Angélica Fuentes On A New Era of Women Leading

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Welcome to episode 286 of the Aegis Podcast. I'm David Stewart.

Today we're talking with Angelica Fuentes. Angelica has lived through and rebuilt after public and personal upheaval so severe She nearly lost everything, including her children and her motherhood. It's an incredible story. She became the CEO of Grupo Imperial at age 29, so young, and spent decades in the highest levels of Mexican business, helping build and lead major companies, has been advocating along that way for equality in the workplace for decades, and is recognized as one of the most influential women in Latin America. What interested me about Angelica is that her story weaves together business, power, motherhood, identity, loss, recovery, and the very practical questions of how we rebuild when all that old structure falls away. She's now 63, a single mother of 2 teenage daughters, and the founder of Nowful, a wellness system built around the daily rituals she says helped bring her back to herself. via scientifically backed products. I wanted to ask her what wellness means to her and how she used it to get through the hardest periods of her life. Here's a little bit of our conversation.

You will fail at some things. It's okay. You have to dust your knees and you have to get up because failure will teach humility. Losses. I lost everything in 24 hours in Mexico. I almost lost my daughters and my motherhood. Loss teaches you what really matters. 11 years ago, I went through that where I was stripped off of everything and I was left with what really matters. And that's my life, my integrity, my self-awareness, and obviously the most important, my, my, my daughters who I fought for like a lioness. Those are the things that we learn as we get older if we Choose to learn it.

What stayed with me in this conversation was Angelica's clarity around strength. We tend to think of strength as output— more work, more speed, more pushing. Angelica makes a very good case that real strength may also involve stopping long enough to hear yourself again and to rest, which is harder than it sounds, especially for those of us who have built our lives around performance and responsibility. We'll talk with Angelica Fuentes right after a brief word from our sponsors.

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Before we get to the conversation, a quick favor. If you're enjoying the Ageist podcast, please take a moment to give us a 5-star review. It helps more people find these conversations, and we would truly appreciate it. Let's give Angelica Fuentes a call right now.

Hey, Angelica, so good to see you.

Same here, David. Thank you so much for this time.

Where does this podcast find you today?

It finds me in Miami, in Florida.

Oh, I love Miami. Such a great city.

Today's a beautiful day. Woke, you know, I woke up and it was kind of cloudy, but now the sun's out, so it's a little breezy, which is nice.

I spent a year living there and I really love the summers because it gets these storms come in and it's, there's like all this drama for like 2 or 3 hours in the afternoon and then everything goes away.

It's great. I don't know if I would like that. This is, I just moved here, so we'll see.

We'll see.

So good so far.

So much to talk about here, but just before we get going, could you give us a little background on how you started in the business world? You started, you know, comparatively young and had a lot of success. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Sure, David. So I'm a Mexican-American businesswoman. I have spent more than 40 years building and leading corporations. I have been advancing gender equality for that amount of time. I was a pioneer in advancing corporate policy that had to do with generating, for example, equal pay for equal time for both men and women, flex time, home office, way before COVID I had equal pay for equal time from the top of the ladder executive all the way down to the men and women who clean the offices, because to me it was important. This is way before it was something that was talked about like it has been over the last few years. Through my foundation, I work with international organizations and created a very positive impact for the lives of, I'm very proud to say this, of millions of women. In Latin America, but they were all this amazing young women that got impacted in 2 areas that are very important for me, financial independence and training programs. You give a woman financial independence, she makes decisions, she does away with a lot of abuse that she goes through, and training programs so they can continue scaling whatever it is that they have chosen to start in their lives. I did begin my career very, very early on at 11 years old. I worked at one of my family's gas stations only in the summers, mind you. So I did that for 3 summers and then I became somebody's secretary and then an accountant's assistant. So I climbed the ladder literally from the very bottom to the top. And I became the CEO of my family's company at the age of 29 years old. It's one of the largest energy groups on the northern part of the country. Then I led a group called OmniLife, Angelissima, and Chivas, who is in 17 countries where I led a major turnaround from a company that was on the brink of bankruptcy into an over billion dollar valuation. And I have been, you know, in businesses and running them. in sectors that are dominated basically by men, the energy sector and professional soccer. I have also believed and understood that if I opened a door for me, I had a responsibility to open that same door or other doors for women. So that has been my life in a short amount of time.

So many questions I wanna ask you. Contrast for me in business, the gender relations in the US versus in Mexico.

When I came on board to run the company as a CEO, they were asking women, I mean, this is a long time ago. I was like 29 years old. They were asking women for a blood test to make sure they were not pregnant so they could be hired. I obviously immediately Took that off. Women at that time did not really believe in themselves. I understood that I had a few women who had the capacity and the talent to become executives in the corporation, and I gave them the opportunity. And more than not, they would eventually give their power away to a man. They could not handle doing that, so it was, it was Very hard. I am sure things that deep were not happening in the United States at the time, but I don't think they were way better than they were in Mexico and Latin America still. Well, back then and even a few years ago, the people who were participating in the boards of the privately held companies were the in-laws, the male in-laws, and not the daughters, for example. I was, has, have been a rebellious person all my life. So I did not just sit down quietly and, you know, lived by the societal rules. I decided that I knew I could push through and I understood very early on that I could not compete with or against men. And much less women, but I needed to only compete with me better today than I was yesterday. I think as time went by, I saw the differences between the U.S. and Mexico. The U.S. had a little more open agenda about women speaking up, women claiming positions, yet I found it that it was hard. To create a pipeline for women by women because it took them so long and it was so hard for them to climb up that ladder position that I believe, and this is just my belief, that psychologically women possibly did not create that for other women because, you know, there's, there's a certain amount of fear of losing that place that, you know, it's only held by very few and not a lot. I'm sure that has changed with time, but I didn't see that happening back then. It was worse in Latin America, believe me, but I saw that in the US too.

You said that you've stopped competing with men and with other women and you compete against yourself. What does that look like?

I didn't compete against myself. I competed with me.

Okay.

That looked like I wanted to be better than I was yesterday. That meant preparing myself twice as much or twice as hard as any man because I understood that because of my gender, I had 2 jobs. First, to prove that I was talented and smart and intelligent, and then to get rid of the barriers and the obstacles that were put in front of me just because of my gender. Yeah. So by saying that, I was just very prepared. I was very studious. I have lived by a belief of perpetual learning. I think when you stop that, when you think there's nothing else to learn, that's when everything basically ends for you. So that's what I meant with that. I was, you know, I started in the energy sector, as I said, where even today is still controlled mostly by men. And I understood that if I try to compete against them, instead of cooperating with them, I was not going to get anywhere. We were not going to get anywhere. And that's how I became the president of the Mexican Natural Gas Association, by cooperating with men, by understanding that they needed to see me as their equal when it came to the policies we were trying to implement, the things that we were trying to achieve. And so I made sure that we That I brought everybody onto the table. I think that's a big mistake that women have made and are still making, thinking we're better than, more intelligent than, more powerful than, smarter than men. That is not true. We have not had the same opportunities as men have had. When and if we ever truly do, then we will make our own choices. And then we will understand that we're not better than anybody. We're just— Amazing as we are. And we are as intelligent as, you know, we want to develop it. And we are as wise as we want to tap into ourselves. And we are as strong as we want to tap into our truth. And I have often told young girls that I hope that when I am no longer around or at the end of my life, I don't see girls doing what men did to us, believing we should be on top of, better than, more powerful than. We need to learn to cooperate. Today, we either cooperate or the needle is not going to move very far. According to the World Economic Forum, it's going to take today 123 years to achieve gender parity with men in economics, education, health, political participation. 123 years.

Wow.

We're going to pause here for a quick word from our sponsors.

More with Angelica in just a moment.

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Now, Full, you have a new venture. What is that?

Nalful is a system that I developed from 40 years of experience that I've lived. I started working within myself when I was like early 20s, after a few years of coming to terms with the question a friend of mine had for me. I remember we were in our lockers in high school and Miriam said to me, how can you be sad when you have everything, Angelica? And I looked at her and as if it was yesterday, I remember looking at her and saying, I have everything, yet I have nothing. I come from a very privileged family. So yes, I had everything on the outside, but I had this emptiness here, this hole that looked very dark and black and scary to me. And it took me a while to understand. Because I would sit with me and ask me a lot of questions. Took me a while to understand that there was not a single person in this world that would be able to feel that until I got it. And it was me who needed to feel that. It was me who needed to open up all those little drawers, because that's how I view them, that one of them is love, the other one is happiness, resilience, strength, wisdom, intelligence. happiness. We all are born with all of that. We forget to feel, open them up and fill them up with light because life passes so fast because it's all about the externalities that we think matter because that's what society has dictated. So when I understood that, I started working within me. I cannot get enough books in the beginning. My first book was called Living in the Light. by Shakti Gayan. My second book that I read was Visualization by her. And then the world opened up to all these amazing books that I read. And they say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. So a lot of teachers that work with the self, with energy, with connecting with who we are started appearing in my life. And that was an amazing journey. And then, you know, taking care of my body and taking care of my mind by continuous learning allowed me to excel in the business, to be able to turn around a company and create an over billion dollar company. But it also allowed me to go through the darkest of times in my life. And all of that is now full. It's not a trend. It's a system that brings you back to connecting with yourself. And it's a system that has products that are scientifically backed. That's NAWFUL. It's my gift back to the universe, and I know it's going to be my legacy. I had a very hard time resting, David, and our major focus with NAWFUL is to teach people to rest, to teach people that rest is power. And that coming back to yourself is knowledge. And those put together will allow you to achieve anything you want because it's allowed me to do it.

Yeah. Resting. Something that comes so naturally, it can be so hard.

Very. Let me tell you a little story. I come from, from an entrepreneurial family from the northern part of the country. And my grandpapa and my dad, were insane hard workers. I mean, even on weekends, even on Christmas Day, it did not matter. They worked, they worked, they worked. So looking at them, I thought it was amazing. I think it's, it's a very good trait to, to come from a very hardworking family because it teaches you how to follow up and how to learn to build. But I grew up feeling very guilty of resting. The other day I was speaking with somebody and he asked me, fill in the blank. It was something like, back then, Angelica, what does rest mean to you today? Back then, if I had answered, it would probably be, it would make me feel not worthless, but it would make me feel like a failure.

Hmm.

Like, A non-achiever. So because I felt so guilty about resting, I had a hard time sleeping. And I think a lot of people today are going through such a hard, fast-paced experience where they wear burnout almost as a, as an honor badge on their chest that we don't know how to rest and we are overwhelmed, especially women. And we need to learn that in order for us to lead with consciousness, to lead with energy, with focus, with clarity, our body needs to be rested and our mind needs to be open and clear. And we cannot achieve it if we go on a constant non-rest, non-sleep motion.

100%. I do want to bring up a little bit of a contrast here. You're 63, you have 2 teenage daughters, and you just started this company. So help me with that.

I have never hidden my age. I love every age that I've gone through in my life because I think it's just amazing experiences that we go through. It's very energetic. They're my biggest teachers. I have gone nonstop in my life achieving what I have wanted to achieve. So it's an amazing place for me to be at. You know, I've always been very creative. I've always been Very focused on, on what I want, but now my focus comes from a different place. It doesn't come from a place of, how are people going to see me? Uh, what is it that, you know, that, that I should achieve, that I should, you know, be looked at? It's from a place of, this is what I want.

Mm.

Damn. This is the 7th stone that I'm going to start from. And that's what I want to do today because that has helped me. And I want to give back.

Tell me about creative visualization. Is this something you still practice?

Oh yeah, I think it's very important. I've always been very visual. I kind of inherited that from my mom. She could see things. So when I meditate, I'm a very visual meditator. I cannot go and find the blue pearl that somebody told me I need to go find. I can't meditate that way. So I go in very fast now because I've been meditating for 40 years. And I see things. I actually see, I visualize. I do believe that you create what you envision, but it doesn't come like, oh God, I want that. You know, I'm visualizing. No, you create what you envision by working, by being disciplined and being constant and believing in you and what you're trying to achieve.

That's right. Let's take a short break. When we come back, Angelica talks about rest, identity, and what it means to keep building at 63.

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Yes, I think there's, there can be some confusion out there between the sort of magical thinking that I, if I just imagine the whatever, but we, you know, use the visualization as a goal, but we still have to Get outta the chair and do the work. It's not gonna happen. Talk to me a little bit about how, you know, starting this, starting this new venture at 6— so I'm 67, so like, I, I get it.

You're still very young.

Yeah, absolutely. That's how I feel about it. Absolutely. And you too. We got a long runway ahead. How are people approaching you with this idea that you're 63, you've had a lot of success, but now you do— now you're doing this other thing too. Are you getting any sort of pushback about that or surprise or anything, or?

I think a lot of women are surprised that at my age I've decided to start something else, but I also believe, and I've seen, and they've written to me, how amazing that somebody has not given up. Because I think that we portray who we are inside. I think people see that energy on the outside.

Yeah.

And I have never believed that dreams That building something with your life, that reinventing, that creating another project has an expiration date. And because I live with that, people have seen it. So no, I have not had pushback. As a matter of fact, I think people, especially women, like I said, have felt, oh my God, if she can do it, then maybe I can too. I'm much younger than, than her. I think that we put our own limitations.

Yeah.

In our lives. It doesn't matter how old you are. We put our own limitations. And I don't, you know, the world's the limit. Go out there, you know, find your purpose, find whatever it is that you want to achieve. When you find your purpose, you find your strength to go get what it is that you want. I always tell people that I feel a lot more aligned, more grounded. I feel very energetic. And I think that's my 2 teenage daughters that give me that because they give me on my toes. And I just do, I just go, I am me. I love what I see in the mirror inside and out every morning. So.

That's beautiful. And it, and it, it's, you know, you're, by doing what you're doing, you are expanding people's imagination of what they can do. And you're an example out in the world. And I, and I, and I think this is something that people, as they get a little older, they forget, like, we're not invisible. People People see us and especially young people can, they'll give us that sort of, you know, like teenagers are, they're like, oh, you know, old people, whatever. And then, but they remember us and they see what we do and it impacts them. And I think that's really wonderful what you're doing.

Thank you. I really enjoy what I'm doing. You know, it's so funny, my daughters, they know I'm 63. They obviously, you know, I'm their mom. They've seen me for 15 and 13 years. When they see a person around my age, when they hear it, they think it's old, but not when I, when they see me, they look at me like, oh yeah, you're 63, mom. I said, yeah, but you know, it depends. I believe, David, that one of the more important things is how do you view yourself is how you're going to view life.

Hmm.

You know, you can be a very young physically person feeling that life is too heavy and too burdensome to live. And so you carry this old heaviness on your back.

Hmm.

Or you could be as young as you and me, and as young as you and me in our hearts. And it doesn't matter. You're 67. I'm 63. We're thriving. We're living our lives from a place that we've chosen, a place of being at peace, happy. A place of resilience, a place of strength, a place of learned experiences that life has given us, a place of understanding that yes, it hasn't been easy, but it's been absolutely worth everything that life has given us to grow as people.

I think it's also the language we use when we speak about ourselves. Like, I know people who, when they speak about themselves, they diminish themselves. They say, well, I'm too old for that, or I'm an old whatever, or I can't do that anymore, or these sort of things. And I think that it sort of, to me, it's sort of, it's connected to the visualization that you mentioned earlier. Because I think that these things, like how we see ourselves in the world and where we see ourselves going, The language that we use around that, I think, I think it's quite important. Do you have thoughts on that?

Absolutely. I believe that words are very powerful. I learned that at a very, very, very young age because I used to go in my closet with my dog and write me little notes, not knowing I was actually writing affirmations for me. And then later I understood how powerful words are. So I always tell myself, be careful with what you say about you. And I tell women, and I tell my girls, be very careful what you say about yourself, how you express who you are, because we become our thoughts, we become our words.

Yeah.

But we should never put ourselves down. I believe, David, that when we don't learn the lessons that life has put out there for us, we go back To that old garbage that we've been carrying. Because like I said a little while ago, it's not about why did this happen to me, but what for am I going through this? And that's how I view life.

Mm-hmm.

And I feel that when you understand that everything we go through, especially the hard times, the pains, It's nothing but lessons the universe, God, creator, whoever you want to call that amazing being, gives us to teach us so we can move on in our lives. We never get anything we're not ready and prepared to overcome, but it takes a lot of strength. It takes wisdom. It takes knowledge. It takes understanding. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes tapping into your resilience to go through it. But then it's amazing. I think that, that when people understand what things teach us, then we don't go back to that, that you were talking about. You know, because for example, to me, you know, we all have gone through Painful things, especially the older you get, the more painful moments you go through. You know, it teaches perspective. When we have failure, and everybody's going to fail, I always tell my daughters, you will fail at some things. It's okay. You have to dust your knees and you have to get up because failure will teach humility. Losses. I lost everything in 24 hours in Mexico. I almost lost my daughters and my motherhood. Loss teaches you what really matters. 11 years ago, I went through that where I was stripped off of everything and I was left with what really matters. And that's my life, my integrity, my self-awareness, and obviously the most important, my, my, my daughters who I fought for like a lioness. Those are the things that we learn as we get older if we choose to learn it.

Exactly. Warren Buffett, or one of those guys, said, you know, failure isn't really failure. It's just if we choose, we learn. I, is it okay? I would, I would like you to give us a little more detail of what, what happened 11 years ago.

I'll, I'll go about the 11 years ago, but to me, failure is nothing but an opportunity. To achieve whatever it is that you did not achieve before. If you do it the same way, then you're not very smart, but it's just, you know, another opportunity to achieve what you want to achieve. And it's not failure that defines you, but the attitude that you take towards what happened that will define you. So what happened 11 years ago? So 11 years ago, I lost everything, a company that I built that was a 50% owner with my ex-husband, ex-partner. And he took it away from me in 24 hours. At a country like Mexico, that rule of law is basically nonexistent. And there's a lot of corruption that goes through it. Some people maybe did not believe or even heard or understood, but I think the news lately are, you know, coming out where people can really grasp how corrupt a country like Mexico is and how people can get away with so much. It is insane. So a judge took everything away from me, my companies, my assets, my bank accounts, my title. My ex tried to take my daughters away from me who were 2 and 4 at the time. He went as far as trying to take my motherhood away from me as well. And he created a horrendous, violent smear campaign. Against me that lasted for years, that went on on a daily basis, several times a day, in the newspapers, in TV, radio stations. And I had 2 choices. I either could choose to be the victim of my circumstances, of my ex-husband, or even me, or his attorneys, or everybody. And hide underneath my bed and cover myself with sheets, hoping that the storm would pass eventually, or stand up, stand my ground, reconnect with my truth, with my wisdom, with my strength, and with my resilience, and choose me, choose my daughters. And choose my life. And I did do that and I moved on.

There must've been days there where you were just like, how do I get out of bed today?

I was terrified because I had my 2 daughters and I was on my own. He, like I said, took all of it away. Um, there were times that I was terrified of losing my girls, of losing my motherhood. I had my daughters with donated eggs. I was 47 and 49 when I gave birth to my girls. So in Mexico, surrogacy, I don't know how it is today, but back then it was very gray area legally. So he said I was not the mom of my girls, that they should be taken away from me. Went to Texas, which is where I was born and where my daughters were born. And a judge gave me an emergency relief very fast saying that I was the mother of my daughters because I gave birth to them. So that was terrifying. Hmm. That was... The hardest thing I've ever gone through in my life. I was overwhelmed sometimes. I was exhausted, but I had me. I had those, at the time, 30-plus years of experience of connection with myself, of taking care of my body, of taking care of my mind, of taking care especially of my spirit.

Hmm.

So what they tried to break, they never could. My spirit, myself, my, what makes Angelica be Angelica. And we can be stripped of everything. They can never take our real power away. Never. If you put power on what you have, and I would tell this to women for years, David, I would tell women, power is not about The position you hold, the assets you have, the bank accounts you own. Um, it's not about your car or your house. That's not power, real power. I mean, it's a certain, certain kind of power, but that's not like real power. I would tell them real power is here, comes from within, is who you become. It's about all those little doors that you open up. That's real power. And sure enough, life, the creator gave me A lesson, you know, in a way it asked me, are you willing to walk your talk? And so I went through it physically, mentally, and spiritually. I never lost my power. I rebuilt myself at 52 years old again. And now at 62 last year when I launched Nowful.

Wow. That's, it is wonderful. Again, North Star power of example. And it's, I love what you said. Like at some point we're all faced with, are you going to walk the talk? It's like, this is all great, but are you actually going to do this? Are you actually going to take these actions? And do you really believe in yourself that you can do these things? And that can be a real, that can be hard.

Very hard.

So yes, that was 11 years ago. And, um, I'm still here. I'm happy. I'm at peace. That's so important, you know, to feel good about who you've become.

Yeah.

Let me tell you another little story. A friend of mine, Camilo, I was living in New York at the time. This is, oh my God, 2015, right? Right after I was going through this. And no, not true. I was not living in New York. the time. I was there for like a while with my girls. It was in the summer. And Camilo, my friend, said to me, if you can change something so you would not have to go through what you're going through, what would you change? And I said, nothing. Nothing. Because I will not have my girls. I will not be who I am.

Hmm. Hmm.

I, Today, today, if you ask me if there's anything in the past, you know, if you were given the opportunity to change anything, would you change anything? And no, I, I, I, I love who I've become.

Mm.

I love being the mother of Valentina and Maria Ignacia. I love my life. I like my path. I like where it's led me. It's been hard as hell. And Terrifying sometimes and very lonely at other times, but, but I would do it again to be where I'm at.

Because now you've got you.

Yep. I got me. And that's when you age with grace, when you age without excuses, when you age without being a victim, when you age connected with your strength, understanding that you're never alone because you have you, when you age with experience and Wisdom. Like I said one time, I didn't start from zero. I started from wisdom.

What are you looking forward to the next 10 years? What's your ambition?

Oh my God. Growing Nowful, definitely. There's a part about Nowful. It's an app that we're working on amazing things. It's an app that guides you to reconnect with yourself. It's powered by AI. It's an amazing platform for wellness and for mindfulness. So I'm hoping to grow the app to where many, many, many men and women use it for that reconnection that we need. It's a very fast, um, practice that you would do on a daily basis if you choose to do on a daily basis. I think that you need to create Those rituals have become habits. So you can be great. I mean, I did what I've done every single day to be here, to grow Naufol, to be a pioneer in products that allow you to rest and to alleviate pain in joint muscles because people who are very active have pain, but as you get older, you know, there are some pains that are there. So. Done, and we've created products that allow you with that. I played tennis yesterday morning and my lower back on the right side was like, oh my God, that was a little painful. I, you know, I, I, something is coming up, but I put it on and it was like, okay, that feels good. So I want that. I want to continue talking to people, mostly to women. I want to see my daughters grow into 2 amazing, they are already, but See them happy and help them with their struggles and letting them know that, like, up to today, I will always be there for them whenever they need me. And I want to continue being hopefully an inspiration to people, mostly women, for them to know that it's never too late to dream, that it's never too late to start again.

Mm-hmm.

Because If we think we deserve them, then we choose that and then we do it.

Is there anything you'd like to leave the listeners with today?

I think I would like to leave your listeners with something that is very important to me. Believe in yourselves. I think that's one of the hardest things that we have, especially women. Women tend to not believe in their own power and their own strength and their own wisdom and intelligence because we are led to believe that we don't have Any of those, that that's more of a masculine trait. No, it's also, you know, part of who we are. We're both, we have both energies, both feminine energy. I want to leave your audience understanding that age does not matter, that your gender does not matter, that you should go out there and live your life as fully as you've chosen to. Not mattering how old you are or what gender you are.

If people wanted to get in touch with you and follow you, what would they do?

I have a webpage. It's angelicafuentes.com. My social media is Angelica Fuentes 63. I like to write a lot of positive things in my LinkedIn. It's also Angelica Fuentes. To me, it has been very important to, to leave positive things. In the world, positive, um, thoughts. It's all Angelica Fuentes everywhere. And remember that your worth is not determined by your age. Your worth is determined only and only by you.

That's right. And I think that goes for young people and older people. It's all the same.

All the same. I agree.

Thank you.

We'll put those links in the show notes. And Angelica, I have terrible Spanish pronunciation, so I'm just—

Oh, you said it perfect right now. You said it perfect.

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you.

I'll take that. Angelica, it has just been, it has been a pleasure speaking with you today. Your story is quite extraordinary.

Thank you.

Cinematic is what I would say. It's amazing. I want to say congratulations, but that's not appropriate here because what you've done is you've become you. And that's, that is a wonderful gift. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you so much, David. It was great talking with you.

My pleasure.

Take care now.

You too. Bye-bye.

What I took from Angelica is that reinvention has a different texture when it comes later in life. It's less frantic. It's less interested in applause. It comes from scar tissue, judgment, and a better sense of what matters in the long run. I also liked her point about rest. Oh boy, many of us have spent most of our lives thinking that If we can keep going, we should keep going. Well, I can tell you from experience that works for a while, but it's not really good for the long term. It can even look impressive from the outside, but there's a cost to always being in output mode. And Angelica's story is a reminder that recovery, reflection, and ritual are fundamental to building a sustainable lifestyle. If I change one thing about my routine after this conversation, it is simple. I want to pay more attention to the moments when I am choosing rather than reacting. That is usually a signal. It may mean that I need some sleep. It may mean that I need to get outside. It may mean I need to stop adding more to the day and ask a better question. Angelica has had power. She has lost power, and then she's rebuilt it from a much more internal place. That is a useful thing to hear at any age, especially useful For those of us who are ready to build that next chapter with even more intelligence than the last one. For those of you who haven't heard, we've got this thing coming up called the SuperAge Games, New York City, November 7th. The idea is that we all have strength and capacity. And wouldn't it be interesting to do a challenge where we actually put some metrics on what healthspan could look like? And If we train for this and we measure it, maybe we'll all live a little healthier and a little longer. It's going to be a great day.

November 7th, New York City.

Check it out. Go to games.superage.com. Love to have you there.

That's it for this week.

Stay strong, stay vibrant. We'll see you next time.