A Conversation About Our “Should” Life and How To Change It (#211)

[00:32] Bobbi: Welcome to UnYielded: Thriving No Matter What, where we talk about how to make your next chapter in life your best chapter. I’m your host Bobbi Kahler, and I believe that the best is yet to come to another conversation. I’m so glad that you’re here. Want to say a special shout out to all of you who have subscribed. And if you haven’t yet subscribed, now is a great time to do so. Hit that subscribe or Follow button so that you never miss another episode. I have to say, I loved this week’s conversation. We cover things like how to own your own health, how to make yourself and specifically time for yourself a priority and why that matters, how we can begin to shift away from our should life, and how the second stage of our life has the potential to be the best time of our life. That’s a lie. So let’s meet our guest. My guest today is a personal development keynote speaker, board certified nurse practitioner, and founder of Siva Health and the Siva Institute. Her inspiring presentations are drawn from nearly three decades of clinical practice and lifetime study of integrative health and mind body medicine. Through courses, coaching, community and radical self compassion practice, she teaches overworked professionals how to break free from burnout and gain the clarity, courage and confidence they need to design the life they deserve. In addition to managing her busy clinical and coaching practice, she is the host of Healthy House Calls with angel, a podcast filled with tips, tools and strategies that help listeners live longer and live better with lifestyle medicine. Her name is Angel V. Shannon, and I think you’re going to love meeting her. Angel, welcome to the show.

[02:30] Angel: Thank you so much, Bobbi. It’s a pleasure to be here.

[02:33] Bobbi: Oh, my goodness. And for the listeners, like, we’ve already been talking for 17 minutes before I finally hit the record button, so we’ll just go with it. It’s been so much fun already. So tell us a little bit about yourself.

[02:45] Angel: Oh, gosh. Where should I start? My name is Angel Shannon. I am an avid gardener. I’m a tree hugger traveler, a mom. I’m also an adult and geriatric behavior nurse practitioner. In private practice here in Maryland. I focus on integrative health and lifestyle medicine for adults and seniors. I am so grateful to be able to do this work and as I say, see people from age 21 to 101 across the lifespan just create better health and wellness skills for themselves.

[03:24] Bobbi: Man, that’s amazing. That is amazing. It’s got to be so rewarding, too.

[03:31] Angel: It is. It really is. I say it is an honor and a privilege to be in the front seat of someone’s health journey like this.

[03:41] Bobbi: Really?

[03:41] Angel: To be a partner in someone’s health, it’s a sacred experience because there’s nothing more personal to us than our health.

[03:49] Bobbi: That’s right.

[03:50] Angel: And our finances.

[03:50] Bobbi: I’ll say that both are important. But the health stuff, quick question on that, too, because so many times since my dad died in November, I’ve had a lot of people talk to me about what the experience was like, not just with him dying, but being in the hospital and trying to find the best care for him. That’s not always easy.

[04:14] Angel: No.

[04:15] Bobbi: What kind of advice do you have for people when it comes to kind of like being their own advocate when it comes to their health?

[04:25] Angel: It’s funny. And thank you so much for honoring me with that question, because when I started my podcast, the very first episode after the trailer was how to Be a Good Patient. That is the title of the podcast episode. And I think that is the most important thing that you can ever do for yourself, is establish the skills of being an advocate for yourself. You have to be your number one cheerleader. There’s nothing you can’t find out these days. Thanks to Google, thanks to Chat GPT. Okay, so you can find out anything. But what you really need to hone in on is two things. One, learning how to be an advocate for yourself, asking good questions, being armed with information, quality information, having your information and your health history about yourself. Well organized. I mean, well organized so that you are always literate. You’re always showing up to healthcare appointments with solid facts and information. You’re not relying on the kindness of strangers getting on the phone, can you send me that EKG that I had in the office? You’ve always got your health history and information in front of you. You own your health history, so it’s not locked up in some portal somewhere or some doctor’s office who retired and is now living in the south of France somewhere. And then finding a person who is truly a partner in your health. That bedside manner matters so much more than people’s degrees, certificates where they studied. Don’t get caught up in all of the shiny things, as I always say. Look for people who really do match your core, core values in their bedside manner. Is it easy to find? Not necessarily, but it’s worth the find. Because when you get to that stage in life, later in life, where you’ve got more years behind you than you do in front of you, you’re going to need someone who can honor your core values. Understand what you mean when you say, here’s how I want to die, and here’s how I want to live.

[07:00] Bobbi: That’s right. Because luckily, with my dad, he had all that in place. I actually think, angel, as you’re talking there, one of the problems that I think because my dad was 89, he would have been 90 in May he was very healthy.

[07:16] Angel: Very healthy.

[07:18] Bobbi: I struggled to think of my dad ever having a cold.

[07:21] Angel: Wow.

[07:22] Bobbi: And so at one point, when he lived down in Missouri, he had his family doctor, and then he moved back to Illinois with one of my sisters, and he never found another family doctor that he really liked. And I actually think that kind of played into because then when he did have trouble, he went to some random hospital.

[07:42] Angel: Right.

[07:42] Bobbi: His doctor wasn’t there. When I brought him down here to Arkansas and I had to take him to the hospital. It took, like, two or three doctors, they’d come into his room, and he’s literally thrashing in the bed. And they walked right to the computer and started looking at it. They never even looked at him. And the fourth doctor, he came in, I’m like, please, before you go to the computer, I’m begging you, will you look at my dad?

[08:09] Angel: Yes. To my dad? Yes. This human being. He’s a human sitting in front of you.

[08:16] Bobbi: Yeah. Thrashing because something’s wrong. So, anyway, I don’t want to get us off tirade, but it’s important what you’re saying.

[08:26] Angel: And I think that one of the things I’m trying to do in my practice, both clinical and coaching, is get people to understand integrative health. I think Andrew Wild does a fantastic job with this. For years has been a champion of integrative health and understanding that one person can’t be our everything. For years, we just had our family duck, medical duck. Right. But now we’re understanding that we have to build a team of very, very capable providers to manage all of our needs. What do I mean by that? Classic example, all of these commercials. Ask your doctor if such and so medication is right for you. No, I think you better be asking your pharmacist, because the pharmacist is the one person who really knows these drugs inside and out. Side effects, limit dose limitations. Pharmacokinetics. Pharmacology. They are the experts in that. They know these studies better than anyone. Your doctor is not, I can guarantee you reading the latest and greatest that comes out on clinical studies of pharmaceuticals. That’s right. You need a pharmacist on your team, a dietitian. Why aren’t people seeing dietitians and nutritionists? Right. So I think our generation coming along. That meaning after your dad and my mom, likely folks in our 50s, we’re understanding integrative health and that we need to broaden this thing. We can’t just rely on just our doctors anymore. We need other people on the team to help us manage the fullness of this health care experience.

[10:16] Bobbi: Yeah. And it goes back to what you said earlier, being informed and owning it. Like we’re the quarterback of it or we’re the owner of it.

[10:26] Angel: Yeah. Wow. Okay.

[10:29] Bobbi: So someone is on my podcast recently, and she talked about what is it called, the white coat syndrome, where even in my family, my children sisters are seven and eight years older than I am. And then my younger sister, she’s five years younger than I am. And so my little sister and I, we’re both, like we get on Google, we’re checking things out. We’re asking questions of the doctor. And my two older sisters are a little bit more of the well, they’re.

[10:52] Angel: The doctor.

[10:55] Bobbi: But that doesn’t mean that they’re the doctor. Yes, they’ve got the expertise, but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to care about our health or dad’s health as much as we do. What’s your experience with that?

[11:07] Angel: I guess so I’ll say this. I stopped wearing my white coat or white jacket right after I received my degree and walked across the stage and got my transcript in the mail to prove that I had been graduated. Because white coat syndrome is real, it creates an unnecessary barrier. Health care offices. I designed my office with the intention that it feels very much it’s our happy place. There’s even a sign on the door where you hang your jacket. This is our happy place. It’s a very non conventional space. So I have plants in my office. I have a sliding door that faces a patio that we walk out upstairs. We just recently expanded, and I mean, like, three weeks ago. So I have more space. We’ve got a sitting meditation room. So patients who are coming in who are waiting for their appointment can sit in the meditation space, and it is absolutely beautiful. We also now are expanding to offer massage and acupuncture, but it is very much a non sterile space for that. And what I always say to my patients and coaching clients is here’s. What I want you to remember from this moment forward is that you are the expert in you. I am your consultant. I’m in your advisor. I’m the person who knows exactly which study to send you from the Journal of Endocrinology, the Journal of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. If we’re talking about menopause ACC for cardiology, I know how to read clinical studies. I know what I want you to hone in on. I’m the specialist or advisor for you in that way. But you are and will always be the expert in you because no one knows you better than you do. And I think setting that stage with my patients and coaching clients from the very beginning has been very empowering for them. They know that I am listening and that you are guiding me toward your diagnosis, toward what you need, toward what will benefit you in this clinical encounter. I’m not going to do everything today, but we’re going to do one thing that’s going to make everything else possible for you. And sometimes that can simply mean holding space for you to cry. Sometimes that can mean us just having a conversation about how frustrating it is for you to keep being identified by your weight or by whatever. So integrative health is very much about affirming the person in front of you and giving them the tools to feel empowered. And as I said, that white coat syndrome is very real. And so I try to take down those barriers from the very beginning.

[14:09] Bobbi: I love that even because they say this, because I’ve done a lot of training and facilitation in my life, dozens of years of it. And they always say that the experience starts the moment they walk in the room. From the time someone walks in the room and they see the table set up, it’s like, oh, is this going to be a lecture? Is this going to be collaborative? So that sounds like the same thing with you. It’s like that whole experience.

[14:34] Angel: Okay.

[14:34] Bobbi: So I’m thinking about something angel that you wrote on your website about like if someone’s and I’m going to get this wrong, but hopefully I get it close enough, you’ll be like, I know what you’re talking about. Where it was something like you’d gotten frustrated with doctors telling you that you were fine even though you didn’t feel fine. Like you knew I’m not fine. Is that kind of what you’re talking about when you’re talking about you are the expert in you?

[15:01] Angel: Absolutely, it is, 100%. And thank you so much for honing in on that because I drive that message home all the time. Because one of the things, and more specifically to women, and this is historic, this goes way back, women have always been told, you’re fine. You remember the days our mothers can possibly tell us, and grandmothers, honey, you’re just overreacting.

[15:31] Bobbi: Go home.

[15:33] Angel: Valium was the drug of choice back then. Just take a little bit of Valium and I’ll see you in a couple of days. And women were having massive heart attacks. Heart disease is, I believe, the number one killer of women in the United States, or one of the top five. Heart disease is severely under diagnosed in women for that reason. Women having palpitations oh, don’t worry about it. Chest pain. Oh, you’re just emotional. That was par for the course for women in our mother’s and grandmothers generations, and not much has changed. It’s still very much. I see. Women are severely over prescribed antidepressants anxiolytics for things that are very clearly hormone imbalances, thyroid disorders, undiagnosed heart disease, all kinds of things, right? And so for me, my own personal experience, when I was starting to have some real serious perimenopausal symptoms, the answer to that from my provider at the time was an oral contraceptive. Now, I didn’t need it because I wasn’t going to have any more children, but it was thought that that could regulate some of my symptoms that I was having. And I’ll just be frank, it was just dysmenorrhea, just this spotting on and off and on and off. And what I didn’t realize at the time, this is why I make this reference to pharmacies, is how much oral contraceptives can do to hormonal imbalances, but also how they can deplete B vitamins, alter neuro, brain neurotransmitters, things like this. And everything was fine. I had the ultrasounds, I had the CT scans of all this work up. I had the blood work, and everything looked good on paper, but I was not fine.

[17:49] Bobbi: That’s right.

[17:50] Angel: And the numbers, the labs looked fine. And this is what happens with a lot of women. The hormones are, oh, it doesn’t show that you’re perimenopausal or it doesn’t show that you’re menopausal. These blood work labs. Right. And I’ll never forget, I will never, ever forget being on this oral contraceptive and getting increasingly and increasingly depressed. And I’ve had so many women depressed in my practice on oral contraceptives. And it got to the point where I was I mean, I just break out crying for no reason at all. And a friend of mine once said to me, what is wrong? And I just couldn’t put my hands on what was wrong. There was nothing wrong. I’m in private practice. I make my own schedule. I love the work that I do. My kids are healthy, everything’s right, but something is wrong. And I can see it just as clear as day. I went in my Gynecologist office, just my own inner wisdom, and I said to her, before I could even get the words, she said, what’s happening? And she said, oh, is it not? And I said, I just broke down crying. And she said, we’ve got to take you off of this antidepressant. I’m sorry? The oral contraceptive, you got to come off of it immediately because it was just terrible. And I mean, it went just like that. Five days later, after this sort of weaning down seven day, I was back to my self. And that was when Bobbi, I started taking lifestyle medicine even more seriously than I had. Anyone who follows me on social media can tell you exercise, diet, nutrition, sleep, caring for this body of mind, learning every single thing I could about perimenopause, menopause, nutrition, mindfulness to deal with those symptoms, because I was not going to leave it to a random prescription. And I’m not speaking ill of allopathic medicine. It has its place. I have a prescription pad. I prescribe when I need to prescribe. This is not a knock or to anything. Allopathic I want to be clear about that. But I will say that it has its place, it has its role. But there is so much to say about lifestyle symptoms, integrative health, and what we do for wellness to change our lives, not just our symptoms. That’s been my story.

[20:42] Bobbi: That’s right. And the integrative medicine. When I got sick in 2003, at one point I was at a research hospital, and the doctor is like, based on early studies, this is what we think it is. Their experience at that point was that only 3% of people that had that would experience a full recovery. And then he said, and there’s nothing really that Western medicine can do for you. There’s no surgery and there’s no pill. And from there, it took me another 14 months or twelve months to find an integrative doctor. And I loved it because sometimes, like, I remember one time I had strep throat. You know what? Strep throat antibiotics work really well. You need that antibiotic.

[21:28] Angel: Exactly.

[21:29] Bobbi: And and her name was Dr. Barb, and she’s like, there are times when you need it. There are other times when you need other things like the acupuncture, the massage, just all the other stuff that you’re talking about. So I’m a huge believer in that.

[21:45] Angel: Yes. It’s not a quick calm down this over right. And to calm down this overactive nervous system that’s shooting out all these chemical messengers that just keep this vicious cycle of inflammation and hormone imbalance. There’s real science in allopathic medicine that I will never, ever discredit. But what I will also not do is shoot down nontraditional approaches to wellness and creating holism in this body of ours.

[22:19] Bobbi: That’s right. So what are some of the best practices? I like how you put that, creating holism. Here are some of the best practices there.

[22:29] Angel: I tell you, I ride hard for yoga. And when I say yoga, not just Asana practice, but ayurveda that whole system of ayurvedic medicine which is rooted in nutrition and eating certain things that help to create, to support healthy metabolism, hormone balance, things like that. I ride really hard for traditional Chinese medicine. Ancient, ancient. We’re talking thousands and thousands of years. And underneath traditional Chinese medicine. Not just herbals, but as Tai Chi. Tai Chi Chuan. I’ve been studying Tai Chi Chuan for probably, I think I may be coming up on ten years now. Wow. Yeah. Qigong practices for breath work and using the breath to calm down the nervous system. So between ayurveda yoga and traditional Chinese medicine, that will also encompass acupuncture. So those things are very well established. And the reason why I mentioned those two specifically is because all day long you can find evidence based studies of how they’ve been proven helpful in things like cancer recovery, pain management, heart disease. As we age, no one can argue that Tai Chi Chuan, which helps us to establish good posture, establish good balance, no one can argue that that’s not helpful in the aging body. If you look at the studies of the number of people who fall, and women who fall and have osteoporotic situations, have bone fractures, have collapsed lumbar spines. I’ll never forget when I was studying and doing my clinical rotation, a woman who was in severe pain with lumbar fractures because of osteoporosis. And us trying to figure out was Prolia going to do it or what we’re going to prescribe and whatnot. That’s a quality of life issue.

[24:38] Bobbi: That’s right.

[24:39] Angel: So Tai Chi chuan is one that I just absolutely ride so hard for. Yoga, as I mentioned, can’t deny plant based medicine, botanicals, herbals, like the adaptogens, ashwagandha, all of those rodiola. So I am a huge believer in plant based medicines, because the truth of the matter is, and what Big Pharma doesn’t really disclose is that many of our prescription medications are really mimicking what many of the plant based things do. So, like curcumin and it’s in turmeric and how it acts on the *** two inhibitors, we get maloxicam. That’s a prescription that does the same, pretty much same way as curcumin and turmeric. Right. And so when you know how to do these things and work with them integratively the way I do in my practice, it’s just a lot of fun work. Those are the things. And again, you can go all day long on valuable websites that establish the role of plant based medicines in healthcare and how they work at the chemical level, in the body.

[26:05] Bobbi: So many things.

[26:06] Angel: James Duke, who is now deceased, has a whole database on the FDA website. I believe it’s on the FDA website, who was my guru. I mean, like, you can research this all day long.

[26:20] Bobbi: Wow, that’s good information. What I was thinking is maybe I’ll have you, if you don’t mind, send me some links for those things like the yoga and the tai chi that you’re talking about so that people can learn more, because I think it’s important. And also, one of the things I noticed with my dad that worked against him at the end is he kind of had that hump over and his shoulder slumped forward. And that was one of the things, because he had pneumonia and because it made it much harder for him to be able to take a full, deep breath and you don’t have to think about that.

[26:58] Angel: Yes, and I was just having this conversation with someone about if you think about just the anatomy. And, you know, it’s funny because in my appointments, I do a lot of teaching on just basic anatomy. Here’s what your lung looks like, here’s what it has to do. And if you are humped over like you just said, or if you’re not taking full breaths, which you learn how to do in Tai Chi chuan, in Qigong, and in yoga, those little alveoli, those little pockets down at the bottom of your lungs do not expand fully. So if they’re not expanding, eventually they collapse. And if they collapse, that’s less available air space. Hence the shortness of breath, the not breathing well, the increased risk of pneumonia and things like this. So when people understand what is happening and they have a visual, they’re more likely to say, wow, I’m going to do this for myself. So I love Tai Chi for that reason and for balance, for better posture. I absolutely love Tai Chi for that and chigong as well. Yeah.

[28:05] Bobbi: The better balance, though. I mean, that alone is so important.

[28:13] Angel: To your point. Bobbi, too, when you were saying about your health as your wealth, I mean, think about it. Think about what your life would be if you had a fall that was serious enough that someone had to come and help you get out of the chair to get to the bathroom. I mean, it would change your income potential, right. Your earnings. It certainly would for me. I wouldn’t be able to run my practice the way I do. That balance and being safe is a quality of life issue. It changes everything.

[28:47] Bobbi: Everything. And it was actually she was a former guest and one of my friends, Pam Sherman, that’s her line, your health is your wealth. And she was even telling me she has a friend who’s a firefighter, and he said most of their calls are because people have fallen in their homes and they can’t get up on their own.

[29:03] Angel: Yes.

[29:06] Bobbi: Oh, my goodness.

[29:07] Angel: Commercial that everyone thought funny is not really funny anymore. And I’ll be honest with you, because my focus is adult and geriatric medicine. I see a lot of older adults who have that very story. I was calling my mom and calling my mom, and when we couldn’t get a hold of her, my brother went over there. Come to find out she was laying in the bathtub. I’m going to tell you, I can write five very true to life books in a mini series on the stories that I have experienced in my practice. I kid you not.

[29:47] Bobbi: Wow. See, that kind of stuff is scary. And that’s why what we do today is so important.

[29:53] Angel: Right? Okay.

[29:55] Bobbi: So I want to shift a little bit because I don’t want to run out of time before we get to this. Before we started recording, you were telling me about how you help women. You’re helping women kind of create that oasis for themselves. Let’s kind of shift gears over there for a while. Tell me more about that because I think that’s exciting.

[30:14] Angel: It is.

[30:15] Bobbi: And you just took the word right out of myself.

[30:18] Angel: I really believe that the second stage of your life has the potential to be the most exciting stage. It has the potential to really be the best years of your life. My mission is to shift this narrative about aging and really help specifically women, because I think that by this time in women’s lives and I’m only speaking for women because I am a woman, I can’t say what men’s experiences are, and I’ve never tried to speak for them. But I will say I know so many women who are excited because here’s what is now over for a lot of us, we’re past the worry about pregnancy, about child rearing, about college decisions, what college to go to, what to major in career paths. A lot of the first experiences in our lives, those that wreak a lot of havoc and anxiety, your first love, your first heartbreak, your first move away from home, all of those firsts are over. In fact, many of us are now at third and fourth of many experiences. So now we have enough wisdom of life in our toolkit to be able to know that whatever it is, this too shall pass. And we have the ability to now say what we don’t want. We may not know what we actually want, what the full picture of that looks like, but we know what we don’t want. And sometimes knowing what you don’t want is more important than knowing what you do want. Because you’re not going to repeat some of that same stuff, right?

[32:05] Bobbi: Yeah.

[32:05] Angel: What I say is that what we really need is enough space, mentally, physically, and emotionally to start designing the life we know that we want, designing what we know we deserve. Right? So that space. Because what I hear from a lot of women is, I’m tired of living my should life. Everything people have told me I should be doing when I was a kid. You should be a lawyer because your mom’s a lawyer. You should live in New Hampshire because this is where you grew up. You should should. Now it’s all about, what do I really, really want? And to figure that out, you need enough emotional and physical and mental space to be able to do that. Mindfulness yoga. Retreats. But creating your own retreat and oasis, time to step away and touch down into something our mutual friend Kathy Robinson talks about, the still point. That’s what’s important. And so what I am working on now is designing two levels of retreat, helping women to create retreat in their everyday lives, weekly lives, but also retreat time away. Time away to really discover what is important to you and to support your body’s ability to do that. Because what we talked about earlier is the perimenopause and menopause. And what a lot of women are dealing with at this stage is the brain fog, the fatigue, the tiredness, the hot flashes. So if I get this body settled down, if I get this brain fog cleared up enough that I can just sit and figure out what I want and need in my life, I will be able to move in that direction. So I bring a lot of that clinical. Here’s what you’re feeling. You’re not crazy. Okay, that’s good to know.

[34:13] Bobbi: Number one, it is real.

[34:17] Angel: So here’s how we can support your nutrition. Here’s how we can support mindfulness. Here’s how we can awaken your own inner knowing and your own inner guidance. My teacher of all teachers, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, who teaches about women’s inner. Wisdom and intuition and the inner knowing and awakening that inner knowing has been a godsend in my life. And so I weave a lot of that teaching into the work that I do. Women’s intuition, women’s knowing. Another person who I absolutely adore. Two other people, let me say Alice Walker, who writes In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens and so many other books. Carolyn Miss, who teaches on women’s intuition and archetypes and things like this. And I’m just putting some of these out. People whose work has informed my work.

[35:17] Bobbi: I love that.

[35:19] Angel: Richard Straussy Heckler, who writes about embodiment and embodying these skills, not just talking about it, but really embodying it.

[35:28] Bobbi: That’s right.

[35:30] Angel: These have been some of my wisdom teachers.

[35:32] Bobbi: Who was the first one that you mentioned? I didn’t catch her name.

[35:35] Angel: Oh, clarissa Pinkola Estes. Okay. Yeah.

[35:40] Bobbi: Maybe if it send me links on those, I’ll make sure to put those in the show notes. Because I think people will be we want these kind of resources.

[35:48] Angel: Right.

[35:48] Bobbi: The wisdom is there. We just have to come together and find it.

[35:52] Angel: Absolutely. And these are old teachings. This isn’t any influencer stuff. I’m talking about people whose body of work is informed by lots and lots of science.

[36:06] Bobbi: That’s right. So you were talking about using Kathy’s words, finding the still point and how we have to create that mental and emotional space because our lives are like runettic jam packed.

[36:27] Angel: Jam packed, yeah.

[36:29] Bobbi: So if you had one or two tips for someone to begin, how do they begin to create that sacred space?

[36:38] Angel: First tip if you had an appointment with your lawyer, and your lawyer says, listen here, you ran that red light, and if we don’t get this off your record, you’re going to get five points, and the fine is going to be $5,000. You would get out your phone and you would put this on your calendar in red. Right.

[37:04] Bobbi: You would not miss it.

[37:05] Angel: You would not miss it. You’d put it in your calendar. You’d put it on your phone. You’d tape it to your refrigerator. You’ve got to have that same mindset when it comes to your health and well being and what I call island time. This is an island that has to exist on your calendar and in your mind that you guard with your whole heart and your whole life. You guard it with your life. It can be an hour. It can be 2 hours. It can be the weekend. I know people who now have gotten so skilled some of my coaching clients have gotten so skilled with weekend detoxes. They know that at 07:00 P.m. On social media detoxes, 07:00 P.m. On Friday, that’s it. All of the electronics go off and they’re not back there until Monday morning. Right.

[38:01] Bobbi: Good for them.

[38:02] Angel: It’s that mental shift that you have to make. Cal Newport Talks writes about deep work. Adam Grant, I believe, is the one who writes about. Was it atomic habits? Is that his book, Atomic Habits? I think so.

[38:16] Bobbi: If I’m wrong, yeah, it’s James Clear who does it.

[38:19] Angel: Clear. Atomic Habits. Right. But it has to become a habit that’s right. To live on your calendar like nothing else lives on your calendar. And that is just really my number one tip and making it a revolving thing. You have this tool in your hand to repeat things week after week. All you have to do is enter it one time and put it on repeat and then know for yourself that up. I can’t schedule anything. Then I can’t run to this is my sacred space of time. It has to be an appointment. And I’ll tell you something. When people say, can we meet at such and such? I literally say, oh, no, I have an appointment at that time. Have an appointment with me.

[39:02] Bobbi: That’s right.

[39:03] Angel: That’s a valid appointment.

[39:06] Bobbi: We don’t have to defend that either.

[39:07] Angel: Exactly.

[39:08] Bobbi: Or explain it.

[39:10] Angel: Or explain it. No one needs to know. If you want to share it, that’s fine. But either way, it has to exist as if you are meeting your lawyer to make sure you don’t get that $5,000 fine. Because that’s the truth, right? Yeah. It’s about our own core values, what we see as important, fear of missing out. We’ve got to make that mindset shift.

[39:36] Bobbi: And if you think about it, it’s actually more important than meeting with the lawyer for the $5,000 fee. Because what we’re talking about is time that could affect the rest of our life and the quality of the rest of our life.

[39:49] Angel: Absolutely. Be surprised what wisdom you can awaken even in just 15 minutes blocks, even if you committed to, you know, something. Now, every Wednesday, I do not go to the cafeteria with anyone. I don’t do anything. I just every Wednesday, have a 1 hour lunch break. That is just for me. Another skill I’ve awakened for some folks is thought downloads. Have a slice of time on your day. That’s just taking out your journal and downloading everything. Just write it all out. A junk journal. Get that stuff out of your head. Your creative ideas, your appointments, the things that are driving you nuts, the things that ****** you off about your boss. Get all of that stuff out because it makes space for the things that are really important.

[40:43] Bobbi: I like how you called that, the junk journal.

[40:46] Angel: Yeah.

[40:47] Bobbi: Because I think we always think we have to journal about something important or grand.

[40:51] Angel: Yes, it has to be literary. Your journal is not for your New York Times bestselling. You don’t need to care about the punctuation, what pen you’re writing with. It doesn’t need to be instagram. And all of this other stuff. Your journal is for you.

[41:12] Bobbi: There are times oh, my God, angel. I’m laughing because this weekend I was going through some old stuff and I found a journal. I didn’t know when this was from, but I was reading a couple of entries and I’m like, wow, I was really ticked off. I don’t even know what it was.

[41:29] Angel: Right.

[41:29] Bobbi: But I think that’s probably good that I look back now and I’m like, wow, that was really upsetting and I have no recollection of it because it out.

[41:39] Angel: You see what I’m saying? No recollection. And you also can even laugh about it. You’re probably thinking, wow, I was really upset about that.

[41:49] Bobbi: I was really wound up about this and I don’t even know what it was who was involved. Yeah, that’s interesting. But I think it goes to that. It gets it out of your head so you can stop the rumination.

[42:04] Angel: Stop the rumination. Oh my God. And if I can just say this too. I recently enrolled in Heart Math, which is to become a certified practitioner and trainer. HeartMath, I’ll send you this link as well, is just all about understanding the stress response in the body, the pouring out of those chemicals that meet chemical messengers and how to really develop heart coherence to understand how to stop that process. So I’m excited about bringing all of that not only to my coaching but to the retreats to share that and to really put it in practice with retreatants to understand that and bring those skills back home into their day to day lives. I’m just so excited Bobbi goodness about this next stage of life. For me it’s just diving into everything that has kept me alive and also what I’m so deeply passionate about to teach and share with other women.

[43:08] Bobbi: Oh my goodness. Let me know when you’re ready with that heart. You’ll have to come back and share that with us here because I think that’s kind of fascinating.

[43:15] Angel: Okay, love to. Perfect.

[43:18] Bobbi: I knew that I’m like, we’re going to talk all day but I won’t do that. You are the listeners. So we’re almost out of time. I know that you’ve got a couple of offerings and I want to make sure you have time to talk about those because I’m super excited about these. I’ll probably be signing up. So go ahead.

[43:33] Angel: So on my website either@angelvshannon.com or Sibahealthgroup.com, you can access what I say is just the nine daily habits for hormone balance because again, hormone menopause and perimenopause. But it’s also about aging. These hormones get out of whack, these testosterones and thyroids and whatnot. And so I would love for your listeners to access that tool. It’s about healthy habits, daily habits and some of the more clinical things of what you should be discussing with your healthcare provider in the way of testing. So it includes some gut health, some hormone balance checking, nutritional deficiency guidance and how you can do that deep dive with your practitioner or with someone who’s skilled in functional medicine, functional nutrition, things like this. So that is@sivahealthgroup.com start here for people who are ready to change their lives, not just their symptoms. And really for helping you just to get a hold on your mind, mood and metabolism naturally is where I like to pin that. The other thing spins back also to what you mentioned in Oasis time and having some island time to just get clear about what we want. I also have Retreat, a seven day Journey to renew, refresh and reinvent your life. That’s sort of a mini course in understanding how to establish this retreat time in your life consistently. So how to design your own little retreat, whether it be every day or every week, the mini course is designed for weekly mini retreat right in the privacy and convenience of your own home. And though I’m a big believer in destination retreats and going away, you can’t always do that. And even when you go away, you still got to come back. Wherever you go, there you are, right? So wherever you are, you have to learn how to bring these skills into your everyday life. So on my website, Sivahealthgroup.com and Angelvshannon.com, you can access that little mini course for yourself. Both of these offerings totally free. And if these are skills that you’d love to keep developing after that in the company of other women who are in the same stage in life, you’re welcome to join the Siva Circle, where women come together to learn these tools to start designing the life they desire and the life that they deserve.

[46:13] Bobbi: I love that. And I think, angel, what I love maybe even more than anything that you’ve said is just the energy that you project into the world and your excitement at this stage of life, right? And how it’s full of potential. So I love that.

[46:30] Angel: Thank you. Thank you so much. That means so very much to me, Bobbi. It really does. I don’t just say that we live in a world that is just jampacked with so many people talking and sometimes we clinicians sort of feel like no one’s listening. We’re not influencers, we don’t have 50 million people following us. And so this is just such an honor and thank you so much for that compliment because I really do work hard at living the life that I’m talking about and advising and whatnot practicing what I preach and only preaching what I actually practice.

[47:07] Bobbi: That’s the trick right there, the second half, right? But no, I sincerely mean that. It comes through when we talked before. It comes through in your pictures and completely in your presence. So you’re really embodying it. So thank you for that. I’m sure that you could feel angels presence and passion in that conversation. Here are just some of my favorite takeaways. Number one. It is time to set aside the shoulds that drive us. It’s like we got caught up in the quicksand of those when we were younger and it can take a while to really rid ourselves of them. But now is the time to do that. Let’s not sacrifice any more of our life living out our shoulds. Number two, we need to make time for ourselves a priority. And there’s no better way to do this than to put it on the calendar in red. I love how angel talked about it. Like, treat it like it was in a meeting with an attorney because you got some kind of ticket or something working against you, but make it a priority. And by the way, both angel and I talked about Kathy Robinson, who is our mutual friend and fellow podcaster. And one of the things that I learned from Kathy is to put exploration dates on the calendar. Now, what’s an exploration date? These can range from a date with ourselves to explore a new class, a new sport, a new hobby, or simply to read a book in the park or journal at a cafe. Time with ourselves is sacred time, and we need to start treating it as such. Number three, I loved how angel talked about using a journal as your junk drawer or your junk journal. It’s a fabulous way to get the junk out of your head so that you can clear some space. Number four I also loved Angel’s enthusiasm and energy that the second stage of our lives has the potential to be the best stage of our life. I believe that to be true. And so much of it depends on how we think about it and how we live into it. Are we approaching it from what are we losing or what are we gaining? Are we framing it as a good thing or as a bad thing? And that’s important because whichever we choose to frame it as is what we will get more of. So that wraps up today’s episode. Thanks again for tuning in. I hope that this conversation was helpful and that it helps you move forward with both peace and excitement. Have a fabulous week and be well.