Being a business owner can be STRESSFUL. So this week, we took a step back to discuss how business owners can manage their stress through meditation and mindfulness. Listen in as Bella and Dr. Kathy Gruver discuss:
- The definition and warning signs of stress
- What meditation is and what other coping mechanisms are for stress
- The definition of mindfulness and how it can improve our health
- How to combat the “negative tape recorder” in your head
Dr. Kathy Gruver
Dr. Kathy Gruver is a motivational speaker, award-winning author of 7 books on health and wellness, a massage therapist, hypnotherapist and trapeze artist. Her passion is to educate people, inspire them to live the fullest life they can, and to let them know that they have choices! She’s appeared on over 250 radio and TV shows, am a frequently quoted expert in magazines and newspapers, hosted her own TV show, and created a stress-reduction program for the military. I’m a hip hop dancer and do trapeze to relax.
As a special gift to our audience, Dr. Gruver is offering a free downloadable meditation. Claim it here
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Transcript:
This is episode 67 of Bella in Your Business. Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready, Bella’s got your chute. Let’s jump. Welcome to Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta, your host, and today I have a hip hop dancer, a trapeze artist, and an award-winning author of seven books on health and wellness. And you know what she’s here to talk to us about today? Motivation. So without further ado, Dr. Kathy Gruver, how are you today?
I’m so great. How are you?
I am wonderful. I am just so enthralled by your biography here. It says that you’re a motivational speaker, you have written seven books on health and wellness, you’re a massage therapist, a hypnotherapist, a trapeze artist, and you like to do exactly what I like to do, which is inspire and motivate people, which is awesome. So why don’t you give us a background, fill in the details, and tell us a little bit about how all of this became you.
Yeah, you know, it is funny because you read all that and you go, how the heck did anybody put all that together? It’s a conglomeration of just sort of my entire life. I grew up dancing and acting, so performing was always really natural to me. In fact, I was a theater major. I thought my path was going to be standing in front of people and performing—and it is—but it’s what I say: same stage, different outfit, different accent. So now I get to go around the world and motivate people and teach them about health and wellness. Stress is one of my huge topics; that’s just such a huge issue right now. I started out as a massage therapist, very accidentally during my time as a theater major. A woman showed up to our school; she would massage the actors for free, and I didn’t have anything particular to do. So I observed her and I accidentally apprenticed with her for a couple summers and realized I was really good at it and I just sort of instinctively knew what I was doing. So that was always this parallel path—healing on one trail and acting on another trail. And I’ve been privileged enough to combine those two paths into quite a road and written seven books and lectured around the world, and it’s been pretty phenomenal.
I have so much respect for you. That’s exactly where I want to take the next career path in my life. And what you just said is so indicative, I think, of a lot of our listeners, because a lot of them didn’t just start in their 20s being pet sitters or dog walkers. They’ve come from many different backgrounds. And I think that’s what’s so fascinating about the world these days—that we can continuously reinvent ourselves or add to ourselves so long as we have the basic foundation principles in place. And I imagine managing stress. So let’s talk about that. What are some warning signs when you can realize—I mean, most people know that they’re stressed out—but what are some serious warning signs where we’re like, this is not good, we need to change something?
Yeah, you know, and it’s funny that you say most people know, because I’ve talked to so many people who think, “Our body’s amazingly adaptable, and its job is to seek out homeostasis.” It wants to seek out that balance, so it starts to normalize things after they’ve been happening for a while. So you start to think, “Well, I’m just a bad sleeper,” or “I just get these headaches,” or “My jaw always hurts.” And we kind of dismiss that away as aging or “this is just how it is.” Well, that might be how it is, but that’s not how it’s supposed to be. Things like overeating, those moments of not finding passion in the things that you used to once find passion in, the desire to escape, short-temperedness, bossiness, road rage—all of those types of things—and then the sleeplessness and the nightmares and the waking up in the middle of the night ruminating and thinking about things. We’re not supposed to be doing that. Our brain is supposed to be resting at that point. So if you’re up at 2 a.m. worried about where you put the key for the house for the cat you’re supposed to sit for on Wednesday, we’re not supposed to be doing that—we’re supposed to be asleep. Those types of things that we oftentimes, again, just shrug off as “that’s just me,” it might be, but it can be different.
That’s fascinating. And I love that you just really dove deep on that. And I know a lot of people that are listening right now are going, “Shoot, that is me right now.” You do, you want this homeostasis, so you kind of actually just accept it as “that’s life and this is how it is.” But in actuality, I’m so glad that you’re here in our listeners’ ears right now, reminding us that it doesn’t have to be that way. So I know the way some people cope with it is they talk about this meditation thing. And for the longest time, I was not a person that even knew how or could meditate, but I’ve actually gotten really good at it. And it’s been a good grounding thing for me personally. Can you speak to those people who say that they can’t meditate and how they might be able to overcome that?
Yeah, absolutely. And in doing that, I’m speaking to myself because I’m very type A. I’m a dancer, so I want to be moving. So when people said you should meditate and I had this idea that I had to sit with my legs crossed—which I could do because I was a dancer, so that I had down—but it was the sitting still and the quieting the mind. And you had to touch certain fingers together, and I didn’t know if you touched the wrong fingers you got sucked into a different realm. I didn’t know how that worked. And your tongue went somewhere and you rolled your eyes back in your head, which always gave me a headache. And then inevitably something itched, but you’re not allowed to scratch it. And then something would cramp and I thought I was comfortable. I mean, it was a nightmare. It was horrible. And I’d get about two minutes into it and I’d finally be quiet for a moment, and then I’d go, “I was supposed to call that guy back,” and I’d leap up and do it. And I started to joke saying it was my to-do list meditation because it quieted the chatter enough just that I could remember all the other crap I had to do. On one hand, that’s very useful, but again, that’s not the point. It’s a time to go inside and be still. And “still” was not a word that worked for me.
Then I had the privilege of studying at Harvard. I studied mind-body medicine, mindfulness, stress reduction, that sort of thing about five or six times with them—the pioneers of this. A woman taught us what they call mini meditation. And when she said, “Now we’re going to meditate,” I thought, “Crap, here we go,” because I was terrible at it. I was raised very competitive, an only child. My dad wanted a son and he got me, so I was raised to be very win, win, win. So to say, “Sit down and do something you’re bad at,” why would I do that? But she explained that meditation was actually really simple. You concentrated on something repetitive. And when thoughts intruded—not if they intrude, because they’re going to come in—when they intrude, you dismiss them without judgment and return to that thing you were concentrating on. And it doesn’t matter how you’re sitting and you can keep your eyes open. And they taught us in this manner and it to me was the gateway drug to seated formal meditation, which I now can do—sometimes up to two hours because I’ve done silent retreats and things like that.
So it’s as simple as you concentrate on your breath and you observe the rise and fall of your chest, and on your inhale you think, “I am,” and you keep repeating that. And on your exhale, you think, “at peace.” And you keep repeating that with every exhale. So inhale “I am,” exhale “at peace.” And when other thoughts intrude, just acknowledge, “Hey, I was thinking, okay,” and dismiss them and go back to the “I am at peace.” Without judgment, without criticizing yourself—“I’m stupid, can’t believe I’m thinking about bread,” or whatever—because things will pop in. You hear a sound and suddenly you’re daydreaming about when you’re going to get your oil changed. Just bring it back and get your oil changed later. But it really is just that—training the brain—and you get to a point in doing that where you’re so good at catching when you’re about to think of something that you can bring it back easily and it doesn’t turn into this full-blown 20-minute daydream, which is the other thing that used to happen to me. I’d have this amazing fantasy but realize, okay, I wasn’t meditating. And this is a really simple way to start, and you can do it anywhere, and anybody can do this. I’ve taught that to millions of people including drug addicts, people in recovery, children. “I am at peace.” It’s that simple.
Sometimes the most simple things in life are also the toughest because we’re almost looking for a way to confuse them or complicate them, right? Right. What a lot of what you’re saying talks a lot about mindfulness. That’s what I’m hearing a lot from you. And I want to dive in a little bit deeper after that—just after this quick commercial break.
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And we’re back with Dr. Kathy Gruver. We are talking about the most amazing stuff. And Kathy, I just have to say, I love your energy. Your energy is awesome. And I know that our listeners are loving this too, because usually I’m the one that’s really excited and you’re even more excited than I am. So I know that people are going to get a lot from this episode and they’re definitely not going to fall asleep listening to it.
No, it’s funny you say that—I do so much radio and so many podcasts, and I had called into a woman. There’s always that moment you talk before the show and I was like, “Hey, how you doing? I’m so excited to be on the show today.” And she goes, “Well, aren’t you a perky one?” And the entire show it must’ve sounded like this: “Blah… okay.” Yes, I’m doing a monologue today.
So thank you for bringing it today to us. What’s mindfulness and how does that relate with meditation, and how can it improve our overall health? Because ultimately guys, we’re talking about all this because—and Kathy, I’m sure you agree with me—that we all have businesses, but our businesses can only be so good. And if we’re awesome inside of ourselves and within ourselves, then our businesses can explode. But when we’re the driver of it, this stuff’s really important, right?
Yeah, absolutely. Well, mindfulness not only helps us on an internal personal basis. Mindfulness is simply going about a task with focus, curiosity, all of your senses, again, remaining in that present moment. And if other thoughts intrude, if that distraction comes in, you just bring it back gently, say, “I was thinking, okay,” and you bring it back. And what that trains us to do through both the mini and mindfulness practice is it trains us to respond rather than react. We want first responders, not first reactors. You don’t want my crazy aunt running into the building that’s on fire. You want someone who goes, “Huh, this is a problem, what can we do about it?”
And if you look at your own communication, it’s those knee-jerk reactions. It’s that first thing that someone says to us and we go, “Blah,” and then a couple seconds later we go, “Whoops, shouldn’t have quite phrased it that way.” Whether it’s a spat with a husband or a communication with a client who’s unhappy or needy, we have to learn to listen, be in that present. What are they really saying to us? What do they need? “Hey, Barb, can you clarify that? I actually didn’t quite get what I think you’re saying is…” We talk about communication and mirroring back and echoing back, and we can’t do that unless we’re present. We can’t be present unless we’re being mindful of what’s happening around us.
If that client is yelling about how you lost their keys and let the cat out and now there’s a deer in their front yard, bring in all of your senses. How does that water feel on your hands? How does that soap smell, that orange or that lemon as it wafts out of the sink? What does it sound like as those bubbles crackle in the water and the water hits the plate and then there’s that one little bubble that floats away and it catches the light and spins a little bit and there’s a rainbow inside, and then it pops and there’s this little spray of water. Suddenly you’ve done all these dishes and you’ve had a mindfulness practice.
And if other thoughts intrude again, just bring it back to, “I was thinking about Joe, okay great,” and you just go back to your task. Whether it’s minding the animal, communicating with the owner, it’s when we rush and when we’re distracted that things go awry. That’s when you don’t hear that the garage door didn’t go all the way down. The cat gets out. Then the next time you become paranoid about “what if the cat gets out,” and you get yourself into such a state that you lock your keys in the car. It becomes this cycle of crazy-making. Whereas if you would just pause and say, “That sounded weird,” and you turn back and look and go, “Holy Christmas, that’s two feet up in the air, we better fix that.” It’s about being present with everything we’re doing.
And again, it’s really hard to do. I’m constantly at work about it, but I’m getting better. And it’s that listening and being with whoever you’re with or whatever you’re with.
I love it. That’s just such a simple practice that, if we’re mindful enough to do the practice to be mindful, it’s a good conditioning almost, you know—just something as simple as doing those dishes. I always joke around that people are listening to my podcast while they’re doing dishes or walking dogs or driving or whatever. But sometimes maybe once a day, I want to challenge our listeners—is there something that you can do once a day, even if it’s just a couple of minutes, to be mindful, to be all in, really go through the senses and feel all of that?
That’s very inspiring.
You know, another way to do it, which is also pretty simple, is just pick one sense. My office is right across the street from a little coffee place called Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, which depending on what part of the country you’re in, you might have one or not—it’s like a Starbucks. Every day, okay, my only vice I can have at work is iced tea. Every day, twice a day, I leave my office and I go outside and I walk across the street to get my tea and I have to stand there and wait for the light to change. And typically I make that a mindfulness practice. I will close my eyes and listen to the cars to see if I can tell when they stop. Now, I open my eyes before I cross—I’m not a whore. Or I’ll close my eyes and just inhale deeply and see what I can smell. Does it smell like rain? The park across the street, they just cut their grass, I can smell that. Or I’ll look at something that I’ve never looked at before and I’ll really look at it—whether it’s the stoplight or the crosswalk sign or that plant that’s on the ground. Or I stretch. You can do it in the 30 seconds it takes for the light to change.
It doesn’t have to be some long complicated thing, but it starts to train you.
That is fantastic. It’s so simple but it’s so fantastic. It’s something that I know people are going to remember after they’re done with this podcast.
So a lot of this mindfulness and you’re saying, “Oh, something pops in your head, acknowledge it, put it away”—that’s the tapes that we play in our head, right? So tell me about just being mindful of these negative tapes that we have in our head and how this mindfulness—it’s so magnificent the way this all works together for the good of us, right?
Absolutely. Yeah, you know, and sometimes we’re not aware of those negative things. We have about 60,000 thoughts a day and 50,000 of those are negative. Wow. Okay. So right there we’re at a disadvantage. And we’re not aware of those thoughts—they just flip by and fleet in and out. If we were aware of all those thoughts, we’d have no time to do anything else. We’d just be sitting around. It might be what it sounds like when you’re schizophrenic, to hear all of those thoughts.
All this stuff is going on under our conscious radar. Thank God, because we don’t have to think, “Better beat my heart now, better inhale, better send blood to my legs.” Thank God we have this system that is basically self-functioning.
But the negative thing—this is where it’s really nice to have trusted friends around you, because there’s been so many times where I’ve pointed out to clients, “Well, you know, every time you mention your mother-in-law, you’re really negative about that. And she might be a jerk, but I’m actually watching you get more and more upset about these external things that she’s doing that sometimes don’t even affect you.” So if you’re getting upset by this thing, maybe you want to reframe how you’re thinking about that thing.
If you have someone that can gently say, “Wow, you know, every time we shop, you continually reinforce you’re broke, you don’t have the money for that, you wish that…” We say these things and we get into these patterns and we just get used to it.
And I don’t know if you’ve ever been snowshoeing, but snowshoeing is really hard for those first couple people because they’re carving that path for everybody else. The snow is really thick, it’s really hard to walk. By the time you’re the 10th or 12th person, you’re like, “Ah,” and the pathway is already carved. Well, that’s those negative thoughts. The pathway is already carved. It’s really easy to just stay on that path of negativity, and that’s how the brain works. So the more negative things we think, the more negative things we think. It’s this perpetuating cycle. Whereas if we can break out of that and start to change that and think positive things—and this is where I like affirmations because it’s hard to stop thinking things—but if you replace that with “I am prosperous and abundant, wealth flows easily to me, I have plenty of money,” that changes those negative thoughts.
Some people believe that all those thoughts actually attract things to us, if you’ve seen The Secret or What the Bleep Do We Know, but at the very least, ceasing those negative thoughts stops the stress response, which boosts our immune system, which helps our cognitive function. It makes us “luckier.” If you’re present in that moment and thinking more positively, that is what luck is. So it changes everything for something as simple as stopping thinking things and replacing it with something else.
I feel so blessed to be able to do this podcast because I get to meet incredible people like yourself and just talk about a variety of topics. And this is just so powerful—something that you don’t see people talking about in Facebook groups for pet sitters. But you do see pet sitters complaining that something isn’t happening for them and someone else is celebrating that the same exact thing is happening for them. And it really all comes back to us, everybody. It comes back to our mindfulness, our stress, managing all of it. Being aware of it is the first step.
Kathy, I have a feeling that you are just a treasure chest of information and resources and guidance. Tell our listeners how they can just soak up more of what you have to say. Tell us about your books, your website—just lay it on us.
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve got seven books, and they range from—I’ve got a marketing book, which I actually wrote with a colleague for other health practitioners, but it’s amazing for pet sitters too. When I did the NAPS conference in Chicago this year, a lot of people talked to me about marketing because that’s one of those things—you’re running a business, marketing goes across the board whether you’re a massage therapist or a pet sitter. That’s a great book. And then I’ve got Alternative Medicine Cabinet, Conquer Your Stress, Conquer Your Stress at Work, Workplace Wellness, which is really great, covers everything that’s happening in your workplace, whether you’re sitting, standing, lugging heavy crap, whatever it is. It talks about stretching and nutrition. There’s just so many different things. Conquer Your Stress has about 60 different stress-busting techniques. I go into detail about mindfulness and meditation. Same thing with Conquer Your Stress at Work. It’s a little more pared down and it’s the five techniques I teach when I do workshops, which are breath work, mindfulness meditation, affirmations, visualization.
And we only touched on a couple of those today, but there’s a lot more goodies out there. Journey of Healing, I have to admit, is my favorite because it’s everything I know about natural health, but it’s also how I got into it. It’s my story through those paths—how I found stuff, how it unfolded for me—and some personal tales that seem to have really good life lessons to them. So it’s a combo of autobiography and textbook.
The best—I’ve got two sites. TheAlternativeMedicineCabinet.com is my general site where you can get more info about me, get all my books, lots of past interviews and links to free resources. And then KathyGruver.com is my speaking site. My TEDx talk is there, as well as all my books and links to other speaking gigs and that sort of thing. So those are your two choices, and I’m all over social media.
That is so awesome. I encourage everyone to go reach out and just follow you because you have a lot of good stuff that people need to hear.
Repeat back—it’s TheAlternativeMedicineCabinet.com?
That’s correct. Also KathyGruver.com.
Right. And I’ve got the Kathy Gruver one. We have in our show notes, you offered episode one introduction to a mini meditation that our listeners could go hop on and quiet themselves and try to walk through it. I’m definitely going to do that and check it out.
Kathy, it’s been such a pleasure to have you on with us today. Is there any final words or final tips that you have for anybody?
You know, just know that you have a choice. You have a choice of not only the food you put in your body, but you also have a choice of the thoughts that you put in your mind. There’s always another way to look at things. There’s always another way to think. And I think we forget that—we look around us and we see these negative things or these frustrating things or these roadblocks being thrown up. We have a choice as to how we deal with that. So just go and think good things, be as positive as you can, make good choices, and go for it.
I love it. Dr. Kathy Gruver, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much for being here. You guys, this has been another episode of Bella in Your Business. Remember to like and subscribe to us on iTunes and Stitcher, and remember to always keep jumping.
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