You know where you want to go, but do your habits align with what you want? Maybe you’re struggling to break the habits preventing you from reaching your full potential. Whether it’s sleep deprivation, too much caffeine, or not enough physical movement, today’s episode will give you a better understanding of the impact of a holistic health approach, the benefits of breaking habits, and the small steps you can take to lead you to the life you want.
Kristen welcomes Justin Roethlingshoefer, the co-founder of Own It Coaching, a multiple seven-figure coaching company that applies this health and performance philosophy to clients ranging from NHL stars to Fortune 500 executives to entrepreneurs. Justin provides listeners with his holistically integrated approach to health and performance.
Justin shares an inside look into the things often overlooked in health and wellness while helping listeners realize that their health is optimized when physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health are intertwined.
Listen in as Kristen and Justin talk about:
Understanding heart rate variability and the incredible impact it has on adopting a holistic health approach Awareness of the four areas of the human experience and how you can find the leaks in your habits to make individualized shifts in your mindset How to implement a holistic approach to your daily routine
You weren’t built to get by, you were built to thrive, and by making simple changes to your habits and behaviors, you can begin to avoid burnout and instead lean into the ownership space. Start by saying yes, and you’ll begin to make the big leaps.
To find out about more about Justin and his programs along with free resources head to this website: https://ownitcoaching.com/
Follow Justin on Instagram @justinroeth
Introducing the Social Selling Leadership School: A 12 week Advanced Leadership Certification program for Network Marketers. This program was designed to give you everything you need to be a confident and transformational coach for the people you serve and help your team get massive results. This is the ONLY Coaching Certification program built specifically for the social selling market. Find out more and join the waitlist here!.
Thanks for listening! Do you have a question about network marketing? Kristen can help! Drop your question here, and she just might answer it live on the podcast: https:/Kristenboss.com/question
Connect with Kristen:
If you’re ready to learn the simple process of running your social selling business online, you have to check out Kristen’s live group coaching program! The Social Selling Academy: www.thesocialsellingacademy.com
Transcript for Episode #162: Own Your Life with Justin Roethlingshoefer
Kristen Boss (00:19): You are listening to the Kristen Boss podcast. I’m your host, Kristen Boss. As a bestselling author and performance coach, I’m on a mission to share about sustainable and purposeful approaches to both business and life. Each week I bring relevant topics that I believe are necessary to create a life of purpose, significance and meaning. Entrepreneurship is about so much more than growing your bottom line. It’s about who you are becoming in the process and building a life that is truly extraordinary. Entrepreneurship is really just the beginning. Hey, bosses. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. This week I have another friend, another guest on the show that I think you’re going to love. You all have been giving such great reviews of friends I have brought from the mastermind I’m in, and I have brought another colleague, another friend from the mastermind. I’m in. I’m here with my buddy Justin of Own IT coaching. Justin, I’m so glad you’re on the show with me today.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (01:20): Oh, it’s so great to be here. Kristen, how are you?
Kristen Boss (01:23): I’m doing awesome. I think my audience is really going to love this conversation because as I’ve just kind of followed you on social media and seen what you’re about, got to know you a little bit at Wellspring at our event in January, but I want to get to know you more and your wife more in the summer. But I noticed you were kind of the biohacking king. I love your approach to health. It’s incredibly holistic. It’s all the things. It’s not just one area. And I’m constantly talking to my audience about sustainability and how there’s a lot of parallels between growing a business and your health and taking care of your body and a holistic approach to business and a holistic approach to health. So give my audience just a little bit of background on your coaching philosophy and your journey in growing your own very successful coaching business.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (02:12): So I think I’ll take it a couple different places here. And I think a lot of my past, my background, I’ve grew up in Canada, and at 13 my dad said to me, son, talent will get you noticed, but consistency will get you paid. And it was really fun moment that I was like, okay, what can I do to be the most consistent version of me? What can I do to really kind of control this earthly vessel and this experience that I’m having on a day-to-day basis? And throughout my childhood, I was like that weird kid at 13, 14 years old wearing the heart rate monitors wherein any sensor I could really get my heart, my hands on, looking at getting blood work done all the time, really wanting to know the depths and the core of what was actually going on. But I suffered heavily from depression and anxiety, and I was anorexic for about three or four years in my teenage years, all well still playing extremely high level hockey.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (03:15): And I was like, there’s got to be a deeper, more holistic version of health and to truly understand what’s actually going on. And as I went and got my degrees in exercise, science, nutrition went and got my master’s degree, when did my postgraduate research and heart rate variability and sleep, I started to learn that even in academia, we only look at 25% of health and which is the physical side. And as I got into the National Hockey League and the NCAA and some of these different places working with the best athletes in the world, the same patterns happened where it was like, Hey, how can we affect what you eat? How can we affect how we train? How can we affect how we recover, how we sleep? But we still dropped the ball on the other 75%. And when I really took a look back at it, and it really started to bother me when I started to see dieticians and functional medicine doctors and other people in the med medical space say, no, we run holistically integrated pro programs or places here, but yet we still only looked at the physical component.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (04:23): I was like, man, this is why we’re so disintegrated. And so if we look at the core definition of holistic, it means all or entire. And then if we look at the definition of integrated, it means to make whole or bring together. And then if we break down what health means, it’s your mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional condition. So in order to be holistically integrated in our health, we have to bring mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional altogether and be speaking and teaching and talking about all of these things as if they are one. Because if we don’t, then we’re creating disintegration, which is why we see the disintegration of our health. So that was really the big aha moment for me. And it wasn’t until I found this definition of heal and the definition of healing again means to make whole one. And so once I understood what the definition of holistic and integrated was, truly got a good vision and picture of what health was, and then the goal of what healing is, we were able to bring all of these together in a really purposeful way. And that’s really what’s been the foundation of my philosophy, taking it right through D N H L now right into own it and how we work with entrepreneurs and executives and athletes alike because we’re all just having human experiences, we’re all souls having a human experience. And if we can heal that soul holistically, we can realize ultimately the potential and the giftings that have already been prepared for us.
Kristen Boss (06:01): It’s almost like you’re talking about healing from the inside out, doing exactly. Yeah, let’s do the internal and then it manifests on the external. And I love that. I so appreciate just your vulnerability of your own journey and what your dad told you was a total mic drop. Talent gets you noticed, but consistency gets you paid. And this is a huge thing for my audience. The number one struggle that they say they have a lot is their consistency. But I’m going to say even one step ahead of that consistency in the right things. And I think people can maybe make this mistake even in their health is like, Hey, they could be consistent, but are they consistent with the right things? So what do you feel are the biggest things that people overlook when it comes to holistically taking care of themselves and their health? What do you think is the biggest area that people overlook and they’re like, eh, it’s all right.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (06:53): So before I preface what that thing is, I want to kind of give this framework of how our bodies are put together. Because when I think we have an idea of how the body’s put together, it can now start to determine what that is for you, because otherwise my answer would be it. It’s different for everybody because what can be great and healing for you, Kristin could actually be something that holds me back and vice versa. And so I think what we get so caught up in today’s culture in today’s society is we hear, oh, this is the best thing that you need to do. This is going to create the biggest change for you. This is really the silver bullet that’s going to work for everybody. It’s this test, it’s this DNA test, it’s this blood test, it’s this sauna, it’s this cold plunge, whatever.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (07:42): We’re just bouncing back and forth between these modalities and tools rather than getting to the base level of habits, behaviors, and lifestyle components that really move the needle and really understanding what you need, what your body’s asking for, what your body’s requiring, what your body’s craving. And when we can do that and simply just answer and read a manual, it really helps us in a big, big way. So really what I’ve kind of driven it down to is that our human experience is made up of four areas. Our heart, our mind, our body and our spirit and our heart is connected to our desires. And the biggest goal here is that our heart needs to be connected to God. Our heart needs to be connected to what our God-given calling is. And if we’re clear on what those desires are, then those desires will ultimately renew our mind, renew our mind through our thoughts and our beliefs because they’re rooted in the truth, they’re rooted in God, they’re rooted in our calling.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (08:41): And so our heart, which is our desires, ultimately fuels our mind, which is our heart, or which is our thoughts and beliefs, which now gets into the body, which is our habits, behaviors, and lifestyles. And those are ultimately determined by what our thoughts and beliefs are, but getting us back to where we want to be with what our desires are. And then lastly, those, the spirit is what determines our relationships and our surroundings around us, both by choice and by birth. Some things we can control, some things we can’t. And so when we have a bigger understanding of this, we now realize that the soul, we’re all just souls having human experience. The soul is the integrator, the soul is what creates that truly to be alive within us. And when we were born, God breathed the breath of life into us, and that’s ultimately what allows us to have this true earthly experience.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (09:34): He’s blessed us with an opportunity to now have something, and he’s already prepared the way for us. But in order for us to realize what he’s prepared, we have to prepare ourselves because otherwise we will not be able to crest on that and realize the promises that are there. So coming back to that, knowing that our heart, our mind, our body and our spirit are ultimately integrated by our soul, and we have to now figure out, okay, where’s the leak in each one of these? Does it start in my mind? Does it start in my heart or does it start in my body? Or does it start in my spirit? Can now help us to determine where we need to go so that we can ultimately figure out what action step, what behavior with lifestyle change or choice will ultimately create a greater adjustment for us.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (10:18): And it’s no longer just about, oh, you need to do that cold tub, or, oh, you need to do that sauna, or, oh, you need to stop eating gluten, or, oh, you need to take this supplement, or Oh, you need to meditate or do breath work. No, it’s like what matters to you? Maybe I still remember when I was leaving the nhl, the biggest thing that I needed to do that I needed to create a change was within my relationships. And it was the relationships of those people around me. I needed to level up the people I was hanging around with. I needed to have people pour into me and create real meaningful relationships, not relationships based on transactions. And when I was able to heal that I had already mastered my body. I had already mastered what I was eating and my nutrition and my morning and night routines.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (11:03): I had nailed that, but I was still unhappy. But yet on everybody else looking at me would go, man, you look great. You’re fit. You can run a five minute mile and bench, press 2, 2 85, you look awesome. And I was like, yeah, but I’m miserable. I can’t stand my day-to-day and I’m lonely, and is this really what life is all about? And it wasn’t until I was able to shift that and look at the other 75% of what health is made up of that we were able to break through into true potential and into the God-given calling that was there.
Kristen Boss (11:41): I think there’s a lot of good stuff to explore here. I really want to dive into this. When you realized it was your relationships that needed to change, because I think some people might be there, they hear this and they’re like, okay, I’m not sure I’m, I’m in edifying friendships. I’m not sure I’m around people who inspire me. What was your step into creating meaningful relationships and was it painful to leave relationships that were not good? Talk about that process a little bit because I think people know this in theory, they’ll hear this and they’ll be like, yeah, I know I totally need to change my circle, but how do I do that when it’s everyone I know, it’s my family, it’s my friends, it’s people I grew up with, what do I do?
Justin Roethlingshoefer (12:25): Yeah. So for me, it goes back to my research in heart rate variability. And I’ll talk about this for a second here. So H R V heart rate variability is the metric in which ultimately is telling us how our body’s adapting to stress and strain. I love this metric because it is a single number. It’s no algorithm. It’s just a single number that’s telling us how our body is handling stress and strain. Now, our body doesn’t know the difference between mental, physical, spiritual, or emotional stress. It just sees stress. That’s it. And the response is the same. An increase in cortisol and increase in adrenaline, it increase in norepinephrine and all these other stress hormones that ultimately will start to create what we call chronic stress. Now, let me take a step backwards. Your heart is attached to emotional stress. Your mind attached to mental stress, your body attached to physical stress, your spirit attached to spiritual stress.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (13:25): So remember, your human experience and how it’s made up is now unbe unable to disintegrate between those different forms of stressors in your body. So stress, our body can’t dissociate between. Now all of a sudden, the reaction is to go into a chronic stress state. A chronic ST stress state creates chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation creates chronic symptoms. Chronic symptoms that we as entrepreneurs have ultimately said, oh, these are normal. It’s normal to have brain frog. It’s normal to have anxiety. It’s normal not to sleep well, it’s normal to have low energy levels. It’s it’s normal to be overwhelmed. It’s normal to have body aches and insomnia and not sleeping well and being close to burnout. This is just normal. This is what it takes to be an entrepreneur. But no, that’s your body communicating to you that something is not right. And those chronic symptoms turn into chronic illness.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (14:19): And chronic illness is what’s killing 71% of Americans. And I think that whole concept now comes back full circle as H R V allows us to know how our body’s dealing with stress and strain. So for myself, when I was about five years ago, as I was really starting to play with everything in my diet, everything in my physical realm, everything in my sleep, in my recovery modalities, remember I was in the N H L and coaching these guys and had access to everything that you could want, had access to every type of modality possible. And I started to see that my diet was perfect. It was all based on blood work. I was training as well as you could. I was traveling a lot, but we traveled phenomenally. I was supplementing, well, everything physically was in alignment, and yet my H R V would have these massive dips and massive dips and massive dips, and I still felt this level of anxiety.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (15:23): I still felt this level of discomfort, this level of energy lacking. And I knew the 75% was untapped. And so going back to a lot of the work that I had done in HIV previously came up with eight controllables that really impact your stress levels and how your body adapts. And it came down to nutrition, hydration, exercise, sleep, immune function, self-care environment and mindset. And when I looked at it, I could check off five or six of those things and say, those are like money, they’re great. But self-care never focused on myself whatsoever, never gave myself any time, actually hated to be by myself because I wasn’t happy with who I was. You go into an environment, I didn’t have any friends, real friends, friends that I could go deep with. I didn’t have any level of community. I didn’t have any level of connectivity.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (16:24): I didn’t have any level of relationship with God that I could really lean on. And then from a mindset standpoint, I didn’t want to do anything when it came to self-development and opening up mentally and emotionally to a lot of the traumas that EXI that had existed. And so when you actually take a step back and you look at it, it’s no wonder I was in that space. It was no wonder was that was my reality because I’d only looked at 25% of what was actually happening from a holistic health standpoint. And I was burning out. I I’ve hated my day to, even though people on the outside are like, man, it must be so amazing working where you are. It must be like the dream. And for me, you asked eight year old Justin, if that’s where I was going to be at 24 through 30, if that would’ve been amazing without a doubt. But it was actually the opposite,
Kristen Boss (17:22): Man. I had a similar experience and I’m so glad you spoke so tactically about the eight things that determine your stress, your stress response, or what causes the stress. And for me, I went through the exact same thing where I realized I was dealing with some chronic inflammation and I couldn’t understand why, because in my mind I’m like, I’m not overworking. And I had gone through a couple years where I was working 60 hours week, I wasn’t sleeping and I was just go, go, go, go. But I was in a place where I was dealing with some of those symptoms, but I wasn’t overworking. I was working 20, maybe 30 hours a week. I was environmentally, I was good. Mindset was okay there. But then I realized, I’m like, okay, nutrition not great. Sleep sucks. I think I was doing maybe six hours of sleep on average.
Kristen Boss (18:15): Apparently my body, I have now learned my body needs eight hours minimum. That’s me. I optim, I operate my best. But what I actually noticed was that the level of stress I was actually under fell under the emotional and mental, it was just the cognitive load that I was experiencing at that time, and I wasn’t managing it. And then I was like, and what I was doing was I was just, I was telling myself, oh, my mindset’s great. My mindset’s great. I was working with a coach, but then I realized, oh, I actually think maybe I need to work with a therapist because there were traumas I was just skating through ignoring. And there’s scientific studies that trauma unresolved stored in your body creates a lot of chronic health issues, inflammation being one of ’em, and poor immune function. So I just think it’s interesting. We can look at things. For me, I think that’s where I was confused. I was like, how am I feeling this way when I’m not working that many hours? I’m sleeping okay, what’s going on? And actually was like, oh, I need mental and emotional health. This is actually a key huge area that was affecting all other areas. So I just appreciate how you brought awareness to, I think we could look at certain areas and completely neglect other areas for sure.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (19:34): Totally. And I often give this example where when you’re building a house, you’ve got a carpenter, an electrician, a plumber, a roofer, all of four of these people work on your house. But they all do very different things. But yet in our life will say, well, I’ve got a therapist and that should be helping me with everything that should be, that I should be holistically healthy or I have a trainer and that should be helping me with everything I, I’m good. Well, no, what happened if you were building a house and you got your plumber to do your framing, your roofing and your electrical work, I hope the wind doesn’t blow all that hard. Or if you get your electrician to do your plumbing work, well, all of a sudden you’ll flip the light switch and your toilet will flush. It’s like that. That’s not how we’re set up is we need to have support in each one of these areas.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (20:38): And that’s why I think oftentimes us as individuals, we give away our power. We give away our ownership of our health to the medical system, the medical system that’s been set up so well to deal with what I call the death and disease side, the emergency side of health, the acute issues. If I’ve got a bone sticking out of my leg, yes, get me to the medical system. I need to be there. But everything from that, we talked about brain fog, headaches, nausea, body aches, not sleeping well, lack of energy, lack of libido, all of these things that we suffer from chronically that we’ve been considered normal. I call it fake health actually, because you’ll go to this, you’ll go into the system and they’ll say, no, you’re healthy, but yet we’re suffering from all these symptoms. It’s disease free, but symptom full. And that is fake health.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (21:32): It’s where 90% of us live. And when we live in that fake health space, all we’re doing is chronically filling up our cup with inflammation, which we know stress leads to inflammation. Inflammation leads to symptoms. Symptoms ultimately lead to chronic illness. And the longer that you accept those as normal, the smaller your window becomes to go from prevention to when that window closes and you have to move into treatment. When that symptom now becomes type two diabetes, when that symptom now becomes cancer, when that symptom now becomes heart disease, when that symptom now becomes an autoimmune disorder, all of these things are our body trying to communicate to us. And H R V is the way that we do that. I tell this story all the time, is I come from Edmonton home to the biggest mall in the world, and I hadn’t been home in about 16 years, and I showed up to the mall.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (22:27): It’s got like 47 phases. It’s got a water park, galaxy land golf course, go-karts, movie theaters, underground submarine like crazy. It’s massive. And then it’s got all the stores. So I walked in, I parked outside of a big green sign outside of the waterpark, D three, went in, did my things, walked around. And as I was on my way out, I was like, man, D three waterpark, green sign, where is it? And I started to take some routes that I thought was getting me there, but I was lost. I couldn’t figure it out. Asked a couple people, I said, Hey, where’s D three? The waterpark green sign? They’re like, oh, go up the escalator. Take a right, take a left and you’ll find it. I would follow their instructions. I wouldn’t get to where I needed to be. All of a sudden I found a directory and the directory was awesome.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (23:20): Found it. Oh, green sign, D three waterpark. There it is. But what was the most important thing that I looked at that big red are that says, you are here. And that’s what H R V is for us. In our whole journey, we know what health looks like, we know what we want it to feel like. We go to bed, we put our head in our pillow, we sleep deeply. We wake up in the morning invigorated with energy to do everything on our list that we want to do to come home and play with our kids and have more energy to be able to drive them to their sports and be present to connect with our spouse, and then to be able to go and do all it all do it all over again. We know what that looks like, but we don’t know how to get there because we don’t know where we are today and we don’t know what actions to take.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (24:01): So instead, we grab at every random thing that’s thrown at us from supplements to a therapist, to a hot plunge to breathwork, to a cold plunge, to this new exercise routine, to this new supplements thing, to this new journaling tactic, to this new EMDR process that we want to work on all of these things that are supposed to heal us, but yet we haven’t understood what our body’s asking for. We haven’t understood what our body’s craving. We don’t know where we are, thus we don’t know what direction to go, and we continue to stay in this tornado and this space of fake health, and we start to lose hope. We start to feel like I’m, everybody else is healthy, but it won’t work for me. Everybody else said they tried that, but it won’t work for me. And yet it’s just because we haven’t listened to what our body’s asking for.
Kristen Boss (24:52): So I imagine somebody hearing this and being like, yes, yes, totally agree, because I think it’s true. I think the medical system is more symptom management than it is about getting to the root cause and those things. So I hear somebody, they’re buying what you’re selling, like, okay, heart rate variability I’m in, I get it. But now I picture them going, okay, but how do I do that? Where do I start? How do I know what my body needs? You’re saying you got to know what your body needs. So it’s like, okay, how do I know what my body needs? I happen to know a couple of the cool things you do with your clients. I know you do a blood test because our friend Mindy is working with you, and she was telling me about the process. I’m like, oh, that’s so cool.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (25:32): So the funny thing about HAR rate variability is that everybody is, if you have an Apple watch, if you have a Fitbit, a garment, a polar, an apple a or a ring, a whoop band, whatever your wearable of choices, you’re pulling HR V. And the big thing about these companies is, if you think about it, they’re all in the fit tech space. So they’re going to come up with all these fancy algorithms. They’re going to come up with all these little fancy metrics like a recovery score or rejuvenation score or a readiness score or a sleep score. But you actually don’t know what that means. You actually don’t know what’s being looked at. And it just leads to more of that confusion. And everything that I try to lead with is like the truth. And so there’s two spirits. There’s the spirit of fear, and there’s the spirit of confusion that will continue to come over you.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (26:29): And in our world of health, we are truly living in a spirit of fear and a spirit of confusion because all of these companies are not worried truly about you, about the individual, about individualizing it, personalizing it, but rather how to make the dollar. And I think as we’ve now started to re-shift our mind and re-shift the way that we think about these things, back to HR V. It’s why I love this metric. It empowers you. It empowers you, the user. It empowers you to now understand the language of how your body’s communicating with you because we just haven’t, haven’t understood it before, we didn’t know, a lot of you might be hearing this for the first time, I didn’t know anything about r v, I didn’t know anything about heart rate variability. I didn’t even know that this was a measure of how my body’s handling stress and strain.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (27:13): And ultimately, if I’m chronically stressed or I’m chronically overwhelmed, how it actually is depleting my number. And so going back to this, you can look at your Apple watch, your Fitbit, your polar, your garment, your whoop your aura, and look for the trend. So a low H R V is not necessarily a bad thing, and you cannot connect, you cannot compare it to anybody other than yourself. And what I would really empower and encourage you guys to do is take a look at your H R V for the last month. Is the trend line moving upwards? Is the trend line moving downwards or is it steady straight across? If it’s moving upwards, awesome. That’s the goal is to see a trend line moving upwards, meaning that we’re gaining capacity to handle and take on more stress, mental, physical, spiritual, emotional. If we’re trending downwards, let’s ask ourself why are we losing capacity?
Justin Roethlingshoefer (28:09): Why are we overloading ourself mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally with stress and strain? And is it conscious or unconscious? And where is it coming from? If it’s a steady line and it seems like I would just draw a straight line right across, is it low meaning, is it again, on kind of like a curve if I was to start giving ranges and averages of where you want to be, because I always get that question. Yep. Let’s just say if you’re 35 years old, you want to have an H R V of somewhere between 40 and 75. If you are 45 years old, you want to have an H R V of between 30 and 60. And so if you are below in the lower areas of those ranges and it’s steady, you’re going to be like, Hey, I am chronically overloading myself. Where can I start to gain some momentum?
Justin Roethlingshoefer (29:03): And that’s where we come back to those eight controllables and we use it as an ability to story tell for yourself. So the moment that you can look at this and say, Hey, yesterday I was at 54, today I’m at 40, what does that mean? Why am I low? Why? What caused that drop? And all of a sudden you’ll go, man, I got in a fight with my spouse last night before I was going to bed. It caused me to only get five hours of sleep, and I didn’t hydrate at all yesterday. Look at all those things that are stressing your body, that your body’s having to deal with mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. No wonder that’s the now do it the other way. Wake up in the morning and hydrate, get with your spouse and create some level of forgiveness. Get on your night routine and periodize it properly and watch that number go up. Another great simple example of just even without having to story tell is tonight have three or four. You can even have one, have one alcoholic beverage, and then wake up in the morning and see the difference in your H R V.
Kristen Boss (30:14): Ooh, Okay.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (30:14): And then don’t drink consciously for two or three days and see the change in your H R V and just be able to now story tell, and why I love the eight controllables for this is because all of a sudden now gives you a checklist to be able to go through and say, which area? Where’s the lowest hanging fruit for me to really create the biggest change and empower me to know what behaviors, what habits, what lifestyle changes need to be prioritized today or this week or this month based on what I have going on. And then once this is so good, and then once we really get down to the habits and behaviors, that’s when we start layering on your DNA epigenetic and cellular testing to be able to figure out, Hey, what are we actually deficient at the cellular level from a micronutrient standpoint?
Justin Roethlingshoefer (31:08): What are we needing from a DNA epigenetic standpoint, from a supplementation standpoint? How can we create some custom formulations for us so that we can get really dialed in? And then what tools, like a cold plunge, like an IV drip, like an ozone therapy, some of these top of the pyramid things I call them to really kind of get that extra one or 2% out of it, then we can start talking about those. But if we’re using those and our lifestyle habits and behaviors haven’t even been touched and tapped into, and we don’t know what our body’s communicating to us, and we’re just operating at this low, low level, all you’re doing is you’re wasting your money. You’re going in your, I mean, I’m sure a lot of people can relate to this is you’ve got, you invested $10,000 in your bedroom to get an amazing mattress, the blackout shades and the white noise machine, a cooling pad for your mattress, but yet you still don’t sleep well.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (32:05): Well, it’s because we’re eating at nine o’clock at night and we’re sending emails till midnight and we’re watching TV in bed, and we’ve got all this anxiety that’s just holding us back. And yet we thought that just by investing all this money into tools would help us get a better night’s sleep, but it doesn’t. Or we, we open up our medicine cabinet or our supplement cabinet in our kitchen and we’ve got $4,000 worth of supplements in there that we take inconsistently, but yet we don’t know why we take these things and we still get sick 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 times a year, and nothing’s really helping us whether we take them or whether we don’t because we don’t know what’s for us and haven’t created this true, purposeful, intentional lifestyle habit choices and behavior modifications that are driven off what our body’s asking for. And then at that point, we start to go and layer up the pyramid.
Kristen Boss (33:02): So good. This has been something I have been working on just since the first of the year. I’ve just been working on micros stacking one habit at a time. I’m just going to keep building, okay, I’m going to master this habit and then I’m going to stack the next habit and I’m going to stack the next habit. One of the biggest areas that I worked on improving was my sleep hygiene. I was like, all right, we’re going to improve my sleep hygiene. And I was a good sleeper, but I just noticed, ah, my nighttime not that great. So I started putting in really stringent boundaries around my evenings and even plugged my phone in another room. I bought a hatch alarm clock, so I’m not waking up to my phone. I’m off all blue light devices an hour and a half before bed paper, paper book only, or my Kindle White that doesn’t have blue light.
Kristen Boss (33:45): I’m doing my tea. Like I joke, I’ve become a granny, but I have never felt better. I’ve never felt better. I’m done eating by seven. I’m in bed at nine 30, the light’s off at 10. And I’m like, this granny life is definitely for me because I wake up feeling so good. I’m like, why? I wish I could go back and speak to my 20 year old self and really told that version of me, Hey, small habits are really important to get these habits in now because try and implement them much later in life Ain’t so fun. But I see the payoff.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (34:23): Totally. I love that because I was literally going to sit here and ask you, I was going to say, how much better do you feel now versus before the first of the year when you were doing whatever it is that was normal to you, then,
Kristen Boss (34:37): Oh, I was falling asleep to the TV and then waking up at 11 and then going back and falling in bed. So I would sleep, but I would wake up. I wouldn’t wake up refreshed. Now I wake up energized, refreshed. I’m like, dang, that feels amazing. And it’s so funny because I remember having an internal tantrum about changing my bedtime. I was like, no, that’s my me time. I want to binge Netflix. I want to do these things. I literally had this internal tantrum and I was like, I don’t want to, it’s my time. And then I was just like, well, what if I could inverse this? And what if instead of being exhausted at the end of my day trying to have me time, what if I went to bed earlier and had me time first thing in the morning and it’s not exhausting and it’s energizing. And sure enough, I’m like, oh, I like this. I never thought I’d be like a 6:00 AM person, but I am now because I like the outcomes much better. It’s a better quality me time, just shifting the hour. So I just was like, Hey, if I can shift my body on jet lag, or if I were to go to the east coast and change my clock, I could do that at home. I can change my clock. And so I think it took three weeks and then after that I was like, okay, let’s go. Yeah. And
Justin Roethlingshoefer (35:53): Even if I’m able to shift the mindset there a little bit, let’s think about this for a second. Yeah. You’ve now prepared yourself for your calling. You’ve now prepared yourself to show up and lean in the version of you that ultimately, God intended this vessel that you’re experiencing, this earthly experience. I compare it to a car a lot of the times where you know what it’s like when you’ve got maybe pre-kids and your car’s beautiful and you’re driving around and this brand new whatever, Porsche or just cruising down the road and then all of a sudden you throw two car seats in the back and then you’ve got two kids who now grind up fish crackers in the seats and have blankets everywhere and extra clothes and diaper bags and all this stuff. And you’ve got a friend who comes over and says, Hey, Justin, or Hey Kristen, can you take me somewhere? And you’re like, Ooh, yeah, no problem, but just give me two minutes to clean up my vehicle. Well, we’re carrying Jesus inside of us every single day. We are carrying the spirit of what exists in us and what we have access to. What’s the interior of our body that’s carrying that? Is it, oh,
Kristen Boss (37:07): Preach. Whoa.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (37:09): Is it the pre-kids pristine and everything’s beautiful and prepared to be able to ultimately realize what’s already prepared for us? Or is it like with seats, with sticky hand prints and all of this garbage and extra clothes and all of these things strewn around that’s ultimately just holding us back and not really built for excellence, not built for how we were ultimately designed. And when we can get back to that, when we can start to think, man, am I stewarding my body well? Am I stewarding my earthly experience well? Am I stewarding my mind, my heart, my body and my spirit? Well, am I truly holistically integrated? Am I healing in this or am I just operating as this broken entity that’s just getting by? That’s not how we were built. We were not built to just get by. We were built to thrive. We were built to lead into something that precedes any form of understanding, but it requires us to prepare.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (38:18): It requires us to ultimately lean in and be obedient to how we were meant to be done, how we were meant to be built. And I love, I bring this scripture in all the time, and it really kind of just is a foundation to how I operate because it, it’s Hebrews five 10 and says, therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said, sacrifice and offering. I did not desire, but a body that you prepared for me. And that’s just what this all is, is all about, is preparing yourself for what’s already prepared for you. And when we can do it by our habits, behaviors, and lifestyle, it’s not the talent that you were given that gets you paid. It’s the consistency of these habits and behaviors that you start to understand what was ultimately built for you and what was ultimately prepared for you requires you to prepare to ultimately realize that,
Kristen Boss (39:14): Oh, that’s so good. And I want to say for maybe my friends that are listening that don’t identify in their faith, or maybe that’s not for you. There’s a good parallel here too. It’s just like, am I built with excellence? Am I approaching things with excellence in order to fulfill out the mission I have for my life, the potential? I know that I have this business that I want. A lot of times I tell people, I ask people, I’m like, well, where do you want to go? What do you want and why? And so they’re like, well, I want a six figure business. I’m like, okay, well do your habits align with what you want? Can you get to six figures when you are not feeling your best when you are sleep deprived, when you have brain fog, when you’re chronically exhausted, when you’re having to live from caffeine to caffeine and your, you’re dealing with all kinds of inflammation is your best self, are you preparing your mind, your body, all those things and so that you become capable to fulfill your potential?
Kristen Boss (40:11): And it’s the same way in that level. And I remember I kind of had a huge epiphany with my business because my current habits got me to where I was, and then I realized, oh, hold on. I maybe had, if we’re going to take business habits and compare them to athletic habits, and maybe you would appreciate this having been in the N N N H L, but I realized I was at a place in my business where my habits, I said, these are collegiate habits and they got me to play collegiate sports, but I’m about to go, my business is about to go to the Olympics, so now I have to up-level into Olympic level habits and all these tiny little negotiations I was making in my habits where I was totally able to get by, still do good. I’m like, Ooh, no. We now have to up-level my habits to be that of if I’m going to play in the Olympics, if I’m going to play in, if I’m going to play in the nhl, then now I have to dial it up even more.
Kristen Boss (41:05): And that’s when I was like, okay. I was able to get by with, okay, sleep hygiene, now we’re dialing it up. I was able to get by with eating what I wanted, but now I had to reframe the way I looked at food and be like, is this going to energize me? How am I going to feel one hour after eating this food? I’m going to be exhausted. Am I going to be hungry? Am I going to have low blood sugar? I started looking at everything through a performance lens, and when I started doing that things, I think the desire to shift habits kind of changed instead of I, maybe I should be in the 5:00 AM club. It’s what the cool people do, it’s what the gurus say. But I started seeing it as like, well, here’s how the benefit is to me. Right? Yeah. So I think that shift is helpful for people to see.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (41:49): Totally. And I’ll, A couple things I want to touch on there and I’ll tell a couple stories is number one is you don’t have to be up at 5:00 AM and in the 5:00 AM club, that’s not what we’re saying at all is it’s what matters to you, what is going to align you so that you can ultimately prepare yourself to do what you want to do? I had a guy who came up to me and he’s like, he was an entrepreneur. He had been struggling for a long time, and again, there’s nothing wrong with, there’s no judgment on anybody showing up, but he’s like, I’m struggling to hit a million. I’ve been at this for three years and I’m just grinding. Guy was about 80 pounds overweight, wasn’t sleeping well, was on the road trying to sell his product. So he is eating past food all the time, staying in hotels. I said to him, I said, what’s the number one thing that would make you feel like you’ve won? He’s like, I just want to see a million dollars in my bank account. And I said, what is available to you? This is the piece I want you guys to understand what is available to you once you have a million dollars in your bank account that’s not available to you right now.
Kristen Boss (42:58): So good.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (42:59): And he started to well up with tears and he said, I just want to be proud of myself. And I said, so what would a million dollars in one do for you? Because that million dollars in one is now going to have to be a million dollars in two. And he resonated that with very quickly. And I said, I guarantee you, if we shift habits and behaviors that now make yourself proud of you, the money doesn’t matter. And so we started to shift habits. We started to shift behaviors. He started to align himself with things that made him proud things. We go back to it, back to what his heart desired, back to what God had told him or what his true desire was, was to feel proud of himself. His mindset shifted of just like you, Kristen, not going restructuring his bedtime, creating frameworks for when he is traveling, getting up and having a 30 minute workout routine, getting breath work in the morning because that’s what connected him and aligned him and got him to a creative space. All of a sudden it changed his habits and behaviors and lifestyle, which created a new reality for him. Well, in doing that, six months later, he didn’t have a million dollar business. He had a $3 million business because he had tapped,
Justin Roethlingshoefer (44:12): I love it, into something that was completely different. It’s just like the guy who wanted to travel all over the world. He was a speaker, but yet he hadn’t been able to break out of his city. And I said, are you a good speaker? He said, yeah, I’m a great speaker. But yet he would party every single night. He would had terrible habits in how he set himself up. I said, bro, you want to travel all around the world speaking to people, but yet when you’re at home, you can’t create a solid routine for you to ultimately wake up with energy in the morning. How do you think you’re going to be able to do it when you’re traveling around the world? We are not going to be able to realize and be able to get gifted and step into our gifting in a bigger setting if we can’t handle the little and where we’re starting.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (44:55): And so we have to be able to choose what we want most over what we want right now, and when we can align that, when we can create a level of prior prioritization based upon what it is that we’re seeking, that’s when everything changes. And the more that we can arm ourself with information and ultimately what I call a playbook or a blue a blueprint as to what our body’s asking for, it’s then just a decision of whether we choose to engage or whether we choose to back off of it and just continue to live life in this surface level of mediocrity.
Kristen Boss (45:36): I just feel like you had so many mic drops in that last couple of minutes, and I am like, this is what I tell my people all the time because I’m just, instead of, I think you, it’s funny because it was a million dollar question. It’s just like, what are you hoping that million dollars will give you? And the honest answer was like, I just want to feel proud. And then it was amazing that you’re able to reframe it in a sense where he is like, well, how can we help you feel proud right now? And that’s where he was able to access habits. And then of course, you uplevel your habits, you uplevel your performance. But I think it started with identity. I tell people, I’m like, your habits is always a manifestation of how you see yourself, how you identify. If you see yourself as, I am a high performer, I am somebody with a million dollar business, that’s going to inform the habits of do my habits align with that identity?
Kristen Boss (46:29): And I remember before I made my first $20,000 in business, I remember asking myself, okay, if I were making that, what would my daily habits look like? And before the money came in, I was like, okay, I I’m, I think I would do this. And I just guessed. I was like, I’m pretty sure I’d be writing this content every day. I’d be showing up to these sales calls in this way. I would be talking to my people this way, I’d network in this way. And I followed through what do 45 days later it happened. I was like, okay. And so then I was like, all right, now what’s my identity and habits around this? So it’s same with our health, it’s same with our business. There’s so many parallels here, and I just feel like my people probably just got so much value from what you wanted from what you shared. Real quick, I have my heart rate variability. What did you say was good for age 38?
Justin Roethlingshoefer (47:11): So if you’re going in the age 38 bracket, you’re going to want to be somewhere in that on a low range for a female is somewhere in that neighborhood of 40 to 75,
Kristen Boss (47:22): Somewhere in that neighborhood. I’m 43. I’m 43.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (47:26): Awesome.
Kristen Boss (47:26): Is that your average? Yeah, that’s my average over the last month.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (47:31): Cool. So can you pull up a three month average if you can, or maybe even a six. Okay.
Kristen Boss (47:36): I have a six. Okay. Six is 47.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (47:39): Cool. So if we were to take a look and just kind of high level in the last three months versus the last six months, where have you taken on more stress and strain or been able been under pressure a little bit, especially oh for sure, maybe even in the last month if you’re starting to see that trend line, but just maybe explain and talk it through over the next couple minutes here. Where have you started to see some of that added stress load come from?
Kristen Boss (48:12): Oh, for sure. It started in Jan one when we have, by the time this podcast airs, my audience is going to hear about a brand new offer I’ve been creating for six to eight months. So it’s thinking about, okay, I got to film all that content, 20 hours of filming my content, hiring the coaches. We’ve brought on, I mean, the hiring we’ve done in my company, we increased our company expenses by 30% operational costs. And so as a ceo, I’m like, all right, now we got to make sure we’re generating our revenue and this new, I have an event next week for, I think we’re going to have 400 people there. Huge thing. So I could tell you exactly what it is. It’s, I am in massive content creation, launching two brand new things and doing hiring and all those things. So I could tell you I have felt, I would say, I’ve called it my CEO stress of understanding the weight of I have 20 mouths to feed, plus my family to feed, plus this thing that I’m doing.
Kristen Boss (49:12): So I know for sure, and I even remember Jan one, which is funny that you asked this Jan one, I looked at my year, I looked at my launch schedule and I said, woo, January to June is going to be a beast. And so knowing that, I was like, okay, I have to up-level my self-care habits exponentially. So that’s when I decided, all right, we’re fig. We’re I’m going to do my sleep hygiene. I’m going to be, I cut out alcohol. That made a huge difference in how I felt, my stress levels anxiety. I just started at working on water and then just moving and breath work, but I’m like, still need to improve it.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (49:49): But here’s the thing though, and here, and here’s the awareness piece. And here’s, I think where the big ahas come from is you’ve gotten the baseline habits down. So now you are almost primed to go and take, okay, let’s go to this next level. Let’s start getting some of these baseline testings done. So start understanding where I can actually make some big leaps in this to help take some of the stress off my body, off of things that I’m not even aware of yet. And then being able to help guide myself in these actions that, again, it’s not adding more, but where can we start stripping what’s actually not helping me? What a, what’s actually just maybe almost turned into a checklist, just a laundry list of activities that isn’t moving the needle for me anymore. And it’s what is ultimately going to be the best thing for you.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (50:38): Last story here is I had this author we were working with, and he was on a deadline. He was supposed to write his, he got his advance five months prior and he was coming up to about a three week deadline. And he’s like, Justin, I have eight chapters left to write and I don’t know, I can’t break through. I’ve just been struggling. And I said, when’s the last time you did something just for you? And and he laughs. He goes, just for me, what are you talking about? And we looked at his r v numbers over the last three months and everything had started to trend downwards. He had a whole bunch of anxiety starting, and I said, what’s something you love to do just for yourself? He’s like, I’m a big water skier. He lives on a lake. He’s got a boat, he’s got all access to this stuff.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (51:25): And I said, for the next four weeks, I want you to go water skiing four days every single week for an hour. He’s like, there’s no way. I said, just try it. First week he went four times, never heard from him. At the end of the week, he texts me, he’s like, it was fun, but really didn’t feel anything. I said, just continue. Just stay with it. Just allow yourself to connect. And he goes out, started the second week, fifth time, sixth time, seventh time. And I get a phone call after his seventh trip and it’s like 11 o’clock on a Wednesday. And I remember answer answering. I said, hello. And I hear him on the end and I just hear this weeping. And I was like, I like, I’ll call him Tim. I was like, Tim, are you okay? He’s like, Justin, I was out for my water ski this morning and I just kept going and I kept going and I kept going.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (52:23): And then I told him to stop and I just got in the boat and I just sat there and I wrote the entire book. And he goes, I was just able to tap into something that was so connected that was so in this space of oneness, and I just don’t know how this happened. And when we come back to it, he was all of a sudden, and again, if you look at his H R V numbers, over the course of that two weeks, you started to see this massive trend line up. The stressors didn’t change. It’s the habits and behaviors of how to prepare yourself to handle these stressors that did. And it opens you up and it allows you to operate on another level. It allows to be connected and work in a different space, which if we continue to stay in that it leads to burnout.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (53:11): If we start to adjust and move in a different way, it allows us to burn up. And that’s where we want to go. We want to be able to continue to allow us to burn upwards rather than burn out and use the stress that we’re exposed to for us rather than against us in a powerful way and create that rhythm between overreaching and regeneration. And that is when we start to win and live in this, what we call ownership space. And that is a powerful way to empower you. And this is available to everyone. It’s not something that’s secretive, it’s not something that is really difficult to find. It’s just that you have to lean in and say, yes,
Kristen Boss (53:51): Going to be, all my audience is going to be getting up their Apple watches and all their things are going to be like, oh, have you heard about your H R V? What’s your H R V? Because I’m going to be so curious. I’m going to go talk to my husband about it right now, but I just, I’m so thankful for the practical tips you have offered my audience where, and we’re going to wrap up here. Where can my people find you to learn more about you? If they’re like, I want to learn more about this magic that Justin does and learn more about how to optimize my life myself, holistically integrate my health, where should we send them?
Justin Roethlingshoefer (54:23): Yeah, so there’s two places. One is just own it coaching.com, every, all the information’s there, you can grab anything that you need, a bunch of free resources that will help you kind of manage this as well. And then just Instagram at Justin Roth super active there, and I try to answer every single DM that comes through so you’ll know it’ll be me on the other side.
Kristen Boss (54:50): I love it. Thank you so much for coming on the show today and bringing so much value.
Justin Roethlingshoefer (54:55): Oh, you’re welcome, Kristin. I’ve really enjoyed it.
Kristen Boss (55:05): That’s a wrap for today’s episode. Listen, if you love what you heard here today, I would love for you to leave a real quick rating and a review. This helps the show get discovered by new people. Be sure to take a screenshot of today’s episode and shout us out on Instagram. We’ll shout you right back out. If you’d like to find additional resources or discover how to work with me, head to kristenboss.com.
