Being Aligned with Yourself

Episode 932: Being Aligned with Yourself, with Cate Stillman

Being aligned with yourself means to work everything in harmony. Listen to Cate Stillman about the importance of being aligned with yourself.

Cate Stillman founded Yogahealer.com in 2001, a $1M+ revenue a year business. Cate is a leader and author in the field of Ayurveda, Peak Performance, and Habits (titles: Body Thrive; Master of You), podcaster with 2M downloads, and global community builder. She runs Yogahealer with her remote team (10 contractors + 40 work studies) so she can ski, surf and run rivers with her family in the Tetons and Mexico. 

Her mission is to help you in being aligned with yourself and restore the balance within you. So make sure to listen to this podcast and undergo this transformation with Cate’s help!

What you will learn from this episode about being aligned with yourself:

• How Cate found her purpose and recognized the problems caused by our materialism and consumerism, and how she came to study Ayurveda medicine and yoga
• Why being aligned with yourself will contribute to your own success, and why bringing these components into balance is critically important
• Why the western version of yoga is an incomplete version that is missing basic connections and important habits that strengthen your mind, body, and spirit
• Why when you eat your meals is as important as what you eat, and why eating your biggest meal late in the day can impact your mental capabilities
• Why holistic medicine teaches that you don’t necessarily feel worse and slow down as you get older
• Why there are visible signs that a person is out of balance, and how you can learn to identify the cause of these symptoms
• Why it is important to reflect on your performance over the course of your day and note whether you were energized and present throughout the day
• Why a major focus in Ayurveda is on digestion, not just physical digestion but also mental and emotional digestion
• What questions to ask yourself to determine where you want to make progress, to determine what areas of your life need more attention, and how to start on being aligned with yourself
• What key takeaways Cate hopes readers will receive from her new book, Master of You: A Five-Point System to Synchronize Your Body, Your Home, and Your Time with Your Ambition

Resources:

• Master of You by Cate Stillman: https://amzn.to/2XjLPep
• Ayurveda for Peak Performance + Deep Rejuvenation free workshop: https://yogahealer.com/peak-performance/
• Free Body Goals session: https://yogahealer.com/body-goals
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/cate-stillman/
• Start being aligned with yourself by doing your annual strategic planning

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
• Learn how cultivating relationships can help you in being aligned with yourself

 

 

Being Aligned with Yourself: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success and start being aligned with yourself from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host Onward Nation, where I interview today’s top business owners so we can learn their recipe for success, how they built and how they scaled their business. In fact, my team at Predictive ROI, I know that I’ve been talking about this now for the last several months. We continue to pour ourselves into our resource library on PredictiveROI.com by adding more ebooks, more checklists, more guides, more resources, all for free to help you build in scale.

 

We compile all of these insights from our brilliant guests, and then put them in the form of downloadable assets so that you can go to PredictiveROI.com/Resources and request whatever you like. And we will send it right to your inbox, all for free.

 

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Being Aligned with Yourself: Cate Stillman’s Introduction

 

Before we welcome today’s very special guests, Cate Stillman, let let me let me give you some additional context Onward Nation as to why, when Cate said yes, why I was over the moon excited that we’re going to have this opportunity to have this conversation, and this is going to be a little bit different than anything we’ve talked about before.

 

We’re going to focus on mind, body, spirit, or I should say, Cate is going to focus on mind, body spirit. Why? Because in our conversations, you know, we’re always driving for that next recipe, that next ingredient, that next strategy, the thing that is going to help us build and scale our business. Cate is going to give us some really interesting and very unique perspective on that.

 

And because sometimes when we get to that next level, is it as fulfilling as we anticipated? Is there some brokenness inside? Do we feel unfulfilled? What were the tradeoffs that we had to make in order to get to that next level? Those are the things we’re going to talk about. How to best be in alignment as we’re pursuing whatever that next level is.

 

I think that Cate’s perspective and her personal story is going to really be helpful as you think about how you’re going to move on to that next level and what your plans are going to be. So Cate is also the founder of yoga healer.com. She’s also the author of the book Body Thrive. She’s also the host of the incredible podcast Yoga Healer.

 

So with that said, welcome to Onward Nation, Cate. 

 

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Being Aligned with Yourself: Jody’s Path and Journey Towards Her Career

 

Woo hoo! Glad to be here Stephen. Woo! I’m glad to have you here. I think this is just going to be a great, great conversation. As I was just mentioning to Onward and in so many different directions, in so many different ways. Before we dive into that though, I just gave a little snippet of some of the things that you’re involved in professionally, and that’s only a portion of the story.

 

And you’ve been podcasting for so long. Like you were podcasting way before people thought, gosh, I should have a podcast because of that. Right. So like, you were one of the early adopters or one of the trendsetters. So such a cool story. So take us behind the curtain and tell us more about you. Tell us more about your path, your journey.

 

And then we’ll dive in on being aligned with yourself. Yeah, sure. So as a teenager, I was working for the Student Conservation Association out west on a trail crew and really living in the wilderness off the grid and, and my, my leaders there were really awake to planetary consciousness and to environmental consciousness. And that transferred onto me. And when I went back home, from the West to the East, I just was really enveloped by modern materialism and consumer culture.

 

And I could finally see it for what it was. And some of the emptiness, of that sense of the supersize me, movement, if you will. And so it really woke me up to there’s a purpose to there’s a purpose to my life. And I want to make a difference. I want to be part of the solution here, not part of the problem.

 

And so I went into international environmental politics and policy. I ended up studying global warming politics. I ended up studying in China, and really starting to understand what’s behind, you know, their, their pollution, economy, etc., and, and working with developing countries that were essentially growing, you know, according to outdated modes, of, of what we modeled here in the US that, you know, with quick growth, with massive pollution.

 

And what happened is I was working in Washington, DC then as a young adult, for the International Institute for Energy Conservation. And we had a very strong global warming awareness program working with, with countries all over the world, especially those that were the quick growth countries. And I got to a point where I realized they just didn’t want to, I didn’t want to be in brown issues, like I didn’t want to.

 

I didn’t want to work in a reactive way. I wanted to see how we could help humans change, like just fundamentally, like the same awakening I went through as a teenager. Like what? How could we wake more people up to the connection to themselves, connection to the ecosystem, and how and how the economy just can be completely reframed in a way that’s not just sustainable, but really aiming towards all levels of prosperity.

 

In the ecosystem, in our bodies, with each other. And that’s what I devoted my life to as a young adult. And it led me into Ayurveda medicine. Ayurveda is the healing. It’s the healing art and science of India that ColorOS with yoga. Yoga is the path of enlightenment. Or how do you live the most awake?

 

The life of really pure potentiality. And when you marry those two things, you basically get on one hand like health and thrive to sustain. So, your side to sustain a life of, of awakened potentiality, which is the yoga side and that’s what led me to start YogaHealer.com. 

 

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Being Aligned with Yourself: Growth is Success

 

Wow. okay, so take us in, take us into that piece though, because growth is success.

 

Like the metrics that lots of people would look to and and and whatnot of pointing to success. You have those. But I think your, your, your definition of success goes much deeper than that. It’s much more personal. It really does connect to the mind, body spirit. So, tell us about the platform and the audience and so forth.

 

But then also tell us a little bit more about how you truly define success. Yeah I mean it gets really quite fascinating. Right. So in any holistic system, you’re dealing with whole ones, you’re dealing with the whole. So every individual is a whole on, we’re all whole and complete on to ourselves.

 

So if we leave part of ourselves behind, the whole isn’t as complete, the whole is not as great as it could be, and it can’t connect with others. Hold on. So if we look at it that way, you know, even the way that my awareness was trained first in international relations and international policy to understand, you know, the world and history and planet and policy, and then really deep into individuals in terms of the body in consciousness.

 

And how does spirit become matter and how does disease start within the body? Like, what are the conditions necessary for disease to start and, and how in a holistic system, there’s an awareness that energy moves from subtle to gross. So the way that disease starts is always there’s a subtler input to a gross outcome, you know, whether that diagnosis is depression or an autoimmune issue or cancer or heart disease.

 

Right. There’s always a ton of little subtle inputs along the way before you end up with a gross diagnosis like that. And so if we look at it, you know, success has to be on all it has to happen on all fronts holistically. Right? You can’t separate, you know, mind, body, spirit, you know, relationships, bank account or abundance.

 

You can’t separate those things and have holistic success. Right? That’s all part of the whole. Just like if the lungs aren’t working, but the heart is working, it’s not going to tell off in the body, like there’s different organs that are essential for the organism. And so my thinking was very much both of the worlds and international relations in my training there and then.

 

It was of the, you know, of the body, mind, spirit. and when these things got married and yoga healed through me, I really brought, you know, both to the table like his business, this platform, etc. has to be holistic in nature, in order to be successful. And, you know, for that reason, it’s called the Yoga healer real life show.

 

We talk about all different aspects of what’s going on in life. Because if we’re missing a chunk, the whole thing doesn’t work as well. So did you realize that, like, that sounds, you know, very enlightened. Did you realize that early on in the process and built it intentionally that way, or is that a discovery that you learned over time?

 

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Being Aligned with Yourself: Habits Are the Keystone to Success

 

Well, I think, you know, it’s like a part of growing up. So I’m 46 now, and I started Yoga Healer in 2001. And the reason I, I really started yoga healer, I was living in San Francisco at the time, which was the epicenter of yoga in the West. And, I just saw because I was going back and forth between our Ayurveda school and yogic school, I was like, wow, there’s a lot that was broken apart early on where yoga was separated from.

 

Ayurveda, from the healing science, was separated from yoga. But if you will, like people were doing yoga for reasons that people had never really done yoga in the past. Right away, as it came to the West, became very, very superficial. and we were trying to navigate that with, you know, with those of us who are in, Ayurveda, which again, two different sides of the same coin, like it had just never been it had never been separate before.

 

So what I saw early on was that there was a disconnect in people’s habits. So yogis have always had certain habits. And these are the habits I codify. And Bodhi thrived. And that book, Uplevel Your Body and Your Life. And for anyone listening, the reason habits are the keystone to your success, including, you know, including your bank account, including your team success, including, you hitting your annual operating priorities is because you have to have the foundation on being aligned with yourself, right?

 

You have to have the foundation that’s going to enable your body to thrive. But when yoga came to the West, we just took what we wanted and we left the rest. And a lot of what we left was the habits. A lot of what we left was like this intrinsic part of the system and the whole. And that was my first awakening to like, oh, we’ve got to rewrite.

 

We’ve got to rewrite the curriculum for Westerners and just like for entrepreneurs, if we if we don’t understand the intricate connection between our daily body habits and how we’re showing up at our team meetings, if we don’t understand that connection, and we’re not looking at setting metrics for our body habits so that we can have a more highly operating team, we are so missing these very, very basic connections.

 

Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, like the ancient Greeks, which is just something near and dear to me just because of my Greek heritage. But the ancient Greeks believed in such a strong mind, body and spirit connection that when you strengthen the body, that you took care of the mind and spirit to that they were as one and to your point before that, looking at a very holistically and and so how can you go like, like just in a very sort of tactical way, how can you go into meeting, you know, where your diet consists of, you know, high caffeine, high sugar, high junk and all of that, and doing that for potentially decades and expect to be operating at your highest level, right? Yeah. Exactly, exactly. And so in I mean, in Ayurveda, we take it, we increasingly go to greater degrees of subtlety, right? To experience greater levels of expansion. And again, whether you’re trying to expand your business, whether you’re trying to expand your, you know, your portfolio, whether you’re trying to expand your team, right.

 

It’s all the same. We’re just following universal rules, universal laws here. So when we look at it’s not just the inputs. The inputs are important, but what’s actually even more important than the inputs. And you’re talking about dietary inputs, is the rhythm. And this is where we’re up against a battle as Westerners. And now the global culture has turned Western in many of the habits, where we’re following.

 

Doesn’t matter if you’re in, you know, India or China or Brazil. We’re falling. We’re falling into more and more westernized habits and less and less the habits of our indigenous cultures. So if we just look, you know, if we just even look at the United States, 100 years ago, which is not very, you know, it’s not that long ago, 100 years ago.

 

Right? If you just take the perspective of how the human body evolved over time, a hundred years is nothing. It’s like not even a, you know, it’s not even a millisecond in an annual year of time in the last hundred years, we went from having our main meal in the middle of the day. That was called dinner and having a smaller meal at the end of the day, which was called supper, which I looked into the etymology of, and that was linked to both soup and it’s linked to supplemental.

 

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Being Aligned with Yourself: Our Lack of Ability to Focus

 

So there’s this end of the day meal that’s not supposed to be the main deal. And so I just want everyone to listen to ask themselves like when? Because I know most of you who are listening like you’re probably eating fairly healthy, but I just want you to ask, when is the majority of calories coming into your body?

 

And is it at a time before bed? Because if it’s going to affect, it’s actually going to affect your energy the next day. Because what’s happening is you’re using digestive energy at night and at night. The energy’s actually supposed to clean the house and you can’t both be like cooking and cleaning the house at the same time.

 

Right? It’s actually kind of gross to cook and clean the house at the same time. Anyone who’s ever done that, like, you know, they’re two totally different things going on. And so it creates confusion in the body. And whenever you have confusion in the body, it creates a residue. Right. So you have now partially digested food that creates a residue.

 

That residue then in the mind shows up as confusion. Yeah. And this is where we see, you know, some of the stuff that my friend Brian Solis covers in his new book, Life Scale, his new company Life Scale, he talks a lot. And he’s a very, very successful entrepreneur and a digital anthropologist.

 

And he talks so much about how this, you know, our lack of ability to focus. And he’s not the only one. It seems like everyone I talked to today, and it doesn’t matter if they’re coming from an entrepreneur background, a health background, or a mental health background. I mean, it doesn’t matter really where they’re coming from. Everyone’s talking about, like, you know, how our use of technology is affecting our ability to think, our ability to focus.

 

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Being Aligned with Yourself: Inhalation is Linked to Inspiration

 

So if you couple that with these habits that create this residue, which creates confusion on the physiological level, you get, you know, a much, much slower effect to getting things done. Okay, that is awesome. As I’m thinking that through, it’s almost like a compounding effect. Like as that going back to your point before where you said a few minutes ago, habits are the keystones to your success, that if one of my habits is eating a large meal before bed and all of the residue and so forth that you described that, that just starts to compound over time and it just gets worse and worse and worse.

 

And so then my ability to to stay focused, stay productive and so forth is really self compromised, right? Yeah. And not only to stay, but we’re meant to evolve okay. So what do you mean by that? Yeah. So again I’m coming from a and anyone who’s you know if we really tapped into well let’s just do this.

 

We’ll tap into the breath of being aligned with yourself right now. So everyone just take a deep breath no matter where you are, if you’re driving or walking or sitting. And then I want you to ask yourself, when you feel the breath and you feel a deeper, slower breath, is it life positive? Does it go positive, neutral or negative? What’s your experience? It seems positive to me.

 

Yeah it’s positive right. So the inhalation is linked to inspiration okay. Like you’re literally inspiring when you exhale. You’re inspiring the breath okay. So just the life force that’s in the breath itself is life positive and positive? It goes somewhere. It’s like when it’s not neutral. Not neutral. It’d be like we’re going to keep things as they are.

 

Life positive is actually going somewhere okay. There’s inspiration, which means there’s a bigger future. There’s hope. And so the way that we are designed, if you look at, again, a holistic, a holistic wellness system or a holistic thrive system of which yoga and or Ayurveda are one, there’s many, in yoga now you’re vadas one there is a deep, deep understanding of is that as you age, you are designed to evolve.

 

And what this means if we understand that coupled with what I mentioned earlier, which is that energy moves from subtle to gross, our awareness is designed to get more and more subtle, which means we understand more interconnected relationships as we age. but the problem is, our lifestyle is so out of sync it’s creating confusion. Everyone’s eating a later, heavier dinner.

 

Everyone’s then either checking their email one last time or their slack or their whatever the heck you’re using Facebook, you know, and then they’re staying a little too late, right? So we’ve had a heated later dinner, and now we’re staying up too late. And the body’s meant to rejuvenate. And in the post sunset hours, it’s meant to go into rejuvenation mode, not digestion mode. Rejuvenation mode. 

 

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Being Aligned with Yourself: Energy Moves in Different Ways

 

So then we wake up the next morning and we have a backlog of yesterday because we ate too late, we stayed up too late, and our mind was way too active before bed. We don’t sleep as well. Then we wake up and we’re already behind. We feel it. We feel like we’re already behind on our to-do list, on our smarts, on whatever it is.

 

Right? We’re trying to move forward. But not just that. Like our body feels a little bit behind, it feels a little lethargic. It feels a little tired often, unless you have the experience. If you wake up very early and you literally spring out of bed because you’re inspired for the day, that means that there’s a comma in it.

 

It’s regardless of age. So we have an assumption in Western culture that you’re supposed to feel worse as you get older. You’re supposed to break down as you get older. And that assumption is not it’s not, I just it’s important to understand that it’s not intercultural. What do you mean? Well, again, like in systems like Veda and systems like traditional Chinese medicine and holistic, in holistic wellness systems, that assumption isn’t there.

 

There’s an assumption that you should live to 100 feeling pretty good if you’re living in sync. But again, energy moves from subtle to gross. So you’re not allowed. You’re not allowed, you’re not. Basically, nature says you’re going to get more energy out of every calorie as you get older. So you’re not, you don’t need to eat as much.

 

And when I look at so many people, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, if we look at Ayurveda, wisdom, it’s based on the elements. A lot of people who are naturally entrepreneurial have to be very high in fire element, which they have a lot of drive. They have a London mission. They have a lot of focus.

 

We tend to burn people up. Get it? We’re so hot, you know, with an idea. We’re just going to plow forward and make things happen. And the way this shows up and digestion is like having a very strong digestive fire. So as young adults and middle aged adults, we can actually process a lot.

 

We can eat a lot. But then as we get older, if we don’t stop eating a lot and even drinking a lot, what happens is we develop that residue and then things start to fall apart. This is fascinating because when I think about being at my best every day and, you know, waking up early, which I love to do, I also go to bed pretty early too.

 

But and so when my feet hit the floor in the morning, I’m stoked. I am ready for the day. But it doesn’t always happen. And so when you were kind of describing that, I’m thinking, yeah, there are some days where I wake up and I feel really sluggish and really, you know, just not ready to jump in.

 

And so I’m like thinking internally as I’m kind of hearing you say that walking us through it that, am I carrying that residue from the day before where there was something I ate or or whatever? That’s why I’m not ready. But if I get myself ready and really take care of myself the way that you’re describing, that’s going to up my game as a business owner, right?

 

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Being Aligned with Yourself: Physical Residue is Mental Residue

 

Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing to understand is that everything we do as leaders was modeling, whether it’s conscious or unconscious, whether we think we’re, you know, getting away with it or whether we know we’re not getting away with it. So if we are living in a way that is not conducive to our bodies to thrive, we are modeling that for our team.

 

And so, you know, that really adds up over time. Where and you see this all the time, like, you can go into a workplace, I can go into a workplace and just tell what the habits of the people are without even asking. And okay, so hang on a second. That sounds like a really interesting diagnostic.

 

So I know granted, I know you have decades of experience in all of that, but like, what are some of the key things that you see right away that would give you that sort of not intuition, but what shows you that. Yeah. I mean, are people learning number one? Are they lean? Are they able to digest what they’re putting into their bodies?

 

So if there’s not a lean musculature, it means they’re carrying residue in their body. And again physical residue is mental residue. It’s confusing. Right. And so then I am okay so there’s leanness. Then there’s like saying someone has bags under their eyes. That’s a sign of elimination. Number three and body thrive.

 

And in my first book on the ten Habits to Uplevel, your body in your life is eliminated. So if you don’t have complete elimination before you go to work, you’re literally carrying yesterday’s waste into today. So again, you know, it happens now and then. But if someone is dark, if they have darkness under their eyes, that’s a sign of incomplete elimination.

 

So just to just those two things, you can also if you’re trained in, you know, anyone here who’s listening, who’s gone to yoga class, you’ve heard about, you know, you can move your energy in different directions, you can move it directionally up and you can move it directionally down. Okay. So what we want is we want someone who’s both grounded where their energy is first going down so that they’re rooted.

 

They know their purpose, they’re confident. They know you know what they’re supposed to do. They know their worth. Right. And then secondarily, energy moves up, meaning they’re inspired, they’re open minded, and they’re ready for action. So if you go into and if you go into, you know, an office or I have a virtual company, so we all just meet online, you guys are visual too, right?

 

We are. Yep. Yeah. So you can just tell if you’re using video conferencing. those who have even more subtle level awareness training, you can tell in the voice so you can hear it, which way the energy’s going in another person. That’s a much more subtle lower level of training.

 

I would say trust intuition on this and just notice, like, are people both rooted and inspired. And that just shows you right away whether or not people have habits that again one decreases energy. Things like elimination and sleep decrease energy and things that actually uplift energy, such as having a quiet time each day for meditation or or sitting in silence where they have an open mind, where they’re not ahead of the meeting or they’re not distracted by other things with their present.

 

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Being Aligned with Yourself: Yoga is a Presence of Being

 

This is so good because, you know, it’s such a tendency, either as a business owner or members of our teams, that everybody packs so much into their day, back to back meetings. And, you know, whether they’re 60 minutes, 30 minutes, 90 minutes, whatever, but back to back to back to back to back. And there’s now it seems like some days there’s never any time to catch your breath.

 

Like you, I walked us through that exercise before. Where it just all gets compressed. And so then, we’re exhausted at the end of the day. And, you know, maybe we showed up the way that we should have showed up for some of those meetings. But maybe we didn’t either because we just had to run from one to the other, and never really had the time to think about through the day.

 

Right? Yeah. Well, and it’s proven it’s very well, it’s very well proven. I mean, again, we have empirical proof from 5000 years of yoga in Ayurveda. But then we actually have good scientific data, medical scientific data. Now that really shows that peak performance demands. It demands quiet reflection. And so you’re never going to have.

 

So you might be it’s all more or less you might be packing more in, but you’re going to get less for it. But not only that, but your quality at the end of the day, when you look back and see, did I have the kind of quality of the day that I wanted to experience? So what we’ve done in the West, right, we’ve seen especially a lot of people listening right.

 

You often like to go to yoga class, but it’s compartmentalized. Yoga was never meant to be compartmentalized. It’s a presence of being. And that facilitates a life of potentiality. So if we’re packing things in at the end of the day, like how do you feel about the quality? Did you feel the present? Did you feel like you actually were able to maximize reflective experience?

 

Right. So all of our past experiences have given us a relationship between cause and effect in order to direct outcomes, like did you maximize your ability to actually take right action instead of just taking a lot of action? No, I think that most business owners that are listening to you right now would probably say I packed so much in because my my goals are high or the bar is high, or I’m trying to drive my team or whatever, and at the end of the day I feel empty, I feel exhausted, I feel like I don’t I’m not exactly sure what I accomplished.

 

And so when hearing you say that and then a few minutes ago, you said peak performance demands quiet reflection. I thought, okay, that’s that that’s profound in my opinion, that’s profound. And so, I need to ask, what does that mean? Like what would be her recipe? What would be her recommendation for quiet reflection? Like, what does that look like on a day to day basis.

 

Yeah. If you know, it’s interesting. It looks pretty spacious on a calendar and, you know, so if you look at it there when you look at your calendar this week and I invite everyone listening right now, if you can actually open your calendar and just see, like is there time? Is there time between activities for reflection and for digestion?

 

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Being Aligned with Yourself: There’s Never a Quiet Time

 

Now one of the key components that I picked up from is Ayurveda, from Ayurveda medicine, this holistic healing science from India. And I was a practitioner in that for a decade. So just doing, you know, wellness consultations with people is digestion. So digestion isn’t just mental. And it’s not just physical, it’s mental. It’s also emotional.

 

It’s also relational. And so if we’re just taking action and we’re not digesting, it’s the equivalent of eating six small meals a day, which now we know leads to confusion. It leads to a less stable state, which is why intermittent fasting and keto are all the rage now. Ayurveda has been doing that for thousands of years because of the understanding that if you don’t digest what you’re taking in, you will create waste from that.

 

You will create confusion from that, and that eventually will destroy you. Whether it destroys your immune system, whether it creates inflammation, or whether it just creates mental and emotional issues like anxiety and depression. So this emphasis on digestion, one of the things about it is it takes time and it demands respect. And so if you override that and you just keep putting more and more stuff in your head, and you don’t take time to listen to how your own mind body awareness is processing it, or how your own spirit is processing it, you will generate inefficient action in an eviction action that always leads to waste.

 

So that’s interesting because when I think about that from like, you know, what is so typical for a business owner to do is to save, to work the budget, to do whatever to pay for this, you know, workshop and the travel and all of that they’re going to go to a conference, they’re going to go to a something that is maybe key in their industry, and they think it’s going to give them maybe a leg up on the competition, and then they go and then maybe they take several members of their team and they go for two days.

 

They pack the schedule and all of that, and then they get a late night flight out on the evening of the second day, to be back to the office. So they minimize the time that they’re out. And then there was never that time you’re describing right now for the reflection, the digestion, the quiet moment to be able to take in.

 

What did I actually learn over the last two days? And then how am I going to operationalize that? There’s never that quiet time. Then they’re back into their grind again. And then it’s like, well, what was the point of going yeah, exactly. I mean, I learned and I’m so thankful that I invested and good, you know, CEO type training to understand the value of just reflective planning.

 

Right. So doing your annual operating plan, doing your quarterly is or we do trimester and really taking the time of the team. Right. So just saying like we are going to, we are going to pause and we’re going to reflect on what we said we were going to do, what we got done, how we feel about it, how we would, you know, rather do it next time.

 

Like, is it too much? What I’m constantly doing with my team is less. Less is more. So let’s look at all the things that we say, you know, we need to do in the next trimester and let’s see, like, can we cut it in half and get close to the same objective? Yeah. I love and have a better time together and have the quality of life that we want together.

 

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Being Aligned with Yourself: Getting Nourishment, The Right Way

 

And that’s so Onward. When Cate and I had a chance to have our first conversation, months and months ago, when our mutual friend Zachary Beech made the introduction, which was awesome, Zach did that. So, Zach, if you’re listening, thank you very much, my friend. But that was one of the things that really stuck out or stood out to me, Cate, was that okay?

 

As a business owner, I want to build, I want to scale, I want to do all of these things. But at the same point, if I have to once I accomplish that quote unquote next level, whatever that next level is for me, am I going to feel empty? Am I going to feel the trade offs were worth whatever the level cost me?

 

Or can I completely change my perspective and still, you know, be the best business owner that I can possibly be and still not have to make those trade offs and still be happier as a result. And I think what I’m learning from you is, yeah, you can if you’re intentional about it. Yeah, exactly. It’s Ayurveda sutra and it basically goes to the degree of where you place your focus.

 

Right. That’s what you can experience. So if we’re really aware of that and we see, you know, we’re you know, I just want to ask everyone listening to these categories like where do you want to make progress. And is it in the category of energy where you’re tapped into energy, where you’re not needing external inputs, for energy, but your nourishment is great and you have good energy.

 

Is it sleep? Is it the quality of sleep? Is it the amount of time you want to sleep? Is it the depths of sleep? Is it uninterrupted sleep? Is it fitness, right, that you’re you’re fit, you’re getting leaner and stronger? Is it nourishment? And nourishment has so many levels to it. So there’s obviously the nourishment that comes from food.

 

But there’s also this: your environment nourishing is your day to day schedule nourishing. And if you’re like, I don’t know, I want nourishment. I like nourishment to do right.

 

And so when we just look at some of these, these really basic categories, of energy and sleep and fitness and, and nourishment, we can often just get a very intuitive hit of that. That’s got to get better. And, you know, you guys, I work with very successful people with very broken down immune systems.

 

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Being Aligned with Yourself: Improving Mental Focus for Peak Performance

 

So I have seen this, you know, in the last, well, I guess it’s close to 20 years. Oh my gosh, where does that go, Stephen? You know, I’ve just seen people that are so successful in certain aspects of their life. But again, we back up to like is holistic, organic successful?

 

Right. And if some part is missing, the whole thing breaks down, which is so fascinating. It’s like we rise together. We fall together. That is in your body, that is in your mind, in spirit. So, for instance, if you have had this little lingering thought in the back of your mind that your business isn’t what you like, it’s not producing the kind of products and services that are good for humanity and good for the planet.

 

And you’re not listening to that. That will kill you. It will kill your business. It’ll just start to slowly disrupt things. In the same way, if you’ve had this lingering, you know, deeper intuitive wisdom saying, I need to get more sleep. And you’re not getting more sleep that will kill you.

 

That will break down your immune system over time. It’s always sad to me when this happens because, you know, people like us, people listening to this show, we’ve got a lot to do. Yes, in our lifetime. And it’s important that that fire is really well backed by water and earth, that we’re taking the time to tap into the slower elements that ground us, that help us reflect.

 

When you look in a pool, if you look in a pool of water, you see your reflection. That helps actually tap in to slow, low and calm. And in that are much, much deeper insights will arise. And this is really well proven. We were talking before about mental focus and peak performance and choice making. And there’s great research that shows that if you meditate if you do and it doesn’t even it doesn’t even have to be this, you know, a huge quantity of time really just starts with a few minutes of just pausing and sitting in silence.

 

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Being Aligned with Yourself: Using The Five Point System to Synchronize Your Body

 

So even if you think I don’t know how to meditate, don’t worry about it. Just sit in silence. Just give your mind a chance to unravel and don’t pay attention to it. Just let it unravel and you will start being aligned with yourself. What happens is, you actually get much more networked thoughts, so your level of thinking is much more intelligent than if you just keep things going.

 

So if you have that sense inside of, you know, that intuitive wisdom saying like, I need just more time to chill out and you don’t pay attention to that. You’re undermining all the other awesome stuff that you’re doing and all the other great growth metrics that you have. It’s fascinating because through this conversation, you’ve really illustrated how unintentionally and perhaps maybe some people intentionally but unintentionally, we can sacrifice or compromise our own ability to be successful or to build the business and life that we want to live.

 

Just because we’re not being intentional about what it is that we want. And so a few minutes ago, you were kind enough to give us a few nuggets out of body prosperity. I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you the same about your new book that is being released next week. So give us I know that we’re quickly running out of time here, but give us a couple of what you feel are the biggest takeaways from your new book, Master of You.

 

Yeah. So in Master of You, I took the five elements from really any indigenous culture. And I use the Ayurveda and yogic system of space, air, fire, water and earth. I treat these as super powers. So these elements have been part of human consciousness since the beginning of time.

 

That’s why if you look back in any culture, over time, you hear people talking about fire and earth and water a lot more than we do now. And I bring these back in and I align them. So it’s a five point system to synchronize your body, your home and your time with your ambitions. So what I found has happened so much is we often have these dreams and these ambitions and yet we’ll sacrifice a certain part of our life.

 

Will you sacrifice our body? We’ll sacrifice our home environment, including our relationships. We’ll sacrifice our time. Right. So our schedule isn’t exactly how we want it to be. And we’ll do this all for the sake of our ambition. And so ultimately, what happens is these deeper issues of integrity where we’re not as integrated. and so what master of you really is like, how do you look at Earth as a body?

 

This is your earth body or bio rhythms. Your home is actually your space environment. Your time is your air element or how you’re moving through the winds of time. Your ambition is a fire element and your flow, which actually shows up as your integrity is a water element. And so I reincorporate for modern humans that have ambitions, how to tap into these elemental powers in a way that aligns all aspects of your life.

 

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Being Aligned with Yourself: How to Connect with Cate

 

Great conversation about being aligned with yourself. And thanks very much for sharing that, Cate. I know we covered a lot. but before we went, we slayed it. Stephen I got to give us a high five. I’m like, wow. We went all we went all over the place and I hope everyone listening is a little bit more tapped into. You know what you want to do today?

 

Like how do you want to do today? Because how you do today will really determine how you do tomorrow. Well, so as we say goodbye, do you think we missed anything? Is there anything else that you want to cover? You know? Absolutely not. I mean, in the spirit of this, I’d say let’s just take a breath and let it all go and see what percolates to the top. 

 

Okay. best way for Onward Nation to connect with you. Okay. Yeah. Yoga Healer. YogaHealer.com. We also have. And you’ll see there we have a lot of cool stuff for free there. We offer body goal sessions and this is something we take really seriously. and it’s yoga healer.com/body-goals if we want to help you get a vision for your body and your life so that if there’s some really basic key habits that we can point out to you that are going to be your easiest wins, that we do. That we’re very service oriented at Yoga Healer.

 

So if you’d like to take us up on one of those complimentary sessions, just go to yoga healer.com/body-goals. Okay. Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and re-listen to Cate’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do. The key is you have to take what you learned from her, take her generosity and apply it.

 

Learn from that, take action and put it into practice in your business and in your life. And Cate, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. And I am grateful, my friend, that you said yes, you came on to the show to be our guide, our mentor, to help us move our businesses onward to that next level in the very right way.

 

Thank you so much, Cate. Oh my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me and everyone listening. Thank you for your attention. This episode is complete, so head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

Read the annual strategic planning guide to start being aligned with yourself