Ep. 134- From Dream Job Burnout to Peak Performance Expert with Julia Arndt

Today's guest is Julie Arndt, and she's the founder of the Peak Performance Method, which is a unique model combining critical productivity, mindfulness, and leadership tools to help forward-thinking individuals and organizations develop the next workplace superpower. Through scalable programs. Julie is a stress management trainer, sought-after international speaker. She originally hails from Germany and has lived in 5 countries over the last 14 years, speaks 3 languages fluently. And after working in Google in Silicon Valley for 7 and a half years while that company grew from 30,000 to 100,000 employees, Julie has been running her own consulting and coaching business, helping over 5,000 employees at innovative companies more understand the effects of stress on the body and the mind, move beyond burnout, and build a mindful lifestyle that delivers focus, high energy, and productivity. So Julie, thank you so much for spending time and hanging out with us today.

My pleasure. It's Julia, actually.

Julia. Sorry. Let me do that over. Sorry.

No worries.

I don't know why I'm doing that. So Julia, thank you so much for hanging out with us today. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you.

I'm very excited as well.

So we have a lot of overlap in our worlds, and you're coming originally from corporate, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah.

And I came out of this nonprofit informal education world and stumbled into the healing and the therapy. And organically, I knew that when I was working with people and spending my day doing these programs, and these events and these organizations, I was really just doing therapy a lot of the time. So that's how I evolved into this process and, you know, wandered into the mind-body stuff. But I would love the listeners to hear that evolution for you of where you started, where you started seeing the writing on the wall about the stressors and the challenges and things that were going on in the environment you were in and that shift and pivot where you're like, oh, I got to do something about this.

Yeah, it's a great question and brings me back to some interesting times in my life. So I worked for Google for 7 and a half years, both in Dublin, Ireland and in Mountain View, California, so in Silicon Valley. And as I moved out here to California, I completely fell in love with Lake Tahoe, which was kind of funny because I had never lived in the mountains. I skied a few times when I was in my teens, but, you know, was not a big skier. Or anything, but I came out here and I really loved it. And that was really a pivotal point for me. That's why I'm talking about it, because, um, as I was really drawn to the nature and being outside and, you know, all of the activities obviously that come with that, I started to think about how can I make this work? How can I be— how can I work for a company, or how can I make money and at the same time have this different lifestyle. And this lifestyle that wasn't maybe really fully available as I was commuting back and forth between Mountain View and Lake Tahoe, which is about a 4-hour drive in each direction. And so, so it was obviously a journey, right? At the beginning, I bought a house here. I bought a condo in Lake Tahoe in 2016. And at the beginning, I thought I have the best of both worlds. I was like, you know, working in Silicon Valley during the week, and then on Thursday nights, I would drive up to my house here in the mountains and then work from home 4-day Fridays and then just have the playground that I wanted to have for the weekend. And I loved it. And I was like, I'm never going to get tired of this. I don't mind the drive at all. This is amazing. And then, of course, over time, you shift your mindset and you shift your perspective on things. And that was the time when I started my first business. So this company that I am running now since 3 years is actually my third business. So I'm a little bit of a serial entrepreneur, which in hindsight is kind of crazy as well because I never considered myself an entrepreneur. But then with the circle, with the life circumstances, it all of a sudden seems super appealing to me to have that lifestyle. So I started my first business and it was an Amazon business. So I basically bought products, created a product and then sold it on Amazon, and it went pretty well. But I wasn't super, super excited about it. It was just kind of a side hustle, and it learned me a lot of amazing skills. But I was like, I don't know, that's not how I'm gonna make, you know, the amount of money that I make at my corporate job and gives me all the flexibility and freedom that I'm looking for. Um, and so, you know, and then, you know, maybe to highlight, so I was working full-time at Google. I was commuting 8 hours a week to Lake Tahoe, and I was running this business. And so I was thinking about, you know, what else can I do? So I started my second business, and I was doing a lot of education on the side as well. I did a yoga teacher training certification, and I did the coaching certification. And before that, in Dublin, I had done a lot of kind of continuous learning and education as well around physical training, so personal training and also sports psychology. And yeah, and then I was like, oh, it would be so cool because there are so many really rich people here in Lake Tahoe. Maybe I should become like a private yoga teacher and go to their homes and sell the products that I was working on because it was in the yoga space as well. And, and I built that company and was really excited and had a beautiful website and beautiful pictures and everything kind of figured out. And that was in the summer of 2018. 2019. So I was running two businesses. I was like building two businesses, right? Not really running yet, but building two businesses and having my full-time job. And during that time, I was a global project manager for a really big project, um, that I was running across all different time zones and all different countries. Like, I was working with a team in India, a team in in the Philippines and then also in Europe and Canada. So it was kind of all over the place. I was up a lot at night to talk to my teams in India and on the Philippines. So it was just kind of a crazy life. And then obviously I had my— yeah, yeah. And I know— and then I obviously had also my private life here, right? And so, yeah. And so in the summer of 2018, I just didn't feel like myself anymore. And there were obviously signs leading up to that, that I ignored at the time and in hindsight were kind of signals that I was putting a lot of pressure and stress on myself. But in the summer of 2018, kind of everything came together. But I was obviously super exhausted and tired all the time. I usually drove at night. I commuted usually at night because the traffic in the Bay Area is really horrible. And so I would drive at 8 or 9 o'clock at night and then get home at 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock in the morning and had obviously high adrenaline, had difficulty to sleep, felt a lot of vertigo. And then During the workweek, I would feel super anxious the whole time, you know, making sure that I get all the work done at work. But then obviously, you know, my mind was kind of in all different kinds of places. And it got to the point in that during that summer that I was starting to have thoughts around wishing I would have an accident and thinking that it would be so much easier if I would be sick or if something would happen to me because it was just starting to feel too much. And those thoughts were pretty scary. Again, at the beginning, I didn't really pay a lot of attention to it. But then at some point I was like, this is not really normal to feel like this and to think like this. And, you know, at the time I was getting a lot in fights with my partner. I took a lot of things super personally all the time, no matter if it was with my stakeholders at work or with other people that I— that surrounded me, no matter if it was my friends or my partner. And I was just like, I'm not really the person anymore who I want to be. I'm not showing up is my best self anymore and something needs to change. And so I decided to go to the doctor and they gave me two questionnaires at the time, one for depression, one for anxiety. And that was the most eye-opening moment for me that I had in my life because I had to fill out this questionnaire and literally almost every question was answered with, I'm constantly experiencing this and it was totally normal to me at the time. But then when you have this questionnaire and they are like, this is like You know, when you say this is always happening to you, that's not a good sign. I was like, oh, wow.

But this doesn't have to be that way.

Yeah. Yeah. And so the doctor sat down with me afterwards and she was like, well, she's like, it looks like you're pretty, you know, you're pretty stressed and you're pretty anxious. And that was the first time as well that someone put a word to what I was experiencing because I knew I had really high anxiety. But I didn't know that it was anxiety. And so, yeah, so it was just a super eye-opening moment and something had to change. And so I took a 3-month medical leave to really figure it out.

It's so powerful, like what you're sharing is so, so many people, I'm sure, who are listening to this and so many people I work with relate to that. And I just had a conversation with one of my clients and it was kind of like, if I give more to this relationship, even beyond my exhaustion point, then maybe once I give a little bit more, then I'll finally get back what I want. And that equation is pretty much what you're sharing about all the different ways that we can do this in our lives. If I give a little bit more to work, if I give a little bit more to this client, if I give a little bit more to this side hustle, to this project, then the balance will show up. And I think you and I are in alignment about— we know through our own experiences, both of our own experiences and both of, you know, our professional background, that that's actually not the equation.

Yeah, exactly. It's actually not what's gonna happen.

Yeah. So what were some of the things that, as you started getting into this new stage of putting the pieces in the right order for you, in the healthy order, in the, the right way of wellness, um, what, what started showing up for you? What did you start implementing that you're like, oh, you know what, this feels better, this actually— I'm able to do this and that and do the self-care. So what were some of that process? What were some of the methods that you were incorporating?

Yeah, the biggest changes I made during that time was my morning routine. It's really powerful. I think when you hear— like, I've heard a lot of, you know, coaches and people that I was following online speak about the morning routine beforehand, but I was always like, ah, yeah, okay, the morning routine, you know? The Miracle Morning.

Yeah. 5 AM Club.

I was like, okay, you know, there must be something about the morning routine. So I was really intentional about how did I start my morning routine before and how much anxiety did that already create, you know, the first hour in my day. And then, yeah, and then I really changed that. So I set up kind of like 5 steps that I wanted to take care of in the morning. And I was really intentional about not checking my phone during that first hour in the morning. And that made a huge difference. I started journaling in the mornings as well. So just writing down a lot of the thoughts that I I was having and a lot of maybe the fears, right? Because I was experiencing a lot of anxiety because I was in this pivotal time of I don't really know what's going to happen. Am I going to stay? Am I going to go? Am I going to start my own business for real this time and not just kind of, you know, with one foot in the door and one foot out? So the morning routine was something that I really made this shift pretty quickly to. It took me like 2 weeks where I was really like, okay, this is what I'm going to do. And I set my alarm clock every morning and like woke up at a specific time and did went through this kind of that little sequence for myself and I was like, wow, I'm feeling really different. And previously, before I kind of got into that burnout, I was a really active and healthy person. I work out 5, 6 times a week. Like exercise is my life, still is. And it was interesting because I hadn't really even realized that because of the commute and the job and the different, you know, projects, I wasn't really taking care of that anymore. So I got back into my routines of of going to the gym or exercising and being active and spending time with friends and just kind of really that space. It was really powerful for me to take that medical leave. And I know that not everyone has that advantage to maybe do that. And people sometimes ask me, can we still do it even though I might not be able to take that long of a time off? And I'm like, absolutely you can. I found it really powerful to just create that space because I think I had so many, thoughts on my mind and so many things that I had like some hands and feet in, that I was like, I just really need to reconnect to myself and understand what's really important for me and what do I really want to do. And at the time, my family, my partner, they were like, don't leave Google. It's the best place to work at. What are you doing? They couldn't really understand what I was going through. They couldn't really understand how much pressure it put on me in terms like from that commuting perspective, because I had a couple of almost accidents a few times, just, you know, just because you're driving all the time, of course it happens. And so while I was driving, I was so fearful, like for 4 hours I was just sitting in the car with high anxiety and adrenaline trying to focus and, you know, trying to obviously not get into any hairy situations. And that was a lot of stress. Like every 4 days I would go through that process of Okay, hopefully the build-up to that. Yeah, to that too. Yeah, getting into the car and stuff. And obviously we live in the mountains, so in the wintertime it would be like, is there a snowstorm coming? At what time do I need to leave in order to still get into the office? Right, anything they know, right? Yeah, yeah. Um, what was I saying? Um, oh yes, so, you know, my family wasn't super supportive of me and my partner either, of me leaving the corporate world, um, because you know, it's a different lifestyle as an entrepreneur. It's a lot of responsibility. You have to be super self-motivated. And I— that was tough. So that made the decision even a little bit more difficult because, you know, you don't want to disappoint anyone. But I got to the point where I was like, I need to do this for myself. I need to take care of myself and I need to do what feels right for me. And if it's not going to work out, I can always go back or find another, you know, corporate job.

Yeah.

And that's what I—

that story is so relatable. And I hear it day in and day out of accommodating other people's expectations of us. And if I don't make them happy, who and what am I?

If—

right, as if our purpose is to be on this planet to make other people happy. According to what they want from us versus help making ourselves healthy and happy according to what serves us. And as I was thinking about the routine, right, that, that morning and whatever it's a— whether it's a morning for someone or it's their evening, whatever it is that they decide, right? For you, it turned out to be that morning. I see. I've realized that it's the consistency of that process, no matter what it is, just be consistent with it. And then some level of accountability. So when, when we're looking for people who are like-minded, right, to get us to that goal, we can't necessarily go to the naysayers. We know they love us. We know they're looking out for us, but they're coming from a place of their own insecurities of the worst-case scenario. I don't want that to happen to you because. Right. And I also see it as if they haven't ever reached that level themselves, they're basing it and judging it through their own limitations.

Absolutely.

Through that lens. So as I talk to my clients all the time, I'm like, you don't have to go buy and work with a million-dollar coach, but you just have to find the people out there. They're on YouTube, they're on podcasts. You don't have to pay for it right off the bat, right? In other words, the resources are out there, but who's already the success in that area that you're looking to achieve in? Go on Google, right? Go on podcasts, whatever. Go on YouTube. Um, and see, right, how do I— who's the best at— who's talking about this the most, and just start washing and repeating that data, those success stories, those patterns, right?

So then not only listening to it, but also starting to make changes in your life and taking action. I think that's the biggest difference. I think we, you know, I talk to a lot of people as well. And, you know, they know a lot of things. I think we all know a lot of things, because we are living in a society where information is just available, right? And, and so many people talk about the same things, which is great. And so many people are so well educated. But then the question is always, do you also take action on the things that you're listening to?

Or execution of that process is the difference between— what's that quote? It's, it's dreams without goals, without action steps are just dreams.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I love that you were talking about, you know, even just podcasts or YouTube videos, because I, I always say the same thing, like, surround yourself. You know, they say you are the 5 people that you surround yourself with. But I think it's not just the people that surround you in your physical direct space, but also what you listen to and what you watch. And, you know, that can have— what you eat, that can have such a strong impact on your development as well. So choose wisely for sure. Yeah.

And I think the process that I walk my clients— when I had that conversation yesterday with one of my clients, And, you know, I share that. And Gary Vee, Gary Vaynerchuk talks about that all the time. It's like, you know, the people who are your 5 people, which other people have talked about. But then he adds something interesting. He goes, you know, the people that you are surrounding yourself with, the next question to ask is who's not doing it well enough? Who's not the healthiest? Who's not the— and if you can't figure out who that is, it's probably you. And my client responded to me. They're like, Oh yeah, that's me. I'm the unhealthiest in my friends group. I'm the only— right? And I'm like, well, that's awesome that you can recognize it and not go defensive. And you didn't make excuses about it. You just owned it. That's the first act, right? That's the thing, right? You own it. You're there. You don't want it to get worse, but you're— but there was no— now can we eliminate all the excuses and the justifications for why you got stuck? And that's part of that process, right? So I'm wondering, like, when you're working with someone, and I know that you're you're now doing this, how do you help them identify their self-limitations in this process?

It always requires some, some level of awareness already, right? People are not going to come to you and work with you if they don't already have that level of awareness that something is—

I won't even take them. I won't even, I won't even take them on as a client.

Yeah. You know, sometimes I even talk with friends or with, with, you know, with clients, and they, they highlight another person that where they identify, oh, you know, they could really work on this. But as long as the person doesn't identify themselves and has some level of awareness that something needs to change and they want to change something, it's almost impossible to start that process. But yeah, so I would say, you know, all people that I work with obviously have a level, have at least a certain level of awareness. And then I really like my work because I do a mix of both. I always say, you know, I want my clients and the people that I work with get to whatever they want to perform at, right? Like to get to the next promotion or to build their own business and be really successful at that. But at the same time, also be aware of what tools they need to sustain that. Because a lot of the people that surrounded me were people that had learned to push their boundaries and had learned to push their limits and work at night and work during the weekends to get all of the things done that they signed up for. And It can be really fun in your 20s to do that, but I think we just, we just don't have that awareness oftentimes in our 20s. And I think that changes now. You know, now I talk to 20-year-olds and they are super aware of mental health and I'm like, wow, like, that's incredible and great, you know. But I don't think that I had that, or my— I think like the millennials really had that. So people from like 25 to 40 years old and And so, yeah, so awareness is the first step. And then once you have that— oh, sorry, I was just losing my train of thought a little bit. But so what I, what I'm really trying to teach my clients is to how to set up systems to manage their time and set boundaries and say no. And at the same time also take care of themselves because I think you can't take care of yourself if you don't have time. And that's the biggest problem that my clients have. They don't have time. They they work a lot and they are super ambitious, which is awesome, but they don't, they really don't have time anymore, but they're not effectively managing their time. There's usually, people can always improve their time and how they're using it and how they're managing their calendars and so on. And so I love to work with clients really on that balance of, okay, what can you do for yourself? And then how can you also achieve all the other things? That you have going on. And I think that's, that's the conversations that I have with my clients when we start to work. So even if they come and say, I want to work on my career, or I want to, you know, work through my burnout because I want to get to the next promotion, and I'm always like, okay, but what else? What are you also doing on this other side? You know?

So it is that balance. But we— I like that work-life balance, right? In the '90s, 2000s, and the last— right. It's, it's kind of fallen out of favor, this idea of work-life balance, because it's not really the goal. It's, it's really knowing, like you just said, what are my priorities? What do I want to let in? What do I not want to let in? And how do I make decisions around that? And that's why I always love starting with, you know, people have listened to my episodes already, already know that I'm going to say what I'm about to say is values-based decision making, that it's all about first define your core values and then use that as the doorman to let in or not let in in every category of your life, whether it's your food, your friends, your relationships, where you invest, all of those different things, whatever you're investing, right? Time, energy, space, money, right? All those things. And if we know that, then we can make it really cleaner and filter out a lot of the chaos, because then we don't get stuck in the emotionality. Yeah, of it.

Exactly. And the more stressed you are, the harder it will be for you to filter, right? Because you're more emotionally driven and you'll just, you know, yeah, you don't think clearly anymore, right?

That's the reptilian brain, that survival instinct, and that goes into the fight or flight process. And that's not strategic brain, that's reactive brain. And, and what I've realized over the years, the more I go deeper into neurology, is that reptilian survival brain doesn't give you a multitude of options. It gives you what is it that you need to survive just for the next near bit of time. It's not longitudinal survival, it's just getting yourself out of this immediate thing. But if our physiology doesn't reset and resolve itself, if we don't have and build that resilience and that emotional healing, that emotional trauma, we're always going to go to that just one little step of variability, of only moving a little bit forward. That's a— that is just lessening the perceived danger, but it's not going into a full strategic, deliberate, sustainable outcome. And I know one of the things that you love working with is sustainable performance. So let's talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, yeah. So I work a lot with, you know, I obviously already mentioned, of course, one-on-one clients, but I actually don't do that too much. I do more corporate workshops and clients, work with clients that way, because I come from that space. And one of the biggest things that I realized as I was going through my own burnout was that there were tons of amazing resources available once it happened to me, right? There were EAP programs, employee assistance programs, like free therapy, obviously medical leaves, there were internal resources about burnout and about depression, anxiety. But up until that point, I had never heard of it, and I was working there for 7 years. And so it's really become just really a new wave, I think, now, obviously also with the pandemic and stuff, that more people are aware of the importance of paying attention to your mental health. And I felt incredibly alone when I went through this process. I felt very guilty, right, to take a medical leave, because I was thinking, what are people thinking of me? You know, yeah, the stigma And I never had really heard of anyone either that had gone through burnout. So that all, you know, sat with me and obviously had a lot of time to think about that as I was going through my medical leave. And I was thinking to myself, well, you know, I was starting to look at research as well and data. And I was thinking to myself, well, if so many employees leave companies because they're burned out, and even now, even more so, right, they are talking about the great resignation. And I was thinking to myself, why do companies have not, have not learned to integrate those programs right from the start and teach employees? They're amazing, amazing employees, you know, ambitious employees. They, they have shown that they can work extremely hard, but why have they not from the beginning shown how to continuously be able to perform on that level? Yeah, and that, that was really And that's really kind of where I'm starting to get very excited about. And that's really my passion and my mission because I'm like, that needs to happen. I don't understand because it's actually really simple. There are simple tools to identify your values and identify what's important for you to practice self-care. How are we building routines? How are we managing our time? How do we set boundaries? And when people learn that from the very beginning when they start in a company, imagine how much how much happier they would be because they have, they have that balance in their life where they work really hard, but then at the same time, they know how to take care of themselves and then obviously are also there to take care of their families or their stakeholders and so on. And so, yeah, so I work a lot with corporate clients and with corporate teams to basically help them learn these tools. And it's a, it's a fantastic a fantastic job. I really love it. I've trained over 7,000 people in the last 2 years, virtually, obviously. And this year we might start to go back a little bit to onsite trainings as well. But it's really powerful because, you know, it's really how do you start shifting your mindset of your clients? Because even today I work with corporate teams and they hire me for a 60 or 90-minute workshop. And then they leave, you know, and then that's it for that one year. That's what they're learning in terms of time management or setting boundaries. And I'm like, no, it needs to be more. And so it's been a really interesting process for me to understand how can I really influence that culture and how can I influence the wellbeing programs internally to make people understand it does— it's not just a one-off training to kind of tick a box, right? But to really show employees that you really care about their well-being and that you know that if you invest in that on a continuous basis, it will pay off so much more, right? Because you have happy employees, you have more productive employees, and yeah, and that's just more sustainable. And then they will probably stay as well and not leave, right? Because they're not feeling like there's no other way out than to just go. And yeah, and I haven't, you know, like I said, I'm still working on this. I have a vision, but in order to obviously implement that into the companies, it takes a little bit of time and talking to the right people. Yeah.

And I see this left and right. So with any of my corporate, whether it's they started their own business and it's interesting to see the different levels of like, you know, small mom and pop shop, right? That you have the family business and they're just hoarding the secret recipe, right? The current, they don't want if someone else knows that we're selling it with this price, but they all have the same distributor. Distributors and they all have the same products, but they're like, you know, they think that someone coming in and leveraging and hiring staff and bringing someone in from the outside that they're going to steal it and open up the business right next door to them.

Right.

That's just like, that's like, that's already a level of stuckness. And then you go into, you know, the solo people, right? They're just doing their business by themselves or the small groups or the lawyers or, you know, the healing arts practitioners that are trying to do it. And they maybe have a small skeleton team, but it's still, they're doing a lot of the stuff themselves. And I'm sure you're familiar with that whole E-Myth model, right? The entrepreneur, manager, technician. And like, you just— when I explain just that theory to people without them, like, they're like, oh crap, I'm doing it all. I'm trying to go out and make sales and I'm trying to go out and market and I'm trying to go out and do the— right? I'm also being the barista and making them coffee. And it's not a sustainable model. And one of the clients that I'm working with about their side hustle, and I'm like, I know what you hate about the reason why you're annoyed about your side hustle. It's not sexy. It doesn't sound sexy to the outside world. It's dirty. It's grimy. It's a lot of work. But that whole entrepreneurship thing over the last couple of years, as you know, right, that everybody's jumped on that. I'm an entrepreneur. I have a business. I have a— I'm a CEO, right? You know this because you've actually worked in real worlds with real CEOs and everything like that. But just because someone opens up a business does not make them the CEO. But I think people are aiming for the sexy, shiny object. And that's the dark side of this entrepreneurship movement. That as opposed to, like you said, building systems, building your team, leveraging out things that you're not an absolute expert at.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah. And finding the right people to do that. And I shared this yesterday. And so like all the themes kind of roll up into like you know, consistency, where I'm like, if I send my laundry out to somebody because I'm choosing to see a client during that time, I'm living in my purpose. I know I'm making money to pay someone else who at that point in their life developmentally is doing their purpose because they can't do the therapy for someone else right now. So where they're at is— and I'm taking away from them being able to do what they need to do if I don't leverage them in that time frame while I'm doing what I'm best Yeah, I love to think like that.

Yeah, that's really powerful. You know, I have a YouTube channel and I, the first year, and I have a podcast too. So the first year, and I'm very, I'm very consistent and disciplined. So the first year I was like, you know, I'm going to record a video every week, I'm going to do a podcast every week. And I, I produced everything myself too for the first year. And after a year I was like, wow, this is like a full-time job. And it is. And I'm doing the corporate workshops and I do the one-on-one coaching and I do all these other things, right? Yeah. And so it's like, no, that's absolutely not sustainable for myself. And that's what I'm trying to preach to people, right? To create, to create more systems in their lives in order to set them up for success. So for 2 years now, I've been working with a production team for my YouTube channel and for my podcast. And it's like a game changer, right? Yeah. Because, yeah, I think I probably save like 2 days a week not having to do that production. And it's way better, right? Way better job at what I did because I had no idea what I was doing. And it's, it's powerful because I think there— I think it's actually beneficial to do it at some point for yourself, right? Because then you have that experience and you can have very different conversations and you know what's possible and so on. Um, but then it's also really freeing to, to give that, to hand that over to somebody else, right?

When you were talking about your teams before in the Philippines and this place and that place, but that's it is. Like, if we're— and we don't even have to have a business, right? If you're listening to this, you don't own a business, you're working somewhere, you're working, you're an intrapreneur, right? You're helping a business grow. You can still find ways in your life to bring this into your life of, right, how do you leverage time for money, for freedom, for peace, for tranquility, and all those things. And years ago, I would think about like, how can people have come in and they have these like live-ins and they're doing the cooking and the clean and all this stuff, and it's I was like, you know, I didn't see it because my price point of my money mindset was so poor, right? Because I didn't see the leverage mindset. I didn't see the, I can do this at this price point, have way more fun than going and doing my dishes and cooking. And we can find, right, we're working with a personal trainer or having one of those meal companies for, right? If you really figure out, like, people don't sit down and they don't do the numbers. How much time is it taking you to go grocery shopping right there, right? A week if you're not doing it, even if you're doing Instacart or whatever. But if you're going to Whole Foods or Sam's Club or BJ's or public, whatever, you know, whatever you have out there, and, you know, Sprouts or Trader Joe's, right? You still got to get there. You still got to find the stuff. You still have to pay for it. You still have to check out. You have to put in your car, bring it up to your place. So that could be an hour and a half process. But for that hour and a half, if you were working on a high-value activity that you can make either more quality time with the people you want to be with, spend the time in the gym. We have to figure out what that dollar cost-benefit analysis is. And a lot of times it's sometimes negligible, especially with the food prep. I'm finding that it might be a little bit more. So if that's one thing, like I want to eat healthier, great. Let's find a simplistic way to solve that problem.

Yeah. And you know, and I'm, as you're talking about this, I'm also thinking, you know, there's probably still a million things that I could outsource and, you know, leverage other people's help. And that's a process in itself too, right? Like, just start with one thing. Just start with thinking about what is one thing that you've been maybe trying over and over and over again to make work, but it's hard to make work. So find a solution for that and just start with that, you know, because then obviously you will grow and develop and evolve, and then you can, you know, see maybe another gap that's missing in order to, to get to that next level. But, you know, we— you always want to just— one— you want to focus on one step at a time and Yeah, I think that's—

and it doesn't necessarily have to be a job. It's like, right, flipping something on OfferUp or Craigslist, right? It doesn't have to be that you have to go out and do something. It might be something you already have that you need to get rid of. Someone else, right? Was that someone else? Someone's trash is someone's treasure.

Mm-hmm.

So it's like, I need $500. Okay, so what aren't you using anymore? What clothing do you have in your closet? What— I sold a pair of hiking boots that I bought 14 years ago in Boulder, Colorado. Great quality., but someone needed them on a last minute. I had them on OfferUp for 6 months, $50. Someone last minute bought them, you know, because they needed it for the next day for a trip and they didn't have— cool. So there's $50. That it's, it's— we have so many ways of if we find and see everything as a possibility versus why we can't, our mindset around that's gonna—

100%. Yeah, that's very resonates with me. It's funny you say that because because when I do my time management workshops, for example, I always have these like one or two participants that are like, but this doesn't really work like this. And, you know, like they just find reasons why the things that I'm introducing to them are not working. And it's— oh, I really love them. I love these people actually, because they are super attentive. Like they actually do want to learn something, but they're very, you know, they're still in a very different mindset. And so I actually did a YouTube video about that a few weeks ago where it was like the secret to time management is to find reasons why it works and not why it doesn't work, right? Because it's so much easier to say, oh no, I can't— like, for me, that doesn't work, you know, instead of saying, okay, what is maybe one little thing that could work for me? You know, it doesn't— you don't have to take everything that I'm saying and apply it to your life. I understand that, you know, every person's life is different, and you need to find that flexibility. But I'm sure there's something you can try out and see if that works, you know.

Or you can listen to someone, then you're like, I don't like their personality style, but is there one thing that you can benefit from? Because, right, what's the expression? The clock is right at least twice a day. So, you know, just because someone might have, I don't like their style, I don't like they're talking about this version of politics, but they might also have some other other, you know. And that's where our world is so polarized now. They're like, I can't get any value, or I can't connect to that person, or that person is like, they shouldn't even be doing what they're doing. But, but they are. They are doing it. And if you found it, that means they're doing something right if it's showing up in front of you. So maybe there is something you can take away from it. You can leave the rest, or the rest in the garbage, or if you're in California, compost it. But right, so, um, but there always can be something. And if it irks you so badly, then that's really more about you than it is about them. So go do that and figure out what the hell is going on.

Exactly.

Why, why is it so repulsive to you? And, and I think that that's really just finding that simplicity of being more open-minded and finding just the reasons. Again, like you said, like I always ask my clients, like, okay, so I just heard you give me 5 excuses on why you can't.

Mm-hmm.

So tell me one, like you just said, like, tell me one about how it could be possible. Mm-hmm.

And even just highlighting that is such a powerful thing to do, right? Because people don't realize that that's what they're doing.

Yeah, I remember I worked with a therapist once and every few minutes she would get up and she had a home office and she had this really insanely large whiteboard on the wall, right? The marker whiteboard was massive. I was so jealous of it. It was like 20 feet long.

Wow.

She was, she was a university professor, so I guess she like co-opted it through the, you know, through the, through that. And it went on her wall. It was on her wall in her home office. And every few minutes she would get up and she would write like like she would just do a hash mark, like a line on the thing, and then when it got to 5, right, it would be that, right, the hash marks with the 5 and moving on to the next set. So at the end of the session, she goes, do you know why I did that? Or why, you know, what was happening when I went up to do that? I'm like, no. She goes, that was every time in our last hour conversation that you said yes, but— and I think it was like 17 times. Wow. Well, yes, but— and the idea of everything's going to be amazing, everything is going to be great, but this can go wrong neurologically, right? That's a neurological limiter, right? Anything that came before the but no longer appears. It's as if it never was spoken or, or, or identified. And the, and the focus is now going to be on the negative. And our brain, we know, is 4 times as likely to focus on negative than positive. And that's why we have to train ourselves with all this mindfulness and positivity and neurology. But for me to see that was like mind-blowing of like, oh my God, I'm so stuck in that script. And I want people out there who are listening, check yourself on this. Just catch your yes buts. Don't do anything. It's like that old clicker. If you grew up in the United States and you went to the roller skating ring in the '80s and they walked in the door and they hit the clicker to see how many people were capacity, right? Or the concerts back then. I'm sure They did that all over the world.

Okay. All right. I'm from Germany. So, you know, we're pretty technologically progressive. Right.

I just have these 1980s roller skating rink memories as a kid and going to camp. And right. But if we just keep track of that, don't try to change it yet. Just keep track of how many times just catch yourself before you try to change it.

Yeah.

You'll see in how many different ways, whether it's a wording or a script or We, we give away our stuckness in how we engage the world. If only we were able to see it and catch it. And that's where experts, expert professionals like you and I come in.

For sure. That's what exactly what I was just thinking, because sometimes we don't know. Sometimes we need that external person that shows us. And I just started working with a business coach, and I had a session with her for 2 hours a few weeks ago, and I was like, Wow. You know, you think you know it all because we do always think we know it all at the point in time where we are at. Right. And then you talk to another person that has such a different perspective on your business. You're like, it totally blew my mind away. Yeah, I was so grateful. And I was like, this is what I'm telling my clients all the time, that, you know, you just need an external person, no matter who it is that you connect with, no matter if it's a therapist or coach or a mentor or healer, you know, whatever resonates with you. But the power of them, you know, showing you your blind spots is priceless as well. Like, I'm always like, there's no price on healing or no price on, on like discovering these things. I've had a lot of conversations with friends over the last 2 years that were thinking about hiring a coach and, you know, were a little afraid of investing the money. And I, and I said to them, you'll, you will never regret paying that money because it is— there's no price on your development and on your healing or on your sanity. Yeah, your sanity. Wow. Super powerful. And I've always had friends that come back to me afterwards and are like, you were so right. I'm so glad that I did this. Like, you know, it's really so powerful.

Well, you can't see your picture when you're in the frame. Yeah, right. You can't know whether you're— that you're a Monet or a Picasso when you're in the frame and you're not. You're looking out from a different vantage point. And I love that metaphor of like, you know, the side view and whatever is that I always talk about with my clients. Like, you might have your lights on, but I can help you put on your high beams. I can help be your side view mirror. I can help be the rearview mirror. Or we can just jump in a helicopter or a plane. You don't need to drive there. And that, right, that whole shift of the way I've been doing it, if I keep doing it over and over again that same way with that same data, you're only going to get a different outcome. Even if you point your direction, your wheel into a different direction, you're still using the same old tools, which will lead you to the same outcomes.

Yeah, you're using the tools that got you there, but what are you going to do to get you to the next level?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't want— when people— I'm sure you have this all the time where they're like, well, I just want to get back to— I just kind of want to get back to where I was then. No, you don't, because that's partially what led you here. Now, you may have been doing a lot of amazing and empowering things then, but now we want to amplify that. But if you want to get back there, no, I'm not gonna lie. That's just going back to— but that's what— why do you think that's gonna get you a different outcome?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I want to have people, right, if you've loved this conversation— I love this conversation, so I'm only gonna assume— I'm gonna be— make it be blasphemous and Jason, speak for everybody who's listening. If you want more of this, which you probably do, right? And then there's so many different things that we didn't even get into, all the different tools to start managing your stress, right? All the things that, you know, one of the things that Julie and I were talking about before is like, I want to talk about things that you don't talk about on other podcasts because the whole thing is go hear that, go listen to her or my other, any of my other guests on other platforms where you're going to get that, right? Right. So, which is a good excuse for them if they got any value in this is to now find your podcast, which is called Stressed.

Ah, there you go, the Stressed Podcast. And stressed with a D at the end, so it's just S-T-R-E-S-S-D instead of the E-D. So the Stressed Podcast.

Beautiful. And also they can find you online as well on Instagram, right? It's, it's Julia Arndt, A-R-N-D-T coaching, J-U-I- J-U-L-I-A-A-R-N-D-T coaching. And it's very similar on your YouTube and your— and Facebook. Those are the main things. And you got your LinkedIn as well. But obviously they can, I'm assuming, reach out to you and find you there if they have any questions and want to hear more. And obviously you all know how to find me. And, and like always, right, the cost of admission— I stole this line from Andy Frisella, who's big in the entrepreneur— he's like one of the top entrepreneurs. He's like, the cost— I don't do advertising. The cost of admission is if you've liked this podcast. And you think you or anybody else can get value out of it, please share it and leave us a review. And so I really want people to, you know, if there's anything that they've heard on this or any other episodes, just do that. Just share it out. Just, just bring, you know, bring value to someone else. So Julia, man, we're going to do this again. I have, I want to do this because I want to do deep dives more into the difference of, you know, okay, so now you're doing this, now you're in this entrepreneur space and now you want to bring that this to your team? You want to be the person that you struggle with this like you are, and now you're bringing this to other people. But what happens if you're the business owner? What happens if you're the owner of a corporation or a CEO or you have any decision-making power? How do you start implementing this in your culture? And I'm already inviting you back to have that conversation.

I would love to. Yeah, it would be my pleasure. Thank you so much.

Awesome. Thanks.