The Well-Tended Life
The Well-Tended Life
Episode 70: Shift Out of Autopilot and Into Empowerment with Lana Sheppard
In this powerful episode of The Well-Tended Life, host Keri Wilt converses with special guest Lana Sheppard, a self-development entrepreneur who shares her journey from hitting walls to igniting her dreams. They discuss the transformative power of mindset, the pivotal moments that reshaped Lana's life, and the essential 'give-ups' necessary for both personal and entrepreneurial growth.
****HEART TAPS FROM THIS EPISODE****
1. Lana’s journey from being a workaholic to finding balance and joy through self-development highlights the profound impact of investing in oneself. She took years and years to work on her inner light to be able to shine it on others. And you too can cultivate the life of your dreams.
2. The touching story of Lana's father urging her to reconnect with her passions and music underscores the lasting influence of parental advice. Not only has she found peace pursuing music, but she's also found peace connecting with her roots in her father's childhood vacation spot.
3. Speaking of parental advice, did you catch that gem Lana's father gave her?
"Worrying is like paying interest on a debt you do not owe". Free yourself from thinking you owe solutions to the problems of others. And pass the gift of letting go to others.
4. Whether it's family, friends, or professional mentors, in overcoming life's challenges we can always lean on those in our tribe to uplift and propel us forward.
5. The focus on financial literacy and empowerment for women serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of education and independence. When we talk about our money are we using limiting language we've learned? Can we find new words and ways of framing our money talk to feel more empowered? What is our money story? What was our relationship with money growing up? How can we cut the ties to those stories to have a healthier relationship with money-making?
Connect with Lana Sheppard:
Home - Give Up Book
(18) Lana Sheppard | LinkedIn
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Introduction to The Well-Tended Life Podcast (Keri Wilt, Host):
Hey friends, welcome to The Well-Tended Life Podcast! What is a well-tended life? Well, let me start by telling you what it is not. A well-tended life is not a set it and forget it life, nor is it a perfect life. It is though, a life that is worked on every day in the sunshine and through the storms.
And the truth is what worked in our life gardens last year may not work in the next. That's why. Here at the Well Tinted Life Podcast, we're interviewing people who have grown and bloomed true in a variety of seasons and who are willing to share their well tinted wisdom and reed blocking advice with us.
Listen in!
Episode Begins:
Hello everyone. And welcome to The Well-Tended Life Podcast. I'm your host, Keri Wilt, a speaker, writer, and heart cultivator who is on a mission to help you and me grow through any season. Today's episode, as usual, is inspired by a quote from my great-great grandmother's famous book, The Secret Garden. And this one says, 'He had made himself believe that he was going to get well, which was really more than half the battle if he had been aware of it'. And y'all our minds are probably the most powerful life gardening tool we have in our tool shed. But I'm wondering for those of you listening, have you been battling against your own thoughts?
Do you feel stuck in your muddy mindset or have your own Beliefs about who you are or maybe who you were, have they inadvertently built a wall between you and what you want? Today's special guest, Lana Shepherd knows firsthand the feeling of hitting walls, feeling stuck, and even becoming your own biggest obstacle.
And I can't wait to see what well-tended wisdom she has to share with us today. So let's dig in. Welcome Lana! Thank you very much.
Guest, Lana Shepherd: Thank you for having me today. Oh my goodness. I am so excited.
Keri: We were just discussing the fact that where she is, it is nice and cool where I am. I am still in a tank top. So, we are recording this at the end of October. Tell people where you're from where you live in.
Lana: So, I am located in Saskatchewan, Canada. Which is about eight hours straight north of Portal, North Dakota. For people that want to kind of figure out where we are. So, we are the land of the living skies.
If you want to see northern lights, this is where you want to come. And this year they've been absolutely spectacular. So beautiful sunset, sunrises. You can see for miles because we're prairie land. Lots of grain farming and, and good fishing in the north. It's pretty well God's country.
Keri: For When is the best time to see Northern Lights?
Lana: Actually, around here anytime, but spring is a good time and the fall right now, they've been absolutely spectacular. Oh my gosh, I literally just wrote that. I was like adding that to my bucket list. Like it just seems like it is otherworldly. Yeah. Yeah. We take it for granted because we can go out most nights and see them. Okay. That is not why we are here but I'm so stoked. Curious about it, so I'm excited you shared.
But, you've been on a journey, that has led you to an amazing self-development business. Can you give us a little bit of your background? What led you to the journey?
Lana: What led me? I guess the biggest turning point was in 2017 is when I really had the 180 light bulb moment. My eldest daughter talked me into going to a Tony Robbins event, 'Unleash the Power Within'. And up until then, I had been a single mom twice over.
I had a business, a bookkeeping payroll business, where I had 18 staff and about 450 to 500 clients. And basically, I was a workaholic 24/7. I did not come up for air. I worked Christmas day, Thanksgiving, New Year Day. I was working constantly. And that was just my focus was to support my children. My daughter was going to university in the States.
I had to support her and I had 18 people that I felt I was responsible for making sure that you can make the payroll every month. Right. Yeah. So, I went to off to Tony Robbins and I walked I did the whole program and walked away from that thinking, man, there's a lot more to life than what I've been doing for the last 14, 15 years.
So, after I had done that, I signed up for everything. My daughter had said, what's your budget, mom? What's your budget? And I said, I'm not spending a dime. Well, I did. I bought the entire program. And today I'm a senior leader, in the Tony Robbins world. So, I've taken all the training, attend the events.
The whole bit. Also, in my journey from that was that I became very inquisitive as to being an avid reader and not figuring out how come I didn't know about all these belief systems that we apparently have. Somehow I had missed the memo on that over the years. And it is absolutely a game changer when you realize What program is running in the background and how much it has an influence on what you think about, what decisions you make.
It's basically running your life if you're not paying attention to it. And that's what I found as I was basically in autopilot, just going through the motions day in, day out. Getting things done, feeling no emotion because that was not a place, I wanted to go with a situation with what happened to my husband and all that kind of stuff.
So, you just shut that all off. And I think as women too, and mums, we put ourselves at the back of the bus. and we worry about everybody else. And I think that's when you get to the age, I'm at now. It's like you lose yourself in the whole process of that. So, I came home from Tony Robbins, and I thought, you know what, I'm not going backwards.
I'm going to go forward, whatever it takes to get myself in a position where I was happy. And usually when I travel, I will catch a cold or a flu or something, sitting on an airplane. Yes, I went home and I had the flu and I was just mindlessly flipping through Facebook one day. And I ran across a video from Natalie Ledwell, and she gives you an electronic vision board.
So back in the days, people would do vision boards, everything starts with a thought. Everything we have around us has started with an idea or a thought. And by meeting Natalie Ledwell, I bought her program, but then I also got a free ticket to go see Mary Morrissey, and the biggest change in my life was by meeting Mary.
And she's like a Tony Robbins, but with a spiritual side to her. She teaches that we're all. energy and light, having a human experience, and that we don't go to our dreams. We come from our dreams. So everything you think about, is what you're going to believe. And if you can dream big, all of that will happen.
It's universal law, really, is what it is. So one of the first questions she asked me is, What do you love? And I'm thinking, I haven't got a clue. I have no idea because all I've done is work, work, work. I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go or where I wanted to be. And I didn't know where I wanted to be in a month, never mind three years or five years.
So, I signed up for her courses as well. I took her dream building coach. Her life practice, the whole bit. And I just had an absolute thirst to learn as much as I could, not only just to apply in my own life, But I also watched a lot of the entrepreneurial clients that I had because they were all small business owners Struggling with sometimes the same things I was and I'm thinking okay I can learn from me, but I can also be a voice and be able to share with others over the course of seven years, that's what I spent a lot of my time doing is taking the courses it's like you open up the closet and all this stuff falls out and you know what, I'm not putting it back in the closet, I'm going to deal with it.
What's serving me, I'll keep. What's not serving me, I'm going to give up. So that is why I then came to the idea of starting my book. give up and everyone's telling you don't give up, don't give up. You know what, there's a lot of things you have to give up if you want to move forward. So, the Give Up series, it's going to be a series of books. The first one I launched in July called 'Ignition', and it's the first 11 Give Ups. That I recognized I had to give up as an entrepreneur. However, a lot of these give ups are really, we as people, give up the fear of failure. That's not just restricted to entrepreneurs. Give up the fear of other people's approval. Lot of us hold back and don't do things because, everybody else going to think. I know I was very guilty of that because my dad's approval was huge for me and until I actually got past that. It held me back on everything I did because I was hesitant. I'm also a perfectionist.
There is no such thing as perfection. You get all these reasons when really it's the fear of failure. You don't want to put it out in the world because somebody might judge it. Or, it might turn out the way you That you want.
Unrealistic goals. How many of us set unrealistic goals? We as people will often do that to ourselves.
Keri: Let's talk about that real quick, because I am a big proponent of giving up when you need to, when it no longer makes sense because so many times when we set goals, a, we haven't thought it through, right? We haven't really stopped to consider what it's going to cost us in time and energy and in money and all of those things, right? We're just like, I am going to, whatever it is, like grow a business, but, or I'm going to, I'm going to get healthy and I'm going to do all these things and I'm going to walk a million miles a week or whatever it is.
But we haven't stopped to consider. What it's going to cost us and or the season that we're in, right? Like if you have kids under five maybe you getting out to do the work to run a marathon, if that's your goal, like that's not really doable in this season, right? Unless you've got help and all these things.
I'm of the opinion and seasons can shift on a dime, right? Exactly. Like what you, when you said, I'm going to go do this thing, but now all of a sudden, you're a caretaker for your mother. Like that goal has to be either changed, modified, or even I say, put it in the greenhouse for now.
You don't have to give it up forever, but in this season, like it's not doable and I think you're right. I think so many people we've been told. From a young age, you never give up. You don't, you just, you push through, and you make it through the hard. Maybe it was a stupid goal in the first place, right?
Maybe it wasn't the path I've changed in a lot of ways in that I don't focus so much on goals, but outcomes. Yes. I look at the outcome rather than the goal and just that little shift in thinking differently about it has helped me actually accomplish a lot more. So, give me and I think some people find goals like 'budgets', it's a restrictive word.
So, if you change it a little bit, it's just mindset, it's all in, in mindset. So instead of having goals, I just know where I want to be in three to five years. And the first question I ask myself is what I'm doing going to help me result in my outcome, where I want to, where I got it. And I don't even use the word goals.
It's a 'financial blueprint' is what I will call it the language we speak to ourselves with makes a big difference and how we respond to that language.
Keri: Oh my gosh. So good.
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I can't wait to see you there!
[Episode Resumes...]
Keri: Let's go back because you did seven years of work. First of all, for those who don't know, you don't go to Tony Robbins conference, or whatever it's called, and you don't just go and sit there and listen. There are requirements.
There are like the activity like, right? It's hardcore. It is hardcore. Yeah. Yeah. It is so worth it though. People think I've heard, ' Oh, you drank the Kool Aid'. You know what? I'm thankful. I drank the Kool Aid because it's made a huge difference in my life
Keri: And so, let's talk about that because here you are, you're a single mom, right? Putting a kid through college andthis must have been a financial leap for you, right? Was this the first time that you had said, 'Yes, I'm putting money towards me'?
Lana: Basically. Yes. And that's when I've got a kid in university. I've got another daughter at home. I'm running a business and university in the U-S of A is not cheap when you're talking Canadian conversion.
Yeah. It was like 12, 000 every three months for tuition. And that was for four years. I was working basically full time as a bookkeeper plus running my business, so I made enough money to get her through school. And I had a 13, 14 year old at home. My second husband had passed away, so I didn't spend the time with my youngest that I should have.
You just can't, you just couldn't do it, right? And then I look at younger people, like I'm in my sixties now, and I look at these younger people and thinking, Oh man, you guys are going to have regrets when you look backwards and go, geez, I shoulda, coulda, woulda, the whole bit.
Another reason why I wrote 'The Give Up Book', because you don't realize. It's until someone brings it into your awareness that you're doing these things. If I would have had this book when I was 25, 30 years old, oh man, life would have been way different, different in my confidence and how I felt about myself and the decisions I would have made, this book is my gift to whoever wants to read it. And move forward, pay forward is really what I'm trying, the lessons I've learned over the years.
Keri: And you talked about earlier about how, you were living on autopilot and I guarantee you there are so many listeners right now that are just like, like shaking their head and nodding their head going, yeah, like I know that feeling, you look back at those are the things you regret is that you just, you're going through life and you're not even aware.
100 percent of what your thoughts are. For someone who feels like they have been stuck in that autopilot zone, what's something that they can do to start being aware of those autopilot thoughts, right?
Lana: Change your daily routine. Okay. That's the first thing I did. As crazy as that sounds, you get out of bed, you do the same, like how many of us do the same routine?
How many of us leave home and go, oh, did I remember to unplug my curling iron? Did I remember to shut the coffee pot off? Cause we do it all unconsciously. Yeah. So, the minute you, that's the first thing I did is I got out of bed on the other side of the bed. I just did crazy little things because you have to pay attention.
So, I had to retrain myself and actually even now, this is now seven and a half, eight years. If I get really stressed out, I sometimes will start to slide to my old ways because that was my comfort zone. Still have to pay attention. It's not something that, you do it for a week and it sticks.
I gently started to pay attention. It's no, grueling, big change in my life. To begin with, you have to be kind to yourself. You can't give yourself heck all the time because it's not that I did it out of. It was survival mode for me, and working was my addiction.
If I was working, I wasn't thinking about all the other things, the stresses that I had in my life. I didn't smoke or drink. I worked. Yeah. It took until my dad told me. He might have been around 75 or 80. He says, Lana, get back to your music. And don't wait until you're my age to figure it out. So, I went back playing in a band. I play contrabass, clarinet. Picked it up after, I don't know, 25 years of raising kids or whatever. I took my grandfather's violin, and I walked out with a bass clarinet.
I don't know how that happened but think about something that gave you joy as a kid. Or before you had kids it can be the simplest thing. It doesn't have to be any big thing but find something that you could have that little bit of joy that, because it makes a huge difference when I go and play in the band, I'm not thinking about anything. I'm getting juiced up on music for, you couple hours. So, then you're wired to hang out with some of my musician friends. It's great.
Keri: I love that. I had a similar experience recently. I was I went to go visit my two college kids and usually I'm with my husband.
And so, we drive together, and we usually listen to whatever music he wants to listen to, but I was all by myself. So, I put on a playlist, but I hadn't listened to in years, and it was like all the old songs that I grew up with, and all of a sudden, the 3rd song was a part of a musical that are that I used to watch all the time.
And I, of course, I knew every single word. And about four and a half hours later, by the time I got there, I could barely speak. Like I sang my heart out and I was like, and it triggered something in me at like a memory, a core part of who I was I mean, I get up and I journal every day.
Like I feel like I dig deep into who I am and, but it was a part of me that I had not touched in a really long time. And it filled my soul.
Lana: That's awesome. Oh my God. That's what it's all about. You can find those things. Yes. For me my father built a cabin for us as kids when in 1972.
And it's about four and a half hours north of the city where I live. And it's up in the bush. So you've got bears and moose and elk and fox and all kinds of wildlife, trees and lake. That's it. And the song, the sound of silence. I honestly believe that silence does have a sound because you can go up there and there's absolutely no noise whatsoever.
And being up in nature and being up at the lake and being up there with my father, who's now in his nineties, it's just my happy place. That's where I really go to recharge in the summertime.
Keri: You have to find your happy place, you have to figure out where that is, for sure. Let's go back to the book. You said it's going to be a series, the first one is Igloo, correct? That's right. That mean light it all on fire or what exactly does that mean? So, if you take a hot air balloon, I was going to use a rocket at first and I thought, no, I think hot air balloons are a lot cooler.
So, the first book is 'Ignition'. They've got to ignite that hot air balloon. So, the first 11 give ups are the first 11 primarily for entrepreneurs that they have to give up getting their business off the ground. So, things like, the false sense of overnight success, there is no such thing.
Fear of failure, fear of numbers, not wanting to look at your financials. That's scary stuff. Things like comfort zones. You really have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable when you're starting a business and taking some of those little risks. I talk about failing forward. I don't think failing is failing because if you're not taking those steps and you're not stretching yourself, you're not growing.
If you stay in your comfort zone, then you're going to become stale and stagnant and basically die on the vine. If you have that fear of not to do anything outside of your comfort zone, then Life can get pretty stale and stagnant.
The second book is going to be called, 'Lift Off'. So, it's the next 11 give ups that I recognized I had to take to go from being an operator to an owner of a business, and this is the second 2-to-5-year span, and 85 percent of businesses in Canada right now will fail within those 2 to 5 years.
Number 1 reason, cash flow, they're right out of cash, , and secondly, just not watching their numbers, and whatever's holding them back will also take them. We'll take them down. They get in their own way. Most of the time is what will kill a business. That one is going to be called lift off. It's, the ignition and now the air balloon is coming up and think of it, to rise that balloon.
You have to give up weight. So, you have to give up a lot of stuff for that air balloon to lift off the ground. The third one will be the 11 give-ups. To taking on a team, having employees, there's, I was a control freak. I had to let go. I couldn't micromanage. I had to trust in my team, had the best team ever.
They put up with so much for me. God bless them. Every single one of them, honestly. And I did a lot of apologizing. I could tell lots of stories about that, but it was all learning and it's not like you can go to the library and get a book on how to run a business. There is no such thing.
Keri: No. In our lives, we all have our own teams, right?
Like our family members, the people, our friends around us, that's our team. I always, we've always told our kids this growing up, like, I've never raised a 16-year-old. I don't know what I'm doing matter of fact, my husband and I just had the same conversation a couple days ago, his mother has dementia, and I was like, 'I am so sorry'.
Cause, I did something, and I was just like, I've never been in this position before of helping to care for someone with dementia. Like you just, none of us know what we're doing. We're just like, we're figuring it out and we're putting our best foot forward.
Lana: Exactly. And then the fourth one's going to be on succession planning and exit, what that looks like, for a business owner.
And then I'm thinking I'm going to probably do a fifth one beyond boundaries, talking about post COVID. Because there's so many businesses that are struggling with what this new business world looks like. Handling and dealing with employees. The whole world has changed. And then you add in AI automation and the whole bit, and a lot of businesses are struggling with, either pivot and embrace it the opposite is you don't, and you're going to get left behind 100%.
Keri: It sounds to me like the 1st book can be applied to anyone's life. Everybody, every single one of those. I was like, oh, I relate to that. And I relate to that. 1 of the things you were talking about was like. fear of looking at your books. And I want to talk about that because you are a financial literacy advocate.
I think that as women, there's some fear around, around money. I want them to be empowered by it and not intimidated by it, but then it feels like money gets caught up in our worth, right?
Lana: Money mindset beliefs. Okay. Yeah. What's your relationship with money as a child? How is it for your family? My mom used to say money doesn't grow on trees. Yeah. You have to work hard to make money. Is that true? I don't know. About two years ago, I had this aha moment, because one of the things when I was little, my mom used to make us do chores. We'd have to go pick the weeds, do all this kind of stuff. And we were not allowed to go have fun until we got the work done.
Who do you think has never allowed herself to go and do? And oh, my world, that made total sense to me. I'm thinking I just never gave. And when you're an entrepreneur, the work never stops. Like it's not, you can ever give yourself permission. And the second was, it's too bad you had to ask, now you don't get. We'd go, my sister and I used to fight like cat and dog.
So, my mom would always say we're going out for groceries or whatever. If you guys behave yourself, I'll buy you a treat. We get right down to the last she's paying for the groceries and we're thinking there's no treat there. And we would say to her mom, mom, we've been good do we get a treat? And she goes, oh, it's too bad you had to ask, now you don't get. As a single mom, guess what? I never asked for help. And it's not true, I could have asked anybody for help. They would have helped me. But you've got this subconsciously running in the background going, Oh, don't ask for help because you know what your mother used to say.
So, you have to go back and really think about what are your beliefs and are they true? And if they're not true, then you need to form a new belief that's going to serve you better. With money people don't understand it because a lot of times they've either been intimidated by an accountant.
I can't tell you how many business owners came in and told me they felt like they'd been in the principal's office with their year-end, and they'd bring me their little brown envelope and go, they didn't want to open it. Like okay you need to learn, but there's so much power in understanding.
I like to teach it that a chart of accounts or a general ledger is just the storybook of your business in numbers. Every single one of those entries is a decision, a business decision that you made in the business. And it's just being shown in numbers rather than words. And that's same with cash flow.
Everyone goes, Oh, cash flow is so complicated. I'm going every single one of us do cash flow. My paycheck is this much. I got to pay my rent. I got to buy my groceries. This is how much money I got left over. Guess what? That's cash flow planning. That's all it is. It's not complicated, crazy stuff that you need to have a degree in commerce to understand.
So, I like to just take it down to the basics, and slowly teach an entrepreneur what, where's the pain in your business and how can you monitor it? By watching the numbers, because the numbers don't lie, you can make up all kinds of stories you think it's going well, but the numbers are going to tell you whether it really is or not.
Keri: I'm super thankful that you have taken the knowledge that you have gained and that you are choosing to pay that forward into the world with your book and, you're coaching and, your financial literacy advocacy. It's so important. I totally believe that we go through what we go through so we can help somebody else grow through it.
Right. 100%. I love that you are leaning into that, and it feels so good and so natural and the way you just broke down even just the financial stuff, like you said it in a way that I'd never heard it, and I am an entrepreneur and my husband, and I own a restaurant as well as some vacation rentals.
I know all of the things you're talking about it. We just celebrated. For almost 20 years and in the restaurant business, which also, very low margin. Yeah, that's a tough market to be very tough market. And lots of pivoting, right? I think I 100 percent believe that the reason that we still exist today is that we didn't get, we were not so hard and fast on who we needed to be. We allowed it to pivot and change when things changed and COVID was a good thing, but yeah, we're also having to have, like COVID itself was actually a good thing for our business, but then the after COVID is it's a real thing. This economy that's happening right now and trying to figure out how to still do what we do best in a market that looks completely different than it did before for us, even being in the restaurant business. It taught people that they could cook at home, right? So, it actually took a lot of people, a good percentage of people, out of the everyday part of the restaurant business, right? And so now what? Now what? Now what?
Lana: Yeah, exactly. No, it's totally different. And I deal with lots of different clients that are really struggling with how they get a balance between how to serve clients well, as well as respect the wishes of their employees and that balance is a lot of them are still trying to figure that out.
Keri: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think balance is bull, it's not it's rarely does just the minute you get this plate spinning, another one starts to go down I that's 1 of the words that I try to take out of my vocabulary, because I do think it's 1 of those things, those perfectionistic things that says, if we could just get it like this, I don't think life works that way anymore. It's a whole different ball game out there in business these days. Gosh.
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[Episode Resumes]
Keri: Is there anything else on your heart that you want to share about any of that at the book?
Lana: I think the last chapter of the book is actually one of the most important ones is that's giving up an unhealthy lifestyle.
So for all of those out there, and I was. Horrible for not taking care of myself, not getting proper sleep. I used to do all-nighters like total insanity. So, for anybody listening out there that's doing all-nighters and not taking care of yourself and not getting sleep, stop it. Stop it right now and start taking care of yourself, because in the long haul, it is not the route you want to be on.
If you stop and really think about it, getting rest, you're actually much more productive than trying to push through. Even though in your mind, what you're saying to yourself is, got to get it done, got to get it done. I did years of that and now I've got health issues and a few other things and it all stems back to just making really stupid decisions in my life.
And again, it all goes back to mindset and how I felt about myself and it all plays a part. Well, in so many of us. Don't really wrap their minds around, we are more productive when we work from rest rather than working to then rest. Right? If you can switch that mindset but it's that same, if you do your work, then you get to play, and people consider rest.
As the reward when rest is the essential first block. And then if you build the work on top of the rest, then you're way more productive. And for those that think they can't take a rest when they got housework to do and everything else, my new mindset on that is I become a guest in my house.
Keri: I love that. Tell me what you do as a guest in your house.
Lana: You don't do any housework. You read books, you relax, you have a nap. It's like it's somebody else's house. I love that. I'm just a guest in my house on the days that I know that I just need to do nothing. Again, it's mindset.
Keri: Yes. I love that. I might be borrowing that one.
Lana: That's okay. Not when I'm in my pocket for a while. I have to be like, what are you doing? And like, I am a guest here. Those dishes are not mine to do.
Keri: Exactly. I love this. Oh, my gosh. So fun. Well, let's move on to the end of the interview, which really are the questions that I ask all my guests and the first one is tell us about the life season that you're in, or maybe just finished, or you're heading into, and how does that impact or inform the way you do life today?
Lana: That's an interesting question, because I gave that a lot of thought this week, and I wanted to put a gardening spin onto it, and the fact that I'm from the prairies, so I am in the harvest and building season.
Right. Is where I believe, so I'm doing some foundation building, I'm planting some seeds, I'm starting to see those fruits take shape I'm in a growth and momentum right now I had another name for the book, and I have to give credit to Vince Tan, one of my mentors, because he's the one going, no, Lana, you're not calling it that, you're going to call it give up.
You're going to polarize it. And the minute he said that. It's like, bam, all of a sudden it was a series, the ignition, every one of these books, at the end of each chapter, there's a website for a workbook because I'm a true, I'm an avid reader. I've read hundreds of books, probably 700 books in the last five, six years on business, on belief systems, whatever the case may be.
And, reading is one thing, but if you don't actually take something that you've read in that book. And actually implement it, execute it in your life. What good is it to read the book? Really? So, the workbook is free. You download it. It's on Notion. And then it's got some more extra tidbits and tools that you can use in your own life.
And you can change the workbook. You've got little tasks, things that you can use, the whole bit. So that was my gift to make sure that, I wanted everybody who bought the book to have all the tools they needed to actually take something of the book, even if it's one gold nugget and actually implement it in their life.
That would be the biggest gift to me is for someone to say, hey, I learned one thing out of your book. That would be the best. That's all I, that's all I really want is just to make that little bit of a difference or have people realize that they could do something different in their life.
That just, that makes it all worthwhile. And then navigating through this season is with grace you talk about journaling. I think that is so important. When you're in harvest and building, you have to sometimes have those little pockets of time to renew, to reflect, how are things going?
Do we need more fertilizer? Do we need to do something a little bit different? And celebrate the little, tiny wins. Sometimes, harvest can take a toll on, stretch you out pretty good. Sometimes you have to take a minute and just go, okay, what am I celebrating today? And the day where you take those moments of joy that are coming out of the journey that you're on.
Cause it's not the destination. There's so many people that get to the top of the ladder and then they go, okay, is this all there is? It's the journey that you're on that you just take time and enjoy it because I think that life in a lot of ways. So I like to think of this as my little garden my give up garden.
Keri: I love it. Okay. Second question is, do you have any regular practices that help you to live your best well attended life?
Lana: Yes. Journaling. Okay. Tell me about your journaling practice. So, my journaling, I like to do it. And one of the things that I learned from. Mary Marcy, Tony Robbins, the whole bit is it basically rewires your brain, because you're now looking for the positives.
You're looking for positives. And I do this whenever I teach, I always say, I always ask people, what are the three things you're grateful for? And they all sit there and they just, well, I don't know, let me think about that. Because they're, everybody's quick to say what they're not grateful for, what's, bugging them or whatever else.
But when you start doing that on a regular basis, you're building emotional resilience, you build confidence in yourself. I think it diverts your whole, whole focus away from worries I used to worry all the time and my father, who is a retired and charity accountant, told me, he says, 'Lana', he says, "worrying is like paying interest on a debt you do not owe".
So that was his tidbit of wisdom to me going, why are you worrying about stuff that, you don't owe any interest on that. So stop worrying about stuff you have absolutely zero control on and pay attention to what you can do in your life. And I think journaling made me see a lot of good things, over the years that We're not so bad after all, because you're going through a journey and there's times when you really can be hard on yourself.
I think journaling brings a lot of that joy and the good things. Things out makes you think about stuff and it's amazing you'll start journaling about one thing and all of a sudden something else pops in your mind and you're off on a whole different tangent, a whole different I was so cool how that works.
Keri: I teach a very specific journaling process where every day we read, reflect, weed, seed and water. But I always tell people the number 1 thing is allow it to become what it becomes. Because you'll sit down to read and all of a sudden that like a one word will take you off in a whole another direction and you won't get the rest of it done.
You're, I'm like, let it be undone. Like you went where you were supposed to go like this. Exactly. Be a formula that will help you get where you need to go. So, I love that. I'm a fellow journaling, I probably have 20 journals right above me, for probably at least 15 years now, if not more.
And it is, it's my lifeline. It's always interesting to go back and read it because sometimes you don't fit, you don't realize how far you've come until you read something from a year ago or two years ago. And you think, oh my gosh I really have made where you don't think you've made any progress at all when really you have made some leaps and bounds, and you just don't realize it.
Oh, good. Yeah. All right. Speaking of journals and joy and goodness and things like that this part is actually from my journaling process. It's based off actually a quote from the secret garden that says, Mary hadn't noticed it, but she looked up and saw it and what you were talking about before, like most of us have been living this life on autopilot.
We are not even aware that there is joy, goodness and growth planted all around us every single day. We just have to train our eyes to see it. That's why that's a big part of my journaling process. I always ask every guest, like, where are you seeing joy these days?
Lana: I'm seeing Joy in the little town where I'm staying right now.
I'm taking on an interim contract with a manufacturer. And this town, it's called Indian Head, is in southern Saskatchewan. And my father grew up about 20 minutes, half an hour from here. And during the summer, I was staying down at a cottage at the lake. And I found out that my great grandmother had a cottage about a hundred feet from where I was staying.
And my dad spent all his days in the 40s when he was like 7, 8, 9 years old. So the joy I'm having is watching my father enjoy the fact that I'm an Indian head close to Abernethy where he grew up. And it's done nothing but got him telling me stories. of him growing up, which we, I didn't have a clue. Yeah.
Because when I first came with the first weekend, I drove down and I said, I texted dad and I said, , I'm, I said, I'm staying at Sandy beach. He goes, Sandy beach. Is that like the Sandy beach by such and such? And I said, yeah, didn't have a clue that it was. So that has brought me so much joy this summer and this year I actually got some wood from the lot.
It was my great grandmother's, and I had someone make me, , pens and keychains, and I'm taking them home this weekend for my father. And I wrote a poem about him growing up at Sandy Beach, and that's his Christmas present. Oh my gosh. So that is been my joy definitely is just being here and enjoying listening to my father telling me stories.
Keri: Oh, my goodness. Okay, joy is joy. Goodness is deeper than that. For me, goodness is the thing that you feel grateful for, the goodness for which you feel grateful for. So, what are you feeling grateful for these days?
Lana: Oh, gosh, I'm feeling grateful for my granddaughters. My youngest one just turned two last week.
Keri: Oh, good age.
Lana: I'm having so much fun at this contract job. It's put me back in the manufacturing world, which I haven't been there for a lot of years. I just feel great. My days, I love my days from morning till night. I'm staying in a little bed and breakfast, little, tiny place, a character home built in 1895.
It's just awesome.
Keri: Okay, more question is what's your grandma's name?
Lana: What's my what?
Keri: Your grandma name.
Lana: My grandma name.
Keri: Do they call you grandma? Do they call you?
Lana: Yeah, they just call me grandma. Grandma. Okay. I wasn't sure. Some people have all sorts of, you know. No, no. We don't have any. We don't have any fancy names.
Keri: Okay. Awesome. Okay.
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[Episode resume]
Keri: And then the third one is growth. Like where are you seeing like life lessons and growth in your life right now?
Lana: Oh, gosh. I've got lots of things going on. Writing this book was huge growth. Writing the second one now, which I'm going to launch on the 11th of January. And I'm going back to Asia because the other thing that I'm working on is starting.
I want to do some training in the Philippines for business college students. That's my next step. This piece of growth is to, they inspired me last year, I spoke to some students in Antique, San Jose Antique, which is one of the poorest islands in the Philippines, and also in Manila through a mastermind group that I belong to over there.
I met an accountant, and these kids just let me up. So, I want to do whatever I can. To teach them Canadian bookkeeping and then eventually give them jobs and pay them properly rather than what they're getting paid from some companies, which is pretty poor. Okay. Lana, seven years ago, Lana, did you have any idea?
That this would be your life right now. Heavens. No COVID was amazing. Cause I started listening to clubhouse. I met John. I listened to John Lee. It was a multimillionaire business guy out of the UK and through him. I met Vince town and Vince. John Lee and I is one of my coaches and mentors and Vince Tan.
And when I met Vince Tan, I went to his mastermind in Thailand three years ago. And I met hundreds of masterminders, young entrepreneurs. And I feel like the mama hen with all my babies. I love these entrepreneurs and Vince and John. I think I've learned more in four years than I've learned in 40 years.
Honestly, in so many areas of business. So, I hope I live long enough to do everything I want to do. That's my, that's the only anxiety I have is I need to be like 150. She went from, let's be clear about this. You went from having no idea what you wanted to do when who was it? Was it Natalie?
What do you want to do? What do you love? You're like, I have no idea, no clue, right? 2017 to now and y'all that's, this is what happens when you invest in yourself.
Keri: This is what happens when you say, I want to live differently in this next season. And the more you have, the more you want of it.
Lana: Yes, it's a snowball, right? Like you can go back. Like you said, once you, once all that stuff fell out of the closet, you were like, I don't want to shove it back in. Let's deal with it on a piece-by-piece basis.
Keri: But also, I also want you to hear at home as well, that this is seven years. That's a long time, right? That is decision after decision, after failure, after getting back up and falling.
That is changing your life is not, it's not a, it's not one class, it's not one course, its daily decisions, right? Every single day that gets you to 1 percent better, right? My, my daughter played select volleyball, which is, basically like higher level volleyball. And I remember being at one of the first tournaments and the coach, was there and they weren't playing very well, but you could tell that they were learning.
And I finally was like, wait, and because I really, I don't care if people win or lose, it wasn't important to me, but my husband was just like, they got to win. And I asked the coach, I said what's the point here. And she was like, 1 percent better. A hundred percent. 1%. She was like, steps do is every single time you go out.
So every time you wake up in the morning, that's all you're trying to do is just 1% Do. Do one thing. Do one thing for you. Invest in you and give up instant gratification. Give up instant gratification. Yes. It's the long, it's the long haul, , and slow and steady is going to win the race. The instant gratification, you have to give that up because it, it doesn't happen that way.
But if you stick with it, you can reap the rewards of it. Oh, my gosh, I'm 63 years old and I got these friends that are retiring. They're going, Lana, Lana, you should just stop what you're doing and retire. I'm thinking, what are you kidding me? And some of them look 20 years older than I do.
And I'm thinking, if I'm going to look like you, there's no way I'm stopping. Absolutely. No way. Let's go. What would I do with myself? I don't know I absolutely love, love, love everything I do. I get up in the morning and I enjoy my day 100%. Whatever that might be, it's a blessing. I get to open my eyes in the morning.
There are people this morning that didn't get to do that. So, the rest. It's a bonus, as far as I'm concerned, and if you take that and stop thinking about all the things you don't have and what's not working, because if you keep thinking about that, you're just going to attract more of it. It's like you wake up in the morning and go, Oh, I'm going to have a bad day today.
You're guaranteed to because you've done it. Walked out of the door with that mindset, it's simple things and even like things like red lights people get annoyed They have to stop at a red light. I think it's great You get to stop and look around and take a it's a minute. What is it? 45 seconds a minute?
You get to just stop for a second. I'm thinking that's an awesome thing if you can do that I, , so we live in a small town, I told you, and there are deer everywhere, like everywhere. And we're right on the river too. So , the road I go in and out of to get to the bigger town next to us is along the river and there's deer and there's a river.
And so we also have a lot of tourists, and they go really, really slow. They're looking at everything, et cetera. And anytime I get behind one of those, I, I literally thank them. I'm like, thank you for slowing me down. Thank you for reminding me of the beautiful place that we're in. Thank you for this because I was, I had to flip it because the same thing I was just like, oh my God, I got to get home. I have laundry to do. And I was like, oh no, this is an opportunity. Just like that stoplight.
Keri: I love that. I love that. I love that. Lana. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. This has been so amazing. I so appreciate you coming on today and sharing with us.
Wonderful. Find you, follow you buy your book, all the things. The book is on Amazon. Okay. So, you could find it as ignition give up you could also find it on give up book.com. Awesome. And then I'm also on LinkedIn as well as Instagram. Awesome. Yeah. And it's just Lana Shepherd L-A-N-A-S-H-E-P-P-A-R-D, right?
Lana: Correct.
Keri: Awesome. On LinkedIn. And then, we've got a give up page as well on, on LinkedIn. Awesome. Oh my God, y'all. Thank you everyone who has been listening to the podcast today. I sincerely hope that this episode has inspired you to give up that autopilot way of life and ignite your dreams in order to live out your best well-tended life.
So, until next time, everyone blessings and blooms. Thank you, Lana.
Lana: Thank you, Keri.
Episode Outro (Host, Keri Wilt):
Oh, my goodness, y'all. That was so good. Don't forget to check the show notes for my favorite heart tap moments from this episode. What is a heart tap? Well, whenever I read, listen to a podcast or watch a speaker, I'm always on the lookout for those like head bob, heart tap, and aha moments. You know what I'm talking about.
These are the things that cause your head to bob in agreement, your heart to make that tap when a much-needed word of wisdom comes along or your soul to scream, aha. That was the word I was looking for. So, for each episode, I like to share a few of my heart taps in the show notes with you. But, I'm curious, what are your heart tap moments from today's episode?
Run on over and direct message me your favorite moments, questions, heart taps, and more over at Instagram or Facebook today. And if you were inspired by this episode or maybe learned something new, make sure to share this show with a friend or post about it in your stories. Finally, could you do one more favor for me today?
Will you take a minute and hop on over to Apple podcast and leave a kind and thoughtful review for The Well-Tended Life podcast? You see, this is how people find us and every positive review helps to unlock the door for someone else to get in on the magic of life tending too. Thank you again for listening and being a part of this well-tended life community.
And until next time, y'all blessings and blooms!