The Ryan Leak Podcast - Moving On With a Healthy Heart with Executive Coach Vasti Cruz

Episode Date: September 18, 2023

In this episode, Ryan Leak engages in a conversation with Vasti Cruz, a coach and founder of Healthy Heart Talks. They delve into the concept of wholehearted living, discussing how to move on from challenging situations, make authentic decisions, and bring your best energy to work and life. Vasti shares insights on the importance of aligning head and heart, letting go of past hurts, and embracing vulnerability to lead a fulfilling life. You can connect Vasti Cruz at her website: https://www.healthofyourheart.com/ She's also available for coaching at: ryanleak.com/coaching

Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to followership with Ryan Leake. I have a very special guest with us today. Her name is Vosti Cruz. And Vosti has a very interesting coaching practice that I thought, I want to bring her on followership to talk about this because I've known Vosti for, I'm going to go, I'm going to go 14 years. we've probably known of each other for 15. But actually, we've known each other for about 14 years.

Vasti is my wife and I's best friend. She's my wife's best friend. But when I exclude myself, I get in trouble with the both of them. So I'm just going to throw that out there. But Vosti is a part of our coaching platform. And her coaching practice is predominantly built off of the health of your heart. Healthy Heart Talks is also a podcast that she has that I also recommend.

And so Vastie, it's, well, first off, welcome, welcome to followership with Ryan Lake. So glad that you're here. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Hello. Secondly, the reason I want to have you on today's episode is because there is a global conversation happening right now around mental health and it should be. but I think what is perhaps missing is a discussion around the health of our heart.

What led you to centering your coaching practice around the health of your heart? What were you seeing that made you think, you know what? I want to be the person in this space that helps people have a healthy heart so that they can have healthy teams, healthy organizations. Because when I think about my mental space, I think, like, okay, there's a million books right now on mental performance and mental, mental, mental, mental, mental. But I found that when my heart isn't in the right place,

that actually impacts so much in my life. So what were you seeing that led you to think, I want to help people with this area of their life? Well, I think is what you just said right now, when your heart is not in the right place, everything in your life kind of feels off. And I believe that what I kept seeing was individuals coming to me with big decisions.

And for example, moving out of state without a job. And they just felt like, this is what I want to do. This is how I feel and my feelings. And I obviously never want to be a person. in that burst somebody's bubble or like, you know, kill your light. But I also want people to move with the intelligence of your decision. And I think that people get caught up with how they feel. So it's interesting that you brought up the mental health because nowadays we're hearing

people quit jobs because of mental health. We're hearing relationships because of mental health. And it's not that it's not valid. I believe that it's not. certain things do affect our mental health. But I believe that if you focus on yourself for just one second of this journey we call life and really hone in on my feelings, my feelings speaking louder than my logic. And I believe that that's what I kept seeing.

I kept seeing people, their feelings were overcoming their logic. And from my experience, when I made decisions out of my feelings, It's never ended good for me. It's always made me repeat something. It's always made me go back to the drawing board, speak to my therapist or friends, and, like, I thought I was doing the right thing. So I more so less saw a lot of people just making very slighty decisions that they would end up right back on my couch. They went right back in front of me with their notebook. like, okay, what do I do next?

And I think the biggest thing is people do not tell themselves a truth. We are out here just living a version of ourselves, but we're not. Give me some examples of that. What are some of the lies we tell ourselves? Some of the lies could be at your job. I don't deserve the raise. I don't deserve the raise. I don't deserve to advocate for myself.

I worked really hard on this project. but I'm not going to take any of the credit because if I take the credit, then I'm going to look like I'm trying to take over. And I think one of the interesting things about followership, when you follow well, you still need to be a good advocate for yourself. That's what I want you on your team. Why do we want so and so on this team? Because when it's done, they're going to let us know the raw honest truth and whatever it is. So that's, I think around your career, people lied to themselves about things that they shouldn't go for in their relationships. They're not truth with their values.

So they conform to the values of the other person out of fear that the person doesn't want to be with them. Out of fear that if I tell them really that I do not like this part of their life, they're not going to ever want to be with me. When that should also cause you to just go back to the drawing board of how, can I work with this person? Is this a value that I'm going to die on a hill or I'm willing to come off my hill? And those are another things around relationships. I also think that when it comes to like your overall health, like I've had a journey on and off with fitness.

And there's so many lies that when I get back in the gym, tell myself, you can't do this. You can't do this. And then at the end, when I do it, I go, wow, it was hard. But it wasn't even all of that. So I think that if you're just authentic with yourself first, that's going to come out in how you lead your life. You have to. And I don't like the saying like the whole living your truth,

living your truth. But I do believe that you should be honest about where you are in life and trying not to do these huge, I guess, don't try to climb Kilimanjaro before you've done. a 10 footer right like just just relax right so yeah that's one of the things that i that i see commonly with people just yeah they're just being overzealous and that's when their feelings get the best of them how does someone how do you measure the health of a heart that's such a good question i'm really when when you say

measure the heart because obviously things are constantly changing a person's life, right? So I think you have to come to the point where you see the threat in your life. How are things in your friendships? How are things that's your job? How are things with finances? How are things just you personally? And I think that if you are able to get to a place where you're able to, again, speak the truth on where you are, then I think you will have a good, I guess, the measure of where you are as far as emotionally goes with your life.

So whether it's a decision you're making, whether it's a move you're making, anything that it has, I think what your community says is big. I think what your, even if you have that closest with your family, who's your counsel? Who's that, like Brunei Brown says,

who's that square squad that you can say, you know, yeah. It was like when I was going to quit my job last year and I wanted to quit four months before I actually quit. And nobody agreed four months before. Nobody was like, yeah, that's what you should do. And I was in school and I was stressed. But fast forward four months later, when I actually took the time to plan and sit down, it was like when I went to call my friends, when I went to call family,

it was like everybody had talked to each other and said yes let's and it's not that you're doing things based on oh this person told me to do it so i'm going to do it but you want a healthy consensus a message that you are your trajectory is going in the right path so so how does how does a person i'm going to ask you a very very difficult question i'm going to ask it first to give you a minute to to process your answer and then i'm going to explain it okay how does somebody move on because what can happen in all of our lives is we can have an experience, to have a job, in a relationship, in a marriage, where things go south relationally, where we can begin to paint the world in a way that is not healthy for our mind or our arts. And so now you could show up to a new job with this suitcase full of hurts. Sometimes life just happens.

And you were fired. Maybe you lost a baby. Maybe you lost a loved one. And I think it's actually pretty easy to wake up any day and your heart just not be in in the right place. And so how have you

coached people to move into a space where they're healthy enough to trust again, where they're healthy enough to date again, to love again, to lead again, to follow again. You know, when a leader breaks your trust, it kind of paints a picture of all leaders. And so sometimes you can have this, we'll just call it just this thing. Might be bitterness, but there's just this odd angst that you can have against. somebody. Absolutely. That has actually done nothing to you. Yes. And so that's what I would call an unhealthy heart. What would you coach somebody to do in that kind of situation where if they're

being, if they're being honest with themselves, they're telling themselves a true story where they can honestly go, I'm actually, my heart actually is not in a good place. I'm angry. I'm mad. I'm bitter. I don't even know who I'm mad at. But for some odd reason, Something like I'm in a good place. Once again, how does somebody move on? Well, I think that moving on has a lot to do with the work you do to heal yourself. You're not going to move on if you're holding on to the narratives that have... Pause right there.

Pause right there. You cannot be moving on if you were holding on. Listen. Come on, yes. Hey, come on. That's good. So I think one of the biggest things when I sit with people, they all think they're moving on and they all think that they're doing the work.

But when I start asking them the questions of how does forgiveness look with that person, how have you really done the work? What is your measuring stick of how healthy do you, how healthy do you think your heart is? So when I start breaking that down to them, like I had a client that was in a nine year relationship, not a marriage, a relationship. And just broke up out of feeling like I want more in life. And I want more. I want to do more. I want to travel more.

I want to do all these things. Well, they released themselves from their relationship. And they only added proximity because they moved out of their city. Wow. But the person was still attached to them. So as they were moving on, they were still answering phone calls, text messages, the occasional visit. So I finally sat down with this individual and I said, I want you to tell me, you've been broken up for three years with this person. And you are still saying you've moved on, but you're holding on.

But I want you. You told me that you broke up because you wanted more and you deserved more. What more have you seen in that person's life? What have you missed out? Has that person been going to Europe, traveling? Did they buy a house? What have they done to show you that you're missing out? I said, move on.

You're not missing out on anything, right? So how it looks is you have to, again, it goes back to be truthful with where you are. If you broke up with somebody, if you're going through a divorce, my biggest thing is accepting your reality. And actually, I remember from my personal experience, going through my, I feel like it was the biggest thing that changed my trajectory of my life was my divorce. But I remember feeling as if I was living in a delusional land. It was like, even though I was going through this process, I was still believing that, no, this person's still going to turn things around, but the behaviors didn't match it. So I remember having to accept the reality of it is time to move forward. When you don't accept the reality of where your situation is, you will always live in the land of delusional.

You will always live in a land where you are just living. I don't want to say that you are, but you are kind of living a lie. Because nothing your life can move forward when you're holding on. Nothing. it hurts, it sucks, all the things you had, whether you lost your dream job, whether you lost a house you were going to buy, whatever it is, it sucks, man. Like you just feel like I put all my eggs in this basket. This was supposed to work. Well, honey, it didn't. So do you want to live in that this was supposed to work bitterness? Or do you want to just say, let me take another stab at it? Let me just, let me go back.

You know, they say that. I don't know who they is, Ryan. Don't ask me they. But I read that certain life events change a trajectory of your life. Losing a spouse, whether it's to death or divorce, losing a parent, losing a child, and losing a job that you worked really hard for. Those four things will always challenge your core values and where you are. It will always, because think about it, we put a lot of status in relationship status, what we do for a living, our family, right?

If you have children, you put so much. So you never think that you're going to be the person to experience this loss. So when it comes to just having to move on, I think it's accepting the reality and then you have to put things into action. You have to. And what are those things? literally you have to sit with yourself and a coach or, you know, obviously coaches are not therapists.

Therapists, I believe, will help you impact the reasons why you do what you do and will give you the professionalism of the psychology behind it. But a coach will actually be able to guide you step by step and hold you accountable to it. So I think if you're ready to move on, that's when this makes sense for you. It's okay, I want to be able to. get out of this rut, whatever it is that that is. And to your point about jobs, it's so true that people leave jobs. And I think that they need to remember that they left their leader, not their company. People leave leaders. They don't leave necessarily a company. They might,

the company may have changed, whatever. But when you think about it, you can't, just like a relationship, you can't treat your new person like you treat your last person. You can't treat your new boss like you did your last boss. It's being able and it causes a sense of vulnerability and having to just be open. But yeah. You know, when I, Bernay Brown talks a lot about wholehearted living. Mm-hmm. When you think about whole-hearted living, what comes to mind for you?

Oh, man. So much. First for myself, I think whole-hearted living for me is my faith in God. my just how I feel I'm leading my life. I think when you're talking about living as a wholehearted and then obviously you want to be healthy, right? I think about all the work that it takes and it's continuous. You just don't do it for five weeks and you're done.

That's the thing about heart work, Ryan. It's a never ending work. Your heart is not going to be the same. as it was last week, yesterday, an hour ago. You know, I remember I heard one of my former leaders say, your head is above your heart for a reason because your head tells your heart what to do. And I remember always thinking that because I was like, man, that is so true.

So when you talk about wholehearted living is making sure that your head and your heart are in check and are aligned. And that you're not necessarily ignoring the logic of it and that you are really taking the time to say, this is before me, this is how I'm going to approach this, and this is what it looks like. Yeah.

So yeah. My last question for you is thinking about somebody in their role, it's interesting. We all have a fuel tank, if you will, an energy that we will bring to our job. And there are some people that have somewhat acquiesced, to the status quo. I'm going to do enough to get by.

Yep. But I am not going to put all my eggs in one basket. I am not going to give my whole heart to this place because they can replace me with AI. My job could change tomorrow. And so what I'm noticing is there is somewhat a reserve that people have in terms of giving their best energy to an organization or to a leader. What would you encourage someone to do that's in between right now? They are making a decision about the amount of energy they're going to bring to their job.

Some people are checking boxes, but what I know about most of our listeners is that they all have a a sixth year that they can go to when their whole heart is really in it. And when it's not, I'll do enough to get my direct deposit. Yeah. Yeah. And so what would you encourage someone to do that knows they could take it to another level, but just hasn't. And maybe they've come to the conclusion that this place that I work isn't worth that to me.

But I don't know that that's good for them in their heart. Does that make sense? So how would you encourage someone, if you were sitting one-on-one with somebody coaching them on giving their very best, we'll say their whole heart. Yeah. In an organization, what would you encourage them with? I would encourage them to go above and beyond and I would encourage them to lead with that sixth gear. Here's why. here's why.

Because if you're looking at a job that's not aligned with your purpose, then yes, you need to go and you need to go figure that out. And this whole like, I'm doing just enough to get by, just when you think someone's not looking in leadership, they're looking.

They look at everything. And I believe one of the biggest things as a subordinate and employee is how you give your, not your energy just to projects, but what you bring as a person as far as how you care, how you translate

a co-workers out sick, do you check on them? People talk, especially in corporate America. And when they hear people say like, oh yeah, I was out and somebody sent me suit. And it's a person that's on your same level playing field. That speaks volumes to leadership. And I think that you can,

can't be the one of the things that I struggled with is that it's like I give my all to all of this job and then I go to the next job and I'm like oh I'm not doing that but I can't help that's who I am I can't help it that is who I am so you're going against who you are when you are holding back from your employer you're holding back from your team and you're not giving yourself you can't tell me that you're a team player but only at church or at school or on your friendships or whatever but then when you go to work, you have this stone wall, right? That you're like, nope, never mind. And I think that also being transparent with your leader, talking to your leader, especially when you're new to a company, the only way they get to know you is by what you tell them. And I'm not telling you to sit there and tell

them your woes and everything. Obviously, do it with reason, but letting them know, hey, this is my work style. So if I come off like this, it's not because of this. Being open and authentic in today's workplace will take you further and it will take you higher as far as leadership than you holding it back and saying, well, I know I can do that, but that's not in my job description. So forget it. You know how many things people in leadership CEOs, VPs, executives have done to get to those roles that were not in their job description? I have a friend right now, executive at Northwestern hospital. She's doing so many things because she's like, I want to keep climbing to the top. And, you know, and there's people that you may not be called to be climbed to the top. So then just do it

right in your lane and do it excellent. And let, because that's your name, that's your brand. That's who you are. So I don't think it's healthy for your heart to be one way at work and one way outside of your extra killer activities and people are like, wait, but that's not who that person is at work. Just if you go, if you go all crazy, if you're all, then do it, then be that. That's who you are. And you would be surprised the bonuses and the accolades that will come with that. You just never know. That's awesome. Well, I want to encourage each and every person to be a wholehearted person. Yes. Wherever you are in your life, wherever you are in your career, wherever you are in your relationships, I would encourage you to do the work that is required to truly have a whole heart.

Basti, where can our listeners connect with you? Well, I am on my website is health of your heart.com and I also have a podcast, Healthy Heart Talks. And that podcast, you'll hear a little bit about everything, topics that people struggle with, from dating to trusting. to forgiveness. And I'm also on Instagram at Healthy Heart Talks. So go ahead and follow me. Or you can follow me on my personal page at Very Vasti as well. I like to have a lot of people on there.

We will have all of those links in the show notes. So connect with Vosti. We believe that she can add value to your life. And if you need a coach, Vosti is also available on our platform. My friend, thank you so much for taking some time out of your schedule today to listen and the followership with Ryan Lee. If today's episode added value to your life, I encourage you to share that.

Rate today's episode. You can rate the podcast, five stars as per. And always don't forget to hit that subscribe button. Thank you so much. We'll see you next time.