize

your Instagram account. If you're ready to grow your audience with your absolute ideal clients who are throwing their credit cards at you, then listen up. I've created a completely free 90-minute training to show you how to do exactly that. I'm taking you through the step-by-step strategy to attracting 10,000 ideal clients as followers over the next 30 days. If you know that growing your audience with ideal clients who can't wait to buy from you would completely change the game, then this training is for you. As I said, it's totally free. I just recommend turning up with a journal and getting rid of all distractions as we waste no time getting into the nitty gritty specifics. You know that I love specifics. To get started with the training, just head to bossbabe.com forward slash IG dash growth, or hit the link in the show notes below. A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and

paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, Sarah. It's such an honor to have you on. It's such an honor to be here. Thank you so much. I'm so grateful for both of you guys for opening up this platform to have this conversation

because it's really important and I'm just so, so grateful to be here and share. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's a real conversation that's quite close to my heart because I shared an introduction about we really value transparency and building a business is really hard. And one of the things in my background in chiropractic I always say is you're only going to be as successful as you are emotionally and physically capable of being and I think so often when we're striving to grow our businesses we're looking at okay the skill sets that I need and the goals I need to set but we really forget the foundations and for me I've really seen a big difference in how I eat and my relationship

with food and how that kind of shows up in the hard times and the fun times. And I'm just really excited to kind of open up that conversation today. Yeah, I'm so excited to have this conversation. And I'm in full agreement. I just have a strong belief that if you're not taking care of your body, then your business isn't sustainable as well. Because at the end of the day, all we have is our health to begin with. And so I think oftentimes what's happening and what I'm seeing so often by going to these entrepreneur conferences and these masterminds and these really, really big conferences where people are spending a lot of money to be there, that within those spaces, we're neglecting

our health. And then when we go home, we neglect our health because we're in this kind of energy of like momentum and I have to keep up and I'm comparing myself to everyone around me. And I think it's really important that we start to have the conversation around bringing it back to our mental, emotional, and spiritual and physical wellbeing. And how do we incorporate all of that within creating the business and life that we love? Because at the end of the day, if you want all those things on your Pinterest board, but you don't have health as one of them, you're not going to be able to enjoy those things that you've created and manifested

through financial wellbeing. 100%. And I know now that you have helped so many entrepreneurs and even people who aren't entrepreneurs and they have careers, like really shift their relationship with their body, with their food, with their health. But I really just want to take it back a little bit further and just allow you the space to share your story because your personal story is kind of where this journey all began, right? Right, right. So the work I do today has actually been inspired by my journey and that's why I love talking about this topic so much. So to go back to my childhood, I grew up in a really holistic environment so much so that my dad was a public speaker and we were doing yoga in the basement and I was learning to meditate at five years old. I wasn't ever grounded. I had to meditate and write out

positive affirmations. So I grew up in this really beautiful spiritual environment, so much so that when my dad was diagnosed with the heartbreaking news of terminal cancer, he became obsessed with everything alternative and really went on this path of healing himself with holistic modalities. And so within seven months of being diagnosed, the cancer was completely gone. And I remember for me, I was really angry with him at the start of his journey, because I'm like, the doctors are telling you to go this other way. Why aren't you doing what the Western medicine practices are telling you? And he was like, I'm following my own path. Like this is what I trust to be true for me. So on one hand, I learned how powerful food could be. I saw him

cure his cancer with food. I saw him create this new relationship with his body. And then on the other hand, ironically, within the same year, I was scouted to model. And within just a few days of signing a contract in Chicago, I started to develop a series of eating disorders. And those eating disorders lasted for 10 years to the point where I was in New York City being told by the doctors in the ER, this is your last chance at life. Like you can't continue in this career. You can't continue living like this. And at that point I was abusing laxatives. I was anorexic. I was just having this very disconnected relationship with my body from a state of survival and from a place of my career, which was I had to sustain a certain size to be able to pay my rent.

And so for me, that's why also I love to talk about this so much is because I was chasing a career for self-validation and self-love, which was outside of myself versus looking within. And so through the process of sitting in the hospital, feeling so much shame and guilt around the fact that I had known that food could be healing and yet I was allowing it to kill me. I remember in that moment thinking like enough is enough. I'm going to do whatever it takes to cure this. And so I went back to school for nutrition because that felt like the only career route for me at the time. But the interesting thing was like the more nutrition information I got, the worse my anxiety got because I was hearing everyone else's opinion

versus listening within. And so over several years of trying to run from this anxiety, and even though I was physically getting better, my anxiety was getting so much worse to the point where I was having panic attacks by getting my picture taken or seeing myself on Facebook, all of the things. And so I developed kind of like a surrender and acceptance within me. Like this is just going to be who I am the rest of my life. There's no way I can break down these patterns and these beliefs that have been ingrained throughout the modeling industry. And I ended up meeting a coach and his name is Shandresh from Break the Norms. And upon meeting him, he was like, are you willing to hear the truth? And at that moment, no one

had ever presented to me that the problem existed within me. They were always presenting to me that come on this protocol, do this diet, sign up for this workshop. But no one was like, you really need to look within and figure out what's happening within you. And he presented that to me and he's like, I'm willing to work with you if you're willing to unlearn the way that you were taught to suffer. And this is going to be a process and it's going to take time and it's not a quick fix and I can't guarantee anything, but if you're willing to do the work. And of course, at that point I was like in. And so I did everything from affirmations, forgiveness letters, breath work, hypnosis,

daily meditation, mantra meditation. I worked with him. I traveled with him. I went to India. So I was doing all of these things to really look within versus the external. And all of a sudden, everything started to shift. And I started applying these practices to my clients. And what was so profound was that they weren't jumping from coach to coach to coach anymore. It was like they were healing, doing the internal work and then being able to tap their own intuition and figure out what protocol worked best for them. And what I noticed was a lot of entrepreneurs coming to me that were saying, oh my gosh, I feel like such a fraud. I want to be this health coach or I want to open my business, but I don't feel confident in my body. I don't feel like I can actually go out there. And all the girls I look at have all the self-esteem

and self-worth, but I don't have that. And so I noticed this kind of trend where we're in an epidemic right now, where probably because I love social media, but also because of the comparison and so forth, a lot of women are struggling with low self-esteem, low body image, low self-image, and all of the things that do impact indirectly our relationship with our career, which impacts the opportunities we get, because our self-worth, self-esteem, self-confidence are all ingrained in our relationship to what we manifest in our life. And so I noticed this beautiful connection between food, numbing with food, movement, taking care of our bodies, and then how that impacts us financially in the bottom line. And so I started applying these things to my coaching practice and

the results were just amazing. And so that really has been what has driven my work today. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know, I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place. So it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you.

It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know? Get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe that's so amazing Sarah and I really just relate to so many parts of your story that you shared that and I

know so many people listening well too because one thing you really touched on is we often think about food and our relationship with food as this external factor like oh yes like I must try this diet it's what I'm eating is making me feel this way rather than actually or hang on a minute I should change this diet because that diet doesn't work for me because it's an external environment rather than actually that intuitive side of it going hey what does my body need because one thing I've always someone mentioned to me is like why do we eat at the times that we eat at like sometimes we eat when we're not hungry because we know it's lunchtime

and actually being like actually what does my body want right now what does my body telling me it's and listening to my body I know I'm so guilty and I also think this is another thing that comes up as well so many of us shorten time that actually when we're eating are we actually savoring that time are we really thinking about like what we're taking on board and you know fracturing that in or are we just eating on the go because we're on to the next thing a little bit like we do in business right hit that goal on the next one hit that goal on the next one rather than in the moment yeah like the next one. Rather than actually being in the moment. Yeah, like 30 more minutes at my desk,

30 more minutes before I eat dinner, 30 more minutes before I take a break. And then the whole day's gone and we don't know what happened and why we're starving and binging, you know, in the middle of the night or at night when we get home. And so when you first started working with your coach

and now what you do with your own clients, how do you really get people to tap in? Like if they are starting to like yeah I'm relating to this I know I don't do so many things how do people start learning like okay what is my body saying to me because I think that's actually a skill in itself is listening to the body right yeah a hundred percent and intuition and being able to actually tap into that place of your own body cues is one of the most powerful ways to get back to your own state of health and well-being and your body's always trying to stay in balance and it's always trying to stay in homeostasis.

I think one of the things that I think is so important to identify is first like the stories that you're holding and actually becoming aware of what you're actually doing and creating with your health and your wellness and your wellbeing. And so, you know, there's four areas specifically that I see that show up so often with women that I work with in terms of how they're relating their health to their wellbeing. And the first one is a lot of times with their body image or their self-perception of themselves, and they don't have that confidence, which can impact their work performance. And so when we're not cultivating that place of self-confidence, it impacts how we work. And then secondly, that impacts how we actually show up

in terms of the opportunities that we bring into our lives. So just becoming aware of this, like, are you doing this? Another way is like the food cravings that we have are actually often a cry for creativity and purpose and meaning and inspiration. And so often we think that when we have this craving, it's bad and we should shame it. But really, we should look within and say, what is my body actually needing? What do I actually need? And there's this concept of primary foods, which is your career, your relationships, your spirituality, all aspects of your life, your family are all just as important as your food.

And I think it's really important to identify with that. And then the other time I see that a lot of times clients are often sabotaging their health because of the stress. So if you identify with any one of these things, it's really important to first and foremost, just become aware of it. And then the second part is to begin to listen to your body cues and listen to like, what is my body telling me in the moment? Not based on the stories of what I've been told to do in this moment, but what is my body actually telling me in this moment? And that can be through lots of different practices, but connecting to your heart, connecting to your own truth by just stillness. I think so often we're in the state of avoidance because we're like, well, if I stop and connect

to myself in this moment, then I'm not going to allow myself to get that project done. But really, we haven't even stood up to take a breath to go get water. We're dehydrated. We're on our sixth cup of coffee. And people feel that these things are normal because they're looking around at everyone else and saying, well, my colleagues are doing this, but is this really normal? Is this really creating this wellbeing that we deeply, deeply deserve? And the way that I've reversed engineered this with my clients, regardless of what category you fall into in terms of if you are sabotaging your health and relationship to your career, is identifying with your why and your purpose. And so often I think that again, with the Pinterest, we pin up the

house and the white picket fence and the cars and the perfect relationship, but never are we identifying with how we want to feel and what is our bigger purpose and mission on this planet. And I think when we reverse engineer it to, if I have this purpose and this vision of what I want to create, and I want to feel good doing it, and I want to stay alive in the process because I have this vision of what I want to create, then we indirectly take care of ourselves without any hesitation. But oftentimes I think people have this big vision of what they want to create based on a wound. So what I mean by that is if you are like, I want to be an entrepreneur and I want to make so much money. Well, is that coming from because you actually have a desire

to impact and help people? Or is that coming because your mom told you you wouldn't be anything and you want to prove her wrong, which would then sabotage your health in the long run? It's this process of really looking at like, is my purpose and what I want to create in the world a strong enough why to keep my momentum and my health the first and foremost priority? And if it is, then you know you're on the right track. And if you're neglecting your health, you know you're not in complete congruence with your purpose. And that's where I see immediately people hear that. And then they're like, wow, I'm not in alignment with my purpose. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I thought I did because of this wounding. That's not true. Or I need to leave my corporate job because I can't be healthy and well in this environment. And I have this greater purpose

that I actually want to sustain and create. And so just beginning, becoming curious and starting to ask yourself these questions really can empower you to look and see, okay, why am I sabotaging my health? And then is my career, my vision of what I want for the future, where I go to work multiple times a week, is that actually going to be sustainable for my health and wellbeing? And does it fit into the model of primary foods principle I learned from Institute of Integrative Nutrition, but does it fit into that model where every aspect of my life impacts my wellbeing? And am I willing to make the change within my career in order to have that? Yeah, completely. It's a little bit like Simon Sinek's book when it starts about business,

which is like, start with why, because you can't really build anything that you're not really passionate about and aligned with. And it's, you know, as we started this podcast saying like, this is the foundation, like you are the foundation of any business, any career that you're building on top of that. So to really start with your own why and your internal values is really, really important. And so how do you feel Sarah, that how do you teach ways for people to tap into their why? Is it through meditation? Is it through journaling? So some people might be listening and going, okay, how do I do that? What are some things you suggest? Yeah. So because time I think is such a

high resource commodity, like everyone wants more time, right? And it's like, we never have enough time. And that's the story we're holding and operating from. And most of us are living from that space of life is stressful in order to have a successful career. It's going to be hard. You know, all of these stories that we start to operate from, it's like, okay, well, what are the stories? Where are they coming from? Are they coming from your childhood, your mentors, your community, your friends, other people in your environment, your colleagues, like what are the stories? And then first the identifying of those stories. And then second, the most important piece of the whole puzzle is like, when I coach my clients, I cannot give them the protocol that's going to be best for them. They live in their own body. And I think that this is what is so

challenging right now is with so much information out there. And I love the fact that there's so many resources to like how to be well, but the challenge with that is there's no copy and paste sort of protocol that I could give you, or I could give any other woman that would work best for them. It's only can be through the process of trusting your own self and tapping that place of intuition in terms of what is best for you. And so meditation I have found has been the number one thing. And a lot of people will say, especially when they come to me for weight loss, or they want to look better, they're like, how is sitting and not burning calories going to impact my relationship to myself and be able to even get the body that I want or the career I want or the relationship I want. And so whatever their entry point is, I'm like

open and willing to support them in that. But what they find out is that through doing mindfulness practices and meditation, that their different belief systems actually start to change because your neuroplasticity within your brain changes as you meditate. And so just to give a couple examples, let's say that you're going home every night after work, and you feel like lonely because you spent the whole day with people and you and you don't have anyone at home with you. Well, meditation actually helps improve your hopefulness and your ability to relate to yourself so that you won't go to the fridge and binge because that's your way of suppressing that emotion. And so there's lots of different ways that meditation supports actually in shifting those relationships. It helps you with your compassion and your self-love and your food addictions and sleep and increasing present moment, your present moment relationship to yourself where you can identify what do I need in this moment versus someone else. But the thing that I have found that it's the most powerful is, and this is a hard thing to hear. So if anyone's listening and gets triggered

by this, I understand it because it was a hard thing for me to hear. But the biggest struggle that people have with creating a healthy life is with themselves. And one of the things that I, examples I give a lot is like Oprah, because she has all the resources she would ever need, right? She created this enormous financial success and I love her. I think she's an amazing mentor to a lot of people and so forth, but she's constantly talking about her disconnect with her health and her weight and how she struggled with this. And so we know that it's not about what resources we can get. We could have the treadmill and the sauna and all of the supplements and everything clean and a chef in our fridge, but we could be sabotaging our health the entire time if we don't do the inner work. And so what I find is meditation does that. It starts to help you just connect with your truth. It helps you identify your stories.

It also helps you identify your habits of what you're habitually doing all day long that aren't serving you because it actually allows you to slow down and witness them. And then it allows you to break free of them because you no longer identify with them as who you are. But you're like, wow, what if I operated from a different place? And what if I created a life that supports my entire wellbeing, not just a quick fix when I get sick, when I have a headache midway through the day, or I'm dropping my energy or so forth. And I think so often we want to buy our health back and it's just, it doesn't work that way. And so one of the best books that I have found in relationship to meditation and productivity and work is Stress Less, Accomplish More by Emily

Fletcher. And I highly recommend everyone getting it because obviously we don't have enough time today to dive into all of this, but it really shows you the science behind why it's actually better for you from a place of cognitive health and clarity to slow down and how that actually produces more outcome. Afterwards, I have a friend who has built a massive business and he's like, I make all my decisions in meditation because one decision impacts my business more so than ever before. And if I'm in a state of chaos and disconnected from myself, I can't make the right decision in that moment. And I thought that that was so powerful. So now I've come back to

that so many times in my own business. I need to actually slow down to make the right decision so that I'm not scrambling to clean up all the mess for making the wrong one. Yeah. So powerful. And so I really relate to actually, I've been doing a lot more work recently and slowing down. So I've been very type A, like my Enneagram is achiever. So I'm like, go, go, go, next goal, next goal. And definitely just really getting used to meditating. And for a long time, a few years ago, I was really scared by meditation. Like I thought that I'd have to really clear my head of everything and I wasn't allowed to have any thoughts

in meditation at all. But as you start diving into it and you start being around people who meditate and now there's apps that you can plug into and guided meditations, which when I started, there wasn't. But you really learn that that's not what it's about. And like you said, it's about taking that time just to tune into yourself and thoughts will come and go and that's okay and you just don't have to like actively think about things but it's okay to still have thoughts and really just starting to tap into your body and

listening to your body and saying okay well what am I feeling what's hurting what's on my mind where can I let go and one thing I've really noticed is when I'm like consciously doing things or working on something and then I go into meditation it takes me a good minute to fully relax my body like I'll notice that my shoulders are higher even the muscles on my face and I think just actually just really letting it go and once you let it go you realize how much stress you're holding onto. And when we've got stress in our body, like you said, we're getting cortisol releases and we're having all these impacts. It's having changes on how we think. And it's so much harder to make rational decisions and think clearly when we're in that fight and flight response, which often, I think a lot of us nowadays spend a huge amount of time in that we were created to have sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems so the sympathetic was that

fight and flight and your parasympathetic which you'll know as well Sarah is like that that calming relaxing phase but I personally feel that on the entrepreneurial journey you do start going into default on fight and flight. 100% When you're the person in the operating seat and driving it, you feel like everything is very much life or death. It feels very much survival. And the challenge is like stress is up. I think 44% of people reporting their stress levels have just increased in the last five years.

And we're now seeing that the six leading causes of death are all linked to stress. And we're also noticing is that the Journal of Occupation on Environmental Medicine just published a study where they looked at 485 studies. And it shows that your job is 100% impacting your weight, your health, your well-being, and vice versa. And so we have to get back to a place where we're looking at how do we have this conversation and how do we empower each other to take a step back?

How do we empower each other to have conversations with the people that we work for? Or even within our teams, like I know for my team specifically, we've been creating a culture around wellbeing and where every week we go to SoulCycle, every week we go to yoga, every day we fill the fridge up with, like I have a fridge where my team can access and it has amazing green foods and smoothies and juices and i just want to create an environment where if they're stressed they have permission to go and meditate at any time throughout the day and so that's been something that i've instilled in my team and you know if you're listening and you own a business or you're working for someone we have to have the courage to have these

conversations and taking the statistics of what's happening if we don't put our health as a priority and then saying, okay, well then how do we have the courage? Because I think there's a lot of shame around asking because it's like, well, will I look like the bad employee if I'm the one that wants to institute this health and wellbeing? And because so many other people are neglecting it, it becomes normal, but only we can shift culture by becoming the culture that we want to be. Yeah. And what are the reasons that you see that women are sabotaging their businesses and careers via their health?

What have you witnessed to be the case in this relationship? It's so powerful and so interesting. I think everyone's story is very different, but I think it's really, really comes back to worthiness. It comes back to how we were raised. It comes back to the stories that we have growing up about, can we have it all? And what does that look like to have it all? But having it all most of the time looks like we talked about before, like the material things, but no one teaches us underneath that. What is the feeling that you want to feel? Do you want to feel joyful and alive and happy and energized and vital every single day? And no one is putting

those things as goals. And so we haven't been taught that. And we haven't been taught that we can be worthy of having all of those things at once. And that's a really beautiful thing. And so I think people just sacrifice one or the other. I had a client who she was really, really convinced that she couldn't be successful and have her health. And she was also convinced that to be successful, she had to be thin. So these were the two things that she was operating from. And so for her, it was like, she came to me in a place where she was like, I'm going to quit my job because I can't maintain a certain size to be successful and I can't maintain my health. And when we started to break down these stories and she identified them and became aware

that she was just not feeling worthy of having the success, the finances, being able to pay for her mortgage and being able to take care of her health and that health ended up being her first priority, that's when everything started to shift. Then she believed that she could have both and she lost 20 pounds and she ended up switching careers. And it was just really beautiful to witness her in this because when you identify it and then you take the courage to actually shift the belief through the mindfulness practices, the forgiveness and affirmations, all the things that we talk about quite a bit. And even in our masterminds, it's like, okay, how do I get more embodied in my belief systems so that they can shift my behavior? And then they shift my habits and they shift

how I operate in the world. But I find most of the time it's worthiness that you can't have everything. And then so people go into survival mode. And I have a lot of compassion and understanding for this because I know what it's like to not be able to pay your rent. And so when we have that story, we neglect our health and we, again, are operating from survival. But what I've found and from the research and from the science is that the things that make us happiest and healthiest don't involve money at all.

And I think this is one of the biggest eye openers for my clients is like, you can meditate without pain. You can go walk, you can dance, you can take a few deep breaths, you can do creative things, you can have connection with your friends, you can obviously organic food costs more, but you can make a little effort to go to the farmer's market. Like the things that people think they need to have, like the trendy things that are going to get them healthy, I think is one of the biggest lies that we're telling women right now. Because you can be healthy while building a business by just maintaining the things that are the most important that scientifically and have been researched to have the greatest impact on our well-being. And you kind of alluded to it there as well, that actually when you do even take the time back to go back to those foundations really assess what you're taking on board you know food

wise and really making those little steps that actually do you find that most people you work with actually come out the other side perhaps creating more of those material things that they actually wanted in the first place but now they're not so bothered about anyway but it actually kind of comes full circle because they're doing things that they're wanted in the first place, but now they're not so bothered about anyway, but it actually kind of comes full circle because they're doing things that they're happier with. They're listening to intuition. They're moving forwards with things that light them up. Do you see that? A hundred percent. A hundred percent every single time. I actually have never found it to be the opposite. Like it's when you're absolutely connected to your health, your wellbeing, and this desire to want to stay

alive, this desire, like this is my temple. This is my physical being. Without my physical being, I can't operate and function in this world and run a business without this. And I know if I don't take care of it today, it will at some point break down. And so when we start to connect to that place of ourselves and really identify that our health should be first and foremost priority, I have seen it's been incredible to watch. and really is in full happiness and aliveness and really taking care of her body, she sees that her financial income that's coming in goes way up every single time. She's like, it never, never fails. And again, that's just reconnecting with your truth. I also see a lot of people realize that by investing in your health now, you actually save a lot of money on the back end that you can actually invest into your business.

So money and time. So for example, by meditating, you know, we see statistically, I think it's like 11% less in healthcare in just one year and 28% over five years. So you're spending less time at the doctor, you're spending less time having to take the morning off or sleep in or do the things right that happen when you get sick. And you can invest that time and that money back into your business, which then has a greater exponential gain in terms of financial achievement. Yeah, I love that. So, so true. And it happens in so many ways, doesn't it? I actually investing the time in having those seven hours sleep or eight hours sleep, you're actually going to be more productive. Spending that time doing that exercise, you're going to

be more productive. Drinking that water, you're going to be more productive drinking that water eating those healthy foods avoiding the pesticides actually it all layers on and so it might seem a bit more of an effort and in that moment oh I haven't got time to eat but when you do eat we know the brain's functioning better particularly if it's good healthy foods right so powerful so what are some ways like if people are listening and they're going okay I really would love some like five actionable steps that I can be like, right, where would they start? Yeah. So definitely identifying with the why, like we talked about. And then of course, starting to recognize where the stories are, where the stories are operating from would be the next step. And I always love to just carry a journal around with me. And I tell

all my clients, it's really, really important to recognize any moment that you're getting triggered or out of balance. And so again, identifying those stories with how is someone else projecting on me when I should be eating? So for example, like you said earlier today, it was like, well, I'm not even hungry, but do you feel like you should be eating because you're going to make someone else feel bad or your colleague feel bad if you don't eat with them, because that's the way you're bonding. So like looking literally, I'm like, you have to dissect your day. Like, are you going to the break room at two because all the employees are there and hanging out there? So it's like, again, that cool time to bond, but like, do you need to eat that

cookie at two o'clock or, or are you doing it to suppress the emotion because you're stressed out and you want to get through the rest of the day? Like just dissecting your day. And I think journaling is one of the most powerful ways. And that doesn't mean sit down and free flow midway through the day, but it does mean when you start to notice that you're operating from someone else's story or from someone else's belief, jot it down. And then I always have people write the upgraded version of that. So like, what would it mean for you to let go of that story? And what would it be true for you if you didn't have that story attached to your identity? And then the same with journaling, identifying the stories, identifying your habits. So habits are really,

really important to identify because we're in an automatic sort of pilot, autopilot all day long, where we're literally just doing the same thing over and over. Someone taught you to brush your teeth in the morning, right? And so because of that, it's like you just go into this, okay, well, I get my coffee and then I get my coffee at noon and I get my coffee at three. And writing down the habits that you have for two to three weeks, you can identify what habits are serving you and what habits aren't. And then the most important part, I think once you recognize the stories, once you recognize the habits and you're connected to your vision of the future of what you want to have in terms of your life and creating again, that life that supports your entire wellbeing, then how do you

start to interrupt these patterns? Because they're so ingrained in us. Like for example, going out to drinks after work with your colleagues is probably something many of you have done many, many times, but is it serving you or would asking your boss, Hey, let's do a bonding session through yoga or going on a wellness retreat or going to soul cycle or one of those other aspects of, of bonding. Like why does it have to be going out and drinking? And so what's the pattern interrupt? And so once you identify, then we go through a process of identifying what is the courage that needs to come through you, the confidence that needs to come through you to interrupt those old beliefs and then recreate a

new story around that. And that could be as simple as walking meditation, where you realize in the moment that what you're doing isn't serving you. And you're like, instead of doing this, I'm going to go outside and I'm going to say, let go every other step. It could be as easy as sitting down and free flow writing and just allowing yourself to put everything that you're feeling onto a piece of paper. It could be allowing yourself to shift your emotion in the moment by meditation or listening to something positive. Like I have music on my phone where if I notice I'm going into someone else's story or something that's not serving me, I just put music on and I like dance and I shake it out of my body,

like literally shake it out of my body. Yeah. It probably sounds so rude to a lot of you guys, but it's just like, how do you interrupt so that your mind doesn't operate from this autopilot? And what is something that you can replace in that moment to serve you and serve your highest good? And so it could be as easy as I usually drink coffee today. My third coffee, I'm going to drink a glass of water. But working with my clients, we identify once we go through all the habits in the stories, then we start to identify what's the upgraded version.

And then how do we create a mindset shift around that where you're no longer operating from a place of loneliness, sadness, anger, frustration, and now you're empowered to say, I can take on this radical responsibility to actually take care of my health and my wellbeing. Because it's so easy. And I mean, this was so much love and compassion. It is so easy, especially right now to feel angry and frustrated and sad and want to blame. And I feel like that's where people get the most stuck. It's like they blame the podcast, they blame the expert, they blame the health coach, they blame their doctor, they blame their work. And we're not getting back to a place of radical responsibility. So through pattern interruption, then it's moving into a place of radical responsibility,

where we take that confidence and that courage to say, this matters to me. This is important. This is important, not for today, but for my long-term health. And one of my favorite quotes of all times is prevention is the greatest cure, but nobody teaches us prevention because again, the story ingrained within all of us is like, there's a quick fix for everything that ails us. And that's another story. Like if we notice that that's happening within the day, it's like, okay, well, I'm just going to grab an Advil. Well, what if we prevented the headache from being preventative today, tomorrow and the next day, so the headache doesn't show up day three. So you can kind of reverse engineer all of this, as long as you're

willing to say, how do I create a life of sustainability versus instant gratification and suppressing whatever is showing up in my body. Yeah, so true. And a question on this, because I feel like this will come up for a few people, right? I 100% agree to everything you've said. And I think that process and moving through these layers and adding each one on the right time is so, so important. But how is it that a lot of people won't be necessarily surrounded? We're speaking about breaking habits, right? And if someone wants to break their habit, that also might affect people around them, their partners, their children, their parents. Like, how do you teach your clients to talk to those people so that they can actually get support rather than challenge? Yes. And this is one of the hardest parts of this process because again, when you're operating from the connection to your colleagues, from your friends, these people that have been in your life, your whole life, right? Like the bonding over food, even with your family. I mean, I've worked with so many people who are terrified to go to their mom and just say, I don't feel good when I eat your pasta. I'm so sorry. I love you, but I just don't want to continue down this road of not feeling good in my body. So breaking down these

beliefs is really, really challenging. And the only thing that I have ever found that has worked, to be honest, is leading by example. And when you become so connected to your purpose and your vision, you're going to inspire those around you that need inspiring to take that step. I mean, I can speak truthfully about my husband. He never ate salad before ever, ever, not once. And if I would have been down his throat every single day, it would have been me coming from a place of like, I don't love you unless you change. So I had to step back and say, I love you exactly as you are. And this is what I teach my clients. Like you can love these people exactly as they are and know that the way that they're operating isn't the way that's good for you to operate from. And that doesn't mean that you love them any less. That doesn't mean that they can't be in your lives, but it's about becoming empowered so that you can feel good. Because at the end of the day, you have to live in your body. You're the only one that's living there. And so from that space of recognizing that with my husband and really, really seeing it, even with a lot of my friends, I've had to set very clear boundaries of, you know, I would rather go to a yoga class than

go out for happy hour. That's just where I am in my life. And I would love to still have you in my life, but this is just where I am in my life. And I found that people that deeply love you unconditionally actually are so happy and inspired by the fact that you're taking care of yourself because they're like, they want the best thing for you. And then they begin to identify that their wounding is coming from the fact that, oh, wow, we're bonding over food. And I feel like if I don't get to go out with her for brunch on a Sunday and drink mimosas, then she doesn't love me. But you actually heal that because then you realize that you love that person regardless

of their behavior, if that makes sense. So, so powerful. And I think I'm really glad I asked that question because I know there'll be a lot of people relating to that. And I just think having that kind of ownership on how they can approach that and you just offering that clarity is just so powerful and thank you so much Sarah for this episode because I really feel like we've kind of dug under the layers of entrepreneurship and performance and got to the root of it and really chatting about that why we discuss why in business all the time but I think we really forget about our why and the real foundations around our health. And just taking the time to have this conversation today is so amazing. So thank you for your time, first of all.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It was such a pleasure and such an important topic. And I think it's really important that also to not get overwhelmed and bombarded and realize you have to upgrade and change your life all at once. And that these, again, are really little baby steps. But when you look back over a year, you can see that your life completely changed by just integrating one little thing at a time.

Completely. And so if our listeners want to find out a little bit more about you, where can they find you? Yeah, I would love to connect with anyone who wants any more information on this topic. My Instagram is at Sarah Ann Stewart. So it's just Sarah with an an h and a and an e and then stewart so you can just dm me there and would love love love to connect amazing thank you so much sarah and if you enjoyed

listening to this episode please tag us both at danielcounty and at bossbabe.inc as well as sarah's and we'd love to hear from you. Thank you. If you loved this episode, please subscribe and be sure to leave us a review. I want to hear what you enjoyed, what your main takeaways were. And also I really want to know who you want to see appear on the show. We'll be reading all of the reviews. So we will be implementing your feedback. And speaking of reviews, we've got a little something up our sleeves so we've just created a brand new document it's called the boss babe 25 so the boss babe 25 is the 25 essential resources you need for personal and professional growth seriously it's like a little boss babe holy grail it's incredible and you're gonna love it it covers everything from must-have products our favorite books rituals

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