Id love to see a worldwide shift to providing access to fruits and vegetables for absolutely everyone. I know that there are many people who would love to eat a healthier diet and the foods they need are out of reach. No one who is barely getting by is going to spend $5 on a salad when theres a $1 burger at the local fast food place, so I want to support those who dont have the resources to get what they need to support their health.
As a part of my series about 5 Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Dramatically Improve Ones Wellbeing, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kate Swoboda. Kate is creator of YourCourageousLife.com, Director of the Courageous Living Coach Certification at TeamCLCC.com and author ofThe Courage Habit: How to Accept Your Fears, Release the Past, and Live Your Courageous Life. She helps individuals, teams, and companies see where old, fear-based habits have kept people stuck or started to limit whats possible for an organization, and then start creating more courageous lives by getting into the courage habit, a four-part process for behavioral and organizational change. Kate has appeared in MindBodyGreen, Entrepreneur, USA Today, Forbes, Lifetime Moms, The Intelligent Optimist, Business Insider, and more, and her website Your Courageous Life was named a top-50 blog for happiness by Greatist. Shes spoken at conferences and seminars on the topic of courage as it relates to personal development, releasing overwhelm, business and marketing, money mindset, wellness, increasing emotional resilience, and healthy goal-setting using habit-formation techniques.
Thank you so much for doing this with us Kate! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you share with us the story about how you first got involved in fitness and wellness?
Ihad always taken reasonable care of my health and had been a runner, but in 2012, I was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease and thats when I got really serious about looking at my health and how to improve it. I overhauled my diet and began training for triathlons. After a few years of triathlon training that included finishing two half-Ironman distance events, I found that it was taking a ton of my time, and while I loved the events themselves, the grind of training from week to week wasnt fun. I was curious about CrossFit and tried it outthat first week, I remember immediately being hooked. It was like finding my soulmateWhere have you been, my whole life? Now, CrossFit is my jam. Ive never had so much fun plus seen such great health results from any other physical activity.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
I think the story I referencedthe autoimmune diagnosisis that story. Ill add to it that I had a period of feeling extremely depressed about the diagnosis and the symptoms that I was experiencing, and one day, I got really angry because I felt that what I was experiencing was unfair given that I had tried to take care of my health. Something in me felt backed into a corner, and I made a decision that day: this diagnosis would neither define me nor limit my life. I decided that no matter how hard it was, I was going to live a regular life. While this was not my intent behind the declaration, interestingly, my symptoms pretty much disappeared after that experience.
Can you share a story with us about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson or take-away did you learn from that?
I was at a store struggling to get into a triathlon wetsuit for the first time. The phrase, stuffed sausage comes to mind. The person kept knocking on the door asking if I needed help because I was taking so long. I now realize that I just didnt understand the mechanics of how to put on a wetsuit, but at the time? At the time I thought, I am such an idiot. It was embarrassing.
Can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority in the fitness and wellness field? In your opinion, what is your unique contribution to the world of wellness?
Im interested in how people shift habits and stay authentic to their habits around wellness from a place of nurturing who they arenot subscribing to rigid dogma, particularly around weight loss. I want people to trust who they are, internally, and that means trusting that their bodies are okay and good as they are, even if their bodies are different or differently abled. I am a stand for people defining who they are and how they live, defying the odds, and creating their own particular authentic wellness.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
In the fitness realm, Im extraordinarily grateful to Holly Wick, a world-ranked masters triathlete who also owns Athletic Soles in my hometown of Petaluma, California. Holly took time out of her day to help a newbie like me get up and going with triathlon training, and her passionate commitment to You can do this! championed me so many times when I was full of doubt. A bonus? She teaches spin at the local gym and her classes are not only challenging, theyre also a ton of fun.
Ok thank you for all that. Now lets move to the main focus of our interview. We all know that its important to eat more vegetables, eat less sugar, exercise more, and get better sleep etc. But while we know it intellectually, its often difficult to put it into practice and make it a part of our daily habits. In your opinion what are the 3 main blockages that prevent us from taking the information that we all know, and integrating it into our lives?
The three main things that block us from taking information that we know and putting it into action are:
Can you please share your 5 Non-Intuitive Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Dramatically Improve Ones Wellbeing? (Please share a story or an example for each, and feel free to share ideas for mental, emotional and physical health.)
Make a habit out of befriending your inner critic. Most people want to get rid of their criticbut thats actually impossible to do. Your critic is a wounded part of you that will do whatever it takes to prevent future wounding, which is why it criticizes you so harshly when you try new things or take risks. It just wants to prevent you from failing, being rejected, etc. The critic doesnt realize that these experiences are necessary parts of growth and change. The more you can do to befriend this internal voice, rather than avoid ithear it and understand itthe better. This doesnt mean you have to do what it says. Listening to why its so afraid will help you to make different choices around managing your fear.
Turn off all notifications on your phoneandnever have your phone in your bedroom. We know the research into how phones disrupt sleep, social media brings your mood down, etc., but people have trouble figuring out how to stop being so addicted to their phones. Its actually pretty easy if you disable the notifications and never have your phone in your bedroom (which means not staying up late surfing the internet).
Decide what your purpose is and live that. Purpose isnt a destination. Purpose is how you live, every day. People really need to understand that someday, we all diewe all die, we are done, we are gone, we are off the planet. Do you really want to spend the days leading up to that moment surfing the internet? Checking your phone notifications? Feeling the effects of poor health choices? Not feeling fully alive, connected, happy? I want us all to aspire to something more. Bringing presence to your purpose in this world is something anyone can do at any time. Make the choice to decide what your purpose is, and live that.
Understand habit-formation. When you understand how habits work, its easier to take charge of your life. Habits run on a cue, routine, reward loop. Its powerful to decide that when you feel the cue of fear, youll respond with a routine that is all about facing fear. Its powerful to decide that when youre stuck in a routine of negativity, that youll stop allowing negative cues into your life in the form of, for instance, spending time on social media when people are being negative. Understanding that habits are part of how we live life, and consciously choosing which habits we want to reinforce and those we want to shift, is powerful.
As an expert, this might be obvious to you, but I think it would be instructive to articulate this for the public. Aside from weight loss, what are 3 benefits of daily exercise? Can you explain?
Daily exercise is an investment in your long-term health. We dont get the benefits from doing it once. If you want to be as able as possible when youre older, daily exercise now is critical.
Daily exercise is a huge mood booster. I can be in a terrible mood, and after a short CrossFit workout, I feel completely different. I joke that its not possible to be in a bad mood when you feel like a badass!
Daily exercise helps with sleep. We all know that we feel crappy when we dont sleep well, and when things that typically help with sleep just dont seem to work? It might seem counterintuitive, but exercise is probably the missing link.
For someone who is looking to add exercise to their daily routine, which 3 exercises would you recommend that are absolutely critical?
Im big into functional fitnessthings that people may need to do in everyday life. Air squats, for instance, are an exercise that tie into a functional movement that people need to do daily, which is sit down or get up from a chair. Raising some kind of weight overhead, and the ability to bend over, are also important, so Id say some kind of overhead press or dumbbell press, and some kind of deadlifting or leaning over to pick something up, will be really helpful.
In my experience, many people begin an exercise regimen but stop because they get too sore afterwards. What ideas would you recommend to someone who plays sports or does heavy exercise to shorten the recovery time, and to prevent short term or long term injury?
Magnesium is really helpful for recovery. Theres a powdered brand called CALM that Ive used that has been helpful. Rolling out with a Grid foam roller is great for working out the kinks in hips and legs. One of the reasons I love the CrossFit model is that functional fitness doesnt get into repetitive movements that cause overuse injuries. Youre doing something different every single day, and most workouts are only around 20 minutes.
There are so many different diets today. Can you share what kind of diet you follow? Which diet do you recommend to most of your clients?
Its important for me to first say that I dont believe in dieting in the prototypical sense, and I definitely dont think that women should be trying to get into a thin body. I think that were all different, mostly due to different microbiome profiles, so it makes sense that we may need different things, and its not healthy for anyone to strive to change their body in order to be accepted by others. With that having been saidthere are certain things that we all need, and the diet misinformation out there is a real head-shaker. For example, yes, everyone needs protein, but that protein does not need to come from animals. In fact, for the health of our planet, I recommend that your protein doesnt come from animals because animal agriculture is a huge source of not just CO2, but also methane, which accelerates the impact of CO2 in our atmosphere.
Im a vegetarian. CrossFit promotes a pretty meat-heavy diet, which is the only aspect of the sport that I dont endorse. Ive made incredible gains while eating vegetarian and know that theyll keep on coming. I dont count calories or count macros or do any diet monitoring, and yet Ive had incredible results (which I define for myself personally as having visible muscles, which I love). I can eat a wide variety of foods and love the plant-based meat alternatives that have emerged, but mostly I focus on eating plants. Thats it. Super simple yet super effective, and also better for the planet. The bookEating Animalsby Jonathan Safran Foer helped me realize how critical our individual roles are in changing the tide of climate change. Yes, there are corporate polluters, and yes the transportation industry plays a huge role, but every single day we all have at least three opportunities to cast our vote for the kind of world that we want to live in when we sit down to eat.
Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story?
Pema ChodronsWhen Things Fall Apartrocked my world 15 years ago, and I re-read it all the time. Its a series of short lectures on different times when life hands us a shit-sandwich and we dont know what to doso Chodron encourages us to use those times as opportunities to learn more about who we are, what we want, what were really about.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Id love to see a worldwide shift to providing access to fruits and vegetables for absolutely everyone. I know that there are many people who would love to eat a healthier diet and the foods they need are out of reach. No one who is barely getting by is going to spend $5 on a salad when theres a $1 burger at the local fast food place, so I want to support those who dont have the resources to get what they need to support their health.
Can you please give us your favorite Life Lesson Quote? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?
Have compassion for everyone you meet, even when they dont want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone. Miller Williams
I first saw this hand-lettered at a coffee shop. I was so taken with it, I think because I was in a difficult period in my own life and saw how some people were rejecting me for the ways in which I was showing up with cynicism and negativity. I wasnt intending to be that way; I was just struggling. To me, this quote is the essence of what it means to have compassion for others.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them
Greg Glassman, Ben Bergeron, and Katrin Davidsdottir would be a blast to have lunch withGlassman is the founder of CrossFit; Bergeron wrote the bookChasing Excellence,and I love his podcast of the same name; and Davidsdottir is a two-time CrossFit Games Fittest on Earth winner, and I love her story and what shes up to.
I recently read Jerry Colonnas bookReboot, and Im so in love with what hes up to. I think he is leading the way for all of us to bring more compassion and humanity to the corporate sector.
It would be the honor of a lifetime to meet Pema Chodron, whose work has lit up my life in so many positive ways.
What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?
Im on Instagram @katecourageous and on Facebook @yourcourageouslife
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
See the article here:
5 Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Dramatically Improve One's Wellbeing, With Dr. William Seeds & Kate Swoboda - Thrive Global
