Overcoming Trauma and Navigating Fibromyalgia

So in this episode, I want to give you a warning before you dive in after the music starts. Our guest is being extremely vulnerable. And if you're anything like her or I or anyone you've met who's living with chronic illness, many of us have found that some of the things that we deal with as chronic illness warriors have been a consequence in some ways of trauma that we've experienced in our childhood, in our life, wherever of the time stream. And Fari, our guest, is sharing her experience. So this could be triggering to you, especially if you have trauma in your life. So really honor yourself and acknowledge that, okay, this this might be one of those episodes that in this particular episode you might want to skip to the 10:15 mark of the show to really grasp more of the what happens after, what has happened for her, which is that even though our trauma is our trauma, right, how it can be turned into purpose and how acknowledging that trauma can help us to find the tools we need in order to cope and live through and grow through our challenges with our chronic illness.

So just putting that out there, you have been warned.

In this episode, we really talk about like mindset. We talk about mental health in this. We talk about the importance of finding tools to help you heal according to your body, because feeling good in your body, living with chronic illness is not a one-size-fits-all. We talk about nutrition, we talk about food and movement, and how both our guests, Fari and I, have found our own ways and how it's so important not to give up. So let me tell you a little bit about our guests. Fari is a health coach helping 40-plus-year-old women turn their challenge into gifts and discover their self-worth, self-love, and self-respect through bespoke supportive mentoring and coaching. Her own battles with loneliness and imposter syndrome and lifelong challenges of living with fibromyalgia, depression, and ADHD has made her the coach she is today. And I love that because most coaches, this is our journey, right? We have turned our pain into purpose. And through fitness and mindfulness, Fari has created a healthy living lifestyle that she uses to help her deal with her, her challenges and rise above some of those struggles and turn her pain into a gift. And she's using that gift to help others. And on the show, you're going to see how and what that journey looks like for her and some really great tips that I just thought was, yeah, some of the simple foundational things that we kind of just like gloss over that we don't give enough impetus to in our life. She definitely shares some of these things, and recognize that this episode is— take what you need, right? Anyway, so many gems in here, so many gems that are going to help you really learn how to thrive and grow through the pain and grow through finding what thriving looks like for you. So be sure to stay tuned.

Welcome to She's Crafted to Thrive, a globally ranked podcast for women living with chronic illness and creatives in business. I'm your host, Nikita Williams, chronic illness warrior and photographer turned digital marketer turned award-winning coach. I love helping chronic illness warriors and creatives to live with their chronic illness and creativity as their superpower in life and business. On the show, you will hear the very stories that helped our guests, my clients, and myself to define our dream way of making money with proven strategies and marketing and mindset, all to grow a business that thrives without sacrificing our health. So stay tuned because you'll find the inspiration and tools and the resources you need to craft a life and business that thrives.

I am so excited to have Fari on the show. Talk about a light, y'all. Like, when you get to hear her story and what she does, you're going to be so excited, just like I was when I got in a conversation with her. I was like, ooh, she's a spitball. So please tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and where you're from.

First of all, thank you for having me here. It is so sweet of you, and I'm so grateful to be here. So yes, I am known as Fari Transformation. My name is F as Frank, A-R-I, and I'm originally from Iran but have been in the West most of my life. Left at the age of 20, went to England, was there 14 years, and now 31 years in Los Angeles. And in one week, we're leaving the precious Los Angeles, which is not precious anymore, and we're moving to Palm Desert because everybody's leaving Los Los Angeles is becoming a very unsafe and dangerous place to be, and, uh, we're leaving it. And it used to be a paradise, but not any longer. So I have been here as a fitness trainer and a life coach for the last 31 years coming up to that, and I have shifted to health in wellness, basically the story of my life. It's my resume. I have no PhD from any university, but I have the biggest PhD from life.

Most of us do. And I'm glad you're about to share some of that with us.

Yes. And I was 27 years old, or 28, who remembers, in London. I got diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I had no idea what that was. And I just thought, I wondered, why did I get it? Like, what is it? Because I've always been into fitness. But growing up as a child, I was a very fat kid. I mean, like a capital F, capital A, double T, if you can say. I was really, really fat and heavy. And I never realized how much I was eating my emotions. And how much I was being traumatized with everything growing up. I was living in this family of, um, to be polite, the most dysfunctional family. Sisters and brothers of 8 and parents, a very dictatorial father. And I wanted to leave Iran to run away from him. And one of the reasons I wanted to run away from here was that, like, I was, I think, 16 or 17, and he beat the heck out of me. My father, he slapped me on my face, like, not once, not twice, not 10 times. It was just going on, and the nose bleeding was coming down. And finally I just started screaming. And then my mom ran out of the kitchen to come and see me, and she pushed my dad away. And then he goes, I didn't find her in the street, that is your child. And he goes, yeah, she answered me back and she's not allowed to. And that moment when I could see, feel the blood, and my neck was hurting, and I said I will leave this man. I will leave Iran, you know. And 4 years later, I was waiting to get the age of 21. You don't have to have the permission of parents to make a passport. So all my papers and everything was filled up and ready. The minute I turned 21, I applied for my passport. It arrived and I left Iran and I would never go back. And that was one of the reasons I was fat. I couldn't have a voice. And all that agony that I ate inside me and then moving to England. And a year after I left Iran, the revolution happened in Iran that you guys are probably too young to even know about it. And the trauma of everything in my life brought the fibromyalgia in my life. And fast forward, I was in London in fashion and there, and then I came to America and my own challenges. It got me to become a trainer and I've been a as I said, a very successful fitness trainer and life coach. But what got me to become a health and wellness coach is that as I grew older and as I grew with all these problems and agony in my body was the reason. And then having these clients coming to me, even like I was 34 years old when I became a trainer and I never wanted to train somebody that wants to say, oh, give me a six-pack or give me an eight-pack in my tummy. I always want— I was I was looking for people that they're having health issues and they were younger. And I said, let me talk to you about it, let me help you. Because no matter what it is I was suffering from, my joints and everything was bugging me massively, you know. And I said, let me help you. I do this, I do that, I do that. And that really ended up being the cause of number one, my own freedom. My own. I'm not saying I am healed or I'm not cured, but learning to deal with it and finding a gift in it and becoming a help for others up till now.

Yeah, I mean, there's so much that, you know, that point about— I have a thing with people who are like, yeah, I mean, I'm never going to be healed. I'm like, well, the, the word heal in our context, when we say it, is a process. It's like it's always happening. It's not just one and done. And so to experience that with helping others, you know, to see how they are healing or learning about their bodies is really powerful to be able to see yourself. I know I have experienced that, too, with my coaching. There's things that my clients see that might— oh, there's a mirror. I need to look inwards for myself and deal with that. So for you, like, how have you Like, what have been some challenges in the journey of like being a health coach while dealing with your own chronic, you know, fibromyalgia and pain and the emotion and the trauma of all of those things? How have you dealt with that while growing a business?

Uh, the best way that I can help it has been through number one, eating super healthy. Because when you're flaring up, when your body, your joints are flaring up, the more you give it sugar or the more you give it altogether carbs, but if you have to have certain carbs, which we all do, but the white carb is the worst of it. I didn't just say to a doctor, okay, fine, I got fibromyalgia, what pill should you give me? I wanted to dig into it and learn a lot about it and what is it and how you go about it. And because I used myself as my own guinea pig, if you know what I mean. So I can use everything. Not only I lost 75 pounds weight, and because I wasn't eating all that after I learned about it, that how much it's damaging me. And the more I was in pain, also the sadness is that the depression comes with it. When the depression comes with it, what happens? The frustration and anger comes up with it. You know, it's like a chain that just like, if, if you don't— this chain grabs you like this, look at my fingers, and it goes like that. If you feed it, this is going to stay like that. But if you feed it better, then the chain begins unravel like that. And this that's staying in here is the core of the pain. That is the trauma that we were raised with. Yeah, I, um, follow this incredible doctor. His name is Dr. Gabor Maté. He is a psychiatrist from, um, Canada. But if you Google him, he's incredible how he breaks down everything. And he says, um, um, he was born 1944, and the Jews got freed from Hitler in 1945. So he always says he's the result of the trauma his mother was carrying him. And when he says in Anglo-Saxon, healing comes from the word wholeness, and the wholeness comes from the word whole. When they say, are you healed? It's like Go back to whole, you know, and you can say yes and no. That's why I say I am not healed, I am not cured, but is tolerable. It's the greatest lie if I tell you the fibromyalgia is out of my body and I don't feel it, and I am not willing to lie for that matter. But how can you keep it like calm? Yeah, that you can live is the question.

Yeah, I mean, that's— I have felt the same way. You know, I get people in my DMs all the time who are like, how are you able to show up? Like, how are you able to show up? And I'm like, well, I had to not show up first for everybody else. I had to show up for me. And so I hear what you're saying is that you had to deal with what you knew that you needed to deal with in order to get to this place where it's not like always at the top. You're not having a fibro flare at 10 all the time, but you have found your way of knowing what your body needs and what it doesn't need and when to pull back, when not to, what things you need to do to it to nourish it. I want to talk about a piece that you just said about trauma in the body and that cycle of when you're in pain, how that has a lot to do with what's going on in your brain, right? For fibromyalgia specifically, those who deal with that, I deal with that. One of the things that I have experienced, and maybe others who are listening have experienced, is that it's a lot of fear because what we're told about fibromyalgia is that Well, let's just say for a second, working out feels like 3 times worse than someone who doesn't have fibromyalgia, like the soreness and the pain and all those different kind of things. And so some people feel really afraid to start moving their body if they have fibromyalgia. What would you share with those who have that fear?

A ton when I work out after work, when I lift weights, and when I go for a fast walk. Oh, I used to be an excellent tennis player up to I was 54 when my tennis coach said— in the tennis, we were playing tennis and my kneecap went all the way to the back of my knee.

Oh my God, I know that feeling. Oh my God. Yeah, it was awful.

And my tennis coach said, When are you gonna give up? And I had a severe, severe back problem, lower back problem. I do have discs on my back because of martial art, but the pain that I have is not from the disc. The pain that I have on the left side of me is called QL and it's quadratus lumborum. It's this chunk of a muscle right here that keeps your upper body straight. Either you go like this or you go back up straight. It keeps you upright. And that has always, always been attacked with fibromyalgia for me and my shoulders, hips, knees, you know, so much so that— and it hurt me so massively that I kept on having surgeries on my knees. And this year, finally, February, and then another one 8 weeks away in April, I had to have knee replacements, you know. So I'm not talking out of being pain-free. It's not existing, you know. So what I do do is that I do work out. One of the best workouts for me is like literally the best workout. I have special gloves that I put in my hand that, you know, when you go and swim in the pool or you do water aerobics, it's just water. So the biggest swimmers, they don't build muscles in the swimming pool. They make stamina. Yeah. You know, is it endurance or strength training or, you know, building strength? The strength for the stamina for you, like you want to go jog, you can do jogging, that jogging in the pool. So you get a lot of stamina, but it doesn't make muscles. So biggest swimmers, They are outside of the pool 4 or 5 hours a week and a day lifting weights. They want that they go compete. My boss, my ex-boss, is a massive swimmer, but she never wanted to do any weightlifting. And she's very slender and very tall. And when I saw her, she goes, "Farah, my muscles are falling and drooping and everything is mushy," because she refuses to do weights. Well, there's a price to pay, right? So I do my swimming, but I wear these special gloves. It's a piece of— you can order it online, it's like $10. And when I go with that into the pool, and when I tell you the water becomes 20 pounds on each hand, I probably haven't said it enough. So I'm lifting the weights as I am swimming or I'm doing the water aerobics. And then when I come out of the water, My body is tired, but it's not in pain. I'm a certified yoga teacher and a Pilates instructor. For years and years I trained people, years I trained people on Pilates, but the minute I got on it, it helped me most. So some people like yourself, you get freedom when you're doing the Pilates. So there's not one size fits all. Every person has to try the different things and work. What I do say, for me, this is not a prescription for everybody, again, because it's dangerous to talk, you know, massively from all. One of my doctors, they wanted to take me like 17 pills. I said, I refuse, I'm not doing it. I will not take all that pills. I fought my doctors. Until one rheumatologist, maybe 4 years ago, 5 years ago, she said, he says, Fari, just take this one single pill at night. You will be able to function. And God bless him. I take it every night because it didn't matter what I did or I didn't. Even if I lie down flat for 12 hours or I walked or I didn't, no matter, that pain in my back would not go anywhere. It just wouldn't leave. Like, didn't matter. That one pill that I take takes this pain away so that I can function throughout the day. And activity at first is really painful for people with fibromyalgia, with people with lupus. I have these clients, I deal with them all the time, you know, and at first everything is painful. Yeah, but once you get on it and you stay on it, and if you just have that mindset that I am getting on whatever that I am doing and I am not focusing on my pain, I am focusing on afterward results, and just go visualize yourself— the power of visualization and how we can see ourselves better off outside of the workout, better off outside of getting out of bed and walking and going somewhere to do. The power of visualization is immense. But are you willing to do that is the question.

That's the question, right? That's the question. Are you willing? I mean, I think all of us have to decide. I don't know about you, Fari, but I have had people like, I don't understand how you can deal with all this pain. And you've had these pains and you continue to show up and you have this light just like like you do, Fari, and like you enjoy connecting with people, and I just don't know how you live. Like, I don't understand, but you have all these things. And my question to them, which I'm going to ask of you, is what's the alternative?

Exactly what I was just gonna say. People, they say, oh, I don't know how you do it. I get that all the time. Oh my God, I can't understand it. How is that? And I said, I have a question. Do you have any other choice? Is there any other choice? And the answer is yes, there is another choice. Change your mindset. Being that victim mentality, that why God me, or why should that happen to me? And my answer to that is, why not you and I? There is a reason Did we go through this? Not for you to have a pity party for yourself, for you to realize this must be this pain that I have for 31 years of my life, or maybe more than that because I was diagnosed in London, so since 27, but, and I'm now 65. So for more than most of my life, you know, it's been the reason I use this pain as a crutch under my arm and I hop and go and I say to the world, Look, look at me. Let me help you. It's the gift in this. It's the gift in this that you want to absolutely get yourself out of this misery. I remember they were— Oprah Winfrey was interviewing Maya Angelou, and Maya Angelou was one of the biggest role models. Maya Angelou and Mother Teresa, these two, like— and then I should always put Lady Diana in this because I lived in London and I went through. And when she passed away, and it was like they took my queen away from me. And when Maya Angelou passed away, I was so sad for a lot. And I said, who am I going to now to check on to, you know? And Maya Angelou said they were asking her that she, when she was younger, she was like, she was very tall. And she was lying down on the side on the carpet and writing forever. You know, and she had health challenges in her body. And they said, well, that head— and then she goes, well, if I sat and worry about my pain, then I wouldn't have written. And she didn't have money to buy furniture, she didn't have money to buy chairs and a table to put it on, to sit on it. She didn't have it. So she goes, two things: either not write what was in my head to save you all today, and sit and feel sorry for myself, or just say, okay, I'm just going to lie down here and let the pain kill me, or just say it doesn't matter how much I'm in pain. I will use my pain and I change side. I said, sit this way, that way. But then it would be uncomfortable for her to be on the side that she couldn't write with hand. And she goes, I just had to write the books until she could do it. And that always stayed with me. If these incredible women did what they did to get to where they are so they can read the book, so the book becomes like my daily Bible, so I can read them and feel better about them. Now today I need to be that platform, just like you are, to reach others and say, hey, let me help you, number one, to change this up here.

Yeah, your mind. Yeah.

All about what's in your head.

And it's so much as mind— like, it is. I, I read it somewhere, it's like the brain is the boss, okay? Like, it is the boss of all of the stuff, okay? Like, and if you can't get up here right, if you can't, if you can't see— to me it's two choices, just like you said. It is two choices. Either you're gonna figure out a way Yeah, you're not, or you're, or you're not, you know, or you're not. And if you're not, then you're also saying, I'm okay with where I am.

Absolutely.

That's the choice. This is something I tell my clients, okay? I'm like, it's, it is totally your choice, right? It's totally your choice, but understand the choice you are making.

Correct, correct. I have this lady, she's been my client since 2007. She's a psychologist. She has— she's bipolar, borderline, you name it. Her children don't want to talk to her. Her husband doesn't want to be with her. Her friends run away from her. And when she comes here and she sits and I say, I want you to write down what's in your head. She writes it, but she's also fighting it. And it's all about what is not what's in her head, what happened to her when her mother was carrying her, and what happened to her mother when her mother was carrying her, and what happens go back to back to back to back. Again, if you, anybody that suffers from that depression listens to this Dr. Gabor Maté, and you listen the way they'd go back to generations, like why they did all of that, that we got the result of it is today. My mother never wanted me to be born at all. And she actually told me, and I don't know why she told me repeatedly, you know, it wasn't a secret. She never wanted me to be born. And she said she did everything in her power to get rid of me. And I was sticking there. And she said her belly was getting bigger and she would hit her belly. She goes, go, I hate you, go, leave me, and I don't want you to come. And can you imagine somebody says you all your life? And my mom will be 90 in 3 months, you know. And the other day I just mentioned it to— she's been, luckily for herself, she's been hit with early stages of dementia. And I said, do you remember those days when you were carrying me and you told me about that? Because I don't even remember carrying you, you know. And thank God for that because it hurts her more. And all that, that she did to not want me, I've forgiven them. I have learned that the only way for— that's one of the biggest lessons that I have to— you said, what did I do to heal myself, to make me feel better, is that to I have been the most angriest person on planet Earth because I was fed anger from the time I was created in my mother's womb, you know, womb, you know, I was created, I was fed anger. Their arguments and all of that was the foundation of Fari being created. You know, well, I needed to undo all of that and go through it all. I wasn't ready to go and sit to a therapist and talk to a therapist, but I've done so much research and dealing with all these sick people as my clients for the last 31 years. I can't say, did I have 100 people, did I have 1,000 people, because I was doing group classes, and I was doing individuals, you know. But getting them all to be to where they got and watching them going through this process was also my healing journey, you know. The feeling how I am helping them to undo their own piece— it's like an onion.

It sure is.

The top of onions, it's got this Fam, hard, yellow, green, white, whatever skin you buy it. And look how many layers you have to undo and unpeel, unpeel until you get to the core of it, you know. And I needed to do all this. That's why I did so much exercise in my life. I was playing tennis in the wet of London with balls getting wet, and I was running like a lunatic going around it. And I would, if I could, I'd be climbing the, um, the net And you know, the wall that they was separating from the other tennis court until they started building tennis courts indoor in London. It wasn't there 45 years ago when I got to London. You know, an activity that I would jog until I fall down on the ground and I would be crying and I scream and I would talk. And I was just like, at that time it was why? You know, because I didn't know any better. You know, and all of that that I went through, it became my healing purpose. Of course, many, many, many reading books, incredible amount of webinars that I did. And to this day I do, you know, but the pandemic kind of like made, thank goodness, everything online. So, and then being angry, I couldn't have any relationship. I got married in London and I got divorced. I had zillions of relationships in here and I just didn't— I would get bored with them and I just wanted to just go away from me because all I saw in them the anger and the frustration that I had from my father and my brother, one of my bro— you know, and it was just there until I could go deep down in. And even with my current husband, please God forgive me, the first year or maybe the second year that I was with him, and this man is like If you can call that, it's like if there is a walking Jesus on this planet Earth, it is this man. And I so mistreated him. I was so nasty to him because I was still feeling nasty within me, you know. And digging deep, it wasn't easy. I'm telling you, it was the most difficult thing to do. And that's why I want everybody to know that you can't do this alone. I had all these groups that I was going to, all these books that I was reading, zillions amount of people that they were there to be my support. This is not a journey that anyone can— when you're depressed, you can't be by yourself. Somebody has to walk you through this agony, this pain, this frustration. Why are you so angry? There's a reason behind it.

Yeah, you know, that is— that's, you know, that's a powerful point. I agree with you about the needing someone there. I mean, at the darkest of my journey, the only reason why I'm here today is because I said yes to help to a friend who experienced same thing. And I thought, well, if she could do this and, like, get through this, then maybe, maybe I can. I didn't even fully have faith. That I could, just that maybe, like, 1%, maybe. And I tell people to this day, I'm like, without that, without— and that was, that was more of an answer to a prayer at the darkest time— was I able to be able to see. And now when I look back, it's like, no wonder it was so hard before, because I was trying to do it by myself. It's impossible.

Right, 100%, 1000%. That's why there are help. Look, I have arms, I have legs, they move, we're moving, we can pack and you can do it. I can't pack anymore, choose not to pack anymore, right? It breaks my nails, it hurts my back. Yeah, my knees are two new titanium knees. I have to drop my rocks and accept the fact I need help. I hire a company, they come on Wednesday, they're gonna pack us, they move us, they unpack us, and they say goodbye. They take their money. I can't do it by myself anymore. Yeah, that's why help is needed for that purpose.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you feel like— and I personally feel this way, especially if you decide to run your own business and you live with chronic pain— the idea that you can do that by yourself with no support, no coach, no virtual assistant, no contractors, to me is like How? How else? How else?

How much? Within this last— I don't go back to back how much money I paid in past. Forget that. The one that I remember in this 2 years, when it ends, is December 31st that I know I paid the last bill for it to get all this help that I need for the, you know, for the media, for whatever that I do, that I— to get my business to be known out there because it's now virtual. Now, just within these 2 years, I've paid $40,000 for it. Yeah. And because I don't know computer, I need help. I'm not a web designer. I need help. You know, it's just I need to help to— I have to have a team. To help me to go to where I want to go. Yeah.

And if you're living with chronic pain, that is like its own full-time job. I don't think people realize that, especially if you're in the journey of taking better care of your body, the food you put in your body, the movement of your body.

That takes time.

Like, Pilates is not a 15-minute workout. Like, yoga is not— I mean, it can be, but it's like, in order for you to feel the benefits of those things, you get in the pool, like, you need the time to do it regularly and consistently. So it's like one of those things I always tell my clients too, and I don't know if you share this with yours, is like, to have the support systems around you allows you to be a more healthy version of you.

100%. Well, think about it. They always say if they want to judge you, they judge with who you're associating with, where you go in life. It depends who you have around you. If I want to be successful as I am, I want to be with successful people, right? If I want to be healthy, I want to be with healthy people. And that's why I become this vessel to help those that they are not healthy but they want to become healthy. But all of it, it only happens from your mind. I have one thing in health that I love to share is that the simplest way that you can help yourself, number one, is that to start drinking water. So many people, including my own husband, he's an athletic guy. He is 68, but he's lean. He's in very good shape. He's a beautiful man. And he's got, I don't think he's got an ounce of fat on him, this guy. He's, as I said, he's 68. Couple, year and a half ago, He gets up to go to the bathroom, 5 o'clock in the morning, and I hear boom. It woke me up. I get up, the door for the bathroom is closed, and I had bruises on my belly, and I just pushing the door, calling him. He's not answering me, and I'm trying to open the door. His leg is extended behind the door and he's locking the door. I am 5'5" and I'm 160 pounds weight. I'm not skinny. I had to glide my body with this much space to go in. My husband has passed out on the ground. His head is against the wall. His head is like this, and all I see blood coming from this side, and his leg is extended and locked the door, and I couldn't go in. Forcefully, I got myself in there, and I tried to get him. He woke up and he goes, what's the matter? And he had no idea what happened. Lots of people go through lots of problems with the lack of Nutrition, hydration. So I said to people, did you drink water? Oh, I just had like 2 glasses. I said, darling, what I drink— well, this is my juice that I blended and I make it, and this was full. It's like 20 ounces. It's going to be finished in a minute. What you drink now is going to take 72 hours to help the dehydration in your body. Once you feel thirsty, you're already dehydrated. You must drink, especially people. No, it doesn't matter what is your problem. MS, lupus, fibromyalgia, whatever, heart problem, stroke. You must drink. If you weigh— I weigh 160 pounds. I have about 8 pounds extra on me because of my knee surgeries. I have to have 16 glasses of 8 ounces a day. So if you weigh 150 pounds, you need 15 glasses. If you weigh 200 pounds, you need 20 glasses water. Now, if you're not going to do that, then take 5 glasses off and make sure you drink. The more you drink, it helps the depression. And people say, well, I just went for the first time walk for 15 minutes. I was on the bike for 10 minutes. I think it's a good start. I said no. It takes 20 minutes from your brain to send a message to your body, you working out. So the first 20 minutes of your workout, it's allowing your brain to get connected with the rest of your body. Mm-hmm. And after that, when you do another 20 or 30 minutes, it's going to be the fat burning. And when we start burning fat, It fastens up the work of your brain. It brings that happiness in your head and heart. Now somebody can say, listen, I'm too skinny, I don't have any fat to burn. You still need to work out and you still need to do that 20 minutes. Bring your brain and your heart together. You bring something in your body that makes you happy. There is no app for happiness. Sorry to pronounce that. There is no app for happiness. And happiness, as one of my coaches was saying, is an inside job. It is not an outside. People say, oh, when I eat the potato, I'm happy. You're lying. You're lying to yourself. You're feeding your frustration. That's another kind of addiction. When you are more than what you need to be, again, if you listen to this Dr. Gabor Maté was saying about addiction, addiction comes from the Roman word that it comes addictus, and the translation for it is slavery, is a slave. So in those time when they had people that they couldn't pay their fees, they would keep them as their slave. So they do the job. So you are addicted to that thing to do the job for you. And the guy who was interviewing me is very much into workout because I'm addicted to workout because you have a passion for workout. Because I always say my addiction, my daily cocaine is my workout. And I learned from him, oh, it's not addiction. Well, maybe it is, is my daily passion. Is the workout. So that's— you want to switch it into a passion, and you can do it by yourself.

Yeah, so good, so good, Fari. Well, thank you for sharing so much with us today. I think if you— if people were walk away today after listening to this, what are 2 things that you would want them to take action on besides drinking water? Because that's the truth.

Activity and have bright light on them first morning when they wake up. One thing, it doesn't matter how handicapped one can feel, get up in the morning, have a piece of paper for you by your bed, and go in front of a mirror, look at yourself and say some amazing sentence about yourself. I am healthy. I am successful. It doesn't matter how you look. I am beautiful. I can do this. And write down all of that. Look, put all the lights on in your bathroom. Let the light shine on you and pour the water on you and start talking and saying that. That is the wonderful way of getting up. And when that's one, and when you get up in the morning, have a glass of hot water or any kind of water that you can start your day with that. Allow your system to get that liquid in it. They always say stroke hits between 4 and 7 AM. If you have water in you, you won't be able to get the stroke. So have that affirmation, go in front of a mirror, put the lights on, and pour the water on yourself and say everything that you don't want to say to yourself as a positive thing to yourself. Love it, love it, love it.

Well, we will have— how, how can we— how can they find you if they want to get to know more about you, Fari, and yeah, connect with you?

I can send you my Linktree. I have all of it in Linktree that I can send you. And, um, uh, shall I send it to you now?

No, we'll grab it after the show, but you guys can check the show notes.

You can have that. But the very simple way is that my email address is the easiest: fari@faritransformation.com. Yeah, and Fari is F as Frank, A-R-I. Just 4 letters, fari@faritransformation.com, and I'll be happy to help anyone.

Perfect. Thank you, Fari, for being on.

Thank you so much for having me. This was wonderful.

All right, y'all, that's a wrap.

Thank you for listening, and I hope this conversation inspired you.

Be sure to visit the website at craftedtothrive.com to check out the show notes and grab all the goodies that I or the guests mentioned in the show.

Join us for our next one. In the meantime, remember, you are crafted to thrive.