[00:00:00] Heather Chauvin: Your emotions, your feelings will guide you back home to yourself. They're breadcrumbs. I hear resentment a lot. Resentment means you had a boundary and you let somebody cross that boundary. So you have to pay attention to what is inside of you that's calling you.

[00:00:18] Tiffany Sauder: I am Tiffany Sauder, entrepreneur, wife, mom to four girls, and a woman figuring it out just like you.

[00:00:24] Tiffany Sauder: If you're tired of living a life of have to and finally ready to build a life of want to, then you're in the right place. Come on, let's go build your Life of And.

[00:00:41] Tiffany Sauder: I used to play life like a game of actual bumper cars. I would crash into the wall. Before I would change direction, I would wait until the financials were screaming at me to make an expense adjustment. I would wait until I got in a fight with JR to put more time on the calendar together. I would wait until we were behind on pipeline to put the time I needed into new business.

[00:01:02] Tiffany Sauder: I would wait until I had a trip on the calendar to start a diet. I was reacting to stimulus around me. I wasn't in charge of my actual life, my actual time, my actual resources, and therefore I had no control of the outcomes in my life. That's why this conversation with Heather Chauvin was so powerful for me.

[00:01:21] Tiffany Sauder: I. Heather is a leadership coach and author and a mom of three, but her clarity didn't come from reading books or climbing the corporate ladder. It came from surviving stage four cancer, navigating deep shifts in her understanding of herself and understanding how to stop being addicted to the fight.

[00:01:40] Tiffany Sauder: Heather said something I'll carry with me for a really long time. Life is an endurance event, and the truth is most of us aren't tired because we're weak. We're tired because we've been sprinting through a marathon trying to win a race that maybe we were never meant to run. But what if success? Real success came from pacing yourself differently?

[00:02:02] Tiffany Sauder: What if it meant defining your own finish lines? Your own rest stops your own fuel. Now, don't mistake this, Heather is a wildly ambitious, accomplished individual. This is not about getting into the rest stop of life. This is about how do we drive on the highway in a different way. I hope this episode gives you permission to check in with yourself.

[00:02:25] Tiffany Sauder: If you've been craving more space, more energy, and more alignment, maybe now is the time to start this one for me. Cut deep and it might just meet you right where you are too. Heather,

[00:02:35] Heather Chauvin: welcome to the show. Thank you, Tiffany. I'm so excited to be here. This is gonna be a really fun conversation.

[00:02:43] Tiffany Sauder: Let's chat about you for a minute.

[00:02:45] Tiffany Sauder: When I read your bio. Mm-hmm. If I were to go back and ask your 22-year-old self, what about that is most surprising to you? What do you think she would say?

[00:02:56] Heather Chauvin: Well, it's actually interesting 'cause as you're reading the bio, I thought all of those things just come from the determination to. Not give up or not become a statistic.

[00:03:10] Heather Chauvin: And so when I was in my twenties, I became a mom when I was 18, and I would've been in the thick of it of really asking myself like, where do you wanna go in life? And having to consistently choose. Something that I didn't have yet or didn't yet have evidence that I could achieve. And so I would just tell her, keep going.

[00:03:36] Heather Chauvin: Don't give up, keep going. It's just time and consistency. But to see those things on my bio now, it's not the thing I've achieved or writing the book or getting on a media outlet or whatever it is. It's who I needed to become in order to do that.

[00:03:53] Tiffany Sauder: So when you say, I didn't wanna become a statistic, you say like, Hey, as a teenage mom, there's a certain trajectory that oftentimes can play out in that.

[00:04:03] Tiffany Sauder: Is that what you mean by that?

[00:04:04] Heather Chauvin: Yeah. First time I looked at my son, I thought I. Two things. I never wanted him to feel the way that I felt as a child. I didn't want his story to be one of the guaranteed, almost trajectory of where people assumed we would end up in life. Mm-hmm. And it was interesting 'cause so many people were projecting that onto me of like, here, oh.

[00:04:27] Heather Chauvin: Because that happened. Here's the narrative, here's the story, here's the path. And for whatever reason, there was something inside of me that I think it was the little rebel inside of me, there was that fire that just came out. It was almost like a primal wasn't really for me, it was for my son, like a primal mama bear, not wanting to feel like I was failing.

[00:04:46] Heather Chauvin: As a mother came out and it was like. Nope, we're not gonna do this. And it was me and him against the worlds, and I carried that identity and persona and chip on my shoulder for a long time.

[00:04:58] Tiffany Sauder: I see a lot of moms struggle with picturing like this sliding scale, you know, like this little button that scales between wanting to do it for my kids and wanting to protect them and create a new opportunity.

[00:05:11] Tiffany Sauder: And knowing that, wanting to. Do it for them or for you also is gonna require you to put him in daycare. I dunno. Making these things up, like take chances, work more hours, whatever the things are, like there's this trade off that comes with wanting to protect, be with them. And do the best by them, and knowing that sometimes that the natural consequence of that is needing to be away or having somebody else watch them.

[00:05:38] Tiffany Sauder: And how did you dance through that internally as a very young mom? What did that look like for you? I.

[00:05:47] Heather Chauvin: So I still dance with that. I think we all do and we will. It doesn't matter how old your children are, and my boys are almost 20, 15 and 12 right now. The person I am today and the resources I have today are very different than.

[00:06:04] Heather Chauvin: When I was a single mother on government assistance and the only way was up, I didn't have the privilege of not doing some of the things that I didn't do. And I think we oftentimes, when people have a lot of privilege and opportunity, guilt will take over and then they don't make decisions. They're leading by guilt of like, I should be happy, this should be enough, and.

[00:06:28] Heather Chauvin: I will tell you, we could have a whole conversation just about this one question because when my son was younger, I remember thinking. The exact same thing of like, I don't have the privilege to stay home and do nothing. I need to make money. How am I going to make money? I'm either gonna go get a part-time job or I'm gonna go get educated.

[00:06:51] Heather Chauvin: If I go get educated, I'm gonna go in debt. If I go in, like, where's the payoff? What am I doing? And so strategically, I'm always doing these things and the amount of people always say, how do you get over guilt? How do you not feel guilty? And I'm like. I don't know. I felt it and I took the action anyways because I knew I wasn't living in the short term.

[00:07:13] Heather Chauvin: I was living in the long term and I'm like, what is better off for my child? This is another thing too. I made a really, what I would call emotionally uncomfortable decision. Not hard 'cause that's a whole other conversation we can have about hard and my relationship with hard. When I was about 20, my son was about 18 months old.

[00:07:32] Heather Chauvin: I went to Guatemala for two weeks. Without him. And my mother took care of him, and I felt so guilty for doing that. I was in university, I met some friends and I was like, there's just a part of my soul that wanted to explore the world. And I remember making this decision and someone in my family, it was not, my mother made a passive aggressive comment towards me about how I was abandoning my child to go on this trip for two weeks.

[00:08:00] Heather Chauvin: Mm-hmm. And deep down inside of me, I was like. Could I be putting like something quote unquote negative into my child because I left him for two weeks? Mm-hmm. To be with a caring adult. Sure, a hundred percent. He might talk about this in therapy in the future, but I was also feeding part of myself and I had a lot of resentment that I lost my twenties.

[00:08:25] Heather Chauvin: Mm-hmm. Like I went right into adulthood and I remember this actually chokes me up. I remember calling home and hearing my son and starting to cry. And when I returned home I felt so much more connected to him because I healed a part of myself. And I just remember that feeling of feeding myself with the pure intention to be better for him, and nobody else understood why I did it.

[00:08:54] Heather Chauvin: And. That I think was the beginning of when I'm hearing this outside message of like, everything you do is for your child now. And I'm like, I can't buy into that. It's gonna kill me. It was killing me spiritually at the time. It was killing me mentally and then slowly, emotionally, and then in 2013. Almost physically having stage four cancer.

[00:09:19] Heather Chauvin: And there's just so many moments that I've had like that where you have to listen to the whisper inside of you and get super crystal clear of when I am leading and making a decision, am I doing it to please other people or am I doing it to please myself? Because I knew that moment was not just serving me, it was actually serving my child, and I was okay if other people didn't understand my choices.

[00:09:46] Tiffany Sauder: Heather, I really appreciate you stepping into that story because I think this is a really. Peculiar narrative right now that is taking hold. I think especially in the world that we live in of these like upper middle class suburban households where our kids' schedules, the financial resources that go towards them, the time, it's like they become the center of the universe.

[00:10:07] Tiffany Sauder: And in that we become these reactive, raggedy, chaotic versions of ourselves. Instead of saying like, no, I also need to stay whole. And I, I did an episode not too long ago and I said, my kids are not. The most important thing in my life. They are a part of me in such an important part of me, but it is not the most important thing, and I know that because there are times I ask them to sacrifice so that I can go love my husband, better, explore my own abilities and fear and push like it.

[00:10:42] Tiffany Sauder: It's just sometimes they have to pay a price because we're doing life. Very, very together, but we're separate people and at some point I need them to be able to launch without me having done everything for them every second of their lives. And so

[00:10:57] Heather Chauvin: I wanna talk about this.

[00:10:59] Tiffany Sauder: Okay, let's do it. So

[00:11:01] Heather Chauvin: with my oldest, we had a very difficult time.

[00:11:06] Heather Chauvin: One of my biggest stressful situations raising my boys today is education and watching the educational system in the last 20 years, especially post COVID, is wild to me, and I'm sure I'll be an advocate for it, but it is just one of those things where I'm like, I've created freedom in every other area of my life, and the only area I feel like my children are being oppressed is with their education.

[00:11:34] Heather Chauvin: They're not. Allowed to be themselves and it's killing them. And it's heartbreaking because I'm like, okay, what's the alternative? And where we live, we don't have an alternative. So I can see myself going into this problem solving mode, and I'm watching it with my second and now my third and my oldest straw gold in high school, especially in COID grade 11.

[00:11:58] Heather Chauvin: I physically took him outta school. He worked full-time. And he still finished high school. I watched, absolutely watched myself sit there with the administration, say, you gotta get his attendance up. And I'm looking back at these adults and I thought, they don't give a shit about my child's mental health.

[00:12:19] Heather Chauvin: I, I could physically see my son becoming apathetic. And that's a huge red flag as like being a social worker. I know this, I can see his mental health is struggling and everyone else is like. Did you get an A? And I thought this is why children have such a difficult time launching. Mm-hmm. Because we are overdoing, overspending, overscheduling to make sure that they have absolutely no leadership skills.

[00:12:48] Heather Chauvin: No leadership skills, no self awareness, no. Like they're drowning because we have become so controlling. And I remember when I pulled them out. He went to work. He started coming back to life. He started thriving. He was learning about the real world, who he wanted to become. Now he is in full-time sales at the age of 19, almost 20.

[00:13:12] Heather Chauvin: He'll be 20 in January, watching this kid show up in faces, insecurities on the daily. I tell him this. My clients don't even do this, and they're in their forties. They're just starting to face these parts of themselves now, and you're doing it at this age. And he's like, mom, you taught me this. He goes, part of the reason why I've always struggled is because I've questioned like how the world works because you showed me there was another way to be, and I thought.

[00:13:42] Heather Chauvin: The, the misalignment. When you are living in alignment and you are like going after who you wanna be, how you wanna feel, and your children are in a world that is misaligned, they're watching you, you are inspiring them, but. I've heard from so many adults, like talking about their kids. They're lazy, they're not motivated, they're da, da, da, and I'm like, go look in the mirror.

[00:14:08] Heather Chauvin: You are overdoing over mothering, over nurturing, due to fear, and you're overdoing it because you will not fill your own cup. And so part of the reason why I started doing crazy endurance events was so that I stopped over mothering so that I could be like, Heather, you got way too much energy. The business is good.

[00:14:35] Heather Chauvin: You're putting enough energy in there, it's gaining momentum. What other part of you do you need to feed our refusal to actually say? What do I want? What do I crave? What kind of life do I want? And giving yourself permission to just feed that a little bit is so life enhancing for your children. And that is so counterintuitive to what we're taught culturally, especially as women.

[00:15:02] Tiffany Sauder: I. I think there's two topics in there. One is the education piece, not being like the environment. I'm hearing for your son not being a good fit. That's one thread that we can run down. The other I think, is this idea that we take the leftovers naturally as moms, as servers of like, Hey, if my business doesn't need me or whatever, professional pursuit, if my family doesn't need me, then I'll think, what do I need for myself?

[00:15:27] Tiffany Sauder: I guess I have time for a walk instead of saying, I am gonna. Make fixed the size of the plate. That is my family. I have this thing where we do a family meeting and I say, I can't make last minute pivots. Last night was a great example. My daughter was like, am I going to training? And I was like, I. Yeah, you didn't say that we were doing that, and so no, I don't have a ride set up.

[00:15:47] Tiffany Sauder: I'm not gonna scramble. You know, the system, you didn't operate it. I guess you're gonna go on a run by yourself, but I'm not gonna kill myself to get you to training. You know how this works. And I think we won our kids to perform. We want 'em to be great, and so we create this consequence free world for them too.

[00:16:07] Tiffany Sauder: That I think creates really crappy training for being an adult.

[00:16:11] Heather Chauvin: Yeah. And also we're living in a world where, you know, everyone's like, but I did it right. I went and I got educated. I got the house, I got married, I had the kids. The bank account looks decent, and I still feel like I'm not resourced enough to.

[00:16:28] Heather Chauvin: Find fulfillment, and I'm like, it's not that you've been sold a lie. It's that things change. They evolve and you have to go within and ask yourself questions. You cannot just check all the boxes. Like we need that. We need strategy. But there's the other part that we need as well of like, is this in alignment?

[00:16:50] Heather Chauvin: Like I'm asking people all the time, does this feel good to you? I don't know. And I'm like, there's a difference between, it doesn't feel good because it's fear or it's resistance, but does this feel in alignment? And if you don't know, you just have to test it. I look back on my life and my journey and I think, dang, it has set me up for success in the best way possible.

[00:17:15] Heather Chauvin: I know now, and I've talked about this on my podcast, especially after my last endurance event, three marathons in three days, I'm like, I won't quit. That's the only thing, and I may be the last one in the pack. I will not give up. And I tried so many times, I'm like, oh, I just wanna be normal. Can I go get a nine to five?

[00:17:35] Heather Chauvin: And I'm like, no, it might be my soul. There's a part of me that's gonna be like, oh my God, that's annoying. I gotta solve that problem. Like I just can't. I won't quit. If something is challenging, I will figure out a way. Because it just annoys me, keeps me up at night.

[00:17:52] Tiffany Sauder: Do you find you're better in a fight?

[00:17:55] Tiffany Sauder: I've learned to not be better in a fight. So talk about that. 'cause I have my own journey with that. But talk about that. 'cause I think it can be a pattern in people who. Are good in a fight that you wait for it to get there. To be able to make. So let's talk about that.

[00:18:11] Heather Chauvin: Yeah. So when you say fight, I hear like crisis or survival state.

[00:18:15] Heather Chauvin: I actually just had this conversation with someone this morning. She's a team member. We've been working together for two years. She was on my marketing team and she goes, I think I need you in my life. When she met me, she had her first child and I was like, she'll have her nervous breakdown soon. She'll need me and.

[00:18:33] Heather Chauvin: She lately has been like, I'm bored. I'm bored. And I said, no, you're not. You're moving from survival state to momentum. And she's like, what do you mean? I said, when I met you, you were living in a borderline crisis survival identity. I. And now you are moving to the next level and you are coming back to life.

[00:18:55] Heather Chauvin: And so I think a lot of people still identify, well, it's gotta get really bad. And I'm like, that's great, but you gotta break that pattern within yourself. Self-awareness is number one. I grew up in a survival state. Like if I look back at my childhood, I was in this fight or flight freeze state constantly.

[00:19:14] Heather Chauvin: I was more of like a freeze. Person more regress. I slept a lot. That was my coping strategy. Didn't know that. I thought there was something physically wrong with me, so I slept a lot. And as a teenager that's what I did. I slept through school and then when I got pregnant, I was like, so instead of being an underachiever, I became an overachiever.

[00:19:36] Heather Chauvin: And then I swung the pendulum the other way. But inside I was like, this is not sustainable. So I'm operating from a place of survival mode, and because I'm an overachiever now, I'm getting like accolades for it and pat's on the back. But internally, I'm like, Uhuh, this is not this. So when I was diagnosed in 2013, I remember this visualization of like running away from cancer.

[00:20:01] Heather Chauvin: Like I did really good. When I got my diagnosis, I was like, boom, boom, boom. That crisis, like social worker intervention came out in me. I was like, Hey, you do this, you do this, you do this. Okay, you need to go to therapy 'cause I can't help you right now. Like it was like, I was great, but I remember this moment where they're like, you're in remission.

[00:20:22] Heather Chauvin: And I'm like, what now? And they're like, well, you're good. If it comes back, we'll take care of you, but like you're good. And I was like, there's no phase two. Like I'm just here and that's it. That moment was like, I was no longer. Running away from cancer. I was like, oh, this is new opportunity. So that's when I shifted my behavior and I was like, how good can I feel?

[00:20:46] Heather Chauvin: How healthy can I get? Uh, whole new world. So now that was also an opportunity. Why, where I'm at now, had a few rough years raising teenager. I mean, not rough, but. Dang, get your hormones balanced and raising a teenager at the same time. That's a fun, a fun period that nobody talks about. And I was just so grateful for all the work that I did and what I teach women and all the things, but I.

[00:21:15] Heather Chauvin: I was like, okay, I'm good. I'm comfortable, but you can always feel that soul calling ache inside of you. And I was like, what am I craving? I'm like, I gotta give myself a challenge that's self-induced. So I'm gonna sign up for something, I'm gonna train for it so that I don't try and blow up areas of my life.

[00:21:33] Heather Chauvin: So I don't try to find problems. 'cause if we're used to, I'm a fixer. I'm a rescuer. Oh, let me try to rescue my kids. And they're like, please leave me alone. Oh, let me try to improve my marriage. It's good. I don't need to go find problems. They will present themselves my business. Right. Actually, if you spend less time in your business, your team might be able to lead a little bit better, Heather.

[00:21:58] Heather Chauvin: So yeah, it's just wild how like getting out of those identities of transition and you feel like the world is. Going to explode because you're like, oh, you're safe. It's just fascinating how fear and the brain work.

[00:22:16] Tiffany Sauder: I wanna take a quick moment to thank my partners at Share Your Genius. For the past four years, they have been an incredible part of my journey behind the microphone.

[00:22:24] Tiffany Sauder: Share Your Genius is a content and podcast production agency that helps leaders and brands bring their message to life. So whether you're trying to find your voice, develop a content strategy, or get your leader behind a microphone, they're gonna help you make it simple, strategic, and impactful. So let's double click into this most recent challenge that you put in your path.

[00:22:46] Tiffany Sauder: I want people to listen to what you're saying that there is. I and I have learned that there's literally a chemical addiction that our bodies have to fighting and to challenges. And I have found in my own mind, I get so clear when there's a war, like everything falls away and I'm so focused because the objective has been so clearly defined and the prospect of winning and achieving is like.

[00:23:14] Tiffany Sauder: An infinite amount of fuel to like whatever is in front of me, but in peace times, you know, like when you're getting to the place where you aren't resource scarce, you aren't opportunity scarce, I can fall into apathy or where I almost, I just start to like not feel as alive and as irrelevant and as useful and so then I will poke at stuff like what you're saying.

[00:23:37] Tiffany Sauder: It's like I'll poke at things and I'll. Kind of break them or I'll run to where I can feel that adrenaline rush and that sense of intent and purpose when it might not be my job and I just need to get away and like go back to your regular life. And so I think that is a really important highlighter for people to just say, are they self-induced?

[00:24:02] Tiffany Sauder: Self-created emergencies that are feeding and fueling your need to be needed. Or are you actually in peace time and you need to challenge yourself in different ways. So just wanna run a highlighter.

[00:24:14] Heather Chauvin: Anything you wanna add before we double? Oh my gosh, I could go so deep into this. So I talk a lot about energetic time management, which was something I created post treatment of like reverse engineering how you wanna feel.

[00:24:27] Heather Chauvin: So you go from overwhelm. It's like, okay, there's level one, the basics, right? But it's what you were saying, like you're putting yourself on the calendar first, but it's not just about like. I used to put like drink water on my calendar because I wouldn't drink water. Where now it's just natural for me. Or eat or like see the sun, like go outside.

[00:24:45] Heather Chauvin: Uh, but now and then it's just, there's always new level, new level, new level. When you get this like intimacy with yourself, you can call yourself out and be like. Like I ask people all the time, especially the ones really close to me, like, how am I causing this? And they're like, because you're doing this, this, this.

[00:25:02] Heather Chauvin: I'm like, thank you. So then I can figure out the new way. But you also have to accept, I never identified as an ambitious person ever in my life. Ever, ever, ever. Didn't I tell my son this all the time? I get very emotional, but I'm like, I don't know where I would be if it weren't for you. Like you. Gave me purpose.

[00:25:24] Heather Chauvin: You gave me an unhealthy purpose at the beginning. Like I had to dismantle that I was so not inspired in school, which is why I see my kids do this, and I'm like, oh, damn, here we go. Mm-hmm. But I had so much creative energy inside of me that was not being tapped. And I think as women, especially if you're a mother or like whatever you identify as, whatever your roles are.

[00:25:52] Heather Chauvin: We're like, I'm a mother. I'm a mother, and we serve, serve, serve. Most of us feel dead inside, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, because we are not feeding those parts of ourselves. 'cause we're like, it's bad. And then I see this ambitious woman who's like, Nope, my role is to be at home right now and we're good financially and my husband does this and da da dah.

[00:26:11] Heather Chauvin: And I'm like, I can see you. Not opening that door because you are afraid. She's like, I can't, I, I do this all or nothing, and then I'm gonna unleash, and then I'm burning myself out. And I'm like, well, maybe your job right now is not to build an empire tomorrow. Mm-hmm. But you keep leaning into this thing.

[00:26:31] Heather Chauvin: You need to feed that energy. Maybe that's the journey is learning how to, it's not taming the beast, but it's managing this energy within you. But that life force or whatever you wanna call it, that will not go away. I. Never in my life. I was not that hyperactive child. I never ran. My friends always make fun of me to this day.

[00:26:52] Heather Chauvin: They're like, do you remember when we used to track and field and used to run around a block with us and you would get sick? Because I'm like, yeah, I don't know what this is. There's this life force energy. I'm not fast. Mm-hmm. But I'm gritty and I'm determined That was not who I was as a child because it looked like depression, because I was regressing nobody.

[00:27:14] Heather Chauvin: Looked at me. I didn't have a role model that's like, I see something in you. Let's bring that part of you to life. So most of the time, like, is it hormones? Is it your health? Is it this? Or are you just apathetic and you need to feed your soul?

[00:27:28] Tiffany Sauder: Did you have to find the courage to dare, to dream, to dare, to have a bigger vision for your life?

[00:27:35] Tiffany Sauder: To dare to? Mm-hmm. Try.

[00:27:38] Heather Chauvin: So I still have to find courage every day because I think I'm gonna get somewhere and then my life's gonna feel complete and it doesn't. You get there, you're like, there's more. I actually find it gets more difficult sometimes the easier your life gets, the more comfortable it gets.

[00:27:53] Heather Chauvin: I don't think I had to dare to dream. I think the dreamer was always inside of me, that visionary. But I did it for my son first, which is I never lived for myself. I was like, I'm gonna dream for you. Everything I'm gonna do is for you. I wanted to create the dream for him, not for me.

[00:28:11] Tiffany Sauder: When I was in my season of using brute force and being prepared and ready as my primary coping strategy, I got to this place where I was like, I can't even hardly I.

[00:28:23] Tiffany Sauder: Do well what I've already said yes to. The idea of like imagining my life at a different level, or imagining adventure or fun or what you just did this like extreme race. Like I would've felt so dangerous to even say, yeah, I would like to do that, because the disappointment that I would feel and not being able to mm-hmm.

[00:28:43] Tiffany Sauder: Was just like too much. And so I found, I was in this habit of kind of not even dreaming anymore because it felt like. What's the point? I guess, how do you respond to that and when women are in that season where it's like, I have too many kids, we have too much house, we have too much job. We have too much.

[00:29:01] Tiffany Sauder: We have, I got, what do you mean? What do I want, Heather? I

[00:29:05] Heather Chauvin: hear this a lot and specifically, I remember doing a talk to a group of women who had children with severe needs, and she's like, Heather. I already know what's gonna happen in this circle. And she's like, we're not your average bunch, and they're gonna have way more resistance than the women you're used to talking to.

[00:29:29] Heather Chauvin: And she's like, we can't go there because we can't dream. 'cause we don't know what our future's gonna look like with our children. And I thought, okay, well my role in your life is not to make you comfortable and it might be to trigger you and to be like. Are you enjoying yourself? You have to get to a point, and I think you said this at the beginning, where you're done.

[00:29:56] Heather Chauvin: I see it in people all the time where I'm like, are you good? I actually just had this conversation. There's five women who just came into a cohort that I was doing. One is like asking me questions every day. The other one, I was like, do you have any questions for me? What am I supposed to be doing? I. What, I don't know what I signed up for, and I'm like, you don't want it.

[00:30:19] Heather Chauvin: You're not ready. You're curious about change. You're not committed to change. I'm not asking you to get a PhD, but you're disengaged. You are not here. And so regardless of how full your plate is, you can put that plate down. And start again. You don't have to blow up your life, but you can look at what is on your plate and go, do I still wanna carry this?

[00:30:43] Heather Chauvin: Is this mine? But there's a lot of fear there. There's a lot of codependency, a lot of high functioning codependency, but you are the only person that can sort through that plate. And the untangling of it is so incredibly emotionally uncomfortable. I tell people to start with a not this list. You can start with a, wouldn't it be nice?

[00:31:07] Heather Chauvin: I like one-liners and I've repeated them over and over again. Wouldn't it be nice if that that's your desire list? And some people that's, they're not this list, but what do you wanna let go of what is no longer serving you? Not this, I don't wanna feel like this anymore. I had a woman the other day say, I don't wanna get in an argument with my children all the time about phone usage.

[00:31:27] Heather Chauvin: And I said, then stop arguing. I'm like, do they force you to open your mouth and like speak words? She's like, no, but they trigger me and I'm like, you're choosing to respond. Like you can write down your rules. You can post them on the wall. You can take a picture of them and just keep pointing and say, I love you.

[00:31:46] Heather Chauvin: Point and move on with your life. The reason why you're always, I'm so frustrated, I'm so done with this, but are you really? I always say your emotions, your feelings will guide you back home to yourself. They're breadcrumbs. I hear resentment a lot. Resentment means you had a boundary. You let somebody cross that boundary.

[00:32:06] Heather Chauvin: So you have to pay attention to what is inside of you that's calling you, and start with a list. And if you are like, man, my brain is going a million miles a minute, great. Go for a walk. Talk to yourself on your phone. AI is a beautiful thing right now. Sometimes I'm talking to chat GPT or a version of that, and I'm like, talk to me like a blah, blah, blah.

[00:32:28] Heather Chauvin: Tell me questions to help me solve this problem. We have no excuses. It could take five minutes, go for a walk. Send yourself a voice note, listen to it back and be like, what did I just say to myself? The fascinating truth about all of this is these things are already inside of you. If I look at my diary when I was five, probably not when I was five, so I probably didn't write when I was five, but like I.

[00:32:53] Heather Chauvin: 10, 12, 15. Probably some of the same things that I am now putting in, like the breadcrumbs are always there. We're just not paying attention.

[00:33:04] Tiffany Sauder: I wanna dive into a tool that you have. What's the 60 minute rule? No

[00:33:09] Heather Chauvin: one likes this because when I tell them to implement it, they're like, but that's too easy. I'm gonna preface this with, I don't believe in hard things.

[00:33:17] Heather Chauvin: I love Glennon Doyle. She has changed my life in so many ways. I just don't believe in hard things 'cause that's what her podcast is called. I believe life is easy. It's just emotionally uncomfortable. I was addicted to hard. I'm trying to be in recovery from trying to make everything so hard. I checked my suffering box a long time ago.

[00:33:40] Heather Chauvin: I was like, I will never do this again. When I was diagnosed with stage four in December of 2013, I was like, I am done, done, done, done. And I know other people are like, but I haven't had cancer yet, so I'll just wait till I get cancer and then I'll check my suffering box. And I'm like, you do, you boo. But you don't have to wait that long or that bad.

[00:34:02] Heather Chauvin: So it's easy. Three tasks, 20 minutes or less. Every day, I call it a profit rule. Profit to me is time, money, and energy. It's the profit, the extra of life that you desire. Time, time, flexibility, energy. There's four types of energy. I will give you a resource after to teach you about all four types. Mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, managing, those, and then financial resource.

[00:34:31] Heather Chauvin: I never used to talk about money, and then I realized it's all connected and a well resourced woman will change the world. The secret you're searching for in parenting, your marriage, your health, all the things is you feeling alive and resourced. You going to bed at night going, we're gonna be okay because our cups are overflowing.

[00:34:54] Heather Chauvin: So the profit rule is three 20 minute tasks a day. It's the habit. I try to get people into action mode. I'll give you an example. You can have a profit rule if you're in business. You can have a profit rule for your own personal life, so you're like, I really need to work on my energy. Maybe your 20 minutes is I'm gonna go for a 20 minute walk a day.

[00:35:16] Heather Chauvin: I'm gonna sit and journal for 20 minutes or read a book, and then 20 minutes of, I don't know, maybe I'm gonna send in that 20 minutes, three. Gratitude text messages to somebody who's made an impact to my life. And that's gonna be my focus for just the week. I'm just committing to seven days and you're gonna watch day one.

[00:35:36] Heather Chauvin: You're like, boom, got it done. Day two, you're like. Oh, this is too easy. I don't wanna do it. Like I'll just do it tomorrow. But it's the consistency of doing these things over and over again. And then you realize by the end of the week, you've reached out to 20 people who've made an impact in your life that you're thinking about.

[00:35:51] Heather Chauvin: And that's the profit rule. And so when my clients, I help them define their profit rules or profit tasks, they're always like, this is so easy. And I'm like, why can't you let life be easy? And I'm like, yep, you're about to have a breakthrough. And they get the pitches, they make more money. They feel more connected to their kids.

[00:36:11] Heather Chauvin: They're yelling less, they feel more energized because they are doing less better. They're less overwhelmed, they're more focused, they're more present, more fulfilled. That was a play off of my energetic time management strategy because I'm all about. How could I take something that feels so big and complex and make it so simple and practical for someone who's like, I don't have time.

[00:36:38] Heather Chauvin: How do I handle the objection of I don't have time? And I'm like, you had 20 minutes to tell me how you don't have time. You could have went for that walk that you say you don't have time for. It's just wild how our brains work. And I have resistance on the daily. I laugh at myself now. It's comical. The things that I.

[00:36:59] Heather Chauvin: No, I should be doing, and yet I'm like, ah, I can't do that. I don't have time. And I'm like, really? You do? It's just uncomfortable.

[00:37:07] Tiffany Sauder: Yeah. What are the three things in your profit circle right now in your 60 minute rule?

[00:37:13] Heather Chauvin: Also, what I wanna say is, at minimum it's 20 minutes. So if you start a task, that's usually the hardest part you can continue on.

[00:37:21] Heather Chauvin: Mine right now would be incredibly simple meal prep. 'cause these are three things that I'm resisting. Meal prep? Mm-hmm. Like the actual prepping of what am I going to eat tomorrow? It takes me 20 minutes or less and I don't wanna do it going for a walk 'cause it's hard for me to like get out of the door and probably, I know right now what it is.

[00:37:44] Heather Chauvin: It's cold pitching. It's more of like collaborations. I have no issue doing it. It's always just the start of the task and once I'm in a state of momentum, easy breezy, I know how to do all these things. So cold pitching, walking, and meal prepping,

[00:38:00] Tiffany Sauder: those are awesome. I love that. I think that it also forces some prioritization and I think people can get paralyzed that, am I picking the right things to start on instead of just like.

[00:38:13] Tiffany Sauder: Your intuition will guide you to important things. Whether they're the very most important or just in the field of these are tier one things that are causing an, like my family right now, if my husband or I sit down for 20 minutes and play a game, we have, we have two teenagers and then like two littles.

[00:38:31] Tiffany Sauder: If we play a game with them or color with them, or some YouTube video where we draw like Snoopy or something, like it changes the way the evening feels because we. Like engaged, like eyeballs to eyeballs did something that they picked. And if I were to put my 60 minute profit rule together, that would be one of mine 20 minutes a day.

[00:38:52] Tiffany Sauder: It makes such a difference in the way that they, there's less like mom, ma, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom. 'cause they're not begging for my time. Mm-hmm. Because we're running the older kids around. We're. Connecting on the day, following up with like sort of last minute things that need to happen, packing lunches, like all the administrative part of doing the family that that playtime can get lost.

[00:39:14] Tiffany Sauder: So love that framing. That's the strategy piece,

[00:39:18] Heather Chauvin: right? The grounded strategy. So it's like, put that on the physical calendar. You don't have to do it when you said you're gonna do it and give yourself a deadline or a timeline. So if you're like, I'm gonna do this for a week. Don't give up on day three and, and watch just watching your brain be like, oh, you don't need to do that anymore.

[00:39:37] Heather Chauvin: Just you learn so much about yourself from the journey of why do I resist this? It's the becoming of it, right? So I am very rooted in strategy, but it's like managing the energy around that strategy. And then the magic is once you get more seasoned at this and master it, you learn the art of pivoting.

[00:40:00] Heather Chauvin: Okay. Oh, I see that picking these three things led me to get to the root of what I'm really avoiding, but that's my next profit rule. I'm gonna change it every week or once a month or whatever it is. You're pulling at things, and I think too often I hear women talk about perfection. I'm a perfectionist.

[00:40:21] Heather Chauvin: Be careful what you identify as. Perfection is a coping strategy. I have had to heal those parts of myself and they pop up. But where's the fine line between attention to detail and a perfectionist, right? I've had to watch myself where I wanna really take a stand for something and own something, and I'm like, oh, I don't like that.

[00:40:42] Heather Chauvin: And they're like, 80% is better than blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, yeah, but that little tweak that they forgot. Is really important to me, but am I being a perfectionist or am I just attention to detail? Am I micromanaging or micro leading? I have to play with that with it myself, but I won't know the answer to that unless I'm on the journey I.

[00:41:01] Heather Chauvin: So if I'm playing double Dutch, I always tell people it's like you're walking around the pool or you're like watching, it's like double Dutch and you're like, when do I jump in? If you are not attempting to get whacked in the face when you jump in, or you're scared to jump in the water because you're afraid of how cold it's gonna be, like that is what you're doing in your life.

[00:41:22] Heather Chauvin: And so the more reps you put into just trying. There is no perfect way to do anything, and that's what we're getting caught up in. Am I a good enough mother? Am I a good enough leader? Am I a good enough this? Why are we a good enough mother? How about my kids can actually be assholes like I am not responsible for all of their behavior.

[00:41:47] Heather Chauvin: Other people can take. Accountability for how they show up in the world too. Am I a good enough wife? Why can't my husband or partner show up for me too? Why do I need to do it all? Like we're just overdoing it. Am I a good enough leader? Am I good enough boss? Yeah. And are your employees or team members.

[00:42:08] Heather Chauvin: Showing up and doing their part too. It's raising our standards. Mm-hmm.

[00:42:13] Tiffany Sauder: I love that, Heather. Okay. Do you wanna share a couple of key learnings from your 29 0 29? 'cause I'm just like kind of geeking out that you did it. I think I'm a little of jealousy. I'll sign up

[00:42:25] Heather Chauvin: tomorrow. I think they're opening the, the doors.

[00:42:28] Heather Chauvin: Is it tomorrow? It's tomorrow. Oh, no.

[00:42:30] Tiffany Sauder: Oh, okay. You know, I'm gonna message you now. Okay. No. Give a, give a quick background on what it is and then you tell me should I do it or should I not? It really is opening tomorrow. This feels like. Divine,

[00:42:41] Heather Chauvin: no

[00:42:41] Tiffany Sauder: pressure, but

[00:42:41] Heather Chauvin: it's tomorrow. So if the desire's in you, it's for you.

[00:42:45] Heather Chauvin: So the fact that you have jealousy means you need to do it. That's all I can say. Look at me way, your whole body language has just changed. You're like terrified. Okay, last year, 29 0 2 9 is apparently the elevation of Mount Everest. And so there original event was they have mountains like ski hills and you have to climb the mountain, like walk up, hike the mountain.

[00:43:05] Heather Chauvin: Take the gondola down and however many times you have to do that, it equals 29 0 2 9,000 feet. And so the one I did last year was 13. I had to do 13 times, and then once you're done, you get this red hat, it's ridiculous. It's like a red baseball cap. It's a

[00:43:23] Tiffany Sauder: baseball cap for like, it's like $8. It's not even cool.

[00:43:26] Tiffany Sauder: Mean costs bajillion

[00:43:27] Heather Chauvin: dollars, but it was like $8. Yes. So I went with a friend. She's actually on my team and she has been there. She's been with me for like a decade and she's been with me through cancer. She's been with me through all the things. I call her a robot. She's so non-emotional. We are the polar opposites.

[00:43:46] Heather Chauvin: She's like black and white, like I'll be on my deathbed or like doing something. She's like, you didn't get this task done. Like I just love her for it 'cause she holds me accountable. Anywho. So we did it and she was like, so. Determined. She got it. Okay. So she got 13, she got her red hat. I did 10 last year.

[00:44:08] Heather Chauvin: But a part of me, I didn't train for it. I didn't even open the training plan. I didn't even attend one call. I went to the gym like I didn't. You really didn't. Oh my God. No. Not at all. Didn't know what to expect. But I'm the, I am the like, let's sign up for it. I'll figure it out as we go. That's next week.

[00:44:27] Heather Chauvin: And then I was proud of myself for getting 10, but there was this. Tiny, tiny part of myself where I'm like, I didn't even try. Why didn't I try? I probably could have squeaked out 11, but I'm like, Heather, why didn't you even train to show up for this? And I, I observe my pattern of I'll run the race, but I won't train for the race, the becoming part, right?

[00:44:49] Heather Chauvin: So I'm observing myself and I'm like. I gotta figure this out. So anyways, of course, after that event, their marketing is genius. They start this new event and it's three marathons in three days, and they invited the alumni and tickets sold out in 18 seconds. So she's like, you wanna do this? And I was like, fine.

[00:45:09] Heather Chauvin: So sign up. And I'm like. I know that if I sign up for this part of my journey is the training. I did their training, it was probably 10 times worse than the mountain because they just like overdid the training, which because they wanted us to be prepared and it was a new event for them. So I did probably 60 to 70% of the training.

[00:45:34] Heather Chauvin: My friend did a hundred percent of the training because she's like that. And then we get there and they're like, oh yeah, the whole point was for you to do like 70% of the training. I was like, see, see, you don't need to be a hundred percent all the time. Anyways. I completed it. I completed it. I got three marathons in three days.

[00:45:51] Heather Chauvin: I was a different person. And I remember on the third day, it was around mile 25. First of all, a marathon is like 26 point something. They had like us doing 28 miles a day. So I'm around 25 miles and the cutoff is coming time-wise, I'm not fast, but I. Remember this moment of like, I think I'm gonna get it, but I don't know.

[00:46:16] Heather Chauvin: And I go into mile 25. I'm crying and I'm facing my fear of failure. I'm in so much pain at this point, and I'm like, don't give up. Keep going. And I'm just like crying through my pain. I get to the eight station at mile 25 and I'm just like weeping. Like ugly cry. I had pigtails, my pigtails broke, so I looked like Lord for a coop off Shrek.

[00:46:38] Heather Chauvin: Like it was just like all over the place. I get in. So then I kept going. I had about an hour after mile 25 because you're like uphill downhill, like it's mountain terrain. And I could hear the like cowbells at the end and I'm like, I think I'm gonna get this. And I just remember thinking I already won.

[00:46:57] Heather Chauvin: This journey was about facing. My fear of failure that I wasn't an athlete or that I wasn't capable of achieving something like this, and it broke me in a way that. I would have only been able to do if I challenged myself physically. I was proud of myself on a deeper level, and I think it was because of all the training.

[00:47:19] Heather Chauvin: And so the race wasn't three days, it was 10 months. And yeah, it's changed how I parent. It's changed how I work. It's changed how I deal with people because I know I'm in it for the daily. I'm not just in it for the hurrah. Of the event, life is an endurance event. Parenting is an endurance event. Success is an endurance event, but more importantly, the relationship you have with yourself.

[00:47:44] Heather Chauvin: Um. It was just wild. I know. I felt complete after that and I told her, we're not signing up next year. And so when it opens, they already had the alumni go. I said, absolutely not. I said, don't look today. I said, let's volunteer next year. I want some inflammation to go down. And I remember Jesse Itzler, one of the founders of the event, he's like, it is not healthy what you just did the last few days.

[00:48:08] Heather Chauvin: Physically. He goes, but your soul. Is coming back to life. And he's like, you guys, this is soul food. Your doctors and healthcare practitioners are gonna tell you you're crazy and you shouldn't do that. But look at how far you have come. And he's like, this is about living your life and not just being compliant.

[00:48:27] Heather Chauvin: So if it's in you, it's for you. And if you have some jealousy, that means it's a little breadcrumb.

[00:48:33] Tiffany Sauder: Well, I'll have to have you send me the link. Heather, you saying life, success, marriage parenting, our relationship with ourselves is an endurance event, I think is the summary of this whole conversation. And when we stop expecting life to be coin operated and we show up in a way that is about sustainable investment.

[00:48:55] Tiffany Sauder: And not getting pissed when the button doesn't give us what we want. I think that's the core of moving from reactive, chaotic, guilty, unbalanced to no, I deserve for life to be moving towards. And you get to fill in the blank. I. Thanks for joining me. We'll link your episode that you kind of did a one hour debrief on your experience on 29 0 29, or this endurance event you just did.

[00:49:20] Tiffany Sauder: And then I'll also how people can find you on your podcast and resources to help them step into their life. So thanks so much for joining me, Heather. Thank you, Tiffany. I. Oh, I came out of this episode so inspired to do something physically hard, so I don't know. Stay tuned. Maybe we'll all do something together this fall, but seriously, isn't that so rad that she did that?

[00:49:39] Tiffany Sauder: I'm obsessed. Okay. As always, if this episode resonated, I would just love it if you shared it with somebody, sent it to a friend, someone who's building their Life of And, and. I would love you forever if you dropped a review. As always, thanks for being here with me. See you next week. Thanks for listening to the Life of And this is your weekly reminder to keep making bold choices, saying clear yeses and holding space for what matters most.

[00:50:03] Tiffany Sauder: As always, if you like this episode, I'd love for you to drop a review and share it with your friend. It's the fastest way that we can grow the show. Thanks for joining us. I'll see you next time.