Tricia shares her expertise and personal experience in learning to change your life. She gives you tips and tricks on how to identify if you need a change and how to do that.
Do not miss these highlights:
[3:11] Her journey to discovering that she was not satisfied with her identity being tied to her job and missing out on quality time with her children
[6:16] Surgeries on her hand and elbows left her not living the life she wanted and led her to discover positive affirmations and personal development
[13:18] Learning to give herself the permission to let go of her corporate life and lead the life she wanted to
[16:25] Living a life that allowed them to make the financial decisions that would not trap them
[19:41] Asking yourself to picture the best version of yourself 10 years from now and discovering what that is for you which led her to improve herself physically and run marathons
[26:07] Implementing S.A.V.E.R.S developed by Hal Elrod, in The Mircale Morning to help focus yourself
[28:33] Developing yourself with books or even using audible to help you focus on what you want out of life
[34:16] Beneficial advice for those that feel that their heads are barely above water
[38:05] Remembering that you can always make more money but you can never regain time
{41:10] Techniques to take care of yourself during the transitional times when you are making those life changing decisions
About Our Guest:
Once a successful director in corporate America, after 17 years and attempting to be a “have it all” Mom with 2 young kids, Tricia Robinson’s body and mind broke down. She quit my job and spent over 5 years recovering from multiple injuries. Now, She’s a triathlete and a NYC marathon finisher with a dream of becoming an Ironman athlete.
Social Media & Website:
www.feelbetternow.com
www.getyourwowback.com
www.facebook.com/triciarobinsoncoaching
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyE2WQnmZ3Zc5SkfSRvINug?pbjreload=102
Transcription of #109:
Dr. Debra Muth 0:02
Welcome to Let’s Talk Wellness Now. I’m your host, Dr. Deb. This is where we talk about everything wellness, and learn to defy aging and live our lives on our own terms. So today on Let’s Talk Wellness Now we are interviewing Trisha Robinson. Trisha is a author, keynote speaker and fellow podcaster. And she’s out helping stressed out moms who are tired of living on the hamster wheel. And they’re ready to focus on themselves to gain back their energy fit into their clothes and feel empowered to fulfill their dreams through her signature MNM program. And no, it’s not like M&Ms. It’s the mindset nourishment and movement program. And Trisha is going to talk with us today about how you can start to make small changes in your life to get big wins, how to stop ignoring the signs that you need to change in a new direction. And she’s also going to share a little bit about how she did this for herself, and the impact that it’s made on her life and her family. So please welcome Tricia Robinson to the show.
Dr. Debra Muth 1:19
I’m Dr. Deb, founder of Serenity Health Care Center. I want to thank you for joining our Let’s Talk Wellness Now Podcast, it has been such a pleasure to share our knowledge. With so many people. We are averaging about 25,000 downloads an episode. And that is amazing because it’s showing us how much people want to learn about health and wellness. Outside of the health care center, we have had the pleasure of changing lives for over 8,500 clients, both men, women and their children. As a result of this, I have created serenity you a university Learning Center where you can access all of my knowledge that I have developed over 25 years of practice at your fingertips in an easy to find index library, you will have access to this dashboard 24 seven, it will be like having your own personal natural path at your beck and call any time a day. I’d like to encourage you to check it out at Serenityu.com.
Dr. Debra Muth 2:35
Tricia, welcome to Let’s Talk Wellness Now. I’m so happy to have you here. And I love your topic that we’re going to talk about because I think it’s such a needed topic for us as women today. It’s so easy for us to burn the candle at both ends. Welcome to the show. I’m so happy to have you here.
Tricia Robinson 2:52
Thank you so much for inviting me, I appreciate it.
Dr. Debra Muth 2:55
So Trisha, tell us a little bit about who you are, and how you got started on this topic in this journey of self care and helping yourself live the best you. Awesome, thank you well,
Tricia Robinson 3:11
To share a little bit about my story. My goodness, I almost 10 years ago, I was driving three hours from Boston to Danberry, and I was feeling absolutely miserable. I had a four month old daughter who I just started putting in daycare and I had another daughter that was also in preschool. And I thought, you know I’m leaving this work meeting and I’m missing out on everything. This fun part of being to the work meeting, and I’m missing out on dinner with them. I still got to drive three hours home, I’m not even going to have dinner with my kids, but I just got to nurse them and put them to bed. And then I have to wake up and repeat this all over again. I felt such overwhelming guilt to the to the job that I had that I started to realize I didn’t want any more into the family that I wasn’t taking care of. And I just started to cry. I was like, I you know, maybe it was postpartum depression at the time. I don’t know. But I was so overwhelmed. I’m like, I am not supposed to be doing this. I’m just not. It was 37 I was successful. I had married with two kids. Great job. I really looked like I had it all but I just it wasn’t fulfilling my life. Each day I felt like I was just on a hamster wheel. I was running so fast. I was doing all the things. Every day was just the same. The weekends were just spent catching up with everything. I didn’t feel like I was being the best employee and I definitely didn’t feel like I was being the best mom. It was like Okay, yeah, I’m making really great money and people are like you can’t quit your job. You’ll never make that much money again. I was completely unclear. and I will say I had many many great years in that job but the last couple years I just I should have gone I was exhausted I was in pain I was depressed and it just didn’t seem like this was living a great life so something had to give and even though my mind told me to quit my job I wasn’t ready because my entire identity was tied into the strong successful corporate woman who’s managing 20 guys and leading a profit loss center of $25 million and yes it’s successful and she’s got all these stock options but I was like I don’t care about all of thatbut I was so like that’s tricia like everybody that’s how everybody knows me and you know I got a chemical engineering degree and I got my mba so what will happen if i’m not a strong corporate person so I clung tightly because I just couldn’t let go but eventually my body gave out to me my hands went numb my arms are killing me and I dropped the dish and I thought there’s no way I can drop my child I think my daughter might have been at the time now five months old so like I was like i’m gonna and I was like I can’t do this anymore so but I did I did hang on for a little bit longer until I was like I gotta get surgeries I like how to fix this problem so I eventually quit that high paying job that everybody told me don’t quit you’ll never make that much money ever again I recovered from multiple surgeries and because I couldn’t use my hands for about five years I had to put my baby in daycare while my other kid was you know in school as well I was like oh my god this is not the stay at home mom version I had imagine like this is crazy like who quits their job to be a stay at home mom and puts their kids and in daycare so I was felt like just outside has destroyed like my confidence was just you know how did I go from the strong confident successful woman to this completely different version of me I just I didn’t recognize myself but I wasn’t in a place where I felt like I could do anything about it so what happened was I ended up finding this workout with this woman and it was like positive affirmations with gently moving your body because I hadn’t you know after the five hand surgeries and two elbow surgeries I was like okay and i’m good to something now like I don’t hurt as bad maybe I just need to move my body and just like the same these positive affirmations well just moving moving my body I was like oh i’m starting to feel good and then I started to add more intense workouts and I started to get strong now i’m still had issues doing push ups because all my hand surgeries but like I was I went from I don’t feel very good to oh i’m starting to feel better i’m starting to then i’m oh I have strength again I can lift more than five pounds and i’m strong confident trisha PTO president like I was had a business I was making money I started to feel fulfilled i’m like yay I came back you know i’ve arrivedand I realized that all that work to say these positive affirmations and listen to personal development and move my body it just made a huge difference just made a huge difference.
Dr. Debra Muth 8:34
That is such an amazing story and I think so many people can relate to that especially women you know somehow we went from having a job at home raising children and taking care of the house to having two or five jobs right we’re taking care of the house we’re taking care of the kids we’re working outside of the house and then we’re volunteering and we’re taking the kids to their games and we’re getting involved here and we’re getting involved there and before you know it your entire day is doing all these things that you may or may not really want to do but you feel like everybody else wants you to do them or you it’s all the “I-shoulds” right? I think so many of us as women have lived the life of I should but it’s not what I want and it’s very hard for us to break away from that difference of well I should do this well I can’t say no to no i’m not going to do this cuz I really don’t want to so it’s so great to hear a story from someone who was able to break free from that and then developed her life the way she wanted it to be and you still have a career you still have your family and you still have your kids but you’re doing it on your terms and I think that’s the important message here
Tricia Robinson 9:47
Yeah I think what’s hard is all of the women ahead of me they worked so hard to get to the point where they were and they really did pave the way so for me in corporate america like I was often the only female in the room but I never felt like my voice didn’t count I mean I just walked in naive thinking like i’m supposed to be here people you know like we’ll get along and yeah I didn’t realize until after I left every job I was in that everybody thought I was gonna fail and I never did or the employees didn’t want me as their boss but by the time I left they were like oh my god she’s amazing like you know she’s and it’s hard to think that you know i’m so glad I was that naive to believe that I walked in and I just took charge and I did what I was supposed to do and I listened to people and but most people didn’t think that I could be successful at things even my cousin when I decided to go to Purdue to study chemical engineering he told my mom Oh Purdue- fail and she’s gonna flunk out i’m like my mom never said that to me oh my cousin and he didn’t say that to me but he told my mom and I and after I graduated I was like so Purdue’s a fluck out school, huh?! Just because your friends fail didn’t mean I was gonna fail like that’s right I think there’s so many I feel like a lot of women especially they’re so underestimated like why do you underestimate these people why do you not believe that they have the strength and capability to do things that you don’t think they should be doing and one of my co workers actually when I was very young still in college and doing a co-op I said if you ever want Tricia to do something just tell her she can’t and i’m like wow I really like that and he said yes.
Dr. Debra Muth 11:39
i can relate i’m the same way like if you tell me I can’t do something oh I will so prove that I can and do it 10 times better than you thought I could it’s like that driving factor for us you know I think there’s a lot of women that are powerhouse like that that bring on the challenge you know I want that challenge but sometimes we do it at the detriment of not only ourselves but our family because we so want to succeed and we don’t want to fail we don’t want to disappoint people we want to set an example for our kids and so we keep pushing even when we know in our heart of hearts that it’s not the right thing for us anymore or we’ve kind of burned that part out and we’re over it we’re bored with it we need to move on but we don’t know how and i’d love to in your story where you talked about your identity being attached to your career because I think so many of us and I started learning this about 10 years ago is that you can’t identify yourself with your career and I did the same thing you know I was dr deb and I was the naturopath and I was the business owner and I was this but who is dr deb who’s deb and I was nobody without that identity I didn’t have a life outside of that career and I didn’t know how to share who I was I didn’t even know who I was outside of that career and really I had to go back and do the same thing and start developing a life for myself outside of what I did for a living versus who I was in this living world and it makes a big difference when you start to identify those two different things with yourself.
Tricia Robinson 13:18
Absolutely it also was one of those I had to stop feeling guilty because everybody else was giving me advice and I didn’t want to take it the only person in my life who wanted me to quit my job was my husband he’s like you gotta quit yeah but I was like I just can’t you know I don’t want a counselor because for my depression and she’s like oh no Tricia you can’t quit your job you’ll never make that much money again and i’m like i’m dying I can’t do this anymore like and you know all the women’s live it’s like all right they’ve worked so hard to allow me to have this position who am I to like give it up. Yeah and actually there’s one other person in my life it was the cousin’s wife cousin who told me I was not gonna graduate from purdue his wife was is she is absolutely amazing and she was a cfo and a company and she ended up quitting her job as a CFO to be a stay at home mom to to the to their kids and I called her when I was going through this turmoil and she said Tricia I just I just couldn’t do it I couldn’t be an all in wife I couldn’t be the CFO of this company and manage two kids I said it’s other people do it all great she’s like but I was losing my mind and it’s okay you do you do what works for you and don’t worry about what anybody else thinks and I was so grateful for that conversation because it kind of like gave me, like okay-
Dr. Debra Muth 14:45
You had permission
Tricia Robinson 14:46
permission permission to not try to live up to everybody else’s expectations permission not to prove that i’m a superwoman superhuman woman doing everything at all like who am I not trying to keep up with the joneses I want to have an enjoyable life, I want to contribute to society, I want to take care of my family, and not like kill myself along the way trying to burn the candle at both ends of the stakes. It’s just it was just not the life that everybody promises that can be like, Nope, not working for me.
Debra Muth 15:21
I think it’s so good that you had the permission from another corporate woman who had climbed the ladder. And so you have that validation from someone else who is in a very similar position to you. And I think we need that because if it comes from someone who’s not what we would look at as our equal, we maybe don’t take it from them as much. But I find it interesting that so many women around you, were telling you, you couldn’t leave because of the money. And I think that’s where we get hung up a lot on is like, well, you are who you are based on how much money you make, not what you contribute to society, but how much money you actually make. And that is such the wrong approach for us as women to be looking at, we shouldn’t be validating ourselves as to whether or not we make $100,000 a year or $10,000 a year. It’s what we contribute to society into the world that really matters.
Tricia Robinson 16:17
Yeah. And we were super lucky because to say my husband, he’s amazing. And he’s the one who’s like, told me right away, you need to quit your job. I wish I had listened to him and not waited a year, because maybe I could have avoided all the surgeries. But we also made some really good financial decisions along the journey. So what allowed me to quit my job and spend five years healing is we didn’t buy the biggest house we could afford. He bought a house that we could live on on one income. And when I was making a six figure salary, we weren’t spending all of it, we were putting in tons for savings, tons for college. So it was a lot of decisions along our you know, very early even before I got married to while we were married, and he decided what we were going to do, we were thinking about, you know, okay, we’re just married, maybe you’re going to have kids and who knows what’s gonna happen. So like, Don’t buy the house that you need to have both incomes on, I think it’s really important. Because, you know, I visited other homes, and I’m like, Wow, this is amazing. And, and the woman has actually said to me, yeah, and I guarantee that I’ll be working for the next 30 years. And I was like, Well, if you love your job, awesome, but like, what if you don’t, then you’re trapped, because you have this mortgage That’s so crazy that you just you’re doing things you don’t want to do, because you’re trapped in a situation where you have to pay the bills. And so I guess I’m so grateful. But as a team, we worked on what’s most important in our lives, and we decided we weren’t going to buy really fancy cars, and we weren’t going to buy the biggest house we could afford, because we felt like it would trap us and we would make decisions that we didn’t want to make. So I think that is helpful.
Dr. Debra Muth 17:58
That’s great advice. I always lived that way too with my husband, we, I grew up in a family where my dad was laid off or was striking more than he was actually working. So my mom was the one that paid all the bills. And so I learned early on from watching that, like just learn to live on one salary, because you don’t know when the bottom is gonna fall out. And I made a lot of those same decisions that you did, so that I would never feel trapped in what I was doing. And I could make those changes in my career. However, I wanted to make them because it wasn’t bent on you have to make this amount of money. And you can’t make a career shift, because you’re going to make you know, $10,000 lesson, it’s gonna break the bank for you. I think that’s an important place for, you know, for people that are younger, that are listening to this, to start making those transitions now. But I would love to talk to let’s talk about how, how do people get out of the situation like you, you talked a little bit about how you got out of the situation, if there are people that are listening to us that are saying, You know what, I am not living my dream life. I don’t want to do all of this. Or maybe they love what they’re doing. But they’ve taken on too many tasks at work, or they have too many businesses that they’re doing whatever it is that they don’t love their life, how can they start looking at their life and creating the dream life that they really want to have? That is a really popular topic for us these days. And a lot of people, especially post COVID, who are now sitting back and saying, You know what? That life I was live in pre COVID was not serving me and now that I’ve had time to be home and relax and not run and chase. This is a better life. But how do they bridge that gap now?
Tricia Robinson 19:41
Well, so the first thing that I tell everybody to do is I asked like what are you trying to achieve? What do you really want? And so the exercise that I went through is to picture the best version of you 10 years from now, what is that person who is that Trisha? What does she accomplished and you need to have some quiet time like put yourself in a room and don’t let anybody bother you and just think of all the things in your life was absolutely perfect and you felt like you were doing everything what would your life look like and I did that and I wrote down like i’m an ironman triathlete so I i didn’t get into that story but that was that was something big for me because I had so many physical issues between surgeries and a car accident where I felt completely broken that once I once I like felt strong i’m like and completed my first triathlon and then later the new york city marathon i’m like i’m gonna be an iron man i’m gonna prove to everybody that i’m strong and capable so for me the picture of health for me is being an ironman triathlete like that is the most like I couldn’t be any stronger I couldn’t be any more fit if I you know that’s that so my vision of me is going to be completely different of everybody else’s vision but that is one of the things so once I wrote down like all of the things that would make my life amazing I came up with 10 goals and actually this is a Rachel Hollis thing but it’s not just rachel like everybody else a lot of other people leaders have done this but I did follow rachel version because it was helpful for me I came up with after that 10 year version of me I wrote down 10 goals that would make that version of me true and the number one thing you write down is i’m an ironman triathlete I also write down I am a highly compensated coach you know empowering others to be their best and I write down like i’m an exceptional life oh you know all the things that are most important to me I written down 10 dreams and every single day I write them back every single day so that it keeps me front of mind what I want to do so if you haven’t taken the time to even figure out what you want that’s the most important thing like just dream big dream of something that’s completely crazy you have no idea like what is it that you want I feel like as kids we dream and then somehow they beat it out of us in school by the time you’re adult they’re like you know quit you know keep dreaming like absolutely keep dreaming like you need to figure out if you could wave a magic wand and in 10 years you had everything you ever imagined you could possibly have and be happy and fulfilled and love your life what does that life look like and then then once you write it down I think it’s very very important to take a take a pen and a piece of paper and physically write it down don’t type it there’s something that happens to your brain when you take the paper and you actually take a pad of paper and you write it down so write it down and then actually write it down every single day and it will remind you every day to take actions to make those things true so I write down i’m an ironman triathlete and every day that reminds me all right what’s your look on your training plan Tricia what did your coach tell you to do well today my coach told me to strength train awesome with personal trainer i’m doing whatever the person trainer tells me to do tomorrow supposed to run for an hour so every day that I writing these things down it reminds me are you doing the actions that are required to make this true so first step got to dream about what you want.
Dr. Debra Muth 23:20
I love that I belong to mind valley so if people don’t know what mine valley is it’s a great resource for self care /self that kind of thing and they have great lectures and things like that but in mind valley program and I forget which one it was that I was doing but they walked us through a very similar exercise and it was what do you want your health life to look like what do you want your career life to look like what do you want your family life to look like you know what do you want your life with your children to be looked like you know you could categorize it and you could outline what is it that you’re dreaming of what is it that you want and same thing there’s there’s no problem money is not an option time isn’t an option none of that gets in your way just simply dream it’s amazing when you take that time to do that you have the truth of who you are and what you want comes out without everybody else’s expectation or without the the physical things that get in the way of that right and so it’s so hard I actually just went over what I was what I wrote down like three years ago I found in a notebook and I pulled it out and I was like oh look at this i’ve accomplished this and this and this and this and I didn’t do it diligently like you I wrote it down and kind of forgot about it and it’s amazing once you put it to paper and you’re absolutely right you have to put it to pen and paper computer typing is very different it there’s something about that that allows things to come true for you and I know one of the things that I do too is you know your phone you have reminders in your phone I would set reminders on my phone every day. So at different times of the day, it would remind me of things that I wanted to accomplish, or I wanted to do or who I was who I wanted to be, you know, I wanted to be this spiritual person, okay, I put a reminder in there, that would remind me, this is who I want to be. So I could look at it, and it would just pop up. And I’d have to take a moment and stop thinking about everything else, and just focus on that and say, Okay, what am I going to do today to make sure that I hit that goal? There are so many things that we can do, to writing it down to setting ourselves reminders to do whatever, to help us accomplish those goals that we’re setting that we’re just not thinking of taking advantage of. Y
Tricia Robinson 25:41
Yeah, so one of the things I tell people too, is once you’ve kind of figured out what you want, you’re probably going to wake up a little bit earlier. before everybody else my house, and it’s actually not an insane time, it just depends on the time of year. But because the kids are in school, I have to wake up a little bit earlier than in summer. And thank god they’re in school two days a week now. But anyway, um, I takethat time, and I don’t know if you’ve heard of how, alright, in the Miracle Morning, I read that book like five or six years ago, whenever I read it, I was like, Oh, my God, this is amazing. And he has a savers technique. And I’ll just tell you what it stands for, for that for your listeners, if you haven’t, but I do highly recommend you pick up the book Hal Elrod Miracle Morning. S, silence, A for affirmations, V for visualization, E for exercise, R for- Ooh, why am I forgetting what R, S is for scribing? What is our for reading, reading. So I’m like, if you haven’t picked up a book, and I know there’s a lot of people who don’t read past high school or college. I mean, I’m reading at least three books right now. So reading is so critical. It feeds feed your brain, like you’re really need to read good books. And I find that every morning if I follow that thing. Now, I don’t always exercise in the first hour of the day, because sometimes I’m getting the kids off to school. But once they’re kind of on their way I do what I need to do. And then a lot of times in the weekends, I’m up doing all this stuff. And I’m exercise before the people even wake up so. But the savers has been hugely beneficial to me for the last five years. Once I was physically able to stuff again. I was I was implementing the savers, and it’s it’s been life changing. It’s really, really great book. And it’s if you want more on that I can share more on that too.
Dr. Debra Muth 27:36
Yeah, absolutely. The Miracle Morning is a really great book. And, you know, a lot of people who are successful in whatever it is they’re doing their career, their spiritual life, or just being a super human person. We talk about reading and increasing our knowledge base. And I know for a lot of our listeners, you’re busy women, you don’t have time to figure out how you’re going to read, check out audible. There’s no affiliation here. But I love audible without audible I would not be getting through any reading books. But I do a lot of driving. And so audible is a great way for me to feed my brain when I’m doing something mundane like driving instead of just listening to the radio and stupid news and things like that. I can feed my soul. I can feed my brain by listening to books on tape, as you know, as well as taking time when I have to to read. But it allows you that time to get things in when you think you don’t have time.
Tricia Robinson 28:32
Absolutely. Yeah, I’m so grateful for Audible, because when I was praying for the marathon in 2019, again, that was a dream. I never even imagined I had I trained I was invited to raise money for kids with cancer. And I’m like, Well, I have I have a deep attachment to that. I’ve had a lot of friends with kids that had cancer and unfortunately, one whose child didn’t make it. But so I when I was like, Oh, I can run the New York City Marathon, I’ve never run more than three miles. You got two months, two months, and I and I listened to on Audible I listened to a Les Brown. So I’m not a fast runner. For four hours I was training to I don’t know if this was my 16,18 or 20 mile train day, but I listened to Les Brown, no joke for four hours running up and down this this highway. I was like, if I didn’t have Les in my ears like motivating me to get to the next step. I don’t know. Now, I don’t usually listen to things now when I’m running just because I’m more tuned to my body and I’ve been running a narrow runner. I call myself a runner. But when I’m riding my bike inside, like not on the roads and it’s like I gotta ride two hours. Man, I listen to an audible because there’s just no way. There’s no way I could get a bike ride, if I don’t have the scenery like I went to Spain last year to do a bicycle adventure with my triathlon coach. And I was by far the least least experienced rider. But seeing the beauty of Spain, like, I didn’t need to hear anything because I was just my jaw was dropped. And I was like, This is amazing. Like, yeah, the only things I had never done before. But when you’re in a situation where you’re training, or you’re driving to a place that you drive to all the time, like, I wish I use audible when I was doing my corporate job, because I was spending between two and four hours a day. One way, getting bigger, I needed to go. And so I could have man, I could have gone through an entire a lot, a lot. It’s very good. But there is also something different with reading a tangible book over the summer, I don’t know if you did 75 hard, I did 75 hard is part of this challenge to get extra time with my mentor. And he’s like, mandated, you had to read a book. So there is something different with holding a book in your hand. But if you if all else fails, audible or the library has other free options, that you can get books, check out books digitally, which I think is pretty darn cool. figure out a way to feed your brain, it’s so important, it is so important to help you reach your goals.
Dr. Debra Muth 31:24
It is so important. And you know I being over the years studying, I mean, I have two Master’s, a PhD, a couple of bachelors. I mean, I studied a lot. And so I I never had time to read something that didn’t have something to do with helping my clients or pursuing my career. And I always thought it was just such a waste of time. Like it’s such a waste of time for me to learn to not learn something in what I’m reading. Right, right. And last year, I finally decided, like, I’m going to try to read something that has nothing to do with teaching me anything, I’m just going to read for the sake of reading this general something self help, whatever it was, um, and for the first time, in literally 20 years, I was like, this is kind of nice reading something that I don’t have to really, truly engage my brain in to understand and grasp. So there is something to be said to reading that doesn’t have an end in sight. It’s just something to enjoy. Right? Well, that’s what reading is about. It’s about enjoying and filling our brain and expanding our growth. These are all just great self help things for us. But you are absolutely right having that book. It’s different than having something in your ear.
Tricia Robinson 32:39
It’s and I sometimes actually do both, sometimes I’ll buy the hardcopy book. And I’ll listen to it on Audible, because it’s a different, it’s a different way of me absorbing it, especially that I feel like I need to reread. And I mean, I reread books all the time.
Dr. Debra Muth 32:53
So I do too. Yeah, you hear it from a different angle. And you know, six months later, you’re a different person. And so now you’re grasping something very differently than you did six months or a year before. And I find books that I forgot that even read, and I’m like, I don’t even remember what this is. And I get a brand new book, and then all of a sudden, I hit a spot. And I’m like, wow, this really sounds familiar. And I’m like, this one
Tricia Robinson 33:19
happened to be I don’t know, my dad just recently gave me a book and I read it, I see the cover and doesn’t, doesn’t like, make me think that I read it before. And I look at the first page and I’m like, I read the first paragraph. This sounds so familiar. I’m like, I’m just gonna keep reading and like, as I keep reading it like, Yes, I’ve definitely read this, but it was probably 10 years before. So it’s all good. Like, I still finished it because I’m like, clearly I need to get something else out of this book. So I’m just gonna keep on reading it.
Dr. Debra Muth 33:49
Isn’t that the truth? Isn’t that the truth? Yeah, you know, Trisha, there’s, I’m sure there’s listeners that are thinking, I can’t do what you’ve done. I don’t have the willpower. I don’t have the strength. I don’t have the financial ability, whatever it is, that’s in their mind that thinks they can’t change their life to be what they want it to be. What would you say to those women?
Tricia Robinson 34:16
Well, I would say I understand what it feels like to feel like you’re drowning and you’re barely keeping your head above water. I think almost everybody has been through that at least one time in their lives. And I just have to say you cannot give up you you’re stronger than you ever imagined. I don’t think that the world the universe gives us more than we can handle. But sometimes you have to be pushed by another force to remind you that you’re doing more. And this is capable of more in a very, very kind of like a simple example is I go to the gym, I have a personal trainer, and he tells me to do something. I’m like, there’s no way I can do that. And as I’m doing it, I’m like holy cow. I can do this. So I believe there’s greatness in all of us, you just need somebody to help pull it out of you. And we don’t do this on our own success is not a vacuum. I have so many coaches and mentorships, between virtual mentorships. Some people, I pay some people I don’t pay, some people have never heard of me, but I’ve listened to them over and over and over again, we are not supposed to figure this out all on our own. It’s just not the best of the best have coaches. So you just have to decide, am I willing is my life is my future worth enough that I’m going to invest and if you don’t have any money, the library is free. YouTube’s got tons of motivational videos, all you got to do is do a search. But you have to decide that you’re worth it. Whatever hell you’re living in, you can climb out of it. If you’ve decided that you’ve had enough like for me multiple times, I’m like enough’s enough. I’m not this is not me, I’m miserable. Whether I was because I gained 15 extra pounds or because I hated my job. Like I finally just, I finally hit the limit of no more. And what I don’t want to have happen is to anybody to be in a situation where I was in where my mind was telling me, like, or my heart was telling me, you have to quit your job, you have to quit your job, can’t do this anymore. You’re killing yourself. And I was not willing to listen, there were so many signs along the way. And I ignored all of them until literally my body broke down. So I never want someone to have to go through five years of surgeries and recovery and hundreds of hours of occupational therapy like that. What could I have done with those five years of my life? Yeah, to get the help you need now, quit trying to figure it out on your own?
Dr. Debra Muth 36:50
No, if you try to figure it out on your own, you are going to be here five years from now, re listening to this podcast and going, why the hell didn’t I listen and take that first step before you know podcasts are free. I can’t tell you how many podcasts I’ve listened to you over the years. And YouTube videos and I still listen to them at night when I’m going to bed to call my mind to relax me or whether it’s a Reiki thing that I want to do. I mean, I too, I’ve done free I’ve done paid are done in personal, I’ve done virtual I’ve done it all. And every one of them has gotten me to a different place in my life. Not one of them has been for nothing. You know, even though you might say, you know, I just didn’t quite fit that, well, I could, there could be something better for me, you will get something out of it that you’re meant to get out of it. But I still agree with you, we cannot do this alone. You can you absolutely can do it alone. However, you’re going to be in the same spot for many years trying to get past that one place that you don’t know how to get past where like you said, if you had somebody that could just push you in the right direction, you’d be over that hurdle so much faster, and then you’d be on to the next thing that you are trying to accomplish within your life.
Tricia Robinson 38:05
Absolutely. And honestly, time is the one thing you can never recapture. Oh, I missed the one thing that once you spend it, it’s gone like money, you can always make more money, but you can never get back tomorrow. And I’m so grateful that I finally it even though it took took a mental breakdown in my body not working anymore for me to finally decide this is not for me. It’s part of my mission to remind women, you don’t have to live up to everybody else’s expectations. What do you really want? And let me help you get there. Yeah. That’s what your life is not meant to just live up to you know, go. If you love your job, that’s like awesome, congratulations. There was a time where I love my job. But if you don’t, you don’t have to be stay stuck in it. And you’re capable of taking all the skills you learned up until now in creating the feature that you want.
Dr. Debra Muth 38:57
Such a great point. And I love that Stan because I think so many times as women, we just keep doing what we think everybody wants us to do. I did the same thing when I was young. You know, I was 16 I wanted to be a lawyer. But I made the mistake of telling my mom when I was 12 that I want to be a hairstylist. And so I she was hell bent that I was going to be a hairstylist. She had the school, she had this she had that. And then when I said I really want to be a lawyer, they looked at me and said no, you’re not smart enough to be a lawyer. And so they redirected me back to being this hairstylist. And so you know, now I’m 54 years old. I’m a PhD natural path, multiple masters and, and it’s like don’t listen to people point you in that one direction. If your heart tells you to go someplace, don’t be afraid to just stop and say to person, you know nicely or even not nicely, whatever it is you have to do to say, you know what, that’s just really isn’t for me because you’re you’re the one That’s going to suffer from it in the long run, not anybody else. It’s going to be your life. And honestly, you know, I’m 55. And I look back and go, what the hell happened to the last 20 years of my life? Where did it go? Because it goes by so fast. And before you know it in a blink, it’s gone. And you’re right, you can’t get that time back, you still have time to go forward, and you can make changes for sure. But you lost all that time behind, you’re doing things that you didn’t want to do. And that’s not a great way to live your life. And I talk to women every day who are in their 60s and 70s. But say, I wish I would have if I only would have, and even eighty year olds who are saying I did what I did, because my parents put me in that direction. My spouse put me in that direction. And it’s not what I would have wanted to do. You only have one life. Yep, you’ve got to live that life the way you want it to be very important. Absolutely. So Tricia, talk to us a little bit about what people can do to take care of themselves during these transitional times when they’re making some decisions to do something different.
Tricia Robinson 41:10
So I talked about the Miracle Morning. And if that’s something that the people want to do, I totally understand. I mean, it takes about an hour, you can do an abbreviated version, but I do meditation every single day. Sometimes it’s just me laying on my I have a BRT mat, positive, it’s electronic, electromagnetic mat that I lay on, to help me recover from Lyme disease. But anyway, every day, I lay on that mat. And sometimes it’ll listen to a meditation, I got the Chopra app, but you know, there’s all kinds of great meditation apps, if if it’s hard for you to just close your eyes and breathe on your own, then, you know, leverage and leverage another app that kind of helps talk you through things, it’s very helpful. The deep breathing that I do during meditation is hugely, hugely beneficial. So if you take nothing away from this, I want you to, this is the one thing that you can do. Anytime you’re stressed. It’s, you’re going to inhale through your nose for a count of four and exhale through your mouth for a count of eight. The reason why this is important is it stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system. So it allows you to calm yourself down. I actually use this two nights ago, when I was driving home from JFK Airport, I just dropped my husband off, he’s flying to India, and I get this phone call 20 minutes. On my way home, it’s like an hour and a half, two hour ride home and I get this phone call. And he’s like, um, I there’s a problem. Like, what do you mean, there’s a problem. He’s like, I need my expired passport. And I’m like, he’s like, it’s not my current passport, like So long story short, we couldn’t get the passport from Danbury, Connecticut to JFK in time for him to be able to make it whether I drove home all the way and drove back or somebody got to our house and drove there. And so he was gonna miss his flight. And I had to remind myself, there’s no Tiger chasing me, nobody’s dying. It’s not like, this is a situation where you’re extremely frustrated. But he didn’t do it on purpose. Turn the car around, go drive home, go back to the airport and pick them up. And when you see him, don’t yell at him. Don’t scream at him. Like, he doesn’t need any of that right now. He’s not on an airplane to India. Going to go see his family. He’s already stressed enough. So by me practicing this deep breath in for a count of four exhale for a count of eight, it calm my body down reminded me. There’s no emergency, like, and and I think throughout your day, you’re you’re going to feel stress. So when you feel that stress, just take a couple moments, you only need like three or five, you only need to do this three to three or five times I use this with my kids, I use it with myself. It’s part of my how I go to bed every single night because it just calms and relaxes me. It’s not what I do first thing in the morning, though, but just you know, because it kind of like calms you down. So I don’t want to be calm first thing in the morning. But definitely every night before I go to bed, and anytime I’m in a stressful situation. It just reminds me I’m not being chased by a saber toothed tiger, like your life is not in danger. So it just that’s the one thing I want anybody to be able to take away from this is learn how to use the breath to calm you down and remind you that you’re safe.
Dr. Debra Muth 44:40
That is such a great exercise. I love that exercise. And I’ve used that over the years as well to kind of deflate throughout the day when there’s a major problem or even just a little problem because if you’re in a bad place, that little problem becomes a major problem and you react in a way that normally would not react. So I love That, Tricia, I want you to talk a little bit. I want to be conscious of your time here. But I know people that are listening to you are going to want to reach out to you. And find out how you did this and how you can help them. How do they get ahold of you? And what can you offer them?
Tricia Robinson 45:17
Sure, I have this “Five habits to get your wow back”, you can sign up at http://www.getyourwowback.com. So for me, it’s one of those I what it means to me is there was a time I looked in the mirror and was like, like, I want to feel Wow, I want to feel amazing. So um I’ll email you go to get getyourwowback.com. And I will email you the five habits that I do every single day to feel amazing.
Dr. Debra Muth 45:48
That is awesome. And you have a program as well that you help people it is the M.N.M. program, right?
Dr. Debra Muth 45:59
The mindset, nourishment and movement, not the little chocolate candies, that melt in your mouth and not your hands m&m.It’s mindset nourishment and movement.
Debra Muth 46:08
I love that. I love that. So those of you who are driving, don’t worry about this, we will get you the link on our social page, as well as on our website. And we will have all of Tricia’s information for you to reach out to her, connect with her, follow what she’s doing, and have her help you create the life of your dreams. Thank you so much, Tricia, for joining us today. It’s been such a pleasure.
Tricia Robinson 46:32
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. It’s been fun.
Dr. Debra Muth 46:35
Awesome.
Debra Muth 46:38
Hey, it has been really great sharing this time with you guys on the let’s talk wellness now podcast. If this episode has helped you or you feel as though this episode would help someone else we’d love for you to leave us a review, share this podcast. And if you don’t want to miss the most exciting episodes we have coming. We’d love for you to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Google Play. Until next time, live every day to the fullest